The Monday Call by Wil Triggs

He had told them that it was going to happen. He had said it several times.
 
But this was something they didn’t want to hear.
 
They didn’t want to think of it, and really it didn’t make sense to them.
 
Better to talk instead or even argue about which one of them was his favorite.

He’s about to bring in his kingdom, so where will he have each of them sit? Who will be his right-hand man? Which one of them performed the most miracles when touring on the road?
 
Why did he keep bringing it up? Stop that.
 
And things were getting so intense and amazing. Feeding thousands with next to nothing. Saying that someone was just taking a nap when she was dead as a doornail. And then—at his word—the person is alive and sitting up. A man walks out of his own tomb when he told him to.
 
So, when he talked about being lifted up, they thought of being lifted on some sort of royal chair. Is it called a dais? Exalted.
 
It never surely occurred to them that he meant being lifted up on a cross after having been nailed to it. When he spoke of the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, it was not in their hearing minds that he could have possibly been talking of his own death and resurrection.
 
Even though he had told them.
Surely it was there, somewhere in the back of their minds,
but they did not know.
 
When he was arrested and then killed right there in public, they scattered, denied, hid, then assembled behind closed doors, praying, wondering, probably weeping. Then when he died, people came out of tombs, walking, talking, breathing, alive. Not zombies. What did people think was going on?
 
No. They did not know. Easter Sunday shocked them all. When they woke that morning, they were not rejoicing, but in shock and despair.
 
Big events in life have a way of changing people. Think of the wars or the Great Depression, or maybe pandemics, how they change people for the rest of their lives. That was Easter Sunday.
 
The angels, the gardener who turned out to be him. He was suddenly with them, in their midst. Thomas, though doubting, got to touch his wounds. And Thomas changed. It was not some kind of head knowledge, but truth experienced through face-to-face events. He cooked them breakfast on the beach. He walked on the road with them and explained the Scriptures,

The Word began to come alive, too, in ways that they never dreamed. They watched him go up to heaven and stood staring until someone asked what they were doing. Jesus began to appear to them, not just in his body, but in the Word. The Word in the Word and in their souls. And then, at last, the Holy Spirit, not out there somewhere, but in them, alive in them.
 
Everything was changed.
 
Sunday wasn’t Sunday anymore. It was Resurrection Day. Their week changed. It had an anchor.
 
Joy and awe and a kind of fear. Every day when they woke up, they would remember. Jesus is alive. He was dead and then he was alive. Then they saw him go up into the sky. So, Sunday was celebration day, the day of the week he rose from the dead.
 
The day to gather and worship and remember and celebrate. Let’s do the last supper again. Let’s remember what he said. It didn’t really make sense the first time, but it does now. So every week began together, marking and remembering and celebrating resurrection.
 
And the Scriptures, they began to take on new meaning as they looked at it afresh, seeing Jesus in it. And the Apostles were alive still and telling about the Jesus they knew in every way they could.
 
Here, look what we have this Sunday, a new letter from Paul.
Unroll the scroll and let’s hear what he has to say.
Remember what we heard last month from John?
And the stories of Jesus, the things he said,
how he quoted from the psalms into his specific day,
the people who followed or opposed or the miracles he did.
And the gathering on Sunday to mark the day everything changed.
 
How hearts must have burned as they journeyed on life’s road. The living Word pushed itself into them and the newcomers, even those who opposed or grew up following different gods. Some of them believed, too.
 
They took to the road and onto the seas, going everywhere, telling everyone that Jesus and Spirit and Father all live and rule. Forgiveness and life are real, out there and in here and lasting forever.
 
The gospel news of great love for everyone, everywhere; the news that Jesus was and is alive, this was not something people wanted to hear exactly, not everyone, though why resist such news?
 
They were the ones, unsettling to the normal human ways.
 
Most everyone knew that sin was real, at least a few bad things. Sure, they might debate what was sin and what wasn’t, but the idea of a once-and-forever person taking it all on, dying and living, a divine person worth giving up everything and following him wherever.
 
These were criminals of the resurrection, arrested, beaten,
sometimes exiled, sometimes killed,
sometimes released to tell still even more folks;
there’s another way to live and another way to die
and live again.
 
When they woke on Easter Sunday, they did not know.
 
When they woke on Easter Monday, they knew the Resurrection
and received the Monday Call.
 
