I try to imagine, sometimes, what it must have been like to be Jesus on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday. What must have been going through His mind as He was surrounded by the crowds cheering Him on?

Who knows what the people in the throngs along the road to Jerusalem thought? Some were looking for a king. Some perhaps were full of religious fervor because of Passover. Others had seen the miracle of Lazarus’ resurrection. Perhaps more than a few were just curious about what the noise was all about. There were probably as many reasons for people to be there as people themselves.

But Jesus’ perspective must have been remarkably different. He understood what was going to happen. He knew that more than a few of the faces in the crowd, filled with hope or joy or the sense of pending victory, would turn dark and threatening in just a few days time. Those who were praising Him now would be mocking Him later; enjoying the fall of the famous has been a human occupation centuries before the National Enquirer. And His friends, those who had followed Him over the years and shared the closest moments, the people who walked beside Him and pushed the crowds back even as they basked in some of the reflected glory; one would betray Him, one would deny Him, the rest would scatter in fear. Jesus knew this would happen even as the rhythmic cadence of His donkey drew Him closer to the city gates.

If Jesus’ had been deceived one could make sense of why He continued on. How could He have known what was to happen? But He knew, every detail of every moment to come, how the people He served and healed and taught would turn on Him, how His friends would leave Him at His most critical time of need, and how He would suffer and die. One could have never faulted Him, knowing what He knew, if He had, with a touch of His hand, steered His animal off the road and away from Jerusalem into the wilderness.

But He kept on and I presume the only answer is that something larger motivated Him, some greater force allowed Jesus to transcend those usual emotions of fear, sadness, anger, or despair that would have overcome even the best of us if our places were changed with His. I believe it was love.

Jesus saw the crowds surrounding Him, those sheep without a shepherd, the thirsty of soul craving living water and saw through their fickle praise and their brokenness to the very core of each one’s soul and loved them. Jesus saw his disciples and even though He knew they could not endure the hard days to come He craved their salvation. In a mystical way He saw us too, each human that had been and each that was yet to be born, fragile, prone to sin and self destruction, captured, as our Liturgy says, by the delusion of idols. Love inspired the hope that some would be saved and set free, and because of love He chose to go ride on, even knowing that we would be in so many ways exactly like the crowds that surrounded Him on His journey to Jerusalem.

Our human ways of loving have no way of making sense of this, of love for its own sake, of love that reaches out infinitely beyond self interest for the eternal well being of another. It defies our categories, makes foolishness of our common sense, and the best of us can only develop of tiny fraction of it in our own lives. Yet it is real and today we’re faced with the full beauty, truth, power, and magnificence it all.

This love of God that we see in the Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, in His willingness to bear our darkness, pain, and death despite our unworthiness and betrayal is the truest love of all and the seed that can transform us. It can warm our cold hearts and turn them to God. It can grant us vision to see all that matters and lay aside what is less. Properly nurtured it changes how we see each other and the world around us, provides rest for our souls, and makes worship natural. To the extent we respond to it in kind we are made more human in the best sense of the word and eternity lives in our hearts. And as we see Jesus unflinching love in the face of death we begin to contemplate the meaning of the word Christian.

There is something terribly unsettling about death.

No matter how we look at it, whatever façade we create within ourselves to try to make sense of it all, in the end it is still an enigma. We know we must all die at one time or another but that inevitability does little to help us make sense of it all. Most of us just put it out of our minds and hope that when death comes it arrives quickly without giving us much chance to ponder its implications.

But the thought of it doesn’t go away. It’s why the cosmetics business is a multi-billion dollar enterprise and gyms are filled with crowds of sweating, puffing, people. It’s why we all seem to be on an endless quest to cram as much experience into our time as possible and work feverishly to acquire things as if things were life. Timor mortis conturbat me, the fear of death confounds me, and this has been the lot of humans since the beginning of time.

Into this primal anxiety our Faith speaks words of truth and comfort.

