[ hold :: this space ]

i realised a few years ago [after years of living with an extravert... it's always the 'other' who makes us understand ourselves!] that i have a quota of words that i can say each day, and when i’ve used it up, that’s it.

that’s happened with easter this year. i have no words left to say.

i wanted to write something about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet… and how maybe that wasn’t so much about service and being willing to wash the feet of others, but about the followers of Jesus being willing to have their feet washed by one who was on the downward slide, who was about to be betrayed, who was about to die, who represents all the world finds unattractive, unnecessary and wrong. the real question of faith for me is am i willing to have my feet washed by ‘them’, rather than just being willing to wash theirs.

i doubt that i am.

luckily, Kester hasn’t run out of words. Go read him instead [start here and move your way up]

and come along to this on Saturday:

4-7 pm in the basement at 130 Little Collins Street. Entrance off Coromandel Place. i just put the finishing touches on a part of it, and had that fabulous feeling you get when you realise that it might just all come together. i can’t wait.

wishing i had the inspiration to contribute to this… so glad those who do are. It’s a collection of reflections on the journey through holy week.

[i've just been reading newspaper reports about the tsunami in the solomon islands. i know it's nowhere near the scale of the boxing day tsunami a few years ago, but for every one of the people affected it's just as shattering. life is devastatingly fragile. i want to protest. it occurs to me that holy week, more than any other, reminds us that God's not the one to protest to.]

I said what about my eyes?
“Keep them on the road.”
I said what about my passion?
“Keep it burning.”
I said what about my heart?
“Tell me what you hold inside it?”
I said pain and sorrow.
He said:
“stay with it.”

Rumi

i’m ready for easter… actually, i’m nowhere near ready for easter, but i wish it were here.

i know this will be a week of 2 am wakeups. The week before an event is always like this… filled with anxiety about whether it’s good enough, creative enough, clever enough… I keep wanting to tell people not to expect too much.

These are, of course, all the wrong things to worry about.

the only way to stay sane in the leadup to events like this is to remember that the whole point of them is to put people into a space where they might encounter the story. The story of Easter is a gift for that because the themes are the grand existential themes of life. they lie just beneath the surface for nearly everyone: death, meaninglessness, waiting, transformation. Honour the story well and people will find their place in it.

That’s all we have to do. Honour the story.

These are just some random bits from the good friday stuff. It basically follows John’s telling of the story, with short reflections between the bible readings. The reflections are below, the full liturgy can be downloaded here: goodfridayprison.pdf

[the recorded music includes Johnny Cash's "Hurt", and Sufjan Stevens "O God, where are you now", with Gorecki's symphony no. 3 being played at the beginning and end]

Reflection 1:

What makes this day good?

If you have ever believed that love inevitably leads to betrayal
this day says it doesn’t.
If you have ever believed that some people are unloveable, irredeemable
this day says they aren’t.
If you have ever believed that there is a limit to forgiveness
this day says there isn’t.
If you have ever believed you aren’t worth saving
this day says you are.
If you have ever believed that you don’t deserve freedom
this day says you do.
If you have ever believed that fear, anger, hate and despair will always win
this day says they won’t.
And this day is good for you.

Reflection 2: [after reading John 19:1-16a]

I wonder, Jesus, what it took for you not to back down.
You could have changed your mind at any time, answered the questions differently. Pilate wanted you to go free. The judge was on your side. Were you mad?

But it seems you knew that to deny who you were in front of Pilate would mean turning your back on all those who discovered freedom and wholeness through the way you had lived your life.

It would destroy all the love they had encountered.

So you knew you had no choice.

We confess now that we choose differently…

For every time we have chosen not to love
forgive us

For every time we have chosen not to do what is just
forgive us

For every time we have betrayed another because it would be dangerous not to
forgive us

For every time we have turned our back on what is right
forgive us

For every time we have not trusted the completeness of your love
forgive us

Turn us around so that we face the cross alongside you -
choosing only love
in the face of every option.

Reflection 3: [after reading John 19:16b - 30]

Whenever injustice wins
you are crucified again
Whenever the truth is betrayed
you are crucified again
Whenever fear overwhelms hope
you are crucified again
Whenever peace is overturned by hate
you are crucified again
Whenever love is not our choice
you are crucified again

Reflection 4: [after reading John 19:31-37]

The story continues. Jesus was wrapped in burial clothes and laid in a tomb. The creeds tell us he descended into hell.

