Celebration in the Midst of Distance

Jesus’s actions don’t make any sense this week. Time doesn’t make any sense this week. What I’m trying to say is: Holy Week makes no sense, at least not logically.

On Sunday, Jesus throws a parade even though he knows how the story will end.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Jesus carries on as if nothing is happening.

On Thursday, Jesus tells his disciples to impose on a homeowner with a too-late request to use his lodging for their Passover dinner. On Thursday he is betrayed.

And on Friday, death hits close to home—for Jesus’s friends and for us, to be sure, but death this week hits close to home for God.

But today there is a parade, perhaps to distract us from trying to bite off more of the somberness of Holy Week than we can chew. I can only imagine the disciples, whispering to each other and giggling as they try to figure out which donkey they are supposed to untie. Now, if you were going to steal a donkey, would you calmly walk up, untie it, and lead it away?  Probably not. Stealing a donkey isn’t like swiping some dates from a vendor’s stand in Jerusalem. Stealing a donkey isn’t like stealing a loaf of bread that can easily fit under one’s cloak. Donkeys are also not quiet animals, and they bray for lots of reasons and—so far as the donkeys I have met go—for no reason at all. The disciples were all ready for their Zoom meeting, situated their computer in front of a bookshelf or a plant to make it look like their surroundings were more professional than what most homes are able to offer, and, just when they were about to pull it off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ98SJrJfps Jesus was ready for the donkeys’ protest and the protest of their owner: ^“If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” Would we? Would we send the animals just because someone else needed them? Would we send medical supplies? Food? Toilet paper? Often times, it seems like Jesus gets the leftovers from our days and weeks. Leftover time, leftover money, leftover forgiveness, leftover kindness, leftover memories of a once upon a time redemption that feels like fake news in the face of our daily realities.

But is Jesus ready for our protests about Holy Week? It feels like Lent is going to go on forever. Pastor and author Angela Denker notes the way that COVID-19 seemed this year to be a package deal with our Lenten journeys. She says, “Coronavirus came to America around the same time as Ash Wednesday, a day when we still allowed people outside our homes and families to touch our foreheads and mark us with a symbol of sin, death, and resurrection.” As the numbers of infected, affected, and the deceased mount, all that is unwell in the world seems to tell a bigger truth about this Holy Week. Dear Jesus: Give it up. Now is not the time to celebrate. Lent is winning. Lent happened to us this year, whether we wanted it to or not. Those in Italy, whose outbreak occurred while most of us were going about our daily business warned us: it is coming for you, just as the ashen crosses reminded us that death comes for all of us. Now is not the time for a parade, Jesus. Now is not the time for Easter. Don’t make me laugh Jesus. This is serious.

Don’t make your disciples steal a donkey, sniggering in the back alleys of Jerusalem as it brays its way to the mount of Olives. Don’t climb on that donkey like you don’t know what is going to happen. How can you even listen to the shouts of Hosanna? We are not ready for joy.

By Friday night, the disciples are probably watching the events play out in their heads, looking back to see if there was any way they could have anticipated what was going to happen, much like the world now looks back on January: could we have done something to prevent it? Who will we be on the other side? Will things ever be the same again? As if in an old movie, the disciples watch Jesus waving to the crowds, as they lay down their palms, their cloaks, and their hearts for the man who will lay down his life. Jesus’s participation in the celebration doesn’t make any sense. It is the wrong time and the wrong place for a parade.

And still there is a celebration. And still there is laughter. But why? Did Jesus simply miss the mark here? Did God Incarnate miss a divine memo about the somberness and the stone-cold reality of what awaited him? Is Jesus simply trying to distract us from what is really going on?

Is Holy Week just a distraction from a global pandemic? Is it just a means to forget our pandemic-imposed Lenten weight of the world? How can we be socially distanced yet so interconnected that our social gatherings, our economies, and our health depend on one another?

No, Holy Week is not a distraction. It is the point.

The laughter of Holy Week is a protest to every joy-robbing scheme that sin, sickness, or the devil could conjure. The whispering disciples, the braying donkey in the back alleys of Jerusalem, the shouts of Hosanna, the laying down of palms, cloaks, and hearts, the joy of Palm Sunday is real. It is real because it happens in the face of everything that would say no to joy. The joy of Palm Sunday is a no to anything that claims to extend the weight of Lent beyond its bounds. The joy of Palm Sunday is a resounding “no” to the distance COVID-19 threatens to put between us. The laying down of our palms, cloaks, and hearts is a joyous event because Christ gathers them up. Jesus’s determination to steal some donkeys and throw a parade are a reminder that joy is at the party even in the midst of fear, uncertainty, and even death. Jesus’s commands to the disciples are as though to say, “I demand that you laugh” despite all of the retrospective protests that joy was somehow out of place the week Jesus died. While some communities will celebrate Easter when they can gather together again because the midst of COVID-19 hardly seems like an appropriate time to celebrate, let us not forget to celebrate this week, because it is a week for parades at the wrong time and in the wrong place (socially-distanced by 6ft or more, of course). Holy Week is an invitation to celebrate even if we may not feel like it.

