Divine Sorrow

Divine Sorrow from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

That We Might Be One

My friend, pastor, and mentor Eugene Scott recently wrote a blog about the power of intimacy and the danger of isolation (you can read it here). In his work Eugene describes the desperate need we have for each other. I feel this most acutely now that a women who I have cherished my entire life struggles to relearn how to eat a cookie. My aunt Betty suffered a stroke recently and the consequences of that stroke have been difficult to learn of. While I am hundreds of miles from Betty, the strength of her love for me kept her presence close in some mysterious way. But now, I do not doubt her love, but she seems oddly distant. Even though we pray for her to recover and believe she is just stubborn enough to do so, there is pain in the separation from the strong woman we all once knew. When I heard the news of her struggles my response was anger, not sadness. I believed deep within that it was simply not fair for this woman to suffer but also because deep down I feared I might never see her again. She is doing better and I hope to see her soon, and that hope of connection is stronger than all my fears and anger.

As I said before we each of us have not just a desire for connection but a hunger and a thirst. Intimacy with our fellow man is not just pleasant, it is vital. Without each other, though our hearts may still beat, our souls no longer live. Jesus knew this well. Before his death he prays a long prayer in John 17 that repeats the same petition over and over: that we may be one. This oneness is core to his hope in us, to his death with us, and to his resurrection for us. While we often focus on the aspects of forgiveness and new life in Jesus' gospel, we must see that we are forgiven so we may be reconciled to God and each other and that reconciled life is indeed our new life. Jesus also showed that pure unity was central to his gospel message when he summed the entire law of holiness up into two relational commands, that righteousness is found in right relationship with God and with each other, nothing more and certainly nothing less.

Our relationships suffer most severely the consequences of death that our sin produces. In the first instance of disobedience, man runs and hides from the God he walked with everyday and covers himself up from his wife in shame. Our relationships were what defined us in the creation account, God in all his triune glory decides to make us in "our image," the shared image of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in perfect unity with each other. And it is that perfect unity that Jesus uses in his prayer as the model for our oneness, "may they be one as we are one." The day is coming when the groom Jesus will be united with his bridegroom the church and what a celebration of union that day will be. But in the mean time, we struggle to hold on to the beautiful relationships we currently inhabit and fight to repair the broken ones. This is hard work. Never will we open ourselves to more hurt than when we make ourselves vulnerable in relationships, than when we lay aside our fig leaves of shame and dare to live life together, in pure oneness.

All this points to why it hurts so much to hear that a loved one is in pain, because if we truly love that person then their pain becomes our own,that is both the blessing and perhaps the curse of our oneness. The reality is that we are all meant to be each other's loved ones and every instance of isolation, death, and disconnect hurts us to our core even if we do not realize it. But gloriously Jesus became our loved one and on that fateful day he felt our suffering in its fullest and it killed him. But in that act he showed love was stronger than death, that relationships would always win over separation in the end and he burst forth from the divide of death to reconnect all of creation to itself and to himself. Just as he felt our suffering on the cross, we feel his joy in the resurrection. May we find our stories at the intersection of the cross, at the place of Jesus prayer for our oneness, and the birth of our reconciled lives walking anew without shame in the presence of the one we have only dreamed of until now. And that hope of connection is stronger than all our fears and anger.

 May we be one.

Common Prayers for Palm Sunday

Right at the crest, where Mount Olives begins its descent, the whole crowd of disciples burst into enthusiastic praise over all the mighty works they had witnessed: Blessed is he who comes, the king in God's name! All's well in heaven! Glory in the high places! Some Pharisees from the crowd told him, "Teacher, get your disciples under control!" But he said, "If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise." Luke 19:37-40

It is right to praise you, Almighty God, for the acts of love by

which you have redeemed us through your Son Jesus Christ

our Lord. On this day he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in

triumph, and was proclaimed as King of kings by those who

spread their garments and branches of palm along his way.

Let these branches be for us signs of his victory, and grant that

we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our King,

and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life; who lives

and reigns in glory with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for 

ever. Amen.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but

first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he

was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way

of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and

peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the

human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ 

to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon 

the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: 

Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his 

suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through 

Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you 

and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Help, I Need Somebody

I have been a little under the weather recently and have succumbed to the woe-is-me regiment of sleeping all day, taking drugs, and whining.  I, like most men, revert to a two-year old any time my temperature even flirts with triple digits.  More than anything, what I desire the most is for someone to take care of me.  Michala does an excellent job of this, rubbing my forehead, bringing me blankets, and always offering them with a smile. Sometimes I wonder if I have a secret longing to be sick just so she can fly to the rescue. Even though I feel as if I just got out of the ring with Mike Tyson, everything is OK. Perhaps I am not alone in this longing to be cared for, I can see this desire manifest itself in other places than merely my sickbed. When the responsibilities of being a grown-up pile up and I  feel as if I could be destroyed under the pressure of it all, I merely want someone to share my load, to hold me tight and tell me it will be alright. Maybe I am just weak or maybe just honest. Yet it is in the moments where I admit my desperate need for help that I fell the greatest peace, the most acute sense of hope, and a faith that I can make it.

I think that our DNA is wired in such a way that we operate best when we operate together. This game called life is a team sport. Yet we often live in a way that does not showcase this fact, in fact we often live in away that shouts "It is all about me!" We want to be the strongest, the bravest, the smartest and we want to do it alone. But as someone once said, "Its lonely at the top." What if we redefined our ideas of what it means to be fulfilled, successful, or even happy. What if intrinsic to all these was a sense of connectedness, that we need one another.  I think we would find ourselves more fulfilled, more successful, and even happier. But beyond this we may just find ourselves.

One of my favorite area of theology is how Orthodox Christianity portrays God, as the three-in-one. Instead of a simple monotheism, we instead have this difficult idea that God is one but also three. I will not risk the cramping of my brain in trying to articulate how all this works, but I will bask in the glory of a God beyond comprehension but also in a God so very accessible. In the beginning, God made everything and it was good, everything except for one thing.  Man was alone. I find this to be haunting that God looks around at all He has made is left scratching His head by this one thing. But in His head-scratching, He is teaching us. God made us in His image, in His image of togetherness, in His image of wholeness found only in community. God wrote His unique love in our hearts: we are only complete, only human when we have and love one another. We are most alive when we depend on each other. Jesus would later affirm this idea by stating that the sole purpose of our existence is to love God and man, in no particular order. His friend John would later write that in fact our love of God was so deeply rooted in how we loved one another that we could not claim one love without the other.

This season of Lent, we seek to grow closer to Christ, to share in his sufferings so that we may share in His victory. When we look at the cross, we see how deep Jesus believed in sharing with us the fullness of being alive. He so desperately wanted us to be alive that He died. With one of his final cries he felt the pain of our isolation, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" If we are to share in Christ's sufferings then we must be honest with our isolation; we must admit that we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, that we think we can do this on our own. In this admission, may we begin to share in his victory too. May we find a new life in the death of ourself, a life of togetherness, a life that not only finds peace in another's helping hand, but also finds the courage to give our hands back. May we be a people, plain and simple, truly a people, one although many. And perhaps we will find life there, a life unlike anything we have ever seen or known before.