A Not-So-Holy Week

                                                          --Photo courtesy of Storm Crypt / flikr

A whole lot of we Baptists came late to Holy Week. For years we were taught this was some kind of Catholic thing. Romanists. Worshipping ceremony more than Jesus. Why celebrate this whole week when we could be getting out the Easter egg colors, buying our new spiffy clothes, getting the kids one of those cute bunnies—and waiting for Easter Day. We would always sing, of course, “He lives on High” to the Hawaiian tune. But somewhere along the way we began to realize that we all needed some preparation to make the Easter event more powerful than even the Crucifixion. Even then we were suspicious of crosses in church and especially not on the tall spire on top of the steeple. Thankfully we got over it.

From the fourth century on pilgrims celebrated Holy Week at least Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Later, following the Scriptures we would recall event after event that led up to Calvary and the Resurrection.

I’ve been thinking of late why did we call this particular week holy? The story is filled not only with the Triumphal Entry, but cleansing the temple, Maundy Thursday when Judas would betray our lord and Peter would deny him. The washing  the disciples’ feet. The agony of the Garden of Gethsemane and the capture of Jesus, the scourging, the stripping him naked, the crown of thorns and finally Calvary with all its gore and heartbreak.

I know…i know that Easter was coming and it would somehow erase all the pain of that long terrible week. What if it really was just a not-so-holy week. God knows history could state the case. Terrible things have happened in the name of Jesus and his Cross has been used as a weapon time after time. “In this sign I conquer.” 

There is so much in the story that seems anything but holy. The rigged trials, the degradation, the spittle and the hatred. They all took place on Holy Week. 

I look out at where we are today—this cursed pandemic and all its aftermath. More than 553,726 have died just in our country. Many of our loved ones have walked their own personal way of sorrows. Dying alone and cut off from all family members. Their loved ones touching that finger-smeared glass so their loved one would know they were not alone. This Holy Week brings the loss of too many jobs, too many suicides and so many enraged and acting out their frustrations. How in God’s name can we call it good?

The Church has been guilty of cosmetizing the truth, often denying all that went on that terrible week. Just Good Friday.

But let’s be fair. Most Holy Weeks have come in the middle of wars and plagues and hunger and injustice and utter heartbreak. In the Middle Ages as one town was immersed in leprosy and death the Priest took a painting of Jesus crucified with a body covered in sores. And the Priest would invite those who were themselves were in great pain and many who had lost children, friends, husbands and wives to gather around that painting of the diseased, dying Jesus.  Legend has it that the Priest would take a large candle from the altar and moved to the crucified. He would show those gathered the crown of thorns, then the diseased face and hands and feet and the terrible body racked in pain. And that was the sermon. The Priest snuffed out the candle and the people would begin to shuffle away in the darkness. 

Maybe this is why they called that week holy. For they found in His way of sorrows something that kept them going despite whatever they faced. It would be something if we could all lay down our burdens—not down by the riverside--but at the feet Jesus.

“At the feet o’ Jesus,

Sorrow like a sea. 

Lordy, let yo’ mercy

Come driftin’ down on me.

At †he feet o’ Jesus

At yo’ feet I stand.

O, ma little Jesus,

Please reach out yo’ hand.”

—Langston Hughes

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

We can't forget the Donkey on Palm Sunday

                                                                  photo by Vicki DeLoach / flikr

It’s Palm Sunday. Our second Anniversary of trying to be jubilant with all that stuff out there that keeps intruding…intruding. So churches everywhere will haul out the Palms and give one to everyone. One of my members back there once said: “What am I supposed to do with this branch thing?” Good question really. The Organ will pull out all the stops. Children will come in waving their Palm Branches and we all might stand and sing:” “All glory laud and honor, To thee Redeemer King.” And on and on it will go as the cute kids wave their branches and we hope nobody gets an eye put out.

I don’t want to sound too heretical, well maybe I do. But this Palm Sunday thing has always struck me as being a little odd. Dr. Fosdick preached  a sermon once  called: “The sin of Palm Sunday.” And in that sermon he asked how the crowd could possibly sing alleluia on Palm Sunday and just a few days later nail that same Jesus to the cross. Let’s face it folks. Those palm branches wither much to soon.

Lord knows we need some Alleluias. That’s why Leonard Cohen’s “Alleluia” struck a chord. And the book says the crowds did line the streets as he came toward Jerusalem on a donkey. Oh, I know what Zechariah prophesied about palms and donkeys. But most of the crowd that day must have wondered. “A donkey. The king is riding in a donkey?” It really was a clue to the kind of King he was. Never mind. They still stood there shouting. Nevermind the donkey--he was coming and he would bring in the Kingdom.

He came into Jerusalem people still shouting and all hell broke loose. He entered the Temple and it was a mess. People selling all kinds of trinkets. Maybe animals too. And the drove them out and this was a mistake as far as the Reverends and the Priests were concerned. With that single act he touched their pocketbooks and that was the beginning of his long sad week. They plotted his demise but they kept it to themselves because they remembered that crowd and those palm branches. 

“They all were looking for a king 

to slay their foes and lift them high,

There cams't a tiny baby thing 

that made a woman cry.”

