Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Ephesians 4:15)

Today's reflection is by 

Thea Keith-Lucas, Episcopal Chaplain at MIT

When we were babies, we discovered who we are by observing others. Did they smile when they looked at us? Did they laugh when we laughed? Did they help us when we cried? As we move into adulthood, we feel more independent, but we still constantly respond to the words and the body language of the people we encounter. We still find our identities in the web of our relationships.

Peter comes into that meal in the upper room with a clear sense of who is: a disciple of Jesus, the promised Messiah. But for Peter to be the disciple, Jesus must behave like the teacher. If Jesus behaves like a slave and washes people’s feet, then who is Peter now? We hear the depth of Peter’s identity struggle in his vehement and confused response: “You will never wash my feet!” and then barely seconds later, “Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!”

We look down and see Jesus, kneeling before us to cradle our dusty, beat-up feet and gently wash them clean. We look down, to see him looking up at us with eyes that see clearly and with absolute love. We look down to see our truest selves, reflected there in our Savior’s gentle gaze.

I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly. (Psalm 40:10)

Today's reflection is by Thea Keith-Lucas, Episcopal Chaplain at MIT

Towards the end of college, I reconnected with my faith in Jesus and started wearing a cross necklace every day. I quickly discovered that the cross acted as a magnet for panhandlers on the subway. It had the opposite effect on many of my college friends. A classmate questioned my objectivity towards the Bible. A science major asked me how I could possibly be against evolution. One guy assumed that I was intent on a courtship towards marriage, which made it very awkward when I asked him out on a date.

Many of us began Lent with crosses of ash on our foreheads. Some of us have explained to a friend that we can’t share a dessert or some other experience because of a Lenten fast. Many of us also joined in Palm Sunday processions that took our congregations outside the doors of the church. Lent seems quiet and inward, but it can also be a time when our faith becomes visible in new ways.

We have three more reflections coming in this series. Before we turn to the great holy days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, I want to thank you for sharing this Lenten journey with us. I hope this has been a time for each of us discover the truth within us and share it with the world. May God give us the grace to move through the awkward moments towards the freedom and joy of living with integrity.

Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:21)

 Today's reflection is by Kari Jo Verhulst
Lutheran Chaplain at MIT and Pastor at University Lutheran Church

It’s been a long, hard Lent this year, full of rough headlines and harsh silences. The untimely deaths of students at MIT and Harvard; the life-altering violence that shattered Fort Hood, Franklin Regional High School, and now the Jewish Community Center in Kansas. The gnawing sense that what is happening in the Ukraine, Syria, and Egypt is only going to get worse. And those are only the big-fonted stories. Add to these countless fine print or wordless experiences of struggle, longing, and bondage.

It’s been a long, hard Lent this year, and I am so glad it is Holy Week. This is the week that I get to act out my own sense of longing and sorrow through the words and stories and songs that tell of Jesus’ journey to the cross, and how his bearing of such sorrow weds the Godhead with the Creation that groans for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay.

The 14^th/15^th century mystic philosopher Julian of Norwich spoke of this as a “oneing.” She imagines that as Jesus hangs on the cross—the preferred Roman instrument of torture and humiliation—he is opened up to “every sorrow and desolation” and sorrows along in kinship. The poet Denise Levertov writes of this way:

The oneing, [Julian saw,] the oneing

with the Godhead opened Him utterly

to the pain of all minds, all bodies

—sands of the sea, of the desert—

from the beginning to the last.

I pray that you, also, will get to join your struggles with the way of the cross this week. And that through this, you will know the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. (1 John 3:2a)

Today's reflection is by Cameron Partridge
Episcopal Chaplain at Boston University

Toward the end of high school I went on a family trip down the middle fork of the American River, near Sacramento California.  For two days we learned how to steer as a group, how to push forward, how to reverse out of a jam, when to stop and let the current take over.  One section of the river included a class five rapid—“the Shoot” I believe it was called—into which we moved forward with a mixture of care and abandon.  At first we steered to the left, then to the right, paddling madly to avoid hidden vortexes.  At a certain point we shifted from our seats to the bottom of the boat, holding our paddles straight up in the air.  We hurdled through a kind of spin cycle and were spat out at the bottom, soaking but exhilarated.

 

Each Holy Week we journey into the Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection, a metamorphosis beyond our wildest imagining. We enter assured that we are indeed God’s children now, even as we don’t know what we will be on the other side.  We may paddle into this week with great gusto, but ultimately we must cede to the current, as we sit together on the floor of our little boat.

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. (John 4:24)

Today's reflection is by Lucas Mix, Researcher in Theoretical and Theological Biology, Harvard. You can read more from Lucas on his blog: dacalu.wordpress.com

What does it mean to worship God in “spirit and in truth”? The phrase comes from John 4:24 and I think it has something to do with a fullness of attention.  Spirit means both the Holy Spirit and the breath of life.  Have you ever been so intent on something that you held your breath?  I think we are invited to that kind of intensity when we worship God: fascination and devotion. For me, “in truth” conveys the idea that we not only have a desire to please God, but the ability to do so.  To worship in truth is to make a proper and acceptable offering of our life and love.

Has there ever been a moment in your life when you were fully wrapped up in love and service? For me it comes in moments of conversation about God and reality, the rare moment when I manage to express the truth that is in me while hearing the very soul of another.  It also comes in moments of simple, concrete service – like cleaning a bathroom for a neighbor.

When have you worshiped in spirit and truth?

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

For today's reflection, I would like to share with you the great Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.”

- Kari Jo Verhulst, Lutheran Chaplain to MIT and Pastor to University Lutheran Church 

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias….

Listen to carrion—put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts….

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn't go.

Be like the fox who

makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter. (Isaiah 59:14)

Today's reflection is by Cameron Partridge
Episcopal Chaplain at Boston University

Many have now condemned comments made last week by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, linking the Church’s support of LGBT people with the murders of Christians in Nigeria.  In a phone-in radio interview Welby described the murderers’ rationale: “If we leave a Christian community here we will all be made to become homosexual and so we will kill all the Christians." He continued, “I have stood by gravesides in Africa of a group of Christians who had been attacked because of something that had happened in America.” 

John Aravosis boiled Welby’s logic down to this:  “he said that Anglicans must discriminate against gays, lest bigots in Africa think Anglicans themselves are gay, and then gay-bash them."

I stumble over all of this.  How The Episcopal Church’s embrace of LGBTI people can be condemned by conservatives and lampooned by anti-religious commentators in the same moment. How in the headlines of this story, Nigeria becomes “Africa” writ large, as if all African countries are interchangeable.  How race, religion and sexuality are pitted against one another, as if one could never be LGBTI, Christian, and Nigerian at the same time. 

If justice is not to be rejected, if righteousness is not to be rebuffed, if the public square is to become a place of authentic encounter and learning, then the complex intersections of human lives must be upheld, even if they confound the categories that so many prefer to keep separate.