The Strangest Story of All

Bread and Wine Reading: "The Strangest Story of All", C.S. Lewis

Scripture Reading: John 1: 1-5, 10-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it….He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

C.S. Lewis begins his essay by saying that now “we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear.” The claim is, of course, a colossal understatement. Strange, indeed! Nothing like this had ever happened before and nothing like this has ever happened since. But it is more than our merely surviving death. In the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, death is, once and for all, defeated and in its place, is life recreated. Lewis describes it by saying that “something new had appeared in the Universe: as new as the first coming of organic life…A new mode of being has arisen.”

Tomorrow is Palm / Passion Sunday, the beginning of our remembrance of this last week of Christ’s earthly journey. It is a difficult week for most of us. Many of us would just assume go to sleep and wake up a week from tomorrow and not be faced with the all-too-real realization that we must walk through the earthly death of Christ in order to get to the glory of Christ’s Resurrection. Nothing can be defeated; nothing can be overcome, without facing it head-on. Ignoring it will not do. Sleeping through it will not do. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are two chapters of the same story. The story makes no sense without both. And, strange though it may be, we have to ask ourselves what it means to us. We have to discover for ourselves how it reads into our own life. Lewis asks, “What are we going to make of Christ?” and answers that “there is no question of what we make of [Christ]; it is entirely a question of what [Christ] intends to make of us.”

This is the road we walk when all of our hopes have been dashed, when our energy is spent and exhaustion has set in, when we are overcome with regrets for what wasn’t, when we can see no way out of the mire and the mess that is our lives, and when we realize that we cannot do it ourselves. This is the road we walk when we realize that we are not alone. This is the Way of Christ making something new out of our lives. It is the way to Christ’s Resurrection, but it is also the way to our own. And when we come to the end of the road, knees bent from despair, we will bow before the seemingly God-forsaken Cross and we will allow ourselves to be handed over just as Christ did. And then…

So, what does Christ intend to make of us? Listen to Lewis’ words: “Come to me everyone who is carrying a heavy load. I will set that right. Your sins, all of them, are wiped out. I can do that. I am Rebirth. I am Life. Eat me, drink me, I am your Food. And finally, do not be afraid. I have overcome the whole Universe.” It is a strange story, but it is yours. Go now and claim it for yourself.

Discussion Questions:
1.) What does the Crucifixion mean for you?
2.) As you prepare for this final week of Lent, what is it that you need to relinquish, to surrender?
3.) What does Rebirth mean for your life, for your story?

So go forth toward the Cross and claim your story!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

It is Done

Bread and Wine Reading: "It is Done", Watchman Nee

Scripture Reading: John 19: 28-30
After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

We shudder at the sound of the final words of Jesus on the cross: “It is finished.” In our minds, there seems in them an all-too-certain finality, an utter hopelessness, an ultimate loss of control. They are hard words for us. Was Jesus admitting failure and surrender? Was Jesus declaring a hopeless departure from what he really had intended to do in his ministry? Was Jesus too exhausted to go on? What do we do now?

That is the problem for many of us. We think that it is now our turn, that we have to somehow take over for what Jesus could not finish, that it is now up to us to save the world. But Watchmen Nee said that “Christianity begins not with a big ‘do’, but with a big ‘done’. We begin our Christian life by depending not upon our own doing but upon what Christ has done…What happened to him happened also to us. All the experiences he met, we too have met in him.” In other words, “It is finished.”

Nee contends that “God is waiting till you cease to do…When you cease doing, then God will begin.” That is hard for us hard-working Western Christians. In all truthfulness, we still emerged from the Protestant Reformation with a faith in our own doing, a faith in the works of, perhaps, proving our faith to others, to God, and to ourselves. On some level, we still want to help ourselves, to do something to make sure that God is pleased with us. And yet…we are drowning—drowning in work, drowning in our home lives, drowning in our relationships, drowning in trying to be someone that we are not. Watchmen Nee asks, though: “Have you ever tried to save a drowning man? The trouble,” he continues, “is that his fear prevents him from entrusting himself to you…Either you must knock him unconscious and then drag him to the shore, or else you must leave him to struggle and shout until his strength gives way before you go to his rescue. If you try to save him while he has any strength left, he will clutch at you in his terror and drag you under, and both he and you will be lost. God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before [God] can deliver you…[God] has done it all!”

