Lent Devotion Week 6
“Holding on to Holy Week”
Rev. Sandy Ward
Holy Week is the most sacred week in the church year. Yet we come to church on Sunday, celebrate the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem with a palm parade and hosannahs, and tend to forget the rest of the story. Next Sunday will be Easter, another day of celebration because Jesus has risen from the dead. What happens in between the two Sundays is sometimes too gruesome and heartwrenching to think about.
But there is power in claiming Jesus' Holy Week story. He reclaimed the Temple as holy space, driving out those exploiting it (the money changers) for personal gain. He spent time teaching, and advising his followers of his impending death. He had dinner with his closest friends, some of whom would betray or deny him, or abandon him. He endured a trial, an injustice and a horrific and humiliating death.
This is a week of passion. Passion, in the context of its Latin root-word, passio, means suffering. In just five days, the triumphal and celebratory moment of Palm Sunday dissolves into torturous hours of suffering and death by crucifixion. This is a reflection of what the human race is capable of in our propensity for sin, selfishness and power.
But passion has another meaning – and that is an intense desire, yearning, or enthusiasm for something good. The passion Jesus encounters through his suffering and crucifixion will be because he has an emotional and spiritual desire for building up the kingdom of God. It is the culmination of his purpose. Throughout his life, Jesus lived, taught, preached and showed us a way that was the very antithesis of his crucifixion. Jesus suffered to his death, to never compromise what he lived for. He would not give into violence, or imperial power, or reinforce inequality, or let evil ways win over all that he lived his human life for.
Jesus would undergo a suffering passion to uphold a yearning passion for righteous living and kin-dom building. This is the mercy and love he has for humanity.
There’s a reason we call it Holy Week. These events are sacred to recognizing the grace God holds for us. We journey together in the life of Christ to Easter - the day of resurrection and the hope and promise of new life on the other side of death. In the face of evil, tragedy and death, we need not fear. Jesus said, “ because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:19)
Lent Devotion Week 5
"Lord of Lords"
Rev. Sandy Ward
I had the privilege of attending the Interfaith Easter Concert this past weekend, and introducing our choir. It was a wonderful event featuring 8-9 choirs from different churches and denominations in the Spokane area. Our own Manito UMC choir was enhanced with members of the Spokane Valley UMC choir and members of the For His Glory group. At the end of the concert all the churches came together and sang the Hallelujah Chorus - unifying the diversity in traditions, theology and culture to proclaim “King of kings, and Lord of lords!”
It occurs to me that in this Lent season, when not all churches even observe the 40 days of Lent, we can all lay claim to Jesus as our Lord. We do this out of our love for him and the kingdom he represents.
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Jesus is the full disclosure of God. But even in his divinity, Jesus lived humbly. He was not consumed with his power, but used his abilities to bring goodness, justice, wisdom and provision so that all may know love. These are good words from Philippians 2:6
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“Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.”
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Jesus' unique ability to hold his Godly power with humility for all people and creation is what makes him the Lord we love, honor and worship. This is the Lord we reconnect with during Lent.
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We’ve talked about Jesus as friend, Jesus as teacher, Jesus as Savior, but to know Jesus as Lord is to understand Jesus as what the Native American Bible calls him - the Grand Chief over all the earth.
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To say that Jesus is Lord is to proclaim who you give your allegiance to. It’s to say I will exercise my free will with respect to the values, ethics and examples that Jesus laid out for me. It will guide decisions I make, and how I spend my time, and how I share my resources. It is to realize that Jesus is my true north, the one I will always come back to.
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To know Jesus as Lord is to be grounded in his pure and humble love for each of us.
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God of the cross, your power is hidden in a weakness that quietly overcomes the world. Open our eyes to see this power at work. May we walk in it as we live out your alternative vision for the world. Amen.
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(Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own)
If you drive through any city with an older downtown, you have a good chance of spotting a neon “Jesus Saves” sign. I especially like the ones that are in the shape of a cross, where the first S in “Jesus” serves as the first S in “Saves”. Those signs represent a vintage hopefulness. The neon glows at night, like a beacon of light in darkness.
“Jesus saves” is a present tense reality. It doesn’t say Jesus will save - as in sometime in the future. Many of us have been raised with a concept of salvation being a life after death. But God has provided a way through Jesus to heal what is broken in, and throughout, this life and make it whole – liberating humans from their wounded past, or their sins, and from shame and guilt, to live productively, morally, ethically, faithful lives, contributing to the good of the whole of society.
Salvation comes to us from its Latin root, salvus. Diana Butler Bass writes “The Latin word salvus referred to being made whole, uninjured, safe or in good health. Salvus was not about being taken out of this life, it was about this life being healed. In this sense, salvus perfectly describes the Biblical vision of God’s justice and mercy, peace and well-being, comfort and equanimity. This is the dream of a saved earth, one where oppression ends, mercy reigns, violence ceases to exist… Jesus is the one who brings this dream to reality” (Freeing Jesus, p. 76-77)
Many people in the gospels were saved before Jesus died on the cross - whenever Jesus healed, they experienced salvus. Lives were transformed just from encounters with Jesus - through every miracle, every act of hospitality, every meal shared, Jesus saved people long before his crucifixion. They came away with vision and mobility and healthy minds and bodies, and with forgiveness, and empowerment, to become whole in body, mind and spirit.
Among his many roles, including that of friend and teacher, Jesus showed and gave people a new way to live. So in this season of Lent, as we are rediscovering Jesus, what does it mean to you to call Jesus your Savior? Where do you seek grace and redemption? When have you noticed the fullness of being renewed and reunited with God?
