Easter 5

A reflection on John 14:1-14 by Janine Goodwin

“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

I once watched a friend, whom I’ll rename Stephanie for this meditation, undergo a radical conversion. When I met her, she was a teenager more interested in fashion than in faith, a kid who went to a mainline church because her parents said she had to. In the course of a few weeks, she became a passionately enthusiastic member of a small church that her understandably distressed parents called a cult. She changed her style of dress, her way of speaking, and the entire focus of her life. She believed in miraculous healings, and she spoke in tongues, things that both unnerved and thrilled me. She also preached hellfire to an extent that eventually led me to universalism because I couldn’t love a God who would send people to hell nor a human soul that could hold out against infinite love for all eternity.

Once, when we were out for a walk, Stephanie began lecturing me about the last verse of this passage. Her preacher had told her that if she asked for anything in Jesus’ name, God would have to give her what she asked, because God never broke promises. At this point, a dog ran out of nearby yard and began to follow us, barking. She told it to go home. It didn’t. She commanded it, in the name of Jesus, to go home.

I couldn’t decide whether she was being heroically faithful or blasphemous. The dog followed us for another block as we walked slowly away, barking so loudly we couldn’t discuss God’s failure or refusal to make it go home. When it turned away, we talked about something else.

I don’t know what Stephanie got from that experience. I got the beginning of the sense that God’s promises are never a way to use God for our ends, and a sneaking sense of relief that her invocation had not worked—because if that dog had immediately stopped barking and trotted home, I would have felt obliged to join her church, which I did not want to do. In either case, I knew I would never have tried what she did, because I didn’t really want God to be close enough to me to disrupt the fragile balance of my life with miracles and demands.

It would be easy to dismiss Stephanie’s faith as immature, and to stop there. Of course her faith was immature: she was a teenager. She did, however, have the kind of courage Stephen had in today’s epistle reading, and I did not. My faith was immature, too, though in a different direction. I didn’t want the power she wanted, because I didn’t want to be called to do the strange works Jesus did.

Like Thomas and Philip in this Gospel reading, both of us were engaged in the lifelong task of learning to trust a God we can never fully understand. My friend believed in Scripture as a sort of magic, in which the power of God could be called down for her purposes. In contrast, I was more frightened of passages like today’s gospel than I was of the growling dog. On Sundays, I sat in a quiet church with nicely dressed people, hearing these wild promises and impossible demands from Jesus and wondering why no one else noticed the kind of danger we were in. God was calling us to do greater works than Jesus did. I found that terrifying. Even if I dismissed the miracles of healing and feeding and the raising of the dead as things that didn’t happen anymore, with a vague sense that it would be both upsetting and somewhat tacky if they did, there was a lot of work to do: the work of justice and peace, the work of preaching and teaching, the work of showing God to one another. I couldn’t help noticing that the followers of Jesus tended to upset the way people thought and worked, and that a disproportionate number of them were ostracized, ridiculed, and even killed. True, not everyone was called to be a prophet or a martyr—but you never knew who would be. I used to revise the hymn, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” slightly:

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce, wild beast,
And there’s not one reason, no, not the least,
That I shouldn’t get chomped, too!

I wanted a safe life, and the Gospels offered no safety at all. I didn’t want to be Stephen. His assurance was wonderful, but his death was still an ugly death. He saw God, true, but I would rather not have done so while being murdered by an angry mob. I strongly suspected that if Jesus had walked by and said, “Follow Me,” I would have said, “Er, thanks, but I really don’t think I’m up to it.” I still wonder whether I am. He still keeps calling.

It has taken me a long time to see that the disciples in today’s Gospel passage were just as confused and frightened as I. Jesus tries to reassure them at the beginning of the passage, telling them that they will be with him always, that he is going to prepare a place for them. They can’t hear what he is saying. They can’t hear what they have already heard: that they know the way to the place where he is going. They don’t dare know what they already know. They respond to Jesus’ assurances with demands for certainty. Thomas wants a heavenly road map. Philip wants proof of Jesus’ authority. How does Jesus respond? He answers them with surprising pragmatism. Jesus may rebuke the disciples, but he is not a perfectionist. He reminds them of what they have learned about him, then tells them to believe in any way they can. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.” I like to have a proper theoretical foundation for things, so this, for me, is one of the most radical and shocking utterances in any Gospel. If living in an imperfect faith is more important than being right, I have no excuses left. I am called to am uncertain, vulnerable life, a life in which the only assurance is that I will be with Jesus when it all ends. That has to be enough.

