Pilgrim's Tales: Good Friday

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Good Friday, we hear from the Serving Girl who fingered Peter (Mark 14:66-72).

I told him, right to his face.

There are enough people in my life like him – fakes, all of them. Fakes and phonies, think if they toss you a few coins as a tip later that gives them permission to pinch your ass. Or worse. Users, that’s what they are, and I don’t like it. They don’t pay me enough to put up with that crap, pardon my language.

It had been a crazy night, even for this place. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but let me tell you, being a servant girl in the house of the Chief Priest is no different than being the servant girl anywhere else – you’re run off your feet, and certain men take certain liberties. The only difference in working here is that they’re certain they can get away with it. Like I said, they throw a tip at you, buy your silence, give you guilt money.

I don’t know everything that was going down that night, but I know enough to know it’s not a good thing when the boss loses it and starts ripping his clothes and yelling about heretics. No kidding, we could hear him all the way down to the courtyard.

That’s when the penny dropped. That’s when I realized there was a fake sitting by the fire, a phony, one of those guys whose friendship…Well, let’s just say his kind of friendship made me think of those certain men who take certain liberties. A user, a guy who’s your friend when everything’s going good but pretends like he’s never seen you before when the chips are down. A guy who thinks he can get away with it.

It ticked me off. I stared at him, hard. And he didn’t flinch.

So I told him, right to his face. I said, “You were with that guy they brought in, the Nazarene.”

The User says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Can you believe that? Liar. A liar and a User.

So I told some others, and a couple of other people held his feet to the fire. He tried lying some more, but it didn’t work so good. He broke down and cried about the same time that rooster went off.  

Most people left then, or turned back to their drinks.

Not me. I stared at him. Just stared.

He thought he was something special, something better than the rest of us.

But he’s just like those guys with roamin’ hands – a user and a phony.

And I told him, too. Right to his face.

Pilgrims' Tales: Passion

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus (with files from William K. Wolfrum Chronicles).

Good morning, members of the press.

I will make a brief statement.
Because this is a matter of national security, I will not respond to any questions after giving this statement.

There will be no investigation into the alleged torture of the enemy of Rome known as Jesus of Nazareth, A.K.A. “king of the Jews.” We want to assure you that his treatment does not meet our Empire’s definition of torture as defined by our policy manual Advanced Crucifixion Techniques.

Thus, no charges will be brought against members of the Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate or Herod Antipas. These operations were carried out within the parameter of legal opinions provided by the best scholars of the Empire. The Advanced Crucifixion Techniques memos represent a careful policy decision made in the proper place by our intelligence agencies and our Justice Department.

Nothing we have done violates the Empire’s law. We again want to assure you that his crimes pose a genuine threat to national security.

We hold the family of Judas Iscariot, our courageous informant, in our thoughts and prayers.

That is all. Thank you.

Pilgrims' Tales: Palm Sunday

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a midwife (Luke 19:29-40).




It was bands of cloth from my cloak she wrapped him in so long ago,
And now I find myself giving up my cloak again,
laying my cloak down on the road,
my cloak paving the way
for this parade of nuisances and nobodies.
He comes riding a little brown burro,
a work horse not a war horse,
a little brown burro, so small his feet almost touch the ground,
a little brown burro, not unlike the one his mother rode
to satisfy the census-taking soldiers years ago.
Birth in a borrowed barn!
We are never safe from surprises in a world made cruel.
He was a baby like all the others I’ve brought into the world:
Wet and slippery and full-voiced
until I put him in his mother’s arms,
she who sang of justice to the poor,
her cradle song – her manger song.
Now, on this parade route, we sing Peace.
Peace on earth! We sing as if it’s possible,
just as the angels sang to startled shepherds.
Peace on earth – not just his birth announcement
but his marching orders.
Ours, too.
And so once more I offer him my cloak,
along with all the others who line this back street,
we who have only one cloak to give,
give it
as the hope of the world parades by
on a borrowed brown burro.

Pilgrim's Tales: Lent 5

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from Lazarus, raised from the dead (John 11:1-44; John 12:1-11).

