The greatest deposit we make is surrendering ourselves to Christ. The greatest investment we make is in others.
~Frederick Buechner (The Magnificent Defeat)
“We must love one another or die.” W. H. Auden’s assertion has now been proven. Researchers tell us that emotional loneliness is as high a risk factor for mortality as smoking. Tumors can metastasize faster in those who are lonely. Loneliness causes or exacerbates Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Mother Teresa once observed that “in the developing world there is an epidemic of poverty, in the West an epidemic of loneliness.” In a 2010 survey, one out of three adults said they were “chronically lonely,” meaning that they’ve been lonely for an extended time. A decade earlier, only one in five said that.
How is Maundy Thursday relevant to loneliness?
Today is known by a variety of names: “Maundy Thursday” (Church of England), “Holy Thursday” (Catholic and Methodist), “Covenant Thursday” (Coptic), “Great and Holy Thursday” (Eastern Orthodox), and “Thursday of Mysteries” (Syriac Orthodox). If I were to give today another name, it would be “Communion Thursday.”
On this day in Holy Week, Jesus led his disciples in the Last Supper, a meal many traditions call “Communion.” But our Lord extended communion beyond this event. He prayed fervently for his disciples and all of us as well (John 17). Then he retreated to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he told Peter, James and John, “Remain here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). On this day the Son of God knew how desperately he needed to be with his Father, and with his friends.
Shouldn’t every day be Communion Thursday for us?
__Dr. Jim Denison (Denison Forum on Truth and Culture)
Scripture Reading: Romans 8:18-39
“Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.” ~Thomas Merton
Scripture Reading: Psalm 31
“It’s hard to believe that Jesus is the Solid Rock when the world you’ve lived your whole life in has cracked beneath you into a thousand pieces. You can’t tell if everything is still half-broken or if it’s half-repaired, and hope is a scary concept when life has been full of false starts and crushing disappointments.”
~Addie Zierman
The setting was typical and familiar–a small church on a quiet street in an urban neighborhood, family members assembled along with friends of the deceased as well as the decedent’s family, and a sampling of ministers that know by heart the ins and outs of just such moments in time. Most gathered to remember a long life well lived. I joined them in order to honor a friend who was also the son of the woman that had passed. Somewhere in the mix of singing and testifying and Scripture reading came the prayer for comfort by one of the clergy present, evidently chosen for the task because he had known the woman for many years. He spoke as much to the family as he did to God, but said a curious thing in the portion of his prayer addressed to the Father: “If you drop something and break it you meant to break it, because you can surely drop it without breaking it.”
We are all broken in one way or another; the key decision of life surrounds who we allow to put us back together and according to what pattern. It is good to think about our brokenness, not just in broad strokes that we are accustomed to doing on the rare occasion when something rattles us about ourselves, but in great detail like an archeologist dusting off and tagging ancient artifacts rescued from a dig. Like detecting dirt hiding in folds of skin that are prominent but no longer useful, we approach our task of remembering so that we may relinquish all our broken pieces, not in effort to become a different person but the individual we were created to be. Fermentation is a process of turmoil; chaos appears to rule in-between crushing and leavening, but the outcome when guided by a master vintner can be beautiful. This is especially difficult for me because I abhor chaos, preferring sameness, routine, predictability. I apologize frequently to my wife for being boring. She smiles, assures me I’m not, and I go on being dull–Jan Karon’s Father Tim in real life. The joy of living is in acknowledging in grand detail the cracks in our pots, and allowing the Potter to recast us into what he had in mind to begin with.
Scripture Reading: St. Luke 9:18-27
Scripture Reading: Luke 14
“There is little we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God’s wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet.”
~Frederick Buechner (The Magnificent Defeat)
Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:24-61
More than wicker baskets and colorful eggs, Easter from my childhood reminds of a song. I can’t tell you why, but my earliest memories of this season center around the singing of “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” An African American spiritual that probably predates the Civil War, “Were You There” was likely composed by slaves in the 19th Century and first published in William Barton’s Old Plantation Hymns in 1899. I can still remember goosebumps popping out all over as my young heart seriously considered my own response to the lyrical question. The cross should always elicit a response. Either I turn away repulsed in unbelief, or I tremble and cling to it for dear life. Crosses are never neutral.
“The symbol of the cross in the church points to the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where the outcasts belong, outside the gates of the city. It does not invite thought, but a change of mind. It is a symbol which therefore leads out of the church and out of religious longing into the fellowship of the oppressed and abandoned. On the other hand, it is a symbol which calls the oppressed and godless into the church and through the church into the fellowship of the crucified God.”
~Jürgen Moltmann (The Crucified God)
We can learn a lot about God in this life if we know where to look. Hopefully we encounter him when we gather in houses of worship, but we stumble upon him most naturally and frequently during the ordinary courses of our lives. These days I’m learning volumes from our daughter’s experience with foster children. Sally, has been with them a third of her tender two-plus years of life, and to her, Heath is Daddy and Mandy is Mommy. We are Papa and JoJo, just like we are to all our grandchildren.
The family attended a Police Department party recently, and it just so happens that Sally is a party animal. A number of months before she arrived barefoot and dirty, but on this night she wore a party dress, sporting a bow in her ringlets and glittery shoes on clean feet. She wouldn’t leave the dance floor. Friends cut a rug with her, but Sally mostly wanted Heath, calling him Daddy, having the time of her young life–twirling her way even deeper into all of our hearts. That is the way of our Everlasting Father: He takes us as we are, cleans us up and gives us his best, encourages us to call him Daddy even though we shouldn’t, and dances with us forever. Heaven is having the time of our lives in our Daddy’s arms.
Skeptics make great disciples because they refuse to take anyone else’s word on anything. They insist on investigating and thinking through things for themselves. Doubt is entirely compatible with belief since Christ never called for “blind faith.” Quite the opposite–he told parables of the necessity of counting the cost in following him. Know what you’re getting into seemed to be his mantra. Once you do, you’re ready and willing to give yourself unreservedly to him.
DANE FOWLKES 