Time and Distance

My GPS calculates the distance as 42 miles, and estimates the travel time at 1 hour and 18 minutes. Today it seems a million miles away. It has been almost two days since I was there and already it seems like a lifetime. I get an occasional email -- reminding me of this and asking about that, but that is all. There are no casual visitors, no shared laughs, no quiet moments of contemplation. Life there goes on without me.

And I suppose life here goes on also. I tend to a sick child and read from a classic text. I pray the Daily Office with a sense of duty that sometimes betrays my spiritual struggles. I recount my past visits and make plans for my next arrival.

All this is fine, and God knows that there are plenty of things I could and should be doing. But deep down inside, I know that I am not living in the moment, but rather in memories of the past or in dreams of the future.

God, show me the way.

Workman and Growing Fonts

Go figure.

I had been there before -- the local retirement home. We huddled together in the community room for Eucharist and our monthly get together. We haven't been meeting together like this for very long, and I will be the first to admit that we are still growing to know each other.

Our past meetings were seeped in that new relationship feel. I struggled to find my place in the worship space and I think they struggled to see me as their celebrant or their pastor. They still miss Audrey, they log for Ellen, and they still do not know me.

But this time something different happened. Over the course of the past month, I had taken the little list of prayer requests that I had accumulated at our Ash Wednesday service and prayed through them each day. I couldn't remember who made each prayer request, but I could pray them anyway. I had also given up on the tattered worship booklets and produced new ones with a larger font size.

The difference was palpable. It was as if some unseen force had reached down and turned up the volume on our shared prayer. We were together. We prayed together.

For our brief time together we were the Body of Christ in that place.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Elephants and Fences

First let me begin by saying how much I truly love elephants. My late grandfather collected elephants -- brass, china, wood, and even a few plastic ones he received from us when we were just children. From a young age when I saw an elephant I saw my grandfather. The memories are warm and personal.

Tonight I learned a bit more about elephants -- specifically how they go about making change in their environs. I am told that when confronted by a fence elephants will rarely charge the fence, but rather lean on it until it collapses. This process might take days, but it is the prefered method of breaking down barriers between one's elephant self and what one wants. Judging from the elephants I have seen, the pressure of holding up under an elephant must be immense and I can understand why the fences collapse. It is all quite simple when it is simply engineering.
Where I start to worry is when I look closer at the elephant bearing down on the fence.

The force of an elephant looks very much like oppression to me. The sheer strength and weight of the elephant is no match for most fences I can imagine. Words like stubborn and bullying come to mind. It is not long before I begin to see the elephant as the agressive oppressor and the fence as the submissive opressed. It is not difficult to see elephants as oppressors, especially when they are about the work of tumbling walls destroying the fences constructed to protect me.

As much as I love elephants. I never thought I wanted to be one. And more than that, I've never wanted to be an oppressor.

But then I remembered that the fence was built my someone else, for the sole purpose of holding back, containing, and controling the elephant. The oppressor in absentia.

And there I am in my mind, standing beside the elephant.

Pushing hard.

Life at a Jubilee Center

I don't remember exactly when I first sensed it -- perhaps it was as we sat in the Parish Office recounting the days events, or maybe it was as I began the long drive home -- but it was unmistakable. It was the feeling of jubilee. The sense that I had been home again to a place that was still remarkably new to me, but home nonetheless.

Maybe it was the music, "Lift High the Cross" and "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing," maybe it was the way the littlest acolyte glided across the chancel, or maybe the seriousness of her brother as he carried the chalice, I am not quite sure what it is about this place that makes it a balm for all that ails me.

Leviticus tells us that Jubilee is a special year for the forgiveness of sins and pardoning of debts, slaves and prisoners freed, and God's mercy becomes more apparent to all people, and typically occurs every fifty years. Having experienced it now, I realize that it is well worth the wait.

Mary Chapin Carpenter tells the story of jubilee best, and I share her writing with you:

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Jubilee

I can tell by the way you're walking
That you don't want company
I'll let you alone and I'll let you walk on
And in your own good time you'll be

Back where the sun can find you
Under the wise wishing tree
And with all of them made we'll lie under the shade
And call it a jubilee

And I can tell by the way you're talking
That the past isn't letting you go
But there's only so long you can take it all on
And then the wrong's gotta be on its own

And when you're ready to leave it behind you
You'll look back, and all that you'll see
Is the wreckage and rust that you left in the dust
On your way to the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you're listening
That you're still expecting to hear
Your name being called like a summons to all
Who have failed to account for their doubts and their fears

They can't add up to much without you
And so if it were just up to me
I'd take hold of your hand, saying come hear the band
Play your song at the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you're searching
For something you can't even name
That you haven't been able to come to the table
Simply glad that you came

And when you feel like this try to imagine
That we're all like frail boats on the sea
Just scanning the night for that great guiding light
Announcing the jubilee

And I can tell by the way you're standing
With your eyes filling with tears
That it's habit alone keeps you turning for home
Even though your home is right here

Where the people who love you are gathered
Under the wise wishing tree
May we all be considered then straight on delivered
Down to the jubilee'

Cause the people who love you are waiting
And they'll wait just as long as need be
When we look back and say those were halcyon days
We're talking 'bout jubilee

Enduring Lent

The season of Lent is in full gear and I am once again reminded of my recurring difficulty with this season. Each year I promise myself that this year will be different. I will be kinder and gentler with myself and my earnest attempts at increasing devotion.

