Passion Week Reading

Today’s reading comes from Alexander Stuart Baille and his famous work, “Seven Words.” The excerpt used is “I Thirst” in which Baille mines the spiritual implications of Jesus’ very human words from the cross. The essay chronicles the many ways in which humans try to fill their ultimate need for fulfillment coming empty apart from a relationship with God. The challenge comes in the final paragraph and is pointed, especially for those of us who quickly connect with thirsting for God but some times forgot that thirst demands expression.

Humanity needs to get away from the world of “things as they are” into the the world of “things as they ought to be.” This means that men and women must learn to live for others. It is only when we can live a life of self-forgetfulness that we get our truest joy out of life. One needs to keep on thirsting because life grows and enlarges.

Today, find joy in a phone call made, a letter written, or a message sent. Today thirst for opportunity to bring joy from the joy you have found in God’s love. Today and all the next days may we thirst for more of God in us.

Grace and Peace

Passion Week Reading

We are continuing the readings from Bread and Wine for this passion week. Today’s essay is written by Dale Aukerman, a former lecturer and ordained minister for the Church of the Brethren. Aukerman takes the suffering of Jesus on the cross and overlays that image on the suffering of people through centuries of atrocities. Aukerman makes a compelling argument for peace in light of the image of Christ in the image of the oppressed. I am not sure if I would draw all of the same conclusions, but two lines in particular did stop in my tracks as I think about the week commemorating Christ’s death. Aukerman says, “God, in order that we might meet him, narrowed himself down into Jesus.” He follows up a couple of sentences later with, “He was formed that our vision might rest not only on this focal expression of the invisible God but also on this singular image of the neighbors we have been to nearsighted to see and of the myriads of human beings we have no sight to see.” The narrowing of God in the incarnation gives this week, the whole a cross a necessary focus, it gives our lives focus because He dies, and as He dies we live. There are people dying all over the world, that we see images of and hear stories about but can keep them at arms length until it hits closer to home. May we focus our prayer and compassion on those unseen neighbors who are fellow Divine image bearers and objects of Christ’s sacrificial love. In this world you (pl.) will have trouble but take heart I (Christ) have over come the world.- John 16:33

Lenten Reading

Today’s essay is aptly entitled, “The Distance” and is written by Simone Weil. Simply, yet with enriching beauty Weil casts the picture of the great distance between the Holiness of God and evil of the Cross. The only thing that can bridge that distance is God’s defining characteristic, love. The distance showed our need, for God to come to us. The crucifixion openly displays the love of God that has indeed come to us. In reading I was reminded of the lyric from the song “Living Hope” that was in our worship last week. The line says “how great the chasm that lay between us, How high the mountain we could not climb.” It is the realization of the great distance between humanity and God that we begin to realize the “height and depth” of His love. As we are literally distanced from one another may we know this for Weil, “God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love….. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances.”

Lenten Reading

The point of these readings is not to necessarily champion the entire views of each writer but to take their essays and glean helpful, insightful, and challenging truths from them. It is, however, interesting for me to be exposed to new viewpoints and new names that I hadn’t come across before. That name in today’s reading is Morton T. Kelsey. Kelsey was an Episcopalian priest and therapist who is also credited with bringing meditation into Western Christianity. He draws on both backgrounds in the reading for today entitled, “The Cross and the Cellar.” The identity of the cross is obvious enough but the cellar demands some explanation. Frankly, for Kelsey the cellar is that deep part of ourselves that is not pretty that we try to keep hidden. It is below that cellar, the deepest pit where evil and hatred resides. If we allow it to that pitted evil can make its way out and what we might normally consider inhumane takes over. Kelsey walks this thought through history of how people who lived common, good lives became caught up in some of the gravest atrocities. He then makes a line to the characters surrounding the crucifixion. His brief, pointed biographies of Pilate, Caiphus, Judays, and the nameless carpenter show how their participation in this great evil may not have started from a vile place even though that’s where it ultimately lead. His summary paragraph about the crucifixion hits at my heart:

These were the things that crucified Jesus on Friday in Passover week A.D. 29. They were not wild viciousness or sadistic brutality or naked hate, but the civilized vices of cowardice, bigotry, impatience, timidity, falsehood, indifference- vices all of us share, the very vices which crucify human beings today.

Lenten Reading

Today’s Lenten Reading is from Catholic theologian Thomas Howard. In his essay simply entitle “The Crucifix” Howard calls on believers to avoid bypassing the cross. The anticipation of Easter is rooted in the reality and truth of the Resurrection. However, Howard appropriately warns us to not bypass the cross or reduce the suffering to a passing aspect just before the Resurrection. We must see the suffering of savior. We must know the reality of our sins, the sins of the whole world, and the pain of Christ on the cross. In that pain is also the pain of people in the past and in the present and even the future pain and travails of people all around the world. Let us see Christ on the cross, let us hear Him cry, and let us hear Him proclaim forgiveness. Let us see the pain all around us and know that Christ not only relates but comforts and encourages.

Grace and peace