Author Archives: MCS

telling the gospel story this easter

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Sit with me and tell me once again
Of the story that’s been told us
Of the power that will hold us
Of the beauty, of the beauty
Why it matters

Speak to me until I understand
Why our thinking and creating
Why our efforts of narrating
About the beauty, of the beauty
And why it matters

Like the statue in the park
Of this war torn town
And it’s protest of the darkness
And the chaos all around
With its beauty, how it matters
How it matters

Show me the love that never fails
The compassion and attention
Midst confusion and dissention
Like small ramparts for the soul
How it matters

Like a single cup of water
How it matters

-Sara Groves, “Why it matters”

what new mystery is this

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“Nature trembled and said with astonishment:

What new mystery is this?

The Judge is judged and remains silent;

the Invisible One is seen and does not hide himself;

the Incomprehensible One is comprehended and does not resist;

the Unmeasurable One is measured and does not struggle;

the One beyond suffering suffers and does not avenge himself;

the Immortal One dies and does not refuse death.

What new mystery is this?”

-Second-century bishop Melito of Sardis

the space between

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Jesus, you are the King of Glory and the King of Creation.

Teach us to recognize the ways of your kingdom that we might participate as faithful and devout residents in the space between a broken world and the coming kingdom of God.

Amen.

-Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

white lent

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…

To bow the head
In sackcloth and in ashes,
Or rend the soul,
Such grief is not Lent’s goal;
But to be led
To where God’s glory flashes,
His beauty to come nigh,
To fly, to fly,
To fly where truth and light do lie.

For is not this
The fast that I have chosen? –
The prophet spoke –
To shatter every yoke,
Of wickedness
The grievous bands to loosen,
Oppression put to flight,
To fight, to fight,
To fight till every wrong’s set right.

For righteousness
And peace will show their faces
To those who feed
The hungry in their need,
And wrongs redress,
Who build the old waste places,
And in the darkness shine.
Divine, divine,
Divine it is when all combine!

Then shall your light
Break forth as doth the morning;
Your health shall spring,
The friends you make shall bring
God’s glory bright,
Your way through life adorning
And love shall be the prize.
Arise, arise,
Arise! and make a paradise!

-P. Dearmer (1867-1936), hymn: White Lent

dirt under his fingernails

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“Mary Magdalene thought the resurrected Christ was a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails.  Of course, the depictions in churches of the risen Christ never show dirt under his nails; they make him look more like a wingless angel than a gardener.  It’s as if he needed to be cleaned up for Easter visitors so he looked more impressive and so no one would be offended by the truth.  But then what we all end up with is a perverted idea of what resurrection looks like.  My experience, however, is that the God of Easter is a God with dirt under his nails.

Resurrection never feels like being made clean and nice and pious like in those Easter pictures.  I would have never agreed to work for God if I had believed God was interested in trying to make me nice or even good.  instead, what I subconsciously knew, even back then, was that God was never about making me spiffy: God was about making me new.

New doesn’t always look perfect.  Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy.  New looks like recovering alcoholics.  New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it.  New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right.  New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway.  New is the thing we never saw coming-never even hoped for-but ends up being what we needed all along.

“It happens to all of us,” I concluded that Easter Sunday morning.  “God simply keeps reaching down in to the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions.  And God keeps loving us back into life over and over.”

-Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix

strangers

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Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;

How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,

Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

-Robert Robinson, Hymn: Come Thou Fount

lenten empty

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It is an irrefutable law: one needs to be dispossessed of the possessions that possess — before one can be possessed of God.

Let the things of this world fall away so the soul can fall in love with God. God only comes to fill the empty places and kenosis is necessary – to empty the soul to know the filling of God.

-Ann Voskamp