don't eat alone

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately. (Matthew 21:1-4)

When I was a kid reading these verses, I thought maybe Jesus had some sort of magical power. He sent the disciples into town to get the donkeys — mother and child — so he could ride one into town. He didn’t give them a name. He just said, “When you get to town you’ll see the donkeys. Take them. If someone stops you, tell them I need them” and they’ll let you walk off with them. I figured their words cast some sort of Twilight Zone trance that let the disciples take the animals without any struggle. It made for an imaginative scene, but it didn’t ring true.

Where I finally came down on the scene is Jesus had friends the disciples didn’t know. Jesus hung out with more people than make an appearance in the gospels. Whoever owned the donkeys knew full well Jesus would send for them. It was not magic; it was prearranged. Jesus didn’t ad lib his ride into Jerusalem. He planned it. He meant it. And he knew the folks who could help make it happen, and many of them were people other than the disciples who got all the press.

I don’t know that my understanding of Jesus’ life beyond the gospels has any giant theological implications, but it does make me read the stories differently. Truth is we don’t have many details about Jesus. We know about his birth, when he was twelve, and then his early thirties; the rest is unexplored back story. There is more to Jesus than we have been led to believe. There are layers of the stories — even the ones we know well — that remain unexplored or at least unnoticed. We don’t know the whole story.

Listen close. Look in the cracks. Fill in the blanks. Go find the donkeys.

Peace
Milton

I want to listen more than talk tonight. These are songs that continue to speak to me.

“Old Friends” by Guy Clark.

old friends shine like diamonds

old friends you can always call

old friends lord you can’t buy ‘em

you know it’s old friends after all

Don Henley wrote:

I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the Heart of the Matter

because the flesh will get weak and the ashes will scatter

so I’m thinkin’ about forgiveness forgiveness

even if, even if you don’t love me anymore

In “Don’t Carry It All” the Decembrists sing

and nobody, nobody knows

let the yoke fall from our shoulders

don’t carry it all don’t carry it all

we are all our hands in holders

beneath this bold and brilliant sun

this I swear to all

Kris Kristofferson closes the show with “Feeling Mortal.”

God Almighty here I am

am I where I ought to be

I’ve begun to soon descend

like the sun into the sea

and I thank my lucky stars

from here to eternity

for the artist that you are

and the man you made of me

Peace,

MIlton

Before church this morning, I turned again to Rock of Doubt to see what seeds might get planted on my way to worship. Sydney Carter was writing about the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly about why we go to see movies more than once. I’ve made a point of return viewings of many movies, particularly those that caught me by surprise the first time. I went back to see how they told the story, where the clues were, what breadcrumbs they dropped along the way. The Usual Suspects comes to mind. And several of the Coen Brothers’ movies. Some I go back to so I can hear certain lines or speeches, or see particular scenes: Miss Firecracker, Moonstruck, Places in the Heart. If I keep listing movies, I won’t say anything else. You catch my drift.

The seasons of the liturgical year are a bit like going back to the same movie. We start with Advent and move through the story of the life of Christ and the early church and then go back and watch it again. As the old hymn says,

I love to tell the story for those who know it best
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.

The thing I find in most any return engagement is things are never quite as I remember them. What I take away is not necessarily, or at least not exactly what was there to begin with. I often find something new as well. A detail stands out in a way it did not before. As many times as I have read and reread the stories from the gospels, I continue to get surprised by things I didn’t see before: a detail I had overlooked, or one I just discovered missing. This Lent, I have been struck by how sparse the gospel accounts are in their telling. They put a high value on getting to the point — even John — such that the stories expect the reader to do some work coloring in the blank spots. Take today’s lectionary passage: the raising of Lazarus (John 11). Even though reading the whole chapter in church made it feel long, John goes from Lazarus getting sick to Jesus traveling to Lazarus walking out of the tomb dressed like a mummy in about forty-five verses. He offers up a plot worthy of a novel in about a page and a half leaving some big questions left unanswered and a good bit of back story unexplained.

From the gospel accounts, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were Jesus’ friends. They had a connection beyond disciples, which means they spent time together. That’s how friendships happen. The gospel writers give us accounts of a couple of visits, but for the two sisters to talk to Jesus as frankly as they did, leaning into their friendship, he must have spent a great deal more time there. They sent word that Lazarus was sick. All we know is Jesus didn’t go immediately. When he did get there, Lazarus was not only dead, but buried long enough that when Jesus asked for the grave to be opened, Martha said (the King James still rocks this one), “He stinketh.” As I read the story, I wrote down some of my unanswered questions:

• how old was Lazarus?
• was he chronically ill, or was this a sudden illness?
• was he healed after he came back to life?
• how did he respond once they unwrapped him?
• what did it feel like for him to see Jesus die not long after?
• how much longer did he live?

We just don’t know. When preachers talk about this story, Lazarus’ return to the living often becomes a prelude to the resurrection, or an example of Jesus’ power, or the moment when those in power decided it was time to cut this Messiah down to size. When I look at the way Jesus treated people, I don’t think he used people to make a point politically or theologically. He went to Bethany to see his friend. He took a risk to go to a region where he was a marked man to be with those he loved. And when he got to the tomb, he wept.

Jesus wept.

The shortest verse in the Bible — and another that is offered without much explanation. When I read the story this time, I noticed something I had not seen before. Look at John 11:34-35 —

He said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
Jesus wept.