My friend and I both wanted a God who would give us certainty, and were met by a God whom we could not understand. We looked for the knowledge of God in groups of people who had differing ways of looking at the Gospels. We were both wrong, each in our own way. We told each other why each others’ churches were wrong, but never admitted where they might be right, never looked at what we might teach each other about the life of faith. Perhaps that was our greatest error: we let our very real and often deeply painful differences become a barrier that prevented us from sharing what we knew of God. In our desire for certainty, we lost the holy uncertainty that is humility before God.

We are all wrong, to varying degrees at varying times, and we are all right, and we are none of us all right or all wrong; we will never be entirely sure when we are right and when we are wrong, and Jesus doesn’t seem to care nearly as much about that as we do. Jesus wants us to believe and do his work, despite our misunderstandings and imperfections. What would happen if we would all spend more time listening to each other and believing that Jesus has already told us what we need to know? If we could listen more to Jesus, and less to our own desire for power and our own fears, what miracles could we do?


Janine Goodwin is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader who lives with her husband, dogs, and cats. She holds a B. Mus. and an M.S. Ed. in Special Education from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Theology from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. When she is not working with words, she makes jewelry and rosaries.

Easter 4

A Reflection on Abundant Life, John 10: 1-10, by Rev. Dr. Katherine Godby.

In John 10:10 Jesus says “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” What amazingly powerful words. Jesus came, he lived and he died, and he lived again so that we might have life. But not just any life—abundant life.

In a spiritual direction group about a year ago, a woman suddenly stood up, threw her arms open wide, and shouted up to God: “I WANT IT ALL, LORD! I WANT IT ALL! YES! I. WANT. IT. AAAALL!”

Oh, what an image she created in my mind. She was without a hint of self-consciousness. Her action was completely spontaneous and completely beautiful. I knew—indeed, everyone in that group knew—that the abundant life was already hers.

The abundant life can be thought of in many ways, of course. What I offer here is a brief reflection based simply on that amazing image created by my friend. It seems to me that her action was an embodiment of abundant life because it held in creative tension two opposites: empowerment and vulnerability.

She embodied a sense of empowerment. Imagine with me, if you will—My friend is in her late 50’s, beautiful silver hair, and petite. She SHOT straight up and declared in exuberant and no uncertain terms that she wanted LIFE! She wanted it ALL! At a deeper level, her declaration was perhaps the most powerful prayer I have ever heard or witnessed.

Walter Brueggemann writes about how the ancient Hebrews had the nerve to hold God accountable. In the imprecatory psalms, the psalmist(s) figuratively shake their finger at God and say, “You promised to stay with us. We have done everything you asked, but you have abandoned us! Wake up! Rouse yourself, O God, and come to our aid as you promised!” I’ve always loved that—the whole idea that we “mere” human beings would have the courage to stand up to God and say, “Hey! Thing is wrong!” fills me with a sense of how intrinsically valuable we are, how we are indeed made in God’s image, and how we need not fear.

My friend’s action that evening reminds me of that: she knew her intrinsic value, she acted from within the center of the image of God within her, and I think she was so filled with exuberant love that there was no room for fear of any kind. What gorgeous power!

Think about it for a moment. In my own life and as a pastoral counselor, I know the ubiquitous role fear plays in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. I once did a study of the number of words/phrases in the English language that signify fear. Here are a few:

—dread, chill, foreshadow, fright, trepidation, agitation, hysteria, apprehensive, cowardice, ‘oh, that was creepy,’ dismay, disquieted, fainthearted, jitters, misgiving, nightmare, cringe, quake, qualm, warning, nervousness, tense, scare, suspicion, timid, trembling, unease, intimidated, shudder, angst, anxiety, horror, terror, terror-alert, panic, awe, fretful, consternation, dismay, alarm, foreboding, ominous, ‘oh, you startled me,’ worry, concern, hesitant, bashful, meekness, insecurity, threatening…cold feet, backing out, chicken, chicken-hearted, chicken-livered, sinking feeling, second thoughts, weak-kneed, yellow streak, gutless wonder, turned-tail and run, funny feeling, mousiness, wimp, shrink from, bad omen, goose bumps, the heebie-jeebies, mass hysteria, big baby, fraidy cat, jellyfish, sissy, lily-livered milksop, milquetoast, and yellow-bellied doormat, paranoia, night terrors, mass hysteria. And of course, ALL defense mechanisms are trying to keep some kind of fear at bay: compensate, deny, displace, dissociate, obsess on something else, make a joke, idealize, identify, intellectualize, introjet, refocus threatening anger onto ourselves, isolate, minimize, project, rationalize, regress, repress, split, substitute, sublimate, and suppress. Not to mention just good old fashioned avoidance. And phobias? oh, please. We can take almost any noun in the English language, and somebody is afraid of it! Fear of cats. Fear of rats, bats, crickets, dogs, bogs, mice, lice, heights, flights, water, worms, sex, speed, space, race, constraint, cocktail parties, office hours, old friends, Friday the 13th, and fat. [Miller, The Mystery of Courage, Harvard Univ. Press, 2005]. Fear underlies all anger—because all anger is a response to some kind of threat. Fear often accompanies love—few people are spiritually mature enough to love without fear of losing love.

