Easter 2024

Keukenhof Garden, Lisse, Netherlands 2012

(Photo krb)

 

 Easter [I]

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.  Sing his praise                          Without delayes, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise                          With him mayst rise: That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more, just. Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part                          With all thy art. The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,                          Who bore the same. His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key Is best to celebrate this most high day. Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song                          Pleasant and long: Or, since all musick is but three parts vied                          And multiplied, O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part, And make up our defects with his sweet art. George Herbert, "The Temple" (1633) Paulist Press New York 1981. Christ is risen He is risen indeed. Alleluia The Peace and Blessings of Easter be with you all.

Holy Saturday 2024.

 

Sillers Lookout, Arkaroola, South Australia. 2007

(Photo krb)

His spirit and his life he breathes in all
Now on this cross his body breathes no more
Here at the centre everything is still
Spent, and emptied, opened to the core.
A quiet taking down, a prising loose
A cross-beam lowered like a weighing scale
Unmaking of each thing that had its use
A long withdrawing of each bloodied nail,
This is ground zero, emptiness and space
With nothing left to say or think or do
But look unflinching on the sacred face
That cannot move or change or look at you.
Yet in that prising loose and letting be

He has unfastened you and set you free.

Malcolm Guite, "Sounding the Seasons" Canterbury Press, 2012

Peace and Blessings to all on this Holy Saturday,

Good Friday 2024

Northern South Australia. 2007

(Photo krb)

A memory of Kreisler once:
At some recital in this same city,
The seats all taken, I found myself pushed
On to the stage with a few others,
So near that I could see the toil
Of his face muscles, a pulse like a moth
Fluttering under the fine skin,
And the indelible veins of his smooth brow.

I could see, too, the twitching of the fingers,
Caught temporarily in art’s neurosis,
As we sat there or warmly applauded
This player who so beautifully suffered
For each of us upon his instrument.

So it must have been on Calvary
In the fiercer light of the thorns’ halo:
The men standing by and that one figure,
The hands bleeding, the mind bruised but calm,
Making such music as lives still.
And no one daring to interrupt
Because it was himself that he played
And closer than all of them the God listened.

– R. S. Thomas, ‘The Musician’ in Tares (Chester Springs: Dufour Editions, 1961), 19.

 

A Thought for Thursday - Maundy Thursday 2024

Honningsvag Church (1885) Honningsvag, Norway 2016

(Photo krb)

The cafe was ideal. It had tables that could be joined together to make one long table. It was central to the city and could be reached by car or public transport. It had convenient parking close by. And the coffee was good most of the time. So, we came, maybe 15 blokes, more at times. We came from all sorts of backgrounds, some were church people, some had been church people but were no longer and some had never been anywhere near a church. There were retired public servants, some former military men, all sorts of different backgrounds but we all came. We drank coffee and talked. We never had an agenda, but we communicated. We often disagreed sometimes strongly but that didn't interfere with our relationship. We were always noisy - there was so much laughter. The proprietor sometimes worried about that but then he discovered that the noise was good for business and we got on fine. We would leave each week better people, seeing other people's point of view a bit better.

And there was Communion of sorts. As we ate and drank together an ordinary cafe became a Holy Place.

Diana Butler Bass sees the Last Supper in somewhat the same way. In John's Gospel, she points out that the risen Jesus meets his close followers in an upper room. She suggests that it is the same room in which just as short time before they celebrated the Passover meal together. She sees a symmetry between the Passover meal and this post resurrection meeting and she points out the extent to which Jesus earthly ministry centres around communal meals.

In a simple meal or a lavish feast God is present and there is Holiness.

Peace, justice and blessing to all as you continue on your Holy Week journey.

 

 

 

A Word for Wednesday - Wednesday of Holy Week 2024

 

Flam Church, (1670) Flam, Norway. 2016

(Photo krb)

We want the warhorse.

Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the eagle.

The Holy Spirit comes as a dove.

We want Barabbas.

Jesus stands in chains.

We want swords.

Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the lion.

God comes as a lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.

God keeps trying to disarm us.

                              Benjamin R Cremer (2024)

So, two processions head for Jerusalem. One with all the pomp, power and discipline of the empire supported by the panoply of acolytes, the establishment church and the local government officials all believing that they have the upper hand, the power to make things happen that will benefit them.

The other procession is the rag tag mob of peasants who follow Jesus proclaiming a new vision of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom based entirely on unconditional love for all, even those supposedly powerful people in the other procession. This procession is like the circus has come to town. Colourful indeed but in a way unlike the other procession. Not regimented, not powerful in the earthly sense but challenging, nonetheless.

And these two worlds collide as they always do, as they still do today. The powerful move to extinguish the threat as they still do today.

Only, once the power of the Kingdom of God - the power of love is unleashed upon the world there is no stopping it. It cannot be extinguished.

Peace, justice and blessing to all as we continue our journey through Holy Week.

,

A Trifle for Tuesday - Tuesday of Holy Week 2024

 

St Peter's Abbey (from 696CE) Salzberg, Austria

(Photo krb)

We want the warhorse.

Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the eagle.

The Holy Spirit comes as a dove.

We want Barabbas.

Jesus stands in chains.

We want swords.

Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the lion.

God comes as a lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.

God keeps trying to disarm us.

                              Benjamin R Cremer (2024)

According to the book, 'The Last Week' by John Domonic Crossan and Marcus Borg which traces the last week of Jesus' life, in the year 30CE two processions head for Jerusalem. One is a rag tag group of peasants led by Jesus. The other led by Pontius Pilate the Roman Govenor of Palestine. He is coming from his headquarters in Caesarea Marittima, on the Mediterranean Coast (a much more pleasant environment than troublesome Jerusalem some 60 miles away).  Pilate made this journey regularly particularly at festivals and if there was rumour of trouble. In this case it was probably both. It was the high festival of Passover and there was rumour of insurrection.

One of these processions proclaimed the power of the state and its dominance by force. The other proclaimed the coming into being of the Kingdom of God through unconditional love for all. What if those two processions came into contact with each other. Would there be reproachment - a recognition of the right of each to exist or would there be conflict with winners and losers. Perhaps there would be a reversal in which the winners become the losers and the losers become the winners in the end. One never knows what will happen when the power of God's love is let loose in the world. What do you think?

We continue our journey through this Holy Week.

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

  

 

A Moment for Monday - Holy Week 2024

 Hagia Sophia (from 360CE) Istanbul 2010

(Photo krb)

We want the warhorse.

Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the eagle.

The Holy Spirit comes as a dove.

We want Barabbas.

Jesus stands in chains.

We want swords.

Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the lion.

God comes as a lamb.

We keep trying to arm God.

God keeps trying to disarm us.

                              Benjamin R Cremer (2024)

Last week I shared a post on Facebook from an Episcopal (Anglican) Church in California which said:

'What if Jesus didn't die for 

our sins

but lived to show us how to love?'

Note that it is a 'What if' question. It asks what the consequences would be if we changed our view about Jesus' mission in that way. I have many similar 'what if' questions about the events of Holy Week. The list probably gets longer as I get older.

A good friend of mine who is a priest in Victoria replied with this succinct reply. 'Both / And.  I like this response very much and am inclined to agree with him. However, the difficulty is that so many people see our world in black and white terms. They would argue that you can't have it both ways, that there is only one truth, and we must choose their way of seeing truth (which is usually that Jesus died for our sins. There is much that occurs in Holy Week that cannot be viewed simply in black and white. We need a much broader perspective at this time. 

At the end of last week I watched two very interesting videos. The first at:

Lecture 4 - Jesus’ Vindication: How is that Exaltation to be Imagined? (youtube.com)

This is the last in a series of lectures by John Domonic Crossan the Irish American theologian and writer who is still going strong at 90. He talks in detail about the references to the resurrection in art and other mediums in the early church.

