My Lord, My Love is Crucified!

Well, here we are.  It's Holy Week, and this has been a Lenten season unlike any other I have ever experienced.  I didn't do so well with the things I tried to "give up," but I tried some new devotional/prayer practices and kept up with these expanded ways of being with God pretty faithfully. 

If you have been following my blog, you already know that pictures/art have become an important part of my spirituality, especially since my time in the United Kingdom during my sabbatical.  During Lent, I created a picture-prayer to match a designated word for two different Facebook pages, every single day.  Some of those were photographs taken in the here and now, pictures of ordinary things in my yard, my home, my office, my church.  Others came from as far back as my childhood and as recently as the past summer. 

It makes sense that visual art is a way of praying because we worship a God-made-flesh, a God who became touchable, tangible love and mercy and forgiveness in human form, a God who could be seen and felt, a God we still see and touch in the sacrament of Holy Communion, a God we ourselves make incarnate as the Body of Christ in the Church.

The above picture was taken this morning in my office as I randomly looked around my office for inspiration.  The objects are simple:  a small Celtic cross, a candle, and a miniature pottery vase.  I don't often get asked to anoint the sick, but I used to conduct a quarterly healing service at a former church. The little pottery container held the oil I used to make the sign of the cross on the heads of those who knelt before me in the flickering light of a candle. 

The link between healing and forgiveness is well established in scripture -- we see Jesus telling a paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven before directing him to take up his mat and walk, and the book of James instructs the elders of the church to pray over the sick, anoint them with oil, and confess their sins to one another in order that they may be healed. 

The climactic events of Holy Week encompass that connection between being healed and being forgiven when we speak of the desire for Jesus to heal our "sin-sick" souls, and many hymns have been written that speak not only of the pardon that comes from Christ on the cross but also the healing that flows from his sacrifice. 

Below is one of my favorite hymns, and it expresses this beautifully.  I invite you to read the words, pray the hymn, and perhaps even to sing it.  It is in the United Methodist Hymnal (page 287) and can be heard in various videos on youtube.com.  May you feel the depth of the love of the God-made-human whose love for us is beyond the power of words to tell.  May you feel in your heart "the blood applied." May you, too, feel the wonder and awe that "My Lord, my Love, is crucified!"

O Love divine, what hast thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s co-eternal Son
Bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th’immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Behold Him, all ye that pass by,
The bleeding Prince of life and peace,
Come sinners, see your Savior die,
And say, Was ever grief like His?
Come feel with me His blood applied:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Is crucified for me and you,
To bring us rebels near to God;
Believe, believe the record true,
We all are bought with Jesus’ blood.
Pardon for all flows from His side:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.

Then let us sit beneath His cross,
And gladly catch the healing stream;
All things for Him account but loss,
And give up all our hearts to Him;
Of nothing think or speak beside,
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!  ~ Charles Wesley

A Fifth Gospel



Stained glass window, Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church, Isle of Barra 

My devout and loving mama was the gateway into church for me.  Like many people, I was taken to church every Sunday unless I was violently ill.  It's what we did.  It's who we were.  She would often tell me that you never know who might be looking at you and that you might be the only Bible they ever read.  After years of hearing that and singing -

While passing thro' this world of sin, And others your life shall view, 

Be clean and pure without, within, Let others see Jesus in you. 

Let others see Jesus in you, Let others see Jesus in you; 
Keep telling the story, be faithful and true, Let others see Jesus in you -

I would at least sometimes think about how I acted or what I said just in case Jesus was paying attention and on the off chance that I actually was somebody's example of a Christian.  

But not always, not even now.  Maybe that's why Lent has come to mean so much to me.  It forces me to reexamine myself and my life in the light of Christ's life and his death.  It also makes me revisit my ordination vows, especially these two questions that go back to John Wesley himself: 

Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?

In other words, are you growing in grace and cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that sin no longer reigns in your heart? Are you becoming someone in whom others see Jesus?

Just in the space of a few days, two of the Facebook pages that I follow have talked about our need to be a fifth gospel in the world, pointing out that our abiding in Christ and him in us must bear fruit, while another said that our witness must be, as poet Edwin Muir says, in our "natural tongue."   

In other words, in my mama's words, to be exact, you are going to be someone's Bible, and more than that, you are going to be part of the Incarnation itself, the Word (Christ) becoming flesh and blood, walking around this good earth.

So in these last few days before Holy Week begins, and before we come to Easter itself, take an honest look at your life. Examine your heart, and see if you are a Fifth Gospel, a book in which Christ may be read, and a person in whom his image and likeness are being shown and reflected.  And ask yourself, can others see Jesus in you?  If not, what do you plan to do to change that?

Lenten Journey

We are a bit more than halfway through Lent, and I haven't written anything in this blog for ages.  I suppose I should have made that part of my discipline for the season.  Nevertheless, regardless of whether I have kept up with this or not, I've been quite engrossed in a number of online devotional activities, and the picture above is part of one.  

Every day, we receive a word for which we are meant to post a picture, one we ourselves have taken as opposed to some professional shot we found on the internet. The very first word was "fast," and I wracked my brain to think of the appropriate picture.  Then I thought of its opposite with its near twin spelling, "feast." I took my NC pottery chalice and paten, placed them on the hardwood floor, and added a black and white filter to produce a dark image of light and shadow. I hoped to convey the tension between the idea of fasting and prayer during Lent by photographing the symbol of the feast we share at Christ's table in the stark absence of color.  It occurred to me that we can only truly appreciate the wonder and bounty of a banquet when we have first experienced its lack and deprivation.  

When you look at this picture, what do YOU see?  How have YOU kept a solemn observance of this church season that prepares us for the abundant life of Easter by taking us through the somber realization of death and sin?  May your pondering and prayer bear much fruit.