The Look at Jesus Course — It's Here!

I’m not big on self-promotion, so instead I’m going to tell you some stories.

That work for you?

—

About 15 years ago, I reached a crossroads in my spirituality. You could call it hitting a wall. You could also call it a moment when it felt like scales were falling from my eyes so I could see clearly. If you’ve been reading here at Still Forming for very long, you know this as the moment I realized I didn’t understand my need for grace or Jesus. 

I’d been raised in the church my whole life and believed I needed Jesus my whole life — even had a pretty intimate sense of Jesus’ presence for as long as I could remember being aware of his existence. But suddenly, at age 19, a junior college, I had a moment of reckoning: I didn’t undertsand why I needed Jesus — you know, in a deep, profound, life-real way.

That led to the most honest prayer I’d ever before prayed: “God, can you help me understand my need for Jesus? If I need Jesus, can you help me understand why — and what that even means?”

—

That honest prayer was followed by two years of darkness. It felt like I sat down on the floor of my life and refused to get up until God answered my prayer. All the things I used to do, I stopped doing. I think I was, in the process, testing God’s promise of unconditional love. 

It was a really confusing time.

But stubborn as I was, I knew it was important. So I kept digging in my heels and refused to move until I got the answers I knew I needed. 

—

About two years into this process, I had another one of those “scales falling from my eyes” moments. I can remember the day so clearly. I was sitting on the couch in my little one-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach, CA, and sitting across from me on the coffee table was my Bible. 

Like a flash, it occurred to me that if I wanted to understand why Jesus mattered to me, why I might somehow need him, I could let him teach me. I could read through the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — and let the records we have of his actual life and words teach me what I needed to know. 

So I did. 

I picked up my Bible, turned to the first page of Matthew, and just started reading. 

—

Over the course of the next 3-4 weeks, I had what I now refer to as an immersive reading experience. I slid into those pages of the Gospels as though reading a novel, complete with characters and scenes and a lone, heroic protagonist: Jesus. 

He came alive to me in a new way during that time. It was like he stood up inside those pages and started walking around and doing things. He became a 3-dimensional person, complete with personality, will, opinions, and a body.

It completely changed my life.

—

Fast-forward about a decade, and I was in a session with my spiritual director, talking yet again about one of the ways Jesus was interacting with my life in that current moment, and I said, “I just wish more people could get to know Jesus in this same way. I wish they could read through the Gospels immersively, like I did all those years ago now, and see what happens for them — how he becomes a real person for them too. I wish I could create a way for others to try it.” 

And she said, “Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you create something like that?” 

So I did.

I took her up on that challenge and worked to create a 6-week course experience called Look at Jesus that I offered in 2011 and 2012. We read the Gospels immersively, and with a bit of a framework and guidance from me, we explored Jesus together. 

The first time I taught the course, it was full of people all along the spectrum of experience when it comes to faith, church, the Bible, and Jesus — some people who had been raised their whole lives in the church, just like me, and were very familiar with the Scriptures and with Jesus, but others who were brand-new to the idea of Jesus and had never before read a single word in the Bible. 

It was an incredible experience, ripe with interesting questions and kind dialogue and new experiences for many. 

Then I taught the course again, this time to just one person, and I discovered what a sacred gift it is to walk with someone in their very personal experience of faith and Jesus, tailoring the experience to their questions and concerns and letting the process be a very personal, safe space for exploration and discovery. We lingered where she needed or wanted to linger. We followed some conversations threads I’d laid out, and we didn’t follow others. The process was simply what she needed it to be. 

And at the end of those experiences, I realized something: This is it for me. I need to do this more. 

—

So I’ve spent the last year and a half — year and a half! — revamping the Look at Jesus course experience into a one-on-one companionship experience that a person can take at their own pace and in company with me every step of the way. It’s the most in-depth process and experience I’ve ever created, and I’m incredibly proud of what it is. I have been beside myself in anticipation of inviting you into it for such a very long time.

And now it’s ready for you. 

Would you like to spend time getting to know Jesus with me? I hope you will say yes.

Carrying Stillness :: When You Don't Understand Why

Her eyes so often hold a question.

—

I remember last June, a season I’d been spending with Jesus abruptly came to an end.  

For about nine months, we’d been meeting each day on the beach. Some days we’d walk back and forth along the shoreline. Sometimes we’d sit and stare at the waves. Sometimes I’d lean my head on his shoulder while we watched. Sometimes when I did this, he’d put his arm around my shoulder and sing over me. Other days, usually when I was upset with him for some reason, we’d stand facing each other on the sand while I let loose my diatribe and he took it all in stride and then responded in some totally unexpected but completely perfect way. 

It was such a treasured time. 

