Going through the motions by Kari Henkelmann Keyl

Ok, now we’re in deep. We’ve stepped through the Palm Sunday door into Holying Week. Or Holy Week, if you prefer. But there will be a lot of holying going on this week, I can assure you. Keep all your senses sharpened, and you may get in on it, too.

Like Heidi said last post, this all-important week for Christ-followers is a mysterious movement of time which is bookended by parties: the palm-waving-save-us hoopla of Palm Sunday and the power-of-death-defeated yesssss of Easter. So what goes on in between? It’s different for each person, of course. One common word might be EXPERIENCING.

Many worshiping communities will have an abundance of ways for people to experience the redeeming love of God in Jesus. Some may have a gathering every day. Many will have a Thursday-Friday-Saturday experience: three worship events that are linked together as one journey of faith.

Sometimes people bemoan the fact that going to these worship gatherings is “just going through the motions”. As in: is anything really HAPPENING, or are they just doing what they’re doing because that’s what they’ve always done?

Well, I’d like to revive this phrase, asking you to consider that “going through the motions” can be full of meaning. As in: something is TRULY HAPPENING. Like part of you is dying and something new is rising up in its place. Like God is busy… challenging, healing, holying, drawing you close. It might be beyond words or rational understanding, this movement that is happening, but something is going on.

Going through the motions might mean:
+ kneeling and saying I’m sorry
+ receiving a healing touch of forgiveness
+ having your feet washed by loving hands
+ listening to some engaging stories
+ being splashed by some water
+ taking into your body the bread and wine of Jesus’ life
+ hearing/singing some deeply-piercing music
+ watching as the worship space is eerily “stripped” of all finery
+ journeying up to the cross to feel its roughness, its pain, its healing

I encourage you to get together with others who will experience this dying-and-rising with you. But maybe your thing will be to find a quiet spot and do some reflecting on your own. Here’s a suggestion for your reflection:  the story of Jesus' gift of life according to Luke.
You could consider all the players in the drama, asking yourself which one(s) you most relate to. What happens to you inside, knowing that this Jesus, who taught and lived the message that no one is to be left out of God’s forgiving love, was found to be too threatening a force, a voice that needed to be silenced? And Jesus kept on challenging and loving, even when it got him headed toward execution. What does it mean for you, knowing that now that love he died to give us, is available to all?

Whatever are the motions you are engaged in these next few days, let the motions speak for themselves, while the message of Jesus’-life-given-for-you sinks in. Know that your understanding of the Cross might be very different from the person sitting next to you, or even the person who’s preaching. There are so many ways of experiencing God’s opening-up love and God’s brand-new life.

Go through the motions. Notice the motions of God. Take it all in. Work it all through in your own time, in your own way. Feel free to share here what you experience, what questions you have, what insights you’ve gained.

I’ll close with this poetry by Paul Gehhardt. I’ve always been intrigued by the question he asks, “What language shall I borrow?”, suggesting that the whole experience of receiving God’s redeeming love is truly beyond words:

What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend,
For this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?
Oh, make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never out-live my love to thee.

Peace and passion to you this Holy Week,
Kari

Two Parties to Celebrate the King by Heid Jakoby

Are you ready to Party! With St. Patrick’s Day just last week, many were out partying and attending parades or marching in them. Many people love to party and to celebrate things by gathering together around a common theme. As we enter into Holy Week we begin with Palm Sunday and the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem Luke 19:28-40. Jesus riding into Jerusalem started a party, people were yelling “Hosanna – Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”, and they were excited and happy. Check out this link to the Musical Jesus Christ Superstar What's the Buzz

I have always loved this musical, because it put an edge on the story and this particular song talks about the good things that can be if everyone just listened and accepted Jesus. At this point in the story the people did not know what was to come, they were on a high of celebration and joy. In our modern world have we as a society been on a real high just to be disappointed or have had to face a tragedy?