And we know that fear funds sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, racism, classism, ageism, ableism—all of which at their core are fear of difference.

But when we exuberantly love, when we are filled with a passion for LIFE, then fear doesn’t stand a chance. There’s no room for it within us! Jesus’ promise of abundant life provides the empowerment we need to live courageously and joyfully inside a culture of fear. Wow.

At the same time, my friends’ action also embodied a sense of trusting surrender. Her gesture of arms thrown open wide spoke of utter and conscious vulnerability, offering no protection whatsoever. The gesture never fails to remind me of Jesus on the cross. It is crucial to remember, however, that this gesture is made consciously. Jesus was aware of what might come when he decided “not my will, but Yours.” And my friend is no innocent babe in the woods—she knows from experience the bitter realities of life. Her gesture came amidst acute awareness of the inevitability of loss and suffering, of our own mortality, and of the evil that human beings can and do perpetrate. The consciousness of this vulnerability is what makes her action an embodiment of trust.

The tension between our empowerment and our trusting vulnerability is a creative tension that results in an abundant life, a life lived to its fullest.

My friend threw her arms open wide and said Yes to abundant life. May each of us know that kind of trusting courage as well.

Bio: Katherine Godby is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and is currently serving a United Church of Christ congregation in north Texas. Her Ph.D. in pastoral theology and pastoral counseling focused on issues of authenticity in a postmodern world. Married late, she is enjoying the plunge into life with a husband and three children-by-marriage.

Hearts on Fire: Easter 3

A reflection on Luke 24:13-35 by Laura Grimes.

Mary and Cleopas trudged wearily and silently along the dirt road. After several days and nights of fear, grief, guilt, and anger they were utterly spent. Mary briefly wondered what was in her husband’s mind and heart, then returned to the restlessness of her own. How could it be true? One more demonstration of Roman brutality, one more betrayal by the priestly caste that colluded with them, one more failed Messiah. What a fool she had been to trust, to believe that things could be different, to imagine that someone from her own village--her best friend’s older brother—could be the chosen one of God.

Mary sighed as she thought of that friend. Though it had been three years since Shira’s death, the pain and memories had resurfaced as fresh as ever since Jesus’ torture and execution at the hands of Pilate’s soldiers. Watching in terror as blood gushed in fountains despite the desperate labor of the midwife and her assistant, and the joy at Benjamin’s birth turned to anguish. Feeling her own child leap in her womb as she watched her friend’s face grew pale and her voice faint. “Esther, your son” – “Little one, your mother.” The words were addressed to Shira’s older sister, who had plenty of milk for the boy; her year old daughter now ran, climbed and jumped everywhere, nursing less and eagerly learning to eat fruit and cheese. But Shira’s eyes sought Mary’s too, in a wordless appeal to which her breaking heart willingly assented. If she survived her own birth the following month, she would love Benjamin as her own, tell him stories of his mother’s youth, make him the most welcome friend to her own firstborn. And she did, until the horrific day two years later when Simeon was taken by a sudden fever. She couldn’t stand to see Benjamin anymore, couldn’t stand life in Nazareth at all, and neither could Cleopas. When he suggested that they join the growing group of disciples following Jesus on his mission, she eagerly assented.

