Wednesday in Holy Week: Do we have to “accept joyfully our suffering”?

The theme of Wednesday in Holy Week is suffering. Fasten your seatbelt:

The reading from Lamentations 2:1-9 is about the destruction of Jerusalem, “her gates have sunk into the ground.” The Apostle Paul, writing in 2 Corinthians 1:23-2:11, talks of not being “overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” And Mark 12:1-11 quotes Jesus telling the rather hideous parable of the vine grower who sends his son to the vineyard where the tenants kill him.

Even the prayer for Wednesday in Holy Week underlines the theme of the day:

“Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed …”

The other day, a couple people asked me why we seem to be “descending” into Holy Week. What’s with all this suffering? Can’t we get on with it and “ascend” to the glory of Easter?

Do we really have to “accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time”?

It is true that there are branches of Christianity that glorify suffering with self-flagellation and re-enactments of the crucifixion with real nails and real blood. The readings for today seem to feed into the masochism of those traditions.

So why do we descend at all? Why not get straight to Easter?

The descending is a reminder, first, of our own mortality, and that suffering inevitably accompanies life. Paul’s letters tend be filled with advice to “toughen up.”

The biblical writers are telling something more about the mystery of death. We will get to the new life of resurrection but first we pass through the wall of death. Rather than “accepting joyfully” our suffering, we should not be so quick to glorify death as “natural.” Death sometimes comes as a relief, and death sometimes comes quickly, but there is nothing good about death. Death is the ultimate enemy to be conquered because it robs of us of seeing the life that comes next.

And there is something else at work: Jesus goes to the Cross, not be emulated by us by glorifying his suffering, but rather he goes to the Cross to stand with us in our worst suffering – to suffer with us. We don’t have to re-enact suffering – there is plenty of it in our world to go around.

He goes to the Cross in a plea with us to end the suffering, to end the torture, to end the warfare. He pleads with us to not accept joyfully the sufferings of this world, but to bring end the violence, end the injustice– and eliminate the human-made crosses that kill people and create hells on earth. The traditional icon above symbolizes that by showing Jesus rescuing Adam and Eve from the gates of Hell and bringing them out of death and into new life.

This Holy Week each of us can do something that others might suffer a little less. It may not be huge, but it will be something:

Episcopal Relief and Development is our arm around the world that brings needed help and relief in places destroyed by hurricanes, earthquakes, famines, disease, poverty and other calamities. Robert Ratdke, president of ERD will be with us April 22 at St. Paul’s and I hope you will join us to meet him. You can find out more about ERD and how you can contribute by clicking HERE.

The other organization I highly recommend: Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). These brave souls go to the most war ravaged lands of this earth to care for refugees and those caught in the crossfire. They advocate with governments for relief, and at no small risk to themselves. Please contribute to CIVIC by clicking HERE.

May you have a blessed Holy Week, and may your walk this week bring you to a closer awareness of the divine within you.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Today we begin Lent, the season of fasting, simplicity and penitence. We begin again in the ashes, with the stark reminder of our own mortality.

We will kneel in silence, and we will be branded on our foreheads with the ashes burned from the palms of last year's Palm Sunday.

For a few brief moments we are reminded that we will leave this earth, our bodies will die and disappear, but we will be made new and whole.

Our own mortality is not an easy topic, and why would it be? Maybe the poets grasp this fact better, and can help us to see it with a little less fear. I was looking through a remarkable book of poems last night, The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, edited by Kevin Young, and I came across this poem which I share with you:

+ + +

Notes from the Other Side
By Jane Kenyon

I divested myself of despair

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.

+ + +

Please join us today for one of our Ash Wednesday services:

7:30 am
12:10 pm,
5:30 pm
7:30 pm (with choir)

We are again offering a special booklet of reflections for each day of Lent written by members of the St. Paul's congregation. The booklets are free, and you can pick up a copy at the church. Or you can read each day's reflection on a special blog by clicking HERE.

The lamp of life

A friend sent this along and I give it to you today. . .

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Rabindranath Tagore

What it means to live

A regular contributor to this space, Karen from Tennessee, sent this email the other day along with a poem. I was very touched when I read this, and so I give it to you today, along with the poem that came with it:

From Karen. . .

I have a friend whose husband is dying. We stood on her porch the other night in this oppressive heat and spoke plainly about death, that most essential force in determining and understanding what to means to live.

Almost a year ago when April passed away, we were all together— physically, spiritually, emotionally— we were bound to her and to each other (and I believe, we all still are) whereas my friend is essentially facing this personal loss on her own. And yet she is doing so with a great bravery and dignity, she had a strength in her face that belies any kind of platitudes. There are many ways to live, and to love each other……

Stars

By Keith Douglas, 1939

The stars still marching in extended order
move out of nowhere into nowhere. Look, they are halted
on a vast field tonight, true no man's land.
Far down the sky with sword and belt must stand
Orion. For commissariat of this exalted
war-company, the Wain. No fabulous border

could swallow all this bravery, no band
will ever face them: nothing but discipline
has mobilized and still maintains them. So
Time and his ancestors have seen them. So
always to fight disorder is their business,
and victory continues in their hand.

From under the old hills to overhead,
and down there marching on the hills again
their camp extends. There go the messengers,
Comets, with greetings of ethereal officers
from tent to tent. Yes, we look up with pain
at distant comrades and plains we cannot tread.

