For me the ball game is: is God real?

If God is real, then God can do whatever the hell God pleases. By definition, God is all powerful.

You respond, yeah but show me God violating physical laws. And I’ll say, show me a physical law. What little I hear of physics, it’s making a mishmash of natural law. All we have is statistical averages, what most things do most of the time.

G.K. Chesterton said (somewhere), natural law is really God’s faithfulness. The sun “comes up” each morning because God causes it, not because some law makes it. So if one day the sun doesn’t come up, God can cause that as well.

What gets me is pain and evil.

 I know intellectually that God turns pain to good purposes, and compensates us wth something better for what we lose.

But it still hurts.

It hurts those I love.

It hurts the innocent.

And some evil and smug people don’t hurt nearly enough to qualify for the human race.

And I often wonder why the all powerful God doesn’t do a little more to assuage the pain and suffering of the people whom G0d loves.

END OF RANT

 A Sermon for Passion Sunday

Exodus 1-15, Mark 14-15 

The story I have to tell you today is old—an old, old story. I bet you know it in your bones. Most of us learned it from Mom or Dad, and in Sunday School before we could read.

The trouble with these old stories is, we think we know them. So we stop listening to them.

Oh, we can tell you what happens. But we don’t know them by heart, not really.

And that’s surprising because they’re not only about the Israelites getting free of slavery and not only about Jesus dying on the cross.

If you want to know who these stories are about really? They’re about you and me.

The story of your faith goes back to ancient Egypt, to a group of slaves called the Hebrews.

The gospel of Mark emphasizes again and again that Jesus’ followers just don’t get it. They don’t understand. A lot like me and you. We don’t get why things are so tough. We’re decent, hard working people. But just taking care of business seems like more than you can manage these days.

So, like the disciples, we ask God a lot of questions.

On his last night with them, Jesus’ disciples were still clueless. How could he help them understand what faith is about in the few hours he had left?

In suffering, in hardship, how can you and I get what faith means?

Jesus taught them by wrapping his story, their story, your story and mine, in the ancient story of God’s love, how God saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Arrested on the night of Passover, the night when Israel remembered how God brought them out of the furnace of suffering into the Promised Land (Exodus 1-15), Jesus used that story as a paradigm for his own.

Most people think that in the Old Testament God tried saving people through the Law and failed, and the New Testament is a kind of do over.

Wrong!!

The Old Testament tells how God, who “abounds in steadfast love and mercy,” brought the people out of bondage in Egypt because God heard their cries.

At the Passover the fight between the forces of slavery and God reached a climax. The angel of death passed over the land, killing all the firstborn, human and cattle! But, wherever he saw the blood of a lamb on the door posts and lintel of a house, the houses of the Hebrews, he spared all those inside.

Pharaoh ignored every prior warning, but this he couldn’t ignore. He expelled the people from the land. They left, without time for the bread to rise. That’s why you celebrate Passover with unleavened bread.

God heard the cries of your spiritual ancestors, and delivered them from slavery.

This is the story Jesus wanted you to remember, so you can understand the cross.

The ancient story of God, who loved a people so much he delivered them from slavery, shines a light on the cross. For the cross is the story of how God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life.

Sound familiar?

Reading the passion according to St. Mark, chapters 14-15, you and I become part of it. We gather around the table, where the woman with the jar of ointment lavished almost a year’s wages anointing Jesus’ feet. You can smell its fragrance filling the house! See how Jesus sweeps away her self-doubts with a tender look.

You and I go with Judas to the high priest and scribes, and they haggle over the price of betrayal: 30 pieces of silver.

We go with the disciples to arrange for the Passover lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened bread. Later, at this table we hear Jesus say, “One of you will betray me”; we can’t help wondering, “Is it I?” Could I stand by Jesus when things really get tough?

But in the garden of Gethsemane, like the rest, we fall asleep. Jesus wakes us when his betrayer comes.  We skitter every which way, like trash in the wind.

And there we stand among the leaders who convict Jesus of blasphemy. Like Peter we say, ” I said I don’t know the damn man.” We hear Pilate ask, “Are you king of the Jews?”

We help the soldiers carry the hammer and the nails.