One of the hardest parts of our faith is to believe that Jesus descends into the hell of our lives.

If you would like, write the story of your hell onto the fabric [card]. No-one else will be able to read it… but know that Jesus is your company in it.

[Play: Sufjan Stevens, ‘O God Where Are you Now?’ as this happens]

Sending out

We leave here in the darkness.
people tell us rumours of light,
of resurrection,
of a new day
but it seems too hard to believe them:

they cannot know the death and hell we know.

we wonder what can be resurrected from this.

We leave here waiting, confident only in the company of Jesus, in our lives, our fear, our hell and our hope.

Go in the uneasy peace of this Good Friday.
Amen.

These arrived back from the printer yesterday:

They’re an Easter Saturday moment for chaplains to hand out in prisons. thanks to mike and claire for design… and to Sammy Stamp for the funds to get them done.

[another update: if you wanted to get some of these postcards printed, email and I'll send you the high resolution, print ready pdf]

Easter is firing on all cylinders at the moment [luckily it's got a momentum of its own because i'm not!]. I’ve just been reading our church newspaper - Crosslight - and i’m a little bemused as to how the Easter Saturday event didn’t make it into the church newspaper when even the secular media are interviewing me about it… That’s been one of the interesting things that’s unfolded in the life of this project. The secular media have been interested from the beginning and keep approaching me for interviews and to write articles, etc. I’m off the radar in the church media.

If the church is the centre of gravity, this project is failing badly. I think it’s because i’m tired that that’s annoying me.

[update: i think i should clarify that i wasn't distressed when i wrote this, just grumpy!]

i’ve just took some photos of the carpark we’re using for Easter. they’re on flickr. they’re probably only of interest to the team.

[for the first time, i caught myself thinking 'are we mad??']

a reminder about the Easter Saturday sacred space / art installation… saturday april 7, in the basement at 130 Lt Collins Street

We met yesterday to keep planning the installation. some parts of it are just wonderful - i love it when we all have the same idea at the same time, even though we’re all approaching the space from different perspectives…

the different perspectives cause some moments of tension - perhaps tension’s too strong a word… perhaps it’s more a cloudiness, when you realise that your assumptions are different to someone else’s.

these, for us, were… at what point do we introduce hope? do we want to show hope [however dimly] from the very entrance? if not, where’s the turning point?

does it matter if a video is 30 minutes long [it's of the 30 minutes before the sun rises, when the blackness turns to grey], and people won’t get to see it all? will people ‘get it’, if they only stay in that space for 5 minutes? Does it matter that they might not see the progression we’re aiming for?

is something worth doing even if there’s a chance people won’t ‘get it’?

[i always say yes... mostly because i don't think that what we do is about people 'getting it'. and what people 'get' is rarely what we think they're going to. others say no, for reasons that i'm sure are as valid as mine]

the best thing about yesterday is that we pushed some of these issues through, and came out with better stuff at the end. it’s in the tension and the pushing that the layers evolve. and it’s always the layers, the icing on the cake, that give something its brilliance.

not that i’m saying it’s going to be brilliant… but i do feel really inspired by how it’s evolving.

hope you can come.

i finally finished a reasonable draft of the Good Friday liturgy for the prisons yesterday. It needs a lot of reworking, but it’s good to have a draft… i wrote the Easter Saturday postcards in a three minute window this morning [it only took three minutes to write, but behind that was approximately 6 hours of looking at a computer screen with absolutely no inspiration...]. now i’m onto an Easter Sunday liturgy for the prisons. I don’t think we’ll end up using this, but i like it so i’m putting it up here!

We have gathered together
because we’re people who have heard a rumour
that there’s life to be found on the other side of death.

We’re here because just the rumour is enough to bring a breath of hope
and just the hope is enough to bring a moment of life.

We’re here because even though it is only a rumour, a breath, a moment,
it’s changed our death forever.

Welcome to worship.

[writing Easter liturgies for the prisons today... this came out too complicated to use.]

you didn’t choose to die
and you couldn’t have chosen not to.

you had no choice as you stood answering Pilate’s questions
[you who defines love
and is defined by love];
because to have a choice would mean
that you could suddenly decide at the end
to deny who you were
and so to betray those who had found their life
in the light [and in the shadow]
of your love.

you didn’t have it in you
to do anything else
but walk to the cross.
and you still don’t have it in you
to make any choice but love.

and if love is always, absolutely, the path you will take,
why do we think there is something we could do
some thought we could have
some place we could go

that would change your mind?