This is the remarkable painting by Caravaggio titled, "The Incredulity of St. Thomas."No one shows the emotion, the detail and the awe like this remarkable painter. His version of the raising of Lazarus is one of my all time favorites and this is a close second.I'm choosing this painting this week because we are now "post-Easter." The Gospel writers reveal several incidents which all fall into the category of post-Easter appearances--those times when Jesus appeared after his resurrection.Thomas' hand.... watch it enter directly into the flesh of Jesus and look at his curiosity. Doubters are welcomed by Jesus--not shamed! Jesus did not shun Thomas or ridicule him and this is our invitation to also bring our doubts to the encounters with Jesus and not hide them or go sub-subterranean with them. Jesus lets us bring all of our doubts into his presence and somehow accepts them--accepts us--and loves us despite them.I am struck with the vulnerability of Jesus here. He's exposed. He's ready. He is not withdrawing. Always available. Always waiting on us. Always ready to take us--doubts and all. How he does this, I do not know but THAT he does this humbles me. What does this painting stir in you as you sit here and enter this amazing scene?In this post-Easter season, we need to bask in what has happened this past week. It's the soul's D-Day. It's the soul's most important holiday and not just the church's.Pause with this painting and be invited, like Thomas to truly enter the presence--the person of Jesus.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Silent Tears
The author of Hebrews tells us that before he died, "he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death." But he was not rescued from death and this is where we are today. He was not rescued.I'm struck with the haunting sound of the loud cries and tears---and as one translation puts it...."silent tears."I've had my own, haven't you? Silent tears of over a situation that seems impossible--so dark that there simply is no light at the end of the tunnel. Today is the day we face the cul de sacs of our lives with no way out but to wait right here...right now.This is where we are today on Holy Saturday.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Staring Through Good Friday
It is enough to stare at this scandalous image for a while on this Good Friday and sit with what might get stirred up inside. Art shows us what we cannot see in words. Wordless silence transports the heart faster than a hundred paragraphs of sentences with nouns and verbs even amazing adjectives. We are visual learners---aren't we? Perhaps that is why the crucifixion happened so we could really see with our hearts and somehow grasp the love of God after all.We are too wordy perhaps these days when silence can tell us more.Words fail to communicate what has happened...what did happen.So we sit in silence and stare.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
The Jesus Vigil
We are approaching a horrible night. Everything turned south for Jesus on Maunday Thursday. His intent was to gather his closet companions to share a meal and to share time but in the end, everything changed. Jesus went from community to agony. It's a journey not so unfamiliar to many of us when we seek out our friends to be our solace only to find ourselves in total isolation.When Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, it became a sort of vigil. A time of watchfulness. A time of waiting. A time of looking into his own heart deeply and to hear from God. This is what a vigil is. It's a time of waiting.When the mother waits all night with her sick child...When a man waits to hear if he will get the job offer...When parents wait for a teenager to come home and it's after the curfew...When you wait to hear the results of the medical tests which you fear will not be good...I've been thinking about vigils since my pastor asked me to preach on this for our Maunday Thursday service tomorrow night. I"ll be leading our congregation at 1st Pres into a night of vigil.... a night of waiting... a time for desperate prayers.I've been able to remember four different vigils that I have experienced: the death of my mother-in-law, the night I begged God for my fourth son's life who was in the intensive care for 38 days and the doctors said, "Prepare for the worse."; the night I stayed awake all night when our first-born son was in the Iraqi war and doing convoys; and a night a couple of weeks ago when we got an unexpected bill from our contractor on work he had done on our big, red barn and there was no money to pay for it.You enter a vigil when you are over your head. The vigil reminds you that you have no control, no power, no might, no strength to change the outcome of what is looming in your mind and stirring up anxiety. Jesus entered his vigil and we must enter ours. The Jesus Vigil, however is the night we share the journey with Jesus and think through all that he was about to lose in order to gain what he could not grasp at that moment. Shortly, he would hang in suspension and that's what you do in a vigil.We hang in suspicion and wait. There in that wordless place we wait for the tenderness of God to give a peace that defies our understanding yet assuages every anxious feeling inside.Jesus, we will wait with you.By the way, join me at 1st Pres on Maunday Thursday at 7pm MT in person on on the internet at www.first-pres.org and you can view me speaking on The Jesus Vigil. I'd love your thoughts on any vigils you've witnessed that might help me with this message.This is my Lenten Journey!Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