So, what are we supposed to do? Nothing. God has done it all. Did you miss what was said? “It is finished.” Jesus did not utter that HE was finished; Jesus declared that IT was finished. In other words, the work here is done. In his book, Thank God It’s Friday, Bishop William Willimon likens it to the same word that Michelangelo uttered when he put his last touch of paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: “It is finished.”

“And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”(Genesis 1: 31)

Discussion Questions:
1.) In what ways do you depend upon your own doing in your faith journey?
2.) What are those things that you feel you should be doing as a Christian? For what reasons should you do them?
3.) What would it mean for you to cease doing? What would it mean instead for you to become instead?

So go forth toward the Cross, knowing that it has already been done!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Waiting for God

Bread and Wine Reading: "Waiting for God", Simone Weil

Scripture Reading: John 19: 38-42
After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

In an excerpt from “The Love of God and Affliction”, Simone Weil claims that “one can only accept the existence of affliction by considering it at a distance.” God created love. We know that. It is easy for us to hang our beliefs upon that. And yet, God created a love more remarkable than anything that we can possibly imagine. Weil says that “[God] went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance” to show that love. In this essay, she writes of the distance between God and God, the distance between the greatest supreme agony and the greatest marvel of love. She says that “nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.”

And yet, in the darkness of the Crucifixion, God crosses what Weil called “the infinite thickness of time and space.” It is something that we all have to do. But it is God that crosses it first. The greatest distance imaginable between the Creator and the creature is crossed by a love that is greater even than that. No longer do we have to fear evil, for even though it has touched us, God has traversed the seemingly bottomless canyon even beyond its own boundaries. No longer can evil and God be pitted against one another in some sort of dualistic cosmic battle. God has not fought the battle; God has crossed beyond the evil and taken it unto Godself.

But Weil contends that “we do not realize [this] distance except in the downward direction. It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.” We want so badly to be with God that we miss the God with us. She describes the dimensions of Christ’s death as a “tearing asunder”. It is the only way that we could see the distance that God has crossed; it is the only way that we could see the distance we must cross. And so, torn apart, we as humanity, Christ as humanity, is abandoned by God. We are left alone to cross this chasm between God and God. And once our souls make that same journey that God made first, we are welcomed into the arms of a waiting God.

As this season of Lent brings us closer to the cross, as we near the end of the journey, as we now begin to come close enough to hear the shouts in the distance, to hear the drums of the death march, we are aware of how far we’ve come. And yet the journey has not even begun. God has gone ahead across the distance. We must follow. The time of our waiting for God is over; God now waits for us.

Discussion Questions:
1.) What, for you, depicts that distance between God and God, between the cross and the Resurrection?
2.) What is it that holds you back from journeying across that distance?
3.) For what are you waiting before you follow?

So go forth toward the Cross through a distance that God has already crossed!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The Crucifix

Bread and Wine Reading: "The Crucifix", Thomas Howard

Scripture Reading: Luke 23: 32-35
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. [Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’

“And the people stood by…” We tend to do that. We stand by, not knowing what to do, not knowing if we should get involved, not wanting to get our hands dirty. We just wait…wait for Easter morning when the whole ugly thing will be more palatable at which to look. But Thomas Howard reminds us that “we don’t just have an empty cross with the work finished and done…that which is thus ‘finished’ remains present in actual time…Sin, sorrow, and suffering, and death itself, were indeed taken away at the Cross, but we mortals must enter into the depths of this mystery in actual experience.” We are called not to merely worship the cross, but to enter its mystery, to be part of its “actual experience.”

This is the most difficult for us Protestant Christians, those of us who have chosen to spend the whole of our church year bowing before the “empty Cross”, the depiction of Christ’s Resurrection and the promise of our own salvation. And while I’m not willing to trade the large gleaming empty cross at the front of my own sanctuary and permanently replace it with a Crucifix, I think that we do miss part of what the Cross means if we choose to never enter the pain and the suffering that is Christ’s. In fact, Howard asks, “Where, suddenly, is the theology that teaches that because the Savior did it all, we thereby are reduced to the status of inert bystanders?” “And the people stood by…”—there it is again—that uncomfortable claim that we stand by and let Christ suffer, that we stand by and wait for Christ to finish up this whole messy ordeal, hand us a lily and a pretty bonnet, and invite us to joyfully sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and go on about our business.

