Palm Sunday Year B

Palm Sunday 2021 March 28, 2021 Hosanna By Steve Garnaas-Holmes Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ —Mark 11.9-10 “Hosanna“ doesn’t mean “Hooray!” It means “Save us!“ It’s not a cry of triumph, it’s a plea in desperation. Of course, aimed at a leader who can protect us, it becomes an affirmation. Our Hosannas signify victory only because Jesus has saved us in our desperate weakness. This is no time to strut but to kneel, to bare our tender need, in honest pleading that we still need saving, and in awe and gratitude for the grace we are continually given. Maybe “Hosanna” is more like “Wow! Thanks. We needed that” on steroids.i Today we move through two different dramatic stories. We begin with a triumphant procession and proclamation of Jesus as King. And we end with Jesus’s death on the cross as if he were a criminal. We begin with cries of “Hosanna”, the triumphant plea to save us; and we end with cries of “Crucify him”, slipping away in silence and sorrow. Today marks the beginning of the holiest time of our church year, which culminates in Easter. As we move through this service today or as we move through the week to come, each one of us is offered the invitation: that this is the time to kneel, to bare our tender need, in honest pleading that we still need saving, and in awe and gratitude for the grace we are continually given. Hosanna, Lord. Save us. i. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net, March 23, 2021

The 5th Sunday in Lent-Year B

The 5th Sunday in Lent-Year B March 21, 2021 We’ve got our seedlings from our Lenten bag growing in two pots in the window near our dinner table, so every day, I get to watch the progress of our little seeds. This week, I was struck by the appearance of one of our little green shoots, so I had to take a closer look. As I leaned in, I discovered what had looked so odd from a distance. One of our little green shoots was wearing a sunflower seed hat. The sunflower shoot, in its growth out of the dark earth of the soil had cracked the seed wide open, and it was still recognizable but also completely transformed into new life, new growth. Our gospel reading from John today is Jesus’s last public teaching in that gospel. Tensions have been rising. Passover approaches. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead and the religious authorities have set in motion their plot to kill Jesus. Jesus has entered Jerusalem triumphantly (which we’ll see next Sunday in our Palm Sunday liturgy). And then we have this rather strange scene from today of two Greeks who want to see Jesus, Jesus’s two flummoxed disciples who don’t really know what to do with them, Jesus’s teaching about a grain of wheat that must fall to the earth and die in order to bear much fruit, his prayer to God and God’s response so that the gathered crowd hears, and Jesus’s promise that when he is lifted up, he will draw all people to him. On this last Sunday in Lent, it may be helpful for us to look back at this image of growth that happens in the darkness of the soil, the new life and resurrection that happens when the seed dies, or in the case of my sunflower plant, gets cracked open so that it is no longer entirely recognizable. In my Ash Wednesday sermon, I quoted the Benedictine Joan Chittister who writes, “Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” How might you be grateful for the darkness of this Lent in which you have been invited to grow this season? And if you haven’t had this experience, well, we still have one week left in Lent and of course, Holy Week is coming. As a part of my Lenten practice this year, I’ve been reading a book of Lenten devotions titled A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent by the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. In his offering for this past Thursday, which is titled The Future, he writes, “The long history of faith, with all the saints, is the story of walking into the future given by God. Lent is a time for sorting this out. Popular Lent is too much preoccupied with guilt and repentance. But not here. Lent is rather seeing how to take steps into God’s future so that we are no longer defined by what is past and no longer distracted by what we have treasured or feared about the present. Lent is for embracing the baby given to old people [like Sarah and Abraham]; resurrection to new life in Easter; and the offer of a new world made by God from nothing….You will find verification [of God’s promises kept] among the daily performances of the trusting ones who live out their trust in ways the world terms foolish…So imagine, in this Lenten season, moving beyond treasured pasts, moving beyond precious present tense arrangements to new God-given prospects.” i In what ways has this Lenten season cracked you open, offered you a small d death so that new life can break forth in you like a shoot breaks forth from the earth? What treasured pasts might God be inviting you to move beyond to embrace new God-given prospects? In closing, I offer this poem prayer by Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Invite you to close your eyes and by still why I pray. Soil Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. —John 12.24 You have tilled the soil of my grave, Beloved. Scatter me. Let me slip through your fingers. Drop me. Let me fall into the earth of you, disappear into you, great, fertile Source, womb-globe, garden tomb, holy darkness. Let the little me-ness of me die for love of you. My husk will fail, a broken heart; what is within, given, urged, born by your unseeable mystery, will emerge, fragile, green, tender, muscular— later. But first let me fall into you and die in you, Beloved Soil of love.ii i. Brueggemann, Walter. A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent. Compiled by Richard Floyd. WJK: Louisville, 2017, pp46-48 (Kindle version). ii. Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Unfolding Ligh:t www.unfoldinglight.net March 15, 2021

