Kathy Coffey

I go for years without thinking of them, then all of a sudden, they are center stage, vital figures in the unfolding drama of a cross-country move. Packing up a household, transporting it 1299 miles, then unloading it isn’t high on most peoples’ ideas for fun. Yet when the circumstances necessitate, you want these unsung heroes in your camp: movers.

They come, apparently, in waves. The first, the estimate person, calmly surveys the chaos of boxes, labels, tape, markers, and oddly angled furniture. He doesn’t bat an eye; he gives a surprisingly accurate guess on the weight. He must be attuned to the  emotional discombobulation of a person in this state of upheaval, and reassures, “you’re doing the tough part: deciding what goes and what stays.” (A process which disintgetrates dramatically in sharp correlation to the dwindly amount of time left.)

Then comes Moving Day, only slightly deterred by 2 feet of snow which shut down the city the day before. At 8:15 am the second wave of saints are shoveling the driveway, maneuvering a monstrous vehicle whose tires spin in the glacial canyons created by unploughed streets. Nothing fazes these guys: they introduce themselves courteously, shake hands with the shell-shocked homeowner, and move at whirlwind pace to inventory piles, tag, wrap carefully and load that van.

It’s a logistical nightmare, keeping my laundry baskets separate from someone else’s grill, the leaf for my table distinct from the leaf for someone else’s. But amazingly enough, after some delay, the third wave arrives: bringing it intact! My Stuff! It feels wonderfully familiar to see my couch in the rented living room, my pictures hanging on the walls. Despite unwieldly loads, monstrously heavy china cabinets and torturously narrow curves, stairs and hallways, the movers remain friendly and calm. When a piece fits perfectly into a designated space (sheer luck—no time to measure ahead), they exult, “Just like the movies!” and share my excitement.

After they drop my load, they’ll proceed to two more locations, until late at night, the van is finally empty. Then they face a long drive back. They will probably repeat this routine hundreds of times this month, and some have done this work over 20 years. I know: there are probably legitimate complaints about sleazy movers but I don’t want to hear them. I’m too busy being grateful and trying to decide: the armchair in this corner or that?

Good Shepherd Sunday rolls around again, and we dread being compared to sheep: wooly, stupid and directionally challenged.

So maybe we should focus instead on the shepherd: there are many reasons why he has been beloved for centuries.  We who have grown overly cynical about leadership, given the disasters in church, state and corporate worlds, can find refreshment in this portrait. This is not the hierarch who sacrifices children to pedophiles in order to preserve the church’s reputation. This is not the president who sends thousands to die in war for some unclear purpose. This is not the CEO who draws a salary astronomically higher than the least paid workers in the company.

In utter simplicity and without drawing attention to himself, this leader sacrifices his own life for his friends. He is confident and calm, nobly laying down his life. Although the thugs may seem to control him at his trial and crucifixion, he in reality is directing the order of events. Why? That seems a mystery, and is in fact the same question the poet Christina Rossetti asked: “Is one worth seeking, when Thou hast of Thine/ Ninety and nine?”

Such dedication is beyond human comprehension, but hints of a supreme love.

Kathy apologizes for the delay in posting an Easter message. She was called to Colorado suddenly to clear out and sell her home there, the final step in moving to the Bay Area to be near her beloved children and grandchildren. She prays it will become a resurrection…

God of Resurrection

and new life, you whose

dear son Jesus broke open

the tomb and the clutches

of death, help us to hear

the good news with the

enthusiasm of Mary Magdalene,

Peter and the beloved disciple.

May we too run with energy,

pause with prayerful reflection

and then believe as they did.

Help us hear “rumors of resurrection”

everywhere we go –and spread them.

***

As David Steindl-Rast points out in GRATEFULNESS: THE HEART OF PRAYER, the angel’s message to bewildered disciples doesn’t say that Jesus has come back to life. Our concept of life edges inevitably towards death. But Jesus has already passed through death. “He is not here” means that Jesus has gone far beyond our limited understanding. All we know is that “the tomb is open and empty, a fitting image for wide open hope.”

How touching: in his final hours, Jesus’ focus is not on the evil that will pin him to the cross, nor the imminent brutality, but on  a last gesture of concern for his friends. Today’s gospel begins with his  Passover meal. His final gifts to the disciples are nurturing bread, inspiriting wine, songs of praise, thanks and blessing.

One of the most heart-breaking lines in the account of Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane is, “Why are you sleeping?” We know how miserably his friends failed him then, but what about ourselves in similar situations? Do we stand with the grieving, those who suffer Christ’s passion today?

As the disciples sleep, Jesus agrees to his Father’s plan, despite what it will cost him. He recognizes, as we should, that God is infinitely wiser than the limited human mind. With any of life’s most challenging passages—marriage, parenthood, a career, dying–we have no idea what we’re getting into. We grow into that awareness. During his passion, Jesus is not a child nor a slave, but a conscious adult, who agrees in love to whatever the Father asks.

This is a good week to take some quiet time and reflect on Jesus’ innocence and willingness. We could ask ourselves the unanswerable question voiced by God at the veneration of the cross on Good Friday, “My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me!”

Today’s gospel (John 11:1-45) prompts us to ask where we ourselves are bound and death-like. Have we capitulated to the culture’s definition of us as consumers? Have we bought into the put-downs tossed off by the careless that do unintended harm? Do we resort to old categories (gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, socio-economic level), caging unique human beings? Jesus’ call comes to us all: “Lazarus come forth!” Shed those paralyzed trappings; enter into new and abundant life.

