Via Crucis 2007

the corner: holy saturday meditation

the corner: good friday reflection 1

979

That's the number of people I have fired in the 23 years of my adult working life.

It is a sad fact that I have sat in countless rooms - even airport coffee shops - and in a calm voice, told 979 people that they no longer have a job.

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sarcastic lutheran: good friday

Here is our King. Here is God’s glory. In the tortured flesh of our God-Man Jesus. This flesh on which we feast. This blood which we drink. The broken, the poured out from which there is true wholeness, true shalom.

Hidden in the suffering, God is revealed.

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the corner: good friday meditation 1

soupablog: lentenblog moleskine Stations VII & VIII

we ask why these mile markers are highlighted.

we ask what we could've done.

we ask where would we have been.

a strange fraternity.

the corner: The Festival Continues: Deus Caritas Est

Tonight is an invitation to go "out beyond ideas" as the poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi beckons, to embrace the Word made flesh with all our senses, to listen to the call to love and be known by love.

 

transmission: Can Jesus console these daughters?

Jesus however, is not presented as a sexual object (neither to be an object of our desire, nor as a subject who felt desire). Naked Jesus symbolizes the power of the incarnation, the undoing of the stain of our original sin (thank you very much, Augustine), a perfect hypostatic union of God and Man. God made Flesh, made manifest.

Yes. We are all created in the image of God. Male and female, God created us. Then God became flesh and dwelt among us. Sexuality is part of being human.

Women’s lives are tied to their bodies, for better or worse. Can they produce children or not? Are they beautiful or not? Are they pure or unclean? Jesus too is sexualized and desexualized with the fashions of the times. But, I believe Jesus sees, knows and loves us all as fully-human natural women.

I can still hope for a day when ministers can wear mini-skirts, when we’re not defined by our wombs and breasts and need not fear being barren, when women no longer need to beat their breasts for the sins of the world. Jesus, you with us?

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ragamuffin diva: Simon the Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross

Even then they profiled us. But I wonder what it was like to be the nigger at the wrong place at the wrong time that day. There he was, Simon, an African man in Jerusalem. Should have been in Africa where he belonged, but he'd come for Passover. Oh we was going to get passover all right.

Simon must have watched with horror as what was left of Jesus tried to drag that massive cross a few more feet down the road. Can you imagine it? Jesus had suffered the humiliation of being stripped naked. Had bets placed for His few humble pieces of clothing. He'd been spit upon and beaten and scourged until His flesh hung off his bones. He scarcely resembled a man. And then He had to take that long walk carrying the cross he'd eventually die on.

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one hand clapping: Carry the Cross

"You broke the bonds
And you loosened the chains
Carried the cross
Of all my shame
all my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for"

- U2, I Still Haven't found What I'm Looking For

So I was listening to my U218 CD in the car and these lines from the most preached on U2 song ever caught my attention. I had just been looking at the images from the life of Christ visual we are using in our Maundy Thursday service and recalled this image from Nicaragua. So often we get so caught up in the personal affront to Jesus - the beatings, the torture, and the via crucis - and the personal freedom it grants us without placing it in context.

Jesus did come to loose the chains of injustice. He came to set the captives free. His people were living under oppression. A military government controlled them and occupied their land. Jesus came to offer the way of peace and love even amidst that lack of freedom. A revolution more radical than any violent uprising, more subversive than any secret army.

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signs of emergence: Constantine and 'Power Church' | The End of Strategy [4]

At Golgotha, God declares the end of strategy.
God will not play our power games.
God is.
God loves.
There is no win or lose.

I believe that if the church allows itself to be tied up in strategies, to 'winning' people for Christ, it will end be moving towards power-politics, towards support for wars, and away from genuine concern for 'the other'.

To give oneself for 'the other' is to lose. It is to be engaged in transformative relationships, rather than tactical change. It is to love. To know grace. And grace and love have no strategy.

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