You say, “No, not me! I’d never do that!” Just like the disciples, all of whom swore that they would die with him. Good intentions. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Except the women: Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, and Mary Jesus’ mother. With them we see where he is laid.

Before darkness falls.

The Christ of the cross wants you to know this story is yours.

At this terrifying moment, we like to skip ahead to the end. But, you see, this actually is our story—and in life you can’t skip the hard part. You have to take it as it comes, from the first line of the first page to the last line of the last.

So I invite you to linger with me on Friday night. On Saturday all day and all night. There’s a Latin word associated with this Saturday, tenebrae. I’m told it means “shadows.” On Saturday, shadows fell like cold rain.

For this extraordinary group of people around Jesus—these fishermen, tax collectors, children of privilege like John, and courageous women like Mary Magdalene and Mary Jesus’ mother—for these extraordinary people, the journey of three breath-taking years had ended in wreckage. Evil consumed them. They hid behind locked doors, startled if a cat scratched at the door.

They hadn’t known what to expect when the Messiah came to Jerusalem, but nobody (except Jesus) expected this.

You can understand, can’t you? How the brightest hopes can die. How dreams and hard work amount to a hill of nothing. You know what it feels like to be at a loss for words, and run dry of tears.

You see, what Jesus wanted these men and women to know, what he wants you and me to know, deep down in our DNA, is that his story is our story.

Sin wrecks the most promising life. Darkness follows the brightest day. Good has to fight, tooth and nail, to survive in this world.

Some of you will say, Wait a minute, preacher. What about the good news? Isn’t this story supposed to be good news?

Of course, it is.

But not glib news.

The gospel says that Christ descended into hell. Now maybe today that doesn’t mean what it used to. But I believe it’s still true:

A lot of people may not be living in hell, but they’re living on its doorstep. Laid off, with just as many mouths to feed. Months behind on the mortgage. Living large, blind and deaf to human needs you could meet, except for your hardness of heart.

Sometimes hell is dry ice cold!

The gospel simply is this: whatever kind of slavery or hell you find yourself in, you’re not alone. God’s there, too, at least, God has been there.

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there,

the psalmist said (139:8 KJV)

Christ died—so what?

A few hours after the terror of Friday, the dark of Saturday, came morning light and  life, brand spanking new life!

 And, because he lives, you and I will, too.

 Thanks to: PD photo.org

Kermit the Frog sings here.

“He makes me lie down in green pastures,” Psalms 23:2 (NRSV).

 As an adult, I’ve had to learn to walk twice.

 My spine is kinky, and I grow a lot of bone, which means I tend to squeeze off the spinal cord every few years.

 In addition, arthritis has destroyed most of the big joints — shoulders, knees.

 So I’ve racked up a lot of surgery and a lot of sack time.  I quarrel with the verse, “he makes me lie down in green pastures.”

Then there’s pain.

“On a scale of 1-10, 1 being no pain, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, what’s your pain level now?”

That nurse (all business, having to log her/his own functions on computer, may be out of work tomorrow because the public hospital is cutting a fourth of its staff, has three kids, an out of work partner and a minivan with stale coke open in the cupholders) qualifies for my instant dislike winner.

On a scale of 1-10, pain is … not a number.

It’s a groan nobody hears, a burn nobody feels. It’s anger that has no place to go.

 I’ve had to lie down a lot more than I want to.  When I gripe about it, the Almighty says, “Green pastures, John, green pastures!”

 ”You’re the boss,” I say.

 I’ve learned from experience that God wins arguments.

 Enforced idleness—green?

 How?

 Well, there’s the psalms.  I read them aloud often. Every ten, I read 16 verses of 119, which all at once is mind numbing.

 There is a sense in which their voice is my voice, or mine theirs. Even the hateful psalms.

 Hate is human. When God gets it out of me, I’ll leave it out of the psalms.

 I wish I had some deep, deep, deep insight into prayer.  I don’t.

 Prayer is listening, prayer is talking.

 Prayer is being face to face with God, not in seclusion, not removed from life, but in the give and get of it.

 When I was offering spiritual direction for a brief time, I imagined God sitting just behind my fellow struggler.  I’d focus on God, while listening to the other person with my heart, my eyes, and any other faculty at hand.

 That’s prayer: focusing on God.

 Enforced idleness also gives me time to read.  During my years of active ministry I never had time to read a book like Les Miserables. 

 Green pastures?  I dunno.

 On a beautiful spring morning I’d rather be out for a run with my beautiful lab Cinnamon.

 But then I don’t have a lab.

 And I don’t run.

 Left: Our Lady of the Burning Bush

On a beautiful fall morning in 1991, I saw my burning bush.

Although I’ve had several mountain top experiences, this is one-of-a-kind.  Remembering it gives me joy.

The Western white male scientific culture most of us live in ignores, deletes, reinterprets peak experiences of a religious or spiritual nature.  That’s why I’m bearing witness to what happened to me.

I was a trailing spouse.  In December 1987 my wife accepted a call to join the staff of the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care. 

Baptists don’t understand why a God called male preacher would move across country with his wife.  There must be something wrong with him!

My 362 days of searching yielded a part time position in rurban New Kent County, which I served for 10 years.

In September 1990 I began training for a career in clinical  pastoral counseling.  Part of that training was an internship on the adult psych unit of a local mental hospital.

It was a 40 minute interstate drive one day a week.  It gave me time to think.

VIPCare’s training program is nationally recognized.  Excluding my wife from any contact with my training, VIPCare graciously began the experiment of providing training for me as a full time resident.

The two-year period maxxed the stress on my family and me.

That morning, as I drove to the hospital, I faced a choice: slide through the program without risking or learning much.  Or put myself lock stock and being on the block, and maybe (just maybe—no guarantees) be transformed.

I had begun individual therapy, a must for good counselors of any stripe.  I guessed what was at stake: would I take up my cross and follow Christ?

Imagine the cost!  It took my breath away.

Christians call it crucifixion. Shamans speak of being cut up, cooked, and eaten.

As I approached the toll booths that used to stand at the intersection of I-95 and Chippenham Pkwy., I decided to give it 100%.

I was scared shitless.

[Part two coming as soon as I can write it, 24 to 48 hours.]

Our Lady of Guadalupe appearing to Juan Diego

2:09 a.m.

A prayer journal

No trumpets on street corners here. Just notes for a sort of science project.

My father was converted from Catholicism, maybe as a young adult, I think. His oldest sister Margaret led her siblings into the Baptist faith, then reverted. She told me that was because, when a young woman serving as a missionary in a Baptist school in Mexico, she had been accosted by the missionary principal of the school. My mother whispered to my wife in the kitchen that Dad had never been baptized by a Baptist minister. So the font gets pretty murky. (Bottom line: God doesn’t care about who, when, how you’re baptized—only the state of your heart.)

The news tonight was all about the government bailout of Wall Street. A trillion dollars.

Typically, I wake up at night. Tonight I pray mostly for my African friends, although there’s an ominously empty place in my gut;  if I stayed there, I’d wonder, “What are we facing?”

But I do my best gently to focus on my prayer word mercy, short for the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I’ve got the words of the Rosary down now. I can say it all without reference to the book, except the final prayers “Hail, Holy Queen”; and “Memorare,” which apparently is optional. One of many how to’s is here.

The story of Guadalupe

Ten years after Cortez conquered the Aztecs, a baptized Indian passing the site of a temple to an Aztec earth goddess saw a vision of the dark-skinned Blessed Virgin, who asked him to build a church on the site. The skeptical bishop asked for proof. The Virgin told Diego to fill his tilmo, or blanket, with roses. It was December, not the month for roses. When he emptied them out for the bishop, they found a beautiful image of the Virgin on the tilmo, which now hangs in the basilica on the site. Scientists who examined it report the image is extraordinary and unexplainable. The Virgin of Guadalupe was a primary factor in the evangelization of the Indian peoples of the Americas. A sociologist says Mexico really is a conglomerate of disparate groups united by their love of her.

What really happened?

No one knows. What we have is the story, the original in a native Indian language, and the Spanish bishop’s testimony.

It’s impossible for the scientific mindset to grasp such a tale as any way real. The same science dismisses the incarnation and the resurrection.

So we bracket that discussion, which is like finding the square root of pi.

Back to praying

For two days I’ve been praying the Sorrowful Mysteries: the agony in the garden, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion.

I discovered a web-based radio service Pandora here. So I figure how to get from head to heart is music, right? Ave Maria! Pavarotti, Charlotte Church, Bobby McFerrin.

As I progress, I read the scripture account of the event remembered in the Mystery (for example, of Gethsemane) to begin. Maybe I sing a hymn, like “Into the Woods my Master Went.” Then I say the Our Father, the Hail Marys, and the Glory be.

One set takes about 20 minutes.

During that I put the image above on screen. I grew up in El Paso with those people.

That process gets to my heart.

Today as I prayed for my friend, I said something like, “For the sake of my friend I’m praying the first decade of the Sorrowful Mysteries, the agony in the garden, the spiritual fruit being ‘thy will not mine be done.’ About halfway through or more often, I give myself an oral reminder “For my friends, the agony” etc.

Is it all “vain repetition”—the fatal blow of my childhood faith to this sort of thing. The other was “idolatry.” You heard again and again how the old ladies in Juarez, Mexico, kissed the feet of the statue in the Cathedral. Repetition?

Outcome

I read somewhere that Larry Dossey M.D. began his investigations of prayer by going into his office, shutting the door, and shaking some prayer gourds or something. Well, going into his office and shutting the door sounds like Matthew. I’ve always wanted to approach a surgeon and ask: “I’ve decided to test the validity of surgery. Mind if I cut up on you a bit, see if it works?”

Dossey didn’t know much about the thousands of years of prayer tradition. Neither do most of the rest of us.

I believe myth is to faith what math is to science. So the story of the Aztec earth goddess isn’t surprising or disturbing to me. There are valid questions, though.

You ask your questions when you buy your ticket. Then, you gotta stow them in the overhead bin and buckle up.

William Congdon, crucifix 64, 1973.

webpage here. (I didn’t see permissions policy or copyright notice. I’ll be glad to abide by one if copyright holder lets me know.)

I’m learning to pray using the Catholic Rosary as a “method”—the word John Paul II used to describe the Rosary in his encyclical here. The page I refer to as I say the Rosary is here.

This morning I said the Rosary entire, all 20 mysteries, just to see what it’s like. I don’t know if experimentation takes away from the merit of the thing or not. But I don’t much care about merit, to be blunt. All that stuff about the goodies you get for saying the Rosary demeans it, just from my viewpoint.

I figure I’m a sinner and I’m standin’ in the need o’ prayer—any how any where any time. Especially contemplative prayer.

Growing up I heard lots of people pooh pooh Catholics and ritual prayers. But I noticed that often our Baptist prayers were rote. People said the same words over and over again and again. Only we never thought through what we said, never paid any mind to the beauty or cadence of our words. It wasn’t ritual; it was rut.

Well, no sermons.

One, my fingers are sore after sliding paper clips 200 times through thumb and index finger. It’s a cloudy, rainy day. Arthritis likes to come out and play anyway on such days.

Two, it took one hour, 21 minutes. I’m lucky enough to have that much solitude. Most people don’t.

Three, I did announce each Mystery (event in Jesus’ life) and spiritual fruit prayed for three times, not once, so that I’ll learn them. The unfamiliar ones I read through the description of, which is on the website (above).

I like the pictures. But the people are all white. Not a Middle Eastern complexion among them. So they somewhat hindered my reflection. I had to keep reminding myself that Jesus looked like a terrorist is supposed to look like. The same is true for everyone around him.

Do I feel a deep sense of peace, or of God’s presence? Not particularly.

The thing about ritual is, you gotta put it in place, use it until the edges fray a bit. Then, some day when it’s the last thing on your mind, ka zam!

You feel the Holy Spirit. You’re suddenly on Cloud 9.

However—it’s a big however—the Spirit is there as you’re building the house, there during every boring day, just as fully as the day when the air tingles and your feet don’t touch the ground. Those FX are spiritual cotton candy, lots of fun, but not essential. And every carnivore on the midway, including Satan, has a large display of them.

Nobody was praising God for the cotton candy at the cross.

I do not mean any irreverence to the traditional Marian prayer. Personally, I’m going to stick with it for now. The Dominican site www.rosary-center.org  has a great summary with beautiful paintings to illustrate each step of the Marian version.

But this very simple process illustrates that we’re a lot closer to each than we think.

In Place of Hail Mary:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. John 3:16-17 (KJV)

OR

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (from Ps 51)

OR

What does the LORD require of us
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
     and to walk humbly with our God? Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

In Place of Longer Prayers:

The Prayer of St. Francis OR  23^rd Psalm  OR

When we cry “Abba! Father!” the Spirit bears witness that we are children of God. The Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8.)

OR                                                                                                                    

 The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
     of whom shall I be afraid? …
One thing I asked of Thee, LORD,
     that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the LORD
     all the days of my life,
to behold thy beauty, LORD,
     and to inquire in thy temple. …
not cast me off, do not forsake me,
     O God of my salvation! …
If my father and mother forsake me,
     do thou, LORD, will take me up.
Teach me thy way, O LORD,
     and lead me on a level path … from Psalms 27:1-14 (NRSV)

According to the riches of his glory, may God grant that we be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love. May we have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. from Eph 3:16-21 (NRSV)

May the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
     did not regard equality with God
     as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
     taking the form of a slave,
     being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
     and became obedient to the point of death–
     even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
     and gave him the name
     that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
    our knee and every knee should bend,
     in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and our tongue and every tongue confess
     that Jesus Christ is Lord,
     to the glory of God the Father. from Phil 2:5-11 (NRSV)

May we be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that we may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as we bear fruit in every good work and as we grow in the knowledge of God. May we be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may we be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled we to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.  from Col 1:9-12 (NRSV)

I said my first Rosary today.

Yesterday I ordered from San Antonio a Mexican Rosary, simple wood beads. By the time I paid shipping it was $20.00. Mexican, in honor of my grandmother Dolores Mercado and aunt Margaret Dickson.

I found several sites where you can make your own Rosary. That strikes me as totally cool. I can imagine, if this impulse lasts, that I’ll make a Rosary and put into it all the devotion and love I can. I don’t have any desire for one of the expensive, jeweled pieces of which there are many.

First, what was it like?

I hooked ten paper clips together and added five loose ones, one for each decade. Following a chart, I recited the prayers, and announced the Joyful mysteries, milestones in Jesus’ early life. You’re supposed to focus on these, rather than the words you’re saying. But I did well enough to say the right words in the right order.

I’m amazed the paper clip chain worked fine. I hope to know how to say the Rosary by heart when my Mexican Rosary comes in the mail.

It was a very mechanical process: how to hold the paper clip so I didn’t get mixed up as to which one I was counting, which prayer to say, etc. There are some differences in how different Catholics say their Rosary. I just want the standard version.

I was surprised at the welcome and peace I felt. I instantly understood why Catholics hang on to the veneration of Mary. There is a softness, a sweetness, about her that deeply blesses.

Whoa! You’re a Baptist, a son of the Radical Reformation, not even a protestant. And you’re saying prayers to the BVM Blessed Virgin Mary???

Frankly, I’m intentionally not thinking theologically at the moment, turning off the analytical mind and welcoming God as Catholics do. The Feminine of God my tradition has totally ignored and shut down; I’m interested in exploring Her (whatever).

It’s also time for the walls between our traditions to come down, for us to welcome one another to one table, where one Lord presides.

Interesting nuggets:

• an Old English word for prayer is “bede” related to “bid.” So the beads of the Rosary themselves remind us of prayer.
• the Rosary was probably the response of the poor to the monks’ weekly recitation of the 150 psalms in Latin. The poor didn’t know Latin, so they substituted 150 repetitions of the prayer they knew: “Hail Mary…”

This kind of prayer helps to quiet the “monkey tree,” the mind that chatters right through times of silence. I’m hoping to learn a lot about prayer.

If future experiences with the Rosary turn out to be as helpful as my first, it will become a permanent part of my prayer life.

I welcome hearing about any experience you have with saying the Rosary, or other prayers.