And then came the day we kept walking southward along the shoreline and turned a bend we’d never turned before. The familiar piece of shore we’d canvassed for nine months disappeared from view. Up ahead and to the right sat a piece of land jutting into the sea, covered in grass and ending with a steep drop-off cliff at its tip. On its south side sat a huge and rambling tree. 

My time on the beach with Jesus was over. 

The hard thing was that I didn’t know it was happening until it happened. I’d been content to walk with Jesus, exploring hither and yon on our daily beach dates, where sometimes I would lead and other times he would.

I had felt myself to be following his lead that day, but to me, we were just walking. I could tell he was leading, that he had a direction firmly in mind, but it wasn’t until we’d rounded the bend and walked up to that grassy knoll that I realized: This was our new destination. 

We weren’t going back. 

The other hard thing was that from our vantage point on the grassy cliff, I could see the beach we’d walked all those months. There it was, just out of reach. Here I was, in a new place. Here he was, too, with me in it, but I knew the other way we’d been sharing life together had come to an end. It was time for something new.

It hurt a lot when it happened.

I cried. I told my spiritual director, Elaine, it felt like he didn’t want to be with me anymore, and I couldn’t understand it. I stood face to face with Jesus, huge tears filling my eyes and spilling down my cheeks, and told him how much it hurt. Why didn’t he want to spend that uninterrupted time with me anymore? Why didn’t he want that intimacy we’d shared between us, just him and me? That experience of having me all to himself? Of having my undivided attention? Of experiencing my faithfulness to meet him each day on that beach that was ours? Why would he want to leave that space we shared? That season so beautiful?

Oh, yes. It hurt a lot.

The aftermath, when I realized what I’d lost without realizing I was losing it, was a painful time, and it was an awkward time.

He wanted to teach me a new way of being then, too, just like he does right now. He wanted to teach me how to look him in the eyes and have my own voice (which I wrote about here). He wanted to make me into a tree that allowed others to nestle inside its braches (which I wrote about here). He wanted to introduce me in greater depth to the Father and the Holy Spirit, beyond just being in relationship with himself, Jesus.

Eventually, I settled into the new territory and became familiar with its lush terrain. I became grateful for the chance to better know the Father and the Spirit. I came to love being a tree. I grew to love that cliff area. It’s still the place I regularly meet Jesus in our times of conversation. We like to sit with our legs hanging over the edge, looking north toward the beach shoreline we used to walk, often meeting there when we can watch the sun set over the ocean.

But it took time to receive. It took time to reorient. To accept this new thing. 

That’s where I’ve continued to be with this “carrying stillness” journey I’m on right now. I know I must sound like a broken record, sharing all the angles of this new invitation that I’ve found difficult. But it is what it is. Changing course means reorientation, which always begins with disorientation. Leaving behind a beloved gift means sadness. Especially when that beloved gift was something that equated to pure and unadulterated intimacy with the Beloved of your heart, and you don’t understand why your Beloved would want something else.

I know he has his reasons. I even know they are good. But that doesn’t mean they’re easy.

And so today I’m in a similar place I was on that June day he walked with me around a corner on the beach shoreline, never to return.

I think about the spacious, quiet life I used to lead. The simplicity of it. The focus of it. The way it felt completely tied to giving him my whole heart with intentionality and prayerfulness and attending each day to the cares and cries of the world. The way living a small and quiet life felt like the call to hiddenness he’d planted in me years before. 

I don’t know why he’d call me away from that. I wish it wasn’t so. To me, nothing seems better between us than that singleminded, devoted life I’d given him. 

I do know he knows what he’s doing. I know his ways are better than mine. I trust someday — hopefully soon — I’ll be grateful for this turn in the journey. 

But not today.

Today I’m still asking him if there can be some other way to keep things the way they were. And I know him well enough to know he’ll receive my tears and my asking with infinite patience and love, and also that he’ll respond in that perfect way he always does — a way that helps me accept what is.

Beginning the Work Again :: Embracing My Humanity

The light above us.

—

Along the lines of relearning my not-God-ness comes the embrace of my humanity, all with the aim of pointing people to God and not me.

This is where something in my head can sometimes get really messed up.

I think about how we are the body of Christ here on earth. How we are meant to be Christ to others. How we are meant to keep growing into the image of God in us. And how, for someone who is a spiritual director or just generally in ministry, this can get even more complex because so often we are the visible image of the invisible God for others. 

Cue the questions of where we end and God begins, and vice versa. 

—

When I stop to think about it, it’s funny that I take over-responsibility for things and people, given the metaphor of us as the body of Christ. We are each a part, not the whole. I’m an ear, or an eye. Which necessarily means I can’t be a foot or an arm or a finger. I can’t — and am not meant to — shoulder all of the concerns of the world or be Christ’s body in the world on my own. We need each other. 

