She who dwells in the Kingdom of Incompitence, How does her Garden grow?

Some of my seeds are coming up.

I didn't expect to be amazed but I'm beyond amazement, living solidly in the land of shock. As one notoriously bad with plants, the wreckage of my gardening endeavors lies behind me like a compost heap of destruction. I've managed to kill every single African Violet I have ever laid a hand on, plus a nice purply thing that was supposed to live forever and be able to start more plants off by cutting bits off, a perfectly shaped little evergreen tree that I intended to plant out but couldn't decide where to put and so it gave up, my Christmas poinsettia which someone brought it back to life while we were gone but appears again to be sick. And these are only the plants I can remember off hand.

But for some bizarre and mysterious reason, there are little tiny zinnia plants poking through, as well as spinach and radishes (I think the radishes are supposed to be indestructible but I have a hard time believing it). Now I'm filled with anxiety that rabbits will come, or blight or bugs or something. And then there's horror of the instructions on the backs of all the seed packets that say 'thin plants when established' which sounds like a perfect opportunity to ruin everything.

The things my mother planted last year are doing beautifully, of course. The pink rose is covered in waxy fragrant blooms and the larger pink thing is an array of glory. Even though I look at the label every day, I can't seem to keep the name of it in my mind. I read my fine, sensible gardening book straining and trying to dimly understand what on earth the splendid author is talking about. I've read carefully about a hanging tomato contraption but darkness veils my understanding of how it works.

It will be no surprise to you how much comfort I take from the words of Jesus, that we plant and water, but God makes seeds grow. We tear down and kill, but he binds up, heals, and gives life. We forget to water, but he, out of mercy, sometimes brings rain.

child trying to get out of unloading the dishwasher

A: "Did you run the dish washer last night?"
Me: "Yes I did."
A: "Well, there's one knife that's really dirty and that tells me that everything in the dishwasher is really dirty."
Me: "Put that knife in the sink. I know I ran the dishwasher. Not everything will be dirty."
A looking sly: "Well, it tells me that everything is probably dirty."

wordless wednesday

this cat has too much hair

I increasingly can't move because of the cat. After ignoring me for two weeks after our trip, he climbs up on my lap every time I sit down, puts his claw-ridden paw on my chest and stares unblinkingly at me. You can't look anywhere else, you can't go anywhere, the claws pretty well keep you motionless (I say you, but obviously I mean me. I don't think he does this to anyone else).

If he would get up, I would, of course, leap up with a cry and a song and go water all the seeds that are sitting, newly planted, in the ground, probably being eaten by all the horrible bugs Elphine carefully dug up to show me and try to make me touch. She has entered, with full force, the Moral Stage whereby she wants to know whether or not Jesus likes whatever it is we're doing. "Does Jesus want us to plant this here?"
"Does Jesus think we should be doing this today?"
"Are Muslims Christians?"
"When is the next election? Who does Jesus want to win?"
"Does Jesus like this kind of grass?"
All these questions where hurled at me in the space of a few minutes. My first instinct, of course, is always to shout, "How should I know!" But I tried to think of answers to this myriad of wondering.

But I can't move yet, howsoever hot this cat may be (hotter as he's stopped chewing off his own fur and its all grown back). So, I guess I better just read more stuff on the internet. Its God that makes the seeds grow, anyway.

long overdue pictures

These are in reverse order because I'm not smart enough to outwit blogger.


Here is Kaw Lake in Oklahoma. It was so pretty in the evening and very calm after the gale force winds. We stayed far away from the water for convenience and ease of having children not fall in. Oklahoma was by far the best place to camp (cheap, water and electric at every sight, nice bathrooms, beautiful lakes, few government regulations and officious park rangers. In fact, the park people were lovely friendly both at Kaw and Lake Euphaula.) Dinner that night--hot dogs for the children, summer sausage stew with white beans, fresh rosemary and vegetables for Matt and me.

This is the culmination of Alouicious' week long birthday. I added blue food coloring to a vanilla chocolate mix (I was tired and didn't feel like making an actual cake). I added weird layers of strawberry yogurt and strawberries and blueberries. Basically it was so horribly sweet I could barely bare to eat more than one bite. He wanted 'fancy pancakes' (crepes) but, heaven be praised, I didn't have the recipe.


Here is the post office/bank at the Little House in the Prairie. It was all that we had ever hoped and dreamed.



Elphine in front of a replica of the Little House on the Prairie. It had been a few months since we had read the book but she remembered the details and knew what was supposed to be there and where it was supposed to be. Sad to see that they'd added a lot of sort of knick knacks (like fake sunflowers. Still, very exciting it was to be there and see how very very little it really is, roughly the size of my kitchen now.



Here is the first camp ground in Ohio and the only time I was unable to be cheerful. I really hate to be cold, under any circumstances, for any reason, and it was very cold. Fortunately for Matt, he had a thermal artic ready sleeping bag and so he slept beautifully. I, on the other hand, had a regular sleeping bag, a baby, and the blanket of death. Arguments ensued when Matt thought we should all awake with a song and a lark at dawn. Wacko. (Also, he had some kind of thermal hat and sweater. He clearly knew it was going to be cold but did nothing to prepare me for this eventuality. I'm still having a hard time letting go of the bitterness experienced on this occasion.)

