Joy

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17).

We can pretty much predict when happiness comes. It is right there at the beginning of the word—hap, which refers to chance or luck or a favorable event that pleases us. Winning the game, success at work, a kind word or smile, these all bring happiness.

But joy is more elusive ... and deeper. It flows from the heart’s inner room when our soul is satisfied, one with the Love who is our home.

Joy releases silent tears that wash away everything else but its presence. It floods the heart with a wave of warmth and gratitude, sometimes for no reason we can see.

You never know when it might appear. It's free, like the wind. Joy can come in the midst of grief, like when we savor the smile of a soul no longer with us, or for the gift of simply being alive on a fresh April morning. 

Joy can never be reduced to words, and when it washes over you it is best not to try. It’s like trying to snatch morning light in your hand as it filers through the blinds. The most and best you can ever say is, "Thank you," to the wondrous mystery from whom it comes. 

Ultimately, joy is the fulfillment of our humanity, as the Love in whose image we are made awakens at our core, filling us whole until it pours from our pores and leaks through our eyes. 

And every time it comes, you know: This is my home, the One from whom I came and the One to whom I will go. 

Pr. David L. Miller

The place of peace

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ (John 20:26)

The morning news has nothing to commend, violence and unresolvable conflict wherever one turns, everything well-seasoned by long injustice and inevitable mistrust. If ever this ends, my lifetime won’t be long enough to see it.

The unsettled heart wants nothing more than peace, as if that were a small thing and not … everything.

And the mind knows what the heart doesn’t want to admit. There is no peace, even when there is justice. Opposition and the clamor of egos to get their way are ever there. It’s the nature of things, or better to say … it’s our nature. Stress and tension remain, inevitable elements of human existence.

We have lost the way or the key or whatever is needed to arrive at the place where the mind grows quiet and the heart rests, no longer insisting that the world serve us, catering to our whims and wills.

Of course, we never knew the way or held the key to the place of peace. For that place is a heart larger than our own.

Peace is a gift to be received, not a state we create. It is the wonder of love filling the temple of the heart’s inner room, leaving room for nothing else, so that we become, if even for a moment, the love who rushes in to fill the ache of human emptiness.

And this love, this Love, stands before those who failed and fled and denied him, breathing a single word, Peace. Peace be with you.

He gives what we cannot give ourselves, the peace that welcomes us whole regardless of the state of our lives. He offers a kind of knowing, love’s knowing, that washes over the heart and carries us into a heart that is immeasurably greater than we can know.

So do nothing. Just stand or sit or be wherever you are and hear this one word spoken to the world by the Wounded One to whom the world did everything possible to reject and kill.

He offers a single word that washes the soul and frees the heart to love and be the peace we so greatly need. Just listen … then listen again.

Peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

It’s enough

 

Maundy Thursday 2021

 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. (John 13:1-5)

This is enough. If I had no other reason to love Jesus than this one moment, this is enough. This is beauty beyond compare, love beyond speaking.

Jesus gets up from the table, casts off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself and pours water in a bowel. Then he kneels ... and washes his disciples’ feet, an act of crystal purity flowing from his heart, giving himself to his friends who could never comprehend the depth of the love who chose ... them.

Watch him as he takes a foot in one hand and washes it with the other. These are the hands that held and blessed children. His hands welcomed lepers who had given up hope of ever knowing the grace of human touch again.

He had bent low to lay his hands on the despairing who fell at his feet, daring to hope that maybe the mystery in him could and would heal them.

He had held the hand of a little girl pronounced dead, lifting her by the hand and delivering her into the arms of astonished parents.

And now, in an act of exquisite love for the uncomprehending and undeserving, he washes his disciples’ feet, loving them completely and loving them to the end.

I see his hands and in them I see the hands of my Sunday school teacher, Grant, red and chapped from working outdoors all his life, strong from milking cows, making hay and building fence. His hands welcomed us every Sunday to his class with a strength born of a love none of us could begin to understand at 10 and 11.

I see Magdalena’s hands, arthritic, a network of blue veins across the back, weathered and worn from chores indoors and out, hands that gently cared for her orchids, bringing them to blossom, beautiful, but none so much as her. I remember her hands laying atop mine as she prayed for me and for hundreds of others, struggling for words to express a fraction of what was in her heart that we might be warmed by the enduring flame of love she felt within.

I also see my hands picking up Hana, a little Ethiopian girl, who long ago insistently tugged at my pant leg until I picked her up and sat her in the crook of my arm. She patted my face and kissed my cheeks, aching to touch and be touched with a love denied her because of the disease that ravaged her family and made her an outcast. I held her, praying that she might live and grow and one day hold her own child as I held her.

In their hands, I see Jesus’ hands, and in Jesus’ hands I see their hands.

And in all of them, I see the hands of the Love who pours from Jesus’ heart as he kneels at the feet of his disciples and washes their feet. In the touch of his hands, the gentleness of grace, the beauty of blessing, we know the Love who labors in the depth of human souls and works in the great tides of history to love us into truest humanity and create a community joined in the heart of God’s invincible love for all creation.

So it is: If all we ever know about Jesus is this one moment as he washes feet, this is enough for us, enough to know that wherever we are in life’s journey, whether it be dark or light, we rest in very good hands.

We adore you, O Christ, and bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L, Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strange power

 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

A wooden triptych sits on my desk at home. Four or five inches tall, it was carved from a single piece of wood. Human figures rise in relief from the walnut background.

On the left, a robed figure stands erect, hands together in prayer. A soldier holds a sword directly in front of him, point down, on the right. The middle panel is Jesus, arms wide on the cross.

Each time I return to my desk, I pick up the tryptic, kiss the relief of Jesus and pray, “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

This sounds like nonsense, of course. How does a crucified man, suffering excruciating pain and degradation redeem anything? It is the very opposite of success, power, status, wealth or any of the other things we are told we should want.

It makes no sense, until you see ... really see ... a mother holding and caressing her infant, or a teacher going that extra mile for a troubled child or any of a thousand other instances where love goes out of its way expecting no reward ... other than the sheer grace of loving.

Then it becomes clear that if anything is going to save this world it is the willingness to give yourself away, loving beyond any and every expectation.

Jesus dies on the cross, rejected, tortured, humiliated by purveyors of merciless power, eager to demonstrate that they owned him and could do what they like.

But they didn’t own him. He refuses to surrender to the hate that kills him, breaking history’s ugly cycle of paying back insult with injury, hate with more hate. He lives the Love who lives in him right to the end, blessing those who curse him, showing mercy to the merciless, grace in the face of evil.

There’s nothing about the cross that suggests power, yet only this has the power to save us from ourselves.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L. Miller

Love comes

So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb. (Matthew 27:59-61)

Lovingly, they’d wrapped his body. Now, there is nothing more to do, so they sit in the silence, the two Marys, staring at the stone that seals Jesus’ tomb, then at their feet, waiting for ... nothing, for what good can come now? But still, unable to pull themselves away.

Their eyes blank, their hearts hollow, their minds lost in thought that is no thought, only the longing for what they cannot have—him, Jesus, his smile, the sound of his voice, his laugh, the way his eyes caught sunlight glistening on Galilee’s sea.

They want to feel the way they felt when he was with them. They want to know this, this ... indescribable love flooding their hearts one more time, this love that made them more alive with joy and gratitude than ever before. They ache for the Love who filled and loved them beyond any expectation.

But now all they can do is stare at the gray stone that holds him in, its dead weight drawing their hearts into depths from which they might never rise.

Maybe, they just need to wait. Maybe time will heal their wounds. But does it ever?

No, time doesn’t heal. Love does, the Love they knew in themselves when they were with him.

But that is gone, so they wait ... for nothing, staring at the dust into which his life is cast, not knowing there is another chapter in the story of what love does.

They do not yet know the Love in Jesus can pass through locked doors and enter closed hearts. They do not know that it has the power to penetrate their darkness with a light that is the glow of eternity.

They do not know that the One who is Love, the One who came to them, will come and engulf their hearts with a warmth sweeter than a spring day. They do not know tears will glisten in their eyes again, not with sadness but laughter, as they discover God is greater and better ... and life more graced and beautiful ... than they ever imagined.

So they sit and wait, not knowing Love will come. He always comes. He always will.

So we wait ... in every darkness knowing, Love will come ... for us.

 We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

We know

 So Joseph [of Arimathea] took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. (Matthew 27:59-60)

We know this moment. We’ve lived it.

I remember friends at the open graves of their children, and my mother on the hillside of Elmwood Cemetery, their feet fixed, not wanting to move at the close of the service, while a voice within me or from outside spoke words that still echo in the crashing silence of the heart.  “We can’t just leave him here.”