Thank you, God, for the grave digger who made the hole and sealed me up. And thank you that I do not need the grave he made, at least for now. But bless his work anyway.

Thank you for my sisters.

Thank you for my sister Martha with her sharp tongue and blunt ways – 

she was the one who told off Jesus for coming too late, 

and for telling him that after so long in the earth I would stink to high heaven.

Thank you for my sister Mary the dreamer, the soft one. 

She cannot be relied on to get a meal, 

but will always bring a flower to grace the table.

Thank you for the funeral food I now enjoy.

Thank you for olives, for the tree that grew them.

Thank you for lemons, and the farmer who tends them.

Thank you for lamb and barley,

and the smell that fills the house, mingling with my own smell,

the smell of the earth, the smell of the grave.

Thank you for wine for celebration.

Thank you for friends with food in their beards

and rejoicing on their lips.

Thank you for life.

Thank you for life!

I who stumbled through my days,

carrying my life like a heavy burden instead of a treasured gift.

I did not have a life before my death, but now…

Thank you.

Pilgrim's Tales: Lent 4

Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a mother.

His father got it wrong.

It wasn’t just our younger son who was lost, the one who skidded off the rails so dramatically, the one who got us to sell half our land so he could have cold, hard cash, only to waste every last coin on intoxicants and bad company. He was lost to us, yes, treating us like human vending machines instead of parents with a bit of wisdom about the world and a lot of love for him. He’s the famous one in the story, the younger son. Everybody likes a bad boy.

But my husband got it wrong.

Our elder son was lost, too.

If the younger treated us as human vending machines so he could squander it all on a way of life I don’t care to think about, our elder son also didn’t see us as parents. He never could just lean back into the love we have for him, but always was trudging around trying to please us. I often wished he would show a bit more spirit. He was so worried about earning his place in our family that he built a wall around himself with bricks of resentment and the mortar of bitterness, imagining nothing he did was ever good enough. He was trying to earn his place in a family he was already part of. It’s as if he thought, “If I work really hard, they will like me.” Not “If I work really hard, they will love me” – he was so lost he was content with like from his own family. He was so lost he couldn’t see the love that was already there.

I don’t know how both our boys got so lost. Being family is the hardest work in the world. 

Pilgrims' Tales: Lent 3

Like Chaucer's travellers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a gardener.
                                                                                     

I like to stay put. In fact, this journey with Jesus is the first time I’ve ever been on the move like this. Gardening takes a long, long time in the same space. You till and dig and compost and manure and dig and weed and till and compost and manure. You invest the sweat of your brow into a piece of land. It’s not like having a dairy cow that you can lead down the road to another location. If you’re a gardener, you have to stay put to see the fruit of your effort.

Which is why no one could believe it when I walked away from my fruit trees to take to the road with Jesus and the others. See, Jesus gets it, gets it – he gets it. Sure, others celebrate the harvest, the goodness of the earth, all that stuff. But that’s about what the earth can do for us, how the earth feeds us with grain and grape, gives us timber to build tables and temples. But Jesus sees something more, something that good gardeners know: nothing is ever lost. Nothing is ever lost.

You can prune a grapevine or a fig tree, cut off the dead branch that is sapping the life of the plant so the plant can use its inner resources to blossom and bear fruit. And most folks focus on the fruit – grapes, figs, what’s not to like?

But those dead branches aren’t ever lost. They go into the compost, take years to break down in the company of other dead branches, orange peels, apple cores, kitchen scraps, all that stuff nobody wants. All that stuff people think is useless just takes more time to do it differently. It’s a holy mystery how it breaks down, changes into rich dense compost. And the gardener uses that compost to enrich the earth, to help other things grow. Nothing is ever lost, just changed.

Jesus treats people that way. Those who are dead to us, those who are lost to us: the lepers, the collaborators, the sick, the sinful, the ones we turn away from – they are not lost to Jesus. No one is ever lost to him. And here’s the miracle: when Jesus finds them, he finds us, too. We are changed by that holy mystery of insistent belonging. Like a good gardener, Jesus helps us grow. Nothing is ever lost, but things can change.