7 Really Quick Takes

One
So excited about the World Cup. Have entered into quadrennial arguments with husband about why soccer is the best sport ever. Plus, found awesome Ap for awesome phone allowing me to be completely disengaged from reality pursuing minute by minute news about all players. Cote d'Ivoire is playing!
Two
Trying to figure out to organize my life so that I can watch soccer at 7am and 2pm every day in other locations (as we have no tv). So far I think I'll be starting every day at Crepe Heaven, and then showing up at various friend's houses in the afternoons. I know some of you think I'm kidding, in which case, you will be so disappointed when you find out I'm not.
Three
Was given the insane and unhelpful and unfriendly gift of Amish friendship bread. Didn't realize it was the Amish equivalent of an old fashioned chain letter. Somehow ended up with Two Batches and came to the belief, mid afternoon, covered in sugar and pudding, that I was wrestling with Leviathan and there was no way I could win. Carefully packaged up 7 starter bits and drove them desperately all over town. Biding my time to be able to give an armload of batches back to the person who gave it to me.
Four
Baby has entered new and clingy stage whereby no one is able to feed her cereal but me. Never had a clingy baby before and am now stuck holding and feeding a baby that is old enough to crawl around and eat many interesting things from the hand of many interesting people (like her father). Flattered, of course, but really.
Five
What with the World Cup and just general homesickness, have taken it upon myself to teach the children to speak some French. Taught them how to ask to go outside and then, because I'm so funny, told them they couldn't go outside unless they asked in French. Alouicious immediately dissolved into tears (which is always what I did when my mother tried to make me speak French) and said 'I won't remember how! Why can't we speak our own language?" (which is always what I said when my mother tried to make me speak French). Had to feed him pieces of Amish friendship bread and speak soothingly to him in English till he calmed down.
Six
Disappointed at so many invitations to 'stop using Facebook for a week' just when I've started to really use Facebook.
Seven
Not going to clean anything in the house until I actually plant out my bowl of flowers in the garden. Sick of cleaning and cleaning every day only to find that I haven't had time to garden again. So obviously the cleaning has to go. Maybe we can do it in French.

Go check out Jen!

Thursday on the Links

As I begin to type it occurs to me that I have not dealt with the mass of pictures on my computer proving that we did, in fact, camp and that we did, if fact, have a good time. I need to post them because everybody who has asked and been told that 'it was great!' begins to look crosswise and clearly doesn't believe.

That being the case, I did just want to point out this. Matt and I watched as much of it as we could bear and then I had strange and unpleasant dreams. I know all the chit chat has been about there being many many fewer people there than planned for, but may the Almighty preserve me, if I had been suckered into going, I would have had to sneak out the back within just a few minutes of being there. Mid way through I was shouting, 'Just Pick Something!' Do you want to be Chinese? Then pick that. Scottish? By all means. Native American? Whatever. But pick something! There's no way that all the nations of the world are filling the pews of the Episcopal Church of So. Cal. I'm thinking, that for anyone who can manage to watch the whole thing (without skipping forward and then lying about it) and can offer the best and cleverest one liner, of sending along some kind of prize. I'm pretty sure no one would win because its so desperately unbearable to watch.

And so, as a balance of to the link above, I give you my favorite thing on youtube right now,


And now once more into the frey.

article from One News Now

A very nice article was just written up in OneNewsNow. Here is the link.
And here is the reporter talking about the whole matter.

Light and Darkness: or an autobiographical interlude

I read this excellent post (please please go read it) yesterday and sat down to compose a comment. Very quickly, however, the enormity of what I wanted to try to say became too great for a simple comment and so I find I have to write a whole post of my own.

My very earliest recollections of life do not include electric light. I'm not sure how old I was when we moved to Farakala, but we lived next to the old village, before everyone moved to the road to be more 'modern'. Our house was a horse shoe-ish circle of six mud huts with thatch, joined by small passage ways so that you could go all through the house inside or cut through the court yard from one room to another. It wasn't a particularly well built house and besides being beset by termites on every side and in every crack, it eventually melted in the rain and we were forced to move.

The new house was half way between the old village and the new and was designed in the style of a french chateau. The foundation was sturdier, the walls straighter, the thatch thicker and I was older. No longer wanting to play in a pile of sand in the courtyard, or tie kittens on my back as if they were babies, I now participated in the rhythm of life to a greater degree, or at least as much as one can on holiday from boarding school.

There are several, as Jen at Conversion Diary calls them (haven't found the post though), hard stops to a life without electricity or running water. In the morning, water has to be brought in, preferably while the day is still cool. In the afternoon, it is too hot to go anywhere or do anything. And in the evening, the twilight period, the time between full sun and complete black, is only about 20 minutes. If you haven't filled the lamps in the morning or waning afternoon, you are racing against the light to fill them enough to carry you through the evening, and to light them. Once darkness has fallen, the deep quiet and deep darkness restrict movement and work.

But it was, and is, always my favorite time of day. It was so unlike my life now. We were never organized to cook supper before dark. There are too many things to do in the daylight hours, and cooking is perfectly achievable by lamp light. We never ate anything before 7:30. And then, baths were usually had, carrying water heated on the stove across the house to the bath hut, bathing by candle light. And then there was plenty of time to read. But you wouldn't want, certainly, to undertake a major cleaning project after dark, as I generally do here (I scrubbed the fridge until 10 o'clock last night and was fairly and completely exhausted after).

Visits could be had after dark--walking out,whether the moon is a sliver or full, the stars are bright enough, practically, to provide light, carrying with you a large stick and a lantern or flash light, remembering always to look down and keep to the path.

I'm getting all weepy as I write this because I miss it so much. Honestly, one of the biggest shocks to my system on moving to the US, besides the wonder of the grocery store and the overwhelming selection of toothpaste, was the unrelenting electric light in the evening. The absence of silence, the blaring light, the constant drone of computers and refrigerator and shouting of the dishwasher, all of it combines together to be psychologically wearing.

And, in my electric life now, though I have light enough to read and pray at any hour, I don't pray at night, much. We don't, as a family, sit together in candle light and sing the phos hilaron or pray, 'be our light in the darkness and defend us from all the terrors of the night', because we already have light, and we don't remember that there are terrors. We could, but we're busy up to the point of sleep.

It is a great loss. But also, my fridge is clean.

Sunday Sermon: Acts 1:1-11, the Ascension of or Lord

I mourn for you, having to listen to me on the Feast of the Ascension. In my own brief experience in ministry, I have heard Matt preach three phenomenal sermons on the Doctrine of the Ascension. I commend them to you, I hope he'll gather them together and post them online. Indeed, I took copious and detailed notes of his sermon last year and if you did also, then you will recognize a lot of what we're about to discuss together.

There is an old old story,
told in West Africa,
that god, or sky,
Clé,
used to live very close to the earth.
He lived so close that you could even bump your head on him.
And god and man got on well together and were able to communicate directly.
You might be able to guess what happens next.
Woman, one day,
for no reason that any one knows,
became irritated and took her pestl
e, her stick she uses to pound grain,
and poked god very hard.
Not surprisingly,
God became angry and retreated a little distance.
But woman was still irritated,
and so she lifted up her pestle and poked God again.
And he retreated even farther.
At which point woman,
with all the fury of woman,
climbed up on her roof
and lifted her pestle high
and poked God a third time.
God then became more angry than you can imagine
and retreated very far up on high,
so far that we cannot communicate with him directly anymore.
Now, to talk and be with God,
you have to go through a jinn or a spirit or even an ancestor to ask God for what you want.

Those of you who know your Bibles should be able to recognize some nuggets of truth
in this old story that tries provide an explanation for why there is evil and brokenness in the world,
how it is that we know there is a great divine ultimate being
with whom we have so little contact
but whom we long to know
and about whom we wonder and make up systems to try to approach,
elaborate systems by where we might get God's attention.
One such nugget of truth is that we,
of our own free will,
offend God,
we push him away, as far away as we can.
We don't want his interference in our daily affairs,
we don't want a relationship with him until something goes wrong.
And here is the second nugget of truth.
Because we have offended God,
we can no longer approach him directly, without an intermediary.
He is so holy, he is so perfect,
that were we to come directly into his presence we would be rent,
utterly torn asunder,
destroyed.

At this point you may be worried that I am going to lovingly and slowly unfold the wonders of the whole of salvation history--
how it was that Adam and Eve pushed God away,
rejected him
how, rather than rightfully and truly destroying them then and there
God set in motion a long and perfect plan to restore the brokenness,
to be able to come back close and speak and live and dwell with them, with us.
Don't worry, I'm skipping to the end of the story.
Today is the celebration of the culmination, the finishing, the completion of that work.

Turn, if you would, to Acts chapter one.
Jesus, you might remember,
is a particularly special and amazing person.
He has two natures
he is both fully God, completely and completely
not the sky come down to hover next to us,
but God himself as God
and,
in his second nature,
fully human,
not a sort of spirit or ghost or jinn.
Jesus laid aside the glory of heaven
to come down here and muck around with us,
to eat with us, our best meals and our worst.
He heard our high ideals and our low maligning gossip.
He heard our high hopes and cowardly longings.
He saw all that we did and said.
And ultimately,
when the time was right,
he gave himself up to die the death allotted for us--
the sure and just punishment for our rejection of God,
our willful rebellious sin,
the fair and right punishment of that action is death.
Jesus stepped into that space,
in that moment
and became the one perfect complete atoning sacrifice for sin.
He could do this, you remember,
because he was perfect in his humanity,
and in his divinity he was strong enough to bear the sin of any and everyone who puts their trust in him.

We tend to stop there. Praise God, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Its the right answer to every question asked in church. Jesus died.
But that was only part one of three.
The dying was important,
but if Jesus had only died we wouldn't all be here this morning.
The second part was that he rose up, he is risen, he is alive.
Death couldn't hold on to him, it wasn't strong enough to destroy.
On the contrary, Jesus destroyed death.
Sure, we die,
but not forever.
He destroyed death for ever.
Anyone who trusts in Jesus, hopes in Jesus, loves Jesus,
that person is not bound by death.
That person is alive forever in him, both spiritually
spiritually we shouldn't ever be dead, or dying,
spiritually we should be maturing and getting stronger and less broken and less dead every moment,
but also physically.
Your body will die,
but on the last day
your body will be raised up,
just like Jesus here, in this text.
Same body but new, better, glorious, complete,
not broken,
not in pain,
not showing the signs of 5 babies and counting,
talk about broken.
That was the second part,
he rose.

