“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15. 1-5 NLT)

happy earth day.

My family’s calendar is probably one of the most important documents in our home. Before things are scheduled; before answers are given; before money is spent - the calendar is consulted. What is already on our family agenda? Who is already committed?

You get the picture. I bet you can relate - as well!

Our agenda’s and the agenda’s of others converge and make for the need to schedule, plan, look ahead, budget, make decisions, weigh options and create deadlines. We live by schedules - daily plans, weekly schedules and monthly and yearly calendars - and we try to balance a life of activity that too easily can spiral out of control with planned activities (trying to fit more and more into an unforgiving, inflexible, 24 hour day, 7 day week and 365 day year).

Enter the interruption.

The unexpected guest, the unscheduled “drop-in,” the knock at the door (”who could that be?”), the ringing phone, the “can we slide that appointment up?” How do we respond to the immediate need or interrupting visitor impinging on our well-planned agenda?

Jesus never met an interruption. It seems every intrusion (whether a Samaritan Woman crowding into a quiet moment by a well or a sick woman latching on to his garment holding him up for an important appointment) was welcomed not as an interruption but as an appointment - a divine intervention. Jesus’ agenda was always submissive to the Father’s agenda.

This kind of perspective is so foreign to me (and also our culture) where efficiency and effectiveness are the measures of all things successful and “right.”

“The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.”
- Andre’ Marois

As I look back these past couple weeks it seems that the lesson and the pattern of my life has been - welcome the interruption as an in-breaking of God’s agenda. As I have been open to this and surrendered my calendar and agenda (and wishes and hopes) to the serendipity of God’s timing (interruptions) it has been amazing the conversations, opportunities and even accomplishments that have ensued. Long standing plans have delayed to open up an opportunity to serve a friend and organization; a knock at a door opens to a neighbor needing to talk; working in the barn is interrupted by another lonely neighbor; a “last minute” e-mail invites me to speak to my favorite youth ministry… and so it goes?

How open am I to this? Well, truth be told I like to know what I am doing and when… but I am learning God calls us to live by faith, not certainty.

I still cringe at the interruption - so I am praying, “God open my eyes to see you in the now. May I be willing to embrace your interventions and appointments that come my way.”

“Interruptions can be viewed as sources of irritation or opportunities for service, as moments lost or experience gained, as time wasted or horizons widened. They can annoy us or enrich us, get under our skin or give us a shot in the arm. Monopolize our minutes or spice our schedules, depending on our attitude toward them.”
- William Arthur Ward

Just noticed this as I was praying this past week.

Our Father,

Amen

In the prayer Jesus taught us, besides being obligated to pray in this manner - I am only obligated to forgive - each of the other items in this prayer are requests, praise or acknowledgement of God as being God.

Help me be merciful as You are merciful, Father.

Sometimes when we say this I think we are emphasizing the wrong part. I think we think, “become like Jesus; become like God.” This trips us up - and “becoming like God” was the temptation that led to the first sin in Genesis 3.

“Becoming like Jesus” is embracing Jesus as fully human - and becoming like him is embracing and striving to become “fully human.” This is our goal, and thus the goal of our spirituality, in my view.

Some inspiration:

“What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life. Clothed then with faith and performance of good works, let us set out on this way with the Gospel for our guide that we may deserve to see him who has called us to his kingdom”
(St. Benedict - RB: Prologue: 19-21).

“Ministry is service in the name of the Lord. It is bringing the good news to the poor, proclaiming liberty to captives and new sight to the blind, setting the downtrodden free and announcing the Lord’s year of favor (Luke 4:18). Spirituality is paying attention to the life of the spirit in us; it is going out to the desert or up to the mountain to pray; it is standing before the Lord with open heart and open mind; it is crying out, ‘Abba, Father’; it is contemplating the unspeakable beauty of our loving God.”
(Henri J. M. Nouwen)

“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.”
(Stanley Hauerwas)

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition — that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are even if we tell it only to ourselves — because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real things.”
(From Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner. )

May we become fully human and thus become like Jesus.

“The Glory of God is man fully alive.”
(St. Irenaeus of Lyons)

The Reading for Today: Sun - Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 & John 20:1-18 & Luke 24:1-12

Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In His great mercy
He has given us a new birth
to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead
and to an inheritance
that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.
It is reserved in heaven for you,
who because of your faith in God
are being protected by His power
until the salvation
that is ready to be revealed at the end of time.
–From New Saint Joseph People’s Prayer Book

All is quiet.

Jesus lays in the tomb.

The King of the Universe is lying cold in a dark, sealed tomb. All is on hold. We await. In silence.

Art work by Fr. Michael Obrien

The Reading for Today: Psalm 22 & John 18:1-19:42 (read it slowly & devotionally)

Why “good”? In German this Friday before Easter is “Mourning Friday” - it is a day of facing the reality of the suffering and pain Jesus endured and the way of the cross before all those who follow in His way. This day is also referred to as Holy Friday and Great Friday. But why good? It seems to be peculiar to the English language and may have found it’s root in being called God’s Friday and over time just as “God be with you” was distilled to goodbye - God’s Friday evolved to Good Friday. Or maybe in English it was always “good friday” referring to the pious retrospect we have and confess as our Christian hope that no tragedy—not even death—can overwhelm God’s providence, love, and grace. All that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could be. [Short answer to why good? - Don’t know for sure.]

Prayer for Good Friday:

Holy Father,

Amen.

Artwork by Father Michael Obrien “Crucifixion”

The Reading for Today: Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 & John 13:1-17 & 31-35

Where did that word, “maundy” come from? Well the word comes from middle english - mandé, from the Latin mandatum - which is the first word in our text from John - “A new command I give unto you…” so the maundy of Maundy Thursday - is the mandate or new command.

He commanded us to love - then He loved.

A Prayer for Maundy Thursday:

Dear Savior,

Amen.

The Reading for Today: Psalm 70 & John 13:21-35 (Mark 14:1-11)

It was this day in antiquity that we remember Judas’ deal with the priests to “turn Jesus over to them.” It is for this reason that Wednesday of Holy Week is referred to in some circles as “spy Wednesday.”

Collect for Spy Wednesday

O God, who desired Your Son to undergo,
on our behalf, the yoke
and subjugation of the Cross;
so that You might drive away
from us the power of the enemy,
grant to us Your servants,
that we may attain the grace of the resurrection.

Amen

The Reading for Today: Psalm 71:1-14 & John 12:20-36

A Prayer for today :

Dear God,

Amen.
(by Rebecca Sharpless in morning worship, Palm Sunday, March 30, 2003 at Lake Shore Baptist Church)