CALLING: Choosing to See Abundance

For many years now, I've been sort of fascinated with the whole idea of calling and what the notion of that means.  I thought maybe I'd start writing some of these thoughts on the blog every now and then.  I would love to hear your own thoughts, your own stories or notions of calling.

Yes, we claim that we are all called--each and every one of us.  I don't know about you, but I probably put that in almost every sermon or lesson that I put together.  But do we truly believe that God has called us?  What does that mean?  Does it give us permission to just, then, continue down the road we're on, thinking that that is where God plunked us down so surely that is where God called us to be?  And here's one for you:  Is it a calling simply because God envisions it?  In other words, what happens to a calling that, for want of a better word, falls on deaf ears?  Is it still a calling?  What happens to that vision that God has for us if we never stop and open ourselves enough to see exactly what it is?  What happens to God's calling for me if I've already figured out what my life is about?  What am I supposed to be?

I think all of us ask ourselves those questions.  But, do you think there is something that you're "supposed" to be?  Well, I suppose it would be easier if God had simply set us on the right road and just told us to walk down the line in the middle, never veering, never turning, perhaps just stopping for rest every seven days or so.  Then we could all walk forward, perfectly aligned, like a bunch of good little Stepford soldiers marching to wherever God led us.  OK, so all we'd have to do is stay on the line, right?  Just keep moving.  Really?  I know there are those who claim that kind of "right and wrong", "righteous and evil" theology but I personally don't think that's exactly how it works. 

After all,  remember what the all-powerful God did in creating us.  This all-powerful being gave away part of the Godself, relinquished part of what made God omnipotent.  God made a world and filled it with abundance.  And then God made us, images, however shadowy, of the very Godself that created us.  And God took a piece of the power that God held and gave it away.  It's called free will.  All of a sudden, this great Creator was no longer omnipotent.  God can do everything--everything, that is, except make us choose.  And, really, if you were God (or, for that matter, even if you were you), wouldn't you rather someone choose to love you, choose to be with you, choose to be who you envisioned them to be? 

So, I guess that straight line down the middle of the road has sort of faded away (or maybe it was never there in the first place!).   Maybe that was the whole idea.  Maybe we weren't called to see the road at all but rather to see the abundance through which it takes us. Maybe that is the way we choose to love, choose to be with God, choose to love God.

And back to the other question:  Is it a calling if we do nothing?  Or does God's calling to us come to be in our response?  First and foremost, God calls us into holiness, into that sacred mystery that is God.  God calls us to know the Godself, to know the very image of God in which we were created, to know the very best self that we can be.  But, more specifically, God calls each of us in unique ways.  God calls us to use our gifts, our talents, our individual circumstances, the persons in our life, to live that calling and become who God calls us to be.  God can do all things--all things, that is, except respond.  Look around.  Look at the incredible abundance that God has poured into your life.  What is your response?

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening.  I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about—quite apart from what I would like it to be about—or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue.  It means a calling that I hear.  (Parker Palmer, in Let Your Life Speak:  Listening for the Voice of Vocation, 4.)   

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Dancing in the Rain

Image from "Singing in the Rain" (1952)
(with Gene Kelly)

Lectionary Passage:  John 6: 1-21
To read this passage online, go to http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+6:1-21&vnum=yes&version=nrsv

We love this story.  (And they must have loved it in the first century because the writers of all four gospels chose to include it their unique account of the Good News of Jesus Christ.) Yes, we like the notion of Jesus providing everything we need, bursting in just when we are at the end of our ropes, just when we need help the most, and fixing the ails of our life (or at least feeding us lunch!).

But notice (don't you hate that...yes, I'm about to ruin your image of super-hero Jesus pulling lunch out of a hat or whatever we thought he did!) that the story never says that the boy's lunch was the ONLY food there.  Perhaps there were some people holding back what they had brought, afraid to offer it for community consumption because, after all, what if they ran out?  What if they needed it tomorrow or the next day or after they retire?  So, perhaps the miracle lies not in some sort of image of Jesus creating something from nothing but rather in the little boy himself.  He was first, freely offering what he had to Jesus and the Disciples to do whatever they needed to do with it.  Now, note what was in the little boy's lunch--barley bread and fish.  Barley is a very inexpensive and somewhat "unglamourous" grain and fish were plentiful.  After all, they were right next to this huge lake.  (Just to get it in your head, the "Sea" of Galilee is actually a huge lake.)  In other words, this was the lunch of the poor.  The little boy was more than likely not from a family of means.  Perhaps his mom had lovingly packed all they had into his lunch so that her son could have this experience of seeing this great man Jesus of whom they had only heard.  But before that ever happened, the little boy stood and offered everything he had.