The third part right there in your text.
As he was talking to them,
he was raised up on a cloud and removed from their sight,
and two men in white said, get it together, obviously your plans are not his plans.
He is not going to be King of Israel,
he already is King of the Whole World
and you have a lot of work to do for him,
as his brother,s his friends, his body, the sign of his presence on earth.

Now, many of you might think,
what's the difference between Clé retreating up into the sky out of anger,
and Jesus disappearing in a cloud,
abandoning, for all its looks,
his friends to a life of hard work and suffering
I mean, look around, if this isn't suffering, I don't know what is.

Is it the same thing? No.
Clearly no. It is not abandonment, nor retreat. Jesus' Ascension into heaven is,
at the very least,
three vitally important things for us.
Obviously more, so many more that I wish we had time to talk about.

First, Jesus ascends to heaven, not just goes up in the air but spiritually ascends into heaven, to sit,

that means that the work is done, you sit down when you've completed something

Jesus accomplished the salvation of all who believe and hope in him,

he conquered death,

therefore he sat down

at the right hand of the Father. He ascends to heaven to rule and direct the church which is his own body.

Ephesians 1 verse 20 "and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name for ever and in every age and place and time

verse 22 and put all things under his feat and made him head over the all things for the church

verse ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
In other words, Jesus, from the right hand of the Father, is directing and moving the church through the power of the Holy Spirit to do the work of spreading the Kingdom of God, of filling up the earth with the good news and the love of Jesus.

Second, he ascended and sits at the right hand of God the Father
so that He might reconcile all things to the Father
Colossians 1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
As the Accuser accuses and tries to destroy you,
Jesus is there,
at the right hand of God,
giving you to the Father
if you are found in him,
you are covered with his blood,
you are clean
you are therefore reconciled,
Jesus is reconciling you.
Do you feel awful when you sin?
Do you feel God's call to do something difficult and unpleasant?
That work is being done by Jesus
through the Holy Spirit
in the presence of the Father.

Which brings us to third and most strange thing that Jesus does.
Hebrews 4
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So far from retreating from us,
in Ascending into heaven,
Jesus draws us up into heaven with him to the very throne of God,
the presence of the Father, to live with him there.
Now, I know its sort of hard to see that this is the case.
When I am drifting around my house,
shouting at my children to stop dithering and Pick Up,
you would probably not think,
she is here,
but she is also in heaven with Jesus at the right hand of God
enjoying his perfect love and grace and mercy,
reveling in his holy and life giving will,
but it would, in fact, be the case.
Now, we don't often revel in the presence of God
and enjoy him
and live as though this were true,
which is sad, because it is.
We can live this way.
I've been trying to lately.
There are a whole lot of places in Scripture where we are commanded not to worry,
or be anxious,
places where we are commanded not to be angry,
where we are commanded to love everybody,
especially those who are difficult to love.
We don't do any of those things but that the Holy Spirit lives in us and does them in us,
but we also do them because we are spiritually in heaven with Jesus
when you whisper, 'O please God, help me' that prayer is spoken to God the Father
Its not a shout into the void.
Why then
for heaven's sake,
wouldn't you pray?
Why wouldn't you live cheerfully and joyfully
with confidence and contentment?
We are not abandoned. God has not retreated from our sin and trouble.
He has come to save us,
to redeem us,
and to draw us up into his presence.
Draw near to the Glory of God.
Approach his throne with confidence.
Let your heart be rend open before him.
Give him the desires of your heart.

Come and worship the King.
Amen.

The Cold Clear North

Obviously we're back.

My blogging capabilities are seriously limited for the moment because Gladys, shock and horror, spoiled my laptop whilst we were all in Corpus and while it is on the mend, may the Lord be ever praised, it is virtually impossible to blog on it. So my usual routine is disrupted and when that happens blogging is always the first thing to go. Furthermore, we neglected to bring the camera home with us and so there will be no pictures until it arrives in the mail.

While I await the camera and the full restoration of my computer, I am trying to unpack and de-clutter and re-acclimate myself to the cold. Did you all know that it snowed here on Sunday? I'm digging out sweaters and socks and trying not to resort to profanity. Matt kindly and lovingly left the window open last night so that we wouldn't "be too hot". I invited all the children in to bed this morning to warm up thereby getting my own back.

Matt is fussing to get his computer back from me, so I will only say that camping was A Great Success. If you have five small children and you decide to drive across the country, I would encourage you most strongly to consider camping. It was lovely, warm, pleasant, pretty and apart from the chiggers, everyone had a good time. By far and away it beat being cooped up in various tiny hotel rooms and eating at Denny's. And, of no small triumph, it was extremely cheap.

And now, once more into the fray.

Non Public Service Announcement

Mommy, is your email working at all? I've tried to email several times? Are you on Facebook? Is there anyway to communicate with you in a less public way than this blog? I miss you.

