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What is so good about Good Friday?

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Imagine the early disciples on the first Good Friday. It certainly wasn’t good in their eyes. Their leader has just been killed, by the state.

This wasn’t a drive by. This wasn’t a domestic dispute. This wasn’t an accident. The authorities put him on trial and then the crowd decided that Jesus was going to die. They freed a murderer instead.

They knew they were upsetting the status quo with their little group but they didn’t know it would lead to Jesus being crucified.

They’ve been up all night with him. They were keeping watch while he prayed. Well, they weren’t really doing a great job of it. He kept finding them asleep. They were sleeping in bits and pieces, outside, on the ground. It wasn’t a restful night. He’d told them what was going to happen but they didn’t really get the severity of it. They certainly didn’t think it would end like it did.

The soldiers came, with Judas. Here’s someone they know. It will all work out OK, they are sure of that. Nope. There’s a fight. A soldier’s ear gets cut off. Jesus gets taken away. Nothing makes sense anymore.

And then this. No last minute reprieve. He’s dead.

Crucifixion is a terrible way to die. It is humiliating. It is long and slow. You suffocate to death, nearly naked, in front of everybody. Meanwhile you are in agony because of the nails that are holding you onto the cross. No anesthesia. No mercy. It is a cruel death – one designed to send a message. Don’t challenge the system or you’ll meet the same fate.

Everything has turned upside down for them. Nothing makes sense. Everyone and everything appears to be against them, and the person they would ask for advice is dead.

They are wondering if they are next.

Where is the person who stilled the raging sea? Where is the person who healed all those people? They are needing healing themselves right about now. There is a raging storm in their hearts, and there is nobody there to say “Be still!”

Let us sit in this moment.

Scattered. Lost. Abandoned. All hope is lost.

Don’t run away from this feeling. You have to live thorough it.

We are those disciples.

We are wondering where is God now. We think God has forsaken us.

We don’t see a happy ending to this story.

Sit with this feeling. Don’t rush ahead to the end of the story. Don’t rush ahead to Easter. You know how this ends. They didn’t. Be those disciples. Feel this loss. Feel all hope draining out of you. Feel the exhaustion and the fear.

And know that God is still with you, even in this moment, even in this agony.

Prayer isn’t about changing what IS.

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I was just asked to pray for a man’s wife. She is going to have a scan today to see how her cancer is. He wanted me to pray that her cancer is gone. Prayers don’t work like this. Sure, I can pray that they find everything that needs to be found, and that the machine is working correctly. But I can’t pray that her cancer has disappeared. That is a different thing altogether.

Say your friend tells you that she is pregnant and she asks you to pray that it is a girl. This is too late. The gender of the child is already determined at this point. The time to pray for a specific gender was before she got pregnant.

Say you are driving home and you see smoke from a fire. You start praying “God, don’t let that be my house!” Too late. The fire is already happening. It won’t jump from your house to another. If it did, that would mean that your neighbor’s house would be on fire, and that wouldn’t be fair. But in reality, you just have to accept that whatever house that is on fire is on fire. You can’t change it. You can pray that everybody gets out ok, but even then you need to understand that isn’t up to you either.

Sometimes people are meant to die young. Sometimes bad things happen. Our goal with prayer is to learn how to accept the reality of the situation.

The more we try to define things as bad or good, the more resistance we are bringing to the situation, and the more attachment.

Our goal is to be like a surfer. Ride the waves, and go with them. You can’t control them. If you work with them you are safe. If you work against them you will get hurt. Or die.

Prayer isn’t about getting what you want. It is about wanting what you get.

A lot of prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind. It is about us coming to grips with God’s will. It is about us learning to accept what IS.

God is in charge. Our job is to understand that. If we believe that God is good, we have to accept that whatever happens is what God needs to happen. We may not like it at the time. It may be pretty awful in fact. But the more we resist, the harder it gets.

There was one time I was in a river raft. My boyfriend at the time was a guide. He had taken many tours of that river and knew it well. We were with a few other friends on a private trip down the river. He got to a certain area and had us “surf” for a bit. The water started to come into the boat a little. I started to freak out and tried to climb out of the raft. He held me in the raft, pushing down on my shoulders. I freaked out more. We got out of it fine and he explained it to me. He knew what he was doing. It had to happen that way. If I’d gotten out, I would have been pulled away by the current, or worse, pulled under the raft. My resisting was making it worse for me.

