At the end of another seasonal blog…

I ask myself if it was worth the work to make sure a new post went live everyday. (O.K., I’ll be truthful here; ALMOST every day!)

I’m hoping that if you were one of the 3,000 or so people that visited during the Lenten season, you thought it was worthwhile, uplifting, thought-provoking, (or whatever you needed it to be at that point in your Lenten journey).

And it’s prompted us to commit to something we’ve only played around with for a while. We’re going to continue. One look at the stats meant that folks ARE coming over and reading what’s been posted. (Even if so few are commenting!) So we’re going to go live with a new, updated version of The Portico Theoblog this next week. It won’t be every day - but three times a week we invite you to come back and engage in Christian Education / Spiritual formation that doesn’t look anything like the Sunday school class you hated as a kid! We’ll probably be posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Come visit!

(Rodger Sellers)

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

For today, nothing more needs to be said!

(Rodger Sellers)

(Thanks to our friend Gypsy-Heart, I Am for the incredible butterfly above!)

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

…Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125.

It seems a bit odd to be quoting Nietzsche in a blog devoted to following Jesus Christ through this Lenten Season. But for today… every word above is absolutely true. For today. Tomorrow is another story altogether…

(Rodger Sellers)

The images here are all from one painting done by Sergei Chepik in 1988 - 89. The first pic below is the whole painting. All that follow are “insets” included in that complex and moving piece.

What a way to put today into images.

The images below are all found somewhere in the painting above. This is truly a masterful way of portraying the events we remember this week.

True to her word back on March 3rd, Valerie over at Chasing Thoughts has a great Good Friday poem up. Either check it out here or look at it below.

Good Friday Offering

What can I give You?
You bought my life and soul
With your raw and tattered flesh
That dripped blood
Into my chalice
For my communion.
You paid in hideous gaping wounds
For my peace of mind.
With Your silent agonizing humiliation
You heaped my tiny troubles
Upon Your overburdened Cross;
You tread barefoot over sharp stones,
Through jagged sneers,
And under Eternity’s crushing weight
To purchase my redemption.
My debt is great,
And You deal not in currency,
But in Love.
So let me love others
As You love me.

Thanks for the words Valerie!

So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover meal. {20} When it was evening, he took his place with the twelve; {21} and while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” {22} And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another, “Surely not I, Lord?” {23} He answered, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. (Mat 26:19-23)

How many of us read passages like the one above and see this image in our minds? The real question is, why do we see this when it’s obviously not what really happened when Jesus gathered for this last meal with his disciples before his crucifixion?

It’s not so much the way Leonardo Da Vinci painted this mural on the refectory walls at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. (I mean, who would really gather with 12 other people and only sit on one side of the table?) Nor is it the “hidden messages” so many claim to find in the painting. (I don’t really much care if someone thinks John looks feminine because he’s really Mary Magdalene, or that Judas must be the betrayer because he’s the only one with an elbow on the table.)

I just wonder… where are all the “other” disciples? (The 70 or 72 of Luke 10:1 - depending on which translation you read.) It’s certainly reasonable that they were there. Matthew 26:17 tells us that “the disciples came to Jesus… and that he sent them to “a certain man” to tell him that “The teacher says… I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.” But in verse 20 he talks about Jesus taking his place with “the twelve.” Why such a clear distinction if this is the same group? (And while Mark 14:17 says much the same thing, Luke 22: 7ff seems less clear on this point.)

I simply think he’s having dinner with the larger group of followers, using the time left here to teach as many of them as much as possible. This certainly would give a reason why John’s account of the Last Supper is so long with Jesus talking so much - a “5 chapter” meal does seem a bit much. And I don’t think we should miss the subtle clue in Mark 14:15: “he will show you a LARGE room upstairs. Why do they need a large room for only 13 guests, even by 1st century standards?