Thank You! I figured out the facebook button. Thanks so much. Recovering from exhausting carnival. Too tired to blog.

Don't want to blog since I can't seem to do it on my awesome phone

Blogger won't let me blog from my phone, apparently, and I'm so disappointed that I can hardly bear it.

Obviously, the wireless situation, as you can see, has been attended to. Matt is on his computer, I am on mine and so we don't need to speak any more or stuff like that. What a relief!

But I don't really intend to blog. There's too much else going on.
We've been going many interesting places--the Alamo, the Corpus Christi Boat Show, the Rodeo, Christ Church San Antonio, the awesome mall where you can get enormous plates of rice and teriyaki chicken.
The baby, in a matter of days, has gone from eating one tiny bowl of cereal once a day to eating three massive bowls of cereal (breakfast, lunch and supper).
And we FINALLY got her ears pierced.
We've been cooking lavish suppers (salmon, chicken, tilapia) and the children have been eating candy all day long.
Elphine has been devoting herself to Fun with Dick and Jane and Gwendolyn has developed a passion for the letter 'E'.
Romulus has devoted himself to TV of any and every kind (even the news if that's all he can get).
Alouicious managed to celebrate his birthday for an entire week by manipulation, trickery and whining.
And Matt has an impressive stack of books that he dozes over.
In short, we're exhausting ourselves with "rest".

OH!!!! Someone asked about facebook. I've been wasting time trying to put a fancy facebook button on my sidebar but I still am failing in that way (can any of you tell me what to do? Blogger doesn't seem to have a 'gadget for that). So see if you can find me on FB as Anne Carlson Kennedy. And if that doesn't work I'll hopefully still be able to post the link. Have a great weekend!

update from Temple

There is a large grey cloud settled over our hotel and all the rest of Temple where we are all indulging in the forbidden pleasures of Watching TV!! All the cartoons (or partoons, as we call them) are just as awful as I remember them to be. Matt isn't watching TV. He is jumping rope and making me feel slothful. However, this bed is so extraordinarily soft, after the pleasures of camping for three nights, that I cannot bring myself to move.

When I finally do drag myself into reality we will all go back to Matt's grandmother's for breakfast. And then its back into the car for San Antonio to see an allotment of cousins.

Have set my expectation bar as low as I possibly could, I can say with enthusiasm that we had a good time camping and that our instincts--that children who have been in the car for 8 hours should not then be expected to go to a hotel and a restaurant, but rather should run around and collect fire wood, roast marshmallows and get filthy--was a true and correct instinct.

See facebook for continued sarcastic one line updates!

On the road...tomorrow

Yeah, um, so, we're not leaving today.

The car it too small the house is too filthy to just jumble everything in and drive away. We're going to go calmly and methodically through the day and take off as early as we can in the morning.

We made excellent progress yesterday. Turns out our borrowed tent is deluxe in every aspect and not difficult to put up, and I've carefully filled Matt's old army duffel to the brim with clothes for the road, and my food box is tidy and easy to access. But you can see, that's only about half of all the work that needs to be done.

The children were desperately disappointed for about 3 and a half seconds (one reason I NEVER tell children in advance what's going to happen--today we're going to the store and then for ice cream and then a clown is coming over--because the clown might not come over and then everyone is hysterical. No, their lives are routine based with sudden, unannounced and unexpected trips to the store, to church or whatever else we do weekly) until Matt told them we'd go to the park (broke the rule Again!). Apparently going to the park is equal in the amount to pleasure derived to driving all the way to Texas and camping along the way.

Anyway, I'm really grateful for this extra day. Being an eminently impractical person, I intend to shove in a lot of unnecessary items that some might not require but will make the whole experience bearable--things like the tulips from my front walk, real dishes and cutlery, a tea cozy, an array of West African cloth to use as table clothes, blankets, towels etc., and a large stack of books that I'm sure I'll have time to read but if I don't they will at least look nice, candles and their holders. I'm not big on 'nature' and 'roughing it'. If we have to go be in nature, I'm going to take as many things with me as I can. I have my mother to thank for this. Long car trips in Africa were always packed full to the brim with everything necessary to set up a full coffee break in the bush (table cloth, chairs, table, coffee, real cups, sugar, milk--Mommy, do you have that picture?).

Fortunately, the top car carrier does work and so I can take as much stuff as I want and I have a whole day to pack it.
'roughing it', in Africa

Its already thursday and my week of 'packing' is almost over without ever actually beginning

I'm going to be perfectly honest. It is very very very very unlikely that I will ever give a detailed account of Holy Week on this blog. Right now I am lying here with a dinky baby sucking desperately on my elbow, an angry non morning child who appears to have slept in his brother's knight costume against his brother's will, a small child shouting louder and louder, 'I don't want a Pider Man Book! I want a Princeth book. My face hurts,' and two other children moving in closer and closer so that I am about to fall off the bed.

How many is that? Looks like all five.
I've vaguely glanced through many interesting blogs of people who manage to read wonderful books. I've read some of the news. I've wasted 14 minutes on facebook.

So it looks like maybe we should all crash downstairs and whine and complain our way into breakfast.

Not a real post

Happy Easter!