Ideally, he would have explained all this before we got to that area, but he didn’t think to. Also, he didn’t know exactly the way the water (or I) was going to behave. But he knew what he was doing, even if I didn’t. He was the expert, and I wasn’t.

God is the expert, and we aren’t. God is in charge, and we aren’t. God knows what is going to happen, and we don’t. God is the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end. God is everything, all at once. We can’t even begin to comprehend that. God’s will is so much more vast than we can ever know.

Prayer puts us in a state of being receptive to the will of God.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t ask God to change His mind. But be aware that whatever happens after that is what is supposed to happen. God is not your waiter. You don’t get to “have it your way.”

Other thoughts on the “Condensed Gospel”.

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I’ve come to see putting the Gospels together as one thing as the same as cooking for myself from scratch. This probably has been done before. Any time someone has made a script for a movie about the life of Jesus they have had to do this. But I haven’t.

When I cook for myself, I get the raw ingredients from the market. I chop them up. I learn how they cook together. And sometimes in the middle of everything I realize I need to add something else. It is a learning experience. It is a bit challenging too. There are often surprises.

I could go to the grocery store and get something prepared, but it wouldn’t taste the same or give the same sense of fulfillment. There is a lot to be said for doing it yourself.

I could look to see if the Gospels have already been put together as one thing. But by doing it myself, I’m learning a lot. It is good discipline.

It is kind of like Biology lab in high school, where we all had to dissect a frog. No new knowledge was gained for science from doing this. But each student learned something that she wouldn’t have known before. You can’t really teach how something three dimensional is put together in a textbook, and sometimes the only way to know is to take it apart.

My “Condensed Gospel” isn’t very condensed. It is, in a way. I’m only putting in one example of everything. Some events are repeated word for word. Some are repeated, but glossed over very quickly. But this is a big story, and there is a lot to it. Ultimately it will be bigger than any one Gospel, because it will have everything important in it.

I have a running commentary going on this project as well. It is where I put in anomalies. There are so many bits that I thought were in all four Gospels, but they are only in one. The Beatitudes – the “Blessed are the…” speech, along with the Sermon on the Mount, is only in Matthew. This was very surprising, as it seems pivotal. The same is true of the story of Gabriel telling Mary that she is going to be the mother of Jesus.

It is amazing to me that the order of events gets mixed up a lot. But I think the most important part is not the order, but the events themselves. It is important to say “what” and not “when” for this story.

If I were to try to publish this for real, I’d probably have to get permissions. I’m copying from one particular translation of the Bible to make it easy, but it is a lot of it. While I doubt that there are royalty checks going to the relatives of the original writers of the Gospels, there probably is something about the translation that matters.

I’m using the Holman Christian Standard Bible for a simple reason. I was able to get free copies of it from the Y, so it is the translation that I had when I was reading the Bible all the way through a few years back. I had a copy in my car and one at work. No matter where I was, I had the same translation with me. It is printed on normal paper – not that annoying “onion skin” paper. It is easy to take notes in. It is an inexpensive printing, so I didn’t feel like I had to baby it. So this is the translation that I’m most familiar with. Now, sure, with the Bible Gateway website, I can use any translation. But I’m finding I need to refer to each Gospel in print and online, as well as take notes, to see how it all goes together.

My big takeaway – if you only have a little time and you want to read the story of Jesus, read Matthew or Luke. Mark and John seem to skip a lot of the story.

I think all Christians need to stop whatever they are doing and read the Gospels for themselves. They don’t have to do this project. This is a bit complicated. But they need to read the Gospels, or at least one of them, slowly and carefully. They need to read what Jesus said, and notice what he didn’t say.

I think that what has gotten the Christian church off the tracks of the message of Jesus has been when people have decided to read the words of anybody else as the Gospel. Not Paul, not your pastor. Not some “prosperity Gospel” peddler. Jesus. Just Jesus.