Don’t get me wrong: I think Da Vinci’s painting is inspirational. I’ve been a part of several “living last suppers” on Mandy Thursday and each of them has been moving and meaningful. But I wonder if we should at least pay some passing interest to thinking about what’s really happening (and with whom) on this night when many of us are going to mark this event. (Those who attend services in spite of the 1st round of the NCAA tournament!) And that means, at least to my thinking, that we probably need to include the larger group of Jesus’ followers, stuck in corners in this large room; perhaps sitting around and distinct from the 12, but certainly included with them. (After all, who cooked the meal? Do you really mean to tell me that Peter and John did all the meal prep for everyone else? That certainly would be astonishing in the culture they were a part of!)

I agree with Jan Edmiston on this point:

“I believe that there were women at The Last Supper and they weren’t just cooking it. I believe there have always been female spiritual leaders. I am past the point when I want to argue anymore whether or not the Bible supports the ordination of women. (It does.)”

One of that post’s comments was interesting:

You wrote: I believe that there were women at The Last Supper and they weren’t just cooking it.
It doesn’t say this in scripture, so are you putting your personal beliefs above those of the Gospel writers? If so, then you’re being revisionist and re-writing your own Gospel.

I don’t think Jan was saying anything like that. (Which she points out in her responding comment.) The question is worth pondering (perhaps) because it begs the question I’m thinking about today. Do we simply discard any notion of this because it’s not explicitly mentioned? Do we suspend any thought that the use of different words and subtle clues raise simply because it’s not spelled out in black and white? Or do we use our brains and our imagination, trusting that God will speak through them as much as through the Biblical passages to make tonight come alive again for our benefit? I would think William Cowper’s words are applicable here: “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

No I can’t prove that the 70 disciples were included in tonight’s Passover meal with Jesus. But there’s enough in the Scripture to make me ponder, and I won’t discount the possibility simply because I can’t prove… or disprove it. I think the transformation of the Passover meal into the Sacrament of Holy Communion important enough to warrant everyone’s attention… and all the disciples’ presence.

So… to me at least… it’s worth thinking about. I just have to turn my back on Leonardo Da Vinci to do it. Oh well… there’s always some trade off.

Happy Maundy Thursday.

(Rodger Sellers)

Have you ever read Matthew’s account of Holy Week straight through and thought about what happens BETWEEN Palm Sunday and Jesus’ arrest on Thursday night? What a soap opera it reads like! Check it out HERE. And so much activity crammed into three days! Reading Matthew it almost seems like Jesus is cramming in as much teaching, healing, fighting (with the Pharisees) in these three days as in the previous three years.

• Sunday night - back out to Bethany; crashing at Mary’s and Martha’s house? (Also Lazarus’)
• Monday: Cursing the fig tree; freaking the disciples out. (They ARE slow learners, are they not?)
  • Monday, cont’d: Back in the temple, teaching, fighting with the priests and elders. (The more of this I read, the more I truly believe he’s picking a fight and these folks are getting pushed to a point of no return.)
  • Parables, teaching, making fools out of the Pharisees; they take a time out and send in the second team with the Herodians (vs 16) and on it goes.
  • Only the first day of the week and already I’m tired!
• Somewhere between Matt 24 & 25 we can assume things move into Tuesday. (Or maybe Matt. 24:1 is still Monday evening perhaps.)
  • Teaching the disciples (repetition might be the key here, these guys are not in the “A.P. ” class.)
  • Parables, predictions, more parables, and of course a few more jabs towards the religious insiders (Matt 25: 41ff)
• By chapter 26 we seem to be at Wednesday. (Matt 26:2; “You know that after two days the Passover is coming”… don’t forget that back then they began counting on the current day, hence the “three days” from Friday to Sunday.) So… 1) Wedneday; 2.) Thursday and the Passover celebration.
  • Back to Bethany, now at Simon the Leper’s home (maybe back to it if he was there before instead of at Lazarus’ and his sisters’ home?)
  • The woman and the jar of alabaster ointment, the disciples anger, Jesus’ pointing out again that they just don’t get it.
  • Judas’ gets off the dime and negotiates the price of God. (Matt. 26: 15) He begins to figure out his plan.
• And then at Matthew 26:17 we move into Thursday and preparations for the Passover Meal in a borrowed room.