I'm too foggy with post Easter tired to think through the past week. I intend to give a varied and delightful account of all the proceedings as soon as I fully awake from my stupor. I also intend to work out every day this week, read the three books of the Bible I'm behind on in my reading the Bible in a year schedule, cook enough food for a week, unroll a vast tent and see if it works for real, carefully pack a small number of carefully selected summer like clothes (which means digging out all the summer things), and loose fifteen pounds in order to be able to stuff myself into a stunning vintage cocktail dress on loan to me for the days to come.

That's right, we're getting ready to drive to Texas! in a car! with five small children! and camp if it doesn't rain! and take all our own food! and make a pilgrimage to Independence Kansas to see the Little House on the Prairie!

Its going to be so fun. We're going to have such a good time. And maybe someone can offer us free marriage and family therapy when we get back.

Here is a link to all the sermons of the week.
And here are the two pictures we remembered to take of the whole week (sorry! I'm going to put them all back in their Easter clothes and stage a picture. Sorry Sorry Sorry).

The Great Vigil of Easter: Sermon, Year C

Let's begin in Matthew. If you want to open your Bible,
its Matthew 28.
Its before dawn.
I would imagine that Mary Magdalene,
the other Mary,
who is probably Mary the mother of James,
Salome and Joanna and one other woman--
that is all the women listed in all the gospels-
-probably haven't gotten very much sleep
between Friday night and Sunday morning.

If you remember,
Jesus died on Friday around three o'clock,
and Joseph of Aramathea
and Nicodemus
had rushed to take his body down,
wash and wrap him as best they could
and get him into the tomb before sun down,
marking the beginning of the sabbath.
The women had had to watch unable to participate.
It is very likely that Joseph didn't know what exactly to do,
or that there just hadn't been time to do anything properly. Traditionally,
in the absence of many high tech funeral parlors and homes,
the women of the family
would have had the task of coping with those who had died--
washing,
anointing with oil and spices,
wrapping the body.
They would have known what to do
and how to do it.
It is very unlikely that Joseph of Aramathea and Nicodemus
knew what to do
or how to do it.

But they might have also been anxious
about the two men themselves.
Remember, Nicodemus came to Jesus at night
and we have no indication that Joseph of Arimathea
was known to the the disciples as a follower of Jesus.
They were both part of the Sanhedrin
and therefore wielding some sort of power.
They displayed incredible courage
in associating themselves with Jesus in his death,
but their motives were more than likely hidden
from Jesus' hiding friends.

I imagine the women looking on
in desperate helplessness while Jesus is wrapped and buried.

Then everyone would have hurried away
before the encroaching sunset so as not to break the Sabbath.
Under normal circumstances the women
would have had Friday to spend preparing for the Sabbath--
cooking, cleaning, putting everything in order for a day of rest.
But they weren't home,
they were all in Jerusalem gathered together,
and the whole of Friday
had been taken up with the horrific and sudden death
of their beloved friend.

I imagine imagine the resulting Sabbath
would have been unbearable.
They couldn't do any work,
they couldn't create any order in the absence of order.
They couldn't clean,
they couldn't cook food all day,
they couldn't go anywhere.
Some of them were probably very far away from their homes,
making do in Jerusalem over the Passover.
The solace of work was forbidden to them.

I don't like to generalize,
but I think this may be hard for men to understand.
Lately I've gotten it into my head
that we should really try to do Sabbathy things on Sunday,
the day of our Lord,
and so I get worked into a frenzy on Saturday
getting ready for Sunday--
cleaning,
cooking as much as I can,
laying out Sunday clothes,
bathing the children,
having my Sunday school lesson ready,
and a pretty table cloth on the table,
and I'm beat by Saturday evening.
When I don't accomplish everything
on my list I am very unhappy.
Often when Saturdays are overrun by other priorities,
Matt starts saying at 11am,
'I forbid you to clean the whole house today, do you hear me?
I forbid you'.
Today was one of those days.

Overlay intense unexpected life shattering grief
over exhaustion
and I imagine that Saturday was a rough day.

But at sun down on Saturday
everyone was allowed to work and go places again.
I bet the house,
perhaps the house with the upper room,
where ever it was that they were all staying,
received a thorough and complete cleaning,
and probably some food was prepared
and some of them managed to eat,
and the rest of the night
would have been taken up
preparing the spices and burial linens
needed to deal with the body of Jesus
in a way that would satisfy them.
At least they could do that much.

They set out in faith for the tomb,
knowing there is an unmovable stone,
sealed no less,
as if that would make any difference.
They wouldn't have known about the guards posted.
You might remember that the Pharisees broke Sabbath,
going after the sun had already set,
and Jesus was already in the tomb to ask for a guard.
And it would have had to be a Roman guard
because Jewish temple guards
wouldn't have wanted to break sabbath.

The women go without any real plans.
They're going to have to convince someone to roll the stone away.
We know from John that they think maybe a gardener will help them because of Mary Magdalene's confusion.

If you look at your text in Matthew,
it looks like they might be there for the earthquake,
but we know from the other gospels,
that this is not the case.
Matthew wants us to know how the stone was moved
and so he puts it here.
Certainly, they probably felt it as they were walking.
Its the second earthquake in a matter of days,
the first one occurring when Jesus breathes his last.

don't know if Palestine is given over to earthquakes

in a normal way,

but certainly,

as the God of the heavens and the earth,

as the controller of all weather,

an angel descending from heaven

and rolling the stone away is excellent cause

for a second earthquake.

And certainly,

seeing an Angel descend from heaven and push away the stone

is reason enough for any red blooded Roman guard

to pass out from sheer fright.

This is important,

as I'm sure you know,

because the guards were not allowed to go to sleep while on duty, and should it have been found out that the seal was broken,

the stone was rolled away,

and the body gone,

they would have been summarily executed.

However, as you can see in verse 11,

as soon as they regain consciousness,

they hustle off,

not to their commanding Roman officer to be killed,

but to the Chief Priests who pay them money to lie

and give them cover for the lie.

This little plot is the first of many many many attempts

to deal with the fact that Jesus is not in the tomb

when the women arrive.

He just plum isn't there.

Big tomb, no body.

The angel tells them that Jesus is risen.

The tense here is so important--

not has risen,

or will rise,

but is risen.

That's what we say Sunday after Sunday--

Christ has died,

Christ is risen,

Christ will come again.

Risen is present.

That's what he is,

not dead, but risen.

They're supposed to quickly absorb this information

and go tell the disciples

but before they get there,

Jesus meets them.

And they take hold of his feet

and worship him.

Zephaniah the prophet wrote hundreds of years earlier,

Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil.
16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak.
17 The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;

On this quiet dark night,

while all the world runs crazy

buying ham and Easter eggs

without knowledge and without purpose,
grab hold of your beloved's feet,
worship him,
let him quiet you with his love.
Rejoice,
sing aloud.
The Holy One,
the King of Kings,
the Lord of Lords is alive,
he is risen,
he will never die again.
And at the last day,
he will raise you up,
in your body.
In your flesh you shall see your God,
your King
whom you yourself will see
and not another.

Alleluia, He is Risen!
The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Sermon: Maundy Thursday Year C

I see looking out over the vast throng that many of you were here on Sunday.
I talked about, if you can cast your mind way way back,
how Jesus took up his human nature in such a way
that he perfectly showed God's nature
as a Being who pours himself out,
who does not cling or hold on to himself
but rather pours himself out into creation and into his Son,
Jesus, to redeem the world.

Now, that's a very pie in the sky theological idea,
one that Paul drove home to the Philippians
so that they wouldn't just think about it,
they would live it.
If you're wondering where Paul might have gotten the idea
that Jesus,
who was in his nature and essence God,
became in his essence and nature a bond servant or a slave,
he got it from the gospel we just heard read.
Now, its likely that Paul did not have this text in hand,
nor that he had read it in its form here
when he wrote his letter to the Philippians,
but he certainly would have heard this story,
possibly word for word.

Now,
I want you to put your bookmark both in John 13 and in Luke 22.
I was not sure which text we would have before us tonight
and so I took the liberty of writing two sermons
and I'm going to preach them both now.

Luke and John are describing the same event--
that last supper which was celebrated and eaten
during the Jewish Passover.

Passover is the English word for Pesach
from which we get Paschal.
The passover was celebrated and eaten by the Israelites in Egypt
on the night before they fled Egypt,
going over the Red Sea on dry land into the Sinai Desert.
The meal was eaten standing up and in a hurry
so as to be able to leave Egypt right away.
The meal consisted of lamb--
a lamb without spot or blemish,
a year old.
The lamb was killed and roasted
and the blood of the lamb was smeared
over the posts and lintel
of every door
of every Israelite
so that when the Angel of Death came to take the first born
out of all of the land of Egypt,
the tenth, final and most devastating plague,
the Angel would see the blood and pass over.

I read a really interesting blog every day written by a young Jewish woman living in Israel. To get ready for Pesech, or Passover, she has to deep clean her house on a level I can only dream of, and she has to wash all the clothes and scrub every pocket and corner and inch of her house getting rid of, can anyone guess?
Leaven, or yeast. Right.
The people had to also eat unleavened bread.
Jesus likens leaven to the false teaching of the Pharisees--
a little bit goes through the whole batch
and grows and grows and grows.
It is like sin--a little bit goes a long long way.
The people were covered with the blood of the lamb--
the Angel Passed Over--
and when they went into the promised land
they were supposed to be holy, blameless to the Lord.

So Jesus,
the perfect spotless lamb,
the only person ever to be holy and blameless to the Lord,
the perfect Israelite,
sits down to eat the passover with his friends.
And let's be honest,
all that fancy theological stuff we talked about on Sunday,
they weren't there.
They weren't overwhelmed by the divine nature of Jesus
and the human nature of Jesus
together perfectly in the one person of Jesus.
They weren't awe struck over how much he loved them
and how he had already done so much for them by being born
in the first place.
They were arguing over who was the greatest--
you can see in Luke 22:24.

If you've spent some time in the gospel of John,
you will know that besides doing the shocking thing
of washing the disciples' feet
John 13:4-5,
Jesus took the opportunity to preach a fairly long sermon
over the course of this meal.
The vine and the branches stuff in John 15
happens during the passover meal,
the I and the Father are one bits,
the love me as I have loved you.

