One Thousand Words - Stories On The Way

Matthew Clark
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Singer / Songwriter / Storyteller

  1. 5D AGO

    Easter: Secret Strength and Deeper Magic

    Easter: Secret Strength & Deeper Magic by Matthew Clark | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Easter-Secret-Strength-Deeper-Magic.mp3 The following is a version edited for length of the full length article, “Easter in the Liturgical Year” by the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann. In the center of our liturgical life, in the very center of that time which we measure as year, we find the feast of Christ’s Resurrection. What is Resurrection? Resurrection is the appearance in this world, completely dominated by time and therefore by death, of a life that will have no end. The one who rose again from the dead does not die anymore. In this world of ours, not somewhere else, not in a world that we do not know at all, but in our world, there appeared one morning Someone who is beyond death and yet in our time. This meaning of Christ’s Resurrection, this great joy, is the central theme of Christianity…  The center, the day, that gives meaning to all days and therefore to all time, is that yearly commemoration of Christ’s Resurrection at Easter. This is always the end and the beginning. We are always living after Easter, and we are always going toward Easter. Easter is the earliest Christian feast. The whole tone and meaning of the liturgical life of the Church is contained in Easter, together with the subsequent fifty-day period, which culminates in the feast of the Pentecost, the coming down of Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. This unique Easter celebration is reflected every week in the Christian Sunday… every Sunday we have a little Easter. St. Paul says: “If Christ is not risen, then your faith is in vain.” There is nothing else to believe. This is the real center, and it is only in reference to Easter as the end of all natural time and the beginning of the new time in which we as Christians have to live that we can understand the whole liturgical year.  We are no longer people who are living in time as [if it were] a meaningless process, which makes us first old and then ends in our disappearance. We are given not only a new meaning in life, but even death itself has acquired a new significance. In the Troparion at Easter we say, “He trampled down death by death.” We do not say that He trampled down death by the Resurrection, but by death. A Christian still faces death as a decomposition of the body, as an end; yet in Christ, in the Church, because of Easter, because of Pentecost, death is no longer just the end but it is the beginning also. It is not something meaningless which therefore gives a meaningless taste to all of life. Death means entering into the Easter of the Lord. Christianity is, first of all, the proclamation in this world of Christ’s Resurrection.    We often use the term “grace.” But what is grace? Charisma in Greek means not only grace but also joy. “And I will give you the joy that no one will take away from you…” If I stress this point so much, it is because I am sure that, if we have a message to our own people, it is that message of Easter joy which finds its climax on Easter night. When we stand at the door of the church and the priest has said, “Christ Is Risen,” then the night becomes, in the terms of St. Gregory of Nyssa, “lighter than the day.” This is the secret strength, the real root of Christian experience. Only within the framework of this joy can we understand everything else. Special Thanks to Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson for reading our Narnia passage this week. Please visit her website: http://kirstinjeffreyjohnson.com/ Kirstin has a wonderful Instagram account I bet you’d love: @mythopoeic_life Kirstin, among many other scholarly works, has written and edited some great material on The Inklings and George Macdonald that you should definitely check out. She’s also featured in the documentary “The Fantasy Makers – Tolkien, Lewis, and MacDonald” on Amazon Prime.  Here’s the trailer for that:  The post S6:E20 – Easter: Secret Strength and Deeper Magic appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    19 min

