Tag Archives: Holy Week

Good Friday

The cross is a mirror. It shows us what we are not, as well as what we are; the embodiment of God, the epitome of humanity: images mundane and immortal in one body.The cross is a mirror.  The cross is a mirror.  The hammer falls and innocent flesh … Continue reading

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Hosanna – save us!

We are used to thinking of them as the same crowd, moving from one Sunday to the next, but what if they were more like us: divided among themselves, one crying one thing and one another, each with their own ideas of whom should be saved, and how? Continue reading

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Preaching from the shadows

The sound of mallet on metal
wood and splintered flesh
ricochets around the city walls
shivering the fabric of
the crowd that clothes the alleyways
too often lost in thought and prayers
we fall without an echo
into the open grave Continue reading

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Peter denies the Christ

Peter denies the Christ(John 18:1-27) Malchus It was dark. Smokefrom torches refused to rise, hung about the olives and our eyes,flames close to dying as though lightitself were loath to bear witness Servant girl It was cold;the kind of springmorning … Continue reading

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Sleep, prayer, grief, and Jesus

Jesus knew that he would conquer death and sin – he had told them over and again that he would rise – but he was grieved and frightened and anguished at the capacity of his human captors for violence. There is no contradiction here: it was from ourselves that he came to save us. That is why he advises his disciples, “Pray that you may not be tested.”  Continue reading

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The Friday Fast: Do not rush to Easter

Do not rush to Easter You may stumble over someone slowlycarrying their cross, might miss the quiet wordsof sacrifice: my body for you, my blood.Do not sleepwalk past the garden, where olive grovesgroan and dream of peace. Do not rush, … Continue reading

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Here is love

Here is love that doesn’t bury grief, but anoints it, attends to it. Here is love that doesn’t count the cost, but pours itself out so that it is felt, sensed, perceived far beyond the feet that receive it: “the house was filled with the fragrance of it.” Here is love that inspires others to love. Continue reading

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Washed in the word

Beside a lake melted into being by glaciers I bathe my feet in your word made water – the fluidity of creation – dry them in the sand, scourings of the land eroded, as all flesh, remade asa million grains … Continue reading

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How I discovered that I have no sense of smell

if my devotions appear lacking or incomplete,
charge it I pray to my imperfect property,
and not to my intent. Continue reading

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Saturday 2020: there is a time

We read, there is a time to live and a time to die; we thought we get to choose, but even Saturday dawns bright yellow with birdsong; it stretches into Easter churches, silencing their pews, emptying the air of alleluias   Trump said … Continue reading

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