The season of Lent, though, is about entering the experience of the Cross—the whole experience. Because how can one understand the joy of Resurrection without experiencing the pain and suffering and even the death of Crucifixion? The two cannot be separated.

There are many people nowadays that describe themselves as “spiritual”, depicting it as something a step above “religious.” (Personally, I’m not convinced that the two can be effectively separated.) But there are those who would claim to be “spiritual” and not “religious”. Being spiritual goes beyond worshipping; it is a way of connecting one’s life with God. But the Cross is about going further. We Christians are not called to be merely spiritual; we are called to be incarnational. We are called to enter and bear all that is Christ—the pain, the suffering, the death, and, just when we think “it is finished”, the joy of rising to eternal life, to an eternity of oneness with God. If we are to truly understand what that means, we must, then, embrace the entirety of the message of the Cross. And so, perhaps, if only for awhile (maybe 40 days or so!), we should spend this Season of Lent truly looking at the “pre-Easter” experience of the Cross. You will be amazed what that Easter morning Cross, gleaming in the sunlight of a newly created day, looks like if you understand how God created it, if you have experienced all that is God.

Discussion Questions:
1.) How uncomfortable are you with the Crucifix, with the notion of the “unempty” Cross?
2.) In what ways do you allow yourself to be a bystander to the whole Christ experience?
3.) What, for you, does it mean to be incarnational?

So go forth toward the Cross and experience all there is of God!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Truth To Tell

Bread and Wine Reading: "Truth To Tell", Barbara Brown Taylor

Scripture Reading: John 1: 5-11
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

Our story of Good Friday has taken on many versions over the last 2,000 years and the blame for what happened has of course settled onto a variety of characters in a variety of ways. For years, the Jews around Jesus were blamed, lumping “Jews” into a large class of “non-believers”, as if forgetting that all of Jesus’ inner-circle and Jesus himself were actually Jewish and that at that point “Christianity” was non-existent! It is easy, too, to blame the Romans, the “powers that be”, speculating that they were threatened by Jesus’ rule. And then there are the theories that in effect “blame” God, citing that God sent Jesus with the specific purpose of dying. In “Truth to Tell”, Barbara Brown Taylor contends that “one of the many things this story tells us is that Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix…Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own.”

Taylor proposes that perhaps all of these “blame games” are nothing more than our attempt to avoid seeing our own reflection in the mirror, to see that we, too, are easily cast as the villain in this story. She says that “as long as [others] remain the villains, then we are off the hook—or so we think.” In other words, as long as we can remove ourselves from the story, what happened will never be our fault. And yet, as Taylor claims, “sons and daughters of God are killed in every generation. They have been killed in holy wars and inquisitions, concentration camps, and prison cells.” Anytime we kill in the “name of God", anytime we commit violence in the “name of God”, we are guilty of crucifying Christ. Anytime we exclude someone “in the name of God” or even neglect standing up for justice “in the name of God”, we are guilty. And anytime that we are so sure that we are right, so sure that we know God’s will that we cannot see God’s will in others, we are guilty.

The reason this story is so hard for us is that it does call us to look at our own reflection. In the Light of Christ, the Crucifixion, unable to remain in darkness because of the light, becomes a mirror. And all those who have been “crucified”—killed, hurt, excluded, shunned--in the name of God or in the name of justice or in the name of our attempt to preserve the way things are also become mirrors. And, as uncomfortable as it may be, they do have a truth to tell as they show us who we are in the Light of Christ. Taylor said that “[Jesus] was the truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves in God’s own light.” She recounts a story of a group being asked who represented Christ in their lives. One woman stood up and said, “I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, ‘Who is it who told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?’”

Discussion Questions:
1.) What image of the reason for Jesus’ Crucifixion is the most comfortable for you? What image is the least comfortable for you?
2.) What are some ways in our 21st century modern society that we “crucify” Christ anew?
3.) Who is it that shows you the truth about yourself so clearly that you want to kill him or her for it, or, at the very least, simply walk away and pretend that they do not exist?

So go forth into the mirror and let the truth be reflected for you and in you!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli