The need for incarnation

We are in the midst of Easter.  A celebration in which we remember the resurrection.  We hear in church "Christ is risen! Alleluia!" a lot during this part of the liturgical year.

But if Christ is risen, then I want to know where the hell he is.  Because right now, it certainly doesn't feel like he's here.  Not in the midst of massive earthquakes.  Not in the midst of systemic racism that plagues our society.  Not in the midst of a vast divide between the haves and the have-nots.  Not in the midst of corporations that control our entire political system.  Not in the midst of war and destruction, which only begets more war and destruction.

Christ is risen, and now we're all alone.  We are the ones who are left to fix this by ourselves.  The resurrection is supposed to give us hope, but in times like these the resurrection just makes us feel alone.  I need an incarnate God right now, not a risen one.

I need an incarnate God when black man after black man is killed in police custody.

I need an incarnate God when society tells us that black men are inherently more scary than white men.

I need an incarnate God when violent riots are the only way for society to hear the cries of the oppressed.

I need an incarnate God when society thinks property damage is more important than the loss of life.

I need an incarnate God when a city 40 miles away from me is burning.

I need an incarnate God when I'd rather bury my head in the sand than address these issues in a public forum.

I need an incarnate God in the wake of environmental and natural disasters.

I need an incarnate God when we think that the right to marry is the only way to ensure equality for the LGBTQ members of our family.

I need an incarnate God when people with privilege are blind to the privilege they possess.

I have hope in the resurrection, but what about the here and now?

It's times like these when we can turn to the witness of the laments in our scriptures to provide us with some comfort.  The laments validate the emotions we feel during these times of distress, and (as my Hebrew Bible professor says) they are some of the most faithful prayers found in the scriptures.  I don't have that much to say about any of the problems plaguing our world that hasn't already been said (by people far more eloquent than me, I might add).  What I do have to offer is a lament that I wrote for my Exploring Congregational Song class.  I initially hemmed and hawed about the best way to get it out there (thinking that maybe I could gain something from its publication or something).  But I've since decided that we all need this lament right now, and if that causes me to lose out on a few royalties, so be it.  Feel free to use it/spread it around as you see fit.  All I ask is that my name stays attached to it.  

Christ is risen...Christ is risen indeed...Alleluia.

---------

O God, our King, we're all alone.

There's no one left to hear our groans.

Pain, grief, and death are all around.

To sin, the world itself is bound.

Injustice looms 'round every bend.

The poor, their plight, it knows no end.

The guns are drawn, the swords unsheathed.

O Lord, our God, we cannot breathe.

Return to us, God on high.

Deliver us and hear our cry.

Restore the world to life anew

So we may live and worship you.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise God all creatures here below.

Praise God above ye heavenly hosts

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia, Amen.

Lent 46

Holy Saturday.  A fellow blogger pointed out that "Holy Saturday is different than any other day in the Christian year, I think, because it's a day dedicated to nothing."

And he's certainly right.  After a week full of the drama that surrounds the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the turning over of the money tables in the Temple, the betrayal in the garden, and the crucifixion, Holy Saturday is kind of...anticlimactic.

If Holy Week were a critically acclaimed television series, Holy Saturday would be the filler episode before the season finale.

The image I associate with Holy Saturday is Jesus dead and locked away in a tomb and his disciples hidden away somewhere mourning and trying to figure out what's next.  The world is still shrouded in darkness. There's nothing really exciting happening.

Admittedly, it's hard to see God on Holy Saturday.  God died on Friday and God will rise on Sunday, but we're left here in this in between state of not knowing what exactly to do.  What do we do when God is dead?

The blogger I mentioned above called this day emblematic of the "fallow" time—the time between an ending and a beginning.  He explains it more eloquently than I ever could, so you should check out his piece (here's the link again).

Since tomorrow is Easter, today is also the last day of Lent, marking the end of this blogging journey I've been on.  As much as it's been about trying to see and discover God's work in my day-to-day existence, it's also very much been a period of self reflection and discovery.  I've wrestled a lot this Lent with what exactly I'm being called to.  My call to ordained ministry has been a big part of who I am for the past seven years, and in a time that has been wrought with change, my call has been one of the few things that has been constant.  And yet I've recently been starting to question whether or not my calling lies in ordination or not.

And I think that's ok.  Like I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, questioning is a sign of a healthy faith.  Over the next couple of weeks and months, I'm going to continue to wrestle with the discernment of my calling.  In the meantime, I'm going to stay in and celebrate this fallow time that I find myself in, because even though it's hard, I can still see God in the Holy Saturdays of my faith life.

Thank you for following me on this journey.  Have a blessed Easter season!

Today, I saw God in the in-between, fallow period.

Lent 45

When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ my God!

