Nothing can carry us to the crucifixion and resurrection faster than the fragrance of frankincense.  While some of the story gets lost through time, and translation, the truth of the spices and oils never waivers.  The spiced oils and their descendants are witnesses to what transpired in the days that followed the crucifixion.  They have not changed since the writing of this text.  They carry the sweet truth and show us how Jesus was buried 2000 years ago. He was buried according to the customs that used spices and oils extravagantly. Aloe (sandalwood) and olive oil are used as the base and then spiced with aromatic scents like bay leaves, spikenard (or its cousin lavender), rosemary, sage, and myrrh.  These are the agents that were used for healing a body from its creation until its return to the earth. 

In John’s Gospel, it is recorded that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and sandalwood weighing a hundred pounds to anoint the body of Jesus. That is an enormous amount of oil. In what is surely one of the most intimate and loving acts in the gospel, Nicodemus anoints Jesus’ body with the spices and oils and wraps him in a cloth.  In Mark’s gospel the body of Jesus had not be anointed when it was laid in the tomb because the body was hastily wrapped after Pilate granted Joseph permission to take it.   Mary Magdalene; Mary, the Mother of James and Joses; and Salome were all at the foot of the cross. They watched as Joseph took Jesus down and saw where he laid him in a tomb hewn from rock.  The women had all cared for Jesus while he was in Galilee and they want to give him a proper burial.  So as soon as Passover ended they risked their safety and went back to the tomb laden with spices and oils to anoint his body.  They went grieving, as faithful women, fully expecting a body.  They were taken completely by surprise as a young angel preached resurrection.  They left, in terror and awe, still clutching the spices oils.

Resurrection always comes as a surprise in the midst of death.  We are like the women in Mark’s Gospel, faithful and fearful when we meet death.  We meet death heavy laden with grief that feels like a hundred pounds of oil on our chests.  This community met death on the first morning of our annual pilgrimage to Ecuador this year, when we received a call that Michael Pontes had died.  It was a tragic ending to a beautiful life.  Michael had talked about his glimmers of faith and love, but wrote before he died that he didn’t hold out much hope.  It made those of us who loved him walk around heavy with our own grieving oils. 

The next three days in Ecuador were a whirlwind of activity and we set all our Michael thoughts aside as we opened the hot make-shift clinic and hundreds and hundreds of people came for healing and community.  At the very end of the second day, just as everyone was closing up, a young woman came in and said she needed a doctor.  The translator saw in the mother’s eyes that ancient look of desperation and fear that hasn’t changed any more than the fragrance of oil.  So the translator quickly called the doctors and nurse practitioners and three-week-old baby, Luis Santiago, ashen and non-responsive, was carried in by the aunt.  Immediately a circle formed and hovered over the baby.  It felt like the air was sucked out of the clinic for several minutes as life and death hung in the balance.  The circle opened as they cleared the airway a fraction and the baby was breathing a tiny bit more. The group prepared quickly to take the momma and baby to the hospital 30 minutes away.  The young mom was scared, so I stood next to her and said a quick prayer, marked the baby with a sign of the cross, and without forethought, prayed, “Come on, Michael, and help this baby out.” 

I prayed to Michael, and everything flipped in an instant.  Before Michael died, if he had been with me in Ecuador, he would have asked a whole bunch of questions; Why would God let a baby suffer? Does God really love us? How does prayer help?  Do I really believe in resurrection?  And all of a sudden I was turning to him for comfort and blessing. I was the one scared and lost because this baby might die.  What was the most surprising to me in that instant of prayer was that beyond his doubts or my worries, I could feel him close, like a young man in a tomb whispering resurrection in the face of death.  It’s hard to believe in resurrection.  It’s hard when we cross through wilderness and are a bit bruised by thorns that caught us on the way.  It leaves us grieving and clutching oils.

