Category: Easter

Reading as Prayer through Lent & Easter: a book (p)review

We are nearing the beginning of Lent. I love this season! I find the preparatory seasons of the church calendar (Lent and Advent) great times to press into devotional practices which are difficult for me the rest of the time. Wednesday, I will find a church service to attend so I can get the Face-palm of Death (AKA the Imposition of Ashes). I will fast. I will engage spiritual disciplines. This season is sacred time and I enter in eager to see what God will do in me. 

between-midnight-and-dawnOne of my conversation partners this Lent will be Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide for  Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide (Paraclete Press, 2016),  compiled by Sarah Arthur). This is one of three devotionals Arthur has edited following the church calendar (also: At the Still Point: a Literary Guide for Prayer in Ordinary Time, and Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer For Advent, Christmas and Epiphany). At the Still Point was the only one of these devotionals I have read any of before, though my Ordinary Time resolve is nowhere near as resolute as my Lenten devotion.

Between Midnight and Dawn pairs suggested weekly Scripture readings with prayers, poetry and fiction readings. There are seven readings for each week of Lent—six poems and one piece of fiction. During Holy Week and Triduum, there are scriptures and 5-7 literary selections for each day, before returning to the weekly format of Scriptures, poetry, and fiction for each week of Eastertide.

The poems and fiction are selected to lead us deeper into the land of Prayer. Arthur suggests reading this literature, applying aspects of lectio divina—lectio (reading), meditatio (reading it again, several more times, slowly), oratio (paying attention to words and phrases) and contemplatio (shifting our focus to God’s presence, p.13). Certainly, this takes a little bit of time. The story sections are longer (because ‘fiction doesn’t work its magic right away’), so Arthur suggests saving the story for a day of the week when we have time to just focus on the story.

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough Publishing. 2002) is a similar sort of devotional, using literature as a way into this liturgical season. Arthur’s selection is different in that she is more focused on reading literature as an act of prayer, and the scriptural readings (absent from Bread and Wine) give focus to daily practice.

As of yet, I haven’t really read the book, only scanned the selections, the poems and stories selected.  Arthur has chosen both contemporary and eminent voices from the past.  Poets like Hopkins, Donne, Rosetti, Herbert, Tennyson but also those like Luci Shaw, Katherine James, Scott Cairns, John Fry, Tania Runyan). There are stories from Buechner, Chesterton, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, George Macdonald. There are some favorite poets and poems I am surprised to not see here, but I am interested to read the ones which Arthur has chosen. I am excited to journey with poets and storytellers on my Lenten journey

Notice of material connection: I received a copy of this book from Paraclete Press for the purposes of review.

If you would like to get a copy for yourself for Lent you can purchase it from

Paraclete Press

Amazon (also available on Kindle)

Barnes & Noble

or wherever fine books are sold.

 

Can We Get More Resurrection?

Yesterday we celebrated Easter, the day the resurrected Jesus broke forth from the tomb and broke the power of sin and death. If the Lenten season was about walking with Jesus the road to Calvary, the Christian life is about coming out the other end. We proclaim with the Apostle Paul, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-55).  And yet . . .

And yet death still stings.  We feel it as we age, time decays and slows our pace. We feel it in the face of a troubling diagnosis or when we have to have our cat put down on Good-Friday morning. We feel its sting when we grieve the loss of a family member or close friend. Where O death is your sting? You don’t have to tell us. We feel it.

And yet death still looks pretty victorious. It still claims us all. We don’t need to look beyond last week’s news cycle to see the threat of death that looms over our heads. The Cleveland broadcast killer, Palm Sunday Massacres, Bombs dropped, another youth gunned down by police in Fresno, executions lined up for this week in Arkansas, and 45’s threat and show of strength against North Korea. Where O death, is your victory? Ubiquitous and persistent, we see death everywhere.

I know everything changed Easter morning. Death died and when love stronger than death broke its hold on our souls. We have hope because of Jesus’ resurrection and we await our own. Still, can we get a little more resurrection? We could really use it.

Happy Easter!

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

-John Updike

Comic-Book-Christ Dying and Rising: a graphic novel review.

I am a reader of great literature, and by that I mean comic books. I grew up reading comics and still love a great graphic novel. There is something special about artists who are able to pair storytelling with images in a way that is dynamic and compelling. You can’t get a more compelling and moving story of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection. This is the story that Alex Webb-Peploe  and  André Parker tell through their new comic-adaptation, The Third Day.

This is not the first comic adaptation of the Bible. There are a number of recent projects which rehearse biblical themes in graphic novel form. What makes this title unique, is that other graphic novel adaptations veer from the biblical material to explain why things happen the way they did (i.e. why did Judas betray Jesus, why did the High Priest plot against Jesus, etc), The Third Day restricts itself to the biblical account focusing on three chapters from Luke (22-24). The words in this novel come straight form the Bible (HCSB version). Words from Luke’s prologue also introduce the story.

Limiting the text to the Bible alone does not detract from the story-telling. Webb-Peploe helps us hone in on what the Bible tells us about Jesus’ final hours. When speech is implied but not recorded in the biblical account, there are story telling panels with no speech bubbles. This attention to the gospel’s actual words leaves some questions unanswered but also helps us stay tuned into what the Bible tells us.

But Webb-Peploe doesn’t reproduce every word from Luke either. The economy and pacing of the genre demand a certain sparsity in the details. If you read this comic beside your Bible, you will notice some details skipped or skimmed over and other elements of the story left out (i.e.). There is the occasional word or phrase written out of order, but the events themselves follow Luke’s account.  To my mind, this is artfully telling the story by choosing which  elements to emphasize from the text.

