Holy Week: St. Iggy, Suffering, and Honesty

My Homeboy: St. Iggy

Since January, I have found this connection with St. Ignatius of Loyola. In fact, the more I learn about him, the more I subconsciously refer to him as Iggy {Iggy Smalls, Notorius I-G-G, Fo Shizzle Ig Nizzle...}, my homeboy, my pal, my bro. You may have noticed this as I've been quoting him a lot in worship.

Iggy has this great knack of picking out perfect words to express my spiritual thoughts and musings. As someone who is verbose to a fault and who is inundated with emotional complexity, I greatly appreciate when people can put into words what is swirling and bubbling in my soul. 

More than that, Iggy has been the inspiration for my Lenten season. Each day (or as often as I was able), I recited the Suscipe to cultivate humility, generosity, and discipleship.

As Lent is coming to a close this Holy Week, I am extremely grateful for this prayer in my Lenten practice. Yesterday, my husband and I watched 2 hours of History Channel documentaries about Jesus (while loudly critiquing some so-called history, spouting our Church History knowledge with accentuated flourish, and exchanging our best facial expressions of dubiousness and disgust). The documentaries were obsessed with getting a historical look at Jesus and his followers, at proving the divine DNA strands of Jesus, and at creating a digital representation of Jesus physical appearance. There is this manic obsession about getting to the proven facts and exact images of Holy Week, and it is not only reflected in this dude who looks like Henry Winkler with a flock-of-seagulls hair-do.

{I mean, who wouldn't want to watch hours and hours of commentary from this dude? His real name is Ray Downing...}

No, it's not just this guy; we all work really hard to get this Easter thing right, perfect, and accurate. Aside from History Channel documentaries, we have The Passion  from several years ago that famously tried to portray in movie form the most accurate portrayal of the four gospels' version of Jesus death. We have numerous TV programs (including The Bible and Jesus) to edify us, and we have upcoming movies and books like The Case for Christ and The Shack to shed wisdom and knowledge onto our Easter week. And we pastors spend a lot of time exchanging ideas, making sure the paraments and Easter flowers and crosses and palms are all in order and perfectly executed through the week. We count the number of times we've retold the Easter story, and strive to tell it in a new and enticing way each year.

Even if it's not about the theology, Easter does sort of signify some sort of perfection. Growing up, I had this hand-made Easter dress and an Easter hat for church on Easter morning. Sometimes we would get new shoes or sweaters. We would spend hours dying Easter Eggs and preparing for Easter supper. Perhaps you spend time cultivating the perfect Spring Break or going through spring cleaning to spruce up your house. Perhaps you make lovely every inch of your garden or decorate with wreathes and bows and figures.

Easter has this classic association with perfection, with brightness, and with new life. We feel pressure to make sure those things are felt and felt fully.

In actuality, so much of Holy Week and Easter reflect imperfection, suffering, and honesty. The Suscipe has been a wonderful tool for me throughout Lent to check my ego and my expectations at the door and to seek to give over my heart and my will to God. What I love about Iggy Smalls is that he recognized that Easter isn't one and done, well we got it now, moving on; he recognizes that I need to be reminded of my imperfection daily, that I need to rely on the grace and love of God which are more than enough.

Suffering

The thing I love most about Lent and about Holy Week is that is raw and painful. When we think of holidays, in the church or otherwise, it is rarely a solemn depressing occasion. Imagine if we spent all of Independence Day fasting and mourning the loss of soldiers, or Christmas feeling sad for Mary without her midwives or aid. It isn't often that we get to sit in the suffering parts of the story. And yet in Holy Week, we need the betrayal of Maundy Thursday and the vicious pain of Good Friday to bring sweetness to Easter morning. Without the suffering of the week, we cannot fully comprehend the extent of joy and excitement that Easter morning brings. Without bloody, gruesome, gritty death, we cannot hope to experience resurrection.

I really love this because my life is not always charming or happy. At times, I have gone through loss, grief, depression, anxiety, or very challenging circumstances, and well-meaning folks have advised me to look on the bright side or count my blessings. While certainly those are nice sentiments, I'm not sure if God always wants us to feel happy, joyful, and content. Several years ago, one of my cousins had a baby who died during labor. I heard many phrases like, "Heaven has another angel!" and "God has a plan!" and later, "Had that not happened, we might not have the two beautiful girls she has now!" and while those might be nice or even true, they don't eliminate the grief and suffering of losing Devon. And in fact, it seems wrong and unfair to place a time limit on the grief and mourning one can experience at the untimely loss of this precious child. Holy Week reminds me that God honors our grief and our pain; God participates in our suffering and heartache.

On Maundy Thursday, we will read Scripture that reminds us that Jesus prayed and was grieved to the point of tears and sweating droplets of blood as he prepared for the impending crucifixion (Luke 22.39-46). We will be reminded that Jesus said, "Not my will but yours be done" in prayer to the Father. The gospel of John will help us to relive moments when Jesus washes the feet that will flee from him in his darkest hour and breaks bread with the man who will betray him for a small fee. In Scripture, we will find that Jesus didn't feel all warm and fuzzy about the crucifixion, nor did he face death with a super-human joyfulness.

On Good Friday, we will hear Jesus cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" a phrase from the Psalms that reverberates in our hearts, a phrase we confess we have wondered in our darkest time of need. We will encounter a Jesus who cries out, who thirsts, who is beaten and shamed, who is in genuine suffering and pain. We will imagine God the Father, who covers the earth with darkness, whose heart is broken with loss, even with the foreknowledge that Easter is coming.

So...honesty...

So, we come upon Holy Week with unbridled honesty. With this sense that life is both painful and wonderful, challenging and rewarding, we approach Holy Week with a raw and vulnerable emotion etched on our hearts. We experience Jesus, exposed and unfettered, in the stories that lead up to Easter, and we are both excited and confused, attracted and repulsed, comforted and discomforted by this Jesus that we meet. Holy Week is when Jesus shows us the truth of who He is; it is also the week when we come before Jesus with the truth of who we are.

We are...doubters, betrayers, sinners; egocentric yet self-loathing beings; people who are barely treading water, yet who are addicted to stress, productivity, and anxiety; people who didn't really feel like giving up a Thursday evening for church or a half hour for prayer; people who would rather curl up in comfort and security rather than face the ugliness, brutality, and bitterness of the Holy Week story.

Whether we are lounging on some beach somewhere, yanking weeds from our garden, exploring a fabulous city, camping in the mountains, or traveling to see family, I challenge us (myself included) to spend some time in the raw, honest suffering of Holy Week this week. I challenge us not to turn away from Jesus' vulnerable position on the cross, and to expose to God our own honest hurts, sufferings, and doubts. I challenge us to see Holy Week as an invitation to an intimacy only God can confirm.

If you're in town, we have the Maundy Thursday service at 7:00 on Thursday in the Sanctuary with communion, and a time of prayer and reflection on Good Friday from 12:00-1:00 pm (you can come on your lunch hour; self-guided prayer stations!) in the Columbarium. If you're not in town, stay tuned for a blog by me on the two services on Friday, and check out the daily scripture readings in the lectionary: Daily Lectionary Readings

Whatever you do, I pray that you know the truth of St. Iggy's words:

Take and receive, oh Lord,

My liberty, my memory, my understanding,  and my whole will.

All that I have and all that I am you have given to me.

I surrender it all to you, to be disposed of according to your will.

Grant that I may have only your love and your grace,

For with these I am rich enough.

Amen.

Because Nadia Bolz-Weber is awesome: Not Sure About Holy Week

Hope: Sports, Resurrection, and Allergies

Yesterday, Dan gave a great sermon about Ezekiel 37, the dry bones becoming flesh, the power of hope in the Holy Spirit. If you missed it, you can watch it here:

http://unityfortmill.org/live

This topic and Scripture are very timely for April 3, and I have been reflecting on hope for many weeks now. In many ways, April feels like a time of hope, and in many ways it does not.

Sports

In our home, we organize our lives around sporting events. We often call the month of February and the first two weeks of March "The Sports Desert" because it's the most depressing time of the year. When we lived in Pittsburgh, you're pretty much guaranteed that 6 weeks will have 1 maybe 2 days of full sunlight, and there will more than likely be one more big snow to cap off the season. The Super Bowl ends the weekly football gatherings for the year. Professional Hockey and Basketball are in that middle part of the marathon season when it almost gets a little boring. College basketball is happening but doesn't really get exciting until March. And of course, Major League Baseball hasn't begun yet. 

The drought begins to let up in the beginning of March when the pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training, when the trade deadline hits for the NHL, and the college basketball teams (both men and women) start to heat up. There is something electric that begins inside me the first time the Pittsburgh Pirates update their Facebook page and as ESPN starts to spend some time on Bracketology. That electricity builds through March Madness, the opening series of baseball season, Stanley Cup playoffs, the NFL Draft, all the way to midsummer with the Home Run Derby (arguably the best all-star sports moment of the year. And by then it's just a few more weeks until we have college football and the NFL starting back up, and we Yinzers (from Pittsburgh) begin to calculate the possibilities of a weekend when the Pirates, the Penguins, the Steelers, and the Pitt Panthers all play at home. 

