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Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Station VI: No Longer Hidden

Scripture Passage: Luke 8: 43-48:


43Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. 44She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. 45Then Jesus asked, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.” 46But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.” 47When the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

The sixth station of the Stations of the Cross, named Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus, does not come directly from Scripture but rather from the hearts and the traditions of the early European Christians. Tradition holds that Jesus healed a young woman named Veronica in his early ministry and as a sign of her deep and abiding gratitude for him, she accompanied him to the place of his execution. When she wiped his sweating face along this walk, the imprint of his face supposedly remained on the cloth. Eusebius, in his Historia Ecclesiastica, tells how at Caesarea Philippi lived the woman who Jesus healed of the blood disorder. In the West, she was identified as Martha of Bethany; in the East, she was called Berenike, or Beronike, the name appearing in the Acts of Pilate. The derivation of the name Veronica comes from the words "Vera Icon", or "true image".

This man had shown her great compassion when she thought there was none. The bleeding had started and had never stopped. And so, always, she was deemed unclean and, therefore, unacceptable, untouchable, shunned. This was a last effort to claim her life, to become a person of value and worth again in a society that so carefully laid out who was acceptable and who was not. She had, carefully, made her way through the crowds that day avoiding the stares and recoils that others held for her. And then she touched him. It was only a touch but she could feel something. She cowered back into the crowd trying to hide. But he saw her, compelling her forward and her life was never the same again.

And so on this day, she could not just hide out in the crowd. He needed someone--companionship, mercy, compassion. She didn't care what she was risking. After all, this is the one who had given her her life. She could do this one thing. And when she wiped his face, she felt that same burst of power that she had felt before, a life-giving, life-awakening power. And she was left with the image of Christ.

Whether we take this literally or not, whether we believe that she was healed or that Christ's imprint adhered to a cloth, is not the point. You see, each of us was made in the image of God. We are not destined to BE God but to be an image, a reflection of the Godself into the world and into the lives of each and every one that we meet. And when we show compassion, when we show mercy, when we step forward and show love to those who need it the most, the imprint of that image DOES stay with us. We become a reflection of the Christ, an image of the God who gave us life and calls us to show it to the world. And as Jesus walked toward death, the image of the Christ remained, no longer hidden, on the one who reached out to one in need. Reaching out to others does not mean that we are Christ; it means that we are human, fully human, the way Christ showed us to be.

So in this season of darkness and shadows, remain no longer hidden but step forward into this Walk of Christ and help someone in need. And the imprint of Christ, the image of the very Godself, will stay with you always.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

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Manna Lessons

The Gathering of Manna
Bernardino Luini, c. 1520

This Week's Lectionary Passage:  Joshua 5: 9-12
⁹The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.  ¹⁰While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho.¹¹On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain.¹²The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.

That experience in Egypt was still hanging around, a past that you just can't shake, that haunts your dreams and gets in the way of moving forward.  If was hard, hard to live within someone else's culture, to live with what is important to someone else, to give up who you were and, more than that, to give up who you were becoming.  Hope had all but died.  And then God opens a door and you can literally taste freedom just over the horizon.  But the horizon was far away.  And on the way was danger, and hunger, and thirst.  And then manna appears.

It was a mysterious little plant, appearing each day so that they could eat their fill and then disappearing just as quickly.  You couldn't hold on to it, couldn't save it, couldn't pack it away for safekeeping.  It was downright elusive.  But maybe that's what hope is all about.  Maybe hope is like that, appearing when we need it and then disappearing when we try to hold onto it.  Maybe hope dies when we hold it too long and try to make it something that it is not.  Maybe hope requires that we keep moving.

But now, God has rolled Egypt away.  We have to let the pain go.  We need to remember, yes, because it is part of us and we need to make sure that it doesn't happen again--to anyone.  But we have to forgive and let go of the disgrace.  God has rolled that away.  And here at Gilgal, meaning "rolling away", that all comes true.  On this day, we have eaten of the land.  This beautiful land with disgrace rolled away has provided for us.  And the manna is only a memory.  Maybe it was there to teach us to only take what we need, to teach us to let go, to teach us to hope, to teach us to keep moving.  It is good lesson to carry into this land.  I am no longer looking for manna.  God has now invited me to participate in what God provides.  This land can feed us all.

So, as you continue on your Lenten journey, think about those things that you still hold, those things that you need to let go.  Learn to take what God offers; learn to let go; learn to hope, learn to keep moving. Learn to not miss what God has provided because you're looking for manna.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Season of Unpreparation

Scripture Passage: Mark 6: 7-12
⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts;⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.¹⁰He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

What do you mean we're not supposed to take anything with us?  This journey is hard.  There might be danger along the way.  We have to be prepared.  Admit it.  That's what we all think.  After all, this journey to the cross is hard.  We're not even halfway there--just sixteen days or so--and we've already encountered more than we really thought we could handle.  And now we're told to go out there virtually unprepared for what will come next.