So he never was the King they wanted but more. A King they needed. Read the story that follows that jubilant morning. He healed the blind and the lame. He cursed a fig tree. He told them parable after parable which most of the officials did not quite get but wondered if he was speaking about them. Not knowing that he was speaking about us, too. The Lord took on the established Temple. And this infuriated them even more. He stood on the brow of his beloved Jerusalem and wept and wept because, like us too, they did not know he wanted to take them like a hen that gathers her little ones—he wanted to take them all in his arms. For they did not know the things that make for real peace. And Jesus told them, as us too. That donkey should have been a clue. He said their task and ours was to feed the hungry…to give the thirsty something to drink…to welcome the stranger—even the illegals—to clothe the naked…to care for the sick..and touch even the prisoners. And he then said the strangest thing: “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these…you do it to me.”

This was not the end of the story. But that donkey should have been a clue. He called the strangest and the weird. The Judases and the Simons with big mouths and clay feet…and all the dear Johns…and Jameses…and later the woman with all those husbands...and all those Marys and Mary Magdalenes…and the Marys and the Marthas…all those other women in the story. Strange King he washed his disciples' feet. And when people heard about what he did they kept shaking their heads and muttering: "Jesus washed their feet!"

The story was not over and never would be as long as there was hurt and need and hate. The manger maybe should have been a clue and his parents whom nobody knew and all those unlikely ones like tax collectors and the Zebedees and all the dispossessed.  Then and now. 

So at worship today even with my mask I will welcome the palm branches and maybe sing alleluia too. But i hope like you I do not forget the donkey because he may be the clue for us all.

                                                                      photo by Bill Smith / flikr

                                                      --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

 

Stumbling Through Lent

                                                   photo by Georgie Pauwels / flikr

 I've been pretty blog-absent for weeks.  Inundated by the too-muchness out there. I keep vowing to quit reading and listening to the news. I have failed miserably. I keep sneaking back in to hear where all hell is breaking loose these days. Healthy? Not. Yet as I slowly make my way toward Holy Week I find myself needing help. All I can get. How about you? 

So I read some things that keep my head above water...most of the time. Obama's autobiography which I finished and it is long--has been a help. The Lectionary which I have read on and off--especially Jesus' words and deeds in Matthew and the Psalms remind me of what is important all over again. I find myself whispering name after name of those in trouble. I've fallen back on remembering some of the hymns that I remember from the beginnings of my faith journey. I even ordered the old green Broadman Hymnal from 1940 that took me way, way back to those early pre-adolescent and adolescent days when some of those gospel songs were a tie that still binds me. "I have to follow Jesus." "Into my heart, into my heart Lord Jesus." "Have thine Own Way." "I have Decided to follow Jesus.' "Blessed assurance...Jesus is mine..." "Just As I Am." "At the Cross"  "Breathe on Me." My list seems endless. But as I remember these songs and others tears sometimes come to my eyes. 

One of the articles that has lifted me up is from Onward/Outward.org. It comes every day. And this wonderful piece on Lent and "Giving Up" spoke to me just this week. 

Giving Up It has now been over a year since the whole world, and my life along with it, changed in response to the pandemic. Perhaps the biggest change for me is simply the realization that it is truly impossible to know what the next year—or even the next day or minute—will bring. I still make plans, of course, but as I do so, I always have a heightened awareness that all plans are provisional, that anything can change at any moment, that I might have to give up everything in an instant.  In a recent spiritual report, I confessed that that I had given no thought at all about what intentional changes I wanted to make for Lent. Having given up so much for so long, the thought of giving up something else for Lent seemed ridiculous. Taking on some new spiritual discipline seemed equally absurd, if not impossible. Hadn’t this whole year been an extended spiritual discipline of looking for things to be grateful for while restraining my resentment at being unable to keep up with my comfortable routines? Hadn’t the whole winter, at least, been a long slog of staying indoors except for a chilly hour of outdoor exercise, of never sharing a meal with friends or hugging people I love, of fear that I might never see my distant children or grandson in person again? Now, as the weather begins to warm, tender green leaves are appearing on the tips of tree branches, the yellow heads of daffodils are nodding in every garden I pass on my morning walks, I’ve gotten fully vaccinated, and I’m starting to have hope of something resembling normality, Jesus asks me to hate my life in this world in exchange for eternal life in the realm of God.* What? Hate my life, just I’m looking forward to enjoying it again? Jesus, what can you possibly mean by this? But then, I remember the guy who has somehow made it alive through a long, cold winter of sleeping in the doorway of the church at the end of my block, and all the people like him who have no warm, comfortable homes in which to hide from the pandemic. I think of my friend whose spouse of many years succumbed to COVID last week, and all the people who, like her, have lost partners, children, siblings, and friends and now must carry on without them. I think of everyone who lives in the shadow of racism, of war, of abuse, or all the other terrors that humans inflict on one another, on top of everything else they have given up in what seems like an entire year of Lent. And when I contemplate all that others give up daily, I give up, too. I give up my right to my comfortable life. I give up my resistance to change. I give up my desire to have everything my way. I’ll probably take it all back again in another minute, but in this moment, in this eternal now, I want to give up everything, and follow Jesus. *John 12:20-33 -Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church And I bumped into Ann Patchett's wonderful story-essay about this woman who has helped to shape her life. I recommend it to everybody. harpers.org/archive/202/01/these-precious-days. It's long and you will wish it would not end. Some days I still find it hard to follow Jesus but I'm still on the road. Easter is just week's away but we have not gotten there yet. And so as I still keep at it--surrounding by the grief out there and the pain and the losses of so, so  many. "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."                                                    photo by nikos viotis / flikr                                                  --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com