Light Lenten Reflections

Week 7B

Back to the Garden: Reprise

Mary Magdalene has something in common with Joni Mitchell.

I started out these Lenten reflections* looking at Mitchell's iconic song Woodstock. She writes:

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

I said Joni got it right, her song reflecting the longing in each of us to get back to the Garden and the Garden Life we were originally created for, that intimate walk with God. I pointed out Joni also got it wrong. We can never get ourselves back to the Garden - way above our paygrade, way outside our purview.

Easter celebrates the day, the event, that ultimately got us back to the Garden. It is fitting that what started in the great Garden back in the beginning is completed in another, smaller, sparser garden. Though the setting may be less than an Eden, the event rivals, if not surpasses, that other Garden experience.

After Jesus' death on the cross, a disciple of Jesus claimed his body and put it in a new tomb in a nearby garden. Two days later, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb before sunrise and finds the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been rolled away. She leaves and returns with two of the disciples. They see an empty tomb, Jesus burial cloths, but no Jesus. Puzzled, they return home, leaving Mary Magdalene weeping in the garden outside the tomb. She then sees two angels who ask her why she is weeping. She is telling them of her missing Lord when another figure also asks her why she is weeping. She mistakes the newcomer for the the gardener, who is, of course, Jesus. He then speaks her name and she joyfully recognizes the risen Lord she only moments before assumed was dead and stolen.**

Mary Magdalene had just had her Joni Mitchell moment. She had gotten it wrong. She thought the newcomer to the sad, mystifying scene was the gardener, the tender of plants, perhaps someone who could solve the mystery of the missing dead man. But Mary Magdalene had also gotten it wonderfully, gloriously right. The person wasn't the gardener, but The Gardener, the Son of the triune God, the same God who walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, whose death, and now, resurrection restored to Mary, and to all of us, the walk lost when our first parents' disobedience exiled them from the Garden. It is why the tragic day of Jesus' death is Good Friday with a capital G. It's why we rejoice on Easter Sunday and call to one another "He is risen!" "He is risen indeed!", knowing our walk with God has risen, indeed, as well. True, we still have the fallen world to contend with, but The Gardener relationship is back in as much glory as this fallen world allows. He invites us to walk with Him in this present garden and all we have to do is say yes and move our spiritual feet.

Something to ponder: Grab a bible or biblegateway.com and read John 20:1-18. Ponder!

Something to pray: If the weather allows, find some time to take a walk with God. Celebrate the restored relationship this day represents. Ask God to give you a time of worship with Him, unique to your relationship with Him.

*Week 1, https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2020/02/thereturn-of-light-lenten-reflections.html

** Read the full account in John 20:1-18.

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven... ― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 7A

Want to Obey

(Want   →  Obey

I want what I want. It's part of my human makeup, my fallen nature, my American rugged individualism or whatever I might want to call it.

Some of us are very good at voicing what we want. Look at any three year old – "I want..., I want..., I want...!" As we get older we may lose our demanding tone, even our audible voice, but the inner us still has no trouble articulating what we want. I have a pretty good idea about what I think is fair, what I think I deserve, what I don't think I deserve, how I think life should look going forward for me.

In this time of pandemic craziness, when most of what we are familiar with is turned upside down, we still want what we want, though many of our wants have changed surprisingly. Who would have thought as recently as two months ago I would be wanting shelves not empty of toilet paper and disinfecting wipes when I go grocery shopping? Wanting to sit face to face with someone and not just talk to them on a screen? Wanting to go to the post office or pharmacy and not have to think of where my hands are every minute?

We are often faced with this tension of wanting what we want and realizing we might not get it. Jesus faced it in a big way the night before he died. He knew what was most likely going to happen to him the next day. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke's accounts in the gospels, Jesus, as was his habit, went off to pray in a place he had gone to before, a place called Gethsemane. John's account calls it a garden. It was a good place to pray, usually, and Jesus asks his disciples to stay awake and be praying, too. He then goes off a short distance from them and prays a very human yet perfect prayer:

Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. - Mark 14:36

He know what he wants – let's skip this crucifixion thing – but he acknowledges he also wants what God, his Abba/Father wants – let's redeem mankind and put right everything that went wrong in that other Garden so long ago.