And, then, well you know how it goes.  The person next to him saw what he had done, thinking that no longer could he now with a clear conscience keep what he had brought tucked away.  And then the person next to that person saw him offer what he had.  It went on and on, a veritable Spirit moving through the crowd.  The message is right.  It WAS a miracle!  And when they had finished eating, they realized that it wasn't that there was enough for all.  There was more!  There were leftovers that were then gathered into baskets.  Maybe they were for later.  Maybe they were for those who needed it.  Or maybe they were offered as holy doggie bags to remind us that God always gives us way more than we really need. 

So what about those of us who feel that we need to be prepared for the next storm that is coming around the bend?  Well, keep reading.  The passage goes on to say that the disciples started across the lake in the darkness.  And, sure enough, the storm began to rage--blowing winds, crashing waves, beating sheets of rain bearing down upon them.  Wouldn't you know?  See, this is what we were afraid of!  But, there is Jesus.  "Do not be afraid.  Do not be afraid."  What is interesting is that the account never says that Jesus calmed the storm.  Jesus calmed the disciples.  Jesus reminded the disciples that no matter what, no matter how hungry or unprepared they are, no matter what storms come up unexpectedly, they are not alone.  It is truly a story of extraordinary abundance.

I was going to write today on the David and Bathsheeba story but I got up early this morning to get a drink of water.  And standing at the window in my kitchen, I saw the words on a plaque I have on the window sill:  "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.  It's about learning to dance in the rain."  (I looked it up and the quote is attributed to Vivian Green.)  It's a great thought.  Jesus is not a super hero that performs unexplainable miracles or plucks us out of the storms of life.  Jesus is much more.  When the storms come, when the winds rage, and when we just think we just don't have enough for what's coming, God invites us to dance, holding us until we find the rhythm that is deep within us and know the steps ourselves.

So, keep dancing!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

For those of you who are reading this through the St. Paul's ESPACE link, welcome!  And for those who get this as a "blog" email, yes, I'm finally back!  I'm going to try to maybe do this 2-3 times a week.  Keep on me!  :)  Shelli

We Have Risen! We Have Risen Indeed!

To read today's Gospel passage, click on
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=200846939

THE LORD IS RISEN!

THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!

"The Resurrection of Christ"
Vyssi Brod Hohenfurth, c. 1350

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is over, Alleluia!
Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!  Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!  Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Hail, the Lord of earth and Heaven, Alleluia!  Praise to Thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!  Hail, the resurrection, thou, Alleluia!

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia!  Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia!  Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

(Charles Wesley, 1739)

The day has arrived!  After all this time of anunciation and birth, of baptism and ministry, of teaching and healing, of calling and response, of temptation and darkness, of dying and crucifixion, this Day of Resurrection has dawned.  Christ has risen!  Christ has risen indeed!

But lest we lapse into thinking of this day as a commemoration of The Resurrection of Christ, as a mere remembrance of what happened on that third day so long ago, we need to realize that this day is not just about Jesus' Resurrection; it is also about our own.  We who carried our cross, we who died to self, are this day given new life.  God has recreated us into who God calls us to be.  And, in a way, that is almost more scary than the dying.  There is no going back.  The self that we knew before is no more.  We are a new creation.  We have risen!  We have risen indeed!

You see, Jesus did not die and magically come back to life.  God did not undo what had been done.  There was still a bloody cross standing on an unknown hill called Golgotha.  Rather, God created something new--a new way of seeing and a new way of being.  Do you remember the first time God did that?

In the beginning when God created^* the heavens and the earth,the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God^* swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1: 1-5)

From the void, from the darkness, God created Light and Life.  Truthfully, if you look at it from a literal view, nothing has really changed.  Jesus, sadly, is still dead.  But through eyes that have been resurrected, nothing will ever be the same again.  Maybe resurrection comes not in raising one above life, but in raising life to where it is supposed to be.  Jesus was the first to cross that threshold between--between death and life, between the world and the sacred, between seeing with the eyes of the world and seeing with the eyes of the Divine.  Resurrection is not about being transplanted to a new world but rather being called to live in this one with a new way of seeing.  It means being recreated into the one that God envisions you to be.  It means being given a new way of seeing where love is stronger than death, where hope abides, and where life has no end.  It means being capable of glimpsing the Holy and the Sacred, the promise of Life, even in this life, even now.  This day of Easter is now only about Jesus' Resurrection; it is about ours!  So, what do you plan to do with your new life?

The end of all our exploring...will be to arrive where we started...and know the place for the first time. (T.S. Eliot)

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia! Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia! Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

Everlasting life is truly this!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli


Thank you for joining with me on this Lenten journey!  I have been so blessed by all the comments and the reflections that you have shared.  We will do this again.  In the meantime, I'm going to take a little "blogging sabbatical" and return on April 25th with posts two or three times a week.  I will do the "every day" thing again later!  Let me know if you or others that you know want to join the Google group and get emails each time I post.  And comment!  Let's start a discussion!   You can email me at swilliams@stpaulshouston.org.  Let me hear from you! 

The Day Between

What do we do with this day, this Holy Saturday?  We are still grieving.  The reality of it all is beginning to sink in, beginning to be real.  Jesus is gone, dying alone on some hill that we don't even know.  So, what do we do today?  How do we pick up the pieces in the midst of our pain and despair and just go on with our lives?  Oh, we 21st century believers know how the story ends.  We've already jumped ahead and read the next chapter many, many times.  (Don't tell those that don't read ahead, but it all works out in the end.)

And yet, we do ourselves no favors if we jump ahead to tomorrow.  After all, the Scriptures tell us that Jesus rose on the third day, the THIRD day, as in one-two-three.  The third day doesn't happen without today.  It must be important, right?  But, oh, it's just so painfully quiet.  The sanctuary is dark, awaiting to be redressed for its coronation.  The bells are quiet, hanging expectantly for tomorrow.  And we still sit here draped in black with our Easter brights hanging there ready for us to don.  What are we supposed to do today?

Tradition (and the older version of the Apostles' Creed) holds that Jesus died, was buried, and descended into hell.  So is that what this day is?  Descent?  Good grief, wasn't the Cross low enough?  The well-disputed claim is that Jesus descended into death, descended into hell, perhaps descended into Gehenna (Greek, Hebrew--Gehinnom, Rabbinical Hebrew--גהנום/גהנם), the State of ungodly souls.  Why?  Why after suffering the worst imaginable earthly death would Jesus descend into hell?  Well, the disputed part is that Jesus, before being raised himself, descended to the depths of suffering and despair and redeemed it, recreated it.  The sixth century hymnwriter, Venantius Fortunatus claimed that "hell today is vanquished, Heaven is won today." Why is that so out of bounds of what God can do?  Don't we believe that God is God of all?  Or does it give us some sense of comfort to know that we are not the worst of the bunch, that there are always Judas' and Brutus' that have messed up a whole lot worse than any of us and so are destined to spend eternity on the lowest rungs of hell?  But, oh, think about the power and grace and amazing love of a God who before the Divine Ascent into glory, descended into the depths of humanity and redeemed us all, perhaps wiped out the hell of each of our lives rung, by rung? 

And, yet, again, we cannot leave it all to Christ to do.  Just as we were called to pick up our cross yesterday, we are called to descend down into the depths, plunging into the unknown darkness, so that God can pick us up again, set us right, and show us a new journey.  And so this day, we stand between, between death and life, between hell and heaven, between a world that does not understand and a God who even in the silence of this day has begun the redeeming work.  In some ways, this is the holiest day of the week.  How often do we stand with a full and honest view of the world and a glimpse of the holy and the sacred that is always and forever part of our lives?  How often do we stand together and see ourselves as both betrayers and beloved children of God?  How often do we stand in the depths of our human state and yet know that God will raise us up.  This is a pure state of liminality, a state, as the Old English would say, "betwixt and between."  It is where we are called to be.  It is the place of the fullness of humanity as it claims both human and divine.  In the silence of this day, we stand with God.  And we wait, we wait expectantly for resurrection, we wait for God to say us once again.  It is where we should always be.  We won't though.  We won't be there. (Remember, we've had this problem before.)  And maybe on some level, it's too much for us to always be there, always be waiting expectantly for God.  But at least we can remember what this day feels like as we stand between who we were and what we will be. 

So, for today, keep expectant vigil.  Do not jump ahead.  We can only understand the glory of God when we see it behind the shadow of death.  But, remember, shadows only exist because of Light. 