  2. 6D AGO

    Holy Week: Easter Sunday

    Holy Week: Easter Sunday by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Easter-Sunday.mp3 John 20:11-18 But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she bent down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Mary replied, “They have taken my Lord away, and I do not know where they have put him!” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?” Because she thought he was the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni” (which means Teacher). Jesus replied, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene came and informed the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what Jesus had said to her.   Imagine with me  – Amy Baik Lee, “In the space of a single word” The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee stood at a distance watching Him breathe His last.  On the day of Preparation they followed Joseph of Arimathea and saw the tomb and Jesus’ body laid in it. The record in Luke says nothing of how they felt, or what they said amongst themselves, or how long they lingered in the last place they might see their Lord.  But their next act reminds me poignantly of a mother who once wrote about preparing for the death of her terminally ill daughter. All throughout the daughter’s young life she had packed her lunch for school, and snacks, clothes, and toys for family trips. But in those grief-weighted days at the end… what could she pack for her now? What could she give her for this long journey?  The women went back and prepared spices and ointments before the sun set and Sabbath began. This was, perhaps, the last loving thing they would be able to do for Jesus.  And none of it would be needed.  What happened to those spices? Did they fall to the ground with the women’s faces as the angels asked, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Were they clutched in their arms as the women took to their feet, leaving a fragrant trail of haste and incredulity?  * In his gospel, John continues the account. Mary Magdalene stands weeping after the disciples have come and beheld the empty tomb and gone home. The spices are no longer present — but neither is the body they were intended for.  The two angels in the tomb ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” she replies. She turns to see a man, likely the gardener, who asks her the same question.  She does not know him until He says her name.  All the post-resurrection moments in which the eyes of Jesus’ followers open to recognize Him have something to tell us, I think; this one arrests my heart. After all the earth-shattering events whose import and magnitude could be sensed, even if not fully comprehended; after the piercing agony of watching from a distance, and wondering what will become of her and the women with her; after wishing to catch one last sight of His body, at the very least, and yearning to hear His voice just one more time — here He is, and all He says is a single word. Not His own name, as He told Moses and the Israelites with equal succinctness so long ago — but hers. “Mary.” In the space of that word, I remember that the Chief Shepherd calls each of His sheep by name. The Captain of the Fishers of Men is, astonishingly, not in the business of pulling up anonymous crowds in a net; we are each line-caught, as it were.  In the tidal rush of world events and catastrophes, we are not forgotten. It is a truth that the Sons of Korah knew ages ago: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea…” (Ps. 46:1-2) — and it is a truth reiterated straightaway by the resurrected presence of Christ. He is here, with me, with you, not vaguely, not abstractly, not merely on the level of nations, but right here.  * Today we were to host an Easter egg hunt. How I miss the sound of children laughing in the spring slant of sunlight across the garden. There ought to be bunting fluttering overhead here, and merry shouts of discovery, and the silent rejoicing of emerging tulips to trumpet Christ’s resurrection with color and vim.  But white snow blankets the ground instead, as heavy as the drift of this spring’s headlines. In place of putting up the banded banners, we’ve covered the strawberry crowns.  Make no mistake: we will rise to the joy of the occasion nonetheless; we will tuck a few eggs into bookshelves and hidden corners, and gather around the table with clasped hands and hearts full of wonder at the decisiveness of the Lord’s victory. We will still make way for “foolish and crucially beautiful things,” as Matthew mentioned on Wednesday, especially in this time of grief and limitation. But perhaps the best commemoration I can make — the act most resonant with that new and holy morning so many years ago — is to come with confidence before the throne of grace, and look full in the face of His love. This Love who was not satisfied to die for mankind in one indistinguishable mass, but who stooped to look the desperate invalid in the eye, who raised His head to call directly to the single outcast in the sycamore tree. This Love who knows my face, and who calls me by my own name.  And so it is that we may turn from the ever-present specter of death with the gladness of Mary hearing the voice from beyond the grave. In place of spices to mask the decay of shrouded hope, here is, instead, the fragrance of life coming upon the wind of the Spirit — deep strength and purpose and joy in the face of an ageless Gardener as He prepares a place for us.    Alleluia; He is risen indeed.    Poem: Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson; John Updike – “Seven Stanzas at Easter”  Make no mistake: if he rose at all It was as His body; If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, The amino acids rekindle, The Church will fall.   It was not as the flowers, Each soft spring recurrent; It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the Eleven apostles; It was as His flesh; ours.   The same hinged thumbs and toes The same valved heart That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered Out of enduring Might New strength to enclose.   Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence, Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded Credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door.   The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, Not a stone in a story, But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of Time will eclipse for each of us The wide light of day.   And if we have an angel at the tomb, Make it a real angel, Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in The dawn light, robed in real linen Spun on a definite loom.   Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed By the miracle, And crushed by remonstrance.   Song: Son of Laughter (Chris Slaten), “The Gardener”    Amid the morning mist the gardener sings  To infant stems he bends almost whisperings  Their young unopened fists are softening  Their lily heads shall spread open offerings    I am learning how to see  Oh what is not as it shall be  And he is still singing over me    You found me by the riverside  So sick of my old ways I cried  I try, I try but I see no change in me    And you told me, Love change can be slow  Just look how long this river goes  To sketch its steep canyon deep calligraphies   I am learning how to see  Oh what is not as it shall be  And he is still singing over me And that rivers’s still washing over me    So I was so confused the day we buried you  Searching in vain for a reply  I kissed the lines along your eyes  If we’re the work of thousands of days  Well, who could throw such work away?     Amid the morning mist the gardener sings  To infant stems he bends almost whisperings  And I stand alone in his periphery  Where this cemetery carries many scattered seeds    And I am learning how to see  Oh, what is not as it shall be  Yes, all that I’ve loved and all that I’ve known  Will one day be laid in this valley of bones  And with a song the Gardener  Will call all we are not as if we were  And will come springing from the earth   Prayer: Brian Brown, The Collect for Easter Sunday  O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. *The artwork featured above was created by Shannon Sigler.