Her namesake, Jesus’ mother, sighed wearily at the news but kissed and blessed them on their way. She knew that Jesus has a special mission, but had felt angry and betrayed when he left so soon after Shira’s death, which followed Joseph’s by less than a year. Didn’t he know how much the family needed him? Couldn’t God’s call, so long delayed in coming to clarity, wait another year till they had all adjusted? Thank heavens they had been reconciled before the end, his mother rushing to Jerusalem in time to join the others at that bittersweet Passover meal. Mary recalled leaning back against Cleopas’ chest, intently watching Jesus’ actions and listening to his startling words. Jesus tenderly washed their feet, something the women usually did, and she remembered the recent feast Martha had prepared to celebrate Lazarus’ return to life. Her sister, yet another Mary, had anointed Jesus’ feet and dried them with her hair. The others had been both moved by the grace and intimacy of her gesture, and troubled by his cryptic words about burial, put out of mind till he spoke in a similar way tonight. “My body, given for you”—she tasted the fresh bread she and the other women had baked. Her mind flashed to the awkward, eager nights of love when she and Cleopas first became one flesh. It had been so long now. Other couples in the group managed to find the needed privacy, but their desire had cooled after Simeon’s death, even when Joanna whispered to her of herbs that the women at court used to prevent conception. “My blood, poured out for you” – she sipped the rich wine Cleopas handed her. Her empty breasts ached as she remembered the bliss of sleepily holding Simeon to her breast on the sleeping mat, with Cleopas’ arms enfolding them both.

The next day she stood as close as she could to Jesus, with Jesus’ mother, Mary of Magdala, some of the other women, and John. Cleopas was farther back, with the few male disciples who hadn’t run away with Peter and the others. She watched Jesus’ mother, looking at him with eyes full of unshed tears, and her heart was torn between compassion and resentment. She couldn’t imagine watching people torture and kill her beloved son —but at least Mary had gotten to watch her son grow up. And he had made a free choice to speak the truth even at the risk of death, rather than being snatched by a stupid, pointless disease. Then even those conflicted feelings fled, as Jesus’ face paled and his voice grew faint. “Woman, your son” – “Behold your mother.” As on the day of Shira’s death, those solemn words were followed by a cry of anguish, and an uncontrollable gush of blood, caused this time by the soldier’s spear piercing savagely into Jesus’ side.

Lost in her memories, she barely registered when Cleopas said something, and was startled when another traveler approached and spoke to them cheerfully: “What are you talking about this fine day?” Cleopas looked at him as if he were crazy, and frustrated words spurted from his mouth. “Are you the only person in Judea who doesn’t know what’s been going on this week?” Mary’s tongue unloosed, and they started speaking over each other as they poured out the story. Following Jesus, hearing his words of fiery challenge, and seeing his miracles. Being sent out on their own to preach the good news, and like the rest of the seventy, being astonished when the Spirit moved through their hands as well. Their combined prayer healed a little girl with the same fever that had taken Simeon, and it brought peace to their heart. They agreed that they were ready to see Benjamin again, and maybe even to open to a new life in their own family. Marching into Jerusalem behind Jesus’ donkey, with the crowds cheering, and their hearts rising to think that Israel would be free once more. And then the grief, and the fear, and the wild claims of angels made by Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and the recriminations that had finally driven them to leave the other disciples in Jerusalem and begin the long walk home.

The man waited till they were talked out, then smiled wryly and challenged Cleopas: “Don’t you know the scriptures? Wasn’t that the fate of every true prophet?” Turning to Mary, he added “Isn’t pain--sometimes death--always the price of new life?” Shocked into silence, they listened as he spoke on, their dead hearts slowly starting to spark to new life. There was something about his manner that resembled Jesus—but no, that was impossible, and surely he would have said something, and he didn’t really look like him anyway. As they approached the inn in Emmaus, the sun was setting. The stranger and said, “Here’s where I leave, you, friends. Thanks for your company.” “Oh, please stay and eat with us,” Cleopas urged, and Mary added her voice to his. She felt stronger and more hopeful in his company, and wanted to delay the return of despair she feared would come along with his departure. The man smiled again and agreed, and they went in and ordered a simple meal from the innkeeper.

He brought wash water first, and Mary knelt to wash Cleopas’ feet; she saw tears well up in his eyes, though they didn’t fall, and felt the same sting in her own. She turned to the stranger next, but Cleopas shook his head and took the towel and basin from her. Her renewed grief turned to wonder as her husband followed their rabbi’s example, washing the stranger’s feet and then hers, with a tenderness which awakened her heart—and some other parts she had thought long dead. She smiled at him with a promise of the joy they would later share. Then they all washed their hands in another basin, and her famished stomach made an embarrassing noise as the innkeeper’s daughter placed cups and a flagon on the table. “My mother’s bread is the best in Emmaus,” she assured them, “but it’s in the oven yet. Just a few more minutes.” So they quenched their thirst with the wine and eagerly set upon the tart goat cheese, salty olives, and sweet grapes that accompanied it.

