Psalm 31:9-16

“Art is wound turned into light.”  —Braque

Abandonment, affliction, suffering, sorrow, grief, guilt, desolation, despair, depression. To be a human being is to be vulnerable at times to the anguish of one or more of these states of being. For some people, myself included, a limited number of days and nights have held the extremity of these feelings. For many others, the cry uttered in this Psalm is a near-permanent condition.

The sufferers of these emotional states express a language of soul that becomes a repeated theme when one views images of this extremity of anguish. We “hear” the cry, though it makes no sound. The hands placed over the face speaks of the condition of an interior wound that agonizingly communicates the feeling of being cast off, adrift, alone, with no Other from whom to draw comfort. The Psalmist cries from these depths, and centuries of readers have felt in these words the reverberations of their own laments.

In the same way that the Psalmist renders a “telling” of the truth in Psalm 31, I also chose to arrange the expressions and images in a way that I find to be healing and meaningful. By repetition and arrangement of the images around a central motif, this mandala seeks to transform the experience of an “eye wasted away from grief” into a place where the soul can be brought to rest in the central image of the uplifted hands. I offer this mandala to all who have felt the keen wound of loss. Essentially, this composition is an attempt toward a visual expression that echoes the complaint, the form, and ultimately the praise of this Psalm.

                                                                                 —Rachelle Oppenhuizen

Isaiah 50:4-9

Morning by morning
God wakens my ear
so my tongue may learn
to sustain weary souls
with a word.

What word, Lord?
Persevere?
Submit?
Endure?

Those who speak
hope to the weary—

“Come to me, all you who
labor and are heavy-burdened…”
for “I have a dream…”—

are liable
to humiliation,
torment,
death…
vindication!

Waken my ear…
teach my tongue…
help my spirit, O Lord,
that I may speak a word
and not be put to shame.

                                                                        —Judith Boogaart

John 12:12-16

Today’s passage tells the story of Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. All four Gospels begin with what they call “The Triumphal Entry.” As a child I can recall being given a Sunday school leaflet on that day showing Jesus riding on a donkey while the crowds of adults and children waved palm branches and threw cloaks in front of him. It was a real parade. At Hope Church on Palm Sunday, we give our children palm fronds and lead them around the sanctuary calling out “Hosanna!” We sing the hymn, “Hosanna, loud Hosannas, the little children sang.” Children are very much a part of our Palm Sunday observance. We might ask why.

Two thousand years ago Jesus arrived in Jerusalem amid talk of a coming King, the Messiah.  Everyone wondered if this could be the man. Instead of a king in royal robes mounted on a stately horse, they see a humble man in a drab homespun robe seated on a donkey. Nevertheless, caught up in the fervor of the moment, they call out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!” The children run alongside of him, cheering him and waving their palm fronds. They see in him something that older eyes do not, and so they cry out their praise, and Jesus recalls the ancient prophecy:

Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself. (Psalm 8:2)

We can learn from this child-like faith. We don’t need the trappings of a conqueror to know a true king. Jesus made a triumphal entry, but the accolades didn’t last. Five days later the same crowd would shout for his crucifixion. Instead, like the children, we can believe in him, we can trust him, and no matter what comes next, He is our Savior. Praise be to God!

Prayer:  Gracious God, like the children, we would praise you with all our hearts. We pray that our faith will be strong and unshakeable through whatever lies ahead for us. May your love shine in us and in all we do. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

                                                                                          —Ruth Donaldson

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

In these verses, I am pulled outside of myself, responding to and praising the Lord as the Master Builder, the one who set the rejected cornerstone in its place, the one who is still building.

In his “A Future Not Our Own,” Archbishop Romero notes:

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning…

We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker….

The world is not my own to perfect, nor is it to be ignored. We join in with the Master Builder, joining in the procession of praise, liberated in knowing that what we do not have to do everything; instead, we join in, freed from guilt, joyfully serving the budding Kingdom.

—Scott Rumpsa

Matthew 6:16-21

A friend of ours who cleans offices tells us about emptying trash, that a person’s trash reveals a lot about them. It’s almost an intimate kind of duty, because you see candy wrappers and a lot of other things that indicate a person’s habits. I think the same thing about garbage day in our neighborhood: there’s so much stuff out there. How do we have so much, that we throw so much away?

Matthew 6 is often used as the Ash Wednesday text, starting us off with warnings about how to practice our piety. Lent is a good time to practice resistance—resistance to consume, even when it’s as simple as resisting popping yet another piece of candy into my mouth.

Of course, Lent is about so much more than not eating candy. It’s about arresting some of our habits to intentionally reflect on our spiritual condition apart from the stuff we surround ourselves with. What, really, are the treasures I want to store up that nurture my spiritual awareness of God’s movement?

