A Chalice Remade

Well-worn, chestnut-coloured floorboards creak beneath the many feet entering the hushed room. A reverent quiet is—mostly—kept, it is a time of preparation for the special yearly observance. My friend and I arrive early, a rarity for me, to settle our hearts and minds for the Ash Wednesday service. Yet my mind is awhirl, reflecting on the day's conversations, expectations, frustrations, and disappointments. In spite of outward tranquility, my thoughts are uneasy.

Without sound or ceremony, the clergy and chalice bearers file down the centre aisle. We stand until the vicar invites us to pray the Lenten collect. Then, kneeling before the King of all things, we seek to know that our sin is costly. Only the life-blood of God's own Son could buy us back from death, the paycheck of our sin. My heart sought to stay focussed, prodding my mind to read along, if listening alone was not enough.

The Epistle reading proclaimed that unfathomable paradox, that God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him"1, a text that baffles both my mind and heart most days. This evening, though, I read the familiar words wanting to be moved, expecting life, yet being disappointed in my expectation. God's word is not something I can use to contrive an emotional experience, thankfully. Only His Spirit at work in my heart and mind can bring truth alive. As I rose with my row to receive the imposition of ashes, I knew that I needed to be emptied of myself and my own chaotic thoughts.

Sweet-smelling charred palm dust smudged thumb and forehead. A cross marked upon my brow, as I knelt and heard the familiar words, "Remember that thou art but dust, and to dust thou shalt return." The service continued, but I found my mind coming back to my frailty. I am but dust? How can this be, when my body is the hale and healthy flesh of one just entering their thirties? Yet, I am not deceived by my feelings of immortality. Hiking in dangerous places and sliding on ice have both punctured my security at times. The recent, unexpected loss of a family friend in her early twenties reminds me that the breath in my lungs is always a gift.

I am fragile. This realisation makes me both afraid and angry. I don't want to be frail. I rebel at being made of clay, the "poor potsherd, patch, matchwood"2 that I am. I am the thing formed irritably asking my Maker, "Why have you made me like this?"3 God fashioned me to need things—from food and sleep, to intimate relationships and love. I wonder if my needs make me frail. No, sin makes me breakable—my needs make me vulnerable, open to depending on God and others, rather than only myself.

My fears of the unknown, the uncertainties haunting my thoughts, the turmoil of my whole day led me to cry out from my knees, "I am flying to pieces, God! Hold me together." The tiny sting of communion wine on my tongue turned my heart to God's reply, "I have fashioned you to be a chalice to bear me." Here I was asking God to hold me together—that my fragments would not turn to wounding shrapnel—and His response was to tell me, the thing formed, that I was to hold Him! This is the mystery, that the Maker inhabits the made—or maid, in the case of Mary. The Potter clothed Himself in clay. The ones who need to be held together by God will be made to hold God.

I walked out into the darkness of evening unafraid, because the Light Himself dwelt in me. My foaming thoughts were not immediately quelled, the questions inside were not somehow answered. Still, I wrestle with my flesh, with distractions and restlessness, with fear and uncertainty, with a complaining tongue and a heart of stone. Daily, I must ask to be emptied of myself and to be held together by God, that I might be filled—like a chalice of Eucharistic wine—with the Holy Spirit. This is the purpose the Maker has for the thing made—whether I am a clay pot or a silver chalice—to hold Him as He holds us together.

____________________

1. II Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV)

2. Hopkins, Gerard Manley, “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire” Selected Poems and Prose (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books Ltd, 1982) 66

3. Romans 9:20b (NKJV)

All Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.

Unmasked...

"Faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God."

~ A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

I began a letter to a friend with this gem, found tucked inside the book I am currently reading (One Thousand Gifts). I was to find over and again in my week's reading (and my music-listening), references to eyes and sight. I discovered the soul of faith in the Psalmist, who says, "To You I lift up my eyes, O You Who are enthroned in the heavens1". We who have faith will set our eyes on God as the servant looks to his master, or the handmaiden looks to the hand of her mistress2. If we dare to look into the face of our belovéd Father, faith is the gossamer tie that binds us to Him; fine, sturdy, and only visible in the light. We see Holiness burning in His countenance. We view His faithfulness in all of history past. 

This gazing on God does not leave us unchanged, however. Indeed, it does something remarkable: it removes the masks we hide behind.

"...At all times I wonder: can anyone with the oily stains of a pride-splotched heart see God? I look down at the stained skirt of my apron, washed in moonlight. And I think I can stand here? I think I can brave this Beauty? Not an empty tinny beauty, but a Fierce Beauty, Flaming Fire Who burns through the thick masks and leaves the soul disrobed. I am naked and I am right ashamed. I know how monstrously inhumane I can be... [M]y neck has been stiff and graceless and I have lived the filth ugly, an idolator, a glutton, and a grace-thief who hasn't had time for the thanks."

– Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts (pp 115-116), emphasis mine

Those words burned into my mind's eyes and memory this week. It is in Thanksgiving to God that our masks are burned off by His fierce, flaming holiness. We turn our faces to Him and He excoriates whatever is not true, whatever is impure; that we, with unveiled –unmasked– faces might reflect His glory3.

Eyes open round. Here I am again, marinating my mind in II Corinthians chapters three through five because they are vibrant, robust, rich. Our own faces must be –and remain– unveiled to reveal God's glory3. Here I am reminded that we are frail earthen jars, full of cracks and full of the light of the glory of God manifested in the face of Jesus Christ4. We heave and groan in this earthy habiliment of flesh, awaiting the day, not when we are unclothed, but more fully clothed... The time when we will leave the body of the shadow-lands behind, to be robed in the most real body, the most real selves. It is whispered that we will become solid persons6. 

