You want to hear about the Last Supper, do you? It’s a bit of a sore point for me, because I still grieve for the spiritually blinkered, inept disciple I was that night, and what I missed, hidden in plain sight. Having already proved myself to be impetuous in thinking I could walk on water like Jesus does, I became incredulous at the thought of him dying on a cross, never mind washing my grimy feet.
Yes, you heard that right. The God of the whole universe knelt at my soiled feet, tenderly washing and drying each foot as an act of supreme submission and love, when I should have knelt at His, especially after acknowledging Jesus as the Christ, Son of the living God.
I’d scoffed at first, dismissing washing feet as a weird idea for our revered Teacher to implement. Once I realised it was a sign of being united with Him, why I wanted to Him to wash so much more, of course—silly, wholehearted, young fool that I was! Now I’m amazed how blind I was to this act of sublime humility, little knowing just how much it would mean to me, and all it implied about God’s surrendered, sacrificial love.
I knew nothing of holy servanthood, whereby the path to the cross would be paved with stepping stones of love. I was ignorant of my own supreme arrogance in assuming I would remain loyal to the end and how, before many hours had passed, I would reveal myself to be a craven coward denying all association to my Lord.
These things still make me hang my head in shame. It’s a wonder and glorious act of grace that Jesus chose to reinstate me. Not only that, I gained a commission and a passion to live for Him to my own dying days, finally becoming a man who could be courageous.
We were sombre together that night, though we could barely comprehend what it would mean for Jesus to save us by dying an excruciating death on a cross. Our low mood was heightened by wondering which one of us would be capable of betraying Jesus, as He had suggested—an act so heinous we fearfully examined our hearts with a guilty conscience, aware of our own propensity for sin.
Later on, the bread and wine of our new covenant communion would take on special significance, reverberate with sacred awe and holy reverence, as we considered the beaten, bloodied, broken body of our Saviour crushed like pressed oil and grapes of wrath, made drink offering and manna bread for us, and all who would follow Him.
We would replay every moment of that last day and all that happened thereafter, cursing our own lack of awareness and culpability in contributing to putting Christ on the cross, while we wondered anew at God’s great, sacrificial gift to fallen humanity.
And as you know (for it’s a tale I’ve often told), extraordinary events followed hot on the heels of that night. Earth and heaven joined hands, were shaken to the core, with a tomb broken open by angelic means and the Lord Jesus Christ freed from death’s confines, raised for evermore.
Later, fearful, spineless disciples were turned into faith-filled, ardent apostles. But that’s a tale for another day. This is all you’re getting tonight, I’m afraid. Old Uncle Peter needs his rest. It’s time for sleep now. May your dreams be sweet, my friend.
**To read about the significance of Maundy Thursday, how it is named and celebrated differently around the world, please click here… **
As regular readers know, many of us here at Godspace love gardens, and enjoy partnering with God in the process of helping nature bloom and thrive in our small plots of land. For a disabled person like me, unable to do any real gardening, my limited time outside has taken on a different form. It started as a seed of contemplation a few years ago, became a love of photography, and then both those things sprouted into a daily blog and thence into the leaves of a paperback book.
I spent some time each day prayerfully considering something I’d seen in a garden, mostly in the tiny one at the back of our rented home, or in my parent’s larger one when I went to stay, thinking about what it spoke to us of its creator. I found the most magical truths came out of these times: scriptural metaphors, such as a sparrow swooping under the watchful eye of God, or the clothing of lilies in splendour; scientific discoveries, like the fact that a snail can rebuild its shell when it is broken, or that a shield bug goes through several different instars or incarnations before reaching adulthood, and most of all, deep, resonating wonder at the sheer inventiveness and beauty all around us. Previously unconsidered items like compost heaps and barbecues, hoses and bird droppings, became food for thought and meditation. To my surprise, they yielded still more fruit for pondering.
I began to write them down, one source of inspiration each day. I loved creating poetic prose to go alongside my photographs of nature, and felt God prompting me to continue and to keep digging deeper in his rich soil. The results of my labour were not your usual gardening fare; no vegetables, herbs or flowerbeds sprang up. Instead, a book of 365 meditations was germinating. After roping in photographer friends and searching painstakingly through copyright free sites to make sure each entry had an apposite image to accompany it, the job of editing, pruning and proofreading began. After several years’ work, this Garden of God’s Heart is now ready to be picked off the shelf, and eaten with glee.
I hope very much that readers will savour the words and pictures that can take them through a whole year of devotions, and find it is a treasure trove of a book, saturated with love for God and all his creations, including the smallest and most overlooked things, right in front of our noses. I hope too you will enjoy this little taster….
