1) AGONY IN THE GARDEN

When have you experience an agony in the garden?

It’s important to have places where we can hide: gardens, backyards, parks, churches, cellars, backrooms, bathrooms, inner rooms.

It’s important to have places where we can cry.

It’s a blessing to have our own garden – a place where we can grow green things – and red things – zucchini and tomatoes – tulips and roses – a place where we can cut and snip, weed and plant – a place where we can get away from it all – a place where what we are doing outwardly, is happening inwardly – cutting and snipping, weeding and planting – in the secret garden of our soul.

Rev. Robert Tristen Coffin was once asked if he enjoyed being a minister. He thought for a moment and then said something like, “I love it. Being a minister is an amazing life – especially when someone invites you into the secret garden of their soul and they tell you who they really are.”

And if we could enter into the secret garden of another, wouldn’t we see both a garden of delights as well as a garden of sorrows?

For many, the agonies in life stand out like broken branches on the grass after a storm. Family stories might sound like a novel, but they are not novel. Every family has rejections, crushing comments, broken vows, people who walked away from us, failures, alcoholism and drug addiction, loss of a job, or kids who don’t seem to care.

Jesus often felt the need to escape. He loved to slip away in the night to enter into the dark garden of God – and discover that God is a never ending garden of Delight.

On the night before he died, Jesus walked into a garden to pray. He needed space. He needed strength. He needed friends. So he asked his closest friends – the ones he climbed the mount of the transfiguration with – to stay awake and pray with him. And he prayed and cried and they slept.

And all alone, feeling rejected by both God and friends, he cried out, “Father, if it is possible take this cup of suffering away from me, but not my will, but your will be done.”

We too, whenever we feel like we’re stuck, need to escape to a garden – and when life feels like we’re in a garden of agony, if we look around, Jesus is there too – and he’s not sleeping.

2) SCOURGING

AT THE PILLAR

When have you experienced the second sorrowful mystery of life: the scourging at the pillar?

Sometimes you just can’t win.

The scourge of selfishness slaps us in the face and we’re sick and tired of turning the other cheek.

We do the work and someone else gets the credit – especially the person who sits around doing nothing.

Who said, “Life is fair?”

Sometimes we feel beat – beaten down by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare calls them in his powerful play, “Hamlet.”

Others seem to have all the luck.

Then to make things worse, others make comments like, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” or “Stop playing the victim game!” or “You’re a whiner instead of being a winner.” And you say inwardly, “Give me a break and just accept me as I am. Don’t you realize, I’m feeling down right now?”

And then there is the caustic remark or racial slur that slices our spirit in two.

A job turns out to be totally what we didn’t expect it to be and we’re stuck in it because we need a job and money is really tight.

The relatives have it all wrong. They judged us unfairly. They don’t have a clue to why we did what we did. And the words that sting keep coming and keep stinging for years now.

Rock throwers are still throwing rocks.

Motive guessers are still guessing without asking.

People are criticized when they work too hard or when they don’t work enough. They hear comments like, “Slow down. You’re making us look bad.” Or “Hurry up. You’re not pulling your load!”

People make comments about a woman if she is too good looking or if she isn’t good looking enough.

Where do we go when we’re experiencing whip lash from crashes and clashes with others?

The scriptures give us some of Jesus’ words in the garden and on the cross, but what was going through his mind as the soldiers tortured his body with whips?

We don’t know. However, we get glimpses of human pain and how people feel beaten down in Alcoholic Anonymous and Alananon meetings, Self Help groups, counseling sessions, or really listening to a friend who is hurting.

If we’re wise, we’ll connect with each other – especially when we’re hurting or beat.

Who needs my ear?

Who listens to me?

Whom have I told my story to?

3) CROWNING

WITH THORNS

Life has its headaches.

Life has its worries and its anxieties.

Life has its mental storms.

Life has its crowning with thorns.

When have you felt like you were being crowned with thorns?

Life takes place between our ears – as we talk to ourselves inwardly about what’s happening outwardly. We worry about the people we deal with each day – at home and at work. Then there is traffic, weather, the cost of gasoline and the cost of raising children.

When we make mistakes or wrong turns, it’s hard to shake mistakes out of our mind. Family and friends tell us to let our mistakes go, but we can’t. They tell us to smell the roses, instead of looking at the thorns. We want to reply, “Hey, there are no roses in mistakes – only thorns and they seem to keep on sticking it to us.”

And sometimes we are hurt by others ….

If someone wants to make fun of us, they will find a way. They’ll twist and turn our words or actions into thorns and stick them into us. They’ll remind us of our weaknesses. They will bring up our past mistakes. The closer we are to others, the more they know our raw weaknesses.

However, we can develop the skill in reflecting on what is sent our way and deflect it. Of course it takes time to acquire this virtue – in the deep recesses of our mind.

Who of us could deal with a crown of thorns? Who of us could stand having a crown of sharp thorns driven into our head with reeds? Who of us could then deal with being spat at, dressed in purple and then mocked with the words, “Hail King of the Jews!”?

What did Jesus think and say when this was happening? We really don’t know. Mystics, as well as the gospel writers, imagine Jesus’ thoughts.

They were doing in the palace or praetorium that night what tyrants and bullies have always done to persons they want to persecute. Forget they are persons. Make him things. Make them objects. Never see them as subjects.

Jesus mirrors the opposite. Jesus is the king. And as king he saw all his subjects – especially the poor and the needy, the stuck and the sinner, in what they were being subjected to in life.

