Lenten Words

This is the last week of Lent...what has traditionally been called, "Holy Week."  Wait...wait you say, "Why would this week be holy?"  Doesn't Jesus' so-called friends all deny, desert, and one even betray him?  Doesn't sound all that holy to me.  Doesn't Jesus die on Friday?  That sounds so macabre to think somehow this week is holy!!  Okay, Easter chocolate waiting for us on Sunday, that sounds like the sacred.  But all the rest after the Palm Sunday parade...just too depressing...too dramatic in a world that has way to many heartbreaking headlines...why would we ever want to call this week holy?

I am so glad you asked!

When we last left our words for this week were:

34.  Expectations
35.  Hunger
36.  Thirst
37.  Communion
38.  Death
39.  Silence
40.  Resurrection/New Life

Right off the bat...we get to expectations.  Perhaps it has been our expectation that God = good.  We have turned faith into a formula or a transaction.  When life is good, God is near.  Or, in some churches, God will reward and richly blessing you IF you say the right prayers or tithe or some how try to appease what sounds like a very angry God.  Do you hear in that how we have taken our economic structure and imposed it into our churches?  I read one author who said that much of religion today has been commercialized.  We talk about church shopping...we want a church that speaks to us...when we think we find someplace we like...then maybe we will put a few dollars in the plate.  Sort of sounds like wandering from The Gap to American Eagle to H & M at the mall looking for the right outfit.  And we can always find excuses why a churches doesn't work.  After all...it is made up of other humans!  Or as Groucho Marx quipped, "I would never join any club that would have me as a member."  

What are your expectations of God?

Is God supposed to swoop in and solve all our problems...but others stay on the sidelines?

Is God constantly present?

Do you resonate with the prayer of Meister Eckhart, “I pray God to rid me of God,”

Wait...that doesn't sound like it has even the faintest trace of grace!!

As Richard Rohr so helpfully explains the quote, "There is no concept of God that can contain God. Your present notion of God is never it. As Augustine said, “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” We can only come to know God as we let go of our ideas about God, and as what is not God is stripped away."

So, should we have NO expectations of God?

Or maybe it is about an experience of God...so often that words cannot capture or contain.  God beyond our ability to understand...yet something deeper than understanding.  That is why hymns, painting, walking in nature, just breathing and being can be so much more helpful in encountering God rather than talking our way into belief ~ ~ All this from the guy who makes his living preaching and writing and typing right now a blog post!

I wonder what the expectations of Jesus were on that very first Palm Sunday that ushers in this holiest of weeks?

Did they want him to take up arms and show Pilate and his arm who really was the boss?

Did they want him to march into the temple, not just turn over the tables, but put others in their place?

Did they really expect him to get hung on a cross?

The downward spirituality of Christ doesn't sell well because it proclaims that to find life you have to lose your life.  I don't think this means dying in the sense of ceasing to be.  I think this means dying to our own personal plans for salvation.  I have my five year plan.  I have fantastic ideas about what the church should do - just ask me!  I have it all figured out.  But do I really?  To lose my life means to let go of all the predetermined plans for what success looks like.  That is really hard to do.  To lay at the foot of the cross all the things I tightly cling to ~ health, travel plans, praying for a packed church on Easter.

What if I have to set down all that...so that I might make space for the One whose spirit is stirring and still creating in the chaos of my life??

What if I have to set down all that I think should happen to be open to what can happen in a beautiful collaboration with the Creator?

What if the way isn't bigger and better...but smaller and sacred?  

What if a holy meal of broken bread, spilled juice and even a cross is really what it is all about?

(Ten points for any reader who just caught the subtle nod to the Hokey Pokey there).

If all those what ifs are really true...that changes every thing, especially my expectations!

And there is more than a trace of grace when I allow God to rearrange my carefully laid out plans with radical love and compelling presence.  That is what this week invite us into...a mystery not to be understood but experienced.

May God's blessings surround and sustain you each day this week.