But we had to, and we did, as all of us have too many times and in too many places, each time standing there trying to remember ... everything ... lest we forget the sound of their voice and how we felt when we were with them, trying to hold it all in our minds lest the love we had given and received be lost in the wash of time.

So we know the hearts of those who surrounded Jesus’ body. They know ... this is the last time they will touch him, look into his face, stroke his arm, brush hair from his brow, hold his ruined hands and kiss his cheek.

They do not hurry as they wash his body, lifting and turning him from one side to the other, reaching beneath and above his dead weight to wrap him in clean, white cloths, folding in spices as they go. Not speaking or wanting it to end, they know ... they will see him no more.

The glint in his eyes is gone, the light in their hearts extinguished. Hope lies dead on the slab, so they lay it to rest not knowing when laughter will come again, if ever.

 Maybe time will heal their wounds, but it doesn’t, not really. Only love does. The Love Jesus is ... and always will be.

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world

Pr. David L. Miller

Love wins another round

 

Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. (John 19:38)

Love and fear are mortal enemies. They compete for the human heart. When one ascends the other subsides.

You see it as Joseph asks for the body of Jesus, seeking the approval of Pilate who could have him arrested for being Jesus’ friend and follower. The fears that held Joseph back are gone now. There is something he absolutely must do, and he knows it.

No external force compels him. But the insistent voice of love within him cannot be denied, lest he deny himself. His soul is at stake.

Once he shied from public association with Jesus, but now love wins, which is the only victory Jesus ever wanted to win, defeating the fear that binds the love within us from seeing the light of day.

Just so, Joseph takes leave to remove Jesus’ body from the cross and mourn his loss. Meanwhile, Pilate takes a deep breath and congratulates himself for disposing of this mystery man, hoping he will be disposed somewhere beyond sight and mind where he will cause no further trouble.

It’s ironic. With all his power and the legions of Rome at his disposal, Pilate remains ruled by fear, while Joseph has become a free man.

So it goes. In the battle of love with fear, the wounded heart is always the winner

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

What love does

 What love does

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. (Matthew 27:57-58)

There are always those you do not see. They labor behind the scenes or in the shadows doing what needs to be done long after others have returned to the warmth of home or the embrace of friends to release the burdens of the day.

Joseph is there, doing what love does, unnoticed, except for Pilate’s minions shuffling about the foot of the cross, impatient to be released that they might drink away the grisly duties of the day.

When Joseph appears they depart, and he does what must be done.

Pulling at Roman nails, ragged and thick, he pries them from Jesus feet, having been nailed atop each other to the splintered wood. Finished there, he works on the hands, wresting the nails from between major bones in Jesus’ wrists, blood staining his cloths, if there was any left to flow from the wounds that drained Jesus dry.

How did Joseph do it, his heart wrenched by the disfigured form of his friend? Surely, tenderness marked his movements as he removed the tortured body of his teacher mutilated beyond recognition

And he must have had help. A different telling of this story mentions Nicodemus who lent a hand, gently bearing the body to earth, as if any further hurt were possible.

They work silently in the darkness after everyone else had gone home. Their stomachs in knots, unable to speak, nodding back and forth to guide their actions, doing what love required them to do.

Like millions before and after him, Jesus was deemed expendable by the heartless and powerful who ate their dinner that night and retired into the evening, ignoring what Joseph was doing out there in the darkness.

Bu isn’t that the way it is? The truly important things, the gestures that make life graced and beautiful so often happen in the shadows where no one sees or is watching ... what love does.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

It is finished

 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:29-30)

Twelfth station of the cross: Jesus dies on the cross

Few moments are more holy than when a human soul breathes a final breath and passes from the labor of this life into the silent mystery of the Love who bears us home.

More than once or twice, I have known the privilege of bearing witness to a final word, a final breath, holding a hand that could no longer hold mine.

Each time, grace and grief entwined as one, awakening gratitude and prayer. “Thank you for this life now lived. Thank you for the grace of this moment. Thank you for the love unimaginable into which you bear us.”

Gratitude and grief entwine here, too, as Jesus hands himself over to the Loving Mystery he so often called Father. “It is finished,” he whispers, and hangs limp, done.

But his words are not the dying gasp of an exhausted soul, drained and defeated by the incessant cycle of human cynicism and brutality.

