This week in Refractions, in honor of Tax Day, we are talking about matters of money, investment and commitment. During our recent worship series, we ask the question, "What have you done with the garden entrusted to you?" To help us think about that, we have read several poems from The Tao of Gardening by Pamela K. Metz. As we discussed the dreadful subject of money on Commitment Sunday, this poem reminded us of the importance of committing to our garden. 

“Investment”

This week in Refractions, in honor of Tax Day, we are talking about matters of money, investment and commitment. At Journey Imperfect Faith Community, we don't have any official membership roster. We don't sign up, fill out forms, and all agree to adhere to a particular set of beliefs -- but we do write on rocks. Because commitment of any sort -- emotional, spiritual, physical or financial -- is important and should be recognized, a person who chooses to journey with Journey gets a rock. How many rock-carrying members are in our community? Only God knows.

In the week following Easter, we share some highlights from Journey's Easter service. This poem by contemporary Spanish poet Antonio Machado has been a refrain throughout our current worship series, as we explore themes of spiritual gifts, personal power and responsibility. How does your garden grow?

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine. 

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,” 
the wind said to me, 
“I would like to trade you for the smell of your roses." 
I said, "I have no roses; all the flowers 
in my garden are dead." 

"Well then,” the wind said,
“I'll take your withered petals 
and your yellow leaves 
and the waters of your fountain." 

The wind left. And I wept. 
And I said to myself: "What have you done 
with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Here is a video using this poem.

In the week following Easter, we share some highlights from Journey's Easter service. Here are two of the songs written by Journeyer Darden Smith and performed by Darden and Renee during the service.

"Rise"

Like a hawk flying high above the city
Like a sunset cloud in a golden flame
Like a leaf on the wind moving cross the water
Watch me rise
Watch me rise
Watch me rise above
Resting, oh resting in his love
In his love

See me as a boy safe beside my father
See my father safe when he was a boy
Time marches on, the wheel is always turning
Watch me rise
Watch me rise
Watch me rise
Watch me rise above
Resting, oh resting in his love
In his love
Watch me rise above

If you cry for me, don’t do it for my sorrow
If you cry for me, do it for my joy
And let your tears fall upon the flowers
So they rise
Rise
Rise
So they rise above
Resting, oh resting in his love
Watch me rise
Watch me rise
Oh, just watch me rise
Watch me rise above
Resting, oh resting in his love
In his love
Watch me rise above

Listen to a clip of this song

"Fight for Love"

What’s the good to hate, to fight
In the name of truth and right
In the name of God above
I’m just here to fight for love 

Why must it be us or them
Someone loses someone wins
Why do we not hear the call
All for one and one for all
When the push becomes a shove
I’m just here to fight for love
Come on people fight for love

How much further must we fall
The depths of the soul
Are not meant to hold such anger 

Many stumble through this life
Like they don’t know wrong from right
Like they don’t know bad from good
Blind to peace and brotherhood
When the push becomes a shove
I’m just here to fight for love
And in the name of God above 
Come on people fight for love
Come on people fight for love

Listen to a clip of this song

In the week following Easter, we share some highlights from Journey's Easter service. This poem by St. John of the Cross was read three times, in the style of lectio divina.

“Some Seeds”
by San Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591) Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Some seeds beneath the earth are dormant.
They fell the last time the cool air turned the leaves to gold.
Those seeds have different needs than we do;
Let them go about their life completely unharmed by your views.
We have cracked open, we sensed even beneath the earth
the holy was near, and are reaching up to know and claim
Light as our self.
We have cracked open and are reaching up
We are reaching up to know and claim
Light as our self.

Samantha just called –
She broke her radio this time,
After her headphones, her laptop
Her telephone.
Like the grandkids, she learned
That broken things get replaced
With something new.

Like resurrection...

I tell them,
Samantha and the grandkids,
They should be happy with what they have --
They should not expect new all the time --
There is no reward for revolt.
They do not believe me
Because I do not speak of such things
With any conviction.

Like fairy tales...

Let’s face it,
I broke Jesus.
Just like Samantha and the grandkids.
He was old-fashioned, worn out
And never met my expectations,
So I just broke him,
I wanted something different,
Something new.

Like Easter…

I live my life
In crisis of expectations,
Examining the nail marks
In my hands and feet
From the times I am broken
Like the radios, the headphones, the laptop and telephones –

Like Jesus...

Death,
Timeless, without distinction between old and new.
They say He walked out of the tomb
And cooked breakfast for his old friends
At dawn.
And so I toil through the night, dying,
Thinking of morning
And breakfast.

Like an Apostle...

It turned cold, grey and wet last night.
Here, on the day before Easter 2007.
Suddenly and unexpectedly…
Like death at the dawn of springtime.

There was a hole in the trash bag,
The last of what was left of my warm stuff
Got soaked.
The weather, like Fate,
Complicating things again
As I lay drunk and helpless on the banks of Waller Creek.

He looks into my eyes,
Through the small window.
The metal grated bars are pulled back,
At the little shack in the alleyway
Behind the Chapel.
Open for an hour every Saturday.