    19 min

  3. APR 4

    Holy Week: Saturday, The Gift of the Quiet In-Between

    Holy Week: Saturday, The gift of the quiet in-between by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Saturday-The-gift-of-the-quiet-in-between.mp3 Today is a strange day, isn’t it? What do we do with today? It’s this empty, weird time just sort of suspended between Jesus’s death and his resurrection. Do we ignore it? Does it matter?   Jesus could have risen the very next morning. I don’t think he waited just to prove he was really dead, the Roman authorities confirmed that by jabbing a spearhead into his side and through his heart, which turned out to be unnecessary since he was already dead anyway. Why wait? Why leave everybody in suspense a whole day? At first glance, it seems a little mean.  But, I wonder whether there’s not some wise and compassionate intention toward us from Jesus built into the waiting this Saturday. It’s uncomfortable to sit with our grief. This day’s deep silence is a kind of resounding silence that sounds out the depths of our own hearts. Sailors take soundings to measure how far down the sea floor is, and today is a kind of sounding that calls us to float suspended and allow ourselves to fathom rather than fix the things that grief us most. We want to paddle the boat ashore and arrive as fast as possible at the resurrection; but Jesus himself, in the wisdom of his patience, seems to recommend against hurrying away from our pain. Jesus, his Father, and the Holy Spirit, seem themselves to be willing to pause here and take it in.     I thought about not doing an episode today, but my mind is changed. This is an important day. We can’t skip it or rush past it. This Suspended Saturday is God’s gift to us just as much as Good Friday or Easter Morning. Because so much of our lives inhabit a space like this, if we’re honest. This in-betweenness may even take up the majority of our human experience? Death is all around us, literal dying as well as figurative deaths, and this is the same world Jesus died in. Resurrection has already literally taken place in this same world we live in, and we’re surrounded by little signs of its reality.  But many of our days are long Saturdays like this one, where we sink down into our sorrows and disappointments, losses and failures, the ways others have trespassed against us and how we have trespassed against them, the death of certain hopes. We hold in our left hand the reality of all kinds of death, and we hold the reality of God’s victory in our right hand, and we don’t let either one cancel out the other.  This Saturday frees us to be who and where we really are much of the time, which is suspended in the realm of pilgrimage, of being on the way, truthful about where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and patiently, with painful honesty, faithfully grieving where we are right now.    Lewis’s devil Screwtape says, “Music and silence – how I hate them both!” And Josef Pieper says that there is a kind of music that “opens a path into the realm of silence.” It is a fruitful silence. This Silent Saturday, like a rest suspended between the two high notes of Friday and Sunday, has been intentionally composed by God. And the silent music he sings for us today, is one that we need to stop and attend carefully to. This silence, like the silence of a wintering garden, has its own way of speaking things that we desperately need to hear.  How kind of Jesus to be willing himself to sit with us in this in-between space. How kind of Jesus to minister to us here, remaining silently present as the slow story of faith-keeping unfolds without jumping forward to conclusions, or interrupting with fix-its. How compassionate of Jesus to resist the temptation to prematurely cheer us up with Easter, when what we need most is to weep and make full contact with our grief.    We say “Jesus is the answer”, and he is; and sometimes the answer he gives is to refrain from answering so we have time to sink down into the significance of good questions. Today, I wonder if maybe he’s setting us an example as a good listener and friend, one who knows the best ways to “bind up the brokenhearted”.  Luke 23:50-56   Now there was a man named Joseph who was a member of the council, a good and righteous man. (He had not consented to their plan and action.) He was from the Judean town of Arimathea, and was looking forward to the kingdom of God. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb cut out of the rock, where no one had yet been buried. It was the day of preparation and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they returned and prepared aromatic spices and perfumes. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.   Imagine with me – Taylor Leonhardt, “On Holy Saturday” How I would like to skip this part.   I can do sorrow, Lord, Weep with you in Gethsemane, Climb beside you to Golgotha Til your tears become mine I am no stranger to death.   I can do joy, Lord Look for angels in the graveyard, Embrace you by the seashore, Sit down with you to breakfast.  I am no stranger to resurrection.   But stranger to me is the space between  Death and life Despair and hope The crush of the grape and the first sip Of new wine. Strange is the silence between my question and your answer, But this is the room you haunt, This is where you hover, over the liminal waters of my unknowing, Breathing on the smoldering wicks.   Tell me again You will not let the flame go out.    Song – Taylor Leonhardt – Lights gone out  Lord, I pray your will be done  On earth as it is in heaven  Today it’s hard to believe in    Hell has never come quite so close  I see the whites of his eyes and oh  I feel the breaking of every bone    CHORUS  What do I do now that all the light’s gone out?    How many times did I promise to  Walk through the smoke and the fire with you  That long before I ever knew the flame    Not them, not this, not the thing that I cannot fix  The house is burning and I’m helpless, I’m helpless    CHORUS  What do I do now that all the light’s gone out?    What will we find at the bottom of  This bitter drink this awful cup  When all the pain’s been swallowed up    Will it make us different  Will we say with confidence  That the love was worth the risk  That the end is joy?    CHORUS  What do I do now that all the light’s gone out?    Poem – Matthew Clark, Christina Rossetti – “A Better Resurrection”     I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears; Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.   My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring; O Jesus, rise in me.   My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perish’d thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King: O Jesus, drink of me.   Prayer – Brian Brown, Collect for Holy Saturday  O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. *The image featured above was created by Shannon Sigler.      The post S6:E19 – Holy Week: Saturday, The Gift of the Quiet In-Between appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    15 min