The truth is that our anxiousness in the face of death is real because it reflects something we instinctually know. Death is not normal or natural and feels alien to us despite our feverish attempts to come to terms with it and that feeling is correct. We were not designed to die, we were not created to live mortal lives that end. We inherently know something is wrong with the idea that a being with the capability to ponder eternity lives for such a short time.

Our Faith tells us that this twisted reality is because sin, the human choice to reject the life of God came into the world through deception and the perversion of a primal innocence. Because of it humans are broken from the life of God and have become mortal, subject to the ills of a creation in pain. Death is everywhere and we do not escape it ourselves.

Yet on this Lazarus Saturday a greater truth emerges and in that truth is comfort. God, in mercy, chose not to leave us permanently in this despair. In the Liturgy of St. Basil, which we have been serving these past weeks, it is stated that even though our sins have banished us from that place of primal innocence and taken us from paradise into this present world where death exists God still has, in love, provided us with the salvation of regeneration.

Our Lord Jesus Christ has come into the world, God taking on humanity and bearing all of its ills, including death, but never being overcome by any of them. In doing this the ultimate power of death was broken. In union with our Lord we die, but we also rise again by the same power that Jesus exhibited in his own death and resurrection. The resurrection of Lazarus we call to mind today was a foretaste of this, an act of our Lord to demonstrate to those who have the eyes to see that He truly has the power to overcome death and that those who are joined to him share in this.

Knowing this, even though it is our lot to be apprehensive about our mortality and death, we still have hope. Death is an adversary but it’s a foe whose power has been broken. Death is not natural for us, but it is not final either. And in the week to come as we face the sufferings and death of Christ, and by doing so face our own struggles, mortality, and death, this day has been given to us as a preview of the resurrection to come, a ray of hope allowing us to face this ultimate challenge with a calm assurance of salvation.

Holy Week is just a few days away and the rush is on. So many things to do in such a short time. But what a wonderful, holy, special, and exciting time it is. The next days will be spent in busy preparation, going over texts, cleaning, making bread, buying candles, and the challenge of praying well as once in a year liturgies are served.

Since I work and commute to St. Elias this time of year is a taste of things to come for me, the day when I can move down and be there and do what I need to do full time. I enjoy just being there and being not just John the Programs Coordinator, but Fr. John.

Come Bright Monday there will be a holy tired over our house.

An interesting article on the topic…

Russian Orthodox Priests celebrate Liturgy at the North Pole.

The sleet is falling outside, with wind moving through the trees and thunder in the distance. A storm is moving through and they say there’ll be over a foot of snow just an hour or so north of here. I wonder what things will look like when I wake tomorrow.

An interesting week is drawing to a close, a week of tension at work and calm at the altar, a new season of change and the timeless flow of faith. My instincts tell me a chapter is ending and something is yet to begin. There’s no direction to it all yet, just instinct. Yet the feeling is strong.

My times, your times, the times of the world are all in God’s hands. There will always be pressures. There will always be changes. There will always be some crisis. We’re not required to be passive in the face of it all but we act rooted in assurance, the assurance that all things are somehow, somewhere in control and part of a larger plan. Right now there are decisions being made and who knows what they will be. I know what I will do. I will not panic but I will pray tonight and place my life in the hands of Mercy and go to work tomorrow and church this weekend to do my very best knowing the everything is in good hands.

Last Saturday a former fiance of mine was married up in Crookston, Minnesota. I was invited, with my wife, to the wedding but she was ill and weekends are kind of locked up for me. Although we couldn’t come we sent along a card with some money and our best wishes.

The details are not important but things I had hoped for didn’t work out between the two of us; too much distance, too many things that didn’t make for longevity. It’s okay, that’s what these things are for, testing out the waters, seeing if a lifetime together is possible with the freedom to back out with less consequence then a divorce.

