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Prayer for Monday of Holy Week

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Lord, after the crowds and noise, the branches and cloaks, the shouts of “Hosanna!” and the scramble to follow your instructions and procure donkey and room, we relish a moment of quiet with you. Even as we anticipate what will come this week, we pause to be fully present to you and to one another. Much is beyond our control and our understanding, but for right now, we give thanks for you, your calling of us, your care for us, your presence with us. We lift our gratitude for the journey of discipleship that grants us the gift of you and of one another. Amen. … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Holy Week

Prayer for Palm/Passion Sunday

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Cloaks on the road, leafy branches cut from the fields of those who welcomed you, Lord Christ, all offerings of what people had freely given to praise you. They cried “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” as you humbly enter Jerusalem on a borrowed colt. Did those who shouted, threw down their coats or waved branches have any inkling what would soon happen to you? Will those struggling, yearning for hope, longing for relief and salvation through you find themselves once again disappointed and bereft by Friday? We, too, question your power and goodness when violence wins and the vulnerable are crushed and death refuses to relent. As we enter with you into Jerusalem, triumphant and lauded, give us the strength to stay awake and close even when events turn from praise to persecution. For the sake of all who suffer, make us stalwart and courageous. When the world seems sinister and cruel, remind us that you are the light that no darkness can overwhelm, and we are … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Holy Week

March 25, 2018 — Palm/Passion Sunday

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Mark 11:1-11 Palm/Passion Sunday, Year B Why are you doing this? What are you doing? These two questions are front and center in Mark’s version of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. We could add a few more questions from the other Gospel accounts of this story. Matthew asks: Who is this? Luke’s version posits a specific query: Why are you untying the colt? John doesn’t ask questions so much as state the disciples’ ongoing confusion: “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.” John’s Gospel must always be read back to front. But Mark emphasizes basic human curiosity: Why are you doing this? What are you doing? It’s the bystanders who ask the disciples as they are untying the colt, “What are you doing?” The disciples do as they are told and relay the message Jesus instructed them to share: “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” … [Read more...]

5th Sunday in Lent — March 18, 2018

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John 12:20-33 (34-36) Lent 5B Some Greeks want to see Jesus. They must have heard stories about Jesus. Word had gotten around about this Jesus who brought a man back from the dead. Maybe one of the Greeks was a friend of a friend who knew the man born blind who could now see. Maybe they were even members of the crowd who’d waved palm tree branches called, “Hosanna!” Maybe they simply wondered what all the hype was about, and they wanted to see for themselves if there was anything to the wild stories about this man called Jesus. They know enough, these Greeks, to know that Philip is one of Jesus’ followers, so they go to him and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” A simple, straightforward request: We wish to see Jesus. Philip – the one with a Greek name, the one Jesus asked to feed the 5,000, the one who invites Nathanael to “Come and see” for himself that this man from Nazareth is indeed the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote – goes to Andrew and the two of … [Read more...]

Lord, make me useless

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Lately my prayer has been to be useful: Make me useful, God. Where this plea originates during days overflowing with unending tasks and responsibilities, I do not know. Or maybe I do. I took a pastoral call for a friend recently. The phone rang: “Are you the pastor on call?” “Yes,” I said. “Then I guess you are it,” the voice on the other end replied. I felt this wave of gratitude, so glad to be “it.” Praying at the hospital bedside or presiding at a funeral come imbued with a sense of being needed, useful. I suspect physicians suturing a wound or teachers helping children learn to read or mechanics fixing an engine understand the satisfaction of unequivocal usefulness, a feeling elusive to those of us who trade in ideas and deep thoughts. But “make me useful” morphs quickly into “make me valuable, admired, affirmed.” Make me useful has “me” at the center. My silent prayers of confession become less an exhibition of a contrite heart and more a display of my need for … [Read more...]

Tagged With: worship

4th Sunday in Lent — March 11, 2018     

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Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 Lent 4B John 3:16. Even in this age when education through memorization has fallen out of favor, many Christians know this verse by heart. In a church I served, every Sunday school student in elementary school was required to recite this verse from memory. (One student, I am told, insisted on doing so while standing on his head. But, he got the job done.) John 3:16. Printed on shopping bags of some retailers, held up on posters at sporting events, embossed on vanity car license plates in every state. John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The gospel in one verse, right? A lovely encapsulation of the character of God and the work of Jesus Christ. Much catchier than, say, John 3:14: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so much the Son of Man be lifted up.” Much more inclusive sounding than John 3:18: “Whoever … [Read more...]

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