No, he loved his own and loved them to the end. It was the one labor of his life, carried out in the face of scorn and perplexity, and here, in this moment, it comes to completion.

Every ounce of love that he is ... has been poured out. The vessel is now empty, and in that emptiness we see the face of the Loving Mystery who invites us to entrust everything we are, have been and ever will be to this Love who is our true and final home.

Trusting this, we live the love that is in us so that, when we are through, our hearts may whisper, “It is finished,” handing ourselves over to the Love who is never finished.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Breathless knowing

 Ninth station of the cross: Jesus falls for the third time

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death (Psalm 22:14-15)

Jagged peaks and deep silence surrounds the sanctuary of Arantzazu in the Basque country of northern Spain. A Franciscan monastery clings to the mountainside, a place of pilgrimage and refuge for 600 years. From there, a narrow trail climbs ever higher into the mountain range.

Walking, I bent low, leaning into the steep incline, pressing my pilgrimage to unseen heights. Aching lungs pleaded for air until I stopped to drink in the rugged beauty. Bent and panting, I sat on a rock and studied tiny blue flowers spouting along the stony path, then looked up hoping the summit was in sight.

But no, there was further to climb, and sitting there I began to think of Jesus carrying his cross.

I thought of him every time I had to stop, breathless, feeling sympathy, and talked to him about how he felt, wondering how he pressed on when he could barely breathe, thinking maybe he just wanted it all over with.

But even as he fell one more time, there was further to go. The summit still lay ahead of him where we will see just how far love will go.

When I reached the summit, I looked back, surveying the mountain range behind me and the high meadow ahead. My lungs finally filling with air, I spoke everything that was in my heart.

“Thank you, my Lord,” I said into the waiting silence. “Thank you for what I know here, now.”

It was enough.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

 

Love and sorrow

Ninth station of the cross: Jesus falls for the third time

 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me ... . For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my courage; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed (Lamentations 1:12,16)

I watched my father fall more times than I can remember. Each time, he would drag himself to where he could grab something stable with his left arm because the right one had no strength. Twisting, he leveraged what still worked in his broken body until his leg brace snapped back into place, and he could slowly pull himself up again.

As a little boy I watched, silent, frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Older, I learned to reach out to help, but most often Dad refused my arm. It was a matter of dignity, pride and perhaps proving he could still do it despite all polio had done to him.

And each time I loved him more for what he was doing, for who he was, an average man living a life he would have never chosen, choosing to live, to do what he could while it was day knowing, as did I, that night would come all too soon.

Just so, in later years when he would let me help, I circled him with my arms and pulled him up, turning my head to hide secret tears lest I reveal the sweet union of love and sorrow for which I still have no words.

I don’t know when it first happened, but I began to think it was Jesus I lifted—beaten, drained, played out, having given all he could to live and love the life our good and gracious God appointed for him.

Maybe having lifted my dad, I feel the sorrow of Jesus and understand both the love that is in him and the love he awakens in this heart and always will.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only hope

The days are surely coming when they will say, “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.” Then they will begin to say to the mountains, “Fall on us”; and to the hills, “Cover us.” For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?’ (Luke 23:29-31)

Eighth station of the cross: Jesus and the women of Jerusalem

These are strange and bitter words. Jesus looks ahead, seeing a time when blood will run deep in the streets he now walks to his death. 

And so it was. Several decades after his crucifixion Roman forces surrounded Jerusalem permitting no one to enter or leave, starving the population. Breaching the walls, they unleashed merciless rage on everyone in sight, young and old, until the streets were obstructed with the bodies of more than 100,000 killed, carrying away as many others as slaves.

Jesus had brought the promise of spring to those streets. His words and mercy awakened hope and peace in open hearts. The clay of their souls sprang to life like willow branches greening in an April sun as they listened to him.

But the time of his presence on Jerusalem streets passed. Soon, the bitterness of life beneath the heel of Roman boots ignited the tinderbox of smoldering animosity, and it exploded in rebellion and an orgy of bloodlust.

It begs the question of whether there is any hope for the human race because this pattern of oppression, resistance and retribution keeps repeating itself throughout history.

The only way to break the cycle, it seems, is to follow the one carrying the cross, the one who refuses to hate even those who hate him.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

 

 

Eighth station of the cross: Jesus and the women of Jerusalem

A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children’ (Luke 23:27-28)

Love beyond naming

Of course, the women are there. They are always there.