—

Spiritual directors like to describe what’s happening in spiritual direction by using the image of three chairs: one for the directee, one for the director, and one for the unseen but very real presence of God.

I was talking with my supervisor about this picture last week, and we were talking about how often we assume those chairs to be positioned equidistant from each other, like an equilateral triangle. Sometimes I’m even tempted to believe the chairs held by me and my directee are the ones in “full color” in the picture, with God’s chair kind of greyed out, or perhaps even off in the corner, since he’s an unseen, non-audible presence in the room. 

And yet here’s what’s really true:

Spiritual direction is ultimately about the directee’s connection with God.

If anything, it’s the directee’s and God’s chairs that are meant to be “full color.” If anything, my chair is the one meant for the corner so that I don’t get in the way of what God and the directee are meant to find in one another. I’m a facilitator, but the directee and God are the main players there. They’re the reason we’ve come together in the first place.

—

In relationship, if I shoulder the God role, then I keep someone from receiving what God alone is meant to give them. I unwittingly make them dependent on me instead of pointing them toward the one upon whom they’re meant to depend. 

I want my life to be about this: “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Or, as Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message version: “I deliberately [keep] it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did—Jesus crucified.” 

May you always see me pointing you to Jesus. This is the prayer of my heart. 

My Life Today, in Honor of Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy 

introduced me to Jesus.

— 

I was talking with a new Twitter friend earlier this week about something Ronald Rolheiser says in his book The Holy Longing—how, when a person dies, their spirit continues to live on in you. You become their living eulogy through the things you do and the person you are that is that way because of them. 

Today, as I’m thinking about Dallas Willard and feeling sad about the news of his passing, this idea is stirring me up in a new way.

Dallas Willard is one of the first people who helped me see the Jesus I’ve come to know.

I read his Divine Conspiracy during my senior year of college, and the chapter on the Beatitudes especially impacted me. It helped frame my understanding when I finally, the following year, sat down and read the Gospels straight through from beginning to end. 

In a lot of ways, I have him to thank for my knowing Jesus the way I do now. He re-introduced me to Jesus while God was preparing the soil in me to re-find him.

And since so much of my life and work now flows directly to and from the source of Jesus, I suppose I am living out my homage to Dallas Willard each and every day. This thought is helping me frame the news of his passing in a way that gives me joy and gratitude.

Is there anyone whose life lives on in you in a similar way?

Beginning the Work Again :: Tears for What I See

Looking at the brokenness.

—

I mentioned in my last post that I experienced tenderness in the aftermath of my healing experience and that I came to see it as what emerged when my heart, fresh and new, became exposed to the elements. 

But it’s also because of what I can see now.

I was in the long-ingrained habit of looking away from some things, and one memory in particular. It was a scene from which I averted my eyes whenever it came into my awareness. I just couldn’t look at it. To do so was to wince and shudder. To do so was to relive it all over again.

But now, because of Jesus, I can see it. 

And not only can I see it, but I also see it for what it is. 

I’m seeing truth — the truth of what happened, and the truth of its injustice. And that, too, is a reason for the tears.

One thing I didn’t mention in the entry about my healing experience is how much I cried. When I met Jesus in that memory and experienced him with me inside of it, I put my head on the desk and just sobbed. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever done that for this particular memory, and it felt good to release the tears and honor the pain of what had happened after all these years.

Then, when I was driving to my therapy session last Thursday, I connected with the truth of the experience in a different way. It was crazy-stormy in Florida that day. The clouds were dark and hovering, the rain like sheets. Everyone crept along the roads the best they could.

And inside my car, I played one song over and over again on the stereo. It was written by a girl who struggled to face the truth of her own difficult experience. The song charts her progression into that truth with a growing strength. “It’s not right … it’s not right,” she begins to repeat about halfway through the song. And then, harmonies tight and strong, she proclaims, “No.”

As I let this song companion me on my drive, I began to realize that another part of the emotion I’m carrying is the acknowledgment of injustice. That what happened was wrong. That it breaks God’s heart, too, even as he offered me his calmness and strength and peace and love in that moment of healing. 

There’s something amazing about God’s ability to see truth while extending mercy. It’s a profound duality I’m holding in my heart a lot right now. It’s something I’m seeking to learn.

Beginning the Work Again :: Jesus There

How lovely are you.

—

“Be watchful—the grace of God appears suddenly. It comes without warning to an open heart. Sweep out the stable of your existence and the King will gladly enter.” 

—Rumi

—

I’m sitting cross-legged on my couch. It’s this past Saturday morning, around 8 a.m. 