Plenty of people think that they have to have special training or a seminary school education to understand the Gospels, and that just isn’t so. These words are said for you. Jesus came for you. You are meant to read them and understand them for yourself.

His message is about love, and about not judging. His message is about forgiveness and forgiving. When Christians judge others and say that someone else is a sinner, they have not gotten the message at all.

It is time to return to the beginning.

I think that non-Christians would do well to read the Gospels too – not to be converted, but to know for themselves when someone says they are Christian and aren’t acting like it.

I think way too many Christians have damaged the credibility of the church by their perverse need to tell other people how to live their lives. This isn’t something Jesus did. It is something that Jesus came to change. The more “Christians” try to force their beliefs on others, the more they aren’t acting in a Christ-like manner, and the more people will be turned away from the true message of Jesus.

So the only way to get the message? To read it for yourself. This is in part what I’m trying to do with this project. I’m trying to make it so that everything is all together in one place. I’m not changing any words. I’m not creating a new translation.

Whether people read it or not is up to them. It is kind of like exercise and eating well. I can’t make other people take care of themselves. I can provide the tools so it is easier for them. But it is up to them to do it.

At the heart of it all, I want the Body of Christ to get healthy and strong. This is going to require a lot of work on the part of each member. This is going to require a lot of soul-searching and conscious-examining.

We have gone far astray from the teachings of Jesus if we have people saying that they are members of a church who protest at funerals. You know who I’m talking about. There are other examples of people who use the name of Jesus as a weapon. I don’t want to give them any publicity or energy by naming them. But you know. We all know.

Sure, there are many Christians who are fine examples of Jesus in this world. But they follow the teachings of Jesus and thus don’t make their piety known. Sadly, their good works don’t make the news, and thus don’t put the right face on the church. We have to collectively change the image of the church to being a force for good, and not a bunch of intolerant jerks.

Our message has to be of love. Just love. Nothing else.

Spiritual director – probation officer

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Sometimes I feel like my spiritual director is my probation officer. I have to check on with her every month to see how I’m doing. That makes it sound like I don’t know how I’m doing, or like I’m going to the doctor for a checkup. It is kind of both.

A spiritual director is kind of like a guru. Their goal is “intimacy with God”, and while that is pretty nebulous, it is a good goal. If any minister I’d ever had over me talked like she did, I’d still be in church. But sometimes it is really hard work. It is one on one, for an hour. It is really intense.

I feel awkward going. She cuts right through the muck, like a laser. She sees through my veils and obstacles that I put up, voluntarily and involuntarily.

Sometimes I hide. There are some things that I know we disagree on, like salvation. I don’t feel that Jesus came to save us. I feel that Jesus came to tell us that we aren’t broken and don’t need to be saved. There is a huge difference here. I know that I differ from mainline Christianity in this. I also know that I’m in alignment with the words of Jesus in my belief. So I keep on saying it in my blog. She and I, however, we butt heads over it. She says we are broken. I say that Jesus says we are as good as we are going to be and that is good enough.

I also feel that she’s holding back in telling me things. I’m the kind of person who needs explicit instructions, and I feel that she’s the kind of person who wants me to figure it out on my own. Perhaps she feels that if she tells me something that I should be experiencing, that I’ll fake it. Kind of like how if you read about a particular disease, you might feel like you have the symptoms and you don’t. Or like if you explain something a certain way, it will frame that experience for that person. I feel she wants me to have my own experiences.

I dread going almost every month, but this month is worse. After going, I immediately want to go again. Then a month later when it is time to go, I don’t want to at all. I think I don’t know what to talk about. I think that whatever I’ve experienced isn’t enough. I’m pretty sure I’m doing it all wrong.

Am I cheating, by wanting to skip? Am I falling to the wayside, or am I on the right path?

I’d like to work on the manuscript for my book. I’d like to catch up on sleep. I’d like to paint. Wednesday mornings are nice – I don’t have to go in to work until the afternoon. If I go visit her, I lose a lot of that time. It is only once a month, though.

Sometimes rules help, sometimes they hurt. What rule am I following here? Go once a month regardless? Do it automatically? Or feel it out? Discipline is the root of “disciple” after all.