There's something more too it of course. Today, being opening day for the Pirates, the possibilities are endless and there are 160 games left to win. On the first day of March Madness, there's the possibility of reliving the one time ever when I picked the champion. Every team has a chance, and every year there's a surprise. There is this bubble of hope that begins to grow in the spring for sports; we believe in the underdog and commit ourselves afresh to the team that we believe will not let us down. There's a new passion and excitement in our daily routine: we look forward to discussing our brackets, congratulating our Gamecock fan friends, and mercilessly debating our rival pals. Watching folks running around in the sunshine inspires us to get out into the beautiful weather and enjoy it...perhaps in a lawn chair, but outside nonetheless.

Spring sports bring me hope, energy, and excitement.

Jesus

Of course, we also participate in Lent, the Passion, and the celebration of Easter Sunday. In Lent, we commit ourselves to the hope that tomorrow we will be greater servants than we were today. We believe that the more we confess our sin and our faith, the more we will grow in our discipleship of Jesus. And we patiently wait for that beautiful morning when Jesus leaps from the grave in victory.

There is lots of hope to be found in the beautiful Easter lilies, brightly colored Easter bonnets, Spring Break vacations, and the adorable decorations of eggs, chicks, and bunnies that surround us. While the secular version of Easter may have nothing to do with Jesus, the colors and images do give us that same spirit of hope and excitement for the season.

Dry Bones and Congestion

Sometimes it's easy to see all of these bright colors, exciting events, and joyful celebrations as an easy time of hope for our lives. But other times it doesn't feel that way. For me, the beginning of spring means extra allergy medications, a tablespoon of local honey every morning, and lathering Vicks all over my neck and face before bed. It means lilies, hyacinths, and pine straw, which make my nose itch, my eyes water, and my sinuses swell. It means an almost certain sinus infection in late April, and multiple trips to the car wash per week to get that pollen drop off my car and away from my nostrils.

Spring means another holiday without a loved one who has died. It means there are soccer games to get to or varsity teams to not make. It means the inevitable aggravation of taxes and the exhaustion of lawn work, social events, musicals, sports, picnics, and graduations. It means sometimes feeling guilty for not getting more done; it means one less hour of sleep for Daylight savings.

Sometimes, Spring still feels like dry bones, like the idea of this field of dry bones taking on flesh seems utterly impossible. Sometimes, I think the sunshine will make me feel a little better, but instead it feels sharp, piercing, and glaring. Sometimes, Spring feels more like the desperation of Good Friday than the celebration of Easter Sunday. We are caught in the grim reality of death found in Ash Wednesday, and the confession of guilt and self-discipline associated with Lent. 

Sometimes the process of hope isn't something that can be fixed in a day, or even 3 days, or even perhaps the whole season. Hope isn't always an instantaneous gratification, but a slow march toward summer. It becomes celebrating the little victories (including getting out of bed in the morning!) and forgiving ourselves for the challenges.

Confessions

I must confess that this Spring for me has been a season of dry bones. I've spent time caring for my mother after surgery and my husband during a particularly terrible batch of strep throat. The Pasta Night and Pine Straw fundraisers have been full of unexpected challenges and additional burdens I wasn't expecting, leaving me one step behind. I feel unprepared almost every day; I leave my extremely messy office with a feeling of being unfinished every day. As those around me have been suffering from loss, stress, illness, and injury, I have felt at times that my well is too dry to give good comfort and care to others.

As one person said to me, sometimes I feel so behind I think I'm in first.

It's the first day of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball season, and it's also Day 1 of Spring Cleaning for Pastor Lindsay. I am beginning the slow arduous process of physically going through, cleaning, and organizing the piles of *stuff* that overtaken my office and my home. Every inch will be a battleground that will require me to fight for it, but I will fight for every inch. (If you think that sounds melodramatic, you should take a gander at the pig sty in my office, and your mind will be changed). Through this physical process, I am working to emotionally and spiritually prepare myself for the next months of ministry in this church. Summer is coming, and with it transformative, beautiful experiences emerge with youth at Montreat, mission trips, and summer after-church lunches. I am gleaning from the stuff and the memories both the wonderful ways the Holy Spirit has shown up here in this place and the ways that we need to change to get back onto the right path.

I invite each of you to join me on this spiritual journey of spring cleaning: what can we get rid of in order to make space for what really matters? How can we emerge from the clutter with greater spiritual energy for the days to come?