collateral renewal

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You have heard of collateral damage. Now hear of collateral renewal. Every time we act in kindness, in mercy, in love: the impact of our actions radiates out to touch many more lives than the ones in our immediate vicinity. Others we do not know will be affected. The reverberations of our compassion will circle the world. Collateral renewal – healing rippling out, never ending.

                     Steven Charleston

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On Friday Jesus was put on a cross

He went by choice

A choice not to meet violence with violence

Hate with hate

 

He could, perhaps have cursed his tormentors

He could have rained invectives on those gathered around him

Those who had beaten him

Nailed him to a tree

In order to steal his breath

The breath of God within him

 

Instead from that cross rained down

Forgiveness

Compassion

Healing

Restoration

 

Drop by drop by drop

Love hit that immense sea of enmity

 

Creating ripples of renewal

That spread

Moving every outward

 

Transforming

 

His disciples who could have

In anger

Turned to violence

Didn’t

 

Those who could have luxuriated in resentment

Didn’t

 

Christ’s love

Creating collateral renewal

 

We all see those who

Drop hate and resentment into the world

Those create collateral damage

 

They create ripples of anger

And we

Alas

 

Become smaller

Harder

Colder

Crueler

 

They bring out the worst in use

And make this world hell

 

But still, love comes

Drop by drop

Filling us

 

So that we

“act in kindness, in mercy, in love”

 

We too have a choice

Even when the worst happens

Even then

To radiate compassion

 

To create collateral renewal

 

I don’t know what went on in the souls

The hearts and minds of the disciples

On that Saturday

During the great wait

 

But I hope what they heard were not the cries

Crucify him

But the gentle words

Forgive them

Today you will be with me in Paradise

Here is your mother

Here is your son

 

I hope I believe

That in that dead silence

Renewal happened

 

I pray that today

We, those who follow

Can choose love

That we can choose, even as we are assailed

By lies, and hate

By the abuse of power

 

To look with compassion

Even on our tormentors

Even those who wish us dead

 

That

We can act with kindness, mercy, and love

For what comes from the cross must be

Must always be

renewal

easter

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“Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”

                                                                                      Gerard Manley Hopkins

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may God “easter” in us all

no matter who we are

 

may Sacred rise

casting light

into the darkness

 

waking us up to our

essential beauty

and our original blessing

 

stirring our souls

into earnest acceptance

of Sacred Love

 

opening us up

filling, until

 

as the sun spills across the earth

caressing it and revealing its beauty

as the spring comes with its greening and blooming

bringing rebirth

 

the Sacred Presence spills forth from our

once parched souls

and kisses the earth

with love

The table is the point

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If you are writing a play about [Holy Week}, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

 

They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meet him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

 

Table - trial - cross - tomb - tomb - table.

 

What if the table is the point?

                     Diana Butler Bass

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What if the table is the point?

What if community is the point?

 

What if Easter is, when all is said and done, about

People gathering

Laughing

Eating

 

People listening to each other

Supporting one other

Being together when it is easy, and when it is not

Being together in the rejoicing and in the lamenting

 

What if Easter is about Jesus stepping in

And saving us

Not from God’s wrath

But from the enmity of the Rulers of the World

 

From hate and violence

From those forces that would divide and destroy

 

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine, the best of meats, and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations;

   he will swallow up death forever.

 

In the great story of love

We move from a table, where feet were washed

Bread was broken

And wine was drunk

 

Out into a dark and painful world

To a garden of anguish

To betrayal

And abuse

To injustice and death

 

To a tomb filled and a tomb emptied

And ends up back in an upper room, that same room, perhaps

And at a  table

Where once again bread is broken

And by the Sea of Galilee

 

Where once again bread is broken

And fish are served

 

Food for the stomach

Food for the heart

Food for the soul

 

Perhaps the point is that because of Jesus

We can be together

We can be stuffed with all good things

We can be love

 

The table reminds us we are family

That we are stuck with each other

And we might as well love each other

 

It reminds us that faith is about being fed

And feeding one another

 

Perhaps the table is the point.  As Rachel Held Evans once wrote:

“This is what God's kingdom is like a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.”