So here’s the thought: With all this activity, teaching, sparring with enemies… how often do we tend to simply “miss” three days and jump from Sunday to Thursday? There’s so much going on here that I get tired just thinking about it. But then, I really don’t think about all that often, do I?

Perhaps these chapters are worth the time to read all the way through, keeping the “timeline” in our head while we do. Perhaps they are worth more than just one reading between now and tomorrow night’s Maundy Thursday observerances? I think so.

(Rodger Sellers)

Missing the Holy Week “Forest” for the Palm Sunday “Trees” Perhaps?

As we enter the weekend before Palm Sunday, I confess I’ve always wondered why we tend to miss the obvious connection between what seems like a huge celebration - some kind of “victory” parade - with the events that followed during Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem. Why do we tend to separate both ends of Holy Week?

Is it not obvious in the way Matthew, Mark and Luke record the first events Jesus does after his triumphal entry?

(Mark 11:15-18) Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; {16} and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. {17} He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” {18} And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.

(And perhaps we should wonder here why John’s Gospel records this as happening early on in Jesus’ earthly ministry?)

How about a metaphor that seems to work for me? (As far as metaphors go.)

(WARNING: Graphic language and violence follow. Just like they did 4 days after Palm Sunday.) (Click HERE for larger wmv file.)

(Want a hint where this is going? Pay close attention to the dialog at the 42 - 43 second mark.)

Interesting to think about: As far as this metaphor can take us; If it reflects any usable truth at all on how to enter Holy Week, perhaps we have to think again about what Jesus was doing. Perhaps he was more firmly in charge of this week than we usually think? (And don’t forget, those who know the movie, what happened to William Wallace later on… And what happened because of what happened to him.)

“Where are you going Jesus? As you enter Jerusalem for the last time?”

“I’m going to pick a fight.”

Something worth contemplating between now and Sunday. (I think.)

(Rodger Sellers)

From a SERRV International Newsletter, November 1997:

My light is small. It is overwhelmed in a large space. My small light needs a small place.

I gather my little lamps around me here in the dark wilderness and wait.

And listen. And stretch out my soul.

I claim only two pieces of original wisdom, and this is one:

The only good thing about worry is that it is something (a gift) you can give to God.

(Kathy Boardman)

The following poem, from a mid-90’s peacemaking packet, made me ponder what, if anything, I am being called to as a result of my Lenten sloughing and listening (see HERE.)

The view below made the sparrow sad. As she flew high above the withering landscape, her tiny shadow skimmed a parched African plain. If not for the constant sun, she thought, the air would cool. Plants could grow again. Animals could thrive. Children could play in the rain.

But the sparrow was so small, she was helpless against the unrelenting sun. Or was she?

Suddenly, she had a thought.

She flew off and excitedly chirped her idea to a wise old woodpecker who nodded in approval. Being a sociable fellow, the woodpecker informed a flock of pigeons, who scattered to tell others. Soon the skies were abuzz with the sparrow’s idea: darters and snipes, hornbills and hawks, osprey and pelicans. Even the crows were interested. Only the vultures turned a cold wing on the plan.

The day arrived—bright and hot like all the others. At the appointed hour, when the sun was at its height, the birds came. From east and west, north and south, they flew shoulder to wing. They strained to fly as high as possible, circling in the mid-day heat.

Plants and animals looked up in disbelief. The earth had suddenly cooled; the searing sun blocked by the great cloud of birds soaring overhead.

Each day the birds returned. Day after day.

Protected from the scorching sun, the earth soon sprouted. Animals frolicked and people found new hope. Then, for reasons that the birds did not understand, the sky began producing its own clouds.

Soon the rains came. The sparrow looked down and smiled.

Her shadow was nowhere to be found.

(Kathy Boardman)