8But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. 9The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance…. 13But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. (2 Peter 3: 8-9, 13)
God will come when God will come. We’ve heard that over and over. But, granted, this life of faith is at times frustrating and often just downright difficult. How do you keep holding on to a hope when you often see no progress at all? How can we continue to be forced to wait for whatever it is for which we’re waiting? Because, as the passage says, we are promised a new heaven and a new earth. We are promised that all of Creation will be recreated. We are promised that, once and for all, righteousness will have a home. Righteousness, then, will be the norm. Righteousness will be an everyday thing. Righteousness will be that place where at the end of all our wandering, at the end of all our frustrations, at the end of the difficult days and the hours when you feel like you can do no more, we will enter our sacred place and be invited to pull the covers of righteousness over our heads and feel like things are the way they should be. So in this Season of Advent, we learn to wait. Good things cannot be rushed. The plan for God’s Kingdom was not made hastily and it cannot be just thrown together because we are getting a bit impatient with the whole ordeal. So, what do we do in the meantime? We live as if it’s here. We live righteousness. We give it a home. The Holy and the Sacred is not unattainable. In fact, if we just open our eyes, it is spilling into our lives even as we speak. God does not sit back and watch us squirm and strain until all is said and done. Rather, God gives us glimpse after glimpse and incarnation after incarnation and waits with infinite patience for us to respond. Look around…there are more burning bushes and parted seas and even waiting mangers in holy grottos than we can ever possibly imagine. As the writer of this passage maintains, it is that Holy Patience, that Waiting God in which we find our salvation. And so if we live as if the Holy and the Sacred has completely filled our lives, righteousness will indeed have a home and we will no longer be waiting for salvation.
But the part that we can’t forget, is that after righteousness has found us and soothed us and covered us, the next morning invites us to enter again and bring the home that we’ve found into our lives and into the world. See, the covers were NEVER meant to stay over our heads. Living righteousness is about being whatever it is for which you’ve waited and waking up and living it, whether or not the world seems to notice. Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.. it’s about learning to dance in the rain. (Vivian Greene)
Grace and Peace,
Shelli
(Sorry I’ve gotten thrown off the last few days…life happens…back on track, hopefully! :))
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 12After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. 14So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them…
31…“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Tonight is the night. Tonight is the night when death begins to cross the threshold into life, when Jesus begins to slip away from the disciples and from his life here on earth and surrenders to what will be, surrenders to where this journey will take him. But before all that, before the history of the world changes, before the Divine comes once again flooding into the earth, before Jesus takes that last walk to the Cross, he gets up and ties a towel around him, kneels, and washes the disciples’ feet. Think about what an intimate act that is in the middle of this Passover crowd.
The first time I participated in a foot washing, I have to admit I was a little reticent at first. Wouldn’t this be uncomfortable? After all, washing feet is very intimate. Yep! That would be the point! I remember washing one woman’s feet. Her name was Caroline. When I picked up her feet, feet that had had a hard life early on in her native Nigeria, feet that had seen wars and conflicts, feet that had known deep grief in the death of her husband when she was a young woman and deep joy at the lives of her four sons who she had raised alone, I felt life. It was palpable, almost scary, as if it shot through me. There, holding in my hand, was not a foot, but life, God-given life, rich life. I was holding her humanity—and mine. And then Caroline started praying aloud in her native language. It was incredible. It was transcendent. I understood what it all meant. I understood why Jesus knelt and washed the disciples’ feet. Washing feet calls one to serve; having one’s feet washed calls one to be vulnerable, to let go, to surrender. Foot-washing is life. It is a way of entering each other, of knowing each other, of sharing each other. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them.
When Jesus was finished, he got up, removed the towel, and looked at the disciples. He had tears in his eyes. He knew this would be the last time that he would share in this way with them. This would, after all, be the last night that Jesus could share humanity with them. He knew that and now they did too. Sharing humanity…such a rich, profound, joyous, sometimes painful experience. Jesus showed us what being fully human looks like—not “only” human, but “fully” human, the way God created us to be. Being fully human means compassion; it means service; it means vulnerability; it means connection; it means love; it means life. It would be impossible to maintain the barriers we build between us if we were fully human.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think being fully human means that we sit around with permanent smiles on our faces and sing “Kum-ba-yah” nonstop. (Nothing against that song.) Being human means that you feel—feel joy, sorrow, hurt, anger, etc. So being fully human means that you feel them fully, right? You feel them and then you take your shoes off and wash each other’s feet so that they can feel them too. Wow! Let’s have Congress wash each other’s feet. Not only would that stay a few news cycles, it might even get them to talk or even listen. Let’s have all of the leaders from every country meet for a day of old-fashioned footwashing. I wonder what the world would look like if we shared our humanity.
So on this night of nights, when death looms up ahead, and friends are sharing their lasts, remember what Jesus taught us—how to be human, fully human, how to be real, how to be who God envisioned we would be. Remember that Jesus taught us how to feel, how to live, how to love. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them. And after all these things, Jesus turned and looked to God knowing that the end was here. The soldiers came and took him down the path. He turned and looked back at them—those he had called, those he had led, those he loved. He loved them all, even the one who had just kissed his life away. They would be fine. They were not alone. They had each other. They were on their way to being free, to being fully human. “Take this cup from me. I have done what I came to do. Now I look to you.”
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
FOR TODAY: First, take your shoes off. And be fully human.
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 11Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Here we are—bustling city, Passover festival, and a parade! It seems that we’re not in the wilderness anymore! As Jesus comes into Jerusalem, there is excitement and joy. He is here! And they honor him. But, to be honest, we probably read a little bit more into this parade than is there. From the time I was little, I had this sense that Jesus came into the middle of the city, flanked by the all of the crowds. He was “it.” (But then it didn’t make much sense as to why it went so badly so fast.) The truth is, Jesus was not “it” in Jerusalem. Jesus was heading what was then a small fledgling movement on the outskirts of established religion. He was coming down a narrow road that winds down Mt. Olivet and was then entering through the eastern gate of Jerusalem, the “back door” of the city, for all practical purposes. Hmmm! It seems that Jesus makes a habit of coming in the back door—into forgotten grottos and wilderness baptisms and ministries that begin around a lake rather than a Holy City. So this seems only fitting. Maybe that’s the point. God doesn’t always enter in the way we expect, doesn’t always show up when it fits the best into our schedule. Instead, God slips in through the back door of our wilderness lives when we sometimes barely notice and makes a home with us.
So the onlookers stay around for just a little while. And then the parade fizzles. As the road goes by the Garden of Gethsemane and down toward Bethany and the outer walls of Jerusalem, many leave and go back to their lives. Maybe they had something to do; maybe they didn’t want to contend with all the holiday traffic in downtown Jerusalem; or maybe they were afraid of what might happen. So Jesus enters the gate of the city almost alone, save for a few of the disciples.
Where are we in this moment? Jerusalem is here. The wilderness through which we’ve traveled is behind us. But it has prepared us for a new wilderness of sorts. As followers, we know that the road is not easy. It will wind through this week with the shouts of “Crucify him” becoming louder and louder. The road is steep and uneven. And the shouting stones and clanging iron against wood will be deafening. But this is the way—the way to peace, the way to knowing God. This is our road; this is our Way; this is the procession to life. The way to the Cross, through the wilderness of this week is our Way to Life.
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass.. it’s about learning to dance in the rain. (Vivian Greene)
FOR TODAY: Keep walking. Keep following. There is no way around. Walk with Jesus all the way to the Cross. For there, you will find life.
8But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. 9The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance…. 13But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. (2 Peter 3: 8-9, 13)
Dancing to God 