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LENTEN DEVOTIONALS
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Why Musings?
- The Musings Page will be a place to consider thought-provoking, evocative, sometimes polemical but not overtly political, writings, quotes, ideas, and poetry on the Christian life in all its facets: spiritual, religious, ethical, and practical.
Lagniappe
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“What Comes Out of That Time?”
posted on April 7, 2012 by Musings
The writer and minister Frederick Buechner speaks to the power of recognizing the darkness and uncertainty of Holy Saturday.Which of us has not suffered one way or another? We’ve all had our crucifixions, where God seems to be absent and light seems to disappear, and the world is dark and terrifying. Anybody with faith or without faith has had somehow to live through that kind of a time. The question is, What comes out of that time?……Chrysalis by Sieger Köder
I can hardly imagine anybody not going through a Good Friday, one way or another, going through the darkness, one way or the other. I can’t. In fact, I would be a little bit leery of anybody who felt that he or she had somehow come straight to a kind of faith having had no suffering at all. I’d think, well, you don’t really know what life is all about. You don’t know what faith is all about, if all you know is little goody two-shoes kind of version of reality.
From: An interview with Frederick Buechner
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Filed under: Faith, Lent
‘Crucify Him’
posted on April 6, 2012 by Musings
Excerpt from the article “Stuck with Each Other” by Thomas W. Currie in the Spring 2012 issue of Insights, the faculty journal of Austin Seminary.
W.H. Auden thought it highly unlikely that any of us would have found Jesus attractive on our own terms. Both disciple and Pharisee knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ rebukes, especially when they sought to enlist him in support of their agendas. In so many ways, he was the wrong person, a thought that occurred to both Peter and Judas. Luke and Matthew make it clear, even in their birth narratives, that the child born in Bethlehem was not the Savior the world either wanted or expected….
In another place, Auden writes that if a person is asked why he or she believes in Jesus Christ, he or she can give no better answer than to say, “‘I believe … because He is in every respect the opposite of what He would be if I could make him in my own image.’ Thus, if a Christian is asked: ‘Why Jesus and not Socrates or Buddha or Confucius or Mahomet?’ perhaps all he can say is: ‘None of the others arouse all sides of my being to cry ‘Crucify Him.’”
Auden’s point is that we are never saved by the one we want, the one we deem suitable for the task, the one we would choose, but rather by one whose freedom to love scandalizes us, “constraining” our agendas, drawing us out of ourselves and into the strange polity of his body. There, “in him” whom we have not chosen, we find ourselves stuck with others whom we have not chosen, but without whom Jesus does not give us himself. To be saved by the wrong person is to be saved in and with the wrong people, a scandal that continues to offend and is regularly displayed in the sacrament of baptism.
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Filed under: Bible, Lent
“Take; this is my body.”
posted on April 5, 2012 by Musings
The Last Supper by Salvador Dalí from http://www.dali-gallery.com/images/works/1955_01.jpg
While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
Mark 14:22-25
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“Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
posted on April 4, 2012 by Musings
John 13:1-17
And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God,got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.
COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
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Journeying Towards Resurrection: Knowing the Brokenness
posted on April 3, 2012 by Musings
John Philip Newell, at “The Pieta” sculpture by Stephen de Staebler, in New Harmony, Indiana, on Tuesday of Holy Week, claims that we will journey towards resurrection in our lives and world to the extent that we know the world’s brokenness as our brokenness.
Journeying Towards Resurrection: Knowing the Brokenness ” Tuesday, “Pieta,
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Hope that into the world the King does come
posted on March 31, 2012 by Musings
From Hope in a Room Called Remember by Frederick Buechner
When Jesus of Nazareth rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and his followers cried out, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord,” the Pharisees went to Jesus and told him to put an end to their blasphemies, and Jesus said to them, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
This church. The church on the other side of town, the other side of the world. All churches everywhere. The day will come when they will all lie in ruins, every last one of them. The day will come when all the voices that were ever raised in them, including our own, will be permanently stilled. But when that day comes, I believe that the tumbled stones will cry aloud of the great, deep hope that down through the centuries has been the one reason for having churches at all and is the one reason we have for coming to this one now: the hope that into the world the King does come. And in the name of the Lord. And is always coming, blessed be he. And will come afire with glory, at the end of time.
In the meantime, King Jesus, we offer all churches to you as you offer them to us. Make thyself known in them. Make thy will done in them. Make our stone hearts cry out thy kingship. Make us holy and human at last that we may do the work of thy love.
Painting by Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence.
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Annunciation Sunday – March 25
posted on March 24, 2012 by Musings
COPYRIGHT DANIEL BONNELL WWW.BONNELLART.COM
“Behold, I am the hand maid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Luke 1:38
Nine months before Christmas, the Church’s Lenten journey pauses on March 25 to remember the Annunciation and Mary’s “yes” to God’s gracious act of becoming “God with us” in Jesus Christ. But Lent is far gone, and so we remember not only the 15 year old girl, who stands at the beginning of the Gospel story, but also the almost 50 year old woman who stands at the foot of the cross. Wrapped up in this remembrance is the mystery of the Incarnation, Christ’s decision, out of love for us, to empty himself, as Paul puts it, “taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”
This short poem by Jane Kenyon captures some of this remembrance of Mary as the first disciple and the mystery of the Incarnation.
Looking at Stars
by Jane Kenyon from Let Evening Come
The God of curved space, the dryGod, is not going to help us, but the son
whose blood spattered
the hem of his mother’s robe.
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Filed under: Bible, Christmas, Lent
A is for Alleluia
posted on February 28, 2012 by Musings
An excerpt from : From: On Being – A is for Alleluia
A is for Ashes and last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the day when many denominations observe the beginning of Lent — the 40-ish days leading up to the Last Supper, the death of Jesus, the finding of the empty tomb, and the mysterious appearances of Jesus….
…….Last Tuesday, eating pancakes and lemons, some friends discussed what to give up. We were all agreed: Lent is less for giving up, and more for making space……
We make space to contemplate what it is that we will celebrate in 40 days’ time. We make space to recognise our faults. We pray a little more. We allow our emptier stomachs to remind us of the pithiness of our observations in comparison with real hunger. We give more money. We confess. We reconcile. We listen to emptiness for a while. We do not say Alleluia.
Pádraig Ó Tuama originally from Cork, works in Belfast, Northern Ireland doing chaplaincy and community work, mostly through the Corrymeela Community and the Irish Peace Centres. Part of his community work involves writing poetry to encapsulate some of the stories of living and dying in the context of the Irish conflict.
On Being is a public radio project delving into the human side of news stories + issues.
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Lent: Dying to Yourself
posted on February 20, 2012 by Musings
The Mardi Gras season is drawing to a close and we are approaching the season of Lent on Wednesday. In the link below to a short video clip author and historian Diana Butler Bass talks about the various ways she has considered dying to herself. This is a Lenten concept that places sacrifice at the most difficult intersections of our lives, the places that are hard to let go of and the “things” that we don’t want to or can’t seem to part with. It exposes our pride and self-centeredness, rather than our God-centeredness.
Video clip: Lent and Dying to Yourself
This video clip is from a subscription to The Work of the People, which is a community of artists who create visual media for the church to re-orient God’s people around Jesus’ good news and mission to make all things new.
