Category: Reflections

Grief is the friend
who teaches us what abides.

Emptiness is the gift
in which the struck bells ring.

Silence is the wonder
in which the next thing may unfold.

Nothingness is the air
that fills the sail.

Darkness is the mystery
where the tomb can become a womb.

Waiting is the discipline
that holds the moment open.

Mystery wraps its long arms around us,
knowing glory beyond our knowing.

This is every day’s holiness,
losses sinking in, miracles biding time,

sitting still, God holding our hand
without our knowing.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
                      —Psalm 22.1

          Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”
                    —Matthew 27.46


To you who despair, here is the voice of hope.
God has not abandoned Jesus, or turned away.
(There is no suffering God does not look upon, or share.)
The mystery of the cross is that both you and God hang on it.
It is you repeating the ancient cry of our deepest horror:
the fear that God doesn’t know where you are,
and doesn’t care, the fear that you are alone
and unaccounted for in this cold world.
But on the cross it is also God.
God knows what it is to feel abandoned by God.
God is with you in that terrible aloneness.
Your longing is God.
Nothing, even the sense God has abandoned you,
can separate you from God.
God is there in your feeling forsaken,
your feeling of unworthiness,
your life as small as a grave
in the great wideness of this world.
God is with you there in that tiny, dark alone place.
And that cross, that tomb, because God is in it,
is unable to be final or complete,
unable even merely to be what it appears to be at all.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.ne
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         Jesus took a cup, and after giving thanks
         he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;
         for this is my blood of the covenant,
         which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
                  — Matthew 26. 27-28

         Pilate said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”
         Then the people as a whole answered,
         “His blood be on us and on our children!”
                  — Matthew 27. 24-25

         We have been chosen and destined by God
         and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ
         and to be sprinkled with Christ’s blood.
                  —1 Peter 1.2

         The blood of Jesus God’s Begotten cleanses us from all sin.
                  — 1 John 1.7

God does not demand blood. That’s our sickness.
Jesus’ blood does not make Jews guilty and Christians saved.
The power of the cross is not in the blood. It’s in the forgiveness.
Jesus’ blood—his life—that flows from his heart is his love,
that forgives us all. The blood of forgiveness
is splattered on the guards and their thorns
and the women and their tears,
sprinkled on the men and their hammers
and the disciples and their fear,
falls on the soldiers and their spears
and the onlookers and their deadly silence.
It’s a grisly scene, with blood everywhere,
the blood of forgiveness sprinkled on us all.
None are clean. All are washed.
None are without guilt. All are saved.
Behold the mystery of the cross, the blood of Christ.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Jesus presence of God
           peace amid our chaos

Jesus flesh of God
           suffering with us

Jesus wound of God
           receiving our sorrow

Jesus hope of God
           praying for us

Jesus prisoner of God
           freely surrendering to us

Jesus innocence of God
          our scapegoat

Jesus silence of God
           no answer to our accusations

Jesus tenderness of God
           dying with us

Jesus love of God
           take us

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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My Beloved Jesus, my Healer and Savior
I do not look up to the heavens to seek you.
I look down, down to the lowest place, beneath me.
For you have come, with all the sorrows of the world,
come fresh from death row, from the starving child,
the bombed apartment, the locked ward,
from the bleeding street and the dusty camp,
with the despair of those dying alone—
you have come and knelt beneath me and washed my feet.
With a world to save, you come to me,
with such attentive tenderness, taking your time,
holding my wayward feet in your hands,
you bless me, heal me, wash me, anoint me.
You take the lowest place and serve me.
I will never find you up on the podium or pedestal,
but down on the ground, harvesting, cleaning,
invisible, among the unseen, unsung, unsavory.
You, my Lowest Christ, my ground beneath, my earth,
you hold my feet. I need never look higher.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it
           he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said,
           “Take, eat; this is my body.”
           Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks
           he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you;
           for this is my blood of the covenant,
           which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
                           —Matthew 26.26-28


Oh, Mystery!

You hand me your brokenness
           and my taking it makes you whole.

I receive your blessing
           and my taking it makes me whole.

I take your brokenness into myself
           and it becomes part of me.

I drink of your forgiveness
           and I become part of you.

Around the table we share
           and we become part of each other.

We all are baked into one loaf,
           into your dying, and your rising.

We receive your giving
           and we too are given.

Oh, Mystery, I receive.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
           it remains just a single grain;
           but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
                           —John 12.24

Beloved,
in love you have thrown the seed of yourself
into the soil of us.
You have sown yourself in the wound of us,
the dark, rich humus of our sorrow and lostness.
You have surrendered yourself to our pain
and the taunting of the demons that haunt us.
You’ve allowed the seed casing of your life to split open,
and your love to bleed out, reaching,
fingering tenderly through the dark soil,
infinite power of life creeping out.
You’ve already said, “Into your hand I commit my spirit.“
You have already died,
and been raised by life that is eternal.

So now you are ready
to ride your little donkey toward us,
Resurrected One, ready to be crucified.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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We come into the joyful procession
          with palm branches and nails in our hands.

You give us the bread of your presence
          with holes in your hands.

We receive the life-giving wine of your love
          with blood on our hands.

You kneel with us in our fear and stumbling
          with our weary feet in your hands.

We pass among the guards and soldiers
          with pieces of silver in our hands.

You stand before us, condemned,
          with your hands in chains.

We behold your miraculous grace
          with nothing in our hands.

You are crucified and buried
          with our lives in your hands.

We wait in silence,
          in the hands of God.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Peter said, “Though all become deserters
           because of you, I will never desert you.”
           Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you,
           this very night, before the cock crows,
           you will deny me three times.”
                           —Matthew 26. 33-34

Oh, Jesus, sometimes I will act as if I do not know you.
I’ll act as if I am in need, alone, unaccompanied.
I will fail to share, to forgive, to bless, to risk, to speak out.
I’ll choose not to trust God, but be selfish.
In an argument I will be sure to win and forget to love.
You will be carted off, and I will slip away.
You will be shot in the street and I will turn the page.
And still you will claim me… forgive me…
seat me beside you, in a place of honor
and give me your body.
Still you love, and will always love.
Still you hold me close
with the faithfulness I writhe against.
Give me the weakness to allow myself
to be so outrageously loved,
so taken, that it’s at least a little harder to desert you.
Even in my unfaithfulness
give me your faithfulness.
When I can’t hold on, hold me.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
                           —Isaiah 53.8

God did not send Jesus to die.
But I confess that in a musty place in my heart
the lie that Jesus was meant to die suits me fine.
Oh, I abhor the theology: God does not need more gore.
But in my heart I confess
I’m comfortable with others suffering for my sake.
I rail against the idea that God needs a blood payment,
that God planned a tragedy—
a payoff instead of true forgiveness—
and I say with my lips the cross is a lynching,
a nazi gas chamber, another police shooting.
But secretly, I confess, I like my place of ease and safety.
I’m addicted to my privilege.
I let others suffer instead of me.
Even as I protest I participate.
I know God demands otherwise.
But I live as if God meant for me to survive
at the cost of others’ lives.
I confess: I am saved from the virus of evil;
I also carry the virus.
I stand at the foot of the cross with tears in my eyes
and a hammer in my hand.

May I die, forgiven, and be raised, changed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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