Archive for March, 2018

Easter Sunday: This Is Not the End

March 29, 2018

Image: Risen © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Sunday, Year B:
John 20.1-18 or Mark 16.1-8

If you are looking
for a blessing,
do not linger
here.

—from Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2016

This is the place we have journeyed toward all these weeks, the destination we have been bound for all these days—more than forty now, if you count the Sundays. I am partial to John’s telling of the story of Easter morning, and of what happens between Mary Magdalene and Jesus here at the garden tomb—how at the sound of her name, Mary’s weeping gives way to seeing, to recognition, to the astounding joy of resurrection.

I would want to linger here, to stay and savor this miracle of reunion and return. But we know that Jesus asks something other of Mary Magdalene. Though this may be a garden, this is not a place to put down roots. It is a place of calling, of consecration, of sending as Jesus urges the Magdalene to go and tell what she has seen.

Mary has to choose whether she wants this calling, this consecration; she has to decide whether she truly wants to be sent from this place. I feel a catch in my own chest in this moment of decision, this threshold that will change everything from here.

This day, this empty tomb: this has been our destination all this time. But we see, with Mary Magdalene, that this is not a place to stop. This is not the end toward which we have been traveling.

This is the beginning.

* * *

For this day of beginning, I have gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Easter Sunday across the past decade. I offer these with deep gratitude to you for traveling this path with me, and with blessings and hope for the road that leads us on from here.

Easter Sunday: While It Was Still Dark
Easter Sunday: A Blessing for the Rising
Easter Sunday: Seen
Easter Sunday: Out of the Garden

I also want to share with you a song that Gary wrote for this day. It’s called “I Am With You Always,” and it’s from a CD he had nearly finished at the time of his death. Particularly on this side of his dying, the song comes as an achingly beautiful reminder that even in the heartrending leave-takings we endure in this life, we are not alone; we are accompanied always. To listen, click the play button in the audio player below. (For my email subscribers: if you don’t see the player below, click here to go to The Painted Prayerbook, where you can view it in this post.)

O my friends. Happy Easter!


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Risen,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary, sacred time | 7 Comments »

Holy Saturday: Breathe

March 28, 2018

Holy Saturday IIImage: Holy Saturday II © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday:
Matthew 27.57-66 or John 19.38-42

Holy Saturday is not a day for answers. It is a threshold day, a day that lies between, and so resists any easy certainty. It is a day of waiting, of remembering to breathe, of willing ourselves to turn to one another when grief lays hold of us.

—from Holy Saturday: A Day Between
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

Just in case the days have blurred together, it’s Saturday, she writes. I thought you might not know that.

On the day I receive these words in a message from my friend Peg, I am in a hospital room, keeping vigil for Gary. It has been nine days since the surgery from which he will never wake. It is, as it turns out, the halfway point of our vigil.

It’s Saturday.

On that day, Peg’s words arrive as a gift, something solid amid the wrenching fear and aching hope. On that threshold, her words remind me to breathe, to remember that others are breathing with me, and with Gary; that we are not alone.

It’s Saturday.

We have journeyed far in this season of Lent. We have, most likely, carried our own fears and hopes as we’ve traveled through the wilderness spaces of these past weeks. Lent generates its own field of intensity, one that seems only to quicken as we move through Holy Week, with its wild mix of celebration and grief.

And so I am here to give you the words Peg gave to me:

It’s Saturday.

If we have grown weary in this season. If we have become overwhelmed. If we are living with fear or anxiety or worry about what lies ahead. If the swirl of Holy Week has become intense. If time is moving strangely. If grief has been a traveling companion. If the ground beneath us has given way. If resurrection seems less than certain.

It’s Saturday.

This is the day that calls us to breathe. This is the day that invites us to make a space within the weariness, the fear, the ache. This is the day that beckons us to turn toward one another, and to remember we do not breathe alone.

It’s Saturday.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered up a collection of the reflections I’ve written for Holy Saturday across the past decade. In the waiting, in the vigil, may you be blessed.

Holy Saturday: Vigil
Holy Saturday: In the Breath, Another Breathing
Day 40/Holy Saturday: Therefore I Will Hope
Holy Saturday: The Art of Enduring
Holy Saturday: A Day Between


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Saturday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 6 Comments »

Good Friday: Speaking, Still

March 27, 2018

Image: Good Friday II © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Good Friday: John 18.1-19.42

Each time we stretch out our arms in love to one another, every time we open our hearts, we find the shadow of the cross, but also a glimpse of the open tomb. We are nailed indeed. It is our keenest grief, and our deepest joy.

