Looking Toward Sunday

"Prisoners of Want"

Fourth Sunday of Easter

April 26, 2015

This week we're taking a look at the iconic 23rd Psalm.(Click here to read it.) We'll be paying particular attention to the very first verse: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want..." 

There are many things we want in life - most of which have little or nothing to do with God. Our want of those things can potentially distract us from what we truly need. And if we're not careful, those wants can ultimately become a prison for us, keeping us from the genuinely abundant life we so desire. 

Join us as we think about where it is that we seek happiness, security, and meaning. In the Good Shepherd who provides all we need? Or in things that can never truly satisfy?   

See you on Sunday!

Devotion for April 12

Unless I See the Marks

by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  (John 20.25)

Oh, Thomas was no doubter.

The least naive, he trusted in the dark

the promise of our rising,

the open door of death.

He was the one, when Jesus stood

to go to Lazarus’ tomb in Bethany,

where enemies awaited him

with threats of death, who said,

“Then let us go and die with him.”

Oh, more, not less than all the rest,

Thomas believed in love, and how it bled.

He sought not proof of Jesus’ life,

but marks of what he suffered and forgave,

the scars of Thomas’ own betrayal,

to know that he had risen

not from bed, but from the depths

of hell, where Thomas needed him

to have gone, and been, and left transformed.

He didn’t ask to see his smiling face,

has famous, radiant eyes;

he didn’t hope to see him break the bread

the way he always did.

No, he asked to see his wounds,

the marks of love, the wounds of one

who weeps with those who weep,

who has walked with us through the valley

of the shadow of death.

Oh, Thomas, I’m with you:

I would not follow the safe and happy one,

the well-dressed Christ from a catalogue;

I will follow only the wounded one,

the one with most to forgive

and least reason to expect his hope.

I will follow the loving one with steady eyes,

who knows how much his love will cost.

I will follow the gentle man

with holes in his hands.

Devotion for April 11

My Confession: I Deny the Resurrection 

by Peter Rollins

Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed.

Devotion for the Friday after Easter

Easter Prayer

by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Loving One,
you are present,

unbound by anything.

Dawning One,
you are in this moment,
not entombed in the past.

Forgiving One,
you are in the freedom of my soul,
not the stones of my surroundings,
not the grave of my deeds.

You whose glory it is to set us free,
deliver me
into the present moment.

You who give life
where there is none,
I live not by surviving
but by being raised
each moment,

with each breath
to have died,
with each breath
to be risen.

Devotion for the Thursday after Easter

We Are Baffled

by Walter Brueggemann

Christ is Risen

He is risen indeed!

We are baffled by the very Easter claim we voice.

Your new life fits none of our categories.

We wonder and stew and argue,

and add clarifying adjectives like “spiritual” and “physical.”

But we remain baffled, seeking clarity and explanation,

we who are prosperous, and full and safe and tenured.

We are baffled and want explanations.

But there are those not baffled, but stunned by the news,

stunned while at minimum wage jobs;

stunned while the body wastes in cancer;

stunned while the fabric of life rots away in fatigue and despair;

stunned while unprosperous and unfull

and unsafe and untenured…

Waiting only for you in your Easter outfit,

waiting for you to say, “Fear not, it is I.”

Deliver us from our bafflement and our many explanations.

Push us over into stunned need and show yourself to us lively.

Easter us in honesty;

Easter us in fear;

Easter us in joy,

and let us be Eastered.  Amen.

Devotion for the Wednesday after Easter

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something 
they will call you. When they want you 
to die for profit they will let you know. 
So, friends, every day do something 
that won't compute. Love the Lord. 
Love the world. Work for nothing. 
Take all that you have and be poor. 
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace 
the flag. Hope to live in that free 
republic for which it stands. 
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man 
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. 
Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields. 
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn't go.

Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction. 
Practice resurrection.

Devotion for the Tuesday after Easter

 

Easter Morning by Ann Weems

The stirring wildness of God 
   calls brittle bones to leaping 
and stone hearts to soaring.  
Old women dance among the stars.

Devotion for the Monday after Easter

An Easter Thought from Clarence Jordan:

The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb,
but the full hearts of his
transformed disciples.
The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave,
but a spirit-filled fellowship.
Not a rolled-away stone,
but a carried-away church.

Devotion for Easter Sunday

Christ as a Gardener

by Andrew Hudgins  

The boxwoods planted in the park spell LIVE.

I never noticed it until they died.

Before, the entwined green had smudged the word

unreadable. And when they take their own advice

again – come spring, come Easter – no one will know

a word is buried in the leaves. I love the way

that Mary thought her resurrected Lord

a gardener. It wasn’t just the broad-brimmed hat

and muddy robe that fooled her: he was that changed.

He looks across the unturned field, the riot

Of unscythed grass, the smattering of wildflowers.

Before he can stop himself, he’s on his knees.

He roots up stubborn weeds, pinches the suckers,

deciding order here – what lives, what dies,

and how. But it goes deeper even than that.

His hands burn and his bare feet smolder. He longs

To lie down inside the long, dew-moist furrows

and press his pierced side and his broken forehead

into the dirt. But he’s already done it –

passed through one death and out the other side.

He laughs. He kicks his bright spade in the earth

and turns it over. Spring flashes by, then harvest.

Beneath his feet, seeds dance into the air.

They rise, and he, not noticing, ascends

on midair steppingstones of dandelion,

of milkweed, thistle, cattail, and goldenrod.

Devotion for Holy Saturday

The Lathe

By Chris King

You lay so still that night,
on your nuptial slab, noble as granite,
Though not a thing inert –
Could any tomb contain your passion?

Rather, an unmoving lover,
A blade crosswise a spinning lathe,
While the world’s crooked timber,
Contracting round Jerusalem,

Yielded, that Sabbath,
To the execution of your design,
(Your mother gazing on,
Only she knowing the extent of it)

And turned as the sun sank past the west,
Swung on through the starless pit,

Until, come dawn, a goose-down light
Fell soft upon the new creation,
A freshly dew-scattered Eden
Where your bride pines for your kiss.

Devotion for Good Friday

  

Good Friday by Christina Rossetti (1862)

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
  That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
  To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
 And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
  Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
  Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
  Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
  Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
  A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
  I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
  But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
  Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
  And smite a rock.

Devotion for Maundy Thursday

Tonight is a Night of Darkness

by Theresa Coleman

Tonight is a night of darkness.
We gather it together like gauze and wrap our souls in it.
Tonight is a night of final things.
We gather together in the darkness and hold hands for one last meal.
Tonight is a night of water.
We gather together to cleanse and prepare.
Tonight is a night of tears
We gather together and pray that the tears can wash away the betrayal yet
Tonight is a night of betrayal.
We gather together to support one another, but one of us will destroy.

The cup comes to me at the table – the cup of the last meal
I will drink of it deeply and
Remember all the good times; the teachings, the laughter, the love.
The cup comes to me at the table – the cup of new beginnings
I will drink of it deeply and
Hope that the new covenant will not hurt too much as it is carved on my heart
The cup comes to me in the garden – the cup of my Father’s will
I will drink of it deeply after
I ask that it pass from me.
The cup comes to me as He is on the cross – the cup of bitterness
I will drink of it deeply even
If it comes in a form that is alien to me.
The cup comes to me tonight and I will drink
I will drink deeply and enter into
At-one-ment with Him.

This is the dark night of the cup.
Dark is the wine, dark are the shadows, dark is my soul.
Together we enter into this night, we will leave separately in silence.
Can I be at one with Him? Will I stand watch with Him tonight?
Or will I too sleep at the gate?
Will I embrace and kiss only to betray?

Devotion for Wednesday of Holy Week

 

Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis

by Denise Levertov

Maybe He looked indeed
much as Rembrandt envisioned Him
in those small heads that seem in fact
portraits of more than a model.
A dark, still young, very intelligent face,
A soul-mirror gaze of deep understanding, unjudging.
That face, in extremis, would have clenched its teeth
In a grimace not shown in even the great crucifixions.
The burden of humanness (I begin to see) exacted from Him
That He taste also the humiliation of dread,
cold sweat of wanting to let the whole thing go,
like any mortal hero out of his depth,
like anyone who has taken herself back.
The painters, even the greatest, don’t show how,
in the midnight Garden,
or staggering uphill under the weight of the Cross,
He went through with even the human longing
to simply cease, to not be.
Not torture of body,
not the hideous betrayals humans commit
nor the faithless weakness of friends, and surely
not the anticipation of death (not then, in agony’s grip)
was Incarnation’s heaviest weight,
but this sickened desire to renege,
to step back from what He, Who was God,
had promised Himself, and had entered
time and flesh to enact.
Sublime acceptance, to be absolute, had to have welled
up from those depths where purpose
drifted for mortal moments.