Tag: Jesus

Easter 2024

I am just home from an Easter service at the church we are attending.
The service had all the requisite parts.
Easter hymns.
Special music.
Gospel reading of the women at the tomb.
Call and response.
Christ is risen!
Christ has risen indeed!

But, I left the service a bit uneasy.
What if we have it all wrong?
What if we are missing the point of the story?
What if the resurrection narratives are not about Jesus
Or, at least as much about Jesus as we tend to make it
(Maybe it is safer if we keep it about Jesus!?)
What if the narrative is about the disciples
And what happened to them.
Maybe that is the resurrection we need to pay attention to.
The resurrection we need to focus on.
And be convicted by.
Because if the story is really about what happened to the disciples
Then, the story is also about you and me
And what might happen to us
About what God hopes happens to us
Because God knows the world needs resurrection.

Here is what I mean.
The Last Supper is not a memorial meal, but a commission.
Jesus, encouraging the disciples to become the next Jesus.
His body and blood now in us.
Now our body and our blood.
Who he was we are now to be.
But crucifixion is brutal.
And fear is real.
And death is real.
But something changed.
Didn’t it?
Somehow those disciples experienced Jesus alive.
With them.
In them.
His vision of how life and world could be
Should be
Suddenly stronger than their fear
Even of death.
And they found themselves transformed.
Being Jesus to others.
Jesus alive in the world.

I don’t know what happened at the tomb.
In the end, I don’t think it matters that much.
What matters is what happened to the disciples.
And what can happen to you and me.

The Last Supper or the First?

Maundy Thursday 2022

I know the words.
I have heard them for most of my life.
And, even said them as I stood before a congregation
Holding the bread and the cup of the Eucharist.
The Last Supper.
Words attributed to Jesus.
My body broken for you.
My blood shed for you.

But to tell you the truth, for a long time now I have been uncomfortable with the words I used so often and know so well because they are words of a sacrificial theology. Jesus giving his life so we might be forgiven. I know the background and history of that language and can take a reasonable guess about why those words and that theology occupy such a powerful position in Christian theology and practice. Afterall, if sacrifice and forgiveness is the primary way of understanding Jesus, who is it that mediates that sacrifice and forgiveness now? Even if it once did, the theology of a required sacrifice no longer fits with my understanding of God or with the words and witness of Jesus.

I wrote about one piece of a different way to think about and to understand what Jesus might have been saying and meaning here. A second piece fell into place several weeks ago when I participated in a study event with scholar and author Diana Butler Bass. The comment she made which caught my attention was this. What if the pivotal moment of Holy Week was the meal and not the cross. Maundy Thursday and not Good Friday. The gathered community and not the crucifixion.

I don’t know what was in Jesus’ heart and mind that evening.
Was he fulfilling his pre-ordained role as a sacrifice to placate an angry God?
I don’t think so.
Did he know he might be arrested and crucified?
Maybe.
Just as those African-American students who sat at Whites Only lunch counters and those who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge knew they might be arrested or beaten or killed.

So, if not sacrifice, what?
Maybe it was the First Supper and not the last.
The first supper of the new community.
The first supper when it was not Rabbi and students.
When it was not leader and followers.
When it was not Jesus and them.
The first supper when that which made Jesus Jesus was now passed on to and claimed by the disciples and a new community was formed.

As the Gospels unfold the story, it takes a while for the disciple to really get it.
But eventually they do.
And, maybe we can as well.

Good Friday 2021 – The Wrong Preposition

As Christians remember and talk about the execution of Jesus,
I think, we use the wrong preposition.
Instead of saying and believing that Jesus died for our sins,
I think we should say and believe that Jesus died because of our sins.
And, believing as I do that the Bible,
Including this story,
Is as much about now as it is about then
And as much about you and me as it is about them
I wonder…
How many of God’s children…
How many of God’s daughters and sons
Continue to die because of our sins?

Maundy Thursday 2021

For Christians, tonight is Maundy Thursday which marks the last meal Jesus had with his disciples. For those who identify as Christian, the ritual and the words are familiar.
Broken bread.
Poured cup.
“This is my body broken for you.
This is my blood poured out for you.
Eat and drink remembering me.”

But, I wonder…
What if, for so long, we have misheard and misunderstood his words?
What if they are not about sacrifice.
Not about his pending death.
What if, instead, they are a commission.
A charge.
A transferring of power.
My body
My strength
My touch
Is now yours.
I give it to you.
The essence of who I am (which Jews believed flowed in one’s blood) now flows in your blood.
My vision.
My hope.
God’s dream which lived in me now lives in you.
What I did you are now to do.
Who I was you are now to be.
What I taught about God’s Kingdom come close you are now to teach.
And, to live.