“Welcome, happy morning!” age to age shall say:
“Hell today is vanquished, Heav’n is won today!”
Lo! the dead is living, God forevermore!
Him, their true Creator, all His works adore!

Refrain

“Welcome, happy morning!”
Age to age shall say.

Earth her joy confesses, clothing her for spring,
All fresh gifts returned with her returning King:
Bloom in every meadow, leaves on every bough,
Speak His sorrow ended, hail His triumph now.

Refrain

Months in due succession, days of lengthening light,
Hours and passing moments praise Thee in their flight.
Brightness of the morning, sky and fields and sea,
Vanquisher of darkness, bring their praise to Thee.

Refrain

Maker and Redeemer, life and health of all,
Thou from heaven beholding human nature’s fall,
Of the Father’s Godhead true and only Son,
Mankind to deliver, manhood didst put on.

Refrain

Thou, of life the Author, death didst undergo,
Tread the path of darkness, saving strength to show;
Come, then True and Faithful, now fulfill Thy Word;
’Tis Thine own third morning; rise, O buried Lord!

Refrain

Loose the souls long prisoned, bound with Satan’s chain;
All that now is fallen raise to life again;
Show Thy face in brightness, bid the nations see;
Bring again our daylight: day returns with Thee!

Refrain

Just wait...

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Were You There at the End?

Today's Scripture Passage: Mark 15: 34-47.
To read today's portion of the account of the Passion, click on the below link:
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=200678972

It's 3:00.  The bells have begun to toll.  The sky is black and rumbling. After hanging there for hours, Jesus is nearing death.  He cries out from the depth of his forsakenness, the depth of his loneliness and abandonment.

Standing in the background, we want to help.  We want to bring comfort and a swift and painless death.  But we don't.  Instead we stand by, not really knowing what to do, not really knowing if we should get involved, put our own selves at risk perhaps.  The truth is, we don't really want to get our hands dirty.  Why do we think that because Jesus is our Savior, we should become nothing more than inert bystanders?  Well, we've never been told that.  No where in Scripture does it tell us to sit back while Jesus does all the hard stuff.  Oh, it would definitely be more palatable to just sort of walk way from this whole ugly mess and wait for it to pass, maybe show up Sunday morning for the grand processional with not even a bloodstain on us.

And then, it is over.  Jesus cries out and breathes his last breath on this earth.  The last piece of humanity that was at its fullest, the last shred that was what God envisioned, goes away in one last long and drawn out exhale.  God breathed us into being and is now exhaling and slipping away.  It is finished.  Jesus is gone.

Suddenly, the earth shakes and flashes of lightning cut across the darkened sky.  Torrential winds begin to blow across the earth and rain begins pouring onto the land.  The curtain of the temple, the veil that separates the Holy of Holies from us, that separates holiness from the earth, is torn in two and heaven and earth begin to spill together.  In some ways, they become almost undistinguishable from each other.  It is almost as if they somehow belong together, perhaps that they always belonged together. 

And then, from the shadows emerge the women.  They are those who are powerless, meaningless in society.  They are those whom Jesus loved.  And they were there even at the end.  Because the Sabbath was beginning, Joseph of Arimethea, an outsider in Jesus' circle, asked for Jesus body.  And after anointing him, Joseph buried him in a borrowed tomb.  Even in death, Jesus had no home.  Even in death, the world did not make room.  And so the stone was rolled into place.  And those who loved him tried to go back to their lives.

So, were you there at the end?  Were you there when Jesus died, when the world changed, and when Jesus was buried in an unmarked grave?  The women knew where he was buried.  But no one else seemed to know.  They were not there.  So, what now?  We were always told to follow Jesus.  Where is he now?  Well you see, this would be the point at which we are compelled to pick up our cross and follow.  This would be the place where we die to self, where we leave our selves behind and go forward.  This would be the place where we experience the wholeness of who Jesus is.  This is the moment for which we've been preparing on this forty-day journey.  Just as the earth and heaven have spilled together, becoming undistinguishable, so have death and life.  No longer can we see where one ends and another begins because death has been recreated as life, death itself has had the breath of God breathed into it. The Protestant notion of the "empty cross" does not even make sense.  The cross is not empty; it is full of life--all of life. 

But we have to wait.  We have to enter the Cross on this day.  We have to follow Christ.  We have to die with Christ this day--die to self, die to greed and selfishness and putting ourselves ahead of others, die to prejudice and exclusion and a lack of compassion for our brothers and sisters in this holy earth.  Today we die.  And then we wait.  For God has gone on ahead.  God entered death first and asked us to do the same, asked us to follow, asked us to take up our cross.  So, take up your cross and follow.  For those who believe that God redeems, death is now part of life, earth is now part of heaven, and endings are now part of our beginning.  The birthing is not over.  It is never really finished.  On this night it all spills together and waits for God's redeeming work.  On this night the earth once again waits with expectant hope for birth to happen.  But this time, it is ours!
 

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright,
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child!
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace!
Sleep in heavenly peace!

Silent night!  Holy night!

Son of God, loves pure light

Radiant beams from Thy Holy Face

With the dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth!

Jesus, Lord, at Thy Birth!

So, even as we wait in darkness, even as we grieve this night, God has only begun creating Life.  So, were you there at the end?  If we're not there at the end, we'll miss what comes next.  In the silence and holiness of this night, God is with us, walking us through to Life.

The point of Holy Week is to empty.  It is the completion of the process of Lent in which we have made room for our death...Resurrection is finding that place that is just for us.  In the beginning of Holy Week, we find ourselves spiritually homeless.  But when we are homeless, we are ready to be sheltered.  The shelter from death, in life, is on its way.  We don't need to fear the emptiness.  (Donna E. Schaper, in Calmly Plotting the Resurrection, p. 80.)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli



Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?

Today's Scripture Passage: Mark 15: 20-33
.
To read today's portion of the account of the Passion, click on the below link:
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=200598988

So they led him away and they hung him on the cross.  They chided him to save himself.  But Jesus was even too weak to carry his own cross.  They randomly pluck a man out of the crowd to help him carry it.  Now if we were doing the staging of this, we probably would have written in one of the disciples to do this, one of those who had traveled with Jesus these past years and received so much love and so much of life from Jesus.  It would have made more sense for one of those whom Jesus had stooped down below last night to wash his feet in a poetic depiction of incredible mutuality.  But that's not what happened.  As it becomes more and more difficult for Jesus to carry his cross, it is a stranger who stoops to serve Jesus.  We really know very little about Simon—is he black, brown, white, olive-skinned?  Does it matter?  He was from Libya—a foreigner to the city of Jerusalem.  Anonymously plucked out of the crowd to help a bleeding dying man, he stooped and hoisted the cross that Jesus was carrying to his own shoulder.  Even at this late hour, God has orchestrated a Divine reversal in what the world expected.  Isn't that just like God?  But, you have to wonder, where were the disciples?  Where were you?

The account says that they brought Jesus to Golgotha.  The name derives from the Aramaic golgolta, meaning "skull" or "place of the skull".  Early tradition assumed that this was a site west of the city.  And when the Lukan Scripture was translated into Latin, it became known as "Calvary."  But somewhere in history, the site was lost.  Perhaps it wasn't even a specific site at all but a sort of general area away from the bustle of the city where these crucifixions would occur.  In 330, the Emperor Constantine tore down a Roman temple to Aphrodite and built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which tradition now recognizes as the last stations of Jesus' journey to the cross, the site of the Crucifixion, and the site of the burial.  The present structure, built by the Crusaders, still houses the Constantine structure and the tradition.  Maybe it's best that it's like that.  Maybe it's best that the actual site of Jesus' final moments is not really known and even that Jesus' final resting place is more of a tradition than a known place.  After all, would you have been there anyway? Maybe the anonymity is the whole point, sort of a depiction of our faith journey as we wander with no real knowledge of where it is we're going--only that God is calling us there.

So, accompanied by an anonymous person to an anonymous place, Jesus is crucified.  The one who not so long ago had been surrounded by friends and followers, who a short time ago had preached to thousands on a hillside near the Galilean lake, and who only days ago had been showered with palm-branches in acclaim for who he was, was totally alone.  The one who had come into the world to save the world was now going to die in a shroud of anonymity.  It's pointless to ask the question as to whether or not you were there.  You weren't.  I wasn't.  No one was. 

The life that began in the humble anonymity of a rough-hewn manger was ending the same way on a rough-hewn cross.  Maybe that was the whole point.  We bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out.  We are here for but a short time that, by the very Grace of God, is hopefully so filled with life and love that when our life here has ended, love still remains.  We do not know exactly where Jesus was born and we can't pinpoint the location where he died.  What we do know is that while Jesus hung on the cross waiting those agonizing hours to die, God had plunged down to the very depths of humanity, to the places of loneliness and despair, to the places of abandonment and darkness, to the places where we are sometimes afraid to go.  And there, God began to say Creation into being once again.  The cross is God's highest act of Creation yet. And when it was all said and done, it was Love that remained.

H.J. Iwand said that "our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end.  Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation, and doubt about everything that exists!  Our faith must be born where it is abandoned by all tangible reality; it must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine."  So, in all probability, the explanation of the Cross is that there is no explanation.  At humanity's lowest point, whether or not we bother to show up at all, it is only God who can save us.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Where you there whey they crucified my Lord?

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon...

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Were You There When Jesus Was Handed Over?

Pontius Pilate presenting a scourged Christ to
the people (Ecce homo!) (Behold the Man!)
Antonio Ciseri (1871)

Today's Scripture Passage: Mark 15: 1-19
.
To read today's portion of the account of the Passion, click on the below link:
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=200591899

So they bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over.  He was no longer in control of his own self and his own destiny.  He was at the mercy of the powers that be.  He was at the mercy of the world's need for control and stability.  At this point, we are looking for him to get out of it.  We are looking for him to be Lord, to be in control, to fix this that has gone totally awry.  But he says nothing; he does nothing.  This doesn't make sense at all.  All of these years, all of these hopes and promises--all for naught, all for this.

Station #1 (Via Dolorosa)
"Jesus is Condemned to Death"
Jerusalem, Israel

And to make matters worse, it seems, if only for a moment, that Pilate somewhat teasingly begins to back track a bit.  He gives the people an out.  He gives  them a chance to release someone, to, in effect, redeem someone.  But they don't choose Jesus.  Once again, humanity makes the wrong choice.  They choose Barabbas, a common prisoner, one who deserved what he got, to be released in the place of Jesus.  And so, once again, Jesus was handed over. Crucifixion was imminent.

Handed over.  We don't do well with this.  We are a people who like control.  We don't like to leave things up in the air.  We don't like the idea of not knowing what will happen.  So, the thought of being handed over is totally counter to the way we think.  But, when you think about it, this was not the first time that Jesus had been handed over.  Think back.  Years ago, on a cold, dark, but star-filled night, God came into a God-forsaken animal stall in a small town outside of Jerusalem surrounded by political unrest and abject poverty, surrounded by a world that did not understand.  And it was there that God gave up a piece of the Godself and handed it over to humanity.  God intentionally handed a piece of the Divine into the world to become human, to become us.  God relinquished control of a piece of the Godself.  It was God's gift to us. 

Stations #10 (Via Dolorosa)
"Jesus is Stripped of His Garments"
Jerusalem, Israel

You see, this fully human Jesus was never really in control.  As one who was fully human, he didn't have the need that most of us do to control his destiny but rather handed his life back to God.  But in an effort to control our own lives, humanity handed him over to be crucified by the world.  Humanity took the greatest and most miraculous gift that it has ever been given, a gift that God with extravagant and unquenchable love wanted us to have, one that God freely and lovingly handed over to us, and tossed it aside.  We handed it over to control, to political unrest, to abject poverty.  We handed over the piece of God that came to dwell with us in the interest of trying to maintain what we thought was the way to live.  We didn't know what we had and we allowed the world to take it away.  The truth is, we never really made room for God from the very beginning.  There was never room in the inn.

Jesus has been handed over.  There is the sound of nails being driven into wood that echoes and bounces from one hill to the next.  Black clouds begin to form over the wilderness. The beloved daughter of Zion has given up her child and handed him over to be crucified.  Humanity has thrown its gift away.  But as Jesus is forced to begin the walk through the streets of Jerusalem carrying his cross, God's work continues--the work of redeeming all of Creation into new life.

So what happened to Barabbas?  When you think about it, he was the first to be redeemed.  Maybe he wasn't the wrong choice at all for he, too, was a beloved child of God.  So did he know it?  Or is he just like all the rest of us--not even realizing the gift of life that we've been given? 

The Body of Christ given for you...Eat this bread

The Love of God poured out for you...Drink this cup

So, on this Holy Thursday, think about what God has handed over to you.  What things in your life have you handed over to God and what things have you handed over to the world?  And think about where you would have been when Jesus was handed over.  The Way to the Cross is to be handed over to God, to give up control.  What does that mean in your life?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli