Easter 2: Into the Wound

March 29, 2008

Image: Into the Wound © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 2: John 20.19-31

Tonight I pulled out a card, received from a friend years ago. On the front of the card is Caravaggio’s depiction of the scene that we find in this week’s lectionary reading. As Caravaggio sees it, Christ stands to the left, chest bared, drawing Thomas’s hand into his wound as two other disciples look on. It is an intimate scene: Christ bows his head over Thomas’s hand, gazing at Thomas as he pulls him toward his wound; Thomas leans in, brow furrowed, the other disciples standing so close behind him they threaten to topple him straight into Jesus. Yet Thomas seems about to tumble into the wound of his own accord. He is doing more than merely looking where Christ leads him; his whole being is absorbed in wonder. The first time I saw this image, I immediately had the sense that Thomas was thinking, There’s another world in there.

The title sometimes given this remarkable painting, and this remarkable man, is “Doubting Thomas,” which grates a bit. Three weeks ago, contemplating the gospel lection for Lent 5, I was reminded that in the story of the raising of Lazarus, Thomas is the one—the only one—who steps forward and expresses his willingness to die with Jesus. In this week’s reading, Thomas once again crosses into a place where others have not ventured: into the very flesh of the risen Christ.

Caravaggio’s painting illumines a point that the gospel writers are keen to make in the post-resurrection stories of Jesus. They want to make sure we know that the risen Christ was no ghost, no ethereal spirit. He was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with our human condition did not end with his death. Perhaps that’s what strikes me so about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns the viewer with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us. The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison; they are a passage. Thomas’s hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.

The presence of the Christ who joins himself to us, who is intimately acquainted not only with the delights that come in being human but also in the ways it breaks us open, comes as a particular solace this week. As I write this in the middle of the night, my sweetheart is keeping vigil by his mother’s hospital bed. She is dying. Just a month ago, we—Gary and his brothers and their families—threw a surprise party to celebrate Shirley’s 80th birthday. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, and where we expected that another series of chemo would buy her some more time, complications set in with startling speed in the past week. Shirley remained alert until Gary and his three brothers arrived to be with her, and now she is letting go.

In a dozen hours I’ll fly to North Carolina, where Shirley’s extended family has begun to gather. I’ve been doing laundry today, working on taxes, paying bills, doing dishes, preparing for a retreat I’m scheduled to lead in Connecticut next weekend—all the mundane and sometimes marvelous details of life that persist even as another life is ending. As I pack, I’ll tuck in the card that my friend gave me all those years ago. And instead of Doubting Thomas, perhaps I’ll call him Believing Thomas. Thomas Who Asked for What He Needed. Thomas Who Crossed the Boundary.

Perhaps I’ll call him Thomas of the Passage, who reached out his hand and found what Shirley is finding in these passing hours:

There’s another world in there.

[To use the image “Into the Wound,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary, mystery | 6 Comments »

Easter Sunday: Out of the Garden

March 22, 2008

Image: Resurrection © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter Day:
John 20.1-18 or Matthew 28.1-10

John’s telling of the Easter story has long had a powerful hold on my imagination. The encounter between Mary Magdalene and the risen Christ continues to coax me deeper into the mysteries of this day. I have written elsewhere about some of the things that strike me about their garden meeting, including how Mary has to decide whether she will try to cling to what she has known, or whether she will accept Jesus’ invitation to leave the garden and proclaim what she has seen this day.

What I find myself pondering this time around, however, is what happens after Mary Magdalene leaves the garden. For her willingness to let go, to step into her new life, and to proclaim what she has seen, the Magdalene becomes known (at least in some quarters) as the “apostle to the apostles.” There’s a wonderful depiction of her apostolic proclamation among the pages of an illuminated manuscript that’s among my favorites. The St. Albans Psalter belonged to a 12th-century Englishwoman named Christina of Markyate, for whom the psalter may have been originally created. Christina lived as an anchoress, a woman called to prayer and solitude. I wonder what this woman, so devoted to the Word, thought about as she pondered this image of Mary Magdalene, telling the good news of the risen Word. Scholars have pointed out that such a depiction of Mary was, in those days, quite rare.

Centuries after the fact, the Magdalene’s Easter proclamation contributed to the wonderful legend that she moved to France and became a famous preacher. (Here’s my depiction of that legend; I like to think that after this sermon, Mary went for an espresso and a chocolate croissant. France, you know?) This tale of Mary the French evangelist is one in a cycle of Magdalene legends that are short on evidence but long on power and charm. Though lacking in fact, such legends offer insights into the lasting power of Mary Magdalene to stir questions about her role in the life of Jesus and in the formation of the early church.

Whatever may have become of the Magdalene beyond Easter morning, John’s Gospel clearly tells us that it was to her that the risen Christ first revealed himself, and she was the one he called to carry the news that everything had changed.

On the threshold of this Easter morning, what is the good news that the risen Christ calls you to proclaim? Is there anything you need to release, in order to tell what you have seen?

On this day: blessings, blessings.

[To use the image “Resurrection,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, books, Easter, lectionary, medieval, monastic stuff | 1 Comment »

Holy Saturday: A Day Between

March 21, 2008

Holy SaturdayImage: Holy Saturday © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Saturday: Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42

At the end of my yoga session this morning, I relaxed into the pose that’s called Savasana, or the Corpse Pose. On this day of thinking about Christ in the tomb, the pose gave me pause.

I thought of a visit to Minnesota a few years ago, and how a friend took me to a nearby Catholic church where you can take a drive-through tour of the Stations of the Cross. Each station offers a large carved relief, with the most elaborate being a life-sized rendering of the Crucifixion. Beneath the Crucifixion, you can look through a sheet of plexiglass to see Christ stretched out in his tomb. It is…interesting. Not the kind of thing that a Methodist girl often comes across.

On Holy Saturday, the lectionary presents us with a choice of Gospel readings. Both readings describe the burial of Christ, with Joseph of Arimathea figuring in each one. Matthew’s version tells us that Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (the mother of James and Joseph) were present, sitting opposite the tomb as Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus in the tomb, rolled a stone across its entrance, and walked away. In John’s Gospel, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea with Jesus’ burial, bringing a hundred pounds (a hundred pounds!) of myrrh and aloes that he and Joseph use as they wrap Jesus in his shroud and lay him in the tomb. I love how Nicodemus, whom we encountered on the second Sunday of Lent, shows up again here; the man who questioned Jesus about the womb now tends his body at the tomb.

Though the Sabbath soon descended after Jesus was laid in the tomb, some traditions hold that Jesus did not rest on this day. We see evidence of this in the Apostles’ Creed, in versions that follow the words “crucified, dead, and buried” with “He descended into hell” (or “He descended to the dead”). The idea that Christ descended into hell is particularly prevalent in Orthodox Christianity. It’s also known as the Descent into Hades, the Harrowing of Hell, or the Anastasis (Resurrection). Searching online for artwork depicting this scene, I found one image titled “Christ Visits Hell,” which makes it sound like a vacation. Artwork of the Descent regularly depicts Christ releasing Adam, Eve, and others from captivity in the underworld, such as in this image from the 12th-century Winchester Psalter. The Descent embodies the idea that the one who fully entered our humanity on earth and thereby freed us was able also to enter even into hell and release those in bondage there.

Whatever Christ was up to (or down to) on Holy Saturday, for his followers it was a day of sorrow and bewilderment. Bereft of the one around whom they had shaped their lives, they had to choose whether they would isolate themselves in their sorrow and fear, or whether they would remain together and wait for a way to present itself.

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. It is a day to open ourselves to the one who goes into the places of deepest pain and darkest fear, in order to bring us out.

What stirs within you on this holy, in-between day?

[To use the image “Holy Saturday,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Gospel of John, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, Lent, medieval | 5 Comments »

Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed

March 20, 2008

Good FridayImage: Good Friday © Jan Richardson

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

Several years ago, I did a series of charcoal drawings for Peter Storey’s book Listening at Golgotha, in which he reflects on Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the cross. (View the series here.) Peter is a retired bishop and active leader of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, and his experiences of working for justice and reconciliation in his home country profoundly shape his understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In Peter’s reflection on Jesus’ third word, “Woman, here is your son…. Here is your mother,” he observes that in giving his mother and his beloved friend John to one another, Jesus “created a community that was to become family to the widow, the orphan, the outcast, and the stranger.” Peter writes of our call to such a community as a “sacred trust,” and he asks, “If we accept, can anybody suffer hunger, homelessness, or need? Would there be any lonely old people? Could there be a single unwanted child? If Jesus has made everyone kin to me, would that not make every war in history a civil war and every casualty a death in my family?”

Peter goes on to write, “From the cross where he is nailed, Jesus nails us to each other.”

The first time I read this sentence, sitting at my drafting table as I contemplated Peter’s manuscript, I cringed. I wanted some other word there besides nailed. I wanted Peter to say that Jesus binds us to each other, or joins us to each other, or some other image less graphic and bloody.

As I continued to sit with the image, I began to realize—Well, yeah, Peter’s right. In our loving, in our call and struggle to be community, we get nailed.

I have listened to the stories of women and men who lived with abuse; I have—like all of us—been drenched with images of terrorism and warfare; I have seen the ways that some people participate in their own wounding because they don’t know how to live otherwise, or because they believe that suffering, by its own nature, is somehow redemptive and should be sought out. Everything I know about the love of God causes me to resist the idea that Christ desires our suffering and that he would perpetuate this culture of violence by willfully inflicting pain upon us.

What Peter claims here, however, is not that Christ desires or wills our wounding. Rather, Peter recognizes and names what happens when we try to be family to one another. Christ doesn’t call us to seek out pain. Pain is not the goal. It does, however, seem to be an inextricable part of loving. When it comes to love, there’s no need to seek out suffering. In the risk of exposing ourselves and opening ourselves to one another, the wounds will open of their own accord.

We call the crucifixion of Jesus the passion, and so it is, for us as well as for him. 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.

Pierce, break, tear, rend, nail: the older I get, the longer and more deeply I love, the more I see how the words I used to avoid are part of the vocabulary of the community to which Christ calls us. It is part of the language of hearts that seek to live in relationship with one another, with all the risks and losses and joys that come in loving. Jesus’ final word from the cross, “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” reminds us that every relationship will, at some point, contain a good-bye.

Yet we who know the rest of the story, we who have glimpsed the other side of Good Friday, know that Jesus’ last word from the cross isn’t the final word. There are more words to come, crucial words that Christ will yet add to our vocabulary, our story, our community.

For now, we wait. Together. Nailed to one another.

What words are you noticing, hearing, speaking this day? What is the vocabulary you use to describe your experience of community and of loving?

Blessings to you as we approach Good Friday.

[To use the image “Good Friday,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, books, lectionary, Lent | 7 Comments »

Holy Thursday: Feet and Food

March 19, 2008

Image: Holy Thursday © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Holy Thursday: John 13.1-17, 31b-35

Years ago I spent a summer doing an internship that involved regular, intensive meetings with the other interns and a supervisor. We were expected to be emotionally and spiritually vulnerable with one another as part of the process. As someone who much prefers to have control over where and how I share about myself, I continually struggled with how to do this with a group of people whom I hadn’t chosen myself. The internship became an important part of my formation process as a minister, and I gained a deep appreciation for the folks in the group, but for an introvert, the expected intimacy was a huge and frequently uncomfortable stretch.

Maybe it was that experience, or perhaps it’s just my natural introverted tendencies, but I tend to avoid situations where I’m encouraged or expected to be intimate beyond my usual boundaries. And here we are at the edge of Holy Thursday, a day when we’re confronted with a story that challenges us as a church to do that very thing.

The Gospel lection for Holy Thursday offers John’s telling of the Last Supper. Alone among the Gospel writers, John tells us that in the middle of the meal—likely a Passover meal in which they would have retold the story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from their captivity—Jesus removes his robe, pours water into a basin, and begins to wash the disciples’ feet. Peter challenges him, and in responding to Peter’s challenge, Jesus makes very clear that he expects his disciples to do the same thing for one another. In word and action, Jesus provides a quick and deep lesson about power in Christian community: how we are to share power, how this challenges us beyond our accustomed roles, and how it is grounded in love. “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says as he responds to Peter, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13.34, 35).

I find it intriguing that in terms of ritual practices, Jesus laid down hardly any mandates. One can argue, in fact, that footwashing is the only ritual act that he specifically exhorted his followers to practice. Interesting, then, that most Christian communities practice it so seldom. I can count on two hands (or feet) the number of times I’ve participated in a footwashing. Given my aforementioned aversion to situations where I’m expected to be intimate with folks whom I might not otherwise choose to be intimate with, there’s a part of me that doesn’t terribly mind this. Given the dearth of footwashing opportunities, I know I’m not alone in this.

The last footwashing I participated in was during a retreat that I shared with clergywomen who serve in a denomination where the practice of footwashing is part of their custom. Drawing from this same passage in John, their ritual takes place in the context of a love feast. It was an exquisite experience to participate with these amazing women who had crafted the ritual with such intention and care, and who understand the power of a practice that calls us not only to serve but to be served. (For those whose lives are shaped around service, the latter may be the most challenging part of the ritual).

But I find myself wondering—what would such a ritual be like in the church community of which I am a part? As Jesus demonstrated, such a ritual shakes up the usual relationships by which a community understands and defines itself. Perhaps this, as much as the mere fact of such physical closeness in a culture that doesn’t particularly foster this, is the source of our discomfort.

Which, of course, is what Jesus was trying to get his disciples—and us—to see. In these final days of Lent, Jesus’ act calls us to remember that this season is not only about examining our personal habits, to see if there are any that are insulating us from God; it’s a season that calls us to examine our corporate habits as well, to see how our practices as a community open us to or distract us from the presence of God.

I love that Jesus washes the disciples’ feet in the context of a meal. As someone who considers the table a holy place, and who purely loves to eat, I dig that. An old boyfriend told me one time that he’d never met a girl who liked her groceries so much. (Though at 40, I’m starting to feel my lucky metabolism shift…) In its own way, however, sharing a table calls us to a radical intimacy. To some of us it may seem less risky than footwashing, may cause less overt squirming, but it demands no less of us. Jesus had a few things to say about tables and power, too. (Remember how, in Luke 14, he tells some banquet parables as a caution for those inclined to get grabby for seats of honor?).

M.F.K. Fisher, the famed culinary writer, once observed that “There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk.” “And feet are washed,” Jesus might add. As we approach Holy Thursday, how might God be calling you to find communion with others? How does power manifest itself in the community or communities of which you are a part? Does your community engage in any practices that challenge the balance of power, that cause you to reflect on your relationships with one another, and that invite you to question how you’ve always done things as a community?

May this week find you at a holy and challenging table.

[To use the image “Holy Thursday,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, food, lectionary, Lent | 7 Comments »

Feast of Saint Patrick

March 17, 2008

stpatrick.jpg
Saint Patrick: Deer’s Cry © Jan L. Richardson

It seems auspicious that Holy Week this year begins with the feast of St. Patrick. Though his feast falls during Lent by happenstance, Patrick offers a powerful example of someone who, in every season, accepted the challenge that Lent poses us: to stretch beyond the familiar borders of the world we know, and to meet God there.

The story of Patrick is deeply entwined with the story of Ireland, so much so that it was only in recent years that I learned that Patrick’s story didn’t begin there. The boy who would become a saint was born in Britain at the end of the fourth century. As a youth he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave, where he tended flocks and began to spend his time in prayer. In a work titled “Patrick’s Declaration on the Great Works of God,” also known as the Confessio, Patrick writes that as he prayed among the flocks, “more and more, the love of God and the fear of him grew [in me], and [my] faith was increased and [my] spirit was quickened….” After six years, Patrick escaped from captivity and returned to Britain and to his parents, who, he tells us, “begged me—after all those great tribulations I had been through—that I should go nowhere, nor ever leave them.” Yet Patrick goes on to write,

…it was there, I speak the truth, that ‘I saw a vision of the night’: a man named Victoricus—’like one’ from Ireland—coming with innumerable letters. He gave me one of them and I began to read what was in it: ‘The voice of the Irish.’ And at that very moment as I was reading out the letter’s opening, I thought I heard the voice of those around the wood of Foclut, which is close to the western sea. It was ‘as if they were shouting with one voice’: ‘O holy boy, we beg you to come again and walk among us.’ And I was ‘broken hearted’ and could not read anything more. And at that moment I woke up. Thank God, after many years the Lord granted them what they called out for.

Patrick eventually went back to Ireland, returning as a bishop to the land that had been the place of his bondage. For Patrick and his fifth-century contemporaries, Ireland was the edge of the known world. In returning there, he considered himself to be living out Christ’s call to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. He writes, “We are [now] witnesses to the fact that the gospel has been preached out to beyond where any man lives.” Though Patrick was not the first Christian to set foot in Ireland, he was among the earliest, and his tireless, wide-ranging ministry was pivotal in the formation and organization of the church in that land.

Like all good saints, Patrick has attracted good legends. One story relates that as he and his companions made their way to Tara to see Loegaire, the High King of Ireland, the king’s men tried to ambush them. Patrick sang a prayer, known as a lorica (”breastplate”—a prayer of encompassing and protection), and he and his companions took on the appearance of deer, thereby eluding their attackers. The prayer, which became known as Patrick’s Breastplate or Deer’s Cry, most likely dates to at least two centuries later. It endures, however, as one of the most beautiful and powerful prayers of the Christian tradition, and it conveys something of the spirit of Patrick that continues to permeate Ireland and the world beyond. The prayer reads, in part,

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me;
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me;
Christ to right of me, Christ to left of me;
Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising…

(This excerpt, along with the quotes from Patrick’s Confessio,
come from Celtic Spirituality, translated and introduced
by Oliver Davies.)

Enter “Deer’s Cry” into your search engine and you’ll find a variety of translations of the entire prayer. My favorite translation is by Malachi McCormick of the Stone Street Press. In a charming edition which, like all his books, is calligraphed, illustrated, and hand-bound by his own Irish self, Malachi offers his English translation alongside the old Irish text. I happened upon Malachi’s Deer’s Cry as a seminary student many moons ago and was immediately taken by his elegant and painstaking work. His wondrous books provided the initial inspiration when I founded Wanton Gospeller Press several years ago, and one of my great delights in the wake of that has come in exchanging correspondence with Malachi. I invite you to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by visiting Malachi’s site at Stone Street Press, purchasing a copy of Deer’s Cry, and picking up a few other books while you’re at it.

A blessed Feast of St. Patrick to you, and may God encompass you with protection on this and all days.

Bonus round: My sweetheart, Garrison Doles, has an amazing song inspired by the life of St. Patrick. It incorporates the ancient prayer of encompassing known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” or “Deer’s Cry.” Click this audio player to hear “Patrick on the Water” (from Gary’s CD House of Prayer).

[To use the “St. Patrick: Deer’s Cry” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, books, Celtic, Lent, monastic stuff, sacred time, writing | 4 Comments »

Palm Sunday: Where the Way Leads

March 14, 2008

Image: Where the Way Leads © Jan Richardson

At the opening of her book To Dance with God, Gertrud Mueller Nelson tells the story of an afternoon she spent absorbed in a project at her sewing machine. Her daughter Annika, three years old at the time, dug into the basket of scraps that sat at her mother’s feet. Annika pulled out several long, bright strips of discarded fabric, gathered them up, and slipped away. Gertrud writes than when she went to find Annika, “I tracked her whereabouts to the back garden where I found her sitting in the grass with a long pole. She was affixing the scraps to the top of the pole with great sticky wads of tape. ‘I’m making a banner for a procession,’ she said. ‘I need a procession so that God will come down and dance with us.’ With that she solemnly lifted her banner to flutter in the wind and slowly she began to dance.”

This week we celebrate Palm Sunday, remembering the day when the crowds of Jerusalem offered a procession to celebrate the one who came to live, and walk, and work, and dance among us. Matthew gives us the Gospel lection for Palm Sunday this year. Matthew 21.1-11 tells the familiar story of how Jesus sends two disciples ahead to the village to bring back a donkey for Jesus. (An art historical note here: Matthew’s claim that Jesus rode a donkey and a colt, which probably stemmed from a not-entirely-precise reading of the Isaiah prophecy that he quotes, produced some unusual medieval depictions of Jesus riding two animals at the same time. Not saying he couldn’t have done it, but I think he already had enough going on that he would have avoided that particular balancing act.) Matthew goes on to tell of the crowds: they line the road with cloaks and branches, they go ahead of Jesus, they follow after him, they shout Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! And to those in Jerusalem who ask, “Who is this?” these same crowds say, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

It is a scene of jubilation, this procession in honor of the prophet. For those who know the rest of the story, however, there is an eerie note to the cries of the crowd. The way of palms will lead to the way of the passion, a path marked by shouts of accusation and a collective demand for Jesus’ death, a path traced in blood.

Amid the hosannas of the festive crowd, I keep hearing a voice that echoes from the other end of Jesus’ story. It belongs to John the Baptist. It is a lone voice, a ragged, fiery, locust-and-honey-drenched voice, a voice that raised its cry long before the crowds began to do so. Early in his Gospel, Matthew tells us of John, and he turns to the prophet Isaiah for words to describe him:

This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'”
(Matthew 3.3, quoting Isaiah 40.3, NRSV)

John had indeed prepared the way for his kinsman Jesus, whom he recognized long before anyone else, even, as Luke tells us, leaping for joy in the womb when his pregnant mother Elizabeth heard the pregnant Mary’s voice. By the time that Matthew tells of a cloak-and-branch-strewn road, John is gone, dead at Herod’s command. What would the Baptist have thought of where this way, so well prepared, was taking Jesus? A prophet steeped in the stories of his prophetic forebears, John would have been well acquainted with the evils that can be visited upon a prophet. Yet he would have known, too, that evil never has the final word.

In the same Isaiah passage that Matthew quotes to describe John the Baptist, the prophet goes on to say this:

A voice says, “Cry out!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower
of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord
blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will
stand forever. (Isaiah 40.6-8)

The word endures. The Word endures. We who stand among the Palm Sunday crowds know that the Word will soon be beaten, mocked, and killed. We know, too, that that is not the end of the tale.

But we have not yet moved on to that part of the tale. This week’s Gospel lection beckons us to linger alongside the road, to lift our voices in celebration, and to ask ourselves a few questions. I find myself wondering, what is the way that I am preparing for Christ? Am I clearing a path by which he has access to my life? Am I keeping my eyes open to the variety of guises that Christ continues to wear in our world? Taking a cue from Annika, what am I lifting up, that God might come down and dance with me?

On the cusp of Palm Sunday, on the threshold of this Week of Weeks: blessings to you, and a pair of dancing shoes.

[To use the image “Where the Way Leads,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, lectio divina, lectionary, Lent, sacred time | 5 Comments »

Unbinding Words, Part 2

March 8, 2008

initial-i.jpgn the Middle Ages, artists depicted the raising of Lazarus with styles that varied but drew upon standard elements. The artists presented the viewer with the entire scene: a commanding Jesus summons forth Lazarus, who appears in some state of enshroudment. A crowd gathers around; typically, at least one of the bystanders holds his or her nose, underscoring practical Martha’s observation: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days” (John 11.39). The Limbourg Brothers offer such a depiction in Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry), which was, as its title suggests, one of the most lavish Books of Hours of the medieval period. You can visit The Raising of Lazarus to see their view of the scene (with an abundance of nose-holding folks).

The Saint John’s Bible, the first Bible to be entirely illuminated and lettered by hand in more than 500 years, presents this scene from a strikingly different perspective. Rather than placing the viewer near the bystanders outside the grave, the illuminator, Donald Jackson, locates the viewer inside the shadowy tomb. We are close enough to smell the death-garbed Lazarus. But we see from a perspective very close to the waking man’s own: our gaze follows his toward the opening of the tomb, where Jesus stands drenched in light.

The shift in perspective beckons us to see that as Jesus calls to Lazarus, he calls also to us. How are you feeling challenged to move this day?

Prayer of Confession

God of compassion,
we acknowledge the times
we have lived too long
with the words that others have put
into our mouths,
with the pain they have written
onto our bodies,
with the terror they have burned
into our hearts,
with the shame they have inscribed
onto our souls.
We know the times we have clung
to sackcloth not of our making,
when we have lived
clothed in weariness,
cloaked with anger,
and enshrouded by sorrow.
We grieve the occasions
when we have lived with alienation
rather than association,
when we have sought isolation
rather than consolation,
when our wounds within
have shut others out.
We confess our fear of the dark
and our uncertainty of the light.

Yet you have placed within us, God,
a longing for survival,
a hunger for your wholeness,
a yearning for your comfort,
and a hope for all our healing.
Bless our mouths
to name our wounds,
that we may not fear them;
our bodies,
that we might cherish them;
our hearts, that we may delight
in their longings,
and our souls, that we may trust
the wisdom of the stories they hold.
Grant us the courage
to be touched by you,
that when our days of weeping
are done,
we may wear your garments of gladness,
see one another in the light
of your love,
and stand together in the power
of your resurrection.
In the name of the risen Christ,
we pray. Amen.

Prayer © Jan L. Richardson, from In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season.

Posted in art, Gospel of John, lectio divina, lectionary, Lent, medieval | 2 Comments »

Lent 5: Unbinding Words

March 7, 2008


Unbinding Words © Jan L. Richardson

For the entire season of Lent I have been looking forward to this week, because it gives us John 11.1-45 for our Gospel reading. The raising of Lazarus is a Big Story. It takes place at a pivotal place in John’s narrative. The action has begun to intensify; Jesus has just narrowly escaped stoning, and he will soon make his triumphal, if short-lived, entry into Jerusalem. The primary goal of the story is to display Jesus’ power: to demonstrate, as a friend of mine once observed, that Jesus isn’t much impressed with death.

John conveys his point with a richness of texture and detail that makes this a particularly compelling text with which to do lectio divina. The story is dense with movement and meaning, and it offers an extravagance of entry points for reflection.

I am intrigued by the web of relationships among the participants in this text. There are Mary and Martha, whose story is bound together with the unbinding of their brother, and who foreshadow the presence of women at another tomb that lies not too distant. I am curious about the friendship that these siblings shared with Jesus, how their home in Bethany seems to have been for Jesus a particular place of hospitality, comfort, familiarity, and, as John points out, love.

There is Thomas, seemingly destined to forever carry the title “Doubting Thomas,” who ought to be better known as the one who, in this story, demonstrates his willingness to die with Jesus.

There is Jesus, whose presence in the story is marked by waiting and weeping.

And then there is Lazarus. Though the story hinges largely on him, for most of it he is a passive background figure. We never hear his voice, and it is only at the end of the story that he finally becomes really interesting, when he is faced with the choice of whether or not to come out of the tomb.

This story is one of my favorites, not just because it’s a Big Story but because of the way that so many stories come together within it. This is not just Almighty Jesus at the height of his powers, showing off what he is capable of; this is Jesus reaching into the depths of who he is, pouring himself out on behalf of those with whom he is most intimately in relationship. Jesus enacts Lazarus’ raising, but he does so in the context of a community. Jesus calls Lazarus forth, but he calls upon those around Lazarus—sisters, kinfolk, neighbors—to unbind him and let him go.

Despite my fascination with such details that this story offers, and despite the fact that I’ve been looking forward to it for all of Lent, it’s taken me a long while to get my act together on doing the artwork and writing for this reflection. There are a variety of reasons for this. Perhaps it’s best simply to tell you a small story.

I live and work in a studio apartment that’s about 300 square feet. I have one closet. After living here for nearly a decade, the closet has gotten pretty full. My decision to clean it out this week owed to a couple of factors: I was looking for something that I thought was in it, and I am getting myself situated to begin working full-time on a new book. I suspect many writers would tell you that there is no time when cleaning seems more compelling and, in fact, absolutely essential than when there is a new writing project at hand. As a result, my apartment is the tidiest it’s been in a long time. This periodic impulse derives partly from my resistance to writing, but I’ve learned that it’s also part of the process, kind of like a dog who turns around in circles before finally settling down. I experience a strong connection between my external and internal space. Clearing and cleaning and sorting is a way of wreaking some sort of order amid the chaos that attends the writing process.

I had not done a purge of my wardrobe in many years, and, as a result, I wound up with a startlingly large pile of garments needing to be ushered into their next life. I’m not a clothes horse; I don’t even particularly like shopping for clothes, mostly because most clothing stores around here offer a sea of sameness that induces lethargy and saps my will to Try Things On. Despite this, I had managed to amass a sizable collection of clothes that I hadn’t worn in years. I had had some of them since college. A number of the garments held sentimental attachments for me, and I subjected my sweetheart to stories of my two favorite sweaters, received as gifts in college and worn for years, and to lamentations over a few pairs of Birkenstocks that were worn beyond the point of repair but that I could hardly stand to throw away.

This small story is simply a way of saying that I have spent a fair bit of time this week thinking about what I have clothed myself in, what attachments they have held for me, and what I need to let go of. I anticipate you figured out a while back that I’m not talking just about literal clothes. Sorting through the stacks has provided fertile opportunity to wrestle with deeper matters of the patterns with which I garb myself, and to reckon with layers of habits, practices, and routines, not all of which serve me, or my community, well.

The raising of Lazarus is indeed a Big Story. It unfolds, however, in the context of patterns of relationships, choices, habits, and personalities that influence how each character participates in and responds to Lazarus’ raising. Our own lives are built on these same details. We each garb ourselves in routines and practices that carry us through our relationships, our work, our hungers, our lives. Those routines and practices influence how we receive and respond to God’s call. We may be swathed in layers of habits that may have once fit us, habits we may once have found beautiful, habits we may yet be attached to long past their usefulness but which now insulate and shroud us from the presence of God.

The season of Lent beckons us to reckon with our most entrenched habits as individuals and communities: to sort through them and to recognize that Christ, in all his humanity and all his divinity, has power even over them. This season reminds us that the miraculous and the mundane are intimately intertwined. We are called to wrestle with the very details that shape our lives together, that new life may emerge.

So I ask you some of the questions I have been carrying for myself this week: In your daily living, what patterns are life-giving and help you notice the presence of God? Which habits keep you bound? What helps you hear the voice of Christ who stands at the threshold between death and life? What will help you choose to come forth, and to help someone else do the same? Are there people who can help with the unbinding?

May you find the presence of God in every detail.