It is hard to feel like celebrating when everything is cancelled. Angela Denker writes, “When Coronavirus came and began to steal lives around the world, it stormed into churches, jump-starting an outbreak in South Korea, and canceling Mass even at the Vatican. When Coronavirus came, we had to look in the mirror to remember who we were.” But the mirror reveals not only who we are, but whose we are.

“Who is this?” ask the tumultuous crowds in Jerusalem. It is easy to get wrapped up in excitement of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the experience of Passover, the sights, sounds, and smells of the city hustling and bustling, with people in too-close quarters sharing air. There were no supermarket announcements reminding celebrants to stand six feet apart. With streets barely wider than the social distance we keep, the crowds in Jerusalem are gathered up into the shouts of “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” without knowing who they announce. These parades would have happened whenever a Roman dignitary came to town. When someone important comes, the crowds gather for the spectacle. But this was the first time they shouted Hosanna. Most of the government officials ride horses fully armored, but this guy comes wearing a pauper’s tunic. And still they say, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” They stop only after to say, “Which Lord? Caesar? Is it the Lord Caesar that takes and takes and then demands more of us until we have emptied ourselves? Is it Lord Caesar that demands piety to him to unify the empire? No,they say, it is the prophet from Nazareth. He is a different sort of Lord. This is a different sort of parade. The parade will soon give way to protest and the cries to crucify, as external events threaten to dampen the Passover holiday, just as COVID-19 threatens to dampen our Easter celebrations.

But Holy Week is a protest to Lent exceeding its bounds. Just as the spring flowers in Valpo threaten to bloom in the face of a global pandemic, just as the tree buds burst forth in green to lift their protest, as people sing songs from balconies and give away their gifts and talents for free, as people offer to buy food for those confined to their homes to protect them from the virus, we contribute our metaphorical donkeys because the Lord needs them.

And so we celebrate, not because of who we are when we face the bitter reality of the brokenness of our world, but because of whose we are. Whose are we? We belong to the Lord, the giver of life, who emptied himself of all that belongs to God so that he might give us all that belongs to him. It is the Lord who gives his life and throws a party on the way to the cross—the worst possible time for a party. Yet, Jesus demands that we celebrate. He demands it because the life he saves is not his: it is yours.

Two Martins, Two Righteousnessess, and Staying in the Boat

            “Lord, command that I come to you…” Peter said. Full of faith, full of joy at seeing Jesus across the lake, Peter stepped out on to the water. Having recounted my efforts to walk on water as a child elsewhere, I’ll leave that story aside for the moment because there is a harder question to ask. Why is it that we—as Christians—either end up staying in the boat and never stepping out in faith or end up stepping out in faith and then sinking as soon as we see how difficult the life of faith really is? Why is it that we leave what ought to be said unsaid? Why is it that we pray for the Holy Spirit to come and then ignore the work of the Spirit among us? How often have we asked Jesus to calm the storm instead of asking him to make us instruments of peace?

            It begs the question: which kingdom will define us? By whose kingdom will we live? In his essay on “Temporal Authority,” Martin Luther puts it this way:

We must divide the children of Adam and all humankind (sic.) into two classes, the first belonging to the kingdom of God, the second to the kingdom of the world. Those who belong to the kingdom of God are all the true believers who are in Christ and under Christ, for Christ is King and Lord in the kingdom of God. For this reason he came into the world, that he might begin God’s kingdom and establish it in the world. Therefore, he says to Pilate ‘My kingdom is not of the world, but everyone who is of the truth hears my voice’ (John 18:36-37)… Now observe, these people need no temporal law or sword. If all the world were composed of real Christians, that is, true believers, there would be no need for or benefits from prince, king, lord, sword, or law. They would serve no purpose, since Christians have in their heart the Holy Spirit, who both teaches and makes them do injustice to no one, to love everyone, and to suffer injustice and even death willingly and cheerfully at the hands of anyone. Where there is nothing but the unadulterated doing of right and bearing of wrong, there is no need for any suit, litigation, court, judge, penalty, law, or sword. For this reason it is impossible that the temporal sword and law should find any work to do among Christians, since they do of their own accord much more than all laws and teachings can demand… but take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner… Christians are few and far between… No Christian shall wield or invoke the sword for himself and his cause. In behalf of another, however, he may and should wield it and invoke it to restrain wickedness and to defend godliness.