Of all Jesus' prayers, I find this one the most encouraging. Jesus, the perfect Son of God, is free before his Father to express what it is he wants. He is not afraid to tell his Father he is afraid and would be fine if this crucifixion thing could go away. But Jesus, the obedient Son of God, is also willing to say he accepts his Father's will over his own. And he's comfortable enough in his Father's presence to pray this not once, not twice, but three times. If the perfect Son of God can repeatedly acknowledge his wants and feelings, even anxiety and perhaps doubts before his Father, how can I not feel free to do the same? Jesus' ultimate obedience is also an encouragement to me as I pray, knowing full well that God's ways are not my ways and that which I really want and boldly pray for may not be what my Father wants for me. He has something better. It may not feel that way at the time, but Jesus's prayer at Gethsemane models an attitude of trust in the Father and His purposes. I may only see the cross from where I stand now, but I'm assured there is resurrection and new life ahead.

Something to Ponder:

How strong are your wants? How willing is your desire to obey God? What are some of the things you feel you really want and need at this moment in your life?

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or biblegateway.com. Read Matthew 26:36-46. Note Jesus' prayer and persistence. Ask God to allow you to experience the freedom Jesus had to put his wants before the Father. Ask for Jesus' obedience as well. Pray through any of the wants you listed above and model your prayer after Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane.

As Adam lost the heritage of union with God in a garden, so now Our Blessed Lord ushered in its restoration in a garden. Eden and Gethsemane were the two gardens around which revolved the fate of humanity. In Eden, Adam sinned; in Gethsemane, Christ took humanity's sin upon Himself. In Eden, Adam hid himself from God; in Gethsemane, Christ interceded with His Father; in Eden, God sought out Adam in his sin of rebellion; in Gethsemane, the New Adam sought out the Father and His submission and resignation. In Eden, a sword was drawn to prevent entrance into the garden and thus immortalizing of evil; in Gethsemane, the sword would be sheathed.

― Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

Light Lenten Reflections

Week 6

Abiding

There is a gardener in West Sussex, England, who has spent over 25 years growing a "family tree". He has grafted 250 different varieties of apples onto one single trunk and root system. The tree stands over 20 feet high and needs the support of vertical planks to keep the branches and fruit from drooping toward the ground, but the gardener is rewarded yearly with an amazing variety of apples.

The Book of John gives us another picture of a sturdy, fruitful plant, a vine, with a single trunk and root system. Jesus claims to be that Vine and we, he says, get to be the branches. And, of course, there is a gardener, a Vinedresser, whom Jesus identifies as his Father:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. - John 15:1-11

Abide, abide, abides...some form of the word appears ten times in the above passage, so I thought I'd take a dive into my favorite "but what does it really mean" book a.k.a Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance. According to Strong's, abide means to:

continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry (for).

Tarry seemed like such a quaint word, so I went to the dictionary for its exact meaning and found:

stay longer than intended; delay leaving a place.

Jesus says we get to be the branches - fruitful, healthy, abundant life-type of branches – to his vine-trunk-root system if we abide in him. If we continue, dwell and endure. If we are present, remain and stand. And if we tarry – stay longer than we intended, delay leaving.

If we were created to walk with God in a garden, what does being a part of this Vine-branch-Vinedresser story mean to our walk with God? Our walk is a call to abide, to be with God. Like the English apple tree, we are many varieties of branches on the one true Trunk and Root System, all potentially fruitful for the Vinedresser when we abide. We each have a potential for at least a bumper crop of God's love. Just by abiding. Whatever we call prayer, our talking to God, it is a multi-faceted abiding relationship with our Creator and His Son. It is a continuing and a dwelling with Him. Sometimes it feels like an endurance, as when the Vinedresser lovingly prunes us to increase our fruitfulness. It is our remaining present and standing firm in His presence. And, lastly, it is our tarrying, staying longer than intended, delaying in leaving God's presence. So nice to know we can never outstay our welcome.

Something to Ponder:

Take a look at your abiding "skills". How easy or hard is it for you to do those things – continuing, dwelling, enduring, being present, remaining and standing? And how are you at tarrying? When was the last time your prayer time ended up being longer than you had planned? Do you ever delay leaving God's presence?

Something to Pray:

Ask God to increase your abiding "skills", especially your understanding of what it means to tarry. (See above.) Ask Him to show you what fruit He wants you to bear for Him and what things in your life still need pruning. Ask for the abiding endurance you may need for that process.

There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to abide in Him wherever we are placed. ― Oswald Chambers