Other Voices

Holy Week is one of those aerobically challenging times for pastors, a marathon of liturgies to plan, sermons to preach, services to choreograph and to lead.   I remember back to past Holy Weeks:  frantic calls to people to request that they consider getting their feet washed or read a portion a scripture, rehearsals for midweek worship services, nestled in the midst of communion visits with shut ins and occasional emergencies.

So it was a bit of a surprise to find myself sitting at our Good Friday service at 3:00, listening to members of my congregation read portions of Matthew's story of the passion.  I had not called any of the readers, assigned the readings or helped rehearse the readers.  My assignment for the service was to pray, to listen, and occasionally, to sing.

I could do that.

I have been in this congregation for a long time.  I know these voices, having heard them for years.  Some of them have been reading and assisting in worship for a long time.  There were a few who I had never heard read scripture before.  I recognized quiet intensity, faith, passion and pathos in their voices as they read.  They each, in their own way, inhabited the scripture reading.  

I heard one man's voice crack as he relayed Peter's denial.  Another woman's voice rose as the crowd roared, "Let him be crucified!"  

I sat, and I listened, less encumbered than usual with a sense of responsibility for making worship happen.  I sat and I listened and tears collected in the corners of my eyes, partly because it was Good Friday and partly because I could allow myself to be in the story, listening to other voices, voices I knew so well, as they told it.  So well.

Your voices, I want to tell them, your voices are more powerful than you even know.  You can do it.  You can embody the love of God.  You already do.  You have.  For me.

Holy Week

On one level, it is an ordinary week.  I get up, I have breakfast, I take the dog for a walk.  I go to church, and write a lot of sermons and plan a lot of worship, more worship than for an ordinary week.  The worship also takes a fair amount more choreography than ordinary worship.  So, it's not an ordinary week.

But I'll be honest.  In some ways, it does feel like an ordinary week.  I know this is Holy Week, which will be busy, and will be consumed with remembering and worshipping and singing and praying.  The part of me which would have made a good nun would like to think of this week with more intentional and disciplined times to stop and think about the week, and all that happened, how Jesus is getting near the cross.

What did he do today, I wonder?  It is Wednesday in Holy Week.  Tomorrow evening he will be celebrating the Passover with his disciples, one of whom will betray him.  Finally he will be alone.  But what did he do today, Wednesday in Holy Week?

He is in Jerusalem with his disciples, getting ready, I suppose.  He is telling those parables, the ones that make people follow him, or stop following him, the ones that make some people hungry and other people angry.  He is healing people, and getting ready for the Passover.

It is Holy Week.  And it is an ordinary week.  I need to clean the house, because we are having company for Easter.  But really, it is an ordinary week (and the house will not be clean enough by Easter either, but will still look like our house).

Somehow, for a flash and a moment I realize that the task is not to make this week special, not to wonder what Jesus was doing today and pay better attention and pray more, but it is to know that these ordinary moments are holy, that talking to the clerk at the grocery store is holy, that sweeping the floor and dragging the trash cans back from the street is holy, that doing my mother-in-law's laundry is holy.

God is in it, all of life.  In the flesh.

And it matters, every single bit of it.

Six Monologues from John's Passion: #5

"One of the Women"

I don't know why we stayed.  It was hard to stay.  It would have been easier to leave, and not to witness the pain, and not to hear the laughter, and not to see the shame.  Almost everyone had left.  There were still a few soldiers, gambling for his clothes.  But there were no crowds any more.  There were no crowds cheering for him -- and there were not crowds jeering at him, either.  Not any more.   But we stayed, even though it was hard.  Sometimes you have to do the hard thing for someone you love.  And we loved him.

Speaking for myself,  I still didn't want to give up on him.  I didn't want to believe that everything was over.  He had given me dignity.  He had given me hope.  He had healed me.  He had given me freedom.  How could that end?  I didn't want to think that I had believed in the wrong things, trusted the wrong person.