Maybe that's our problem.  Maybe we mistake this Lenten journey as a time of preparing us for the Cross when, actually, we're being called to unprepare ourselves, to put it all aside and encounter the raw roughness of the road itself.  This season is not a season of preparation but, rather, a season to shake the dust off, to clear our minds of any baggage that we have brought to this place, and to leave empty-handed, open, ready to receive.

It's not something that we do well, this letting go, this allowing ourself to appear vulnerable, out of control, and unprepared.  I mean, we know that we have to walk this walk.  We know what's coming.  We know what we have to go through.  And so we don some sort of cross-cut suit of armor to protect us, to make it just a little bit easier.  But think what Jesus did at the beginning of this journey.  He went into the desert, unprepared, taking nothing.  He did encounter danger--the danger of his own needs, his own desires, his own vision of what his life could hold.  What he encountered was himself.  And then he shook off the dust and left, returning to the road itself.  St. Catherine of Sienna once said that "all the way to God is God."

This road to the Cross IS the road to which we are called.  It is the Way of God.  The challenge for us in this season is not to prepare ourselves for what is to come, but to clear the way. 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Station V: Anonymous Bystander

Scripture Passage:  Mark 15: 21-24
They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. ²²Then they brought Jesus^* to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). ²³And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. ²⁴And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take.

We know the town from where he came--Cyrene, an ancient Greek colony that became a Roman colony near modern-day Shahhat, Libya.  We know that he was a father of two sons.  Beyond that, this man Simon is essentially an anonymous bystander.  We don't know why he was there at all.  Had he intended to come and bring his sons to this gory event or had they planned to visit Jerusalem, perhaps steep themselves in history and a little shopping, without realizing what this day would bring?  We don't know what about him prompted the guards to literally pluck him out of the crowd.  All we know is that this man lives in history as the one, the only one, who helped Jesus carry his cross to Golgotha.

The Scriptures do not say that he responded in any way other than to do it.  It is interesting that in all those years upon years of God's calls being met with "no, not me, please not me" that this anonymous man about whom we know little would be the one to do this.  So God calls a scared, young, no-name peasant girl to bring Jesus into the world and a foreign, probably dark-skinned, anonymous bystander to carry him out.  Isn't that just like God?  Here, just before the end, God slips one more Divine reversal in.

You know, Simon had to be afraid.  Good grief.  Here he was in the middle of the processional to a crucifixion!  What if they killed him too?  What would happen to his sons?  His family was miles away.  How would they even know what had happened to him?  And, yet, he didn't seem to question his role.  He put his hand on Jesus' shoulder as if to say, "I'm here."  Then he leaned down and picked up the heavy cross, being careful to place his hands rather than running them down the splintering wood.  And then they began to walk--Jesus and this man, this dark-skinned anonymous man who Jesus had never met, this child of God, this new disciple, this one who without hesitation carried the cross of his Savior.  He would go through the gates and up the hill, touching the edge between life and death. 

But, again, I have to ask, where were those disciples?  Where were those who Jesus had called, who Jesus had groomed, who had been part of Jesus' ministry, who had been Jesus' friends?  Why was it THIS man and not them?  Why was it Simon that when it was all said and done was the first to take the yoke of Christ unto himself?  After all, it seems, the disciples would have been in the best position.  It would have made a whole lot more sense.  But, then, where would we be?  Where would those of us who Jesus had called, who Jesus had groomed, who are part of Jesus' ministry?  Why isn't it us touching the edge between life and death?  Why do we hold back?

28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matthew 11: 28-30).  See, we read this with such comfort at what Jesus can do for us.  But what does it mean to "take my yoke"?  For, THAT is the way that our souls will rest.

So, on this Lenten journey, move from being an anonymous bystander to a disciple of Christ.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli


 

Waiting for Figs

This Week's Lectionary Passage: Luke 13: 1-9
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.²He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it.⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

We spend a lot of time trying to make this faith thing make sense, don’t we?  We try to offer reasons for what happens in our life, the good and the bad.  After all, we surmise, everything has a cause and every cause has an effect.  And so we live under the illusion that somehow we have control over things, that somehow everything in some way has got to make sense.  But truth be known, we really don’t have the answers.  In fact, our lives are really pretty precarious when you think about it and sometimes the answer is just that we have to wait and wonder and be willing to just let God be God.  And repent... 

And then we read this parable of the fruitless fig tree.  The owner waited and waited and no fruit appeared.  So, he got tired of it and told the gardener to cut it down.  After all, nothing was happening.  It was just wasting soil.  But the gardener stopped him, offering to nurture it just a little bit more than it had been, putting fertilizer around it, and waiting just a little bit longer. 