[To use the “Unbinding Words” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Gospel of John, lectio divina, lectionary, Lent, writing | 4 Comments »

Lent 4: Here’s Mud in Your Eye

February 27, 2008


Mud In Your Eye © Jan L. Richardson

One evening during my senior year of college, I had dinner with a couple of friends I hadn’t seen since high school. As we caught up over our meal, I shared that I was preparing to go to seminary to become a minister. Upon hearing this, one of my friends immediately launched a series of questions. What did I think of homosexuality? Fornication? The inerrancy of the Bible? It was clear that my friend, who (I had quickly learned) thought the idea of women in ordained ministry was both unscriptural and immoral, wasn’t really interested in a conversation. He was administering these questions not as a way of learning how I was sensing God’s call in my life but rather as a litmus test to see just how far I had strayed from God’s will for me as a woman.

There are questions, like those from my high school friend, that seek to keep us in our place, and there are questions that help us find the place where we belong. Our Gospel lection this week, John 9.1-41, invites us to hear both kinds of questions and to notice the vast difference between them.

John draws us into the story of a man, blind from birth, who has an encounter with Jesus that results in his being able to see. For those who had known the man as a blind beggar, the change in his condition is deeply unsettling. They begin to ask questions, first of one another, then of the man. They take him to the Pharisees, who ask questions of their own. Then they bring in the man’s parents and ask questions of them; they, in turn, direct the questioning back to the man. Lifted from their context, here are the questions they pose:

Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?

Then how were your eyes opened?

Where is he [Jesus]?

How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

What do you say about him?

Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?

What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?

There is a sense of mounting tension in John’s story, a steady escalation of frustration and fury on the part of the questioners each time the man responds. He is telling them nothing they want to hear, nothing that fits into the beliefs and experiences that they carry. The newly-sighted man possesses a remarkable sense of calm, answering in the only way he knows how: from his own experience. “One thing I do know,” he says, “that though I was blind, now I see.”

When the man’s inquisitors press further, he finally asks a question of his own. “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” His questions are too much for the questioners. John tells us that they begin to revile the man, finally sending him away with an abrupt, rhetorical question: “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

Their questions induce a sense of claustrophobia in me. These questions are not doorways into conversation. These questions are fences, these questions are walls. They are designed to reinforce the boundaries of what these people already know, and to keep their landscape of belief, experience, and knowledge safely contained.

These questioners are arrogant. They are aggravating. It would, therefore, be easy to dismiss them as the bad guys in this story. Reading this text in the context of lectio divina, however, urges me to consider where I find those maddening questioners inside myself. And I feel a measure of compassion for them, because I know the times when, faced with something beyond my own experience, I have scrambled for an illusion of security. I know the times, at least some of them, when I have retrenched the boundaries of my beliefs, when I have been overly defensive of what I think I know, when I have asked a question—of someone else or of myself—that built a wall rather than opening a door.

One of the best practices we can engage in, during Lent or any season, is to ask the questions, of others and ourselves, that expand our vision rather than confining it. Good questions carry something of a ritual within them, a sense of the sacramental: they do for us what the act of washing in the pool of Siloam did for the muddy-eyed man. Good questions rinse our eyes. They help us practice seeing. They widen and deepen our vision. They clarify our perception of what is present in our lives and of what is possible. They remind us, as a friend recently reminded me, that we may not always get answers, but asking a good question makes way for a response.

John wants to make sure that we know that Siloam, the name of the pool in which the man washed his eyes, means Sent. Here I have to make the theological observation: Is this cool or what? We are all being sent. Sometimes we are sent beyond the boundaries of what others find acceptable or comfortable or convenient. Sometimes we are sent beyond the limits of our own vision. Whether or not we know where we are going—and sometimes especially when we think we know where God means for us to go—we are ever needful of learning how to see. Like Jesus with the blind man, God calls us to participate in claiming the vision that God gives us, so that, as Jesus says, God’s works might be revealed in us. In order to know where and how and by whom we are being sent, we need to keep visiting Siloam to do the washing that will keep our eyes clear.

John closes this story with questions that are good eye-clearing questions. Jesus, John tells us, finds the seeing man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answers Jesus’ question with a question: “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” His question leads, not to a wall, or to a law, but to worship.

It’s the Pharisees who offer the final line in the long litany of questions that this story contains. Overhearing the exchange between the sighted man and Jesus, they ask, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”

Are we?

How well is your spirit seeing these days? What questions are coming your way in this season? What questions are you offering? Are they doorways or walls? How do they take you deeper into the mystery of Christ? Are there deeper questions beneath your questions? What questions will help keep your eyes clear so that you can see, and be sent?

[To use the “Mud In Your Eye” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, lectio divina, lectionary, Lent | 4 Comments »

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