True Christians, according to Luther, are few and far between. There are not many of us who would stand in harm’s way on behalf of another, so we let events like those in Charlottesville go unmentioned. As the people marching called “blood and soil” as their rallying cry, most of us look the other direction in our knowledge that some of these claim Christ as their Lord. Christ, in whom there is neither male nor female, black nor white, democrat nor republican, died so that we might live as one. We ignore the words of 1 Corinthians 12:26, that if any part of the body suffers, all parts of the body suffer. We ignore the sins of racism and white supremacy that regard people as superior on the basis of the color of their skin. Where God sees no distinction, we divide worthiness as though it was something we had the power to mete out. True Christians do not bear arms to defend themselves, but rather the other. True Christians do not step out of the boat for their own sake, but for the sake of the Lord. But, as soon as we step out on the waters, we realize that Christ’s body is more tumultuous than we first thought, and most of us are begging to be put back into the boat. We accept quiet faith even though Christ says even the stones will shout out the truth.

This is not the only time a pastor has suggested Christians have chosen lives of quietude over lives of active, abiding faith. Another Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” recounts the failure of the white church to stand with its black brothers and sisters.

I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

We cannot say that these situations were in the past. They are in the present. While we might point to progress elsewhere in the world, like Charlottesville, we must confess our apathy even when these situations are closer to home: on Tuesday, the Willow Branch Baptist Church in Waco was vandalized, the image of a swastika spray painted on the church floor. Racism is present in our culture.

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            But that’s not us, we say, and I think this is why we usually end up staying in the boat. Christ does not just compel us to follow him or to step out on the water. Christ compels us to examine our hearts. Perhaps we do not hate people because of the color of their skin, but our apathy to the plight of other human beings—our sisters and brothers—reveals a faith that is in need of a savior. Our ability to identify when we have been wronged and failure to see when we have wronged others reveals a faith in need of a savior, because it reveals that we still think of ourselves more than we think about others. Our failure to treat others how we would want to be treated—by standing up for them, supporting them, and loving them—reveals a faith in need of a savior. Dear brothers and sisters, we are all in this boat together, all of us having lives and faith in need of a savior. We need to be saved from our sin, from our apathy, from our fear, and from our death. When the only way out is a cross—a symbol of violence—may we know that Christ stands against violence, transforming the cross into symbol of love. When the only way out is a cross—a symbol of torture and shame—may we know that Christ stands against torture and shame, transforming the cross into a symbol of hope and love. When the only way out is a cross—something that reminds us of our sin—may we know that Christ stands against our sin, transforming our sinful selves into beloved Children of God. Sin, evil, and death cannot stand; all that keeps us in the boat cannot stand; all that makes us sink cannot stand, for we are in Christ, and in Christ, we join hands with our sisters and brothers of every race, time, and place to proclaim that the death Christ died, he died to sin—once for all.

The Wait of Holy Week

It is one of the busiest weeks of the church year for clergy. Invariably, things come up that were not planned, with no consideration or respect for the tasks at hand. Children get sick. Parishioners die. Wars continue. Our newsfeeds remind us of the world's deep need for redemption and reconciliation. The normal events of a week continue being thrown at us, not leaving any breathing space, pressing and pushing our boundaries.

And I find myself swearing under my breath as I wipe my child’s nose and rock him. This is not what I had planned to be doing this week. As I desire to watch and wait, as I crave the breathing space of Easter morning, the immediacy of my child, his eyes tired, his nose running, struggling against me in his desire for both comfort and independence, I realize that Christ shows up even in this space. In fact, I think the space of struggle is precisely the place where Christ is most powerfully found.

Christ comes into a world that insists on “business as usual,” leaving no room for life, for breath, leaving no room to be saved as we struggle to save ourselves. I wait for the events of Holy Week only to realize they are present in the places that I think get in the way of my watching and waiting. We watch and wait as we hold sick children. We watch and wait as we make the sign of the cross on the deceased and comfort the mourning. We watch and wait as we receive phone calls about the minutiae of ministry.

Perhaps I wanted Holy Week to be something other than what it is: a week in which Christ dies in a world that insists on business as usual. It is a week in which Christ dies as a statement against the world that insists on business as usual despite the horrors of the weekly news. Christ redeems a world where sin, suffering, and death are treated as business as usual: forgiving the sinner, bearing up those who suffer, and promising life in the face of death.