Jesus was promoted as the “New King” he did not embrace that label until this day and then he wanted the idea of King to be different than what came before. As Peter Wolf ruminates on his blog Palming off the Donkey King

Jesus could not accept the association with Kingship and rule until he had opportunity to correct the popular experience and understanding of what that meant. Lord knows the current exemplars of kingship and rule were far from Jesus’ concept. ... Power, control and brutal consequences for those who dissented.
This was not what Jesus wanted to be associated with and so he avoids being proclaimed king until he had had a time to reorient his disciples understanding of kingship.
In three and a half years he has modeled what kings are intended to do for their people:
• He has healed the broken and restored them to full participation in community
• He has forgiven those who missed the mark of required ethical and religious standards and included them in his new community.
• He has raised the dead so as to offer social security to those women who would be destitute by the deaths of the men (Lazarus, Widow of Nain)
• He has raised and healed children to break the bondage of bad theology that blamed bad things on parental conditions and culture (Children of Jairus and the Canaanite woman)
• He has been inclusive, unconditionally accepting, and restorative in his words and actions.
This is who kings and rulers are meant to be and now it is time for him to own the archetype and to associate with the kingship that the stoned prophets were trying to bring to the palaces of Palestine.(yes probably both meanings of “stoned”, they were high on God remember?)

Who have we viewed as kings and how have we celebrated them, Elvis Presley the “King of Rock N Roll” or Michael Jackson the “King of Pop”. Currently the Newseum in Washington has a special exhibit on Elvis Presley check out the promotional video.

Both of these popular “Kings” died at an early age, both had and still have a following throughout the world. What makes these individuals so different? What do you think? How do you decide who to follow? As I reflect on the life of Elvis and Michael Jackson, I just wonder why they both turned to drugs at some point. How difficult is it to be referred to as King?

For Jesus it was more difficult than we could imagine. Inviting everyone to follow a very different kind of king led to suffering and death, but also to new life. By giving his life for all, Jesus brought the whole broken humanity into God’s arms; to find healing; to find a different way to live. To find Life-for-all that’s truly worth partying about! It’s a mystery that’s hard to explain. You almost have to experience it and then talk it over with a friend or two.

That's what Holy Week is all about. You've got the week book-ended with parties: the palm-waving party for the King-on-a-donkey (a wild new kind of peace-making King) and then the biggest party of the year: the joy of Easter (the King is back!). In between, you get to live through the reasons for all the partying. I encourage you to attend as many Holy Week gatherings as you can in order to live the journey, in real time. Please come back to the blog or to our facebook page to share your experience. If you need help finding a place to go in your community please e-mail us at www.bytheway.nashua@gmail.com and we would be happy to help you.

Don’t forget we will be on Skype “bythewaycommunity” this Thursday March 25th from 7-8 PM for conversation.

Your comments are appreciated.

Giving: Obligation or Love? by Heidi Jakoby

Do you give out of obligation or out of love? Passionate giving feels very different from obligatory giving? What do you feel when you give? I grew up in a family where my parents were careful about giving my brothers and me gifts of equal value. Did the monetary value matter or was it the love and the non wrap-able gifts that matter the most? Do they matter equally? As we look at John 12:1-8 John 12:1-8 I want to focus on Mary and the passionate love she gave Jesus along with a monetarily valuable gift. What was the true gift? What did Mary receive in this exchange? Was Judas’ comment just a comment of a “realist”?

In the book Giving to God: The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Life the author Mark Allan Powell shares a childhood story of having to buy flowers for the dinner table and carry them home through the neighborhood and how he felt embarrassed versus when he was a young man buying flowers for a women he loved and how proud he felt. What was the difference in these two scenarios? When he was buying flowers for the young woman he loved he did not care what anyone thought or if this was a practical gift just that he wanted to get her flowers because he loved her.