Part of it is realizing that she works for me, not the other way around. I pay her for her services. It is like using a personal trainer, but for your soul. It is really weird and really awesome.

This month I decided to cancel. And I’m glad I did. I feel that if it is a choice, it is easier. God loves a cheerful giver, after all. If I go because I feel I have to go, then I’m missing the point. But then I also know that if I slack off too much I’ll get out of line/habit/practice. Order is important to me.

It is all a balancing act. Order / freedom. I chose order, of my free will. But too much order starts to feel stifling.

Smudge head

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It is Ash Wednesday and I haven’t seen anybody with a smudge on their heads.

Now, this is the South. There aren’t a lot of people who observe Ash Wednesday. Most people, if they go to church at all other than at Easter and Christmas, don’t do Ash Wednesday. The most common denominations are Baptist or Presbyterian, and they don’t play this game.

Catholics certainly do, and Episcopalians. Many Methodists do it as well. Lutherans for sure. But in the South, smudges are rare.

So last year I felt like I was in a special club when I’d see someone wearing a dirty grey cross on their forehead. It was weirdly cool. We were all Christian, sure, but we were part of a different batch of Christian who did this odd thing. Not better, just different. It was kind of like being in a club within a club. Maybe it was like being a 33rd degree Mason, versus a 32nd degree. We were all “in,” but some of us got the extra special handshake.

Last year I felt really strange, sticking out like that. I worked my normal shift at the library and had to be out amongst the public. Part of the game is that you aren’t supposed to wash it off. It is like wearing a cross around your neck. It is a visible sign of your faith. The irony is that one of the readings at the service is always about not making your piety known before others. Jesus said a lot about that.

Matthew 6:1
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Matthew 6:5
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

Matthew 6:16-18
16″Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 17″But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face 18so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

So maybe we are doing it wrong. Jesus tells us not to do it, and yet we do it. Jesus didn’t tell us to do any of this ritual, either. There is a lot we do in church that Jesus didn’t tell us to do. But I hadn’t realized this then. Then, I was doing it because it was something my church did.

It was strange to have a mark on my head, out in public. I’d wear a straight face and pretend like this Thing wasn’t on my head. It is hard to miss. Now, some people understood, but not most. Some just pretended it wasn’t there. Some didn’t even notice. Some would gesture towards their own foreheads and say “You have a bit of dirt on your head” and I’d have to explain it to them. Some would look at me, think about it, and say “It’s a religious thing, right?”

Sometimes they would say “Happy Lent” and I’d not know what to say. It isn’t a happy thing, on purpose.

In a way, it was a good way to tell them about the whole idea. I think that making Christianity a participatory event is a good thing, in more than one way. I think that people certainly need to live like Jesus did and treat others like he treated them. But sometimes, getting there can be hard. So a little bit of playacting is necessary. It can get things going.

But nobody that I saw was wearing ashes this year. Maybe they are all doing it right now. It is the evening, and it is common for some churches to have this service then. Making time to go to church before work or in the middle of the day is hard. Plus, not all churches have the staff necessary to have multiple services. If you don’t have enough staff, it is easier to have just one service.

Plus, if you have the service at night, you don’t have the dilemma – wash it off, or not. Nobody is going to see it except your family, and they all have one too.

But I kind of liked having the cross on my head last year. I’d have a weird kind of bond with people – people I didn’t know played the same game I did. A lady looked at it and it helped her – she said “Oh, that’s today!” and realized she needed to go to church.

While that isn’t the best way to enter Lent, it certainly is a way.

Ideally, we enter our Christian life awake, and prepared. Ideally, we plan for it. Ideally, it isn’t a rush or something we forgot.

But then sometimes God comes to us right where we are and surprises us, just like Jacob in the desert.

Genesis 28:11-17
11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

May we all be ready to receive the Guest that is God, at all times. May we all be marked with the Cross in our hearts, and not just on our foreheads.

Paternosters

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decade

Paternosters are one-decade rosaries. They are more easily documented than rosaries, since many rosaries were destroyed during the Reformation. Beaded cords used to recite prayers have been found in many cultures and over many years. In fact, our word “bead comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “biddan” meaning “to pray” and “bede” meaning “prayer.”