He gives no suggestions or directions.
There is no request for confession or reform.
He simply hands second-hand pants, a shirt, underwear and some toiletries,
Out through the window,
And I take them and walk away. Redeemed.

For a brief moment,
I wonder if he might ever wake up by the creek and have to go up to the window…
I think it would be nice if it could be me there on the other side …

“Wouldn’t it be funny if things worked out that way?”

And so we come to the Friday called good. The day we are asked to celebrate the day God died. What strikes me today is the ordinariness of this day. Even on a day of heightened sensibility, life still moves on. The crucifixion seems far away, the events powerful and yet removed. It reminds me of these lines from W.H. Auden’s poem Horae Canonica in which he tells the events of Good Friday hour by hour: 

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always
Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
Blown up, burnt down, cracked open,
Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
Have all melted away: not one
Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
Harmless as sheep, can remember why
He shouted or what about
So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
All if challenged would reply
--"It was a monster with one red eye,
A crowd that saw him die, not I."--
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;
We are left alone with our feat.

Today I should be in mourning, marking the death of God’s son, repenting of my complicity in the act. But life moves on around me nonetheless. I will drink my morning coffee, I will fix dinner tonight, I will take my children to the park. Good Friday will have to be remembered in the ordinariness of everyday life.

But isn’t that as it should be? That the death of Christ should influence and change everything? That enacting the ritual of the everyday should be imbued with the significance of Christ? That there is something different about changing the diapers, cutting the grass, or doing the dishes because of this death? 

At first glance, those habits seem so ordinary as to be meaningless. In the shadow of cosmic redemption dramas, our daily actions seem so pointless and boring. Yet at the same time in light of the call that cosmic drama gave to each of us, those actions now take on new meaning. They become part of the drama, a way of identifying with the story. Acts of remembrance and service and hope.

Nothing is ordinary anymore. The world was wrecked and rebuilt, and even if we can’t always remember why, we walk in that changed world that is now charged with significance. And we call it good.

I can just picture the scene here. On Thursday, the disciples arrive in the Upper Room they have rented for the Passover and immediately they start positioning for the best seats (or reclining pillows as it were). In this tradition, the most prominent and important people sat near the host. And here are the disciples just arrived and already debating about who would sit where.

In case one wonders where they were getting their delusions of grandeur, consider that they had just returned from an itinerate preaching tour. In general they had been welcomed and accepted. And as they started performing miracles and doing healings they developed a certain form of popularity. People liked them, they were rock stars.  

They wanted to be liked, wanted to draw crowds and develop followings. They had some idea that they were in Jerusalem with Jesus because something big was about to happen – something important that dealt with the kingdom – and they were excited. And here they were having an exclusive holiday meal with their leader and they start bickering about who is considered the greatest.  

I have to assume that Jesus got a bit frustrated at this point. All week he had been talking about giving up power and lifting up the oppressed and now they start bickering about who is the greatest. Talk about missing the point. So he says to them: "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Jesus as always turns things upside-down. Unlike most pep talks that focus on winning and showing how superior you are to everyone else, Jesus encourages them to serve. He tells them not to be like those who seek power and lord it over others. To not gather a following that idolizes them. But instead tells them if they are in positions of power they should be using it to serve others – to be a community that cares for each other. Jesus then models that community by breaking bread with them and by performing the lowest form of service – that of washing his disciples’ feet. Even he – the leader they follow – is not establishing a kingdom to rule over but creating an ethos of love and service. 

This act of communion, of serving one other, should remind us of the sort of community we should be – one that turns the hierarchies of this world upside-down and values service and love more than power and prestige. 

I find the events of Wednesday of Holy Week to be humbling. Basically they reveal how much the disciples, Jesus’ closest and best students, still struggled to integrate his teachings into their lives. They were his followers, they were supposed to listen to and obey him, and yet they still messed things up.

This is the day that one of Jesus disciples got fed up with how Jesus was doing his thing and decided to be a catalyst for more extreme action by betraying Jesus. Perhaps Judas the Iscariot – one of the Sicarii or dagger-man, a splinter Jewish extremist group that promoted violence and murder as a means of overthrowing the Romans – was fed up with Jesus’ creative nonviolence. His political views eschewed how he listened to and obeyed his teacher. He wanted a swift rebellion, and perhaps thought the only way to spark such action was to betray the very man he claimed to follow.

This is also the day when a woman broke her treasured alabaster jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet. The disciples, conditioned to Jesus’ teachings about serving the poor, were offended at her extravagance, asserting that the perfume could have been sold for money to give to the poor. Jesus though admonishes the disciples and called her act beautiful. The disciples had become so wrapped up in the literal interpretation of his words that they missed the spirit of love and devotion that his teachings were based on.  

So it humbles me to realize that even Jesus’ closest followers didn’t always get the listen to and obey Jesus thing right. How could I be so arrogant to assume that I even barely have it figured out? But it is also comforting. Jesus still loved his disciples and stuck with them – even though they messed up over and over again. I know I let my biases, my cultural proclivities, cloud how I hear and follow the words of Jesus. But I also know that Jesus loves me anyway, and that even my imperfect attempts to listen to and obey him are sufficient.