What if we understood his words this way?
Would it make a difference?

Maundy Thursday

Today we remember.
The Last Supper.
The bread broken.
The cup shared.
Today we remember Jesus.
Who he was and what he did.
The gospel’s original greek word which has been translated as remember is anamnesis.
From which we get the English word amnesia.
Anamnesis means against amnesia.
So what we do today is not merely remembering.
Like remembering the milk when we go to the grocery store.
It is refusing to forget.

And so we remember.
What did Jesus do?
He healed.
The paralytic.
The man possessed by demons.
The woman who was bleeding.
Blind Bartimaeus.
Zacchaeus.

What did he do?
He fed those who were hungry.
The 5000.
The disciples on the shore and those on their way to Emmaus.
He fed those who were searching.
And, the woman at the well.
And, Nathaniel who asked if anything good could come out of Nazareth.

What did he do?
He extended a welcome to those who were excluded and looked down upon.
The woman who interrupted Simon’s dinner party to wash his feet.
The woman who pushed her way through the crowd to touch his robe.
The children the disciples tried to keep away.
The Samaritan.
The Canaanite woman.
The Roman officer whose son was dying.

What did he do?
He made the circle which encompassed God’s children larger.
As a colleague said…
Moving the margins until there are no more margins.

The author Frederick Buechner wrote:
“When you remember me it means you carry something of who I am with you. That I have left some mark of who I am on who you are.”

Believing that to be true.
That Jesus has left some mark of who he was on each of us,
Today we remember.
Today we chose not to forget.
Today we claim the mark he left on each of our lives.

A Bucket of Water

Holy Week.
Palm Sunday to Easter.
Each day this week, in this stay at home time, the pastor of the church I attend and I are recording reflections around events in the final week of Jesus’ life to share with the congregation. We are using images of frescoes painted by the Italian painter Giotto which are in a chapel in Padua, Italy as our jumping off point. Today’s image is of the fresco of Jesus washing the disciples feet.

And, here is my reflection…
The account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet is found in the Gospel of John. The 13th chapter. Verses 1-13. It’s a longer narrative, but goes something like this:

As Jesus and the disciples were gathering to celebrate the Passover, Jesus poured water into a bowl. He then knelt before each of the disciples and washed their feet. When he is done, Jesus says this: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done for you.”

As someone who has lived his entire life north of the Mason Dixon line and east of the Mississippi River, I have spent my entire life wearing shoes and walking on sidewalks. I washed my feet only when I took a shower. For the longest time, while I knew the story, I didn’t understand the importance or the meaning of Jesus washing the disciples feet. That changed for me about 15 years ago when I spent time in Nicaragua helping to build homes for families who lived in very substandard housing. Being close to the equator, Nicaragua is alway hot. And, being an underdeveloped country, the roads and paths where we worked were dirt and it was always dusty. After working all day in the heat and dust, I watched as the masons with whom I worked took off their shoes and sandals and put their feet in a bucket of water. When I followed their example I was amazed at how refreshing and renewing it felt.

So now back to the Gospel and to Peter and James and John and the other disciples in that upper room with Jesus. I am sure this was not the first time the disciples had washed their feet. I am sure, that at the end of of a long day of walking or working, they did the equivalent of putting their feet in a bucket of water, but I would bet it was the first time they had someone kneel in front of them, like a servant, and wash their feet for them.
Cool water. Strong hands. Washing and massaging away the dirt and the fatigue of the day.
Such luxury was known only by a select few.
Those in power.
Those with enough influence and money.
Those who owned servants.
Not the disciples.
The disciples were fishermen. Day laborers. Common. Poor.

Could it be that the example Jesus gives by washing the disciples feet is not just one of serving others, but of lifting people up? Treating those too often overlooked or looked down upon with a respect and a dignity usually reserved only for that select few? I wonder.

As those of us who have made the commitment to follow in the way and in the footsteps of Jesus, as we walk through these days of Holy Week towards the mystery and wonder and celebration of Easter, how is it that who we are and how we live and how we treat others lifts them up and affirms their dignity and recognizes and celebrates their worth? Extending our hands and reaching out our arms until all are…and know they are…included in the circle of God’s love.

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Several things I believe: