4th Passiontide, Palm Sunday 2021, He Suffers In Us

 4^th Passiontide (Palm Sunday)

Matthew 21:1-11

 And they approached Jerusalem and came to  Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus sent two disciples ahead and said to them, "Go to the village which you see before you and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away."

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

'Say to the daughter of Zion,

Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.

Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and a foal of the beast of burden.'

Julia Stankova

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them and Jesus sat on them.

Many from the large crowd spread their clothes on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:

Hosanna to the Son of David!

Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!

Hosanna in the highest! [or, Sing to Him in the highest heights!]

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is he?" The crowds answered, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee."

4^th Passiontide, Palm Sunday

March 28, 2021

Matthew 21:1-11

We are entering Holy Week. The altar and vestments are black. Especially in this week, Christ battles the forces of duality. These are the false polarities of either/or, black or white, the yes or no of dead binary thinking. Good or bad; heaven or hell. By the end of the week, He will arrive at Golgatha, literally the Place of the Skull. At the place of the skull, He will die. And in a garden, He will rise again.

Christ exists in the living world of flow,

Julia Stankova

change, and metamorphosis. He operates in the changing subtleties of the grayscale, in the nuances of color in transforming one form to another. His opponents ask Him questions designed to entrap Him. He gives them answers from outside of their framework, answers from the flowing world of a greater reality.

Today we still battle with the deadness into which our brain-bound intellect so quickly falls. We still tend to use ill-making polarities in the way we think, thus closing ourselves off from more significant possibilities. Nevertheless, we strain to open our thoughts in reverence. We struggle to warm our hearts in empathy. We strive to act according to inspirations of our conscience, our higher self.

In those moments when we manage reverence of thought, when we burn with heart’s love, when we act out of inspirations of conscience, in such moments, Christ can operate in the world. In such moments Christ is in us.  It is He that thinks in us, suffers in us, dies, and rises in us. As Rilke says,

To work with Things in the indescribable

relationship is not too hard for us;

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,

…

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions ... For the god

wants to know himself in you.*

 

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* Rainer Maria Rilke, in Ahead of All Parting, ed. and translated by Steven Mitchell

 

For more inspiring resources, go to https://www.christiancommunityseminary.ca/podcast

 

3rd Passiontide 2021, Writing the Story

3^rd Passiontide

John 8:1-12

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives,

Cranach the Elder

but as soon as day dawned, he was already in the Temple court, where the people flocked to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees led in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand in the middle and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now, what do you say?" They said this only as a trap, in order finally to have a reason for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write something into the earth with his finger. When they kept on pressing him with questions, he stood up and said to them, "Whoever among you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her." And again, he bent down and wrote into the earth.

When they heard this, their conscience began to stir within them, and they went out, one after the other, starting with the eldest. And only Jesus was left and the woman who stood in the middle. Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one passed judgment on you?"

"No one, sir," she said.

Then Jesus declared, "Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin."

And Jesus began to speak to them again: "I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light in which there is life."

3^rd Passiontide

March 21, 2021

John 8:1-12

If one were to go to the shore and write 'I love you' in the sand, the waves would wash the letters away. The words would disappear. But their meaning, the love itself, would still exist.

Our deeds are the letters we write into the earth. Whether public or secret, they may seem to disappear. But their meaning remains.

A modern poet writes:

         …it's wrong to think people are a thing apart

from the whole, as if we'd sprung

from an idea out in space, rather than emerging

 

from the sequenced larval mess of creation

that binds us with the others,

all playing the endgame of a beautiful planet….*

Ninetta Sombart

Jesus bent down and started to write something
into the earth. The Gospel doesn't say what He wrote. But it certainly had something to do with deeds and their meaning for the earth.

Christ's whole life, His death, and His resurrection have inscribed their meaning permanently into the earth. And their sense still speaks: I love you, He says. I recognize your deeds. And I love you. Let my love for you shine before you. Let My love give you the strength for acts of integrity and worth, for we are writing the earth's story together.

 

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* Alison Hawthorne Deming, “The Enigma We Answer by Living” in Genius Loci

 For more resources, go to click here.

2nd Passiontide 2021, Eucharist of the Ordinary

2^nd Passiontide

John 6:1-15 

After this, Jesus crossed to the far

Margareta Woloschina

shore of the Sea of Galilee near Tiberius, and a great crowd of people followed him because they had seen the signs of the Spirit he had performed on those who were ill.

Then Jesus went up on the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Feast was near.

When Jesus raised his eyes to the world of the Spirit and beheld how crowds of people were coming toward him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread, that all these people may eat?" He asked this to test his understanding and presence of mind, for he himself knew what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, "200 denarii [or, seven months wages] would not buy enough bread for them each to have only a little."

Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, "A boy is here with five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are these among so many?"

Margareta Woloschina

Jesus said, "Let the
people sit down in groups." There was plenty of green grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and gave to those seated, likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.

Now when they were satisfied, he said to his disciples, "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." So, they gathered them, and they filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

Seeing the sign that he had done, the people said, "Truly, this is the prophet who is to come into the world." When Jesus became aware that they intended to come and make him king by force, he withdrew again to the mountain alone by himself.

2^nd Passiontide

March 14, 2021

John 6:1-15

The Jewish Passover Feast celebrates the Hebrew peoples’ escape from the tenth plague—the death of their first-born. The blood of a lamb was smeared on the doorpost as a sign to the angel of death to pass over their house.  As a result of this plague, they and their children were released from bondage in Egypt.

Grunewald

In today’s gospel reading, the approaching

Passover feast of the year 33 will be different. The lamb will be Christ Himself, whose innocent selfless blood will be poured into the earth to keep her alive and free human beings from the death of matter. Meanwhile, Jesus raises His eyes in spirit vision and sees all of those human beings of future ages who will need strengthening nourishment to keep their souls alive.

In the reading, it is evening. One by one, the stars come out. The people sit near the Sea of Galilee, on the lush spring grass. Christ draws down the formative, healing, and revitalizing power that pours down from

Margareta Woloschina

His Father through the stars. These living forces Christ draw into bread and fish, into a form that can be taken in by human beings. The life in them is so potent that it takes very little to satisfy their hunger.

At His Last Supper, on Holy Thursday, He will pour that same power into Bread and Wine and make them bearers of the form of His body and the enlivening power of His blood. And along with them, He will pour His soul’s deep and selfless love.

Indeed, Christ is still drawing down living forces from the stars. He is still pouring His love into bread and wine. He wants to release us from the bondage of the mundane, of the ordinary. In the words of John O’Donohue:

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place

Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

Transforming our broken fragments

Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.*

 

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*John O’Donohue, “ The Inner History of a Day” in To Bless the Space Between Us