One Week from Today
One week from today is Maunday Thursday---that scandalous night when Jesus orchestrated a dinner party that ended in his arrest and eventual death the next day. Of all the days of Holy Week, this one day is the most awful and most beautiful.Here we find Jesus eager to share a meal where the food would merely transport them to a deeper meaning of his true identity and what he was about to do. He told his companions that he was eager to share the meal with them--but why eager?There is a holy eagerness that we find ourselves drawn into as we journey towards Easter. An eagerness for the music to switch from minor keys to major melodies! In some churches, you can't say "Hallelujah" until Easter Sunday---all through the Lenten Season---imagine no Hallelujahs. We find ourselves eager to say and to believe in the Hallelujah of Easter.One week from today, we'll be on the final countdown towards Lent ending and Easter's gift to us.Am I ready for this change?What do I need to give attention to in this season of waiting?One week from the world began to alter its course.This is my Lenten Journey.Stephen W. Smithwww.pottersinn.comPotter's Inn
My Sabbath and Lenten Thoughts
I'm thinking tonight about my friend, Lazarus...my need for this Sabbath day...my Lenten Journey. Let me explain.Finally, I've taken the time to have my sabbath--my time of ceasing. I thought it would never come. My personal rhythm has been sadly interrupted and neglected due to travel, work and choices that have not always been wise or life-giving. So, it's been a life-giving day which included fasting from food in order to re-align my life and get my rule of life back in order. All of the things that I have intentionally chosen to do this Sabbath have helped to refuel my soul and helped what felt dead inside to come back to life. For such is the journey of Lent and when combined with Sabbath makes me glad--yet again to be alive.It's remarkable this week that across much of the Orthodox world, this week is the Feast of Lazarus. Sadly the protestant church has neglected this important story and event in the life of Jesus. Lazarus was actually resurrected a week before the week of Passion that Jesus experienced. He foreshadowed the death and resurrection of Jesus and thus, Jesus knew full well that only in a few days that he, too would experience this scandalous agony and ultimate victory.The Lenten Journey for me this year has forced me to be more mindful--more awake--to what is happening both inside me and around me. I started my Lenten Journey by asking this important question which I blogged about: "What in me that seems dead--needs to come back to life? Now, several weeks into my Lenten Journey I know the answer.It came to me today on my Sabbath walk on the Santa Fe trail. It was a beautiful day here in Colorado. I wore short sleeves on the trail and walked through the wind and it came to me....that which felt most dead.... felt a rumble of a tombstone being slightly--oh, so every slightly back and some light came in.Lazarus... you heard that too--didn't you...the faint sound of the tomb being moved back....yet still asleep in death... you waited for His Voice to all you. He called. You moved. You came to life. So, I too, wait on His Voice.This is my Lenten Journey!Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
A Lenten Supper
The title of this painting is "Supper at Emmaus"...but it could well be a Lenten Supper. A Lenten Supper is any meal--which becomes MORE than a meal. A Lenten Supper is a meal where the soul is nourished along with the body. These are times we long for to connect; be known, be heard, be understood and be loved.All of this is happening in this painting and it is my profound experience that this deep and soulful connection happens many times when I gather with a friend for lunch and the lunch becomes MORE than a lunch. The time becomes--encounter. The time becomes church. The time is when Jesus is suddenly in our midst and we feast on him, not just our Cobb salad or tuna fish sandwich.Lent is our time to slow the mind to run in sync with our souls. How does this happen admits our busy lives and demanding schedules? It happens when we create space and linger in time allowing Jesus to show up. In his presence we find ourselves alone no longer. In his presence our agony is assuaged. In his presence there is the fullness of joy.I want a Lenten Supper with my closest companions. I want Jesus to show up in our midst. I am wanting Easter real bad right now.This is my Lenten Journey!The painting is my reflective work this week using Juliet Benner's book. It's by Caravaggio.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com