I take a deep breath in. Let a deep breath out. I close my eyes, then breathe in, then out. I find a still place in the center of myself where I know God lives. 

Thinking of this still place inside of me, I turn my eyes to the right, where sits a used copy of Joyce Rupp’s The Cup of Our Life that arrived a few days ago. On the cover is the drawing of a cup held between two hands. I pick up the book. Read the first few pages again — the story of Joyce’s encounter of cup as spiritual metaphor.

I set the book down and return to that still place. Eyes closed. Breathing in. Breathing out. The image of a cup in the center of my being, filled with God. 

—

A few moments later, overcome with stories of my life, seen as a panorama, I get up off the couch. Walk over to my desk. Pull my vintage typewriter off the small side chair and onto the surface of the desk. I sit down and scroll a sheet of paper into its feed. 

I reach for my earbuds, folded up in the corner of my desk. I untangle them. Plug them into my iPhone and place them in my ears. Pull up the music app and scroll to Eustace the Dragon, then tap “White as Snow” and make sure it’s set to play on repeat. 

Turning my attention to the typewriter, I type the date. Hit return. Then indent. Start typing the first paragraph of the panoramic view I saw inside my head. 

—

After one paragraph typed, I stop. Cross my arms, folded, on the desk and listen to the song playing on repeat in my ears. Eyes closed.

I become aware of his presence. Jesus. He’s just behind my shoulder. 

I’m inside my memory — that memory, the one that feels like running full-out into a thick black wall and then wrenching myself away, black and blue, bruised. 

And there Jesus is. Right behind my shoulder in that memory. 

Inside the memory, I turn my head back a bit to look at him. The memory is still happening, like a video playing inside my mind, every moment of it happening right there in front of me — in front of us — and what I notice is him. 

Jesus. 

This. This is my moment of deepest shame and humiliation. This. Right here. 

And there Jesus is, with me. Calm. Strong. Radiating peace. 

—

The first thing I notice is his presence with me. Solid. Fully there and attentive. With-ness. 

The next thing I notice is that while he is fully present to me and my consciousness of him, he is also fully aware of what is happening inside that memory. He sees it happening, and he doesn’t flinch.

He sees it happening. And he doesn’t flinch.

What grace washes over me. In the moment of my deepest shame and humiliation, he sees it and doesn’t flinch. He sees it and doesn’t flinch.

For the first time in 19 years, I see it, too, and do not flinch. 

It’s a miracle. Happening inside me and before my very eyes. 

—

I become aware of the truth: Who I am, the reality of me in the eyes of Jesus, is deeper than this memory. I am more than this moment of shame. 

This? This is healing. 

This? I’m reminded of what I’ve learned so viscerally before: This is how forgiveness becomes possible.

And I realize in that moment that if I can find this truth in the place of my deepest shame, then so can others. Hope floods me.

—

This is not the first time I have experienced Jesus with me inside my memories. It is not the first time he has healed me in such a way. 

At other times, I have asked him the question we all long to ask: Why did you let this happen? You were there. Why didn’t you intervene? Sometimes I’ve asked this question in anger. In hurt. 

He has always answered.

The answers, too, are a healing.

I notice that I don’t feel angry this time, seeing him there with me, not moving to stop the events. The feeling of his presence was so strong and peaceful and full of his attentiveness to me that I could feel no anger. Only gratitude. 

I did ask the question, though. Quietly.

I don’t know if he’s done answering the question yet — why he let it happen, why he didn’t intervene, why he allowed aspects of my story to collect the way they did. But here’s one impression I had that is feeling very true: If that memory happened for the sole reason that I would land here, experiencing the potent presence of Jesus in the way I did right then, that maybe is enough. 

He is my greatest treasure. He is the most beautiful one of all.

“How lovely … how lovely are you.

“How lovely … how lovely your voice, your face.”

—Eustace the Dragon, “A Song for Sparrows”

Beginning the Work Again :: What I Didn't Know Then

My life now. 

—

Dear Christianne,

When you started your formation journey at age 19, you had no idea that’s what you were doing. All you knew was that you suddenly saw things — about yourself, the world around you, and even God — you couldn’t see before and that the vista of your whole world was changing. 

You had blow-your-mind, whoa-dang moments about all this for quite a while. And you often felt like the ground was being pulled out from underneath your feet. You had no idea what you were doing, and you didn’t have any guidebooks or teachers to help you.

But you were also quite stubborn and stuck to what you knew: that you needed to walk this path.

I’m proud of you for that stubbornness. 

What you didn’t know then was that it would take so long. This is one reason your stubbornness was a good thing. It took you two years into the journey to find Jesus. It took another four years beyond that to really settle into your sense of belovedness. It took you nearly a decade to forgive some things.