A few minutes later the girl returned with a steaming loaf of barley bread. Mary reached out to serve it to the others, but the stranger forestalled her, as Cleopas had earlier. He reached for it, broke it in pieces, and handed one to each of them. Jesus! It was him! How could she have missed it before? Mary’s heart leapt and she clutched at Cleopas in shock, looking away from Jesus for a moment. When she looked back she received another shock—he had completely vanished. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for another rush of grief, then realized that it wasn’t coming. She couldn’t see him, but she could still feel him with her somehow, and she could tell from Cleopas’ dancing eyes that he could too. “Come on, let’s go back…” “We need to tell the others…” They both spoke at once, then laughed as they cut off their jumbled sentences. Cleopas reached in his pouch for a few coins and tossed them on the table. She grabbed their cloaks, then her beloved’s hand, and they set off together in the star-filled night.

Easter 2

‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men will see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.’
(Acts 2.17-18) A reflection by Imogen Nay

We follow the story of Acts in the Easter Season and with the first Sunday after Easter we begin with Peter’s address to the crowd. It has intrigued me to find however that the verses shown above have been sidestepped in the lectionary; on Monday of Easter week and today the same readings from Acts are given: Acts 2.14a, 22-32 and on both days Acts 2.14b-21 is missed out.

It may be that these verses are read in different lectionary years; however, it seems significant that they are deliberately not included. Reading with a hermeneutic of suspicion I can’t help but wonder: is it because there is the prediction of radical inclusiveness in the Kindom (sic) of God for the post-resurrection community of believers?

I couldn’t help but wonder if the selectors felt: Is it better not to read this passage regularly as a Christian community? Is it more convenient to turn away from the resurrection witness of Mary Magdalen in John’s Gospel and move into the circle of male discipleship authorized to declare the good news? Is it better to forget the devotion of women to Jesus during his worst hours? Is it better to control the radical nature of the gift of the Spirit?

During Holy Week Bishop Victoria Matthews was the visiting preacher at Westcott House Seminary, Cambridge, UK. At the Good Friday addresses she explained the significance of the tearing of the temple curtain as Jesus breathed his last and cried out. The temple curtain marked the entrance to the Holy of Holies into which the High Priest only could enter once a year to offer sacrifices to God. A hierarchy of access to the sacred space was employed, with gentiles furthest away and then Jewish women, followed by Jewish men and the priests. The tearing of the curtain reveals how Jesus has destroyed the regular division between humankind and God and the need for a hierarchy of access to the sacred. Jesus invites all to reach the Father through him: all are equal.

In ‘the last days’ as the Spirit is poured out upon the people and we follow the story of that through Acts and into our own lives we do well to remember the radical nature of Christ’s salvation promise. Jesus humbled himself, utterly, coming into the world, washing his disciple’s feet, showing us the way of love even to the Cross and revealing the new commandment to love one another. He closes the gap between heaven and earth, having broken into the economy as love, as the divine. It is very hard to believe. The story of doubting Thomas in the lectionary today from John’s Gospel is a necessary reminder of the task of faith and of the extraordinary nature of what we believe. It is easy to doubt. It is easy to doubt what salvation means in Christ and it is easy to doubt that all are included. As humans we want to monitor, guard and control access to the divine. We want to say who is allowed and who isn’t allowed access to the sacred mysteries.

Training for the priesthood in the Church of England in which women are still barred from the Episcopate there is a definite punch to this reading. As communities of believers it seems that we still doubt the resurrection of Christ and the implication of that resurrection. We prefer to select and read with our own prejudices, and of course I am no exception. To have the honesty to read with the eyes of Christ and to act with the mind of Christ demands great faith; we all no doubt would prefer Christ to come among us and show us his wounds so we could prod and poke them and have definite proof of his resurrection. With John we can truly assent to Jesus’ saying: ‘Blessed are those that have not seen but have come to believe’ (John 20.29).

But let us rejoice in the Sunday after Easter in the promises of Christ and of the last days. We can confidently expect our ‘sons and daughters to prophesy’ and that the Spirit will be poured out upon those who have low status in society ‘both men and women’. Christ disrupts our categories of status and authority, freely bestowing all manner of gifts upon those whom society least expects to be blessed. PRAISE BE TO GOD.

