Benediction

This Cathedral holds many treasures
strange ornaments and instruments,
useful for things that no one remembers

What were they for? Their uses as diverse
as their appearance: oft the victim, oft the perpetrator
and usually

somewhere in between

This monstrance
tarnished by affluence
dimmed by frustrated hopes
cradles the corpse of a dead god
Who keeps company with all who have

finally failed

This life so full of compromise
this will to love so fierce
but so stunted
these immobile feet so
desperate to move

bears the presence of a dead god
in the world that

also died

but forgot

Those with eyes to see
kneel down to adore
the brokenness and the pain
the failure and the compromise
the unclarity and confusion

"this is the way he made me, and I don't dispute 'hit."

Faith for all defects supplying
where the feeble senses fail

I am a temple of the Holy Ghost
I am a temple of the Holy Ghost
I am a temple of the Holy Ghost

You are

Meet Me on This Road

In the beginning, YHWH made heaven and earth

The Man and the Woman lived with promise,
clothed in their trust of his heart

And then they Fell

-

In the beginning, YHWH created Israel

Israel lived by his promise,
as he had brought Jacob to freedom through the Red Sea

And then they turned

and YHWH called
and they turned

and YHWH called
and they turned

and YHWH smote
and after that, our exile

YHWH promised a new beginning

he promised them a new heart, beating with covenant faithfulness

And soon their return

-

In the hours before the dawn of chastened Israel's vindication

the promise comes to bear

the Son of Man confronts the rod of YHWH's arrogant instrument

but

the righteous and anointed one is slain

-

They had promised their lives to him. They trusted YHWH's promise to redeem them. "How long will you hide your face from us, O YHWH?" they must have asked. "We are a disobedient people, and our god has finally forsaken us.

Their hope has died.

They walked along the road, arguing. Perhaps they argued about it, this shattered hope. Was he a false prophet? Had they disappointed YHWH? Had he finally proved as faithless as they had?

Or perhaps they argued about where to stop for the night.

They didn't know what the others did. They had not seen. They had not touched and felt. They offered their story and their broken hearts to a stranger on the road. They offered him bread and drink.

"He was our hope," they explained.

The stranger told them God's story anew. He told them of Moses and the Prophets, and of the Suffering Servant: the Son of Man who must suffer for Israel and be vindicated by God before his enthronement as his viceroy.

The Risen Lord told them the story anew, and their suffering was transformed. In the breaking of bread he bore the sorrows of their long and dark Holy Saturday into the joy and illumination of Eastertide.

Many of us have missed the promise of Easter, and suffer under the long shadow of our crucified hopes. We share our stories of pain with one another and with the stranger. We tell of the God who failed to show up. We offer him this bread.

We learn silence here that we might hear the new tale, the bigger story that weaves every tattered thread of our lives into the tapestry of YHWH's redemptive work.

We eat the bread, offering our brokenness for his healing.

We recognize him in this word and this sacrament, and he disappears from our sight.

And our cold hearts begin to burn

Signs of Life

Resurrection Happens

The Spirit of promise moved silently through the house, rippling across the surface of our souls as it did over the waters before the First Day.

It billowed with the cigarette smoke that wafted in from the front porch every time someone walked into the house.

Over the din of a March Madness game, through the busy preparations in the kitchen, and under the light and unselfconscious silence of smoke breaks, we came together in the waiting space of Holy Saturday. Like any of us, I found myself resting and waiting for resurrection in a tomb filled with my own fears and disillusionment.

This is the night,
when you brought our fathers,
the children of Israel,
out of bondage in Egypt,
and led them through the Red Sea
on dry land

Each of us was carried to 12th Street, once again, by the Promise. This was a joyful gathering, one of expectation. We cooked and we talked. We ate and we listened. In that joy, I found that I forgot nothing. The disappointments and recriminations – the ordinary brokenness – of a common life remained, but I knew they belonged right where they were. They ought not be cast aside, not on this night.

I was just happy – deeply and exuberantly so – to be with my friends, just to be together as we were meant to be and to do what we were always meant to do. Yet I mourned those broken things, without expecting it, and without even paying attention at that moment.

This is the night,
when all who believe in Christ are delivered
from the gloom of sin, and are restored to
grace and holiness of life

Unexpected, unspoken conversations brought words of prophecy and healing to pain and despair. (Grieving together does not require speaking.) The listening itself became a prophetic act as Friday’s cross carried all of our brokenness into Saturday’s tomb. Those hurts could be honored and treated them with tenderness. I began to realize that his Resurrection was coming upon them.

In the completely unplanned and spontaneous ways that characterize God’s New Community, we were broken like the bread and poured out like the wine.

Nobody planned that. It just happened. It just happens. It was so ridiculously ordinary.

The Creator Spirit came and re-created us into a Community. In those moments, we lived in forever.

How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God

I wish I had the words for it. When do you say when you’re standing in the kitchen and pouring peas into the steamer basket and you’re really joining everyone in adoration, pouring your heart out onto the floor and you suddenly know that Yahweh himself is in the house and he’s healing you and everyone else there whether we know it or feel it or not and nothing is stopping him or even slowing him down? When you’ve not even lit the coals for incense, or finished mashing the potatoes?

What do you say after you go away and you know it happened and you know it’s not stopping for anything?

Arise, O Christ

Technorati Tags: Easter, church, discipleship

Ordinary

I visited the 12th street community

veni spiritus sanctus

on Monday, gathering with them for dinner and prayer for the first time in awhile. We ate and talked, enjoying the company of one another. We lit some candles and listened and began to pray. We prayed for one another, friends present and absent. And I thought

this is ordinary

Last night was our final Tuesday gathering for the semester. We read from the lectionary

with terrible recompense He will come and save you

and just talked. Told some inane stories and shared some frustrations, and looked to YHWH with hope,

redemption stares at you

in the mirror from behind

the glassy eyes and the

cold, barren face

becoming more and more aware that in our life together we reflect the glory of YHWH, that these moments are not fleeting, that they do not need to be protected or guarded jealously, that they are

ordinary

And I see that grace does not run out, that restoration is not a weekend project, and that some things really ought to hurt and pain is not always bad

this veritable power is not transitory

i tire of the old ones the hollow men and women who being blind try to describe light behind their glassy eyes stares nothing

::the - candle::

they say

::the - candle - you - lit::
::in - the - dark - place::
::is - not - so - bright - as - you - think::

what if you were dead and nobody told you
i would tell you if you would listen but you hate when we disturb your sleep
(i'm sorry; you see, no one else ever will)

blind ghosts hiding among their pretty tombs whose whispers echo and drown the whimpers of those of us who are getting up our of our graves

i won't fear truth
i won't shirk correction
i will not deny our life

these gods need to die
these gods who do not raise the dead

In God's new world, resurrection is ordinary.