If you knew it would take so long, would you still have walked the path? We’ll never know, and it doesn’t really matter. Because you did walk the path. And now you wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

That’s another thing you didn’t know then. You didn’t know that “yes” you uttered would lead to what would become the most precious thing in your life. Now you wouldn’t change the journey for anything. Wrapped up inside the whole of it — the difficult truths, the healing moments, the growth, and of course Jesus — is everything you are today. 

You didn’t know it would change your life. Because of that journey you took, you began to care about other people’s journeys. You wanted them to experience grace and belovedness too. You wanted them to meet the Jesus you’d met. You wanted them to take the formation journey, even though it’s one of the most messy, complicated things a person can try to do. You wanted to walk beside them while they struck out on the path.

And so you eventually left your full-time job as an editor — the work you thought was the end-all, be-all of a career life when you were 19 years old! — in order to be trained to do this work responsibly and well. You took four formal years to get trained, and you’re still equipping yourself every day. You eventually started this website as an invitation and a safe place to begin. You now write and teach and offer spiritual direction, undergirded by a life of prayer; these things are your vocation.

The formation journey that you didn’t even know was a formation journey at the time you began it changed your whole entire future. 

Right now, you’re facing some hard truths and revisiting the process again. And more than anything, I want to remind you about what I just said about your formation journey having become the most precious thing in your life. I want you to remember that. Because right now, you can’t imagine ever feeling that way about what you’re walking through.

You will. Someday you will hold it close, just like you hold all the other parts of this journey close, and say you can’t imagine life without it.

Love,

Me 

Be Transformed by the Resurrection

Make way for the light.

—

The last two weeks on the Cup of Sunday Quiet, we’ve been focused on Easter. In particular, the weekly lectio recordings that I create for that community of subscribers have centered on resurrection stories — the story of Mary Magdalene encountering the empty tomb and the risen Christ, then the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples gathered in the upper room. 

I’m being transformed by these stories. 

That’s the wonderful thing about lectio divina. It carries the power to transform. You may be listening to a portion of Scripture you’ve heard a hundred times, but you’ve never heard it in just this moment, carrying just what you’re carrying now, responding in just the way you’re moved to respond today. 

Plus, it creates room for real response. You’re invited to encounter your real heart as well as God. You’re invited to let God encounter you. 

It can be a powerful, transformative experience.

I’m away at a conference this week and won’t be posting here, but in my absence I’d like to invite you deeper into this season of Easter through these two resurrection stories. Will you make room to encounter the risen Christ?

• Recording #1: Mary Magdalene encounters the Risen Christ — John 20:11-16 (15:15 minutes)

• Recording #2: Jesus appears to the disciples — Luke 24:36-43 (13:40 minutes)

PS: Please pardon a little bit of airplane interference in the second recording — a sometimes-hazard of living in the flight path of an international airport! :-)

PPS: To receive the Sunday Quiet mailing each week, sign up here.

Love,

Christianne 

Woman, Why Are You Weeping?

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

—

I love John’s rendering of the resurrection — the way we get to read about it through the lens of Mary Magdalene’s experience.

We follow her to the tomb “early, while it was still dark” (John 20:1) and then follow her as she runs to get Peter and John to tell them the body of Jesus is gone from the tomb. After Peter and John run to the tomb to confirm it, they return to their homes, but we stay with Mary. 

It is Mary who sees the two angels: “Woman, why are you weeping?”

It is Mary who first meets Jesus: “Woman, why are you weeping?”

Then he asks her the same question he asked the guards who arrived to arrest him just days before: “Whom are you seeking?” It’s similar to the very first words John records Jesus speaking earlier in his gospel, after two disciples began to follow him. He turns around and sees them following and says, “What do you seek?” (John 1:37).

Always with the questions, this Jesus. 

I love how his questions, simple as they often are, obvious as the forthcoming answers may seem, gives each person the dignity of their response. He wants them to know themselves. 

And then he says her name: “Mary!” And she knows him at once. 

May you, too, on this Easter day know yourself and whom you seek, as well as the blessed joy of being named by Jesus.

Fumbling in the Dark

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series. 

—

I know that, for me, grief creates a confusing state. 

When in grief, it’s like I’m stumbling around in incoherence. Bumping into walls. Nothing makes sense. I can’t think clearly. I don’t know how to hang on to rationality. I barely know how to articulate my feelings.

And I have no idea where God is.

Grief sets us at ground zero, I think. 

And this is where the disciples were on this day we mark as Holy Saturday. They were reeling. Didn’t know which way was up anymore. The One they had followed for three years — left everything and followed, even — was gone. Dead. Crucified by the powerful ones they thought he had come to supplant. 

I picture them in that upper room, wandering around like zombies. Together, but alone. Unable to speak much. Unable to hear much. 

Where was their leader now? 

Could he really be gone? 

They didn’t have the privilege of living on the other side of Sunday, like we do. They were living inside Saturday. 

They were fumbling around in the dark.

Whom Do You Seek?

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series. 

—

So, I made it to the vigil last night. I’m so thankful. 

I spent most of the hour staring at the icon of Jesus (pictured above), which last year I realized is incredible because in the depiction of his eyes, he seems to both take in the whole world while staring at and through the individual beholding him.

I stared at that icon and sought to place my heart with him in the garden on that last night of his freedom. The darkness. The fear. The loneliness. The anticipation. The desire for that cup to pass his lips on by. 

The eventual surrender. 

At one point, I realized that right at this moment, our Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. And to get there, it means he actually walked through the events he — and we — most dreaded him to experience.

He went through with it. He walked through the doors leading to his death. 

I thought about the strength that required. The resolve of will. The willingness. The greater vision that compelled him beyond the scourging and the pain and the abandonment and the forsakenness and the death and the descent into hell. 

He walked forward. 

Then this morning, as I read the events of that last day of his life, which we observe on this day called Good Friday, I saw even more of that initiative. 

Like when Judas and the guards and religious leaders entered the garden and Jesus, John says, “went forward” and asked them, “Whom do you seek?” (John 18:4). John says that Jesus knew “all these things that would come upon him,” and even still, he stepped forward and asked the question directly. He even asked it twice (vv. 4, 7). Then, when Peter tried to defend him with a sword, Jesus tells him to put the sword away because, he says, “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” (v. 11). 

The events of John 18-19 move forward with such unrelenting purpose. He’s arrested. He’s questioned. He’s put before Pilate and questioned again. He’s dressed in a robe and scourged. He’s given a cross, which he carries to the Place of the Skull. They cast lots for his clothing. He gives his mother to the care of John. He dies. He’s pierced. He’s taken down from the cross and carried to a tomb, where he is dressed for burial. 

It moves with such intentionality, and he withstood it all. 

He did not look back. He did not forestall. He did not run.

And so today, we both mourn and receive what he gave and wait.

On Being Someone Who Stays

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series. 

—

Today is Maundy Thursday of Holy Week.

In church tradition, it’s the day when we remember the Last Supper of Jesus, the event of his washing his disciples’ feet, his final teaching words and prayer, and then his arrest, when all his friends scattered. 

It’s the day, in church tradition, when the altar is stripped and left bare … just as Jesus was.

On this day — today — I can’t stop thinking of my experience of Maundy Thursday last year. It was our first Holy Week as a part of our little episcopal parish, which means it was our first time attending a Maundy Thursday foot-washing service and a Maundy Thursday service for the stripping of the altar. 

It was the first time I’d heard of the vigil at the altar of repose. 

In our tradition, this is a vigil that runs the whole night, with various members of the church body showing up to carry the hours. It’s meant to symbolize our willingness to watch and wait and pray with Jesus, just as he asked Peter, James, and John to do on the final night of his freedom.

This year, I signed up for 3 a.m. slot. Just like I did last year. Except last year, I slept through my alarm.

I keep thinking about that today — the way I fell asleep on Jesus, just as Peter did. I can’t help but wonder if tonight’s events will run the same. 

I hope not. 

Tonight, I hope to wake in the dead of night and drive myself over to the Alleluia Chapel at my church and sit in the presence of Jesus, staying awake with him in his hour of need. I hope not to leave him alone. I hope for my presence with him to be a blessing and comfort. 

I hope to be someone who stays.

He Still Speaks

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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One of the most incredible pictures of union that I know is shared between Jesus and the Father.

I’m completely inspired by it. Again and again, Jesus tells his disciples, “I don’t speak any word unless the Father tells me to speak it. I don’t do any act unless prompted by the Father to do it. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” 

So. Much. Union.

It’s like there’s absolutely no space to be found between them. The alignment Jesus shared with the Father made them a mirror image of one another. They were one and the same.

Complete integrity.

And then Jesus says the same is true of the Holy Spirit. 

On the last night of his freedom, Jesus says to his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come” (John 16:12-13). 

Jesus is about to die, and he has many things he still wants to say to his followers. But it’s OK, he says, because they couldn’t bear hearing those things right then anyway.

The words would have to wait. 

They’d wait until the Holy Spirit comes, when the cycle of divine union would continue — this time forever. 

If there were ever any need for believers to know that God still speaks today, I think this would be it. He still speaks, through the medium of the Holy Spirit who lives inside us, telling us everything that is true from the mouth of Jesus.

He still speaks. It’s amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?

We Serve Because He First Served Us

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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We’ve talked a lot about foot-washing in this Holy Week series. 

About how Jesus washed Judas’ feet. And how Peter didn’t understand the foot-washing and protested it at first until Jesus gently helped him receive it. And how a woman, overcome with love for Jesus, washed his feet, too, with her tears and expensive oil and her hair.

There was a whole lot of foot-washing going on in those last days of Jesus. 

And then Jesus tells them: You do this, too. 

He washes their feet and then says to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:12-15). 

I think the timing is important. 

It’s important that he waited three years to wash their feet. It’s important that he washed their feet before asking them to follow his example. In other words, they received fromJesus before being asked to respond on behalf ofJesus to others. 

I think about this in terms of healing. Going back to the woman who washed his feet with her tears, she did this in response to what she’d received from Jesus in a very personal way. Her foot-washing flowed out of her experience of being loved by him. She received, and the natural outflow for her was to give. 

In the same way, the disciples had received much from Jesus in those three years that preceded this event. They had received his time. His presence. His teaching. His guidance. His attention. His friendship. Even his correction.

And then, as a type of culmination, he washed their feet. 

And then said: You do this, too. 

They were to love and serve others out of the experience of having been loved and served by Jesus first. It’s like John also wrote in one of his letters: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). 

I’m not so sure we can love well if we haven’t allowed ourselves to receive love first.

Love strengthens us. It roots us. It establishes us and gives us confidence and a sense of self and worthiness. Then, from that place, we love with greater freedom. We serve freely because we have experienced being served by the one who loves us fully.

The Way You Know

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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John 14:6 gets so much of the attention, doesn’t it? Jesus tells his followers, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” 

And yet I find it interesting why Jesus said these words in the first place. 

He was responding to a question. He’d just begun telling the disciples he’d be leaving. He says he’s going to prepare a place for them.

Then he says, “And where I go you know, and the way you know.”  Thomas, though, responds with a question: “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 

That’s when Jesus says those famous words: that he is the way, the truth, the life.

I like how he told them, “The way you know.” Like he has so much confidence in them. Like there’s nothing mysterious here. He’s already shown them the way by walking with them for three whole years. They already know the way.

It tells me about our part now. Our part is to know Jesus. To know his way. 

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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It’s such a kind, tender thing for Jesus to say — and he says it to them twice (John 14:1, 27):

“Let not your heart be troubled.”

He’s trying to prepare them for his absence.

He’s going to prepare a place for them. He’s going to send them the Spirit. He’s not going to leave them orphans. He’s been with them for a while, but soon he will no longer be there.

And yet: 

“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

I’m thinking it would have been hard for them to let him go. They’d spent every day with him for three solid years. He’d taught them so much. He’d trained them in his works and power. With him, they’d witnessed healings and other miracles. With him, they’d been safe from storms. 

He had become their whole world. And now he was leaving. 

And yet:

“Let not your heart be troubled.” 

One thing I love is that he made provision for their concern. He had a plan in place. He was going to have the Father send the Spirit, who would not only teach them everything they needed to know and bring to their remembrance everything he had taught him (v. 26), but who would also be with them forever (v. 16). 

He tells them this is what he’s going to do, and then upon his resurrection he promises it again (Acts 1:4-8), and then what he promised actually happened (Acts 2:1-4). He cares for what their experience of losing him will be, comes up with a plan, tells them about the plan in advance, and then he follows through on it.

It teaches me his care for us. It teaches me his trustworthiness.

It tells me he’s someone worth following.

When Healing Leads to Washing His Feet With Oil and Tears

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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John’s gospel tells us that six days before the Passover that would signal the death of Jesus, he ate dinner at Lazarus’ house and that, while there, Mary took a flask of expensive oil and washed his feet with the oil and her hair (John 12:1-7). 

Judas said the oil was worth three hundred denarii. 

In Luke’s account of what happened, we learn that Mary “stood at his feet weeping” and then washed his feet with both the oil and her tears. We also learn she had been forgiven much by Jesus. Luke refers to “what manner of woman this is” and says she was known as “a sinner” (Luke 7:36-50). The people around him were astounded at her actions and wanted him to watch out for a woman of her caliber of sinfulness touching him.

And yet there he was, defending her.

And there she was, weeping at his feet. Wiping them with her tears and her hair. Pouring upon them some very costly oil. 

I think this happens when we experience profound love. At least, I know that’s the response I have. I can’t help but cry at the feet of Jesus for what I’ve received — and continue to receive — from him.