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So, as I rock Hugo to sleep, my breath comes as prayer. 

May our watching help us to see the world around us with compassion. May our waiting help us to be patient as we struggle against a world that insists on “business as usual.”

The Blessing as Indictment

Today is an invitation to take a long hard look at ourselves. Before we protest, before we answer a question we have not yet heard, it is time to listen to Jesus’ words and let them sink in. Before our lists of boasts and things we have done well, let’s take a moment and take a long, hard, look at where we—where the church—is today. When our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren read of this week in their history books, and ask us, “What did you do?” What will we say?

We are a church of a poor spirit. We are poor in spirit not because we are humble. We are poor in spirit because the proclamation of Christ crucified has been traded for a gospel of glory. We are attracted to being right, to winning, and as we stand in messes of our own making, we try to play it both ways, aligning ourselves with the poor of spirit when our riches have cost us all that we hold dear.

We are a church that mourns. We mourn because we have tried to outrun the message of scripture, the message that calls us to care for the orphan, the widow, the alien among us, and turned them all away because we do not recognize Christ coming to us in the hungry, so we did not feed them. We do not recognize Christ in the thirsty, so we do not give them water. We do not recognize Christ in the foreigner, so we refuse to let them reside among us. We do not recognize Christ in the one who is naked, so we refuse to clothe them. We do not recognize Christ in the sick or imprisoned, so we do not visit them. We mourn because the Gospel seems so far from our reality because we have tried to make its message something easy, something that enables our apathy.

We are a church that is hungry and thirsty for righteousness. We are hungry and thirsty because we have bought the lie that our hunger and thirst is supposed to be for our righteousness, rather than for Christ’s righteousness. We are hungry because we want a Bread of Life that will not inconvenience us. We are thirsty because we want the Fruit of Salvation that requires nothing of us. We want to be judged worthy without having answered the call.

We are a church who craves mercy. At the same time, our mercy extends to those who look like us, who believe like us, who think like us. Mercy does not extend to families fleeing war zones, to their children who have seen atrocities we cannot imagine, to those who have nothing but a shelled out building to call home.

We are a church who has cried “Peace, peace,” when no peace is to be found for far too long. We want to be protected. We want to be safe. But we do not want peace, not really. Instead, we nurture old hurts, we hold grudges, we refuse conversation with those who might disagree with us. These are not the things that make for peace. Fear of conflict and peace are not the same. Fear of being unsafe does not make us unsafe.

We are a church who wants to claim that we are persecuted, standing in line with the prophets before us, but we proclaim a message of quietude, like the false prophets of Israel. We claim the parts of the Bible that we find comforting or convenient; we claim the cross so long as it saves us, but we try to shimmy out of the claim the cross makes on us, trying to take off our baptismal robes as soon as we realize that it unites us with Christ’s life and his mission, calling us to act as he would act, to love whom he would love, to stand up for those he would stand up for, and we are called to follow him all the way—even unto death.

The Beatitudes are not simply blessing for those who are poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted: the Beatitudes are an indictment of all that stands in the way of their blessing. Jesus’ words weren’t about some eschatological future; they were present-tense, they were for today. Jesus gives no caveat about the blessings: he does not tell people they need to become Jewish or even believe in him before he blesses them, lives with them, eats with them, or heals them. Jesus doesn’t ask if the people he saves will benefit him, he doesn’t ask what’s in it for him; he just feeds the hungry, heals the sick, sets the captive free, and dies at the hands of the tyrannical schemes of humanity to keep God out of our lives.

Jesus saves us even though we don’t deserve it. This is the foolishness of the cross: that Christ would save us who prefer our complacence over discipleship. This is the foolishness of the cross: that it keeps hoping in us to live faithfully in accordance with the Son of God who didn’t claim status or power or authority, but rather, came as a servant among us.

The Beatitudes are an invitation, not to justify our behavior, not to point to ways in which we are already poor in spirit or meek or hungry for righteousness or any of that. The Beatitudes are an invitation to stop and be quiet. The Beatitudes are an invitation to look around us and around our world, to recognize the poor in spirit even though they may not believe the same as we do, to take the hands of the meek to comfort them, to encourage those whose hunger and thirst for righteousness refuses to let them be comfortable in an unrighteous world, to watch with the pure in heart to see God, to join with the peacemakers because we are children of God, to recognize that we have the opportunity to bless the persecuted.