This year was no different. Again I find myself wondering what magic cure will instill in me a deeper and fuller life of prayer. My attempts thus far seem puny and without much merit.

I tell myself that this is the journey of Lent and that I will always be headed away from my personal shortcomings and toward God, but I keep looking back.

May Easter come soon.

One Man, One Whip, and Everything Changes

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"

It is am amazing image, isn’t it? Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem and there he finds the moneychangers, the caged animals, the tables stacked with coins, everything an observant Jew would need in order to make one’s sacrifice at God’s altar was right there before him. Jesus does not make his way to one of the vendors and piously and quietly procure the necessary sacrifice. We might expect that. After all, that is what we are told elsewhere in scripture, isn’t it? Somewhere in the back of our minds might be the story of the man who made his way to the temple and prayed loudly and thanked God that he was not like his neighbor – the one who prayed quietly and plainly, without great fanfare. Remember what happened to him? He was rebuked and told to pray in secret – not to make a scene.

Rather than choosing to be quiet – to proceed business as usual as it where,
Jesus does what was unthinkable.

He made a whip and drove the moneychangers from the temple. He overturned their tables and sent their money rolling across the Court of the Gentiles. He released the animals freeing them from their impending deaths. Animals roamed the temple and doves circled looking for safe perches.

One man. One whip. And the whole way of being in the temple changed.

It is an enticing image of Jesus for some of us. This is, after all, what we have been praying to happen. Jesus comes into a situation and his righteous anger flows.

As Ellen says: Yay, God!

Jesus seems to have two different images: the calmly pastoral Jesus who says let the children come, or come unto me all ye who are heaving laden and I will give you rest. The Jesus who prays and heals, and sits teaching with Mary at his feet.

And then there is the image of Jesus that some of us cling to in prayer. This is the Jesus that stands up to injustice, and the Jesus that rights wrongs and brings about change for a world in dire need of reform and a different way of being. This Jesus blesses the weak and the poor in spirit. He protects and defends the widow and the orphan.

We may want to be with and be like this Jesus too. To take up our own whips and to strike out at those we perceive as being unjust or unrighteous, or even evil. We are God’s people, on God’s team, after all.

When we hear that all this happened at the Passover of the Jews, we might be tempted to think of Jesus cleansing of the temple as a rebuke of the Jews, but that wouldn’t be honest, would it?

When Jesus says, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" he is talking to us too. We are the people who gather in the church and go about the business and busyness of being the temple. We are the ones who make sure that the bulletins are printed and handed out to everyone. We are the ones who distribute numbered envelopes and take up the offerings that allow the doors to remain open and alms to be collected for the poor. We are the ones who have set up the tables that Jesus was so quickly and passionately to overturn.

The Jesus with the whip in this story is coming for us too.

The Jesus who takes on powers and principalities is the Jesus who take us on too.

The moneychangers in the temple, before we forget, were doing what was necessary for the functioning of the temple. People needed coins without Cesar’s image and they needed unblemished animals for sacrifice. What started out as necessary and good had become institutionalized in a way that emphasized the institution rather that the prophetic messaged that called God to come again into right relationship with God.

Those folks who came to the temple that day to offer sacrifice where there to get right with God or to help others get right with God, even if they were distracted by other concerns. Jesus was reminding them what was important.

They needed to stop thinking about the temple as a gathering place or marketplace.

They needed to learn again, that it wasn’t their place, but rather God’s house.
Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
Reminded them of the OT prophesy that “Zeal for your house will consume me."
But he was also teaching them something that was new:
That temple what not merely God’s house, but my Father’s house – that he was the son of God.
And that the temple as they had come to know it would need to be changed. Changed so drastically that they themselves might not recognize it. That it would cease to exist in Jerusalem and become the temple of his body.
And that this temple of his body would be destroyed and them raised up again in three days.
It is a wildly discomforting thought that the temple, the church, that we have come to know, to love, to gather at Sunday by Sunday, might be visited by a Jesus with a whip, who overturns what we have built up and who calls for a new and different way of being.
Look around. That is what is happening, isn’t it?
Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
The Good News for us is that yes, the temple was destroyed, but it was built up in three days, just as Jesus promised. Just like the disciples, we too remember what Jesus said. We have the scripture before us and we too know that Jesus has spoken to us and continues to speak to and through us.
We too know the worlds that Jesus said: Fear not, for I am with you always, even to the end of the ages.
Amen.