I found this great article in The New York Times entitled: A Gift that Gives Right Back? The Giving Itself

This article talks about what the giver gets out of giving and that if you are someone who tells people not to give them a gift you are not showing care for that other person. Tara Parker-Pope writes: “People who refuse to accept or exchange gifts during the holidays, these experts say, may be missing out on an important connection with family and friends. ‘That doesn’t do a service to the relationship,’ said Ellen J. Langer, a Harvard psychology professor. ‘If I don’t let you give me a gift, then I’m not encouraging you to think about me and think about things I like. I am preventing you from experiencing the joy of engaging in all those activities. You do people a disservice by not giving them the gift of giving.’”

Do you agree? I know I love to give gifts and when my parents asked my husband and I to no longer “buy” them a gift I found ways of working around this request and to still “give” them gifts. I love the challenge. I also shop for gifts for people all the time. Each person is unique and I love to bring a smile to their face and to show them love.

As I was surfing the web I found a link to Jaeson Ma a musician and Pastor who has embarked on telling stories of love and challenging all of us to spread a little love. He has a variety of videos and writings about what I would call “acts of kindness” he calls these “365 Days of Love” here is a link about the gift of a SMILE  and the difference it can make.

Gifts do not need to cost you anything but time and love. What gifts can you give each day? What do you think about the difference in giving out of obligation or from love? How does giving anonymously feel differently than giving in person? What does this stir up in you as we continue our journey to Easter, to the gift of Jesus Christ dying for our sins, the ultimate gift? Who would you give your life for? Family, friends, enemies?

Please add your thoughts and comments here and feel free to join us Thursday March 18th in person at the Crowne Plaza, Nashua NH off of exit 8.

May you receive an unexpected gift today!

God is a loony dad (or mom)

by Kari Henkelmann Keyl

It’s no secret that parents sometimes do crazy things, embarrassing things that send their own children into near panic-attacks. Often those loony things are done due to loony-level love, a love so deep and fervent that it loses sight of what the rest of the world deems appropriate.

When Sandra Bullock  accepted her Academy Award last Sunday night, she gave a prize part of her “I’d like to thank…” speech to some such crazily loving people. She thanked those whom she said her film about a risky adoption,The Blind Side, was all about: “those moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from”.

She then went on to thank her own mother who taught her “there is no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love.”

That assertion that we are all deserving of love does not seem so terribly unusual. But actually living out that claim can easily take us into the quite counter-cultural.

Here enters our counter-cultural, crazily-loving God.

In last week’s blog, Heidi referenced a Boston Globe op-ed piece by James Carroll who amazingly has managed to get some pretty good theology into a newspaper. A few of his powerful words have been echoing in my brain ever since: “God is not an executioner,” he writes, adding: “God is not a nanny either.” I couldn’t agree more. But if God does not fit the common stereotype, the one who tempers life’s chaos by disciplining the bad and coddling the good, then who is God?

I’m pretty sure that this is just the kind of question that would have made the eyes of Jesus shine bright with eagerness-to-respond. And you can bet that he wouldn’t give a treatise on the topic. He’d tell a story. A story like this one:  Luke 15:11-32.

Now it would be all too easy to see this as a tame story about a naturally kind and welcoming God. After all, how unusual is it for an adult child to return to the homestead after finding it impossible to make it on his or her own? Not very. And plenty of parents are opening their arms to welcome their children home… because it makes good economic sense, and because the parents love their kids enough to put up with the inconvenience.

But back in Jesus’ time, this story would have had much more bite. Just the thought of a son abandoning his father’s land and wasting a slice of the family fortune on a fling... would have deeply enraged the listeners. Such humiliation this father would face in his community! And honor was not a luxury; it was a matter of life and death. Live honorably and you have the protection of the clan. To break the rules of honor is to risk living separately and dangerously. The only way he could even partially claim back his honor would be to declare his wayward son to be dead and gone.