It is marvelous to consider Martha’s role in this miracle. She starts with an understandable complaint: “If you’d come sooner, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Yet she dares to hope for more, just as Mary once told Jesus at Cana, “they have no more wine.” Martha is far more creative than the bystanders, who never dream that this “Johnny-Come-Lately” could defy death and wrench their friend from the tomb.

Approaching his passion, it’s almost as if Jesus needs one slight affirmation. He must wonder whether those who’d been with him so long had the slightest glimmer of understanding. Peter had once professed that Jesus was the Christ, but in the next verse, Jesus is warning him because of his stupidity, “get thee behind me, Satan!” Martha, on the other hand, gives Jesus what he needs: her belief that he is “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” Encouraged by her trust, Jesus asserts his truest identity: “the resurrection and the life.”

Scripture scholar Thomas Brodie writes of the man born blind: His first words, ”ego eimi” mean literally, “I am.” But there’s more to this than a simple self-identification. They also place him in line with God’s self-definition, “I am who am,” and Jesus’ string of identifiers elsewhere in John: I am the bread of life (6:35) and light of the world. This spunky, uneducated man represents us all, made in God’s image. (The Gospel According to John New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 55.)

Furthermore, the formerly blind man models how to trust. He’s so grateful to Jesus he believes him completely, and bows in reverence to him. He may not have read anything, but he stands in sharp contrast to the Pharisees who desperately cling to a tired tradition: “we are disciples of Moses.” Their blindness keeps them from seeing how awesomely God works in the present.

We shouldn’t pick on them when we all have our blind spots. Sometimes, metaphorically, we choose to hang out in the dark basement, rather than the gorgeous, light-filled ballroom to which God invites us. If we wallow in despair or anxiety, we overlook our amazing identity: created like God.

Jesus arrives at the well in today’s gospel (John 4:5-42) tired, thirsty, aware that he’s among Samaritans who have a long history of conflict with his people.

He immediately breaks a social taboo since a good Jewish boy never spoke to a woman (even his mother, wife or sister) in public. So the Samaritan woman is surprised–and intrigued. Jesus refused to categorize her by gender or  nationality. He begins by expressing poignant human need, the same thirst he named from the cross. Then he engages in conversation with her, just as he did with Martha, Peter, or the other disciples.

His conversational style is important: some believe that the Trinity itself is a marvelous conversation or dance among the three persons of God. In contrast, the one-sided lecture form seems stale and lifeless. Jesus’ conversation liberates the woman from enshrined prejudices and irrelevant beliefs. Where we worship is secondary, he says. How we worship is primary.

Since Jesus has invited the woman’s participation from the beginning, it’s natural for her to become involved in spreading the good news. She leaves behind her water jar, symbol of exhausted systems and drudgery, in her eagerness to tell her village about Jesus.

The Samaritan woman got more than she bargained for when she went to draw water. She got a life-giving spring, gushing up to eternal life. And we, working at the old tasks, the same routines or the endless chores, we too might be surprised by a stranger…

“Try it in G,” the musician suggests and we hear the same song in a different key. So Jesus models a transition from his glorious mountaintop experience to the verses that follow today’s gospel, about a boy foaming at the mouth, grinding his teeth and rigid. Descending, Jesus scolds a “faithless generation,” who cannot cure him, then rebukes the demon, curing what today we might term epilepsy.

“Will the real Jesus please stand up?” We’re inclined to believe in the one whose face dazzles and whose clothes shine, affirmed by the Father’s voice. Clearly Peter is stunned into babbling an elaborate plan for building tents, so Jesus can converse with the prophets in peace.

Yet it is no less Jesus who repeats, “how much longer must I put up with you?” in exasperation with the disciples’ lack of faith and inability to cure the boy. He heals him “instantly,” so his power is still intact; his compassion still overflows.

We also go through various transformations in our days. We might be praying, then cooking, gardening, paying bills, caring for children or the elderly, chatting, reading, singing, shopping, working on the computer, filling the car with gas or doing the laundry. It’s the same self, in different keys. But because of Jesus’ transfiguration, we do all these things as divine children of the Great King. It’s all prayer in different ways. The disciples who saw Jesus in dazzling light also see themselves anew.  The radiance might not be obvious, but it is there nonetheless, hiding beneath the surface.

Some gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptations end with the phrase, “and angels waited on him.” After a dreadful ordeal, when Jesus is hungry and probably exhausted, the presence of the divine is somehow still with him. It is possible that angels attend all our lonely desert places. Where we sense the least comfort, there it abounds. Perhaps it’s a relationship, health or job issue, looming decision. How might God be present in difficult circumstances?

As ashes are signed on our foreheads, we hear the words, “Turn from sin; trust the good news.” What does that mean? Sin in the Hebrew context was anything less than the fullness of what God wants us to become.

“Turn from all that drags you down,” Jesus says. Are we haunted by worries about the future or shame about the past? Are we still angry about something that happened years ago? Lent means springtime: it presents us with the opportunity to slough off like a snakeskin all that deadens. Instead, we turn to the God who made us, who redeemed us and who lives in us. Just as Jesus would say that the Prince of this world has no hold on me, so we belong to God, not to all that threatens. If we over-identify with our emotions, achievements, children, work or ideas, we risk being in bondage to one sector of our lives, out of balance as a whole person. Instead, Jesus invites us to belong completely to him, with all we are. The only door into the future is trust. God who has been faithful before can be trusted again. Can we step towards that life source this Lent?