  4. APR 3

    Holy Week: Good Friday

    Holy Week: Good Friday by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Good-Friday.mp3 Today is Crucifixion Day, Good Friday. Today we can’t pretend anymore that everything will be okay, we can’t be idealists and act like people will simply improve. While being led to Golgotha, Jesus remarks, “If this is what they do to the tree when it’s green, how much worse will it be when it’s dry?” Luke 23:31. And Muggeridge says,  “Jesus was not in our contemporary sense, an idealist, and gives no intimation that the world could be made better on its own terms any more than that individual human beings could make themselves better on their own terms…Jesus was concerned with showing us how men could be reborn.”  In the few minutes we have together in this podcast, what can be said about the Cross of Jesus? It’s worth saying that it was necessary, our “wound is incurable”, death is the only remedy. I can’t help but squirm today, looking at a crucified Jesus – surely I’m not as bad off as that? Aren’t you being a little dramatic about all this, overreacting a bit, Lord? But, I know better, really. I’m full of things that, if even my closest friends knew, I’d be terrified they’d abandon me. You’re full of those things, too, I imagine, unless I really am utterly alone in this world. (But we both know better than that. At least, I pray you do.)  I said death is the only remedy, but not our own deaths.  Babies don’t have what’s called ‘object permanence’, if I hide behind the couch, to them, I’ve ceased to exist. But we’re adults; we can’t pretend our sin just goes away, when we refuse to look at it. Even secular psychology admits that ignored pain will come back and bite you till you pay attention to it. No, to really go away, our guilt must actually go somewhere. At the cross, Jesus somehow – we don’t really know how – takes us and our sin into himself, and dis-members us from it while re-membering us to himself and his inextinguishable life.  Again, Lewis says that ultimately we don’t know how the cross works, we’ve simply been assured that it does. Whatever needed to be done to get us home, has been done for us. That’s the Christian claim.    And finally, I can’t help but think of my friend from India who grew up without any contact with Christians, no Bible, nothing. But somehow she heard through the grapevine that there was this god, just one among the millions of gods, called Jesus, whose specialty was healing. That was interesting because she was sick at the time, but she also heard that he had done something really strange. Just because he loved them, he had died for his friends. Why would such a grand cosmic personality lay down his life for his friends?  To my friend, the concept of guilt or sin that’s so familiar to me, was nowhere on her radar. But, still, she was captivated by Jesus’s beauty, simply because he would do such an utterly graceful, beautiful thing for his friends. She picked up on the fragrance of the costly perfume long before she recognized her own need to be cleansed.    This is a hard day, because Jesus’s brutalized face, faces us with the truth about ourselves – asking us to face him with our true faces. We squirm; I squirm. How painful it is to maintain eye-contact with that suffering face. But it is my unmet sorrow and hatred I meet there that he is meeting. Oh God what a pain to witness your love for me! But, I must look, too, because he is so beautiful in his dying. And I know this beauty is of a kind from which ‘men hide their faces’, for it is terrible to behold that bright fixity of kindness. We’re life-long grave dwellers, with clammy palms pressed over our eyes to keep out the sun, which is our only hope if we’re going to get any warmth back in these cold bones.    At any rate, today, we look. Long and hard. Jesus received a kind of un-communion from our hands, he opened his flesh to receive our broken bodies, and he drank the cup of our bad blood, passed down from the first Adam. All so he can offer us the fresh, fragrant bread of his body, and new blood-warming wine of God’s forgiveness and everlasting life.    Psalm 22   My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. My God, I cry out during the day, but you do not answer, and during the night my prayers do not let up.   You are holy; you sit as king receiving the praises of Israel. In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted in you and you rescued them. To you they cried out, and they were saved; in you they trusted and they were not disappointed.   But I am a worm, not a man; people insult me and despise me. All who see me taunt me; they mock me and shake their heads.   They say, “Commit yourself to the Lord! Let the Lord rescue him! Let the Lord deliver him, for he delights in him.”   Yes, you are the one who brought me out from the womb and made me feel secure on my mother’s breasts. I have been dependent on you since birth; from the time I came out of my mother’s womb you have been my God.   Do not remain far away from me, for trouble is near and I have no one to help me. Many bulls surround me; powerful bulls of Bashan hem me in.   They open their mouths to devour me like a roaring lion that rips its prey. My strength drains away like water; all my bones are dislocated. My heart is like wax; it melts away inside me. The roof of my mouth is as dry as a piece of pottery; my tongue sticks to my gums. You set me in the dust of death.   Yes, wild dogs surround me— a gang of evil men crowd around me; like a lion they pin my hands and feet. I can count all my bones; my enemies are gloating over me in triumph.   They are dividing up my clothes among themselves; they are rolling dice for my garments. But you, O Lord, do not remain far away.   You are my source of strength. Hurry and help me! Deliver me from the sword. Save my life from the claws of the wild dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lion, and from the horns of the wild oxen.   You have answered me. I will declare your name to my countrymen. In the middle of the assembly I will praise you. You loyal followers of the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, honor him. All you descendants of Israel, stand in awe of him. For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed. He did not ignore him; when he cried out to him, he responded.   You are the reason I offer praise in the great assembly; I will fulfill my promises before the Lord’s loyal followers. Let the oppressed eat and be filled. Let those who seek his help praise the Lord. May you live forever!   Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to him. Let all the nations worship you. For the Lord is king and rules over the nations. All the thriving people of the earth will join the celebration and worship; all those who are descending into the grave will bow before him, including those who cannot preserve their lives.   A whole generation will serve him; they will tell the next generation about the Lord. They will come and tell about his saving deeds; they will tell a future generation what he has accomplished.   Imagine with me – Amy Baik Lee, “Blood bought gift of loneliness”    One spring afternoon eleven years ago, I boarded the bus on my college campus.   Virginia in the spring is a promise of a hundred jubilant displays of beauty: red tulips against a weathered white garden door, dogwoods spreading lacy plumage along serpentine walls, the slant of afternoon gold on red-bricked colonial promenades.   I vaguely remember the swaying dance of komorebi — that welcome Japanese word for the winking of sunlight as it filters through tree leaves — along my walk to the bus stop. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to walk under archways of that dappled light, but on this day, even as I stood right beneath the trees, the komorebi was only a distant impression.   I had made the decision to set a situation in my life right, knowing that the ramifications would affect not only me but the people closest to me. That afternoon, I put that penalty in motion, and braced myself to break the news to my loved ones. My imagination ran wild on the bus as I pictured the hurt and betrayal on those familiar faces, and for a brief, flitting moment, the terror of utter loneliness gripped me.   And yet, something within rose up in that moment to say, simply: No. As searing as my choice was, I realized I did not know the stark and solitary abandonment that signaled total separation. Later that week I jotted down my subsequent thoughts:   Even now as I pen the words I know that I will never fully comprehend it — the concept becomes so familiar in the story of Calvary — but He died that I should never feel such loneliness.   In the years since that bus ride, I’ve known different measures and concentrations of isolation: in postpartum depression, parental anxiety in the emergency room, and the general disorientation of a cross-country move. There was also a time, very long ago, that a deep-seated, fear-fed guilt whispered that I was past forgiveness and redemption.   But the silence of Gethsemane and Calvary reveal that I’ve never known what it is to be truly forsaken. And perhaps, until this moment, I’ve never recognized what Christ did to loneliness. As Donne says, out of His sacrifice “we wake eternally / And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.” Death and its power, crushed — but loneliness?   Loneliness has become our gi