The Spirit was nearer than near.
The people who scattered in fear
Were scattered themselves like seeds
Around the ancient world they knew
The light of the world full of life so new
They embraced their own crosses,
Created the creeds.
The people of God took care of all needs.
It was not a war. It was a brand new world,
Though Rome all around them swirled,
battles raged; the war already won
on the cross and the tomb and the sky that’s all.
This truth and beauty is our Monday call.
Unspotted Lamb,
General Shepherd,
One
Only alive and ever
Triumphant forever
Father,
Spirit,
Son.

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Blessed Redeemer, beautiful Savior,
Author of all grace and comfort,
We approach you with the deepest reverence—
not with any presumption, nor with servile fear—
but respectful boldness—because of your gracious invitation.
In days of yore, you met the invited penitent at the mercy seat.
There the sprinkled blood was a covering for sin.
Today, our needed blessings are to be found at the throne of grace.
Here it is that we find grace in every—every—every! time of need.

It is easy for us to elaborate our needs, as trouble upon trouble piles up on us:
fragmented friendships,
hostile relationships,
adversarial conditions,
financial roadblocks,
family nightmares,
unanswered questions.
Some of these heartburning situations have plagued us without relief,
and we have pled with you to alleviate—
yet still we wait for divine answer.
Lord, we have nowhere else to go but to you,
and so we again cast ourselves upon your mercy.
Maybe you delay because of the insidious sins
we tolerate or turn a blind eye to!

Galatians tells of good old Barnabas and influential Simon Peter who were
captured by flagrant hypocrisy.
Maybe that’s our sin today—protection of self—
desiring the approval of the crowd rather than God.
Father God, it will take a detergent as strong as the blood of Jesus Christ
to wash away that sin.
We confess with tears all the times we played the hypocrite
and curried the world’s favor—in the world’s place—
and tried some face-saving, self-serving falseness around God’s people.
Forgive us, Lord.

Thank you Father; help us to never again indulge in hypocrisy.
In the name of Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life.
Amen.

The In-Between Day by Lorraine Triggs

“Easter’s coming,” I whispered on Good Friday as we left the church in silence and darkness. Soon my social media feeds will post assurances that Easter is coming—a hope-filled reminder that darkness and death are not the last word.

Jesus’ first followers didn’t have the luxury of bypassing Saturday. By the time Saturday dawned, this Easter story of ours had been marred by betrayal, bitter tears, despair, a Savior who could but didn’t come down from the cross to save himself, and followers who watched him breathe his last. We have Joseph of Arimathea who went to work quickly and secretly to take away Jesus’ body, which he and Nicodemus wrapped in linen cloths with spices, not with resurrection in mind, but because of the Jewish day of preparation.

For some of us, the solemnity of Good Friday quickly gives way on Saturday to Easter’s triumphant song, that “Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia! Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!” For most all of us, Saturday is the day we spend getting ready for Resurrection Day in one way or another.

But for some, ours is still the cross and grave. We relate more to loss, bitter tears and fear than we do to hope and joy. We sit in Saturday’s darkness, painfully aware of its suffocating silence and uncertainty. For me, it’s the uncertainty that creates low expectations that nothing will change for a sick family member. Am I am going to be perpetually stuck in this bleak in-between day of Easter?

On this in-between day, women who had followed Jesus now trailed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary watched him lay Jesus’ body just so and then roll a great stone to its entrance and leave. Matthew 27:61 describe the two Marys sitting there opposite the tomb, sitting through the shock and grief of Saturday. Eventually, they went home to prepare spices and ointment to take to the tomb the next morning and lovingly attend to Jesus' corpse.

How confusing those moments must have been when the tomb was empty. There was no body to tend. The costly jar had been broken, tears had already washed his feet and they were nowhere to be found.

I would like to think that at some point, the burial spices and ointment went every which way when they saw an angel of the Lord sitting on the stone they were sure Joseph had rolled to the tomb's entrance. Instead of a body to tend, they were greeted with the news that the lifeless body no longer existed. Death and loss were gone. "He is not here, for he has risen as he said. Come, see the place where he lay." (Matthew 28:6) Saturday's shock and grief gave way to Easter as the Risen Savior greeted them.

Perhaps Saturday’s expectation isn’t that Easter’s coming, but that the sunrise has visited us from on high “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79) That darkness isn’t darkness to God, and that night we’re sitting in is as bright as day, that fear and joy and hope are part of Easter expectations, and we can look for a return visit from on high.