This message is foolishness to our world, where fear and doubt run amok, because this message demands courage, faith, and belief in something greater than the power of humanity: this message demands belief in the one true God, who blesses those who hope for no blessing, giving them the kingdom of heaven and the earth as their inheritance, who comforts and fills those whose endless grief and hunger seem to have no end, who promises to walk with us through persecution and unto death and, on the other side of that death, promises us a life we could have never imagined. So, when our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren read of this week in their history books, and ask us, “What did you do?” Let us live in such a way that we can answer, “We followed Jesus.”

The Wild God

“What did you go out to the wilderness to see?” Jesus asks. John the Baptist, of course. We spoke about the wilderness last week. It is not the place where we expect the paths of the Lord to come. It is a place of danger and isolation. It is a place that marked Israel’s fear that God was not the one who had brought them out of Egypt and decided to take matters into their own hands. It was the place that Jesus, after his baptism, was met by the Tempter. “Turn this stone into bread,” the Tempter said, knowing Jesus was hungry. “Worship me, and I will give you all this,” the Tempter said, knowing anyone in their right mind would find the power offered to them too heady to refuse, even when it came from an unsavory source. “Throw yourself off the temple—prove that the angels will guard you and that your heavenly Father will save you,” the Tempter said, knowing that the prophesies would come true in this One.

What did you go out to the wilderness to see? It would be nice if we could say we go out to the wilderness to make straight the paths of the lord, to see all that has been made crooked in this world preparing the way of the Lord, but most of us look at the world around us, focused on what is crooked, feeling as if God never meant for us to participate in preparing the way of the Lord. But often, we go out to watch for the Lord, and instead of waiting for the Bread of Life, we accept the bread of temptation, of hatred, of fear.

What did you go out to the wilderness to see? It would be nice if we could say we go out to the wilderness to witness the watercourses, the spring rains that cause the region that was once sand to bloom, but most of us struggle to find beauty in the wilderness. In our own wilderness wanderings in our lives, times in which God feels far away, we feel like we have strayed too far from the path for God to find us. Isaiah tells us that not even fools will go astray, but somehow we’ve managed it.

What did you go out in to the wilderness to see? We long to be made new, but Christ’s call to live as new creations often proves too difficult, as we slip into old patterns bent on destruction. We ask God for proof, we ask Christ to show us a sign, we look for something bigger than ourselves to remind us that we are not alone.

But God doesn’t come to us in fine robes. God doesn’t come to us in the palaces. The royalty of this world shape our expectations of God instead of God shaping our expectations of what is royal. What did you go out to the wilderness to see? Are we willing to see what God has placed right in front of us? What happens when God comes to us in a still small voice in the middle of the desert, in the middle of us having given up on things getting better, in the middle of us having given up on our loved ones who have disappointed us, in the middle of our doubt and fear?

“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” But how? God isn’t coming to save you through brute force. God is coming through a pregnant young woman whose pregnancy probably surprised everyone. God is coming through a crazy prophet who proclaimed a baptism for the repentance of sins. God is coming through the watercourses in the land that has been parched for far too long. God is coming through the paths that have been crooked since time began, making them straight. God is coming to save you, but not how you expect.

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We watch and wait for Christ. We hold vigil with Mary and John and those who have watched and waited. We strengthen each other on the journey, reminding ourselves that our hunger is not for bread, but the Bread of Life. Our hope is not for power that always takes and serves itself, but for power made perfect in weakness, the power that comes among us as One who serves. We do not hope for faith that demands proof, but for the courage to believe that God is doing a new thing—an impossible thing—by coming to us.

What have you come out to the wilderness to see? We have come to the wilderness to watch and to wait. We have come out to the wilderness because we expect our God to show up, because God has promised to come. We come out to the wilderness as a reminder that our God is wild, not bound by time or space, not bound by convention, not bound by our expectations. No, our God exceeds our expectations. But we expect a God who plays small, who operates under the strictures of human power structures. If the voice of God sounds like the voice of the Tempter in the wilderness, offering bread that does not satisfy, power that serves only itself, and proof that requires more proof, know that it is not your God. Keep watching and keep waiting. Your God is coming to save you. There are no half measures. Your God is coming to you in the wilderness, bringing an abundant land. Your God is coming to you in the places of unrest, bringing the peace that endures. Your God is coming to you, not to prove to you through signs that demonstrate worthiness of belief, but to save you.

Dear brothers and sisters, do not settle for half measures. Do not settle for tempting half-truths of a god who can’t save you. God could have come to the places of royalty, but instead, God has made holy the wilderness places. God could have come in robes of purple and opulence, so that we would marvel at God’s riches, but instead God has come in swaddling cloths. God could have waited to come to us until we had made straight the paths in the wilderness, but instead, God has placed us on the path from which not even fools can stray. Behold, your God will come, and your God will save you.