I DEMAND EGGS!

All the eggs are gone! Not a bunny rabbit in sight! And I'm mad about it!

Okay, so I'm not mad. I'm actually laughing out loud at the moment (insert emoticon here?). But a certain inconsistency has grabbed my attention that Christians ought to at least pretend to be bothered by. A playful protest over pastel eggs might be just about the perfect way to celebrate the season we're in.

You see, we had to look at Halloween masks for weeks and then Santa suits for months. We heard songs about snow for an awful duration without a flake in sight, all in preparation for a Christmas America celebrates more at the register than at the creche. I have seen even today lights still stapled under gutters and a wreath perched above a garage just blocks from my home. We can't seem to get greenery soon enough or keep it for too long. Christmas, even the heathen acknowledge, is a season worth taking our time with.

Well, I'm a Christian, and a weird historical sort at that! Christmas is wonderful, but wonderful precisely in light of that for which it was preparation. As a Christian I celebrated the Christmas hope, witnessed the Epiphany urgency, agonized in the Lenten fast, observed the silence of Maundy Thursday and wept at Good Friday. Sunday was Easter! I opened my eyes to see the bright dawn of the Resurrection of Jesus! He came in order to raise us up to life again after our deathly Fall, and here he is: the Lord is risen indeed!

One puny week later and the plastic grass and painted eggs and fuzzy bunnies (ancient pagan fertility symbols baptized long ago as heralds of the new life we have in Jesus) are gone. Gone! Had my wife not made a basket to hide within the safety of our Christian home, every vestige of Easter joy would be swept from sight, a grand cultural denial that anything has changed since last (Holy) Saturday night.

Well, fellow odd, historical Christians, Easter doesn't end for several weeks. We remember that Easter is a season too (and a longer one than Christmas by our watch)! We ought to be painting things pink and yellow and blue! We should be hiding eggs in people's file drawers and wearing bunny ears to important conferences! We should be greeting strangers at Starbucks with a great "He is risen!" and look at them happily, confusedly when they don't know the return greeting.

My wife dyed eggs with five-year-olds today. Now THAT's some Easter cheer!

He is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!

Now pass me a Cadbury Creme Egg and let's do this thing right.

Jesus as Tragic Hero

Palm Sunday is here with its beautiful procession and liturgy and its striking contrast from beginning triumph to ending sorrow. This beginning of Holy Week commemorates the "Triumphal Entry" of Jesus into Jerusalem in preparation for Passover and for his arrest and crucifixion. The scene has Jesus riding on a donkey like one of Israel's ancient judges, while being hailed as well as the "King who comes in the name of the Lord". This is a hero's welcome from a crowd eager for a hero.

But Jesus is not the sort of hero the crowd thinks it needs; he still isn't. This is not the dashing, white-hatted cowboy swooping in to rescue the tied-up damsel on the railroad tracks. This is not even the quick thinking citizen pushing the little boy out of the way of the speeding truck. Destruction is coming: Jerusalem, Jesus says, is impending disaster and all who have chosen to live by the sword will die by the sword. The train is bearing down and cannot be stopped. The people (like we still are) are stubborn and will not be rescued. What heroic act will Jesus accomplish? He lays himself on the track between the train and those doomed to be run over. He loses his life right along with us.

How does this help anyone? What is the purpose of Jesus' headlong rush to die if it doesn't keep anyone else from the things coming at them? Jerusalem, remember, was indeed levelled. Most of Jesus' own apostles died violent deaths. What was accomplished?

At the heart of this is a mystery well know to the Church: whatever is divorced from God is maligned; whatever is offered freely to God is transformed. Every week we do it with bread and wine. We take these ordinary items to the Altar. We give them to God and call for his blessing. We offer ourselves with them to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit. They are returned to us now as Christ's Body and Blood, "true spiritual food". We find in the course of our meal that we have been changed as well. We are his Body too, you see. We believe this mystery about the whole creation. Divorced form God's love it is depraved and corrupt. Returned to God in Christ it is redeemed and redemptive. What has this to do with Jesus' death?

With the Incarnation, God received humanity back to himself. It is now being sanctified and restored to divine fellowship. In the death of the Lord Jesus, even death is taken up by God for transformation. Even death is being sanctified. The death with which we have died has been experienced within God's own self. At the rising again of Jesus we see that death has been cheated of its power. It has not been eradicated, but it has been transformed. Death is, for us, the still-sad, but not overpowering prequel to resurrection. Instead of the end of life it has become the beginning of life eternal, life restored to the love of God.

The terrible heroism of Christ is the drama we live out in him this week. We follow him in his passion, grieving divine Love's dread cost. We share in his ministry and fellowship Thursday. We weep with his disciples and blessed Mother Friday. We wait Saturday. We do not bypass a moment of this drama. We watch the hero lay down his life extravagantly on our behalf and wait for death to end in new life.

As we follow Jesus this week, let us remember all who suffer throughout our community and in the communities of the world. Let us remember those who live in a state of war and disease and poverty. Surely if Jesus bears upon himself anything, it is everything.

Learning the Language of Prayer (click me!)

So now, after all of the writing and editing and bashfully (sometimes obnoxiously) requesting that my friends and colleagues read the drafts, comes the part of book writing I dread most...promotion! The book's self-published. It's far from perfect. It's mine, for heaven's sake! These three issues alone make the act of "putting it out there" extremely awkward, and it just seems weird to suggest that random strangers should read something I wrote. So before I tell you what it's about, I'll simply say the one thing I really believe about this book that makes it "promotable": this is the book I wish someone had handed to me ten years ago. I would own this book and buy a copy for everyone I know unreservedly...even if it didn't have my name on it.

Many Christians want to have deep, fruitful prayer lives, but don't know where to start. They have heard the message that prayer is important, that disciples of Jesus are people of prayer. What they often have not heard is what to say in prayer.

Learning the Language of Prayer draws from the practice and spirituality of the three major "streams" of Christian prayer to help the seeker understand how believers pray. The Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic perspectives on prayer, brought to bear on one another, have potential to enrich the prayer life of any Christian. Practical exercises and biblical examples answer the needs of those who wish to grow in their practice of prayer. Balancing practical concern with theological insight, this small book opens wide resources treasured by saints everywhere.

As a Pentecostal who has found a home in the evangelical Anglican tradition, I have learned to see the value in the resources of all three traditions. I don't believe they stand in oppostition to each other. I believe that an integration of these three traditions' understandings of prayer is the most fruitful work we can do in developing a prayerful intimacy with God that honors his revelation in Scripture and within his people. Much of the material in this book comes from my experience teaching the classic prayer tradition to fellow Pentecostals. Most comes from my experience of struggling with a sense of total inadequacy in prayer and finding that the Church has all of the resources I needed. All has been tested within my walk with God as a man and as a minister discipling others who want to pray. Ultimately our prayer struggle is often a struggle of individualism. Letting the larger body of Christ help us along is an integral part of the Christian life!

Buy a copy. I hope that as you read it you'll find yourself praying as the subtitle suggests, in "intimacy with God" and "in communion with his Church". Then buy a copy or ten for said Church. I've got a self-publishing bill to pay!