Day Sixteen: Ladybird
The scarlet and the black, your priestly cloak holds tight to cased layers of petticoat-wings, made of the finest dark lace. Your Catholic credentials borne further aloft by your association with Our Lady and the holy names you carry: our Good Lord’s wee beastie (lieveheersbeestje), Moses’ little cow, little messiah, Lady’s bird. Wrapped in Mary’s red cloak and decorated by her seven sorrows, you fall from a thorny crown of rose briars like a drop of blood shed for us.
A Cardinal, crimson carrier of insect incense, you waft cheerfully up and away like a hovering brooch; terror of the aphid, protector of the rose, defender of the faith, leopard of the garden skies, emblem of my early childhood reading, friendly-faced defier of fire in nursery rhymes, up, up and away you zoom, my imagination soaring with you.
Extract from Garden of God’s Heart by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt, photo by kfjmiller on morguefile.com
“Garden of God’s Heart is a delightful collection of meditations from an English country garden. I love Keren’s poetic prose which invites us into the contemplation of God’s beautiful creation in fresh and insightful ways. Each phrase holds treasures of understanding that lingered on my tongue and in my thoughts, beckoning me to dig deeper and enter the Garden of God’s Heart. A refreshing and enjoyable book, not just for those who love gardens, but anyone whose senses are stirred by the fragrance of a flower or the beauty of a tree. ”
Christine Sine, author of “To Garden with God,” contemplative and gardener.
Garden of God’s Heart has a Foreword by Jen Rees Larcombe, is published by Migiwa Press and is available to buy at Amazon, Lulu and Barnes & Noble.
Washing the Feet – Jan Hynes – Used by permission
by Christine Sine
It’s just before the passover feast. Jesus is eating dinner in Bethany and Mary pours expensive perfume on his feet and wipes them with her hair. (John 12 & Mark 13). A few days later, at the last supper, it is Jesus down on the floor washing feet (John 13) This is something usually only done by a slave.
Maundy Thursday Foot washing
On Thursday we will attend the Maundy Thursday love feast and foot washing at our church. It is my favourite Holy week celebration. Yet as I read these two passages in preparation for our celebration it suddenly struck me – was Jesus washing of feet not just a proclamation of himself as servant of all but also an identification with the slaves, the condemned and unnoticed in our midst. Is it that he was saying I am just like that woman. Is it
He Qi: Woman anointing Jesus Feet.
I suspect that the memory of the woman anointing Jesus feet must have come to mind when he took up the basin and towel. Some were just as offended by his actions as they had been by the woman’s. And perhaps it was this juxtaposition that really brought home to Judas that Jesus sided with the poor and the outcast, not the rich and the powerful. Perhaps for all the disciples this was a moment of painful realization that Jesus was not going to proclaim himself as the kind of king they had been hoping for.
Have you ever reflected on this juxtaposition of Jesus having his feet washed with perfume and then a couple of days later turning round and washing his disciples’ feet? I would love to hear what you know about this or what images it creates for you.
by Christine Sine
It’s Holy week. Yesterday we progressed around the church with our palm fronds singing hosanna, reminding ourselves of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. From here we walk with Jesus towards the cross through what I have in previous years called the most subversive week of Jesus life. In the past I have said that Jesus walk through Holy week begins with this triumphal entry and ends at the cross.
Today as I helped plant our spring vegetables, I was reminded that it does not really end at the Cross at all, it ends in the new life of the kingdom. It is very easy for us to get stuck at the cross, focus our attention on Jesus’ death and allow the true wonder of Easter to escape us.
Unless a grain of wheat is planted in the ground and dies, it remains a solitary seed. But when it is planted, it produces in death a great harvest. (John 12:24 The Voice)
Death gives birth to life. I don’t plant my seeds and then forget about them.
Are we stuck at the cross in the throes of death when God wants us to burst out of the tomb into new life? Are we stuck at the cross, unaware that the new life of the kingdom is bursting out around us?
Jesus endured the cross, he didn’t revel in it as we sometimes seem to. He looked ahead to the joy of a new world breaking into ours.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to walk the stations of the cross on Good Friday. I love to remind myself of the agony that Jesus went through in order to break the bonds of sin to bring us all to freedom, but I don’t want to stop there. I don’t want to live there in the heartbreak and despair.
The joy of Easter is not Good Friday, but Easter Sunday. This is the end of Jesus subversive walk. This is the place we are meant to live. Not on the cross, not in the darkness of the tomb but in the liberating light of God’s new world.
I want to enter into the new life of God, and bring that newness into the lives of those around. I want to see it burst forth into the creation that is still waiting with groaning, looking forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. (Romans 8:21, 22)
Easter Sunday ushers in 50 days of celebration of resurrection life but for most of us by the time the sun sets on Easter Sunday we seem to have forgotten about it completely. We are back to life as usual, just as the disciples were.