They bear life in their bodies. They nurture it with the substance of their own flesh. They are the first to help and refuse to flee when danger threatens their little ones.

For 20 years, I saw this again and again in hellish places where the specter of disease, hunger and war hovered over battered lands, killing hundreds of thousands. More than anyone else, it was women who denied themselves, hoping to save their children and often the children of those whose mothers had long since perished.

Blessed are they, these saints. The Spirit of the Great Giver breathed through their hope and became flesh in their sacrifice. I kneel at their feet and give thanks, for they reveal the truest beauty of the human heart and the indestructible love of the Love who loves us.

It is women like these who surround Jesus as he carries his cross. Some had likely been with him all along. Now, they must mourn with a sorrow he is powerless to prevent. Such is the cost of loving.

Jesus turns and looks with compassion at them as he stumbles along, knowing bitter days are coming when the violence that destroys him will scar their lives.

He looks at them and they at him, mirrors reflecting a love beyond naming.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

 

Stations of the cross: Jesus falls a second time

Just then there came a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying (Luke 8:41-42)

This time it is you who fall Jesus. The days are gone when others fell at your feet, bereft, desperate, collapsing beneath the weight of their need, hoping their pleas would move you to care.

It is easy to imagine the mercy in your eyes as you saw the crumpled mass of broken humanity at your feet. I wonder how many times you gently drew them up that they might look into the window of your soul ... and know.

But now you are a crumpled mass of broken humanity, and the eyes of compassion into which we long to gaze are hidden, cast down into the ancient cobblestones, no longer able to give what our hungry hearts crave.

Or do they? For even here we see into the window of your soul ... and know.

We see that it is the weight of love you carry, the burden of a love that doesn’t break even as your body fails and falls.

And here, we, who long to look into the eyes of your compassion, are moved to love you, to feel for you what you always have and always will feel for us.

“See,” you say to us on your hands and knees, broken and spent. “Now you know what is in me for you. The love I am ... I give to you, a holy gift.”

Pr. David L. Miler

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

Hope unending

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come’ (John 2:1-4).

So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull (John 19:17).

The time draws near. And Jesus knows, the hour for which he was born has come.

Long before and many times, he spoke of this hour in John’s gospel, starting with the day he turned water into wine at a wedding, pleasing his mother and the thirsty crowd. But this was not the hour on which hinges all hope and history.

That comes only now, as Jesus carries his cross to the place of execution. The meaning of his entire existence rests on whether he can embrace and endure this hour or whether he will recoil from the bitter brutality and pain to come.

Will he love and love to the end, or will the cruelty that kills him also kill the love that is in him, the Love he is?

All creation holds its breath. For if the hour of bitterness kills his love, then the hope of the ages is gone. If his love does not prevail, then darkness not light, death not life, despair not love is the final word over us and all that is, and all we know, all we are and all we love ends in the dust of the grave.

But, we are not a people without hope. We know … hope is never lost.

For he who turned water into wine transforms bitterness into a radiant beauty beyond any the world shall ever see. He is love and light and life and love, lifting us from every death we shall ever die

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

For mercy's sake

 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him (Luke 23:27). When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:27).

It is mercy we crave and mercy we find in him who is shown no mercy. And seeing him, hearing his voice, we know the mercy of the One who is Mercy, another name for our God to be sure.

The women of Jerusalem weep for Jesus as he drags himself toward his execution. We are not told that Mary, his mother, witnessed this, only that she was at his cross when they lifted him high to be mocked and bleed out his final hours.

We cannot imagine Mary’s agony as she watched, even if we have been at the side of our beloved as they drew their final breath. There is no pain like the death of one’s child under any circumstances, let alone ... this.

We are left to wonder if Mary spoke to him as he died, offering final words of love that could never be enough to say what was in her heart. Scripture is silent about this, too.

But Jesus spoke to her and to a friend he loved as dearly as any he knew in this life. He gave them to each other that they who loved him might be bound together in the love he awakened in them.

It was a final act of mercy, by one denied mercy, revealing the Mercy who holds us one and all.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

 

 

 

 

That we may know

 

             Wednesday, February 24, 2021

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. (Mark 15:20)

Alone you are, Jesus, stumbling, exhausted, played out; your arms tied rough and hard, shoulders scraped raw against the coarse grain of the cross as your skull jars harsh against the cobblestones.

Do you hear their voices as you lie there—taunts and derision, soldiers’ demands to get up and get on with the grisly business of the day so they can go drink away the rancid phlegm stinging their throats before they have to do it all again, maybe tomorrow?

Or maybe you are so beaten down that their voices are a distant echo in the background of your soul, knowing what is to come and wondering if you have grace or strength to be and do what love requires.

And this? To bear it all, refusing to return hatred for hatred that the divine heart may be known—and that we may know it.

This is how the world is saved. This is how sin’s ugly cycle is shattered, not by force of power or victory over enemies, but by hearts who repay bitterness with blessing, taking the worst the world can give and giving back the best.

The way of Jesus.

Pr. David L Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

 

He is the one

 After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. (Mark 15:20)

I see her every time I step into my office at church. She walks south, her back toward me, and I wonder if she still lives or if the child on her shoulders survived what I witnessed.

She ... is a Sudanese mother carrying her child. A dirty brown sack drapes across her back containing everything she owns.

I took the photo in the middle of a war as people fled along rutted dirt roads, running from certain death, carrying what they could, often falling exhausted along the way. The fortunate found succor from scattered relief workers or stronger refugees who gave what food and water they could. But tens of thousands were not so fortunate.

I see all of them in this one woman, who carries the most precious cargo of life on her shoulders, and seeing her ... I see Jesus and love him with tears that flow from my heart’s deepest room.

For Jesus, cloaked in the purple robes of royalty, walks with the poor, the beaten and forgotten, the oppressed and those denied all justice and mercy. He shares their struggle, carrying the weight of love even when it crushes him.

Here, here is our God, walking a Sudanese road, bearing the weight of love for all the burdened who stumble and fall along the way.

If there is one worth worshiping in this world, surely he is that one.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore, O Christ, and we bless you.

By you holy cross you have redeemed the world

The weight

 So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. (John 19:17)

The weight

It is as it should be. Jesus carries the cross, bowed beneath the weight of human misunderstanding and cussedness. Nothing new here.

He has carried the weight of disciples who didn’t and couldn’t understand him. He bore the condemnation of those who thought him a libertine for welcoming tarnished and ruined souls into God’s embrace.

He shouldered the constant hectoring of those trying to trap him in his own words and endured the cynicism of a religious establishment that sought only to protect its position and privileges, truth and decency be damned.

And now he carries the instrument of his destruction, a Roman cross, the ultimate expression of oppression and brutality reserved for the poor and most despised.

His death will be like his life, a demonstration in the face of hardened hearts of just how far divine love will go to change our minds about God, about ourselves and about the only thing that really matters in this life.

He carries the weight of the world, bearing it all in love, a love that doesn’t break. Ever.

Pr. David L. Miller

We adore you, O Christ and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world

To be given

 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’  (Mark 1:12-15)

The kingdom appears to make right all that is not right with the world. It is the ultimate good, God battling the enemy of all that is true and decent, kind and caring, a battle of life with death.

But I wonder if post-modern ears are capable of hearing let alone grasping the notion of ‘ultimate good.’ Can we believe anything is ‘ultimate’ or fully give ourselves to anything beyond us?

It’s impossible to surrender yourself to anything that transcends you if you do not really believe there is something transcendent—something more important, more valuable, more critical and central to existence than your comfort and personal outcomes.

Yet even in our self-referential times, there remains something in us that recognizes the magnificence of people who shine like the sun because they refuse to count the cost or cut their conscience, people who give themselves away for a great love for something or someone they deem more important that themselves.

Seeing such souls, hearing their stories we might feel pangs of shame, unless our consciences have completely calcified. For we recognize that to be given away for the sake of love is our natural destiny, written so deeply in our hearts we cannot remove it, a destiny we know we have not fulfilled or only in the rarest of moments that make us smile in memory of their sweetness.

And this is what Jesus is saying, deep within, telling us the ultimate good, the kingdom of God making things right, is appearing. It’s in him, in you, in the world around you, in people you meet every day.

See it. Feel it. Let it move you until you say ‘yes’ to whatever desire arises to surrender yourself in love to some need you notice in your corner of God’s vineyard.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I heard long ago. At 68, I’ve lived long enough to remember too many good intentions, too many moments when a word or act of love stuck in my throat or wasn’t followed up upon. These moments haunt, and I pray for those who were deprived whatever small kindness or grace I failed to share, even as I hear the call to be given, totally, to the Love who gives himself totally for me.

Pr. David L. Miller