    21 min

  5. APR 2

    Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

    Holy Week: Maundy Thursday by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Maundy-Thursday.mp3 John 13:3-5,34 Because Jesus knew that the Father had handed all things over to him, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 he got up from the meal, removed his outer clothes, took a towel and tied it around himself. 5 He poured water into the washbasin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel he had wrapped around himself. “I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”   Matthew 26:26-30  While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it, gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat, this is my body.” And after taking the cup and giving thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, from now on I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.   Song – Son of Laughter (Chris Slaten) – The Meal we could not make Sit beside me now, there’s so much that we’ve shared, like the comfort of our doubts and the safety of despair. So many promises have just been tricks. So many remedies have made us sick. Do you even have it in you to savor something new?   Chorus: Take and eat, all the work is done. Stretch out your feet in the Sabbath sun. With this bread, old ambitions break. As we pour the wine, we feel our hungry hearts awake to the meal we could not make.   Look around the table, behold your company. See the needy and unlovable and many enemies. I know that peace has never worked before, but this feast satisfies the thirst for war, for justice has been won, and mercy’s made us new.   (Chorus)   Do you recognize me now? It’s been so many years since you laid me in the ground and planted me with tears. We used to joke about the great hereafter. Now he’s made each of us a son of laughter. That little hope in you is finally coming true.   (Chorus)   Matthew 26:36-40  Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to the disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and became anguished and distressed. Then he said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake with me.” Going a little farther, he threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me! Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping.    Imagine with me – Amy Baik Lee, thoughts on “Nondum”  When I read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Nondum” earlier this year, I felt a curious sense of relief, the kind that only comes when you hear the details of your bleakest landscape described back to you from someone else familiar with the terrain. No two people travel the same road, but sometimes knowing that another has walked a similar valley is enough to keep hope flickering until the road begins to bend upward. In the prayers that “[seem] lost in desert ways,” and the disoriented guesses with which “we clothe Thee, unseen King,” Hopkins shows that he understands intimately the pain of waiting in the face of silence, surrounded by seeming “abysses infinite.” The measured cadence of the first five stanzas picks up in the sixth like the sudden beat of a pounding heart — “And hosts confront with flags unfurled / And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds / And truth is heard, with tears impearled” — ebbing, afterward, into the rhythm of a checked sob, and then a prayer such as a weaned child might utter (cf. Ps. 131:2): “And lead me child-like by the hand; / If still in darkness not in fear.” In two lines, Hopkins encapsulates my greatest request of my Father, coming out of this past year. “Nondum” means “not yet” in Latin. So much has not yet come to fulfillment — so much that can only come to maturity in the soil of adversity and trial — but what the poem gives me is confidence that God, too, understands. I’ve said too much already, but I wanted to share this poem this week in hopes it might encourage some of you, friends. The “morn eternal” will break, and He who bled agony in Gethsemane holds us in these long pre-dawn hours with a dearly bought word: In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33b, ESV) May peace be yours today, Amy   Poem – Amy Lee, G.M. Hopkins – “Nondum”   ‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’  xlv. 15.   God, though to Thee our psalm we raise No answering voice comes from the skies; To Thee the trembling sinner prays But no forgiving voice replies; Our prayer seems lost in desert ways, Our hymn in the vast silence dies.   We see the glories of the earth But not the hand that wrought them all: Night to a myriad worlds gives birth, Yet like a lighted empty hall Where stands no host or door or hearth Vacant creation’s lamps appal.   We guess; we clothe Thee, unseen King, With attributes we deem are meet; Each in his own imagining Sets up a shadow in Thy seat; Yet know not how our gifts to bring, Where seek thee with unsandalled feet.   And still th’unbroken silence broods While ages and while aeons run, As erst upon chaotic floods The Spirit hovered ere the sun Had called the seasons’ changeful moods And life’s first germs from death had won.   And still th’abysses infinite Surround the peak from which we gaze. Deep calls to deep and blackest night Giddies the soul with blinding daze That dares to cast its searching sight On being’s dread and vacant maze.   And Thou art silent, whilst Thy world Contends about its many creeds And hosts confront with flags unfurled And zeal is flushed and pity bleeds And truth is heard, with tears impearled, A moaning voice among the reeds.   My hand upon my lips I lay; The breast’s desponding sob I quell; I move along life’s tomb-decked way And listen to the passing bell Summoning men from speechless day To death’s more silent, darker spell.   Oh! till Thou givest that sense beyond, To shew Thee that Thou art, and near, Let patience with her chastening wand Dispel the doubt and dry the tear; And lead me child-like by the hand; If still in darkness not in fear.   Speak! whisper to my watching heart One word—as when a mother speaks Soft, when she sees her infant start, Till dimpled joy steals o’er its cheeks. Then, to behold Thee as Thou art, I’ll wait till morn eternal breaks.   Song – Matthew Clark, Gethsemane  It was a dark night a dark night  I saw the light of the world trembling on the ground  Saw the frightened flicker of that flame And I held my breath and hoped for strength  Silent to the slaughter he remained    CHORUS  And Oh the sorrow I’m fearing for tomorrow  And though the darkness hide Thee I will drink the cup you give me  And Oh the sorrow I’m fearing for tomorrow  And though the darkness hide Thee I will drink the cup you give me   It was a cold night a cold night  In the garden the Vine, was crushed beneath the weight I saw the cup he drank was bittersweet  To the dregs where joy and anguish meet The poison strikes like a kiss upon his cheek  CHORUS   Prayer: Brian Brown, The Collect for Maundy Thursday  Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. The post S6:E17 – Holy Week: Maundy Thursday appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    20 min

