April Fools & Holy Weak

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1:25)

I hope the irony of April Fools’ Day and Maundy Thursday coinciding hasn’t been lost.

Though, Maundy Thursday may strike even the most ardent churchgoer as the junior varsity of Holy Week activities, it may actually hold the key to the whole week.  Sure, we all know: Friday=Cross, Sunday=Resurrection (chocolate bunnies, special outfits and hats, peeps, etc…).  But what about Thursday?

Maundy comes from a Latin word for mandate/command.  This refers to Jesus saying, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13:34) .  This statement, of course comes well after Jesus interrupted a nice dinner with his palls, tied a towel around his waste and got on with the washing of the feet.  Foolishness.  Weird stuff.  At least Peter thought so.

Jesus explained himself by saying, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”  Perhaps the best summary for the whole of Holy Week.  Foolishness that later comes to make sense in light of Sunday.  We later come to really see that foolish weakness overcomes conventional wisdom and strength.

Peter didn’t understand the foolishness of what Jesus was doing.  Frankly, neither do I most of the time.  Jesus patiently uses this as a teachable moment saying, “If I am your Teacher and Lord and I wash your feet, do this to each other.”

Think about how silly this would be for us.  “You mean you want me to drop everything and getting down to the dirt of where someone has been?  You’re kidding me.  You want me to clean feet?  No way.”  Jesus shows us a foolish type of friendship and asks his friends and us to follow suit.

I wish these two “holidays” coincided a bit more often.  It might make it a bit easier to remember how Christ’s wisdom looked like foolishness, how his strength looked like weakness, and his victory looked like defeat.  The shape of his very life, looks on first blush, like death.

I pray that we really embrace this call to be holy April fools, that we take on this free and costly life.  That we see strength in apparent weakness.  That we get comfortable under the table doing this foolish work of friendship and service.  Amen.

Original Gathering Church post.

praying: for memorial day: 'thanksgiving for those who preceded us'

"Our Father, you who have mothered us by giving us good forebears, we thank you for those who have preceded us. Without them, faithful and unfaithful, we would not be. Often we little understand what they must have been like, yet they passed on to us a sense of how wonderful it is to be your people. may we be capable of producing yet new generations born of your hope. Amen."

*Prayer by Stanley Hauerwas, Painting by Jasper Johns.
While I sincerly doubt this prayer would have necessarily been prayed in a memorial day setting, its humility and perspective seem apt.

Father Richard John Neuhaus

I just received this month's First Things Magazine (a fine Catholic monthly). Their long-time leader and editor, Richard John Neuhaus recently died after battling with cancer. Neuhaus was a Lutheran who then became a Catholic priest. He was greatly involved, and remained so to his dying day, in civil rights and advocacy. On the last page of the magazine is a brief reflection written by Neuhaus shortly before he died. It shows the grace, depth, and humour he exhibited throughout his life and public career. How beautiful and challenging to us all as we inevitably face our mortality.As of this writing, I am contending with a cancer, presently of the unknown origin. I am, I am given to believe, under the expert medical care of the Sloan-Kettering clinic here in New York. I am grateful beyond measure for your prayers storming the gates of heaven. Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is must that I hope to do in the interim. After the last round with cancer fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, As I Lay Dying (titled after William Faulkner after John Donne), in which I said much of what I had to say about the package deal that is mortality. I did not know that I had so much more to learn. And yes, the question has occurred to me that, if I have but a little time to live, should I be spending it writing this column. I have heard it attributed to figures such as Brother Lawrence and Martin Luther- when asked what they would do if they knew they were going to die tomorrow, they answered that they would plant a tree and say their prayers. (Luther is supposed to have added that he would quaff his favored beer.) Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees, and certainly I am saying my prayers. who knew that at this point in life I would be understanding,as if for the first time, the words of Paul, "When I am weak, then I am strong"? This is not a farewell. Please God, we will be pondering together the follies and splendors of the Church and the world for years to come. But maybe not. In any event, when there is an unidentified agent in your body aggressively attacking the good things your body is intended to do, it does concentrate the mind. The entirety of our prayer is "You will be done"- not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression. To that end, I comment myself to your intercession, and that of all the saints and angels who accompany us each step through time toward home. (02/09)