There is an ironic side in this all, of course, as my wife was supposed to stand up for my former fiance at the wedding. No, she didn’t do anything to break things up but one thing leads to another and we’ve been married now for almost 23 years. I like to talk about it sometimes because it has the feeling of scandal in a lighthearted way even though our lives have been basically boring (if you count boring as contrasted with, say, the life of a movie star). People laugh and smile at it all when I tell them about how I married the Maid of Honor at what would have been my wedding had events not intervened.

Every once in a while you see a bumper sticker that says “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your Prince” and I think its true. Very few people marry their first love and lots of us have to explore with our hearts exposed before we can find a love that endures. It’s an awkward thing and there are a lot of mistakes along the way. Its not hard to step on someone else’s toes when you’re both stumbling around in the dark, as it were, looking for the light switch.

Still I wish them all well, and pray for them at times, these people who came in to my life as I looked for enduring love. I hope if I was their “frog” they found their prince. I hope they can forgive me for whatever I lacked and that their journey has been smooth. Most of them, of course, I’ve never seen or heard from because this is the way of things but I do hope one day we may see each other in heaven, recognize each other for an instant, and realize that all has turned out well.

Many blessings, Mary, on your wedding and may God grant you many years!

Rooted in an Evangelical worldview crossexamined.org is a great source for basic apologetics (the defense of the faith). When you get there you’ll see a significant number of resources to help you understand your faith and discover how reasonable and defendable your Christian faith can be.

Pay a visit and tell me what you think!

Tomorrow I will be serving the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy in replacement of the Priest at St. George Orthodox Church in West St. Paul, MN. It’s the long one with the extra readings and as I have been traveling I have only served a few of these liturgies in my tenure as Priest. Please say a prayer or two!

Thanks.

Another day of change at work today. Looks like things are going to get rearranged again. And although the truth is that I sometimes get exasperated by it all it’s just part of the business.

The economy is supposedly down. I say supposedly because lots of media voices are telling us things are bad. But it’s their bread and butter to keep people glued to the set and bad news is a great way to do it. An example; I was listening to the news on my way down to LaCrosse this past weekend and it turns out that around 95 percent of people with mortgages are paying them off on time, the “crisis” is about 5% or so of mortgage holders! But if you watch the television it seems like they portray the whole thing as millions of families just a visit from the evil banker away from losing their homes and starring in their own version of The Grapes of Wrath. But whatever level of truth are in those breathless reports by millionaire news anchors we’re on the receiving end of it all in one way.

Our bread and butter, though, is all about seniors selling their homes and making the jump to retirement living with us. Parkshore Senior Campus is a high quality place with a lot of services but also a hefty price tag. Two kinds of people come to stay with us, people with money to begin with and people who’ve acquired money through the sale of their homes or other assets and are essentially drawing down on that investment by living with us. If people think there is a crisis in housing they hold on for as long as they can, especially the potential clients of our independent living apartments, and vacancies accumulate. Just a handful of openings can take a lot of cash out of the flow and we need to find ways to be creative to keep everything out of deficit

And it could get worse because the baby boom is expected to produce a lot of seniors but how much they’ve actually saved for their retirement is still in question. My generation, and I’m on the very tail of the baby boom, are not necessarily as thrifty as the WW2 folks who experienced the Depression of the 30’s. There’s a rush to put up senior apartments, condos, and residences of all kinds but the truth is they might, in just a few years, be scrambling for residents as there will be plenty of space chasing too few with the money to pay the prices.

So it looks like we’re going to retool again, find ways to do more with less and make sure all things are lined up in that uniquely corporate way. Part of me is tired of the constant flux but another part understands that this is just the way it is, being nimble and anticipatory is part of the game. One thing is certain, I continue to gain a deeper empathy for those who’s vocation lies outside of the Parish, people who work in countless jobs and try to do their best to be Christians while swimming in the corporate river. It is a kind of martyrdom to be able to know how to navigate the maze, be a person of integrity, and still be fresh and ready in a world where business change now happens daily and in some cases on the hour. Whatever else comes out of this these times will make me a better Priest and hopefully wiser as well.