Jesus was a king – so they crowned him with a crown of thorns – and dressed him in a purple cloak. .

Jesus was a king who washed feet and let his feet be washed by a woman whom others saw only as an object. Jesus saw people as royalty – children of Our Father – especially people whom others objectified in order to rid them from their circles – sinners, tax collectors, people with leprosy, prostitutes, the unholy.

Jesus never tried to be a king with a golden crown. Yes he talked about a kingdom, but it wasn’t one with golden streets leading to a palace. No, he only mentioned a narrow way that leads to life. This carpenter told us to build our house on rock, yet he had no place to lay his head.

4) CARRYING

THE CROSS

What have been your crosses?

Who have been your crosses?

Everyone has a cross to carry.

And the Stations of the Cross are not only on the walls of our churches. They are also along our streets, but especially along the walls of our homes.
Everyone has a cross to carry.

Sometimes it feels like we have to carry it all alone.

Sometimes others help us.

The cross is made of wood.

It has become the symbol of Christ and Christianity.

We all know how to make the sign of the cross on our bodies – because that’s where we so often experience crosses: cancer, arthritis, headaches, and the slow loss of mobility and memory.

Most crosses come in the shape of people.

Obviously, Jesus’ cross was from people and he accepted it for people. People crucified him and he turned the other cheek to stop the violence that plagues our world – ever since the day Cain killed Abel.

Most don’t experience violent violence: murder, rape and assault.

Most crosses, as Tip O’Neil said of politics, are local.

A daughter is an alcoholic or a son is on drugs.

A husband is out of work.

A car accident causes a daughter to be paralyzed for life.

A marriage breaks up.

Our kids refuse to bring their kids, our grandkids, to church.

A son or a daughter moves in with someone refusing to get married and they come to visit us. What to do? Where to sleep? What to say?

Crosses then come in the form of people – usually those who are close to us – and people are hard to carry.

5) DEATH

ON THE CROSS

What have been the deaths in your life?

Death is the so called elephant in our living room.

Just as we have a birthday, we have a deathday.

Not knowing the second date helps make life that much more interesting.

Most prefer to avoid the presence of death in their autobiography.

Death, however, announces its presence on a regular basis.

The obituary column arrives on our porch along with the rest of the daily paper.

We notice death when a family member or a friend dies.

We become more and more aware of death as the number of candles on our birthday cake increase.

It helps to accept death’s reality – but it also helps to take care of our health with a balanced diet and regular exercise.

Death is in the cards as they say. The other cards in the deck can be used for cute fortune telling, but everyone is dealt the death card eventually.

Death challenges us to live life to the full – and to reflect on particulars when it comes to the question of why God made me.

As Samuel Johnson, the famous British writer put it, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Calvary is a steep hill above every town.

The cross is on the top not only of our churches, but also our homes.

The funeral business will never go out of business.

People are dying all the time.

We all know the experienced of the loss of a loved one.

Death is in the wings.

Death doesn’t wait.

Death.

We hope there is resurrection.

THE
GLORIOUS MYSTERIES

Life has its glorious mysteries – the bigger than life moments –glorious moments – climbing higher moments – crowning with glory instead of sorrow moments of life.

We look to the mystery of Jesus and Mary to understand the call to glory that God calls us to – especially through these mysteries:

1) Resurrection moments: these are moments when rise again after the deep sorrow of losing a loved one. These are moments when we start all over again after a fire or after being fired. These are moments when we meet the risen Christ in the morning after a long night of pain.

2) Ascension moments: these are moments when we climb out the pit of depression or recover from an addiction one day at a time. These are moments when we see the next step when we didn’t know what that step was.

3) Decension moments: these are moments when the Spirit of God comes down upon us – when the Spirit shakes the foundations of our being and we breathe in a breath of fresh peace.

4) Assumption moments: these are moments when our old assumptions fall apart and new ones appear – when we finally begin to grasp why pictures and statues of Mary are everywhere – when we begin to see she models the life of the Christian – now and into the hereafter.

5) Crowning moments: these are moments when we reach the finish line – when we see that it’s all worth it – the sacrifice and the giving – the being there for others – the emptying of the self to be filled with the fullness of God.

1) RESURRECTION OF JESUS

FROM THE DEAD

When have you experienced “Resurrection Moments” – a moment you just knew someone who died is with the Lord?

Obviously death – the end of the line – is part of life – whether we like to look at it or not.

Obviously death – for the Christian – is not the end of the line.

Yet, death – especially after a long life or a long struggle with cancer – or Alzheimer’s – looks like that’s “The End” of our movie.

But because of Christ we Christians believe there is a sequel – another life - a new life – a never ending eternity in God.

Hopefully, when we look death in the eye, we’ll see Jesus the Light of the World waiting for us on the other side of the dark tunnel of death.

Every year we celebrate Easter as a way of saying to ourselves, “We believe in life after death – because of Jesus.”

Each Sunday we say the same thing by celebrating the Eucharist with each other.

“Dying you destroyed our death,
rising you restored our life.
Lord Jesus, come in glory.”

Each sunset teaches us endings; every sunrise teaches us beginnings.

We know birth; we know death; has resurrection dawned on us yet?

At some point in life, usually when we are older, Easter appears as a sunrise before us. Do we stop to watch it?

Easter is a feast of hope.

Easter is a feast of light.

Easter is a feast of new life.

Easter is a feast of the bursting up out of the earth of new flowers, new life, new possibilities.

We believe.

Jesus rose from the dead – giving us hope in the same possibility for us too.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

Roll away any heavy stones of doubt.