  6. APR 1

    Holy Week: Wednesday, Mary Does a Beautiful Thing

    Holy Week: Wednesday, Mary does a beautiful thing by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Holy-Week-Wednesday-Mary-does-a-beautiful-thing.mp3 Mark 14:3-11 Now while Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of costly aromatic oil from pure nard. After breaking open the jar, she poured it on his head. But some who were present indignantly said to one another, “Why this waste of expensive ointment? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor!” So they spoke angrily to her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you will always have the poor with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want. But you will not always have me! She did what she could. She anointed my body beforehand for burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus into their hands. When they heard this, they were delighted and promised to give him money. So Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray him.   Imagine with me – Mary does a beautiful thing Can you imagine the loneliness Jesus is likely feeling at this point? Every time he mentions to his disciples that he must die, they don’t get it, or they get it enough to try to stop him, which just reinforces the fact that they don’t get it.  We’ve all felt that sense of being lonely even in a crowd. We smile, make small talk, but our heart isn’t in it. Maybe we do dare to venture out and begin to speak about what’s really in our true heart, but it’s like being lost in the woods, crying out “Can anyone hear me, is anyone there?” with silence the only response.  I sometimes think at the center of life is a song of call and response, proposal and engagement. The most terrible, lonely thing is to fall like a tree in the forest and for no one to hear or take notice. Or to sing up from the street to your beloved’s window, and for her to peek out briefly, then close the shutters.  In the midst of this crowd, the man Jesus is carrying this unimaginable sorrow alone. But then comes Mary with a jar of perfume. As far as we know she spoke no word; she let her actions say everything, because only this beautiful act of love could say what she had to say.  The alabaster body of her vessel is broken open and the very costly perfume poured out entirely onto Jesus. I’ve heard the idea of anointing is to supply the means necessary to fulfill an assignment from God. Who knows what strength Mary’s anointing gave to Jesus? Finally, someone who gets him. Someone who hears and understands what no one else has.   And like loud flatulence in the middle of the most tender moment of the symphony, comes the voice of the wordly-wise disciples, “What a waste! We could’ve capitalized on that! Could’ve done something really useful – could’ve actually done some good in the world!” The text says they spoke harshly, threatening her. They’re not just mildly annoyed, in other words, they’re really laying into her.   And Jesus lays into them, saying, “You leave her alone! Stop beating up on her!” Meanwhile, Mary is silent like a lamb before her butchers. But Jesus speaks up, “She has done a beautiful, praiseworthy thing for me.”   It’s worth pointing out that immediately after Mary wastes her money on Jesus, Judas, in contrast, goes to turn in Jesus and makes money doing it. Interesting.  The disciples are all pragmatists, utilitarians. This is stupid inefficiency. What is beauty worth? It serves no practical purpose. Acts of pure grace, acts of prodigal affection are more than baffling or unaccountable in the eyes of the world; they’re a kind of idiotic and infuriating foolishness. Maybe they make us mad because they distract us from our distractions, forcing us to face our real human hungers – the ones we’ve defaced; because, in our despair that those hungers could ever even be met, they’ve become too painful to look at.  But what we’re really being asked to face is a humiliated, dead Jesus.  John’s baptism was the perfect case of anointing for Jesus as he began his public ministry, and Mary’s is the perfect case of anointing to send him forth to his own crucifixion, where his body will become the alabaster jar, and his blood the priceless, fragrant perfume, poured out  – entirely – on the world God so loved. (By the way, this means the Cross anoints us for an assignment, doesn’t it?) And to the worldly-wise, that beautiful offering will always be infuriating. Grace tends to be.  We say, “I don’t want your pity, your charity – give it to the poor – someone who really needs saving.” But we’re being asked to look closely at Mary’s offering, to endure the embarrassing truth it tells us about ourselves, and to let it lead us to the beautiful thing Jesus has done for us. He has “wasted” his priceless life on us, because we are, in fact, poor. We must face that truth. The truth that not one stinking drop of our useful, practicality can save us.  As one writer has said, in contrast to usefulness, “Beauty will save the world.”  Yes, it is this act of beauty that has.     Poem – Grace Craddock, George Herbert’s “Mary Magdalene”    Marie Magdalene. When blessed Marie wip’d her Saviours feet, (Whose precepts she had trampled on before) And wore them for a jewell on her head,                Shewing his steps should be the street,                Wherein she thenceforth evermore With pensive humblenesse would live and tread:    She being stain’d her self, why did she strive To make him clean, who could not be defil’d? Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,                And not his feet? Though we could dive                In tears like seas, our sinnes are pil’d Deeper then they, in words, and works, and thoughts.   Deare soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deigne To bear her filth; and that her sinnes did dash Ev’n God himself: wherefore she was not loth,                As she had brought wherewith to stain,                So to bring in wherewith to wash: And yet in washing one, she washed both.   Song: Taylor Leonhardt, Mission House – “I don’t have much”   How can I respond To the love that You have lavished on me?   I don’t have much, I don’t have much But I have a heart that beats for You I have a heart that beats for You   Every part of me Wants to love You like You’ve loved me, Lord Every part of me Wants to love You like You’ve loved me, my Lord   I don’t have much, I don’t have much But I have a heart that beats for You I have a heart that beats for You   Prayer: Brian Brown, Collect for Wednesday of Holy Week Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.   *The artwork featured above was created by Shannon Steed Sigler.  The post S6:E16 – Holy Week: Wednesday, Mary Does a Beautiful Thing appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    18 min