The ancient theologian and philosopher, Irenaeus said, The glory of God is the human being fully alive. Jesus, the Savior lived such fullness perfectly.
Lent Devotion Week 4
"A Glowing Sign"
by Rev. Sandy Ward
Lent Devotion Week 3
"Favorite Teacher"
By Rev. Sandy Ward
Dr. Diana Butler Bass, author of Freeing Jesus, continues to inspire me in this season of Lent. She is helping me to think about how I have known Jesus through the different roles in which I have experienced him. This week she focused on knowing Jesus as a teacher.
When I think about a teacher, the image of desks, classrooms and a person who has been educated and trained is leading a group of students in various studies. Jesus fits that description in many of the scriptures. The classroom may look different - instead of an indoor room, Jesus often taught outside, in a field or a mountainside, or even around water. The students may not be sitting at a desk, but rather reclining on some rocks or around a table. And students of Jesus don’t keep a school calendar and schedule… rather they are disciples round the clock, learning to live and love as he did.
“Of the ninety or so times that Jesus is addressed directly in the NT, roughly 60 refer to him as teacher, rabbi, great one, or master (as in the British sense of school master). He teaches at the Temple, on a hillside, by a lake, by a campfire, at a dinner table, while at a wedding and in the center of the city”. (Freeing Jesus, p.29) In Jesus day, the word that is translated as teacher was the title rabbi - which was new in the first century. It didn’t mean Jewish clergy, like it does today, but rather was one who taught with spiritual authority. To be a rabbi in the first century was someone who was crafting a new approach to Hebrew texts, scriptures and traditions.
Knowing Jesus as a teacher invites us to be learners, as in disciples. Jesus was a teacher of wisdom, values, ethics and a path of justice with compassion. He taught us about God, who gifted us all of creation, and authored a vision of a kingdom that is not fraught with the lust for human power. Jesus’ teaching was relational, inspiring us to ask ourselves who we are in relation to him. He taught with few rules, and his lessons (often in the form of parables) compel us to consider our values as we contemplate where we find ourselves in the stories he tells.
The best teachers raise questions and nurture exploration in their students. And this is why Jesus remains relevant throughout the seasons of our lives. What I understood at age 13 was different at age 35, and is now different again, as my life experiences and the world around me gives me new context.
Lent is a great time to rediscover Jesus, as a friend, as a teacher. No classroom needed.
Lent Devotion Week 2
"What a Friend We Have in Jesus"
By Rev. Sandy Ward
I am reading a book by the modern Christian writer Dr. Diana Butler Bass, entitled “Freeing Jesus”. As a memoir of her own faith journey, Bass highlights the various ways she has encountered and experienced Jesus. With each chapter she recalls and rediscovers Jesus as a friend, teacher, savior, and Lord. This week we look at Jesus as our friend.
In John 15:15, Jesus says, “I have called you friends”. Friendship is one of the central themes that run throughout the Bible. How do we think about Jesus as our friend, and what it means to be a friend to Jesus?
So what does friendship look like to Jesus? I might describe it through the ways I read about Jesus interacting with the people around him. He offered companionship, compassion, empathy, truth, acceptance, and love. Friendship in Jesus' world gives people a leg up.
Friendship with Jesus is imagining that divine hand extended spiritually, and the human hand that is led by it. It is the hand that reaches out, in comfort, to remind us we are not alone. And it is the hand of guidance and motivation that moves us toward the next step. A step that may lead to restoration, to justice, to mercy, to healing.
In the book, Freeing Jesus, the author quotes a professor who says close friendships are made up of three simple things:
“Someone to talk to; someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy”. It is simple, and it underscores the freedom of the exchange.
Saint Theresa of Avila once said, God has no hands but yours… Yours are the hands with which God blesses all the world. Friends work together to make a better world. There is freedom and mutual respect in friendship. There is honesty and gentleness. Friends build up one another. I think when we truly extend the hand of friendship, we extend the hand of Jesus.
Lent Devotional Week 1
"Jesus and the Snickers Bar"
By Rev. Sandy Ward
​​​Have you seen those commercials enticing you to reach for a Snickers Bar? The ones that say “You’re not you when you’re hungry”.
In Matthew 4, the Devil is hoping for a Snickers moment with Jesus.
Jesus has been fasting in the wilderness for forty days and nights. At the end of that time, the Devil comes to him with temptations to satisfy his physical hunger, and appeal to his sense of personal power.
But Jesus doesn’t bite. He has something greater than bread (probably the first century answer to the Snickers Bar), or the false promise of safety or human power to sustain him. Jesus has spent the last forty days in solitude with his father - God. He is spiritually grounded in his role as God’s son. He knows who he is, so he knows what to do. And now, he can face the challenges before him. Jesus can draw upon the spiritual truth of his identity to be Christ in a physical, social and religious world.
The season of Lent is meant to resemble the forty days of Jesus in the wilderness. It is a time of reflection and opportunity to see how our spiritual limits are being pushed and to re-fortify ourselves in our identity as people who follow the wisdom and values of Christ.
These forty days represent our opportunity to put integrity back into our spiritual lives. A time to reflect on the depth of our relationship to God. A time for soulful self-cleaning and a time to purge self-doubt and pursue the things in which God delights - things like justice, compassion, mercy. A time also to experience grace, and to give grace to ourselves and others. A time to become whole, spiritually, and then let it inform all other parts of our life.
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So that we will know what to do, because we know who we are.