Lenten Reading

So, I am jumping around a little today, but I know you don’t mind and wouldn’t even be aware if I hadn’t told you. Yet , I did and I am. In Bread and Wine there is a short essay by Kathleen Norris that really piqued my interest today. She tells of an experience as artist in residence at a parochial school. She would read Psalms as the children listened. Then, she asked them in their adolescent honest to write Psalms of their own. One young boy who confessed to being upset when his dad was angry with him and taking it out on his siblings wrote the following, “ Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, I shouldn’t have done all that.” This captures the Psalms, penitential, reflective, and honest. Maybe over these last few weeks you have set down in you house (messy or not) and thought, “ I shouldn’t have done (said) all that.” Good news for the amateur Psalmist and us, God hears and God forgives. It reminds me of a line from an Amy Grant song, “the honest cries of breaking hearts are better than a Hallelujah sometime.”

This brings me to a challenge. If you’re reading this, I challenge you to write a Psalm. It can be any category, praise, imprecation (mad), confession, wherever you are at in this journey. This can be just for you, or you can share it in the comment section below or via email at jdunnok@gmail.com

Lenten Reading

I took the last two days off to kind of catch up with the Lenten readings. But I really enjoy reflecting on these readings so I’m back today. The reading from Bread and Wine is the “Great Mediator” by Augustine of Hippo. Often lost in our consideration of the incarnation is the purpose of Christ to be the go-between for humanity to God. He is not the perfect mediator because he understands humanity and Divinity but because he became one and has always been the other. Augustine says it beautifully, “What we needed was a mediator to stand between God and men who should be in one respect like God, in another kin to human beings, for if he were manlike in both regards he would be far from God, but if Godlike in both, far from us: then he would be no mediator.” God in Christ is not far from us, but he is also not us. He is God who became human, so that in part we humans may connect with God. Christ is close, lean in.

Grace and Peace

Lenten Reading

Today’s Lenten Reading is from Priest Joseph Langford. You can read his biography here on the occasion of his death in 2010. Langford’s contribution to “Bread and Wine” is his meditation entitled “I Thirst for You.” It is written from the perspective of Christ talking to each one of us. Personally, I would probably be more comfortable with more Scripture citation but nothing in the meditation contradict the Christ described in Scripture and in fact brings it to light in a fresh and intimate way. I will just include the following excerpt and forego any comment as it (in a manner Jesus) speaks for itself:

I know you through and through- I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you- even in your wanderings.

Grace and Peace

Lenten Reading

The Lenten reading today is written by Henri Nouwen and comes from a ministry visit and his resulting reflection. The individual that Nouwen went to visit had been an active participant in social activism and had expended his energies in serving others. At the age of 50 this man finds himself battling cancer and dependent on the care of medical staff. Nouwen recounts that the man struggled with his identity now that his activity virtually stopped. The essay then pivots on Nouwens reflection on Christ and His activity versus inactivity. Nouwen goes to the scene in the garden where Jesus is “handed over” by Jesus and then pairs that with Romans 5:8 where it says God “handed over” His own son. The pivot in the essay makes Nouwen’s point that passion is as much a part of our identity as is action. The following excerpt illustrates the point well,

All action ends in passion because the response to our action is out of our hands. That is the mystery of work, the mystery of love, the mystery of friendship, the mystery of community- they always involve waiting. And that is the mystery of Jesus’ love. God reveals himself in Jesus as the one who waits for our response. Precisely in that waiting the intensity of God’s love is revealed to us. If God forced us to love, we would not really be lovers.

When our activity is stilled for whatever reason, we question our identity and maybe even worth. But we learn from Jesus that there is a time to act and a time to wait. When we are in those times of waiting we identify with Christ, who in His passion was obedient even in His “inactivity.” We are at a time this very day where many of us are struggling with being still. While we wait may our strength be renewed and our passion for Christ be fueled.

Lenten Reading

In full disclosure., I have messed up. The 40 days of lent should be counted, omitting the Sundays. I have failed to omit the Sundays and so it is not really Day 32,. But we’ll just keep going with the readings without numbering the days.

Today’s Lenten reading is from Dorothy Soelle a German theologian who focused much of her work and writing on the strife and suffering of the Holocaust. This essay, “On This Gallows,” relies very much on an excerpt from Night by Elie Weisel. In examining Christ’s place among all suffering, Soelle makes a thought provoking quote on resurrection. “A person’s resurrection is no personal privilege for himself alone- even if he is called Jesus of Nazareth. It contains within itself hope for all, for everything.” The life , death, and resurrection of Christ has implications for all people. This is not a revolutionary statement, it is a simple statement of orthodoxy and the Christian understanding of salvation. Yet, its profundity is in the fact that it displays unknown love and the pervasive plan of God in Christ. The challenge for us is to know that as we are changed, challenged, and encouraged by the presence of Christ, we do the same for others. Christ in us is on display to impact the world around us. When we have trials, the world sees and when we come through the world sees. May they see Christ in us through it all.

Thanks to Nick Noble for the new cross in the courtyard.