I thought it rather helpful this last Sunday,
when all the children's Sunday School was downstairs
remembering this special meal together--
there were about 20 of us--
and it was quite an expanse between the top of the table,
where Jesus,
played by Joe Osgood,
was sitting,
and the bottom of the table where many of the disciples were sitting and talking to each other.
Once or twice Joe yelled out,
'I have something to say!'
and the crowd would sort of quiet,
although there was always some murmuring going on,
'one of you will betray me!'
he shouted down the table and a general uproar ensued--
who? me?
It helped me picture how a 'dispute could rise up amongst them'.
In a dinner that long,
with that many people,
its very much apparent how all the attendants could continue on
in their own little worlds,
thinking about their own little concerns
and their own little problems,
never noticing that so many things were going on.
I'm just going to quickly list just
some of the things that were happening.

One: The Passover Lamb, the true Passover Lamb, Jesus, was sitting there with them.

Two: He is also holy and blameless, the thing that Israel was supposed to be. He is standing in for Israel, doing what Israel never did.

Three: That he was in the form of a servant, he took on the lowest possible most disgusting most humiliating task of the meal, that is the washing of the feet.

Four: That as the Passover Lamb, the true sacrifice for sin, he has made his own body the means by which we come into the Promised Land, that is, eternal peace with God. That is, his blood poured out, for those who accept him, for those who trust in him, covers the post and lintel of your heart. When the angel of death passes by, he sees the blood of Jesus and passes by you, you are safe with God.

Now, can anyone tell me, in the Old Testament,
were the people of Israel allowed to eat anything with blood in it? Right, absolutely not.
When they killed any animal,
for a sacrifice or just to eat,
they were supposed to pour the blood out onto the ground
and eat the animal without any blood in it at all.
No blood sausage, well, no sausage, no blood cakes, none.
So, if the people of Israel really did follow this law,
they would have gone through their whole lives
eating various animals
but not the blood,
because, said God,
the blood is the life of the animal.
So when Jesus holds up the cup and says,
'This is my blood, poured out for you, drink it'
his disciples,
besides being shocked out of their minds,
should have seen that he was going to be their life.
His body, the manna that came down from heaven,
his blood, both the guard against death over their heart,
and the life that would sustain them.

The fact that they are arguing about who is the greatest
magnifies how completely they did not get any of this.
One way you can know that the Bible is true
is that their complete lack of getting it is recorded
and preserved here for us.
If they wanted to make something like this up,
they would have added in that they were
1. paying attention and
2. getting it completely.

So, we're about to do all the things that Jesus just did--
we're about to wash feet, a sign of humility,
because Jesus told us to.
We're about to eat the bread and and drink the wine of communion as he told us to.
And I wouldn't be surprised if many of us might not get it,
or only understand part of it.
And, so you are not left up to the imaginations of your own hearts, I thought I'd list some ways you might miss the moment.

One way you might miss all that is going on here is if you have never been to church before. You may have heard Jesus' name and know that he was an awfully good person and that's it. If that's you this evening then there's only one thing for you to take away--
and that's that Jesus came to earth to take the burden of your sin,
to die in your place,
to offer you himself in exchange for you.
Its not a fair exchange,
but he loves you,
and he will give himself to you
if you give yourself to him.
If you've never done that before
and you don't even know what I'm talking about, please don't leave the building tonight without grabbing hold of me, or Matt or Ife or Carrie, she's up here in the front, and we can tell you more.

The second way you might miss it
is by being here for your whole life.
Familiarity, as the saying goes, can breed contempt.
The disciples' had been there for every word Jesus had spoken,
and here,
at the critical moment,
they have no idea what he is talking about.
If you've been here for years and years
hearing all the words
but never understanding them
or giving yourself to Jesus,
you have missed the point.

The third way is the problem Peter fell into. If you look at John vs. 6-9. First he's incredulous, then he says no, then he wants a bath. What is he doing? He's trying to control Jesus. He's trying to tell Jesus what to do and manage the whole event. It looks pious, but its a sign of both insecurity and pride--two sides of the same coin. Either way he's instead of giving himself to Jesus out of obedience and love he's keeping all the attention and focus and trying to manage the moment.

Fourth, you might miss what's going on by making a list of all the other people you think should hear this. No, take a good hard look at yourself.

In a moment we're going to get out some water,
and towels and you are all welcome to come up and have your feet washed.
You don't have to, please don't freak out.
But I have a word of caution.
When you come up,
let your body action of coming forward,
taking off your shoe,
putting your foot in the water,
let that body action reflect an action of the heart and mind
to let Jesus have access to all those things you're hiding from him. Are you angry?
Are you hurt?
Are you proud?
Are you ashamed?
Are you guilty?
Are you lazy?
Is there something you're not dealing with?
When you come up you need to give that thing to Jesus.
And then,
when you come forward for communion,
and you open your hands,
let that action of your body,
coming forward,
opening your hands,
let that also be an action of your heart and mind to take Jesus,
to cling to him,
to trust in him,
to love him.
So first,
even if you don't actually come forward for your feet to be washed, give yourself to Jesus--everything.
And then, when you come for communion, grasp hold of him.