Easter Day

Reflection for Easter Sunday by the Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy

In the Lectionary for Easter Sunday, we are given the choice of which Gospel to use, John or Matthew. While Matthew’s Gospel has certain advantages, the repeated message of, “Do not be afraid” and the clarity about the news of “He is risen,” I cannot help to be more attracted to the Gospel of John. For one thing, we have been steeped in John for most of Lent. As Jacqueline says, “In the surprising, startling, long, complicated stories… of God's abundant, overflowing, profligate grace.” And for the other, we have Mary. Mary Magdalene whom John tells us went out to the tomb while it was still dark. Mary Magdalene who has been confused and merged with the other Marys of the Gospels. Mary who has been maligned through the ages as prostitute and sinner. Mary who may have gone to France as a disciple. Mary, who since da Vinci Code fame has been speculated about as the possible mother of Jesus’ children, Mary of the many narratives, is the one on this Easter morning who brings us the story, the one who is the bearer of the news. Ultimately not only the good news of that Easter morning that Jesus was not in the tomb, but the ultimate Good News that the love of God is stronger than death and the grave is not the end. Mary who was in relationship with Jesus and knew him again when he called her by name.

But what we first know of her here, on this dark morning is that she stands weeping, confused and confounded by something she does not expect to see. She has come to grieve, to mourn and she finds that the tomb is open, the body gone. She is horrified and upset. What does this mean? Has the grave been robbed? Has someone taken the body? Clearly resurrection is not the first thing on her mind. She runs to her friends for help, for solace, for some explanation. But they are of course no use to her. They see what is before them, an empty tomb, and all they can “believe” is that it is empty, Peter and this other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. Despite all Jesus has tried to tell them about the power of God, the power of life over death, they see only evidence of death in this grave, evidence of absence. They too assume that the grave has been robbed and the body is simply gone, and they have nothing to say to Mary, to comfort her in her obvious distress, and they leave her and return home.

I wonder if John just had to set it up this way for us. If the narrative had to continue in this way, so there could be just one more chance, one more story, just one more rich opportunity for Jesus to show himself at his best being Jesus self….revealing himself as the light whom the darkness could not comprehend and being the one who gives her that beautiful moment of “aha” as he calls her by her name and she knows him for who he is, the relational one, the one who knew and loved her. Like the sheep who know the voice of the shepherd. I wonder if it had to be set up this way so that she too could be converted again, so that she could know that there was yet another task of evangelism required of her, this time the task of letting go of the earthly Jesus she loved so much, of letting him be bigger than even she could understand him to be. ”Do not hold on to me” he tells her, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and to your God.” And there is something in what he says to her that that reveals Him to her as more than a beloved rabbi, more than whatever he has been to her in this life, and she gives her testimony, “I have seen the Lord.”

In her reflection for Lent 5, Janine Goodwin talks about how we continue to struggle with making our God too small. It is hard for us and our human minds to grasp the enormity of a God so great and so loving that God would incarnate Godself in the form of us, and then choose to be our atonement in the crucifixion. Apparently this struggle to understand has been going on for a long, long time. Nicodemus could not at first understand the kind of rebirth Jesus was talking about; the woman at the well struggled to understand living water. Having sight given to a blind man with spit and mud, and seeing a dead man called out from the grave all required just a little bigger God than could be grasped. Until that moment when she encountered Jesus in all his reality as the Lord, really heard her name being spoken by the risen Christ, and knew without a doubt who it was that was standing before her. She knew that in rising he was bigger than death and bigger than anything she could hold back…or should.

Palm-Passion Sunday

If you have to do Lent, this is the one to do: story after story of God's abundant, overflowing, profligate grace. These stories from the Gospel of John have been surprising, startling, long, complicated stories showing that God's grace and love and truth have no limits. We started with the establishment Nicodemus; Jesus' admonition that even he must be born again showed the grace of God as the great leveler. Jesus discussed great theological truths with outsiders -- with the Samaritan woman at the well – an outsider in many ways. She, the first missionary, told this good news of the waters of eternal life with such conviction that many became believers. The man born blind, another nameless nobody, gets grilled over and over again about what happened to him, and his story never changes: the man put mud on my eyes; I was blind and now I see. He is who he says he is.

Jesus does good works, and he does them to reveal that the glory of God is here. Now. With us. It's a new day, a new world. Or rather the world restored to the way God created it to be.

