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

A Truth Worth Trying On

Last week Steve reflected on the enormously tough but endlessly rewarding work of forgiving those who’ve messed with you. You get hurt. The hurt creates a wall. You can either live with the wall in place or you can do something about it. Be honest. Keep reaching out to the offender. Show the same patient compassion to others as God shows you. Forgive. Or else…

Or else? Yeah, there are consequences to not forgiving. They range from being mildly irritable to living a tortured life. And if the negative consequences are not enough to motivate you, try the positive: True forgiveness is so sweet, such a release, refreshing as a deep cleansing breath. Not to be missed.

With God’s help, and only with God’s help I’m afraid, forgiveness can become a way of life… a way we stray from, to be sure… but the Spirit keeps tugging on us to come back and taste its sweetness again. It can be downright habit-forming.

Forgiving those who’ve injured us is vital. But if you limit yourself to just forgiving the jerks around you, you’re missing out.

This week, try forgiving Life. Try forgiving God. Try forgiving the jerk you sometimes see in the mirror.

List your grievances. Call in your witnesses. Be honest to God. Dare to lay it all on the table. Write it down. Whine a little. Confess to a friend. Do whatever works for you to clean out the stuffed closet that holds all the times life has let you down or you have let yourself down.

Then let it go. With God’s help, let it all go. See God's image in the mirror instead. See God's grinning face when you look out at Life.

Then do it again tomorrow morning, too. Because forgiveness is a gift that keeps on giving. Trite as it may sound, it's the truth. A truth worth trying on.

Many of us visualize the never-drying-up well of forgiveness that is our God with the sign of the cross. All the grievances of all time can somehow fit on that cross.

It’s now a reflex action for me. When my waking-up toes touch the braided rug right next to my bed, my hand flies up to my forehead and down to my heart, across to my left shoulder and on to my right. I’ve sketched a cross upon my body, and I can’t get up out of bed without walking through it.

A new day of forgiveness begins.

~ Kari Henkelmann Keyl