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Today, I saw God dead on a cross.

Lent 44

Behold, I give to you a new command: you are to love each other as I have loved you. 

The Latin root of Maundy (as in Maundy Thursday) is mandatum, as in mandate or command.  We call today Maundy Thursday because we remember the new command that Jesus gave his disciples before he was betrayed. You are to love each other as I have loved you. As the rest of the liturgy of the Triduum unfolds, we see just what the implications of Christ's love for us entails. 

Betrayal. 

Humiliation. 

Desertion and abandonment. 

Torture. 

Death. 

Christ's love for us entails his suffering through all that and more. In short, Christ's love for us is sacrificial. 

You are to love each other as I have loved you. 

Christ is calling us to love each other with the same sacrificial love that he loved us first with. Therein lies the crux of it all. But what does it mean to sacrificially love someone in the 21st century here in the powerful and privileged United States of America?

I don't think it necessarily is a call to martyrdom (but that's not to discount the witness of those who have been and will continue to be martyred for their faith). For starters, Christians in America aren't being systemically persecuted for their beliefs as Christians around the world are (in fact, it saddens me to say that too often we are the ones who are doing the persecuting). 

But if the cross we (individually and collectively) are called to bear doesn't involve our own gruesome deaths, then how is it that we can sacrificially love each other as Christ has loved us? In order to understand that, we first have to know what exactly it means to sacrifice. 

We talk a lot about sacrifice during Lent. The tradition is that we deny ourselves of something we hold dear for a period of forty days. This often manifests itself in phrases like "I'm giving up ______ for Lent this year". But as I'm about to point out, this misses the mark. But first, a disclaimer. 

I wish I could take credit for the following theological reflection and say that it came to me in some divine revelation. That is not the case. As I mentioned, my mom was in town this past weekend, so I wasn't able to be at youth group this week. I was in the church office two days ago, and the youth pastor was there, so I asked him how youth group went. He said it went really, really well. 

He said they were talking about the topic of sacrifice and what it means. He presented it in the same way I just did (in relation to "giving up"). He then asked the youth group what they thought sacrifice meant, and one of the young women (the same one from my women's day post last month) said that she thought the concept of sacrifice has an element of hope to it, whereas giving up is inherently hopeless (giving up = defeat). You sacrifice something because you care about someone else. 

I know. When he told me that 13 year old girl's insight, my brain exploded too. 

I had never before heard sacrifice defined in that manner, but it makes perfect sense. Why did God come down incarnate in this world to live the life of a human being and endure all the pains that life entails? Because God so loved the world that God was willing to sacrifice God's very nature to show us that death does not have the final say. God does not give up. God wins. Life wins. Love wins. 

Unfortunately, in order for there to be a resurrection, there has to first be a death. And that's what we now find ourselves in the midst of, not just in these next three days of the liturgical calendar, but in the very world itself. It's often said that we Christians are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world. 

But by answering Jesus' call to follow his new commandment; by sacrificially loving others as he sacrificially loved us; by pouring ourselves out to heal the world and all its inhabitants in the way that he did, we can destroy the kingdom of oppression that we currently live in and replace it with the kingdom of justice.

We can destroy the kingdom of hate and fear, replacing it with a kingdom of hope and love. 

We can destroy the kingdom of sin and death and replace it with the kingdom of God. 

We are surrounded by death, but through our love for one another and by the grace of God, we are bold to envision, proclaim, and bring forth something so much better. 

We live in a Good Friday world, but Subday's coming. 

Today, I saw God in Christ's sacrificial love for us. 

Lent 43

One of the realities of working as a church musician is that you wind up being forced to celebrate liturgical holidays before everyone else.  It obviously makes sense.  You have to rehearse the music ahead of time.  Before that, you have to spend some time selecting music.  Late last summer, I was going through the calendar and selecting all of the music that my children's choir would sing this year, meaning I had to spend some time sitting there and listening to Christmas carols in August (much to my roommate's chagrin) while I selected songs for them to sing on Christmas Eve.  The Chancel Choir started rehearsing its Advent oratorio this past year in October, and we've been working on our Easter Anthem since before Lent started.  It's not a bad thing or a good thing necessarily.  It's just part of the job.

Anyways, the church I sing at does two services on Easter Sunday, but the choirs combine (there are two separate choirs at each service), so both services are the same.  However, since the combined choirs have to work together in conjunction with the brass/organ/handbells, every year we all get together the Wednesday before Easter to rehearse everything, but there's definitely a cognitive dissonance when you're singing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" with full forces during Holy Week.  And yet singing that hymn this evening gave me a tremendous amount of joy.  Even though it's still Lent, I was able to witness a brief moment of Easter bursting through at that time, and it was wonderful.

Today, I saw God in singing a hymn too early.