All this work of truth-telling and restorative justice comes at a cost. The story of bringing Lazarus out of the tomb is followed by the grumbling and conspiring of those who are angry at what Jesus is done. The raising of Lazarus sets in motion the events of the passion – the arrest, trial and crucifixion which we begin to read on Palm Sunday.

I feel better prepared for this Holy Week – spiritually anyway; not at all in terms of all those tasks that need to be done before next Sunday!!! – than any other year. It's these lessons, of surprising, unending grace, that have done it.

Our Lenten exile in the side chapel has worked as well. We returned on Lent V to the nave, to a wide open space – we removed the first third of the church's pews. We have a new free-standing altar, with a muddy-Lenten Jacobean frontal. We have two large pots with bare branches. The lectern is the one the church already had, a 4-foot tall angel.

People liked it. The high altar can stay the same. We can have the same Easter lily arrangement. Everyone could come to communion as equals, with no steep steps to climb. We had space to move, space to breathe, space to greet each other.

The educational process was key: I did a power point slide show of other churches with renovated liturgical spaces, and showed the very good "St.. Paul's Pew Project" from St. Paul's Chapel of Trinity Church, New York. It was convincing that sacred space could change and still be sacred.

Without this shock of the new, I don't think this little church could ever move on from its troubled past. It's like Daylight Savings Time: at 6 this morning I was none too pleased but at 6 this evening, with the sky still light and a touch of spring in the air, I see the value of the change. Born again, living water, sight to the blind, life to the entombed. Hosanna, hosanna, even the stones cry aloud.



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Jacqueline Schmitt

The Adventurous Parson
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Reflection Lent 5

A Reflection on the readings for Lent 5 by Janine Goodwin, M.S. Ed., M.A. Theology.

When I was a teenager, I began a passionate search to learn more about God. Since I was shy and bookish, I began with the church library, a single bookcase full of threadbare copies of inspirational titles which promised a perpetual mood of cheerful holiness I found implausible if I would only yank on my spiritual bootstraps hard enough to achieve a level of trust I couldn't sustain for more than a few hours of hopeful euphoria; those hours were invariably followed by a scrabbling, flailing period of faked happiness that bottomed out into a long, grim letdown. After awhile, each book seemed like more of the same old hopeless thing, but I read through them one by one, searching for the one that would change me.

I still remember the shock of recognition, joy, and a little fear when I saw a new addition, a battered paperback with the title Your God Is Too Small. I remember little of what J. B. Phillips wrote, but have never lost the insight that our concept of God is always too small to encompass God's reality. At various times, I have found out that my God was too small, too rule-bound, too male, too pale, too twentieth-century, and thought too much like me. The too-small Gods fold up in crises, fade away in the face of sustained thought, fail to meet me when I seek them in prayer, and disappear in the light of new knowledge. But that's all right, because none of them are the real, living God, in whom we live and move and have our being, who speaks to us in the deepest part of our souls, who is close to us than we are to ourselves, and who, for all this, remains unknowable.

Scripture is like that, too; it keeps expanding the more I learn about it. My perception of scripture has gone from that of a frightening monolith full of harsh commandments and blinding miracles to a fluid, multi-voiced, very present set of stories that invites us to read,, reinterpret and retell, finding our own truths in its light as we grow.

A priest I knew used to lead a Monday night Bible study: whoever showed up sat in a circle and practiced lectio divina with the coming Sunday's Gospel. The prayerful silence brought forth images, ideas, and interpretations that made the sermon the result of group discernment as well as of the priest's education and skill. The insights and questions that seemed most difficult at the first hearing were frequently the most illuminating in the end, and we would smile at each other when we sang the hymn whose refrain was, "The Lord has yet more light and truth to come forth from the Word."

The themes of the too-small God and the multiple readings of a story came back to me when I began to study the raising of Lazarus in a circle of books. In at least one interpretation of this story, everyone's God is too small, and this makes Jesus so angry he cries.

First, the disciples ignore Jesus when he tells them, with increasing clarity, what is going on. He tells them that Lazarus is asleep, and they don't get it, so he tells them that Lazarus is dead and that they will see God's glory—but all they see is what Thomas voices: they will risk death by heading toward Jerusalem. I had always heard this as a heroic utterance, but Ann Nyland, in her 2005 translation, The Source New Testament, says it is "highly sarcastic." Suddenly, the bold figure I'd imagined, calling his friends to martyrdom, became someone who may be hunched and muttering an aside, or even speaking clearly on the edge of defiance—but someone who went anyhow, following Jesus imperfectly and with doubt.