As kids, my sisters and I dubbed any large grey clouds with shafts of sunlight beaming through them “Second Coming Clouds.” Actually, these are Crepuscular rays—“God rays”—sunbeams that originate when the sun is just below the horizon, during twilight hours. These God rays are “noticeable when the contrast between light and dark is most obvious,” like between Easter Saturday and Easter morning.

Today, for all who sit in the darkness, ours is the cross, the grave, the skies.

Alleluia.

Moving Across Town by Wil Triggs

My parents moved across town just in time for me to go to high school. I don’t know for sure if they did it so I would go to what they perceived as a better school, but at the time, I thought that’s why we moved. Self-focused, I know now, but it seemed real.
 
The move also meant I lost the apricot tree in our back yard. Actually, we lost the back yard entirely. Our new place was the front side of a duplex; behind us, instead of a yard, there was a four-unit apartment and behind that, a garage structure with parking for the cars of any of the residents who wished to pay extra for covered parking. We chose to save money and park on the street. The garage was too small for our pre-economy-car sedan anyway. I used to joke that it was made for the Model Ts or As from the days when cars first hit the market.
 
When we looked out the kitchen window onto the street in front of the house, we saw the slender trunk of the palm tree. This new home was not only within walking distance of my high school, but also just three blocks from the ocean. Growing up, we always had to drive to the beach. Now, with this move, I could walk there. The palm tree reminded me every time I looked at it that we were just a few yards from the ocean.
 
From our window, that tree didn’t look much different from the telephone pole that stood a few feet north of it, both within view. Two different columns, that’s it.
 
I didn’t pay attention to the palm tree, except on Palm Sunday. Then, I would always look up at the palm branches. The tree was two or three times the height of our one-story duplex. The crown of the tree was the top where the branches and the fruit were. The city we lived in would send a utility truck with a cherry-picker around once every year to cut away the branches that had died and dried out at the base of the crown. I suppose this was their equivalent of our snow removal fleet—their palm-tree trimming crew. They ground up the branches, and drove them away, so I never got to hold one or wave one. But they were big, and I imagined them to be somewhat heavy.
 
Over time, I’ve become aware that there are different types of palm trees—from the ones that take a crew to cut down to the gentle palms of green the children wave when they process through the aisles singing hosannas year after year. In Kindergarten we make them out of green craft paper. The cloaks and palm branches signaling the good and happy news that the King has finally arrived.
 
What kind of branches did they wave on that most significant parade in all of history? One man, sitting on a donkey, coats on the ground, palm branches waving. This parade of One is marked all over the world. Not everyone has access to palm branches, and make other botanical choices: olives, willows, yews, even boxwood stand in for the palm branches in places where they are not available.
 
Wherever in the world there are churches, the people of the churches are waving something to reenact in one fashion or another Jesus’ royal ride into Jerusalem.
 
In contrast, the Daily Mail reports that “The Gold State Coach will not be used by the King and Queen to travel to Westminster Abbey for their coronation on May 6. 
 
“In a break from tradition, the royal couple will instead travel to the ceremony in another vehicle. They could choose to use the Irish State Coach, which is often used to travel to the state opening of Parliament or might opt for a more comfortable car.”

No coats on the street. No palm branches. I do not think that a donkey is going to be one of the transportation options for Charles and Camilla. The article goes on to say that they will likely use the Gold State Coach to get to Buckingham Palace after the coronation. So, it won’t be a complete break from tradition, and people will be able to see the new king riding in the golden coach.

The king many wanted was not Jesus, but someone more like Charles. Signs of wealth and power are what we come to expect with royalty. Though many will watch this coronation, after a few years it will be mostly forgotten. There will be other coronations to take its place.
 
But Jesus was not like that. We do not forget his journey. One man riding into the town on a donkey knowing that in just a few decades, the city he was riding into was going to be destroyed, knowing that his own cross was just days away, understanding that his friends would abandon and deny him. Then the beating, the nails pounded in.
 
You know the rest. Death—the thing that ends a monarch’s reign, except for this one. This king is a king of love, the only king of his kind in all eternity.
 
Let’s sing Hosanna. Death is not the end of his reign but the beginning. His reign will take us where there is no death. Sweet suffering, loving Jesus, we don't deserve you, but you come anyway. You bring us a better way. Your donkey is better than any golden coach.
 
Wave the palms, whatever kind you want. Willows. Yew. Olive branches. Green construction paper. Throw your garments down onto the road. Our king has come, riding on a donkey . . .
 
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
 
From the stable to the cross, this saving king comes in humility, reaching the forgotten, associating with sinners, identifying with the poor, the lost, the animals. King Jesus calls us to follow him in this suffering world and beyond, to his kingdom where palm branches still wave and cloaks are all white.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

Under the Bus by Lorraine Triggs

Two separate stories on my news feed recently claimed that Politician A threw Politician B under the bus. Or was it the other way around? No matter, both politicians are now under the bus, which might be a good thing—or not.

As the youngest of three girls, one would think that I would be well acquainted with the underside of a bus—an easy target as it were for blame whenever our sibling skirmishes got out of hand. Fortunately, our mother wasn’t into throwing things or people under buses or other places. As arbitrator, she operated on a single principle when things went awry and none of us were taking responsibility. Obviously, one person was guilty; the second person was guilty by association, and third guilty by her silence.

According to Merriam Webster, “No one is certain where the phrase ‘throw (somebody) under the bus’—meaning to betray or sacrifice a person, particularly for the sake of one’s own advancement, or as a means of safe-guarding one’s own interests—comes from. But there’s probably enough evidence to throw British English under the bus.”

Perhaps the venerable dictionary should have looked elsewhere for the origin of this idiom, such as the Garden of Eden. The serpent intentionally threw Adam and Eve under the bus in the first move to advance his own kingdom. Adam and Eve may not have been as intentional as the serpent, but they were quick to safeguard their own interests to avoid blame.

It’s remarkable how much we resemble our first parents in shifting blame. It’s a bit like the advice my car insurance agent always gives—don’t admit fault—and if a bus happens to pass by, all the better. Even more remarkable is how subtle we are at self-advancement. Something goes wrong and we jump to the head of the line—not to admit fault but to clear our good name. It’s our kingdom, uh, our reputation at stake.

I take another look at Merriam Webster again and read the words betrayal and sacrifice. This is the language of a promise made and a promise fulfilled that the one we despised, rejected and didn’t esteem would be the one who would heal us with his wounds. 

In the language of another garden at another time, where a reputation wasn’t considered a thing to be grasped, where the Son, like his Father in the cool of the day in that first garden, came to seek and save the lost.

It’s not Merriam Webster, but the Bible, God's living Word, where the language of grace and of mercy and rescue and restoration begins to make a miraculous and unfathomable kind of sense. It is there that we see the Stone the builders rejected become the cornerstone in a whole new way of life. It is there that God himself looks, even goes under the bus, or wherever we’ve been hiding. Jesus finds us and keeps taking the guilt and blame on himself. God who forgives and brings us under his rule and kingdom, the hiding place where we find ourselves transformed, a people no longer in darkness but living, working, walking today in the place of his marvelous light

A Saturday Prayer

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Holy God, Lord most gracious,
We are in great need and you have extended your beneficent invitation:
“Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden.”
That describes us: we are overloaded with the cares of our existence.
We are creatures of need, but there is a problem . . .
What we see as our need is not the way you see it.
We see our need as more money,
we see our need as better health,
we see our need as a promotion,
as greater respect from our family,
as less anxiety—less stress—less pressure.
You see our need as prioritizing:
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
We confess that really, deep down, we don’t love you with all our hearts.
Lord, we see our sin. Forgive us.
We want to love you first and foremost.
Help us to experience the joy of love unblemished, a life lived to please God.
We pray that we will know you, whom to know is life more abundant.
We want to join with the psalmist in saying,
As the deer longs for streams of water,
So I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the Living God.
Amen.

Vacation Homes by Wil and Lorraine Triggs

The HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes is closed to entries for this year.

As far as Wil knows, he and Lorraine will not be the lucky owners of this year’s giveaway, which their website describes as “a grand mountain escape packed with high-end design and located in Morrison, Colorado.”
 
He knows this because he did not enter to win.

Lorraine on the other hand, did enter, and she’s still holding out hope that we’re about to win the grand prize.
 
There were a few years when we entered the sweepstakes twice a day on two different HGTV-affiliated websites, imagining winning a home much larger than the one we lived in year-round and making that our vacation spot every year, even if we weren't wild about the home's location or design.
 
We have yet to win the dream home. All we've won so far is a lot of emails from paint, furniture, plumbing and deck companies.

This year, though, we actually did take a vacation. Before that, it was sometime before COVID that we actually had a real vacation, not long weekends or half days, but a week or more.
 