Photo: The Trifid Nebula (M20), by Robert Gendler, NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

While I am away...

There is a lot going on at St. Paul's tomorrow, so I hope you will be there. It is the First Sunday of Lent, and it begins with the chanting of the Great Litany. The cantor (Daniel Hine) will be chanting the "prayers of the people" in the opening litany, including the names of those who have asked prayers for healing, and those who have died.

We also have a double-header Sunday in adult education. I hope you will avail yourself of one of these opportunities:

An authentic Haitian Meal Fund Raiser with The Rev. Elisa Wheeler of Episcopal Relief and Development after the 10:00 am service. The Rev. Wheeler will be our guest preacher at both the 8am and 10 am worship services, and will speak at the luncheon about ERD’s work in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

We are also launching Lenten series on end-of-life issues, led by The Rev. Ann Willms, our associate rector. "Talking About Death Won't Kill You: A Lenten Series About Grace-Filled Endings" continue on Wednesday Feb. 24 and through Lent. This Sunday we have a guest speaker, Marcia Childress, who will be joining Ann for this.

Before you decide that this topic is too grim for you, please do think again. Even those of you who are in your 20s need to know about these issues, not just for yourself but for the care you might need to be giving your parents one day. I can tell you from personal experience having cared for my father before he died, I wish I had known more than I did at the time.

Ash Wednesday is as different as it gets

This is my sermon from the 12:15 pm Ash Wednesday service today. It is based on 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6,16-21:

Ash Wednesday is as different as it comes.

On Ash Wednesday we use words not heard in ordinary conversation, like “wretchedness” to describe our condition. In a few moments, we will have grimy ashes smeared on our forehead. We will hear “from dust we come and to dust we return.”

It just doesn’t get more different than that.

On the face of it, the words we use are not exactly the most comforting, joyful words in the English language, or in the Christian religion, or for that matter, in any religion. This is not a warm and fuzzy feast day we are celebrating today.

In all candor, “To dust I shall return” is not something I particularly like to think about as I go through the daily drumbeat of my life. There are no Christmas trees or Easter lilies today.

Just ashes.

Today is the day when we stand and look squarely in the face of our own certain death.

What we do today, and what we are asked to think about today, is not only different, it is as countercultural as it gets.

Our culture works overtime to insulate us from death. We are bombarded daily with the message that we can endlessly stall off death with luxury cars or extravagant clothes or botox, or with a bottle or a pill or the perfect job.

Underlying our culture is a deep fatalism: That nothing we do will change anything – so we may as well grab all we can get until our luck runs out: Life is a stall game.
We don’t even like the word “death” or “dying” in our culture; we use euphemisms like “passing away” or simply “passing” or “parting.”

We rarely die at home, we segregate death into nursing homes and hospitals. We sanitize and domesticate death into oblivion to make it clean, two dimensional.
Our culture takes all the soul out of death.

Not all people in our world sanitize death the way we do. In Mexico, on the Day of the Dead, people parade through the streets with skeleton masks and bring feasts to their dead relatives in the graveyards.

In Louisiana, where my wife’s Cajun relatives live, they regularly hold picnics and outdoor dances in the town cemetery so that all of their dead friends and relations can be part of the festivities. They live St. Paul’s declaration that “love never ends.”

And, here on Ash Wednesday, we do something very different. We celebrate our own death before it happens. And by so doing, we proclaim our defiance of death.
Today, with ashes on our forehead, we proclaim that eternal life begins right now, and that although the death of our physical bodies will touch us in this mortal life, there is more to life than what we see now.

As Paul reminds us, “see, now is the day of salvation!”

Not tomorrow or the next day. Today.

On Ash Wednesday, we reach across the horizon of time and space and touch those who have gone before us and who are still with us, even though, for a little while, we cannot see them.

We celebrate with them that there is more to our existence than what we see now.
That is the treasure Jesus speaks of, and that is where our heart should be.

If we can catch a glimpse of our death in the ashes today, maybe we can see that our own death does not separate us from each other, but binds us together in the future that Christ has promised for all of us.

But things we do get in the way of our living into that promise.

That is why Ash Wednesday begins this season of Lent, set for personal introspection and the “giving up” of those things that get in our way of experiencing the fullness of God’s gift of life.

It is a time for self-examination, for working on our physical and spiritual health and looking into our deepest self for the God within us.

Also do something more. Look outside yourself for the God all around you. Do not simply withdraw, but look for the Christ in everyone you meet and in everything you do.

Saint Thomas Aquinas once observed that we should think of our souls differently than we do. Instead of seeing our soul as inside our body, we should see our bodies as inside of our soul.

That is another way of saying our soul is bigger than our mortal bodies, and our souls reach outside ourselves to touch other souls.

And that makes Lent something more than about me personally, but really about all of us together. If we can embrace a Holy Lent that is both inside us and beyond ourselves, may we can see that the hunger and pain of the world is ours, too.

I would suggest we can start here today by embracing our own death with hope. We can declare that death is not the end of the story, not for us, not for those we love, not for anyone.

If we can embrace this kind of hope, maybe we can find a way to embrace all people – all who are alive today, all who are beyond this horizon, and all who are yet to come – and see them as individuals who are connected to us.

By embracing our own death with hope, we can stand in communion with all people as fellow human beings who are truly loved by God. We can become the brothers and sisters to each other that God has intended us to be, on earth as it is in heaven.
AMEN