In my life, I’ve been through some intense seasons of pain followed, eventually, by the experience of being healed. Every single instance of healing happened in the presence of Jesus. It came through an encounter with his love, which is infinite. Patient. Full of embrace. There on the floor with us.

When we, in our deepest experiences of brokenness, are loved like that, we fall at his feet in worship. We feel utter amazement, awe, and thankfulness. We want to love him in return. He becomes the most beautiful vision we have ever known. 

And we want to give him everything. 

Even our tears. Even the most costly thing we have.

His Response to Peter's Lack of Knowledge

This post is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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One of the things I love about Peter is his out-loud way of living. 

He takes the lead in so many of the scenes recorded in the gospels between Jesus and his disciples. He’s the one who steps out of the boat to walk on water to meet Jesus in the ocean in the dead of night (Matt. 14:25-32). He’s the one who declares out loud who he believes Jesus to be — the real and true Messiah — before anyone else breathed a word of it (Matt. 16:13-20).

Even when he’s misguided, Peter lives out loud. 

Like when he tells Jesus he’d be willing to die for him (John 13:37), but Jesus tells him otherwise, saying that Peter will have denied even knowing Jesus before the next morning dawns. Or when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and Peter protests that Jesus should kneel and serve him in that way. Jesus tells him this must happen, so Peter course-corrects and says, “Then wash also my hands and my head!” (John 13:5-9). Or when the guards and Roman soldiers and religious leaders infiltrate the garden to arrest Jesus, and Peter draws out his sword and cuts of the right ear of one of them. Jesus redirects Peter’s aggression and impulsivity by telling him to put his sword away (John 18:10-11). 

Over and over, Peter speaks his mind and acts with complete abandon. And a lot of the time, especially as recorded in John’s gospel of the last days of Jesus, he thinks he knows himself and the need of each moment.

But he really doesn’t. 

He doesn’t know himself.

He doesn’t know the full way and intent of Christ. 

And yet, there’s Jesus. Redirecting him. Teaching him. Correcting him. Telling him the truth. And most of all, staying with him through it — and even beyond. When he and Peter have that famous encounter on the beach in the aftermath of it all, Jesus takes him aside and talks with him with patience and even more forgiveness. “Do you love me?” he asks Peter three times, letting Peter respond to the best of his ability (John 21:19). 

And then he gives Peter more responsibility, telling him to feed and tend the flock of believers.

I think one of the reasons I love watching Peter in all his brazenness is because I love seeing the response of Jesus. 

Despite Peter’s presumption and lack of real knowledge of himself and the intent of Christ, Jesus never pushes him away. He never sneers at Peter or shames him for being a bit off-base. Instead, he keeps moving toward Peter — and not just moving toward him, but also trusting him with things to do and leadership.

It tells me that Jesus isn’t exasperated with us in our ignorance. It tells me he can handle giving responsibility to people who don’t have it all figured out and don’t do all things perfectly. 

I love Jesus even more when I see his love for Peter.

It tells me about his love for me.

He Washed Judas' Feet, Too

This entry is part of the Holy Week 2013 series.

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Have you ever noticed that Judas was still in the room when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet — meaning Jesus washed his feet, too? 

It’s true. 

Judas didn’t leave the upper room until later in the evening (see John 13:30), but the footwashing event happened earlier (vv. 4-12). And the passage in John that records the footwashing event indicates Jesus washed the feet of each disciple in the room. 

Which means he washed the feet of Judas. 

Can you see Jesus kneeling on the floor before the one who would betray him — the one whose betrayal would lead to his capture that very same night and his great suffering and even his death — picking up his dusty, dirty feet and bathing them gently with water and cloth?

Can you just imagine it? The tenderness of such an act? Offered to his ultimate betrayer? 

It does a number on my concept of love. It tells me much about the capacity of Jesus to love and welcome those opposed to him — and not just to welcome them, but to assume before them the posture of a servant, willing to kneel and clean their dirty feet.

Amazing.

Holy Week 2013: Our Meditation Begins

Last year at this time in the church year, I wrote a series of posts that took us through Holy Week via the book of Matthew. Each day, we journeyed with Jesus in his final days and reflected on what he experienced and how his discples were with him — as well as not with him — in that time. We allowed his final days to become a marker of our own days in that week. (You can read the posts from last year’s journey here.)

This year, I’d like to do the same, this time from the gospel of John.

Will you take the journey with me? 

Since we’re two weeks out from Easter at this point, Holy Week proper has not yet begun. But I find much to consider in the pages of John as that book records the last days in the earthly life of Jesus, so we’re going to start the journey now. 

To get us started, let’s begin with an open question: 

What does Holy Week mean to you? Does it mean anything at all?