So it’s been long enough that we’ve been looking back on that trip, how we took our dog with us and spent most days writing, with breaks for coffee, sweets, ice cream, fixing the car’s dead battery, visiting a health food store to look at vitamins, going to a farmer’s market and discovering a privately run bookstore that was half used, half new, with a little of everything in it. Oh, and that Mexican restaurant that seemed like it was only for Mexicans, but yes, they would take our money if we wanted to eat there.
 
Mostly, though, in the mornings, we played with words on paper and laptops for longer than we normally allow ourselves. In the afternoon, we traded papers and read what the other had been writing. We’d talk, edit, debate, suggest and then break for dinner.
 
This might not sound like an ideal vacation to very many of you. For us, it was pretty great.
 
Being in the middle of a good time made us think about all the other good times we’d had. With the exception of our honeymoon and pre-9/11 trips to England and missions trips, our other top places to stay have been gifts of one kind or another from friends or family.
 
We have had the privilege of staying in other peoples’ homes, cabins, cottages, whatever you want to call them--friends or family who want to share life with others or bless us with a week of retreat we wouldn’t otherwise have. That probably sounds kind of terrible to those who have vacation memories on cruise ships or the top floor of luxury resorts or excursions.
 
The element of a home as a gift is something we have become familiar with, always on the receiving end of this sweet kind of sharing. Remembering these places has a beautiful sort of nostalgia because those cabins and homes and lodges come with people attached. They aren't dream homes; they're places of reality. They represent places of hope and rest and work in the best possible context—in the context of people who love us and email “The key is under the mat.” Or give us our very own key to their very own place or entrust us with their lone set of keys for a week.
 
Along with that beautiful nostalgia and reality comes a deeper longing for a lasting home, no HGTV designed home, but a reality home “whose designer and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10). It's not a grand prize, but a great and eternal gift. A home where God himself will be with us as our God, and he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

A Doxology Psalm

Today's Musing comes out of this week's ArtSpace workshop. Participants included teenagers to those in their seventies. Thanks to each of them for their worshipful contributions to this psalm in three parts. We asked everyone to consider the Trinity through metaphor and simile. Consider these, a sampling from the evening, first draft thoughts and images of the God who loves us. 

God the Father
The beginning, always, infinity, reality, light, present.
God is like a firm rock foundation, a perfect just judge, the best friend.
God forgives our sins like a person who is in debt to the master and the master forgives him.
God the Father is like a skyscraper, shining in the sun.
Love, our Creator, Protector, Potter, the strong yet gentle One.
A house that gives us refuge and shelters us from storms.
God the Father is like a fresh-flowing stream.
The Commander, sends forth his word, hosts of heaven,
The Father is like the sun covering his children with warm light that makes the flowers burst from the earth even through snow.
He sees like an eagle and a mouse inside our hearts.
True North,
The master gardener.
Weaver of a stunning tapestry, the universal manager,
The Artist, the Playwright, the Sculptor,
Vast pillar of stone, Canopy of the sky.
 
God the Son
The calm after the storm
Like a David Austin rose, splendor in its beauty
Friend, Life Preserver, Lifeline, Mirror,
Jewel, Strength, Advocate, Defender
The storied warrior, slain in battle, comes home victorious.
A fruitful vine, like a brother
Teacher, firm yet encouraging, showing his love.
Truth, our rescuer.
Jesus is a whirlpool, pulling everything into his dominion.
The hero who rescued me, the glue that holds all things together, the road and the destination.
A desert oasis, a mighty oak, beloved one.
Jesus is like a dog; He walks with us and is always there for us. Faithful.
A protecting brother, our defense attorney, our umbrella from God’s wrath,
The bridge across the bottomless pit of sin to God the Father,
The perfect sacrifice, the creator of earth come to the ruined world; the never-sinner.
The One who hears all who call.
 
God the Holy Spirit
Healer,
Consuming fire, voice of God, like a wind, like a dove.
A whirlwind all around us.
The Holy Spirit is like the snow that blows from the church steeple, softening the deepness of night in his blanket of white.
My helper. A constant companion showing me the way.
An eternal flame, like a piercing beam of light.
Water, breath and wonder.
A rainstorm that refreshes and gives us new energy to persevere.
All-directions wind,
Uplifting breath,
Cleansing, rushing waterfall,
The wind, the white noise to which I fall asleep.
Our stronghold in seemingly empty and void places.
The Holy Spirit whispers in our heart and tells us what we need to do.
The Holy Spirit helps us to overcome the temptations of Satan, sin and this world.
Full of surprises. Intense joyl
He listens to everything we say and turns it into a song that he sings to the Father.
 
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.