  7. MAR 31

    Holy Week: Tuesday, Remembering Abraham

    Holy Week: Tuesday, Remembering Abraham by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Holy-Week-Tuesday-Remembering-Abraham.mp3 Genesis 22: 1-18 [God] said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am!” Abraham replied. God said, “Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you.” Early in the morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants with him, along with his son Isaac. When he had cut the wood for the burnt offering, he started out for the place God had spoken to him about. On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place in the distance. So he said to his servants, “You two stay here with the donkey while the boy and I go up there. We will worship and then return to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. Then he took the fire and the knife in his hand, and the two of them walked on together.  Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father?” “What is it, my son?” he replied. “Here is the fire and the wood,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” “God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham replied. The two of them continued on together. When they came to the place God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife, and prepared to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am!” he answered. “Do not harm the boy!” the angel said. “Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.” Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram caught in the bushes by its horns. So he went over and got the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place “The Lord provides.” It is said to this day, “In the mountain of the Lord provision will be made.” The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “I solemnly swear by my own name, decrees the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be as countless as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the strongholds of their enemies. Because you have obeyed me, all the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants.”    Imagine with me  – “Bringing home the Stars”  Jesus rubs his arms and hands in the firelight. Some muscle in his back strained a little earlier in the day when he was turning the tables of the money-changers over and driving out the animals. He clears his throat and feels the soreness from having raised his voice. He swallows a hard swallow.    A wooden ladle taps against a cook-pot and Andrew’s feet scrape the dry ground throwing little whirls of dust up to catch the warm flicker of the campfire.   “Rabbi, here, eat something,” Andrew says and hands him a little bowl. He’s not really hungry, but he takes the bowl and raises his face to his friend, “Thank you, Andrew.” Andrew nods and smiles a worried smile.  A few hours pass, and the various sounds of shuffling and chatter have dwindled down like the campfire itself has dwindled down to an occasional crackle from barely glowing coals peeking through their white ash mantle. They’re like old, old faces whose bright life is now buried beneath the layered detritus of age. Whatever warmth comes to the surface, comes, as it were, from a great distance.    Everyone is sleeping now. Everyone but him. His back turned to the coals, he faces the darkness… and the faraway stars. There they are dappled and blinking upon the face of the heavens. So many like scattered seed hovering in black soil, burning for the husk to break, waiting to hear their names called.  Jesus crinkles his bare feet in the grit beneath them and pinches little clumps of dirt between his toes. Tiny particles glimmer as he turns the earth. Bits of sand dispersed amidst the soil catch moonlight and starlight on their impossibly small crystalline facets and he glimpses them hidden there like nearly imperceptible pearls in a field. The air is still, but then the barest breath of a breeze brushes by, just enough to alert the little hairs on his arms and legs, and he remembers his own words to the Sadducees, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – the God of the living, for to him all are alive.”  And the muscles in his face tighten and a burning gathers to press from behind his eyes. He smiles and cries quietly there.  “Father, go tell Abraham, that the night sky is so full and beautiful. Tell him the Lord still provides on Isaac’s hill.”   He scoops up some of the dust and brings it close to his face, so close the breath of his nostrils stirs it a little. The dust smells and feels good, and he rubs it into his own hands and forearms, his feet are already covered in it.  He prays again, whispering, “Go tell Sarah – laughing Sarah – that her barren arms will be filled, Father.  More children than she can count. We’ll laugh together before too long.”     The later it gets, the colder. Jesus stands and walks a little to get his blood moving. A little ways away from the camp now, he lifts his face and hands to heaven and gazes silently, slowly around, seeming to look every glittering star directly in its eye. Each of those pale little lamps seems glazed-over, clouded-over in blindness, seen but not seeing, lost but looked-for.  Maybe like fruit fallen from a tree, hidden in tall grass.  Looking up to heaven, he says, “Faithful Father, I remember the face of Abram, that Chaldean of Ur. I remember how he listened.” Someone behind him in the camp snores, snorts, and rolls over. It’s quiet again. He went on, “Father, I remember the promise we gave, and that he believed. Tonight beneath these stars, I keep that promise and count it kept. I remember when Isaac was bound. I remember the ram caught in the thorns.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his teeth. “He will be caught again, I know.”   A restlessness grows as the cold night presses in, and his body is filled with mingled eagerness and anxiety, like a cliff-diver looking at the water far below from the precipice. He places both hands on his head, rubs his face and eyes, and crosses his arms, hugging his body. “All these years, Father. After all these years, it will finally be done.”   “Amen,” he says breathing in, “Amen,” he says breathing out.  All about his body the wind flaps his seamless garment.    Poem – Malcolm Guite – Before Abraham was, I AM  Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. John 8:58   Oh pure I AM, the source of everything, The wellspring of my inner consciousness, The song within the songs I find to sing, The bliss of being and the crown of bliss. You iterate and indwell all the instants Wherein I wake and wonder that I am, As every moment of my own existence Runs over from the fountain of your name.   I turn with Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, With everyone whom you have called to be, I turn with all the fallen race of Adam To hear you calling, calling ‘Come to me’. With them I come, all weary and oppressed, And lay my labours at your feet, and rest.   Song: Matthew Clark, “Father without a child” Abram, leave your life and go  to a land I will show you A nation be born to sing a Kingdom song  a blessing for all mankind   CHORUS You’re a Father without a child I’m a Father who’s lost his children Follow me Abraham I will bring them bring them home   Faith is wearing thin Lord hopelessly barren for years now We laughed just to hide  the tears the years have dried  when will the son arrive?   CHORUS I’m a Father without a child You’re a Father who’s lost his children Lord I am in your hands Can we bring them, bring them home?   BRIDGE While Abraham slept  in covenant darkness With faithfulness crowned the God of love moved Poured out the blessings  and shouldered the curse He signed on the line  by the ink of his blood ink of his blood   CHORUS Hear the Father of all cry out See a son laid upon the altar One day the knife will fall Just to bring them, bring them home   Collect: Brian Brown  O God, who by the passion of thy blessed Son didst make an instrument of shameful death to be unto us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen. The post S6:E15 – Holy Week: Tuesday, Remembering Abraham appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    22 min