The three little words in the people’s response are the ones that got me: come and see. In the summer of 1990, as I was preparing to finish my years as youth minister at University Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, my friend Billy and I wrote a song for youth camp that summer. As I remember it, I was getting ready to leave Billy’s house near Austin to drive back to Fort Worth. The next time we would see each other would be at camp. As he was showering, I sat down and wrote a lyric. It’s the only time I have had one arrive so fully formed. When he came into the room, I handed it to him. “This is a song,” he said. While I took my turn getting ready, he wrote the melody.

if there was a place that felt like home
would you go there
if there was a chance that you could know love
would you try
if there was a dream that would come true
would you fall asleep
if there was someone to dry your tears
would you cry

come and see
come and see
take and eat
come and see

if there was a voice that would call your name
would you answer
if there was a friend who would never leave
would you stay
if there was a heart that would break for you
would you fall in love
if there was someone who was listening
would you pray

come and see
come and see
take and eat
come and see

I love those three little words, both because of the song and also because of where they show up in the gospel story. When John the Baptist’s disciples came to ask if Jesus was the One They Had Been Waiting For, Jesus said, “Come and see. (John 1:39) When Philip, one of the disciples, went to get his brother Nathaniel, the latter wondered aloud if it were even possible, if anything good could come out of Nazareth. “Come and see,” was Philip’s answer. (John 1:47) When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, she went back into the middle of the town that had regularly rejected her and invited them to the love and acceptance she had found by saying, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.” (John 4:29). The last time they show up is here, when Jesus got to Bethany and asked where they had buried Lazarus, they replied: “Come and see,” and took him to the tomb.

Then Jesus wept.

I have wondered most of the day if those three little words were what broke his heart. Previously, they had been invitations to discipleship, to community, to forgiveness; now they were showing him the way to a funeral for a friend. Yes, Jesus called his name — in a loud voice — and said, “Come out!” Perhaps it was the memories tied up in those words that hooked something in him. Maybe he was exhausted by the grief and dropped his guard. Or perhaps the best I can do is project on to him what my grief has felt like.

When they passed the bread for Communion this morning, I tried to tear a piece off of the main loaf and got a handful. “I took a little too much Jesus,” I thought to myself. I started writing a poem in my head, but then I stopped and let my old song find its way back from my memory.

come and see
come and see
take and eat
come and see

Peace,
Milton

Yes, I realize there is still two weeks to go until Easter. That said, I would like to share an article I wrote for Christian Reflection, a quarterly published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. The piece is titled “On Beyond Easter.” Start here and follow the link.

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The morning my father died, I drove to the nursing home where he was in hospice care soon after sunrise, trying to make sense of what had happened. When we left the building after we had said goodbye, all we knew to do was go eat together. Grief does strange things to the mind, not the least of which is to make random connections. For me, that goes from an egg hunt in the graveyard, to a hospice bed, to a children’s book, and then a couple of lines from an old sermon I heard a long time ago. Bear with me.

When we lived in New England, my wife Ginger pastored North Community Church in Marshfield, Massachusetts, which originally broke off from the First Church of Plymouth — as in “The First Church.” That’s right: Pilgrims and all. It was a white clapboard building with big clear windows, very few decorations except for the driftwood cross that hung at the front of the sanctuary, and a tall steeple, in keeping with good Puritan tradition. Next to it was a cemetery whose tombstones bore the names of folks who lived and died before the Revolutionary War and on down.

One of my favorite traditions at our church was the Easter Egg Hunt, which followed our Easter Sunday worship service. The young people came early to hide the eggs and then the little ones came bursting out of the sanctuary after the benediction to find the eggs—among the tombstones. Since we were just south of Boston, some of those early Easters meant they found the eggs lying in the snow as well. The whole scene was a marvelous picture of the resurrection: the children running and laughing among the silent granite slates, some with names we remembered and some long forgotten. It was not uncommon to find one of the little gatherers perched on a gravestone stuffing her face with as much candy as possible before one of her parents caught on.

The juxtaposition of cold stones and vibrant children reminds me that the transition from Good Friday to Resurrection Morning is not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’. We proclaim the resurrection in the middle of the cemetery that is our grief-colored existence, losing loved ones even as we welcome new people into our hearts. We are the walking wounded, the disconsolate, as the old hymn calls us, the ones who need to be reminded there is a love that will not let us go. For those who have had loved ones die, Easter is less certain, even as it is more necessary. “He is not here” carries both a tone of palpable absence and enduring hope. . . .

You can find the rest of the article here.

Peace,
Milton

I spent the better part of the day writing, but not for this blog. I was working on a proposal for the next book. (I do love writing that sentence.) Tonight I have been staring at the screen for some time looking for the words that belong here. In the middle of writing, I took time this afternoon to go to a memorial service for a woman named Ruth Lewis who was a member of our church and an wonderfully kind and courageous person. The other thing that has been on my mind is David Letterman’s announcement that he is retiring next year. Though I will say I don’t watch as often as I once did, I am going to miss him. I learned a great deal about being funny from him. In the midst of all of that, today also marked the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. I haven’t been able to find many words of my own, but I did think of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art” —

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Loss is not the whole story for any of us and it is part of the story for all of us. Some days it elicits great sadness in me; today it led to gratitude for Ruth’s life, for Letterman’s humor, for Martin’s courage and leadership. I am different for all of their influences. Perhaps that is the best word for today.

Peace,
Milton