The second is at:

The Resurrection of Jesus with Diana Butler Bass & John Dominic Crossan (youtube.com)

This is the question-and-answer session between Crossan and Diana Butler Bass. These are both presented and chaired by the social media group Homebrewed Christianity. If you have the time and the interest they are both excellent.

I am always interested in your views. Please feel free to reply. I am not the quickest person to reply but hopefully you will hear from me. It is best if you permit me to share your views.

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

A Word for Wednesday - Lent 2024

Hamburg, Germany. 2016

(Photo krb)

I think the Church as I have experienced it during, let's say, thirty years of membership in my order, the Church is speaking less and less to the realities before us. Just one instance is the Church's failure to face and deal with the social and political difficulties of believers. And then when one moves out to another scene, as I have been doing, and meets the people of very mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds, one sees how tragically unresponsive the Church has been - because it has not heard and been moved by the ethical struggles of people on the 'outside,' yet maybe nearer to Christ's own struggle. More and more I see the need for flexibility in the Church. And I feel that one's responsibility to the Church can no longer be expressed by the priest's or parishioner's traditional compliance before powerful and sometimes corrupt 'authority.' I would like to see the resources of the Church brought to bear upon the realities that the Church alone cannot deal with - though it can shed certain light upon many troublesome issues. It is such matters I am discussing now with the families I stay with. I hope we can come upon something new, which will help us in the very real and new situations we are facing, I hope there is a spiritual breakthrough of sorts awaiting us, so that we can learn to live together in a new and stronger and less 'adjusted' way - 'adjusted' to the forces in America which plunder other countries and our own country as well.”
― Daniel Berrigan, The Geography of Faith: Underground Conversations on Religious, Political & Social Change (1971)

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

A Trifle for Tuesday - Lent 2024

Edinburgh, Scotland. 2019

(Photo krb)

Christians are usually sincere and well-intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We are often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else-and often more so, I'm afraid.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

 

A Flight of Fancy for Friday - Lent 2024

St Jacob's Catholic Cathedral, Riga, Latvia 2013

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“It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

 

A Thought for Thursday - Lent 2024

Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, 2007

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“Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.”
― Desmond Tutu

Peace justice and blessings to all.

 

A word for Wednesday - Lent 2024

 

Newport, Rhode Island, USA 2015

(Photo krb)

“God wills our liberation, our exodus from Egypt. God wills our reconciliation, our return from exile. God wills our enlightenment, our seeing. God wills our forgiveness, our release from sin and guilt. God wills that we see ourselves as God’s beloved. God wills our resurrection, our passage from death to life. God wills for us food and drink that satisfy our hunger and thirst. God wills, comprehensively, our well-being—not just my well-being as an individual but the well-being of all of us and of the whole of creation. In short, God wills our salvation, our healing, here on earth. The Christian life is about participating in the salvation of God.”
― Marcus J. Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith

Peace, justice and blessings to all.

A Trifle for Tuesday - Lent 2024

River Ribble, Settle, UK 2019

(Photo krb)

“There are many reasons to steer clear of Christianity. No question. I fully understand why people make that choice. Christianity has survived some unspeakable abominations: the Crusades, clergy sex-scandals, papal corruption, televangelist scams, and clown ministry. But it will survive us, too. It will survive our mistakes and pride and exclusion of others. I believe that the power of  Christianity — the thing that made the very first disciples drop their nets and walk away from everything they knew, the thing that caused Mary Magdalene to return to the tomb and then announce the resurrection of Christ, the thing that the early Christians martyred themselves for, and the thing that keeps me in the Jesus business (or, what my Episcopal priest friend Paul calls “working for the company”) — is something that cannot be killed. The power of unbounded mercy, of what we call The Gospel, cannot be destroyed by corruption and toothy TV preachers. Because in the end, there is still Jesus.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

 

A Moment for Monday - Lent 2024

Neretva River, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2016

(Photo krb)

“The new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God.”
― Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer

Peace, justice and blessings to all.