  8. MAR 30

    Holy Week: Monday, Cleansing the Temple

    Holy Week: Monday, Cleansing the Temple by Matthew Clark & Friends | One Thousand Words https://www.matthewclark.net/mcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Holy-Week_Monday-Cleansing-the-Temple-1.mp3 Luke 19:45-48 Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were selling things there, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of robbers!” Jesus was teaching daily in the temple courts. The chief priests and the experts in the law and the prominent leaders among the people were seeking to assassinate him, but they could not find a way to do it, for all the people hung on his words.   Imagine with me – Cleansing of the Temple  I don’t remember what I said that day back in high school, but I’m ashamed to tell you, it was something cruel. My poor Mom had probably just been practicing some element of basic good parenting but I wasn’t having it. Whatever it was the original conversation was about, I was a blunt instrument ready to smash through anyone who got in the way of what I wanted, and I chose as my bludgeon cutting words of pure meanness. I am thankful I don’t remember them or what that conflict was even about. Here’s what I do remember.  Later that day, I was sitting on my bed in my room when I heard my Father’s characteristic footsteps coming down the hall, but faster than usual. The door flew open and my Dad was transfigured into a consuming fire, he burst into flames. He grew up a Mississippi farmer and at that time was around 60 and stronger than I’ve ever been or will be. His voice boomed and expanded to fill that room with righteous fury and I flailed and cried in astonishment and terror at the glory of his wrath.  Let me be clear; my Dad is in no way an out-of-control individual, nor is he a violent or habitually angry person. This was an outstanding occasion. That day, his Beloved Bride had been treated cruelly and my insults against my Mother had been to him like a flaming arrow shot into a haystack, and he became a Pillar of Fire.  I’ve seen people get angry and explode for all kinds of reasons, most of them selfish. Someone said anger is a good signal that something we care about has been threatened, it shows us what matters to us and urges us to protect things that need protecting. Sometimes we care mostly about our pride or we want to keep some power scheme in place that benefits us, even though it’s not right. Other times, like the one I’m describing with my Dad, the wrath is holy, because wickedness has been done against what God loves and desires to protect. In that way, wrath itself really can be the unveiling of a terrific glory.  How long does it take for an experienced craftsman like Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph to make a whip out of cords? I don’t know, honestly. I’ll speculate an hour to obtain the materials and tie them together while thinking about what he was going to do. Jesus had adrenal glands, synapses, muscle, blood, and bone. Sometimes anger makes the body almost vibrate and burn as it gathers, as the barometer spikes. Jesus had time, in other words; when he bursts into the temple this is not an impulsive act, it’s a careful, deliberate thing.  Zealous and Jealous are two words that come from the same root and generally have to do with a husband’s desire to protect the reputation of his wife. When, in the Old Testament, God says he’s a jealous God, it means he’s fighting for his marriage to Israel. It means he cares more about her well-being than she does. When I insulted my Mom, she cried I’m sure, but her response was nothing like the zealous response I witnessed in my Dad. So, here’s where we are: Yesterday, Jesus entered the Holy City of Jerusalem and today he goes straight to it’s sickened heart, the Temple, and he absolutely wrecks it in his careful, deliberate wrath. Remember today, Jesus is no timid, passive aggressive, apathetic bystander. Understand that the humility that accepts a crown of thorns without raising his voice or moving a pinky finger in self-defense, is the same humility that weaves a whip of wrath ready to defend the ones this King has bound to himself with cords of lovingkindness.     Poem: Malcolm Guite –  Cleansing the Temple  Come to your Temple here with liberation And overturn these tables of exchange Restore in me my lost imagination Begin in me for good, the pure change. Come as you came, an infant with your mother, That innocence may cleanse and claim this ground Come as you came, a boy who sought his father With questions asked and certain answers found, Come as you came this day, a man in anger Unleash the lash that drives a pathway through Face down for me the fear the shame the danger Teach me again to whom my love is due. Break down in me the barricades of death And tear the veil in two with your last breath.   Song: Matthew Clark – Heart burning brightly  I had a vision so lovely Of the tender taken in and given hope But you prey on the people  Till the prayers of my people fill your pockets up Collecting the toll at the door to my house  You sell off my children, and threaten my spouse    CHORUS I saw the Lion of Judah leaping up from the steps And the tables were turning  and the temple was wrecked  Saw the Son of God like a column of fire  He was leading the nations   he was opening the door  With a heart burning brightly   Till it burst into flames    He drew a line in the dust   Where the reign of terror ends    V2 A home for the hopeless   Reminding the broken that they have a prayer  But the time draws near   When the house of God will be the hearts of men   And to you robbers who’ve made   this temple your den   There’ll be no stone left on another   And your roof is caving in   The body for the Lord        The temple of the Spirit    Prayer – Brian Brown Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.   The post S6:E14 – Holy Week: Monday, Cleansing the Temple appeared first on Matthew Clark.

    17 min
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