Our Lenten Hope
This amazing painting by Caravaggio is compelling. In the painting, the artist invites us to join this amazing dinner party. It's the scene after the first Easter and is titled, "The Supper at Emmaus." It's a favorite Bible story because Jesus reveals himself to his companions at the table. They did not recognize him on their long walk. They did not recognize him anywhere but at the table. There they recognize the nail pierced hands, the love of Jesus in their midst and their hope for many more Easter experiences. As Jesus broke the bread, their dullness of insight was also broken. Everything changed because of the table--and who was sitting around the table.This Lenten Season, I've sat with this painting explored more in depth by Juliet Benner in her remarkable and inviting book that I'm using this Lent.What must these followers of Jesus be thinking? Be feeling? Be experiencing at this moment of transformation when their eyes were opened? Imagine this as you study the painting. I so want to be there with them...with him.I like it that Jesus' hand is outstretched to me. It is as if I, too, belong there. I like it that there is room at the table for me. I like it that in that scene of intimacy, I too, would have my eyes widened and opened which I so need these days. I long to sit at a table like that. Don't you?As you find out in following Blog entries, this picture has so captivated me for some years now since it first came to may attention that it lays the foundation for our own ministry to begin having intimate gatherings, around the table, where we can too, experience the love of Jesus in our midst. It is what is missing in the fast pace, hurry sickened, fast food nation that we are living in. There seems to be no time for such intimate dinners. But why?The table of Jesus is where he did most of his teaching; where many were found by the love of God and where men and women were ushered in the church of two or three that Jesus spoke about and wanted us to also experience.This is the Jesus Meal.This is where I belong.This is where I am invited.This is my only hope.Caravaggio knew something that I'm wanting to know. Through the medium of his art, I can find my place at the table where I belong. Where you belong.It is our Lenten Hope.This is my Lenten JourneyStephen W. Smithwww.pottersinn.com
Lent: Lost in Space and Time
I was reading a favorite book of mine this morning and stopped when the author penned this line: "Implanted in the monastic heart is the desire to learn how to make a life rather than just a living." It's found in Macrina Wiederkehr's book, Seven Sacred Pauses. Her book is about living in rhythm by embracing a life of prayers similar to the Benedictines which have captured space in my heart over the past few years. Their old ancient wisdom and lifestyle offers us our best shot at learning a new way to live.Macrina's words are not new to me but this morning, they found a barren place in my soul. For the past three weeks, Gwen and I have been on the east coast leading three different ministry events--events for others, not for ourselves. We returned home near mid-night on Sunday knowing that the first thing we both needed to do was to find our center again. Life and the demands of ministry had somehow swooped down causing us to lose our equilibrium in nearly every way.Travel does that.... we cross time zones and lose our perspective. We have to meet other's expectations while burying our own. We feel out of sync. Imagine a life like this.... a life...not just a few days or weeks.Now, I can return to my Lenten Journey...how is yours going? A few weeks ago, we embarked on a 40 day walk to the Cross. It's fast, coming to an end. Now I must prepare a Maundy Thursday sermon that I've been invited to preach and I'm drawn to reflect on what it means to spend a time in vigil--an old word from an old world but it was a time when people seriously waited---waited for a soldier to come home; waited for someone dying to take their last breath; waiting for a new life to begin.Now, perhaps you, like me, can embrace the idea of entering an Easter Vigil--to regain the land that we have lost in our busyness and to live our lives and not to merely eek out an existance. Easter is our only hope!If you can scroll back to my last Lenten entry...the busy, busy painting and try again to find Jesus in the midst of the chaos. He's there. Do you see him?This is my Lentern Journey.Stephen W. SmithPotter's Innwww.pottersinn.com