Glimpses of Resurrection

Found this poem on emergentkiwi's blog. In my desire to celebrate the resurrection during this season, I'm going to try to post poems, symbols, reflections on the resurrection of Jesus!!

resurrection door kicker

Jesus, door kicker, strides out the tomb
hinges swinging
door banging
in Spirit's breeze

Jesus, walks our world,
loving on sandy beach, gathering on grassy knoll,
calling "Followers, to me"

If you walk away, will we follow?

Church,
inside 4 walls,
contains, confines,
holds, hoards
doctrine?

Or

Church,
jogging through city street,
laughing, listening,
stretching through house and home,

Til Kingdom come

Easter Season (March 23 to May 10)

I've been thinking a lot about the resurrection and its implications for me (us) today as a follower of Jesus. I have lived in a faith tradition that normally sees Easter as a one day event, but have come to appreciate an alternate keeping of time coming down through the ages - namely the Christian calendar.

It is in this keeping of time that I am learning that Easter is not a one day event, but a 50 day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. It is a season of great astonishment and joy which culminates with the day of Pentecost when the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church is celebrated.

So this year, not only do I wish to participate in Lent (which I've done), but I want to spend the next 49 days pondering, living out, asking questions about, being astonished and humbled at the Resurrection of my Lord!

Some Easter thoughts by a favorite author:
The world has already been turned upside down; that’s what Easter is all about. It isn’t a matter of waiting until God eventually does something at the end of time. God has brought his future, his putting-his-world into rights future, into the presence of Jesus of Nazareth and he wants that future to be implicated more and more in the present. That’s what we pray for every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth at it is in heaven.”

… if Lent is a time to give things up, then Easter ought to be a time to take things up.

Easter is a time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means to put things to death in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training things up in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume and in due course bearing fruit.

All right, the Sundays after Easter still lie within the Easter season. We still have Easter readings and hymns during them. But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. It is any wonder people find hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? It is any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simple the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long over due that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up.

+NT Wright

Remembering...

In the Christian calendar, Lent officially ends at sundown today. It ends, in many cases, with readings from John 13 - Jesus washing the disciples feet and the eating of the Passover meal that Jesus ate with His disciples. In many gatherings around the world, those assembled will wash one another's feet to re-enact what Jesus did and then they will partake of the bread and the cup together.

Then, as Phyllis Tickle writes, "in stark silence, those serving at the altar will clear away the vessels that have held the wine and bread. They will take such bits and pieces of consecrated bread and wine as may be left and lock them out of both sight and reach in a niche or sanctuary in the chancel wall.

They will clear away next all the cloths and fair linen that have draped the altar, bringing basins of water to wash the altar down, as people watch, many of them crying. No part of the sacred meal may be left. All trace of it must be obliterated. The altar of God's presence is closed while all of Heaven and earth together mourn what is being recalled. Last, the priest or pastor extinguishes the sanctuary light or lamp. It will not burn again until the Easter Vigil when, just after midnight, the cry will go up: He is risen! He is risen indeed!"

I don't know how you will spend the next 3 days. You may attend a gathering or you may not, but I hope that you participate in some sort of remembering. Remembering the story, remembering His life, remembering His death, remembering the groaning of all creation as God is laid to rest in a tomb, then remembering Sunday morning, and remembering to cry out, "He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!"

Maundy Thursday

I learned the other day that Maundy means "command". So Maundy Thursday is derived from the command of Jesus at the Last Supper to love one another. Right before He gives this command, he "acts" it out...Jesus gets up and washes His disciples feet.

As He does this, He asks them, "Do you realize what I have done for you?" It is a poignant question, both to the disciples and to us today. (It is actually amazing to look at all the questions Jesus asks through the gospels).

Someone wrote: Well might Jesus ask us if we understand what he has done for us. In this passage, he is speaking of the washing of the disciples' feet, and how the disciples themselves must become servants of one another. But how can we realize that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word made flesh, so humbled Himself, not just to provide a basic scrubbing, but to wash away every bit of human sin, degradation and death?....No we don't realize what He has done, at least not entirely. Each year the Church returns to the mysteries of our Redemption so that we can consider them again, perhaps more deeply this time, perhaps with greater faith than ever. Or perhaps in stunned, humble silence, we will just let the magnitude of these saving acts wash over us.

Lord, as I watch You - the Master and Teacher - wash the feet of Your disciples, I realize that You have laid down a pattern for us, Your people. Help me to not just understand what You did in that act, but to live it out. Enable me to live out the command of loving one another whether that other is friend, brother or enemy. For Your sake, King Jesus!

Palm Sunday

This morning as we grabbed our palm leaves to carry into the service, I stopped to look down upon the one I held in my hand. It was lovely and green except that one leaf was beginning to turn brown and was showing signs of a blight or disease. I thought about switching out the branch and then realized that, for me, it was a great symbol of Palm Sunday.

It was the day when the crowds cheered and rejoiced over Jesus. They wanted to make Him king, they thought for sure He would deliver them from the hands of the Romans. They sang His praises!! But within a handful of hours that chorus of "hosannas" would become a cacophony of "crucify Him!!". They, like my branch were green with energy and desire, but would soon show the decay of fickle allegiences.

I often ask, how could they have done that? Loved Him one moment and chose a convicted murderer over Him the next...Then I stand back and see myself among them. I, too, love it when I think Jesus is going to do something in my favor. I sing His praises and act triumphant! However, when He doesn't do what I expect Him to do, I get kind of ticked off at Him and choose other things or people over Him! I choose my own ideas instead of Him!

Lord, as we stand on this side of Your death and resurrection, I can see now that You came as King, but in a different manner than those around you thought You would. May You give me the grace to always give you a triumphal entry - to always see you as King - but keep me from disowning You when You operate in ways I do not understand! This week, would you help me enter into Your Passion - to hear the story with new ears, to see You in new light, to be humbled deeper by Your death on the cross and to tremble at the announcement of Your resurrection!!