I also loved that in addition to being biblically correct, this graphic novel is also ethnically correct. In a world full of white Jesus movies, yellow-haired stained glass Christs, and other pasty renderings,  it is refreshing to see an artistic presentation of Jesus that presents Him as an olive-skinned Mediterranean Jew. This is a marked improvement on the ‘traditional’ blue-eyed Jesus  often imaged through Western media and art. The illustrations in this book are strong and dynamic, well-inked and colored .I am impressed.  I give this book 4.5 stars and recommend it for young adult and teenagers, children and other fans of ‘great literature.’ The publisher suggests this title for teenagers. i I read it was my six-year-old.

Thank you to the Good Book Company for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Ascent of God

This coming Thursday is Ascension Day–the day in the church year when we celebrate Jesus’ post-resurrection-trip-to-heaven. While this is a significant event in Christ’s life and the life of the church, it doesn’t get much play in today’s churches. Growing up in church I remember 2D disciples and flannelgraph feet, but I don’t remember much else said about Jesus’ Ascension. If your church recites the Creeds  then it  is affirmed: “he ascended into heaven.” However it is little emphasized in worship, in readings, or preaching. Only Luke records the event (though he does it twice) and we may wonder what the big deal is.

In another age the Ascension was celebrated as the crowning  glory of  the Incarnation. Listen to St. Augustine:

The Ascension is the festival which confirms the grace of all other festivals put together–without which the profitableness of every other festival would have perished. For unless the Savior had ascended into heaven, His nativity would have come to nothing . . . and His passion would have borne no fruit for us . . . and His most holy resurrection would have been useless. -St. Augustine, quoted in Tim Perry & Aaron Perry, He Ascended into Heaven ( Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010) 3.

The following observations are my musings on the significance of the Ascension. I affirm the event as a historic reality. Jesus stood with his disciples somewhere near Bethany where they witnessed him taken to heaven. While the events of Jesus’ Ascension are only described by Luke in Luke 24 and Acts 1, there are a number of passages  assume its reality.

So why does it matter? Here are three observations:

  1. The Ascension means Jesus is absent.  In another sense, us post-Pentecost believers know Christ’s presence with us through the ministry of the Spirit. We cling to Jesus’ promise to be with us, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). But let’s not gloss  over Jesus absence. One moment Jesus was with his disciples, the next moment he was taken up into heaven and they were told that in the same way he departed, he would one day return.  Because  of the Ascension we are people between times: Jesus is no longer with us bodily, Jesus will one day return. We pray and work toward the Kingdom of God but as post-Ascension people we live in the ‘already but not yet’ tension of the Kingdom of God. 
  2. The Ascension means that Christ’s Incarnate work is finished. We love Christmas with all its fanfare and we walk with Jesus on the road to Calvary through Lent and Holy Week. On Easter we proclaim Christ’s resurrection with shouts, songs and chocolate bunnies. As significant as Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection are, they lose their meaning unless they are sealed by his Ascension.  If Jesus the incarnate one does not return to the Father, than we are left with a fractured deity. If the words of dereliction on the cross resulted in Christ’s eternal separation from God, then there is no hope for humanity.  The Ascension is Christ’s vindication and proof that God’s favor rests on Him. Philippians 2:5-11 describe how the Ascension is the telos of Christ’s Incarnation:

    5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

    6 Who, being in very nature God,

    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

    7 rather, he made himself nothing

    by taking the very nature of a servant,

    being made in human likeness.

    8 And being found in appearance as a man,

    he humbled himself

    by becoming obedient to death—

    even death on a cross!

    9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

    and gave him the name that is above every name,

    10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

    11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

    to the glory of God the Father.

  3. The Ascension means that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God.  Jesus is exalted and that means Jesus reigns! This is good news, especially in a world with marathon bombings, political and social unrest, bloodshed.  Things on earth are not all as they should be (or will be!), but we can be confident that the risen and ascended Christ, sits with God and intercedes on our behalf.

So Thursday night  celebrate the Ascendant one and give thanks that the Christ who is absent will one day return, that his salvific, incarnational work is completed, that he reigns in glory and holds you in his hands.

Prayer for Easter Week 5

Five Weeks since shouting

we declared Your rising:

 

He is Risen, He is Risen indeed!

 

We live in light of Your rising

and live resurrection-lives

and yet . . .

 

And yet death  clings to us.

We go through  our daily routines

and at night can’t recall where we saw

the Living One in our thoughts, words and actions.

 

We are anxious when pain,

sickness and disease

hurt the ones we love.

 

We are numb when we

consider wars, rumors of wars.

We confess these un-lively responses

and cry out:

 

Lord Have Mercy!

 

 

You are not the God of the Un-dead;

you are the God of the living!

Guide our steps as we seek to live

the abundant life You give  us.

Teach us to risk and  to respond

to the needs of those around us

and your Spirit’s guidance.

 

Help us to trust You.

Resurrected One, resurrect us!

 

Prayer for Easter 4

The Lectionary Text for today includes the Shepherd’s Psalm (Psalm 23).  I am singing and playing on the worship team at my church tonight and we’ll  be singing the House of God Forever by Jon Foreman (video below). Here is a prayer based on this season and the Psalm (the prayer is my own and you shouldn’t blame Jon Foreman for it).

Death’s Dark Valley–

If we doubted  that’s where we were,

this week’s events have shown us.

We mourn for those in Boston,

for West Texas,

for Syria and other war-torn places,

for the suffering of those we know and love.

We mourn and ask, “How long?”

We wonder where you are.

 

Resurrected Shepherd

lead us to quiet waters,

Bring us to green pastures,

restore us and make us whole.

May we know your presence with us

here in Death’s Dark Valley.

Guide our steps and keep us from wandering.

Prepare Your Table for us

though we are surrounded by enemies

We long to taste your goodness and mercy.

May we dwell in your house forever.