Sunday Collection: Surrender

Photograph by Hypertypos

They were approaching Jerusalem, and when they reached Bethphage at the mount of Olives Jesus sent off two disciples, and told them: ‘Go into the village opposite, where you will at once find a donkey tethered with her foal beside her. Untie them, and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, answer, “The Master needs them”; and he will let you have them at once.’ This was to fulfil the prophecy which says, ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, “Here is your king, who comes to you in gentleness, riding on a donkey, on the foal of a beast of burden.”‘

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed, and brought the donkey and her foal; they laid their cloaks on them and Jesus mounted. Crowds of people carpeted the road with their cloaks, and some cut branches from the trees to spread in his path. Then the crowds in front and behind raised the shout: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the heavens!’

When he entered Jerusalem the whole city went wild with excitement. ‘Who is this?’ people asked, and the crowds replied, ‘This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.’

Matthew 21 1:11

For me, this year’s season of Lent has galloped past faster than that donkey from Bethphage could ever have dreamed of going. Here we are already at Holy Week, and I find myself spiritually unprepared and unfocused. But looking back at what I’ve read this week, perhaps it’s simpler than I thought: let go.

The theme of this week’s daily meditations from Richard Rohr has been the transformation and absorption of evil. On Wednesday of this week, his question was:

What needs to be sacrificed in order for me to forgive?

In part, Rohr’s answer reads:

Historically, we have at least moved from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice, to various modes of seeming self-sacrifice. Unfortunately it was not usually the ego self that we sacrificed, but most often the body self as its vicarious substitute. In forgiveness, it is precisely my ego self that has to die, my need to be right, to be in control, to be superior. Very few want to go there, but that is exactly what Jesus emphasized and taught. I am told that forgiveness is at least implied in two-thirds of his teaching!

‘Of course’ was my response to reading this. Throughout my Catholic upbringing, I was wary of the Church’s emphasis on the evil of our bodies. The emphasis has been on suspicion of our physical selves, with an unseemly eagerness to deny ourselves.

Rohr’s words made me realise that all this emphasis on denial of the body means we do not have to think about the massive and destructive role our egos play in religious dogma and practice.

This Lent has seen the kidnapping and death of the Chaldean Archbishop in Mosul, a new deterioration of the situation in Darfur and ugly conflict in Lhasa, as well as many personal losses for people in our blogging community. It is as difficult as ever to trust in the words of Lady Julian:

All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

He did not say ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted’. But he did say, ‘You shall not be overcome.’ God wants us to heed these words so that we shall always be strong in trust, both is sorrow and in joy.

Milton asks this week in his Lenten Journal ‘How can I keep saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace?’ This, in part, is how he answers his own question:

Part of what Palm Sunday tells us is the church has been broken and flawed from the start. We’ve always been a conflicted and confused people. We, the body of Christ, have a hard time thinking beyond ourselves: our needs, our dreams, our fears. If the story of Easter depended on us, it would have ended on Friday, with the disciples sitting in the Upper Room talking about what might have been. But we are not the last word.

As our arms tire and our fronds fall to our sides, hope begins to take root in our despair and grace seeps into the cracks in our resolve and the contradictions of our collective conscience. We are not the last word.

Please go and read the rest of his post, and his poem yesterday.

Also this week, Yolanda posted a beautiful photograph and quote from Lewis, following the theme of surrender.

And Jan Richardson encourages us to think about Where the Way Leads in her Palm Sunday post. She reflects on The Baptist’s role in preparing the path of Christ, in His road through Jerusalem to Calvary:

Amid the hosannas of the festive crowd, I keep hearing a voice that echoes from the other end of Jesus’ story. It belongs to John the Baptist. It is a lone voice, a ragged, fiery, locust-and-honey-drenched voice, a voice that raised its cry long before the crowds began to do so.

And she bids us ask ourselves:

…what is the way that I am preparing for Christ? Am I clearing a path by which he has access to my life? Am I keeping my eyes open to the variety of guises that Christ continues to wear in our world? …what am I lifting up, that God might come down and dance with me?

I came across this challenging passage by Wells this morning, which moved me to tears:

In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching? Perhaps the priests and the rulers and the rich men understood him better than his followers. He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love.

Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realised that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, comfronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness…

Is it any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?

H.G. Wells

Everything I read this week seems to me to be pointing towards the imperative need to shed our ego, to surrender our gifts to the Creator for our own transformation. My own ‘little private reservations’ are numerous and explain why I found the Wells quote uncompromising and frightening.

I leave you with Julian again, who has gentler words which nonetheless hide an assumed surrender – we have to let him hold us:

He is our clothing. In his love he wraps and holds us. He enfolds us for love and will never let us go.

Have a very blessed Holy Week everyone, whatever you believe.