No wonder it is so helpful to sing, “Be still and know that I am God.” Being still allows me to attend to my heartbeats—literal and spiritual heartbeats—and to separate myself from the trash that may divert me from knowing God, and being known by God.

                                                               —Cindi Veldheer DeYoung

John 12:27-33

Apse Mosaic, Basilica of St. Cosmas and St. Damien -- Rome, Third Century

John 12:20-26

“Now there were certain Greeks…”

There has not lived a more certain and self-possessed people than the Greeks. Even Americans pale by comparison.

Curious that Greeks should attend a Jewish festival. Cosmopolitan knowledge-seekers, these certain Greeks wanted to know Jesus.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” John surcharges the honorific “Son of Man” to a divine claim, but these certain Greeks, steeped in the ancient literature, would not have understood the immortality of the soul as other than a claim of divinity—all are divine souls using a mortal body.

Christians are tempted to think Jesus confounded these certain Greeks. Instead, Jesus offered a conventional ethic. “He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.” Epictetus, writing at very nearly the same time as John, set a similar qualification for the philosopher. A practiced detachment from circumstance always has been the currency of a moral life, in whatever religion or philosophy.

“If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant also be…” This is the new idea to confound these certain Greeks. At his death, Socrates hoped for God’s favor—“the risk is a noble one”—but he had no certainty. To these certain Greeks, Jesus offered a certainty.

                                                                                          —Chris Wiers

Hebrews 5:5-10

Melchizedek appears briefly in Genesis 14 as a priest-king who blesses Abraham. Psalm 110, source of the second quotation here, takes him as the prototype of a priesthood that Hebrews 7 will explain is greater than that of Aaron.

Who is this figure of blessing and reconciliation prior to and greater than the line of Abraham? What does Melchizedek represent about how God acts in history?

What was utterly mysterious in Genesis is fulfilled and made known in Christ. Jesus, true God and also true man, comes to us as the perfect model of how to receive blessing from God and become a blessing to others. His prayers, fully human in their passion, open for us the way to follow him in faith through the acceptance of unjust suffering and death to the revelation of life that transforms suffering and death into salvation.

May we learn and receive in him an obedience that turns our suffering into blessing.

—Curtis Gruenler

Psalm 119:9-16

The Problem of the Cross

Lent anticipates the cross. Lent is the prelude to the main anthem, the mood setter for the drama to come. Waiting around the corner, begging for the bright lights of Easter, stands the cross. As we reflect on Lent, it is hard to dismiss the cross. But what cross?

The cross as symbol? The cross as personal reality? The cross as a grim, functional instrument of a repressive state? I find the cross to be a disquieting and problematic window into Christianity. It is the ultimate Divine Rorschach Test. It becomes what we project it to be.

Crucifix, cruciform? Simple X-ed bar, or multiple bars, or X-es within X-es? Two horizontal beams, or three, or four? Slanted slats, or squared up ones? Occupied or deserted? Elaborations that tell of centuries of projection and fear and bitter conflict.

Focus on the pieta of a mother’s pain. No, focus on the brutal agony and gore of the wretched victim. No, focus on the emptiness. No, focus on the nefarious history of a brutal mechanism dedicated to subjugation. Always remember that the cross was used to punish. No, it was used to humiliate. No, it was used to liberate.

Social icon or fashion statement? Separator of Christians from Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Others. Distinguisher of people, of Kardashians versus Dali Lamas and bin Ladens. Wear it on our plunging necklines, pierced ears, tattooed biceps. Show the world that we are unique–like all of our clan. Arrayed on grassy fields in geometric rows to signal the graves of Us. We Are Not They.

Healing image, hopeful future? Gently placed on crinkled foreheads on disheveled deathbeds. Kissed for good luck; bon voyage into the next world where crosses reign triumphant. Human frailty, Divine redemption. Sin and selfishness and salvation. The human condition aspiring after higher things through the cross and grave and empty tomb. It all begins with the cross.

Such a simple structure on which to hang so much ambivalence. The cross bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things. It lives in the hearts of millions, billions; spreading good, spreading evil. Such a simple structure; such a world of burden to bear. During Lent we anticipate the cross. But what cross?

—Don Luidens

Psalm 119:1-8

Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the LORD.
Blessed are those who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart—
they do no wrong
but follow his ways.
You have laid down precepts
that are to be fully obeyed.
Oh, that my ways were steadfast
in obeying your decrees!
Then I would not be put to shame
when I consider all your commands.
I will praise you with an upright heart
as I learn your righteous laws.
I will obey your decrees;
do not utterly forsake me.

This psalm is an acrostic poem, the stanzas of which begin with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet; moreover, the verses of each stanza begin with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

—Kari Miller Fenwood