Buechner: Maundy Thursday

Buechner: Maundy Thursday

“‘WHAT YOU ARE GOING to do,’ Jesus says, ‘do quickly.’ … Jesus tells them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death,’ and then asks the disciples to stay and watch for him while he goes off to pray. … His prayer is, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will but what thou wilt,’—this tormented muddle of a prayer which Luke says made [Jesus] sweat until it ‘became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.’ He went back to find some solace in the company of his friends then, but he found them all asleep when he got there. ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ he said, and you feel that it was to himself that he was saying it as well as to them.” —Frederick Buechner, “Last Supper” in The Faces of Jesus: A Life Story (Paraclete Press, 1974).

We all continually struggle with our own humanity. So many spiritual friends I meet with, including myself, spend a lifetime seeking perfection. Holy Week is a time for us specially to remember Jesus’ struggle with his humanity as best told in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. On Maundy Thursday in these Gospels, Jesus reveals to us how difficult the human condition is, as he asks for this cup to pass, he sweats “blood,” he suffers, he cries out in anguish, he thirsts, and he even asks God, “Where are you?”

A huge painting of Jesus praying at Gethsemane hung at the front of the sanctuary inside the Methodist Church where I grew up in Virginia. The image of Jesus praying in the Garden is different from any of the other references to his praying in the Gospels. This time Scripture connects us to the human side of Jesus. This is an image to keep when we, as well, are praying through difficult situations in our lives.

We can talk to and identify with those who have had experiences similar to ours. I see this most often in grief recovery groups where people listen to each other because they know that the other has some idea of the pain they are going through. I see this in twelve-step groups where alcoholics and addicts and co-dependents listen to others who walked a very similar path to theirs. How amazing that our God loves us so much, so deeply that God came to be among us. This week especially we remember that God has experienced and understands what it is like to suffer and be human. There is no greater love.

Joanna. joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Hope out of Shameful Acts

Hope Out of Shameful Acts

“In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone highlights a paradox of the gospel: out of the shameful and humiliating act of crucifixion comes hope.” —Debra J. Mumford, “Living the Word” in The Christian Century (3/14/2018).

We drove through Montgomery, Alabama, the week before the opening of The National Memorial and Museum for Peace and Justice—better known as the Lynching Memorial and Museum. We think we caught a glimpse of it in the distance. We felt a call that we must return to Montgomery someday to visit both parts.

Between 1950 and 1877 more than 4400 African American men, women, and children were lynched by being burned alive, hanged, shot, drowned, or beaten to death. The memorial structure on the center of the site is made of more than 800 steel monuments, one for each county in our country where a racial lynching took place. The adjacent museum is built on the site of a former warehouse in which black slaves brought in by boat or rails were imprisoned before going to the slave market.

It is ironic that James Cone, one of American’s best-known advocates of black theology and black liberation theology, died two days after the opening of this memorial and museum.

In her Good Friday message in The Christian Century, Debra Mumford reminds us how the horrific lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta in August of 1955 sparked national outrage that led Rosa Parks to move from the back to the front of the bus in Montgomery that December. Her arrest began the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that was a groundbreaking event in the civil rights movement.

The Lynching Museum and Memorial and the Good Friday services in which we will soon participate can serve to remind us of the shameful acts that did and still take place in our world. We are to remember this on Good Friday and remind each other, especially our spiritual friends, that our hope, our small part, is not unlike that of Rosa Parks. We are to change the world by remembering the cruelty and standing our ground with trembling hearts in love wherever we see injustice.

Cone and Mumford are reminding us that when we talk with spiritual friends, at some point we are also to remind them that our traditions teach us about great hope that can follow horrendous and unjust tragedy.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.

Sparrows

Sparrows

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So, do not be afraid: you are of more value than many sparrows.” —Matthew 10:29-31.

The Christian Century: Thinking Critically, Living Faithfully is a biweekly magazine that explores current religious topics. I started subscribing many years ago when Scott Lee told me Barbara Brown Taylor often wrote for it. Today I especially look for a section called “The Word: Reflections on the Lectionary,” in which some amazing ministers from all denominations write a response to the Sunday lectionary readings.

In the June 7, 2017, issue Liddy Barlow, executive minister of Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania, was the guest preacher writing about the sparrow text from Matthew for the Sunday of June 25th. She writes about the lawyer Kenneth Feinberg who chaired the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, giving money to the families of those who died in the terrorist attack using a formula based on the income and earning potential of each victim. The compensations ranged from $250,000 to $7.1 million. At the end of the experience, Feinberg struggles with this differentiation as he listens to the stories of the victims and their families and wonders if one person is really twenty-eight times more valuable than another.

Barlow also writes of the Civilla Martin poem, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which became a Gospel hymn bringing comfort to the African-American Church in our past century. I will never forget hearing Kathleen Battle sing this hymn a cappella in a concert with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center. We were on the first-row center and she was there in front of us, a foot away, in this striking dark red velvet dress. Her soul was singing from somewhere deep inside of her.

This indeed is a Scripture passage and a hymn about how valuable each of us is to God. So often people tend to come for spiritual direction when they do not feel valued by God. When we talk, I so wish I could sing this song like Kathleen Battle and let them know their worth.

Barlow concludes her message by telling us that Feinberg is again consulted, this time in 2007 by the president of Virginia Tech about how to distribute the compensation to the families of those killed there in a mass shooting. Feinberg has been changed by his 9/11 experience and has come to believe in an equality of all life. He recommends that all victims, students, and faculty receive the same compensation.

This is the story of how the God our understanding works in the world, a God who so desperately loves and values each and every one of us. I am reminded of this every morning as I watch the white-crowned sparrows come to the feeder outside my window above my desk.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter from me, joannaseibert@me.com, from Wordsworth Books in Little Rock, or from Amazon.