—from Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2008

That he can still speak.

That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does not cease to say what he needs to say.

That as he lets go, he leaves them with words of comfort and release, of lamentation and love.

Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken. Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.

Knowing that these are his last words, but not his final ones.

That after this, there will be a span of silence. And that soon the silence will come to an end.

For now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we wait.

* * *

For this day, I’ve gathered together a collection of reflections I’ve written for Good Friday over the past decade. I offer them with gratitude and many blessings. Deep peace to you in these days.

Good Friday: Still
Good Friday: A Blessing for What Abides
Day 39/Good Friday: They Took the Body of Jesus
Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Good Friday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Holy Thursday: At the Table, Speaking of Love

March 26, 2018

Image: Holy Thursday II © Jan Richardson

Readings for Holy Thursday/Maundy Thursday:
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14; Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19;
1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 13.1-17, 31b-35

A blessing is not finished until we let it do its work within us and then pass it along, an offering grounded in the love that Jesus goes on to speak of this night.

—from Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
The Painted Prayerbook, April 2011

As this season has been unfolding, we’ve been talking about the wild language of Lent, noticing the words that have tugged at our attention, the vocabulary that has helped us make a map through these wilderness days.

Now the language intensifies, and the vocabulary takes on an urgent edge as it traces a path through these days of horror and of hope. Moving into Holy Week, we listen close and more closely still to the words being said now, as one does before a death.

Holy Thursday draws us to the table, in the company of Jesus and the disciples as he begins to speak his final words on this side of his dying. The disciples will not understand everything Jesus has to say, will not be able to comprehend fully the import of what he is telling them, but his words will sear themselves into their hearts nonetheless. These are the words that will return to the disciples later, in that bewildering time known as after. These are the words that will comfort them and also stir their courage for the path that waits for them still.

But for now, they, and we, are at the table. As the night unfolds, we will see that the word at the center of Jesus’ vocabulary is this:

Love.

In John’s Gospel, in what’s known as the Farewell Discourse (John 13:31-17:26), Jesus will speak the word love thirty-one times. In these final hours before his death, the word will ring repeatedly, a potent echo of the moment when Jesus rose from the Jordan River, the waters of baptism dripping from him, and heard himself named Beloved. This night, he will give this word to his friends, passing along to them the love he received at a moment he needed it most.

But Jesus does not begin there. As he works to convey what he most wants his companions to know, he does not start with spoken words. Instead, he takes a towel, a basin, water. He begins to wash the feet of his friends, the drenching itself another echo of his baptism and his naming as Beloved.

Perhaps more than anything Jesus could say this night—and he goes on to say quite a lot as he opens his heart at the table—this washing speaks to the hearts of the disciples. In this sacramental gesture, we see Jesus’ vocabulary in action. Word made flesh.

The love that Jesus enacts and speaks this night is an extraordinary gift and grace. But, as the disciples will hear Jesus say at the table, such a grace is not reserved solely for them. They are to pass the gift along: to enact this word, to live this word, to give flesh to this word in this world.

For I have set you an example, Jesus tells them as he returns to the table after washing their feet, that you also should do as I have done to you (John 13.15).

This is my commandment, Jesus will say to them a little later, as they linger at the table, that you love one another as I have loved you (John 15.12).

As we approach the table this week, how will we listen for the love that meets us there? How will we allow ourselves to receive the gift and the grace of this love? When we leave the table, how will we carry this love with us? How will we enact this love, giving it flesh for the life of the world?

Here at The Painted Prayerbook, where we are celebrating our tenth anniversary, we have traveled through Holy Week many times. In a series of posts this week, I’ll be gathering up reflections I’ve written for Holy Week across the past decade, as well as for Easter Sunday. In the links below, you’ll find a collection of reflections for Holy Thursday. I’m tucking them beside your plate, grateful for your companionship at this table. Blessings.

Holy Thursday: Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Holy Thursday: Take a Blessing
Day 38/Holy Thursday: Cup of the New Covenant
Holy Thursday: Feet and Food


Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Holy Thursday II,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 2 Comments »

Liturgy of the Passion: Awake, Awake

March 21, 2018

GethsemaneImage: Gethsemane © Jan Richardson

Readings for the Liturgy of the Passion, Year B:
Isaiah 50.4-9a, Psalm 31.9-16, Philippians 2.5-11,
Mark 14.1-15.47 or Mark 15:1-39, (40-47)

It’s no wonder the disciples sleep. It is hard work sometimes to remain present with Christ, to stay awake to him, to God’s longing for us, to the demands of resurrection.

—from Passion/Palm Sunday: A Place Called Gethsemane
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2012

Following on this week’s reflection for Palm Sunday, I wanted also to gather up some reflections I’ve written here for the Liturgy of the Passion. Deep peace to you as we move through these days.

Mark 14.1-15.47

Passion/Palm Sunday: A Place Called Gethsemane
Day 34: Anointed

Isaiah 50.4-9a

Day 31: Wakens My Ear to Listen

Psalm 31.9-16

Day 32: Like a Broken Vessel

Philippians 2.5-11

Day 33: Emptied


Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Gethsemane,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of Mark, lectionary, Lent, The Psalms | Leave a Comment »

Palm Sunday: Way of Courage, Way of Grace

March 20, 2018

The Way of Blessing Shall Become Our Own WayImage: The Way of Blessing Shall Become Our Own Way
© Jan Richardson

Readings for Palm Sunday, Year B:
Psalm 118.1-2, 19-29, Mark 11.1-11 or John 12.12-16

There is a time for stillness, for waiting for Christ as he makes his dancing way toward us. And there is a time to be in motion, to set out on a path, knowing that although God is everywhere, and always with us, we sometimes need a journey in order to meet God—and ourselves—anew.

—from Palm Sunday: Blessing of Palms
The Painted Prayerbook, April 2017

It can be challenging enough to walk with intention into a future that is unknown. But to move with purpose toward a destination that is known, and fearsome? That is quite a different path, one that requires grace and courage we cannot conjure on our own.

Such a path offers a curious freedom, too, because it invites us to enter our future not as victims, helpless before our fate, but with intention and discernment, knowing that the path we choose—any path we choose—will hold its occasions of dying and rising. When we can meet those occasions with courage and grace, the perils of the chosen path begin to lose their power over us.

Courage. Grace. We’ve been talking about the wild language of Lent over the past weeks, the vocabulary that draws our attention and provides markers on our path through this season. As we round toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week, these are the words I’m noticing, the words I want to carry at this point in the path.

I’ve gathered up a collection of reflections I’ve written for Palm Sunday across the past decade at The Painted Prayerbook. I’m passing these along to you with blessings and gratitude. Over the coming days, as we accompany Christ on the path he chose with astonishing intention, may his courage and grace pass into us. May we follow where they lead.

Mark 11.1-11 and related gospel readings

Palm Sunday: Blessing of Palms
Day 30: Blessed Is the One
Palm Sunday: The Way It Makes
Palm Sunday: The Temple by Night
Palm Sunday: Where the Way Leads

Psalm 118

Day 29: God Has Given Us Light

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “The Way of Blessing Shall Become Our Own Way,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, lectionary, Lent | 3 Comments »

Lent 5: Testimony to the Mystery

March 12, 2018

Image: Into the Seed © Jan Richardson

Readings for Lent 5, Year B: Jeremiah 31.31-34, Psalm 51.1-12,
Hebrews 5.5-10, John 12.20-33

We work so very hard at letting go, sometimes, trying to train ourselves to release our grip on all that is not God. But what if it is not about giving up but giving in? Falling into dirt, as Jesus says here. Going where grain is supposed to go.

—from Lent 5: Into the Seed
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2009

A lot of life has happened since I wrote those words nine years ago, in a reflection on this week’s reading from John’s Gospel. A lot of life, and a death that alters how I read this passage now.

It goes against all reason—that what falls into earth could live again. That letting go could enable this living. It bears discernment, of course, so that we may know when we are being called to hold on fiercely, to refuse to let part of ourselves die, and when to release our hold in order to let new life rise up in us.

The discernment depends little on reason, though, and as I spiral back around the reflections I’ve written for this week’s lections across the past decade, it’s the presence of paradox in those reflections that still resonates so strongly for me. That tension and relationship between dying and rising, hiddenness and revelation, losing and finding, intention and surrender.

I am here to bear testimony to that paradox, that mystery, and to the presence of the God who seeks us out in the midst of it all: the God who, Jeremiah tells us this week, offers us a new covenant; the God who, the psalmist sings, releases us from the sin that has held us; the God who, Paul writes, saved Jesus from death and who, with love and mercy beyond reason, is ever at work to provide that same gift of life to us.

In this fifth week of Lent, what is the God of paradox and mystery up to in your life? How are Jesus’ words about dying and living sitting with you? Is there something you are sensing an invitation to let go of in order to enter more fully into the life God desires for you? What help do you need in order for this to happen?

For you, for this new week in our Lenten path, I’ve gathered up a collection of reflections I’ve written for this Sunday’s readings across the past ten years. I’m slipping them into your hands with gratitude for the ways you share this path, and with many blessings.

John 12.20-33

Lent 5: Into the Seed
5th Sunday in Lent: Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls

Jeremiah 31.31-34

Day 24: And Remember Their Sin No More

Psalm 51

Day 25: And Cleanse Me
Day 26: My Secret Heart
Day 27: Restore the Joy of Salvation

Hebrews 5.5-10

Day 28: With Loud Cries and Tears

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Into the Seed,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, The Psalms | 2 Comments »

Lent 4: Strange Remedies

March 5, 2018

Image: In the Wilderness © Jan Richardson

Readings for Lent 4, Year B:
Numbers 21.4-9; Psalm 107.1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2.1-10;
John 3.14-21

Look on me and live, [Jesus] says. Turn your gaze, your attention,
your focus to me, and you will be saved by the hand of the God who
sent me, not for the punishment of the world but for the
utter love of it.

—from Lent 4: The Serpent in the Text
The Painted Prayerbook, March 2009

At the beginning of this season, I wrote about the wild language of Lent—the wilderness words that caught my attention as I spiraled back around a decade’s worth of reflections I had written here at The Painted Prayerbook for the first Sunday of Lent. I’ve continued to think about the language of Lent as this season has unfolded. This week, as I revisited the reflections I’ve written for Lent 4 across the years, the vocabulary that grabbed my attention was this: strange remedy.

Strange remedy came up in an early reflection I wrote on this week’s passage from John’s Gospel (“Lent 4: The Serpent in the Text”). In this passage, Jesus makes reference to a curious episode that happens to the people of Israel on their wilderness journey; this episode is described in Sunday’s lection from Numbers. In my reflection on the John passage, I explored the seeming strangeness of both these texts, along with the hope they hold out to us.

The point of the stories, after all, is that God is intent on providing healing for God’s people. God’s desire for healing persists not only when we are sick or broken because of circumstances beyond our control, but also in those times when our own choices have brought about what ails us. We see God’s bent toward healing in the other readings as well: They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress, we read in the psalm; he sent out his word and healed them (107.19-20). And to his friends in the church at Ephesus, Paul writes, God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2.4-5).

I am especially struck by Paul’s words here—that when our brokenness is so severe as to cause a kind of death, God’s pervasive mercy and love, made evident in Christ, can bring us back to life.

When new life comes, when healing arrives, it doesn’t always look like we hope. In the times when healing doesn’t equate with curing, or doesn’t fix the underlying cause of our pain, this can be bitter indeed. In the midst of this, these passages bear witness to a God who ceaselessly, stubbornly works to make a path to wholeness for us.

If there’s anything I have learned on my journey since Gary’s death, it’s that the path to healing often unfolds by weird, inexplicable turns, as the snakebitten people of Israel discovered. This makes some kind of convoluted sense. Because the brokenness that besets us can take such strange forms—be it grief, illness, accident, or any of the other ways that life can unexpectedly and senselessly clobber us—it should perhaps come as no surprise that the means of our healing can take strange forms as well.

Even so, I still can find myself surprised by the strange remedies that present themselves—the peculiar graces that visit, the unforeseen encounters that bring comfort or insight, the particular practices of solace that don’t always make logical sense and might not fit for someone else but offer the mending my heart most needs. I am learning to keep my eyes open for those strange and surprising remedies, to loosen my hold on my expectations of what mending and solace should look like, in hopes of recognizing the remedies when they show up.

Strange remedies. At this place in our Lenten path—which we cross the halfway point of this week—what does this stir for you? How do you keep your eyes and heart open for the healing and life that Christ brings, often in such unexpected ways? Is there a place of brokenness you are living with that might hold a particular invitation for you in this season—a step toward wholeness that might not make sense to others but helps open you to the healing God desires?

As we mark ten years at The Painted Prayerbook, I’ve gathered up a collection of reflections I’ve written for this week’s lectionary readings. I’m passing them along to you with deep gratitude and many blessings.

John 3.14-21

Lent 4: The Serpent in the Text
Day 22: Rather Than Light

Numbers 21.4-9

Day 17: In the Wilderness

Psalm 107.1-3, 17-22

Day 18: O Give Thanks
Day 19: And Saved Them from Their Distress

Ephesians 2.1-10

Day 20: Even When We Were Dead
Day 21: In the Heavenly Places

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “In the Wilderness,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in art, Gospel of John, lectionary, Lent, The Psalms | 3 Comments »