But crucifixion means only one thing, and that is death.  There could be no other ending.  There was no hope.  He was our hope, and he was on the cross.  I suppose that's why everyone else went home.  They knew how it would end.  But we stayed, because we didn't want to believe it -- not yet.  And we wanted to be near him.

Yes, that's right.  We wanted to be near him until the end.  That's what you do for someone you love, and we loved him.  He had given us so much, and now we wanted to give him something.  We weren't even sure he knew if we were there, but he did.  Because even then, he was giving us something.

He gave us one another.  He said, "Here is your son."  and "here is your mother" just as if he knew that we needed each other as much as we needed him.  He made us a family.

We have been a family ever since that day.  Something was born on that cross.  I know that seems strange to say.  And I don't mean just Jesus' mother and his disciples were his family.  No -- we are all connected to one another, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers.  Because of the cross.  Because of what he did.  We live differently now.  We care for one another.  We make sure each of us has food and clothing -- and hope.  We stay with each other, even in hard times.  I don't mean to say that we have suddenly become perfect.  We haven't.  But like I said -- he gave us to each other on the cross, just like he gave himself to us.

Sometimes you have to do the hard thing for someone you love.

*image is by Patt LaPorte

Six Monologues from John's Passion: #3

"A Bystander"

I'm one of the people who shouted, "We want Barabbas!"  And I'm glad I did.  Oh, it's true, the religious leaders go us all worked up.  That's one of the reasons we all shouted.  Then Barabbas got all the votes.  Jesus didn't get any.  But looking back, it was already beginning to be clear that he was a loser, even then.  And I wanted to be on the winning side.  Barabbas seems to be the kind of a man who gets things done.  We can count on Barabbas to go out there and fight for us.  They say that he was a bandit, but what was Jesus?  All talk.  When push came to shove, did he have a mighty army tucked away so that he could stand up to the Romand and so that we could take our country back?

Some people were saying that Jesus was the Messiah, but I didn't believe it for a minute.  Even when he was popular, I didn't really believe he was the Messiah.  Oh, he had me going there for a minute, but I got over it.  After all, the Messiah is going to be a military leader, and he is going to be our king.  Some king Jesus turned out to be.  But Barabbas -- I could see him as a king someday.  He's a man of action.  He's the kind of man you can follow.

Jesus was a troublemaker, that's what he was.  He set impossible standards for people to follow him!  "Sell everything you have, leave you family, and follow me."  That's what he said.  The funny thing is, I almost did it.  I almost walked away from my whole family, and my business.  To follow Jesus!  To eat and drink with sinners, never to know where I was staying night after night!  My family has a prosperous business!  I don't know what possessed me, but then I thought better about it and I stayed home.  I didn't follow Jesus.  And now.... now it's clear that I made the right decision.

I know what is important.  Financial security, that's one.  And strength, that's another one.  I stayed home and I'm taking care of the family business.  And I'm doing very well, thank you.  Sometimes I worry, just like everyone else, about whether there is more to life than money.  And sometimes I worry about keeping what I have.  That's where security comes in.  that's where someone like Barabbas comes in.  Mybe someone like him can help us get our country back, and have more security.  Then I don't have to worry so much about the corrupt tax collectors coming and skimming off the top of my wealth.

I'm glad I didn't follow Jesus.  I'm sure I made the right decision.

Didn't I?

Friend of the Jews

A long time ago I had a dream I've never forgotten. In my dream, it was a future when the world was in turmoil. It was a time when it seemed like you had to stand up for what you believed, or maybe you just had to stand up for people who were your friends.

In my dream the Jewish people were again being oppressed, segregated. Nobody knew what was happening for sure, but I remember that somehow I had been labeled as someone who might be a "friend of the Jews." This was not necessarily so unusual; in high school, I had a number of Jewish friends.

In my dream, I remember that I was looking for places to hide, but I was pretty sure that at some time I would be discovered. When that happened, I wanted to be able to stand up for what I believed, to stand by my friends, but the truth is: I didn't know what I would have done.

All these years I have been haunted by this dream. What would I have done? What would I do? Would I stand by my friends? Would I stand up for what was right?

On Friday, Pilate put up a sign on the cross. He wrote, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." He wrote the sign in three languages, to make sure that everyone would understand. The religious leaders took offence. "He's not our king," they said. But Pilate didn't care. He thought it was a good joke, maybe. "Here is the man," he said more than once. "Who's powerful now?" he was saying. "Here is the man who was supposed to be the king."

He thought he was telling a joke, but it was the truth. He was the king of the Jews, and of everyone else. He was the friend of the Jews, and the friend of sinners, the friend of those who stood at the foot of the cross and wept, the ones who denied him, the ones who ran away, the ones who laughed at him.

On Good Friday, we stand at the foot of the cross, we keep vigil, like people who gather a bedsides, we grieve, and we listen for last words, clues, words of wisdom that will help us go on. On Good Friday, we stand at the foot of the cross, and we see the words, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

Maybe we are wondering what we would have done. Would we have betrayed him, not understanding his mission? Would we have denied him, afraid? Would we have wept at the foot of the cross?

The truth is, we don't know what we would have done.

But we know what he did. He did not deny us. He did not run away. He stood up by his friends. "King of the Jews, friend of sinners." He loved us to the end.

And because of this, we stand at the foot of the cross this day, knowing that in his love, there is no end.

A Good Friday image that has stayed with me

"Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases."

Many years ago now,I taught school in southern Japan. I taught junior and senior high at a Boys' School. I was the only woman teacher there, and many of the boys in high school were taller than I. There were big strong strapping boys and they all wore black uniforms and they all loved to play sports.

One day one of these big strong boys fell ill. He had been complaining of headaches, I remembered -- and we found out that he had those headaches because he had developed a brain tumor. He ha a very complicated operation to remove the tumor, and then he came back to school. He seemed to be all right, except that the operation had left him blind. I remember seeing him day after day, putting his hand on the shoulder of one of his classmates and following him to his classes. But he would still joke around and he seemed to be in good spirits.

But he wasn't really all right. The operation removed most of his tumor, but not all of it. And after awhile it began to grow again. This time there was nothing they could do, and he began to weaken. He saw many of his dreams for the future disappear. He always spoke about wanting to travel (he wanted to go to America), and now it seemed that he would never have the opportunity. He would never go to college. He would never have a family. The only dream he had left was to graduate from high school. But as he grew weaker, even that dream seemed to fade. He was too weak even to walk up the stairs to his classes.

It was about this time that I began to see a sight that I will never forget. A car would drive up to the front of the school. He and his mother would get out. She would help him and support him as he walked through the front door. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, she put him on her back, and she carried him. She was much smaller and much shorter than he, a tiny Japanese woman, and she carried her big strong 17-year-old son on her back.

"Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases."

I couldn't help it. When I saw her, I thought of Jesus, and she has remained in my mind and my heart, a picture of his strength -- the strength of God. When I think of Jesus at his arrest, telling his captors, "Take me, but let these men go," I think of this woman, willingly bearing the burden of her son, who would do anything to make his one last dream come true. When I think of Jesus, bent over from the weight of the cross, I think of this woman, bent over with the weight of her son on her back. When I think of Jesus, sagging under the weight of our sins, I think of this woman, slowly trudging up the stairs, stronger than she looks, with the strength of love. When I think of Jesus, who looked so small and weak at his crucifixion, I think of this woman, and I know that his weakness is stronger than my strength. Thirsty, he offers us the water of life. Abandoned, he reunites us with one another and with God. Bruised and broken, he heals us. Dying, he gives us life. There is no burden he cannot bear. There is no weight he cannot carry.

"Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases"