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Today is both Palm Sunday and April Fools’ Day. It is oddly appropriate to have this day of foolishness kick off the holiest 7 days of a Christian’s religious year.  The message of the cross is, as St. Paul once wrote,  foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The core of Paul’s message is the cross and the proclamation of Christ crucified. Who could have imagined that a world-wide religion would be built with its primary symbol as the method of Roman capital punishment. This is not a message geared to win friends or influence people.

One reason that the message cross is foolishness is the Christian belief that God, through human weakness and failure, conquered humanity’s ferocious enemy of death and the grave.  One does not conquer enemies through weakness but through strength.  Ask any military commander; overwhelming force and power is what is called for. Not so with God and the cross of Christ, however. Jesus was executed as a traitor to his own people and was betrayed not just by one of his followers, but by all. 

Given this, we can understand how some would think that it is sheer idiocy (not just mere foolishness) for a Christian to say that the cross is the means that God uses to bring fundamental change to the human race.

So this April Fool’s Day we recall the foolishness of the cross and celebrate Jesus, the man of cross, the Son of God, who brought life abundant and eternal through it and who taught us that the sacrificial life is our way of life, living foolish lives of love for the life of the world.

Comes this Forty  days and Forty nights,  a LENgThened Christian self-examination Rite;
Allowing the faithful not just to be riteful but more so to be rightful

Seafarers can be vulnerable to sea sickness, causing them to their weakness;
For Forty days and Forty nights or even more is their longest sailing time from from to shore.

Seafarers, challenged by a commotion, needed a chaplain’s pastoral intervention;
This happened on my ship visit with intern Jania on a ship last Ash Wednesday.

Seafarers were imposed the ashes with the words: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return;
 A creative comment  was said by a seafarer: Remember that from dock to dock we shall return.

Seafarers were much relieved after letting God confront their own belief;
A mass on board on the same ship followed by the way, that  Monday after Ash Wednesday

Seafarers needed a periodic space to break a tightly knit common place;
A chaplain’s responsibility upon breaking in a close knit community is to break the monotony with a delightful personality that cheers up everybody.

Seafarers needed also an opportunity to exercise their spirituality;
I met seafarer who claimed to be a trained Bible study leader, he helps lead his on-board family to love what is heavenly in the midst of the worldly.

Seafarers are pre-occupied by the demands of work which they applied;
Chaplains are there to provide  for their spiritual and social needs yet unsupplied.

The 40 days of fasting and repentance known as Lent began today for millions of Christians around the world. It is a solemn time that Christians use as a preparation to observe the holiest days of the Christian’s year, the days of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. We prepare ourselves for Holy Week and Easter by scrutinizing our lives through prayer, fasting, self-denial and meditation on God’s holy Word.

The Church begins Lent with a solemn fast on a Wednesday each year, which has come to be called “Ash Wednesday.” Our preparation to celebrate eternal life at Easter begins by reminding us that we are mortal and that we are fallen. We do this by placing a small amount of ash upon our forehead as sign to us of our mortality.

Despite all of our attempts to fight it, we are mortal. We have an end point. We are limited and frail and finite. We just “ain’t” quite as important as we think we are. As we have a beginning, so, too, do we have an end. We are creatures of dust. We are made of dust and to dust we shall return. We are here for only a season, and yet we act as if we have all the time in the world. Coming to grips with one’s mortality is the hardest challenge for any human being to face.

Despite all of our attempts to deny it, we are fallen. We are sinners. We are more often than not, hypocrites, actors on a stage motivated by the applause and approval of others rather than God. We constantly fail God and fail one another. Today is the time to describe explicitly all the ways we have failed both as individuals and as a community and to say, “I’m sorry. Lord, I did this. Nobody else. I accept responsibility for my actions.” Today is the time to say, “I intend, with your help, to amend my life.”

The Church calls us to this solemn fast and reminds us of our mortal and fallen human nature with the express intent that you and I will know and feel to the depths of our soul what a wonderful and awesome gift of grace and mercy has been given to us by Jesus Christ our Savior and then to live lives of graciousness and mercy to others.

As I sit down to write this, I’m tired - I’ve not returned home from out of state activities until Saturday evening for the last 2 weeks, and that before needing to be in church no later than 7:00 the next morning for a full day of Sunday services. Of course, there were also chores on the home front and the needs of aging parents to be considered, as well as another out of town meeting early tomorrow morning. As I said, I’m tired - physically, emotionally, and mentally drained, and the only thing holding me together right now is God. If not for God, I’d have already completely fallen apart.

Now, everybody’s been that tired sometime in their lives, probably this very week. You know what I’m talking about because you, too, one time or another, have collapsed in God’s arms for sustaining care. We come together in our common experience of exhaustion and in our shared experience of God’s help. It’s precious.

Being tired is something to which we can all relate. So many demands are constantly made on our time, our energy, our selves, that we regularly feel overwhelmed and worn out. Job, home, kids, marriage, other people, hobbies, telephones that keep ringing all the time: we want to shout, “take me away!” People go away for a weekend just to get a little rest. Moms lock themselves up in the bathroom just to have a little peace and quiet. We lie in bed in the morning, knowing it’s time to get up and get going but wishing we could just lie there a little longer. Often it seems as though we’re tired most of the time.

As Chaplain Marge reminded us last week:
    Our mariners are set apart from their families and communities as they travel the globe ensuring the continuance of world commerce, so essential for our present way of life. As they go from port to port, they are strangers in foreign lands, and even when they go home, they still remain somewhat of a stranger. In the time they have been at sea, family dynamics have changed. Perhaps a new child has been born, perhaps the children are older and are presenting more challenging behaviors, and perhaps someone has become seriously ill or has died. For many and various reasons, things are just never the same as when they last left. By the time they have all re-adjusted, it is time to go to sea once again.

Well my friends, Jesus got that tired too. Beginning at Verse 21 in Chapter 1 of his gospel, Mark relates for us one of those days in our Lord’s life when too much happened in too little time. Jesus’s day began with a bang and kept on going that way well into the night. It was the Sabbath, so Jesus went to the synagogue to worship, as was his custom. His quiet time there place was shattered by a demon out whom he promptly cast. The people marveled at his power, and after worship they couldn’t stop talking about what had happened. Jesus and his friends went to Peter’s house for lunch. When they got there, they found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. Giving us all a beautiful example of how to care for mothers-in-law, Jesus healed her. He touched her and took her fever away immediately. News of this healing traveled as quickly as the news of the earlier healing in the synagogue, and, combined, they caused all the people of the region to come to Jesus, bringing their sick and those possessed by demons. What was supposed to have been a quiet day of rest for our Lord finally ended when it was dark, and a great number of people, now healed, had been given normal, healthy lives. Then everybody left. It was time to sleep. But not for Jesus. He was too wound up and exhausted, so while it was still dark, he went off to a lonely place and prayed.

Our Lord was always tired because the people came to him so much. Leprous, blind, dying, crippled, they all came to him for healing. Remember the story of the man let down through the roof? Jesus was teaching in a house. The crowd was so great already that there was no more room, no way for anybody to get in. So some people peeled back the roof and with ropes lowered their crippled friend right in front of Jesus (Mark 2:1-12). Everybody wanted a piece of the Lord. Many came, asking nothing more than to touch the fringe of his garment because those who touched it were made well (Matthew 14:36). Great crowds followed Jesus all the time. He healed them. He fed them. He taught them. He gave them so much of himself that his own family worried about his health. Matthew tells us that the Lord’s mother and brothers once came to take him home, hoping to force him to rest (Matthew 12:46).

The reason the people mobbed Jesus that way was that he was the only One who had ever been able to help them so well. Nobody else ever did the things he did. They knew he was special. Nicodemus spoke the popular opinion when he said, “Teacher, we know that you come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (John 3:2). The people knew Jesus was special. He is special because he is God, our only Savior.

When it all got to be too much for Jesus, he went away: Six separate times the Gospels tell us that Jesus went away by himself. He especially liked to go up into the mountains. He went away and prayed. Even on the night before his death, in the closing moments before his arrest, Jesus went to be alone for a while and to pray.

What a beautiful vision of the Lord Jesus this is. He is true God, who has the power to heal all those who were brought to him. And he is true man, who got tired from overwork. He is God with us, able to sympathize with us in our experiences of life.

Like Jesus, we as well like to get away when it gets to be too much. It feels good to leave all the pressure behind and go someplace. Unlike Jesus, however, we don’t get as much out of our get-aways as he did because we don’t do with them what he did when he went away. Jesus went away to pray. We just go away.

For our Lord, rest from all the tension of life came through prayer and quiet time with his Father in heaven. Rest came not just from “doing nothing,” but from taking all that he had to do and giving it to God. Our real rest comes in the same way, when we spend time with God.

Jesus frequently spent all night in prayer. It simply fascinates me that he could give up a whole night’s sleep and still be refreshed in the morning. When I lose a night’s sleep, I’m a mess. How did he do it? His rest, his recreation, came from God. So often when we’re lucky enough to sleep a few extra hours or to have a few extra days off, we’re still tired. David learned this fact and prayed, “Return, O my soul, to your rest” (Psalm 116:7).

We all need to pray more. The more tired we are the more we need to pray. This means more than just the same old prayers we pray regularly, the mealtime prayers and the prayers we recite from memory. Good as those prayers are, we need along with them to pray prayers that open up our lives to God as we give everything to him. Before choosing his disciples, Jesus prayed all night for guidance. Before he asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” he prayed all night. We too have been invited by him to pray without ceasing.

Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Just as he went to his Father for rest, we’ll find our rest in Him also, in the Father and in our Savior. When we pour out the concerns of our life to him, telling him all that’s going on, all that’s making us tired, he takes those things away from us and makes the burden his own. Then it doesn’t weigh us down anymore. We need to pray, to “spill out our guts” to God, to share with him our life. When we try to live it alone, without him, all we get is tired.

Jesus prayed. On the cross he prayed. While he was hanging there between heaven and earth, dying to pay for all of our sins and to make us one with God, to open up the way of communication between God and us, he prayed. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” His last words were a prayer. Jesus gave it all to God, and God sustained him. God raised him from the dead, and he lives today. He lives in us and calls us to give it all to God also, to pray so that we may finally find rest for our souls also.

And such rest may be found, my friends, in Jesus’ name.

“There but for the Grace of God go I.”

These are often my thoughts when I pass some poor fellow with a breakdown or a flat tire on the shoulder of an Interstate.

“I’m sure glad that’s not me…”

For chaplains, car trouble can mean missing getting underway on a towboat or being a “no show” as guest speaker or preacher. And while changing a flat tire is a simple task, it often results in soiled clothing, dirty hands, scraped knuckles and an occasional wrenched back. On top of aggravation and inconvenience, breakdowns are stressful. Even the most confident travelers can’t avoid feeling vulnerable, exposed and on-edge when stranded in their car late at night, all alone and miles from the nearest town.

Late one Sunday night I became that “poor fellow” at the side of the road.

While driving on the interstate, a dashboard light showed one of my tires was low on air. I pulled over and saw immediately the left rear tire was nearly flat, and what little air remained was audibly hissing out. Owing to the remote location, I opted to try to make it to the next exit. I emptied a can of aerosol “flat fixer” and coaxed the ailing vehicle 11 miles to the next exit, unsure how, when or if my journey would resume.

Not surprisingly the service stations at the exit were already closed. I nursed the car to a hotel parking lot, hoping for a room. Luckily, they had one. I checked in, but slept little from dread of the day ahead.

The following day I sat in the waiting room of the Honda dealership as Craig, their service technician (and choir director at the local Cumberland Presbyterian church) worked on my Honda. The dealership is about 10 miles from the Interstate in downtown Clarksville.

Through all of this I was reminded of the goodness in ordinary people, no matter how dismissed or disrespected they may be by the wealthy and powerful.

In all candor, I had a most pleasant morning, due in large part to the willing and even cheerful self-forgetfulness in evidence at every “service desk” at which I alighted. Even though her store didn’t stock the tire I needed, I hold up the example of Kirsten, the wife of an army sergeant, who holds down a day-job as an auto service cashier at a Wal-Mart in Oak Grove, just outside the gates of Fort Campbell.  Despite numerous other things going on, Kirsten took time to call more than a dozen other places where I would have looked for a tire. Even though she came up dry, she could tell me where NOT to go. Her Wal-Mart colleagues, Julio and his assistant, cheerfully removed my old tire and neatly mounted the “donut” emergency spare tire. I tried to pay them but they refused. They seemed sorry not to be able to fix what was wrong, and all three smiled and waved as I headed out on my quest.

The same was true at Firestone some 11 miles further down the road. At Firestone’s service counter was Matt who, despite a filled waiting room and the many needful items on his list, was eager to help me. Matt didn’t have my tire in stock either, but determined where I could find the needle-in-a-haystack tire my Honda needed. 

Long story short: much to my surprise, even those who did have the tire I needed,  who could easily have exploited the situation and used my relative vulnerability to ramp up the cost, did not. Marty, Honda’s service manager, despite a lot filled with cars left for servicing by his regular customers, squeezed me in (and on a holiday!) and even gave me a veteran’s discount on the tire. 

Sure, I was behind schedule but I’m on God’s time anyway. And I am surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses … if I have eyes to see, that is.

Two weeks after the flat tire incident, Chaplain Baldridge returned to Walmart in Oak Grove to thank Kirsten P. and to take a snapshot with her.