Hours later we were all sitting in the dark outside, waiting for the nurse practitioners to come back with the news about baby Luis.  Finally we heard the truck as it pulled up to the gate.  The truck starting beeping its horns and flashing it lights; blinding us and telling us it was time to celebrate, the baby lived.  Everyone cheered.  We cheered for life, for the nurses, and that we had witnessed a baby’s resurrection.  I cheered because praying to Michael was a sign. A sign that even in the wake of deaths that cast a huge pall and pack a heart-breaking sting, resurrection surprises us.  On the night the baby’s life hung in the balance, it was the angel Michael I prayed to without hesitation. Resurrection transforms everything, fear, tombs, and even the spices and oils. Oils for the dead became the fragrance of life.  

Michael Pontes and the baby were connected for a moment in a universe of 7 billion people where death is overpowered by the fragrance of love that never waivers, no matter how shaky we may feel.   The hope of resurrection comes as a joyful surprise. With Easter comes the most hopeful signs of life in the world.  These spices donning the altar are fragrant gifts to anoint the dead, and these very spices are transformed into signs of life; signs that all things are transformed in love. So we are taking these oils and spices from this altar to the new still at Thistle Farms, dedicated to Joanne Cato.  Then for the next two days Jennifer, Jim, and volunteers will take these sacred spices and distill them for healing.  Today we celebrate the oils as a sign of life that carries us all the way to the eternal side of time.  We can doubt so much about our life and faith, but let these oils be a sign that we never have to waiver in our hope. In Mark’s Gospel, it is love itself that speaks the last word.  The women leave speechless and transformed.  Resurrection fills the very air with a fragrance that allows us to walk in hope all the days of our life and even on the last day, when we make the grave our bed, to sing. “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  

It is a joy to travel with the women from Thistle Farms. One of the many reasons is that for some of the women over the years, I have gotten to witness the wonder of their first flight. The laughter as a plane starts down the runway. The wide eyed look as they witness clouds from the top side. The gratitude they feel no matter where they are sitting or how long we sit on the tarmac.

The trip this week to Pennsylvania with Shana and Dorris was filled with joy for me. As we were ascending, Shana pulled out her cell phone and started taking pictures of Old Hickory Lake. I didn't remind her that she wasn't supposed to have her phone on.  Instead, I loved seeing her look at the lake from an aerial view. Dorris then said she wondered if this was the closest to God she would ever get before heaven. I told her I thought she was as close to God as I had felt all week.  I'm always grateful for this work. I'm grateful to spread the mission of Thistle Farms, but tonight, I'm grateful that Tim and I get to travel home with shana and Doris on a magical flight.

Hours don't pass evenly like the rhythm of chimes on a grandfather clock. They speed by and then pull up to a halt. Some stretch out long enough to wrap around our hearts and live in memory while others are a still life shot that flashes into our brains every now and then. Most hours fade into the sweet forgotten by and by of our past. To me, an hour is like a long short story. It’s long enough to soak through lentils, but doesn’t last long enough to soften black beans. We can fly to Florida in an hour, drive to Manchester, get diagnosed, or be freed.

As Lent creeps toward Good Friday we move with Jesus to what is known as the Gethsemane of John.  It is where Jesus says that finally, his hour has come.  So many hours have passed since the beginning of this Gospel where he described what it means to be so loved.  There have been hours where he has healed, retreated, grieved his friend Lazarus, and been anointed for burial.  We all know what he means when he says the hour has come.  He means that of all the hours of his life, the hour of his death has come.   

This is the climax and the culmination of what it means to so love.  He tries to explain it by using the example of a grain of wheat that must fall to produce a greater yield.  This is the hour where what we have lived for becomes how we are remembered.  This reading is the prelude to his farewell discourse where he says there is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend. We are called to live for love and pray we die glorifying love. 

Two thousand years and 17 million hours later this truth has not changed.  To live and die for love is the essence of discipleship. Death is the hour that seals our life and that we fear and face.  We are put on this earth preparing to die. Death is the returning to ashes like the seed to the earth. That hour is the climax, and what Jesus teaches us is that even in that hour Love can be glorified. 

Our Lenten journey is coming to an end, and like all journeys, it is right that it ends with a reflection on death. We began a month ago on the edge of the Lenten wilderness, praying for a revival of the heart.  The prayer is that we make the journey while wrestling demons and seeing angels so that we can explode with “Alleluia!” by Easter. But I almost forgot that to get there we have to walk through this hour, not just in scripture but in our lives.  When we accept this hour, we live and die to glorify love.  It is hard to reflect on this, especially as all the fruit trees are blooming and the larkspur are rejoicing.  But it is a gift when we can hear it as good news, as part of the gift of love.  It is a gift to see this spring in the context of the sweet seeds of fall that were buried in the cold earth to give this new life such beauty and abundance. 

Jesus reminds us in this Gospel that this is the holiest of hours.  It is the hour we walk closest to our creator and hold on to the truth.  All of us who have grieved loved ones know how hard it is to make it through this holy hour.  It is so powerful that for a long time it eclipses all the other hours.  It is the hour we sit through like labor and count breaths and watch and wait and pray and pray and pray.  It is the hour we anticipate and fear in the middle of the night when shadows seem real and prayers feel hollow. It is the hour that is as hard and disillusioning as witnessing Love hanging from the crucifixes of our lives.  In our lives of faith that hour still stands between us and Easter.

I have witnessed folks these past few weeks glorify their hour.  There is a man who came to the Chapel for ashes on Ash Wednesday, and the next day his aorta exploded. He endured a 15 ½ hour surgery and a horrible infection that put him back on death’s doorstep in the ICU days later.  Last week he said, "They thought I would die. I thought I would die, but this morning, lying here, watching the rain hit the window I have realized it doesn't get any better than this. I know that sounds crazy, and maybe I should want other things, but truly, I feel like listening to this rain, at this moment, it doesn't get better.” His eyes were filled with love that poured out in sweet streams on his cheeks. He had broken the hourglass and was living in an eternal moment where he saw it was filled with grains of sand that taken alone were enough to contemplate the wonder of the universe itself. 

I have heard from others facing troubling hours from diagnosis, prison, death or separation talk about gratitude. I heard about an old friend who died alone in New York, and it seems like the hardest hour I can imagine.  No one knows when her hour was or about all the circumstances, because it took so long to discover the body that they could only identify her by her tattoos.  She was a fighter and a poet.  I pray that in her hour that if her mind traveled in and out of all the hours she lived, it drifted to her years in Nashville with Magdalene and Thistle Farms and that she felt beloved even as she was alone in that hour. This Gospel assures me that in her hour she was lifted up and love didn't abandon her.  

We can take even this hour, knowing that love is stronger and speaks the last word.  It cannot be wiped out, just lifted up. The hour can be lived in this moment and stretched out to eternity, as we say, “It doesn't get better than this.” Being able to glorify love is not out of our reach.  It's as close as your next thought to live for love right now.  That is the revival of Lent—meeting our death in the wilderness and walking through it, and then living every hour with gratitude. 

-- Luke 2:12-14

Early one morning last week under a drizzle and a thick blanket of fog, I headed off to Radnor Lake for a moment of peace from the busiest Advent I have known at Thistle Farms and St. Augustine's. There, perched on a low branch beside the lake was a majestic bald eagle. I know they roost in the foothills of Tennessee, but seeing it watching me 20 feet away was still startling. It was a sign to me, as clear as if I had been a shepherd out watching my flocks at night, of good tidings from an angel of the Lord.

Christmas is the season of signs. The author of Luke's Gospel makes the signs of Christmas, such as stars, angels and dreams, the beginning of his Gospel with poetic mastery. Into the tradition of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, he sows with signs a theological blanket that cover us this holy season with grace, joy, lowliness, peace and universalism. The shepherds were given the sign that they would see a baby in a barn wrapped in a blanket. The magi were given the star as sign. Mary and Joseph were given dreams. Since the celebration of these signs were recognized by the church, this has been the season for all God's people with eyes to see, to find sings that point them to the Christ in this world, tucked away like a baby in a barn, to fill our days with hope and glad tidings. 

Looking back at seasons past, Christmas has always come to me in signs. I remember in 2004 when we were building a big new house for Magdalene in a pretty rough neighborhood. I was driving to the construction sight and worrying if this home could ever be a sanctuary for the women in this neighborhood. Then, like swaddling clothes, I saw a red ribbon tied in a bow on a neighbor’s door. It was a sign of peace and hope in the midst of doubt and fear. I remember in 2001 driving home about 10:30 on Christmas Eve after a service. We were just getting ready to launch Thistle Farms, and I was preoccupied the whole of Advent. All the sudden driving I realized the roads were quiet just as I drove past the hospice at 19th and Charlotte. There was only one light on in the whole place. As I imagined the person keeping vigil on Christmas Eve as someone they loved was dying, the light all of the sudden looked as holy as a star over a manger. I remember just last year how it was the simple dancing of a candle flame that brought the spirit of hope and peace to me. As I watched it flicker on the altar, I thought about how a single candle can cut a path through the darkest night, and how I had gotten to be part of a community that had made about 50,000 candles through Thistle Farms over the past 10 years. It was like the multitude of the heavenly host filling my heart and singing. 

You have signs that have carried you through this season like the most treasured gifts of Christmas. Chances are, your signs of Christmas rarely have been found in packages under your tree. It is not surprising that we all have signs, but they always come to us as surprises. This is the season to name them and recognize them as gifts of love that renew glad tidings that Emmanuel, God with us, was born. Your signs and my signs remind us that the eternal love of God is still visible in this temporal world and it can still turn stone to flesh in a heartbeat. 

For me the eagle was a great sign of Christmas. The eagle is obvious because it looks like my totem, the hawk, dressed up like Santa. There are probably a million ways to see any sign. In the rainy foggy wilderness, the eagle had to hunt by getting in close, and it didn't look lofty on that dreary morning, it looked determined. The eagle preached that morning with a clarity that I can only strive for -- that its not always visions of mountain tops, lofty cathedrals, and sugar plums.  Sometimes the holiest is lowly, determined and alone. 

The sign of Christmas is the moment we remember that our hearts beat to hope. The sign of Christmas is a welling of gratitude that bears the gift of loving the whole world. The sign of Christmas is a community that can take this world as it is -- seeing the horrible in the glorious, the meaningless suffering in the midst of deep meaning, and the sorrow in the midst of joy. And so with grateful hearts beating to hope we never, ever stop searching for signs as diligently as a hunting eagle on a foggy morning, that bring us glad tidings of peace on earth and goodwill to all people.

Let us  sing a song to the saints of God.

This picture was taken after leaving the Champions of Change award ceremony and conference at the White House today. The work I heard about from all the other Champions of Change was inspiring. Here is what I said on the grounds of our White House to the hundred members of the staff and leadership of the justice department and administration.

I carry with me into this hallowed space the gratitude of a community comprised of hundreds of women who have survived violence, prostitution, traumatic childhoods, prison and the streets, and who bear witness to the truth that love is the most powerful force for change in the world. Thank you for recognizing the work of Magdalene, and its social enterprise, Thistle Farms. We began 15 years ago with a single home and invited 5 women to live free for two years.  With no federal or state money, we have relied on individual gifts and grants and have grown into six homes. Thistle Farms currently employs 35 graduates and residents of Magdalene as we manufacture and distribute all-natural bath and body care products to 200 retail outlets. We have partnerships and sister programs scattered throughout the world and share this model with cities throughout this nation. This work is my joy and this honor gives me renewed courage to keep seeking that hallowed space in which the universal issues of violence are born on individual backs and love still endures and heals. Thank you. 

I listened to the broadcast by myself while I was in Connecticut at Trinity College for a speaking engagement.  I walked around the campus listening with my IPhone clutched in my sweaty palms and prayed.  NPR told our whole story, including the devastating news about Tara. What we came to understand was that a million people cried with us at the horrific reality of the violence of the streets and the courage of the women of Magdalene to live differently.  The response was a real witness to the truth that when love heals, it washes over all of us. 

In a long letter to me Tara wrote that she can look out through a sliver in a razor-wire fence and glimpse a thistle and remember that her story is not over yet. Thistle Farms has been a whirlwind since the airing with the women speaking their truth in love about why women walk the streets and what it takes to bring them home to over 10,000 people at conferences and events. We have never wavered on our mission to be a witness to the truth that love is the most powerful force for social change in the world.

The Hawk totem came to me at the same time we began the journey of opening Magdalene fifteen years ago. The hawk came swooping in and has been there every step of the way.  It is been a sign to me that we need to be as fierce in love and as focused as the hawk in our vision.  The Hawk soars to the heavens on a breeze and reminds us that the mission of Magdalene and Thistle Farms is not just a statement about the past but a vision that propels us forward with power. That vision is honed by a trusted board, a tireless staff, and hundreds of dedicated volunteers.  That hawk vision is centered on individual women moving from lives tormented by traumatic, abusive childhoods and violence to life on the streets and in jails, into a life that can soar on a breeze and imagine a future. 

On a visit to a prison this year to tell our story, we walked by a woman behind glass in solitary confinement.  Her cheeks were etched like a ravine in a valley carved by a river of tears. There was a mural across from her in the hallway was a hawk flying over a valley.  I swear love can make the connection between a valley of tears and a free bird soaring over mountains.   The healing is slow and mysterious, and it takes all of us to make it happen.  Our vision looks into new fields here and afar.

That vision includes opening a Thistle Stop Café at our manufacturing facility led by Desmond and Roberto.  The cafe would welcome the public to Thistle Farms, provide another training ground for the women of Magdalene, and would serve the hundreds of individuals that come to us from around the country to learn about our model and about how we make paper.

That vision includes launching sister programs like Eden House, founded three weeks ago in New Orleans after Jennifer, Kenny, Tim, Gwen and I spent the week there.  We are working closely with cities like St. Louis, Atlanta, and Dallas that want to learn our best practices and implement them in their own communities. 

That vision includes breaking the million dollar annual sales figure in the next two years and moving into 25 Whole Food stores as well as over 200 other retail outlets.  Those figures will help us to be a force for changing a culture that still buys and sells women and holds other worn out notions.

That vision includes welcoming another 12 residents this year, opening a new house and helping the authorities of the women’s prison to imagine developing a Magdalene sanctuary inside prison walls.

That vision includes a new still at Thistle Farms dedicated to Joanne Cato by her family.  That still will help us be the only local producer of healing essential oils on a commercial scale, and it will save lives by giving new women jobs, by the healing oils it will produce, and by the story it will spread to others.

That vision includes partnering with 3 other women’s enterprises in Lwala, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; and Kigali, Rwanda to introduce a new evening survival kit as we move into fairer trade and lift our communities together.  We are having our pre-launch of these kits tonight. We are offering them to you first, the people who have changed the course of Magdalene and Thistle Farms forever by your presence and grace at this gathering.

Tonight there are eight hundred of us here, but there are more than a hundred women whose paperwork is sitting on Donna’s desk; women on the streets or in jails wishing on the full moon that they could find a home with us.  Tonight, we could raise enough money in this one hour to keep the doors of our six homes open another year, to invite another 12 interns to be a part of this journey, to work with another 100 women who need help navigating the legal and mental health systems, to speak with another 200 groups about providing sanctuary for women’s bodies and spirits, to invite another 10 residents into Thistle Farms for vital training, and to go across our nation and the world to share the miracle and to inspire other cities to open their own communities. 

Magdalene and Thistle Farms are a gift to the city; they cost nothing and save millions.  Magdalene and Thistle Farms are a gift to all of us who donate our time, to buy into the hope that love is the most powerful force for change.  Magdalene and Thistle Farms are a gift to all the women here tonight who are graduates and residents who found a chance at life. 

This evening could be a totem; a sign to cities and social enterprises around the world that it can happen-- we can love the whole world one person at a time; we can change the course of one of the oldest forms of abuse this world has known; we can raise $350,000 in gifts and pledges in an evening and make this vision a reality. It can happen and it can happen with so much grace that all of us will walk out into the world filled with gratitude that it all had meaning and looking towards the sky for the new signs of Love’s healing power.

On the occasion of Joanne's birthday, we consecrated the still with with joy, tears, and excitement.  This great act of love and generosity will allow Thistle Farms to be a commercial producer of essential oils as we continue to expand our line of healing products.  As the sweet smell of lavender fills the workspace, we are reminded again that our cup runneth over.