The Third Sunday in Lent-Year B

Lent 3 B 2021 March 7, 2021 One of the greatest technological gifts to the parents of young drivers is Apple’s Find My Friends app. With the touch of my finger, I can see a map with dots for each member of my family suggesting the general location of each one of their phones. I use this app multiple times a day just to check on my people. They, on the other hand, like to call me a stalker for this practice. The other day, Mary Margaret was headed to school in some nasty weather. I asked her to text me when she got there, but I told her that if she forgot, it would be ok. “I’ll be watching you,” I told her, meaning that I’d be watching her little blue dot travel downtown on my app. Her brother immediately started laughing and then repeating my lovingly parental words in a creepy, stalker voice: “I’ll be watching you!” Our Old Testament reading for today is the passage from Exodus which gives us the 10 Commandments. Throughout the centuries of our faith, the 10 commandments have taken on a life of their own, and at times they seem to point to a God who ominously, threateningly punitive. If you step a toe out of line and break any of these 10 rules, then I’m going to get you. I’ll be watching you! The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes about how these are really more like the 10 teachings; how the 10 teachings were originally given to the Children of Israel while wandering in the wilderness, and they are about how they are to live corporately. Rather than thinking of them as a check-list for individuals, we should think of them as a road map for what it means for a whole people to be faithful to God and to live together in community. The passage begins: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery…” And these 10 teachings are to help the people to keep from being enslaved by other things. These are 10 teachings to help the people continue to live in freedom. The 10 commandments are not so much about obedience and punishment; they are about how we can live meaningful lives in community with each other and with God. And then there’s Psalm 19. One of my seminary colleagues reflected this week that she had heard Ellen Davis, who is an Old Testament professor at Duke, speak on today’s psalm. Davis told this group that Psalm 19 is a psalm about integrity that is written in 3 parts; and the 3 parts are about the cosmos, the Torah, and me. In the first part, the psalm talks about how you stay in sync with the cosmos. The second part talks about how you stay in sync with Torah or scripture. The third part talks about how you stay in sync with yourself. Psalm 19 talks about the life-giving quality of God’s law or teachings, how they “revive the soul,” “give wisdom to the innocent,” “rejoice the heart,” and “gives light to the eyes.” Finally, in our gospel reading for today, we have John’s version of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple. Unlike the other gospel writers, John situates this episode at the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry. At first glance, it may be difficult to discern how this angry Jesus fits in with our other two readings for today. But I think it points to the freedom offered in following Jesus, freedom within a new-visioning of the original teachings or commandments of God. The Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite has written a sonnet on the cleansing of the temple that has helped me engage this gospel passage in new ways. Cleansing the Temple by Malcolm Guite Come to your Temple here with liberation And overturn these tables of exchange Restore in me my lost imagination Begin in me for good, the pure change. Come as you came, an infant with your mother, That innocence may cleanse and claim this ground Come as you came, a boy who sought his father With questions asked and certain answers found, Come as you came this day, a man in anger Unleash the lash that drives a pathway through Face down for me the fear the shame the danger Teach me again to whom my love is due. Break down in me the barricades of death And tear the veil in two with your last breath.i Your invitation this week is to think about the freedom that comes both through the law and through Jesus’s re-visioning of the law. To invite Jesus to restore in each one of us our lost imagination and to restore us to the fully loving presence of relationship with God. (reread sonnet) i. https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/the-cleansing-of-the-temple/