Now, granted, this is not one of our warm and fuzzy passages.  Jesus is not healing or welcoming or feeding a crowd.  In fact, this is downright hard, probably because we find way too much of ourselves in it.  We, too, want so badly to find answers to things that happen in our lives that we often lapse into that same notion of God rewarding and punishing based on what we do that these first century followers did.  After all, what other answer could there be?  And then, the fear factor...if we don't bear fruit, we get cut down?  If we don't repent, we'll die?

Well, do you remember the Book of Job, the quintessential story of all in life that makes no sense at all, that has no answer,  that comes to us from the margins of faith, those places where we’d rather not go?  You remember it…Job, righteous and reverent, loses everything he has.  And most of the book is about his so-called friends and even Job trying to figure out why.  After all, God doesn’t just pull life out from under someone for no reason.  Job must have done something.  He must have not been who he was supposed to be.  The truth is, Job and his friends, like us, I’m afraid, inherited a somewhat myopic world of retribution and distributive justice.  It is hard to imagine a God who loves us just to love us and who, when bad things do happen, when life begins to feel like a whirlwind, appears into the depths of our being to help us stand, to help us walk, and to wait…just a little bit longer.

That’s where that turning, that repentance comes in.  You see, our problem is that we see repentance as a negative thing.  We envision repentance as a change toward being “right” or “moral” or something else that will win us favor with God or rack us up enough points to get us into heaven.  That’s why we sometimes have this Job-like image of God as some controlling entity that pulls some sort of Divine strings based on what we do.  But what kind of God is that?  Repentance is not about losing who you are; it’s not about becoming a puppet of some sort of string-pulling God; it means discovering the wonder of who you are meant to be.

The Greek word that is usually translated as “repentance” is metanoia.  In Classical Greek, it meant to change one’s mind, one’s heart, one’s soul, one’s life.  Penance was not a part of it until later.  We did that to it!  It simply meant to follow a different road.  But, as Jesus said, unless you repent…unless you change course…unless you let go of the life that you’ve created and the image of this string-pulling God that you’ve somehow concocted, and listen to the road that beckons before you, you will remain comfortable and secure and right where you are.  And you will, surrounded by comfort and answers, die!  But, oh, what you will miss!  Frederick Buechner says, “To repent is to come to your senses.  It is not so much something you do as something that happens.  True repentance spends less time looking at the past and saying, ‘I’m sorry,” than to the future and saying, “Wow!” ( Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (San Francisco:  HarperCollins, 1973), 79.) 

So, what does this have to do with waiting on figs?  It sounds a little bit like a threat.  OK, one more chance you lazy fig tree.  Because if you don’t, you will die and that will be it.  You have one more chance to get it right, to repent, to turn, or, that’s it.  Well, you know as well as I that there are well-meaning people in pulpits all over the world saying exactly that.  You have one more shot!  And that it!  Oh, that’s not it at all!  Read it again.  There’s always another chance.  There’s always someone that will come along to nurture and wait patiently for us to turn, for us to change, for us to see what we’re missing.  You see, there ARE consequences for those who do not repent.  But it has nothing to do with punishment.  It has to do with missing who we’re called to be, missing out on the life that is offered us, missing out on being able to see what God is showing us.  And that, my friends, IS a form of dying.

You know, it’s an interesting thing about figs--the common fig bears a first crop, called the breba crop, in the spring on last season's growth. The second crop is borne in the fall on the new growth and is known as the main crop.  But the fruits cannot happen without the first crop and, likewise, without the last season.  Essentially, the fruit sprouts from a seemingly fruitless crop.  Maybe the gardener saw that.  I think God certainly does.  See God sees things that we miss, things that our eyes, unadjusted as they are to the light, have not seen yet.  God is good at leading us through our darkness and nurturing us over and over again.  The truth is, God is pretty incredible at patiently waiting for figs.

And yet, with all the omnipotence that we imagine God to have, God cannot pull strings.  Because there is one thing that the Almighty cannot do because God in God’s infinite Wisdom placed the power to choose in our hands.  And so God cannot coerce us to love or to serve or to respond.  God cannot force us to see what God is showing us.  And so God waits for figs to bloom and the world to change.  And God holds us and guides us and picks us up off the bottom of our existence time and time again.  There’s always another season.

We read this passage in our Lenten season because it is our season to wake up, to open our eyes, to turn, to love, and to learn that sometimes the world that we see does not make sense.  But it’s not all up to us.  God is waiting patiently for our response.  God knows it’s hard.  After all, it just doesn’t make sense.  We wish it made sense.  G.K. Chesterton said “to let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”  You see, God just desires that we love.  And for that God waits.  God knows that there’s always a little bit more time to wait for figs. 

So in this Lenten season, turn toward God and wait for figs.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli