We've Moved! (click title or link Hidden Things)

If Have found Lenten Journey 2005 and are wondering why we are no longer posting it's well...because...(how do I put this nicely?)...Lent is over. Lent is a period of forty days (+Sundays) between Easter and Ash Wednesday.

A new work is beginning however. Click on Link to Hidden Things and join us. We don't care what your background is we're interested. The point of this Blog and Hidden Things was to unite persons in a common spiritual practice. The point was simply to find a way to allow persons to be encountered by God through Scripture.

THE POINT IS IN THE PRACTICE!

We of course are not sure what you may experience but we feel that if you allow yourself to be disciplined by the practice you might discover through it a God not bound by our imagination. We expect to that you will be influenced by those who write along with you.

We hope you will join us in our next venture. There is no right time or wrong time to begin. Begin as you feel called.

In Christ's Peace,

Scott

A beginning and an end

Forty days is a long time to write about anything. I found that this last week, while certainly being the most climatic of the Church year was less so in my practice. I felt very far away my energies actually more in touch with the school calendar rather than the Religious calendar.

Thankfully He is risen. He is risen. He is risen. He is risen. And none of that grace is dependent on anything of my own doing. He has risen indeed. Alleluia.

I am thankful for all those who practiced along with me and any and all those who read from the sidelines.

He is risen. Let us be glad in that.

Thine is the glory forever.

That's really sums all of it up. I find this one harder to accept than either the kingdom or the power; I don't have a problem realizing that I'm not going to be able to control the world around me. But I do tend to crave recognition. I have a strong desire for people around me to see what I have done, and say "Golly Gee! Isn't she wonderful!" I see daily the success and acclaim that those close to me receive, and I envy it.
Yet, if we were to keep things in perspective, nothing any of us do would be worth recognition next to the service and sacrifice that comes throughout Holy Week, and nothing can compare to the glory that is due to Christ and is shone through the triumph of resurrection and dedication of his followers. And so the glory really does belong to God, forever and ever. Amen.

He Descended to the Dead

Most Episcopal churches forgo the Holy Saturday service in our Book of Common Prayer, skipping instead to the Great Vigil, and from my perspective this is problematic. Holy Saturday, according to von Balthasar, is the day when the actual work of salvation is being carried out.

This is when he descended to the dead.

There are also readings in the three-year Episcopal lectionary that are reserved for Holy Saturday, and if we skip from Good Friday to the Vigil, we miss these readings; for example, Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42, dealing with Joseph of Arimathea procuring Christ's body; or the epistle, 1 Peter 4:1-8; or the Old Testament reading, Job 14:1-14. We get pieces of these stories in other three-year lectionary readings, but not these pieces, unless we observe Holy Saturday.

As one pursuing parish ministry, I am not eager to heap more liturgies on overburdened priests; but why is this the one we skip? Why are these readings less important? To me it feels like we want to gloss over death and grief, and zip straight to resurrection and celebration.

The Lord's Prayer- Good Friday

Our Father
Gave himself in Jesus
Who art in Heaven
looked this day and saw a need to seek us out
Hallowed by thy name
and saw a new way to create out of darkness, make a strait way along a crooked road
Thy kingdom come,
and tonight this horrid day of persecution it will come in a most unexpected way
Thy will be done
"if it is thy will take this cup from me"
On earth as it is in heaven
the way of heaven must be a way of love
Give us this day our daily bread
Today, Jesus' bread is foul
and forgive us our trespasses
Jesus taking on our sins upon the cross
As we forgive the trespasses against us
the cross, that juncture where God forgives us
Lead us not into temptation
Let us stay true to that which you bring us to Lord
And deliver us from evil
your work of the cross now done
For thine is the kingdom and power and glory
hidden there in the broken body of the cross
forever and ever
to surprise us again and again even amidst the height of our sorrow

Lead us not into temptation

Yesterday, when my roommates and I arrived home, we had all had really bad days for various reasons - whether it was hurt pride (mine), hostile phone calls (Kelsey), or general moodiness (all of us), we were all in that funk where it's easy to rage at your circumstances. I know that I personally was tired after my 2 1/2 hour bus ride, frustrated by other issues, and hurt by a rejection letter that was waiting for me when I got home. I know that I succumbed to temptation last night; the temptation to dwell too much on worldly success, and forget about the actual kingdom of God.
It's rather appropriate that all of this happened on Maundy Thursday; we were each of us in one of our own Gethsemane days, when we question and get angry and tired about what we feel is surrounding us. I just wish I could have been stronger.

Thy will...arrrrgh

It's Good Friday, and I'm having control issues. I want to be telling God what to do. Actually, in my prayers I basically am telling God what to do...

and then there was Jesus, who could have come down off the cross, who could have defended himself, who was God Incarnate and therefore all powerful (while at the same time fully human...I can accept that, even though the Trinity continues to baffle me), and yet gave himself up, submitted, to suffering and death.



I hope that on Good Friday I can, for once, relinquish the illusion of control I typically cling to.

Forgiveness of sins

I've been thinking alot recently about the Brethren tradition of the love feast. In their congregations, it is the third sacrament, consisting of celebrating together like at the Last Supper, and washing each other's feet. It lifts up this act from a rather esoteric display of servanthood to something central to the faith, where I feel it should be.
But there's more than service to the washing of feet; it's a physical manifestation of God's forgiveness to us. Christ took the nastiest, dirtiest part of what we see about each other, and made them clean and pure again himself. Ingrown toenails, athlete's foot, grime and dirt - all were washed away. It's very similar to God washes us clean of our sins, those nastiest parts of our personalities and lives. I wish more people practiced the love feast; it's strong imagery.

Holy Week

Nothing really jumps out at me today. I think about the mundane events of my life and the grand events that will come to pass over the next couple of days. Literally life, death, resurrection, and wonder will flash before us. It seems surreal and I guess for one on the outside of faith, it would be almost comic.

If not comic certainly tragic, for at the center of story lies the brutal death of a man. Of that we can be certain.

Over the next few days we are not worshiping tragedy. We wait with baited breath that moment when tragedy is overturned. The tragedy is not diminished. Tragedy is redeemed. Our comic, violent, hopeless act becomes overturned.

So in sense their hold to comedy is correct. Not in the laughable sense but comedy in the literary sense. A wrong will be righted. The tomb will be empty. Our darkness does not have to be that which condemns us. The story does not end there...

But I am too far into the story. On this night Jerusalem awaits...

House of Bondage

This struck me this morning. I think this biblical event, i.e. God leading his people out of the house of bondage, continues metaphorically today. I know that I continually create houses of bondage for myself, and God's the only way out. It would be nice if I would stop creating such houses.

I keep meaning to look up this passage (the Decalogue) in Hebrew. I assume the root for bondage is the same one that was used in Gen 22 when Abraham bound Issac. Apparently Jews call that story, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, "The Binding."

Taking the Lord's Name in Vain

Jephthah exemplifies this commandment for me. I know that too often, I try to promise God things, try to dedicate myself to disciplines and issues that promote the kingdom or develop discipleship, knowing that I'm probably not going to go through with it - things like doing devotions every day, or tithing, or what not. I've never felt that taking the Lord's name in vain was really about swearing; really, it's about making rash promises that you don't take seriously. If Jephthah had known that his daughter would be taken from him because of the vow he made to God, would he have made it? I'm impressed that he honored it. Just more proof that we shouldn't take our commitment to our God lightly...

You shall not bow down to them or serve them

It is hard not to focus on the Apostles Creed during Holy Week. As we move toward good Friday one can imagine the nervousness in the air and the talk in Jerusalem. It was the Passover. The time of remembrance when a people were delivered by God and the most powerful nation on earth was overthrown. The climate must have been charged. Here arrived Jesus with a motley band of followers in a city with a people crying out to be liberated from a foreign occupying army. People are people so there was shock, resentment, drama as this rogue back country rabbi spoke truth against power and allegiance to God above all else. So as I read the apostles creed "suffered under Pontius Pilate" it had impact since I know how the week ends. While Jesus was innocent of the charges brought against him he was not chosen to be brought before Pilate for no reason. He had not come to Jerusalem to simply be a pilgrim.

I then read the Ten Commandments.

This whole period of Lent for me has been the continual reflection on the first command. You can't escape it in the readings:The first commandment, The fourth commandment, Our father, I believe.

God seeks us to seek him first.

Today I really saw how Jesus lived it out. Even with the threat of punishment, even with the uncomfort that he knew his words would bring, even as he must of felt the climate of Jerusalem shift against him from his royal entrance toward his criminal end, Jesus did not waver from the first command.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God"

Judge

Today, judgment leapt out at me, as in "he will come again to judge the living and the dead" and "The Lord wil not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain."

Judgment has always made me uncomfortable, but why? Would it make me comfortable to believe that people can behave however they wish without facing consequences? It seems that some of us (note the us, because I know I do this) abuse our Christianity by taking our forgiveness for granted. God's grace through Jesus, so no worries. Our OT professor pointed out yesterday that there is both love and jugdment in both testaments, and that to leave out either is "to impoverish the Gospel message."

To Judge the Living and the Dead

I can't help but feel a little daunted whenever I really think about the role that I am stepping into. Not necessarily for the earthly difficulties of work, dilemma, persons I may not agree with, a church hieracharchy I may struggle with. These are almost expected. People are people.

God on the other hand is God.

All I really want is God to greet me at my death, "Well done my good and faithful servant."

There is risk in taking on this position. There is the risk of getting caught up in power or the prestige. As a friend of mine often recounts, he does not want to win the "millstone of the year award." Nor do I.

I can't help to think of "To he whom much has been given, much will be demanded."

I hope I never forget to whom I owe my allegianance.

Father

The only word that keeps leaping out at me but that I keep trying not to notice is father. My father has been unwell for some time; he'll have a setback, then things will look better, then suddenly another setback. I feel some anger with God about this, and I don't want to, so I tend to try not to think about it. (Maybe that's one reason I keep too busy...maybe it's not all about a drive for grades?) But, in a loving relationship, such as the one I want with God, it is important that I allow and acknowlege the anger, because otherwise I won't be able to work past it, toward reconciliation and healing. So, that's where I am this moment, angry with an all-powerful God whom, it would seem, has heaped problems on my dad for two and a half years, or has refused to intervene on Dad's behalf, or something.