It was very dangerous to be a Catholic during the Reformation. To possess a rosary or any other Catholic paraphernalia was to risk imprisonment or death. One way that Catholics chose to practice their faith in secret was to carry Paternosters instead of rosaries. They were easily portable and concealable. It was possible to use the paternoster discretely while going about daily life in public because it could fit in the palm of a hand.

Pre-Christian people valued certain stones for their talismanic or protective qualities. Among these were coral – to strengthen the heart, rock crystal – for purity, amethyst – to protect against drunkenness, and agate – for protection. Other materials that were used included amber, carnelian, and emeralds. When Christianity became popular, beads fell out of favor. God was to protect you – not the beads. But old habits die hard. When people made rosaries, the used the same stones, for the same reasons.

Paternosters are not meant to be worn, but used. Following the standard order for rosaries, the prayers go as follows: at the cross, recite the Nicene Creed. At each of the ten following beads (Aves), recite the “Hail Mary” prayer. At the final bead (the Paternoster), recite the “Our Father” prayer.

References –

The Book of Beads – Janet Coles and Robert Budwig
The History of Beads – Lois Sherr Dubin
Sacred Origins of Profound Things – Charles Panati

“Those people”

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It is so easy for people to think that church is a special club. They are in it, so it must be special.

And then they look around and they see people who don’t look like them. They are a different color or class or race. They are from a different culture or country.

And they don’t like it.

How can “those people” get in here? Like it makes them lesser, because the church is big enough for people who aren’t like them.

I’ve taken communion with homeless men. I’ve shared the cup with addicts and alcoholics. The person at the rail on one side of me is divorced. The other person is going to be divorced soon because she is cheating on her husband. Widows, orphans, and the wealthy are here.

We all are joined in this communion. We all are joined in this Body.

We are all crumbs
And we are all chosen.

And it is beautiful.

They aren’t “those people”. They are us with different faces and different stories. But they are us, all the same.

For us to exclude them or think they are lesser is to harm ourselves and to weaken the Body.

In the same way that a husband is married to his wife, when we are joined into the Body of Christ, we have to love all of it.

To paraphrase Pogo “We have met Christ, and He is us.”

Half prayer

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I was sitting at the end of my neighborhood, waiting for the light to change. It is a long light, and that intersection marks a change in the traffic from light to heavy.

I have started to use that time to pray.

This time I was filling up the space with my words, and this suddenly came to me. Be still. Let God fill you with God’s words instead.

Prayer isn’t just about talking to God. It is about letting God talk to you.

In my desire to pray, I was doing it all wrong. Or rather, I was doing it only half right.

An imperfect storm

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I had a dream that Jesus was giving a talk in a high school. It wasn’t a lecture for the students or staff – the group was just using a meeting room in the school because they didn’t have a permanent place to meet.

I went wandering away from the lecture for a bit and found a student who said he was afraid of a particular area in the building. He said it was haunted.

We went to look, and we found a lot of other students and staff members transfixed, staring at this big swirling black cloud that was in a stairwell. It sure looked angry. I thought about calling Jesus to come calm it or to cast it out. Then time shifted a bit and I realized that Jesus wasn’t there.

But then I realized that I was, and because I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart, he is there, in me. This is true for all believers. I also remembered that Jesus said to his disciples in Mark 16:17-18 that nothing can harm us, not poison, not snakes. I remember also in Mark 9:28-29 Jesus teaching his disciples to cast demons out.

Somehow, the idea of angry spirits and the weather got merged. We have a lot of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in the South, especially this time of year. We have a lot of casualties and property damage from them.

And I remember the story in Mark 4:35-41 where Jesus calmed a huge storm at sea, saying “Silence! Be still!” to it. I also remember the story of Elijah and the storm, from 1 Kings 19:11 where we learned that the Lord was not in the storm. Elijah held his ground and was not afraid.

What is a storm but energy? It isn’t a fluke of nature. It isn’t just something that happens. I think there is a reason I’m seeing the idea of a storm and of demons. Bad storms certainly are very destructive and harmful. We need rain, certainly. We don’t need 30-50 MPH winds. We don’t need tornadoes.

Why not think of a storm as a demon – and cast it out? Tell it to be still?