In Acts 10:39-42 we read
“And we apostles are witnesses of all he did throughout Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him to life on the third day. Then God allowed him to appear, not to the general public, but to us whom God had chosen in advance to be his witnesses. We were those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. And he ordered us to preach everywhere and to testify that Jesus is the one appointed by God to be the judge of all—the living and the dead.
The Cross, the empty tomb are not the important events of Easter, the living presence of God in the resurrected Jesus is. It wasn’t the empty tomb that transformed the disciples and the women who followed him, it was Jesus appearing to them, eating with them, interpreting the scriptures for them. They met the risen Christ in the 50 days after Easter, and it changed their lives so that they went out not just talking about the things Jesus did, but living them.
What Is Your Response?
My challenge to all of us today is: will we hang around long enough to enter into the full joy of the risen Saviour? Will we hang around long enough to encounter the living Christ? When Easter Sunday is over will we be back to life as usual or are we ready to encounter Jesus over the next 50 days, which is the true season of Easter, and have our lives radically changed and redirected as a result?
Watch the video below and think about how during this Holy week you can get ready to “light the world” in the coming days.
“It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ-“for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ-so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.” ~Andrew of Crete 8th c
Not fig leaves or animal skins, desperately sown
after eating forbidden fruit, to cover our sin and nakedness.
This time it’s God’s Lamb shedding his blood,
giving his life, for the life of the world.
Riding on a donkey’s back
Jesus, our King and Savior,
triumphantly enters Jerusalem.
Those who line the way, caught up in the moment,
spread coats and lifeless branches under his feet.
Joyfully proclaiming,
“Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
–the king of Israel!”
It’s different this time…
no animal skins to cover our nakedness…
no palm branches, coats or cloaks
to throw under his feet.
We, the baptized, are clothed with Christ’s grace,
unmerited favor and mercy,
dressed finer than even the wildflowers.
Called to put on the whole Christ
summoned, if we will, to spread our whole selves,
not coats or lifeless branches, costing nothing, under his feet.
Clothed with the whole Christ, made new,
we commit ourselves, like him,
to God’s way, acquiesce to God’s will,
and in doing so find peace, joy, purpose.
“ Let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet”.
by Lilly Lewin,
Wine, Cheese, Chocolate and Jesus! This has been our invitation to thinplace for the past few years. My husband Rob and I have hosted a thinplace gathering in our home in Cincinnati, Napa Valley and now here in Nashville. thinplaceNASHVILLE happens on Sunday nights. We start with dinner, sometimes a potluck, wine and cheese, and always chocolate. After dinner, we move from the table to the living room and I pass out clipboards, copies of the scripture and any art supplies that folks want to use. The second part of our gathering is a time for journaling and art based off a passage of scripture. We open by praying a psalm together and then doing a lectio divina on a passage usually from one of the Gospels.
We listen to a passage in two translations, one being The Message. After listening to the passage and allowing the Holy Spirit to highlight something for us, we have 30-45 minutes to just be with the passage and be with God. I write several questions to consider while journaling and I have art supplies if people want to create a response to the passage. During this time, there is a peaceful instrumental playlist playing as a backdrop. Before we begin, I always remind us that there is no wrong way to do this process.
Some one might be inspired by the psalm, rather that the gospel and that’s fine. The Holy Spirit might take someone in a totally different direction than either the psalm or the gospel passage and that’s ok too. After the journaling/art time is completed we open up the space for sharing but there is no requirement to do so. During the journaling people ponder the questions, write poems, create drawings or just sit with the text. Some people use their phones to find out more about the people or places in the passage or dig a little deeper in another translation of the Bible. When everyone who wants to share has had the opportunity, we close with an experiential element that ties the story to our real lives, often it is something that we can take away to remind us of the passage or remind us to pray. I actually call these symbols and/or responses “Take Aways.”
This past week we used the lectionary passage from Ezekiel 37:1-14 as our lectio/ listening passage and had the gospel passage from John 11:1-45 the story of the raising of Lazarus as something that could be read during the journaling time. Each story focuses on bringing life back from death. The dry bones in Ezekiel need the breath of God breathed back into them. And in the story of Lazarus, Jesus commands his friend to come forth from the tomb and he does, still wrapped in his burial cloths. Both stories also remind us that we too need resurrection and to be unbound from our grave clothes.
As our closing, we passed around strips of muslin and a bowl of mixed spices: cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Each person took a strip of muslin and rolled it in the spices and then made a bracelet from the muslin strip. We are wearing these bracelets as a reminder of our need to be set free and our own need for new life and resurrection. They also remind us of the burial of Jesus and we will cut them off on Easter Sunday as a symbol of resurrection.