When Jesus and his fellow travelers reach Bethany, Martha expresses deep faith in Jesus even in her reproach, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." At his prompting, she confesses that he is the Messiah, a confession that would stand alongside Peter's if women had been valued alongside men through the last two millennia. Martha is the heroine! I thought, then read Francis Moloney's commentary on the Gospel of John in the Sacra Pagina series. Moloney contends that Martha's proclamation of Jesus as rabbi and even as Messiah show the limits of her understanding. She still sees only the miracle-worker, not God incarnate. She interrupts Jesus to tell him which resurrection he means: "I know he will rise again at the last day." Her confession of faith is limited to what she already knows.

Here, I felt a flash of anger and a wince of recognition. Can't the woman be the one who really gets it right just this once, and can't we finally recognize it? Then I thought of all the times I have told God what I know in prayer rather than listening for the living and creative voice of the Spirit. If Martha's confession is limited by her limited perceptions, she is still no less an apostle than Peter, whose proclamation was followed by cowardice and whose comment on the Transfiguration was to try and build walls around a vision. None of Jesus' followers see everything and get everything right. When we miss the point, we are following in the footsteps of the apostles—and when we follow, mistakes, rebellious words, and all, we are doing as much as any of them did.

Next, Jesus meets Mary. If Martha made an imperfect confession, perhaps Mary, who sat and listened while Martha was busy managing, will understand better. Mary falls at his feet and repeats, "If you had been her, my brother would not have died." Moloney identifies this gesture and unconditional confession of faith in Jesus' power as a sign of greater faith than Martha's standing and engaging in conversation; given the many examples of faithful women who argue with Jesus in the Gospels, I disagree. In any case, Mary's hope has already died; she joins the mourners, and they all weep out their grief over Lazarus.

Jesus weeps, too. Whether the words describing his state indicate his grief for Lazarus, his anticipation of his own death, or his anger and frustration at his own followers in their failure to imagine how God's glory could come out of this loss, Jesus is as caught up in his emotions as we are in ours: he weeps and is deeply moved. No one is above grief. In the Gospel which insists most strongly and persistently that Jesus is divine, the incarnate God, for whatever reason, sobs and wails with the people who have lost a brother, a friend, a precious set of hopes for the future. God weeps with us in our losses. One persistent vision of God, the God who cannot suffer, is a God who looks too large for us, but is too small in the inability to share in all our griefs. (Recently, theologians have begun to question the idea of the God who is immune to suffering. To name only two, J. Massyngbaerde Ford gives a summary of twentieth-century takes on the impassible God in Redeemer: Friend and Mother and Rosemary Haughton writes luminously of The Passionate God.)

My God was too small, my disciples were too large, and here they all grieve together. Jesus does not show up on the scene, calm everyone down from a detached perspective, and make a miracle as shiny as a laminated holy card. Jesus stands in the dust, weeping as others reproach him for coming to late to heal his friend. He calls for people to push away the stone at the tomb's entrance, and practical Martha reminds him that death stinks. How often, when God is offering to do something new, do we try to turn aside from it because we know what our deaths smell like—the stench of a broken relationship, the dusty smell of a dying church, the sweaty bodies of the homeless, whose smell is a reproach to those of us who will not help them find a clean, safe place? Jesus may weep with us, but he never despairs with us, and he faces our deaths with us even as he brings new life. As anyone who as seen a birth knows, new life is a messy thing. Lazarus does not come out like the undead of the horror movies, but he doesn't come out tidy, either: he returns from death trailing his graveclothes, stumbling back into the light of day blinded by a cloth around his face. Jesus does not make the graveclothes fall away, but calls the disciples to remove them. When God calls something back to life, we have work to do; we must unwrap the graveclothes, bring the food and drink that sustains new life, continue the healing.

Lazarus is returned to his family and his community. Jesus has raised him from the dead so that those around him might believe. In the next part of the story, the part that is not usually read in the lectionary for this week, the imperfect belief of the disciples is joined by the limited belief of the political and religious authorities, who see clearly that Jesus threatens the status quo and their power. He is dangerous, and he must be killed. I find it easy to empathize with the disciples in this story, but it is much harder to face the times when I, too, have wanted to kill the power of God in my life in order to feel safe.

Our God is too small, our faith is imperfect, and sometimes we want to silence the Spirit and kill the messenger: but down the road, beyond the Crucifixion, there is a Resurrection coming. Dare we believe?