Thanks be to God!

~ Johanna

1. Psalm 123.1, ESV

2. Psalm 123.2, ESV

3. II Corinthians 3.18, NKJV

4. II Corinthians 4.6-7, NKJV

5. II Corinthians 5.1-8, NKJV

6. See The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis for more on this idea

The Icon Tree

"...Indeed the only way in which I can make real to myself what theology teaches about the heinousness of sin is to remember that every sin is the distortion of an energy breathed into us - an energy which, if not thus distorted, would have blossomed into one of those holy acts whereof 'God did it' and 'I did it' are both true descriptions. 

We poison the wine as He decants it into us; murder a melody He would play with us as the instrument. We caricature the self-portrait He would paint. Hence all sin, whatever else it is, is sacrilege."

~ C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer

Fog renders the foothills out my window nearly invisible this morning. In much the same way, sin renders the good thing from which it derives existence unrecognisable, incomprehensible. There is so much good in the things God made, because He made them, and He is goodness itself. Yet when we take a good thing and turn it on its head, it becomes vile, wretched, utterly broken. Lewis chooses well when he says that sin is sacrilege. Sacrilege is defined as a "crime of stealing what is consecrated to God." Indeed, that is what every sin is; stealing God's glory, or God's good thing and using it to satisfy our cravings, to harm others, or turning it into an idol.

God is greater than our sin, more imaginative and redemptive than our corruption of His good things. All we can think to do is twist something good into cruel, sick, selfish means to our own ends. God, however, creatively, completely, redeems brokenness. He turns the Fall upside down in the most ludicrous and paradoxical ways.  The God of the universe, Creator of all things, becomes part of the creation,  dwells inside the universe. He Who could not sin, became sin itself in order to make us the very righteousness of God. When the first Adam failed to obey, the Second Adam fulfilled the Law in spirit and in truth. When we could not atone for our sin, the blood of the perfect Lamb was shed in our stead. Who is this King of glory?

This King of glory rode into Jerusalem one day to the shouts and praises of His people. They shouted words to the effect of, 'Save us, O King!' that day. Less than a week later they screamed, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him! His blood be on us and our children!' And what was condemnation for this demand, was turned right side up. Rather than guilt and culpability remaining on those who appealed for Jesus' blood, that same blood was upon them, to cover all their sin. Rather than covering their hands in blood, Jesus offered to sprinkle them entirely to remove their condemnation.

Often Christians will say this all took place on the cross. After all, that is where the blood was shed. But many innocent men have been killed (though no other sinless men have been executed), how does the bloodshed of an innocent man save anyone? Partly it is because Jesus was sinless and took the penalty we all deserve and He did not. The wages of sin, the payment for sin, is death. So Jesus died on the cross, that image we see throughout the ages in churches, on necklaces, on wall art, and more. So He paid a debt that we owed and could not pay. So what?

This is where many Christians miss the mark. Too often we stop at the cross, we end the story on Good Friday, and Jesus is still in the tomb. What I love about Eastertide is that it is the co-mingling of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. The fact is that the tomb is empty, and the One Who formerly occupied it had the authority to defeat death.  In fact, He had the authority to declare to those chained in darkness that He had won. 

The cross is no icon of hope at all if the empty tomb is not set beside it. The cross does not tell the whole story -- not without remembering that the cross is empty and the tomb is empty because Jesus is alive.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!"

 ~ Luke 24:5b-6a

Let me encourage you not to turn the very cross of Christ into an idol. We do this when we do not tell the whole story, when we forget the risen Christ. 

Let the cross instead be an icon to us. An icon is a real object that reminds us of a historical or spiritual truth. Let the wine be drunk physically to remind us of the blood shed to save our bodies and souls. Let us bow to the cross because it reminds us that Jesus is our King, and we must revere and honour Him. Let us delight to be where the Composer has placed us in the melody of His symphony. Let us look at the scarred tree, the paintings of the scarred hands and feet, and be reminded that He was pierced  and wounded for our lust, anger, pride, and over desire. Let that empty icon tree remind us to seek the living Jesus.

Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He!

~ Johanna

An Empty Page

Sometimes I walk through life giving thanks for the obvious blessings God has given. Other days, I stare at the empty page before me and think how it mirrors life... Empty. Dull. Meaningless. I am afraid to love, because if I love someone or something, it can be taken away from me, it can cause me pain.

Love often goes hand-in-hand with pain, sorrow, and loss. I feel the depths of sorrow and suffering in love because I have felt its heights of joy and goodness. Just like I hate death because I know what it means to live. 

However, that same empty page is full of possibility. It may begin as a blank sheet, which has no meaning, but it is ready to receive whatever story the Author sets upon it. An empty page is malleable, ready to be shaped by words of despair and lies, or by words of hope and truth. Sometimes there isn't a whole lot of hope in facts, but I do think there is hope in Truth.

This day finds me staring at the white page, wondering what the Author is about to pen. There are some less than pleasant facts rearing their faces before me. Yet there is hope in Truth. I am a little afraid of finding out how painful love is. Yet I would rather take the pain if it is the price for knowing the greatness of that love.

I find it no 'random coincidence' that in the 12 days of Christmas, today is the day set aside to remember the 'holy innocents' - the young male children killed by Herod when he tried to destroy Jesus. Death is a result of sin; sin is the result of the fall; and it is this very thing that Jesus came to set on its head and turn backwards. Death will be swallowed up in Life. And all manner of things shall be made well.

I am thankful for Life, and for love so deep that it hurts... And for a Love Who was 'hurt' for us by being separated from His Father... So that we might never have to be.

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

~ II Corinthians 5:21

~ Johanna