The grave cloth bracelet is a great take away, experiential response that you can do on your own, with your family, with your roommates, your small group or even your entire church community on Good Friday. You might even have some people over for dinner sometime during the week and talk about where they might be feeling “dead” or in need of new life. All you need are enough muslin strips (cut 10-12 inches long so they can be easily tied) some small scissors for trimming the bracelets, a bowl with a mixture of cinnamon, all spice and ground cloves. The bowl needs to be big enough to roll the strip of muslin in easily.
The grave cloth bracelet response is originally from Station 14 in my Experiential Stations of the Cross that you can download at freerangeworship.com.
Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
This all happened on Friday, the day of preparation, the day before the Sabbath. As evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea took a risk and went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. (Joseph was an honored member of the high council, and he was waiting for the Kingdom of God to come.) Pilate couldn’t believe that Jesus was already dead, so he called for the Roman officer and asked if he had died yet. The officer confirmed that Jesus was dead, so Pilate told Joseph he could have the body. Joseph bought a long sheet of linen cloth. Then he took Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it in the cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been carved out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone in front of the entrance. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where Jesus’ body was laid.
Mark 15:42-47
Take a strip of cloth and roll it in the spices. Now Make a bracelet with the cloth.
Allow the smell of the spices and the strip of cloth to remind you of Jesus’ death and burial.
Wear it until Easter and then cut off the bracelet and as symbol of resurrection. Or you might wear it longer and Cut it off when you feel you’ve experienced resurrection in the next few weeks.
Sitting in my home office, I’m gazing out the window at my garden sanctuary it looks a total mess. I just haven’t had the time to finish cleaning up from the winter. It’s worse this spring because I decided to only minimally remove plants from last summer/fall, choosing instead to leave them for the birds and various animals to forage over the winter months.
In the midst of the mess emerge new plants from seed left behind and scattered by my animal friends, my gardening companions. It’s fun to see just what emerges where… and when. Gazing further out I see the top of Mt. Defiance still covered with snow. Those native to this valley remind us that, if there’s still snow on Mt. Defiance, then it’s still too early to plant seeds. Yet wandering my garden I see little signs of defiance everywhere, flowers and vegetables naturally emerging after a long, cold winter.
In the book of Ecclesiastes we’re reminded that there is a season for everything. Ancient wisdom can provide general guidelines to some of those seasons, like planting, but each year brings a new interpretation of the seasons, told first by new plants bursting forth from their seed-tombs. This year I am surprised by the contrast between the amount of snow still on Mt. Defiance and the new life springing forth all over my garden. And so it is with resurrection; it catches us off guard, bringing both joy and hope. (And we’re certainly ready for that after the winter we’ve had!).
Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week is just three days away. Lent is drawing to a close as hearts turn first to the cross, and then to resurrection. Like lingering snow on Mt. Defiance, Lent continues to linger. And like those seeds bursting early from their winter grave, I’m all ready to burst forth. It’s a bit like the famous “Already, but not yet” of the gospel. Resurrection is already upon us, but so much more lies ahead – a fullness not yet realized.
Holding these two things together, I want to attempt a kind of virtual Lectio Tierra. I wrote about the practice of Lectio Tierra last August in my post, Listening to the Life of Jesus… in a Tree. For this exercise, I invite you to watch the slideshow loop of various signs of new life from my garden.
As you watch, invite God to capture your attention with one of the images.
Watch the video again but this time pause on the image that catches your attention. (just click anywhere on the video and it will pause)
- As you gaze upon this image, how does it speak to you about:
- the past?
- the present?
- the future?
- Try to put yourself or a current relationship or situation into the picture. For example, try completing a sentence or two like:
- My life is like this _____ because I also…
- The relationship I’m thinking of is like _______ because we _________ but we also ___________.
- I see this situation in this ________. Both reveal ________.
- Sit silently with what you’ve heard and expressed so far.
- End with prayer. You might begin with the outline below, then allow God to lead you further.
- “Thank you, Creator God, for the gift of both winter and spring. In them you reveal ______________. “
- “Thank you for the gift of creation and how you speak to us through the work of your hands. In particular, thank you for the image of ___________ through which you’ve shown me __________.”
- “Help me to remain alert, hearing you speak through your whole creation. Help me to take what I’ve heard today and allow its truths to sink deep into my heart. Like the changing of the seasons and new growth in the garden, change me day by day and grow me so that in each new season I reflect more of who you are and who you’ve created me to become.”
If you found this exercise helpful I invite you to take it out into your garden, local park, or with you as you walk your neighborhood. As you walk, notice God’s creation through the change of seasons. Our friends in the southern hemisphere will have a slightly different experience than those of us in the north, but the exercise will work the same.
Comment below or drop us an email and tell us how this exercise works for you in your setting. And as you go, walk in the fullness of God’s shalom.
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