When the son comes home in desperation, the father does the impossibly crazy thing. What he should do is look the other way and say, “You are not my son; my son is dead.” But this dad is so wildly in love with his wild son that he risks everything to sew back up what has been torn apart. He runs out to meet his son, an extremely shameful thing for an elder to do, probably racing to save his child from the angry mob of folks who would lynch the wicked kid in a heartbeat.

This loony dad does so much more than that. His joy at seeing his lost son spills out all over the place. The fact that he chooses barbecued beef for the welcome-home party means that he intends to bring the entire community together, eating the best meat, drinking the finest wine, having a blast. The only ticket you need to get into this rocking feast is the ability to embrace this crazy guy’s outrageously-forgiving, passionately-reconciling way of loving.

So… do you think this crazy parent would actually get people to come to the feast or would they just lynch the father and son together? In Jesus’ story, the music and dancing invites all to come in, even the resistant older brother. But in Jesus’ life, it’s a different story. As Jesus invites all to come into the party of God’s generous love that knows no boundary lines… he must truly put his own life on the line to give that love.

What would it mean for us to take this risky, boundary-less love into our lives? What grudges would we feel compelled to give up? What prejudices would start to melt? What healing of relationships might be born? What self-hatred could be disarmed and forgiven?

So what you’re saying, Jesus, is that God is a loony parent, right? One that will always mess up our categories of what is appropriate and expected.  God runs toward us to forgive and heal us, even when we are running away. God adopts us into the family no matter where we come from, and in the joy of that love we do the same for others. God is so determined to bring together all of God’s children that God will do anything to draw us close… close to God’s heart… and close to one another.

Feel free to jot your thoughts down in our comments and/or join in our audio skype conversation 7pm (EST) on Thursday, March 11, when we'll dig into this some more.  (If you're new to this, create a skype identity and contact bythewaycommunity). 
For more reading on the power of this story in Jesus' culture and in our time as well, check out  "The Parable of the Dysfunctional Family"  by Barbara Brown Taylor. It is an amazing read.

If quiet contemplation's what you're after, here's a song (sung by Amy Grant) to get you thinking/feeling about coming home to the God who waits for you, called Softly and Tenderly.

Are we doing what we are suppose to be doing? by Heidi Jakoby

What is God calling us to do?  To care and love one another. To treat others as we would like to be treated.  Trust, respect, help one another.  How do you describe what we as human beings are suppose to do as we are in relationship with others.

As in the reading from Luke 13: 1-9 Jesus talks about loss and tragedy and how one can become lost based on the choices they make.  At the end of this reading Jesus talks about a Fig tree that is about to be cut down because it has not given any fruit.  The gardener interrupts and says he will tend this tree and give it more time to bear good fruit.  I love this image of tending, and caring for the tree.  I often think of the people with whom I am in relationship; how do they care for me and help me to be a better person and how do I help them? Being in relationship with others is vital to our growth and understanding of who we are and what we are called to do.

With the earthquake in Haiti we have witnessed many people doing their best to help the people affected, by  donating money, items and their time.  Do you agree with Pat Robinson who said the Haitian people "made a pack with the devil" and that is why the earthquake happened? Or do you think that God is with the people of Haiti and showing grace and mercy through those who are helping.  James Carroll, in his article Haiti and God gives a great commentary on God's presence in Haiti.  What do you think of his article?  How does this inform your understanding of Luke?

Finally, as I reflect on these readings I think about how I live each day.  I believe I am asked by God to be in relationship with others and to be the best, loving, caring person I can be. I know I will make mistakes and that I am imperfect but as long as I do my best I will have a good day.  Check out this song by Lenka
Live Like You Were Dying What does it mean to you to live like you were dying?  Would you travel, would you quit work or would you continue to be the best person you can be each day?  What is your answer?

Please share your thoughts and consider joining us for an in person conversation at Panera on Amherst Street in Nashu NH on Thursday March 4.  We would like to hear from you.