5-31-18 - Showdown on the Sabbath

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel passage is here.)

They thought this time they could catch him red-handed. Jesus would never be able to resist healing this poor man, even if they were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And if he did, they’d have a case against him: Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so they might accuse him.

Jesus, who can read their hearts, knows what they’re up to: Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…

I wonder how it must have been for this man with the withered hand, to be the battleground on which Jesus and the Pharisees set to. These doctors of the Law seem uninterested in him or his fate; the Mosaic Law deemed people with defects to be ritually impure. Maybe they could not afford to care about him. Maybe it never occurred to these lovers of literal interpretations of the Law.

Jesus engages them before healing the man. He never gives up trying to open their hard hearts. He poses them a lawyerly question – is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? In another altercation with these leaders, he brings it closer to home – if their sheep fell into a well on the Sabbath, would they not rescue it? Why should he not exercise the power of God in love to restore a person to wholeness? But he doesn’t seem to have moved them, since we’re told,
The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

It seems they were so obsessed with bringing Jesus down, they see this man only as a means to their ends. This is where rule-bound legalism leads – to objectifying other people and created things, rendering them of lower value than the rules meant to assure their well-being. And when we see others as less than human we make ourselves less than human. For we were created in the image of the God who is Love, whose nature is to love at all costs. Any time we fall short of love, we tarnish our selves, and God’s Life becomes less discernible in us.

Can you think of a time when your adherence to a rule or principle caused you to overlook, even degrade the humanity of another? How does a story like this, and Jesus’ words and actions in it, play out in some of our national issues, such as how we treat immigrants, or those at risk of violence, or those mired in poverty due not to their own choices but to national policies that privilege the well-off?

In prayer today, we might place ourselves in that synagogue, watching this story unfold before us. How do you react? Where do your sympathies lie? What is God inviting you into?

The mission of God is about life, saving life, restoring life, upholding life. Life and love must govern how we wield the power of law.

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5-30-18 - Holy Bread

(You can listen to this reflection here. This Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

What a thing to get in trouble for – picking grain on the Sabbath. Snacking, really: 

"One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain."

The Pharisees, always watching for a reason to question Jesus’ bona fides as a holy person, ask why his disciples are breaking the law by doing “work” on the Sabbath. Jesus replies with an example of “situational ethics”:

"Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions." 

Jesus makes two bold rhetorical moves here. First, he evokes a story of the great King David, from whose line the Messiah was to come. Who could argue with the choices of King David? And he tells a story about David and his men raiding the sacramental bread in the temple of God – a much more serious breach than picking off a few heads of grain on the sabbath, yet one for which David seemingly faced no punishment. Feeding the hungry matters more than the letter of the law.

The Pharisees, like all people given to legalism and self-righteousness, liked to interpret the Law in black and white terms. “This is what it says; obey it, or else.” Jesus asserted that the Law was to serve humankind, not inhibit normal human actions and interactions. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” He was not tossing out the Law; he was grounding its interpretation in love, recognizing that it cannot be applied blindly in all circumstances.

In citing this example, implicitly comparing the holy bread of the Presence with heads of grain in a field, Jesus also broadens the scope of what might be deemed holy. Those heads of grain become sacramental bread to feed Jesus’ followers because Jesus is there. Perhaps we need not make quite so strong a distinction between Sacrament and sacramental. Yes, the elements we bless at eucharist are invested with particular holiness, as we believe Christ is truly present in them in a mysterious way when his Church is gathered for worship.

Yet Christ’s presence also infuses the bread we break at our tables and desks, as we remember he is with us. Christ’s presence infuses the wheat as it grows, as we bless our fields. Christ’s presence infuses the preparation in factories and kitchens, as we invoke his holiness in those places. To live a sacramental life is to be mindful of Christ’s presence in everything and everyone as we move through the day.

What ordinary sacraments might God be inviting you to participate in today? What eucharistic feasts? What baptismal blessings of new life? Pray for the grace to see and hear and touch and taste God today.

The Celtic church had such an awareness, and has left us beautiful prayers of blessing over brooms and hearths, cooking pots and garden patches. Here is one for today:

A New Day
As I wake from sleep, rouse me,
As I wash, cleanse me,
As I dress, gird me with your power,
As I eat, energize me,
As I journey, protect me,
As I relax, calm me,
As I sleep, surround me.

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5-29-18 - Above the Law

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

The passage from Mark we will hear next Sunday tells two stories, and in both of them Jesus does something on the Sabbath day that the Pharisees consider against God’s law. In the first story, he defends his disciples snacking on the Sabbath as they walk through a grain field. In the second, he heals a man in the synagogue on the Sabbath – his detractors call that “work.” We’ll take up each story in turn, but today let’s look at the way Jesus defends his actions. 

He says,“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had so elevated the Law of Moses, and the rules and regulations to which that Law had given rise, it was as though they worshipped the rules more than God. Jesus had a deep respect for the Law, but constantly set it into the broader context of God’s love. And here he unequivocally asserts that people matter more to God than the rules meant to keep the people blessed.

In our time there are many who claim to follow Jesus, but make an idol of the Law, even literally making statues of the Ten Commandments. Every time we worship the rules above the God who made them we have departed from the Jesus Way. Indeed, it is harder to follow our Lord than to follow the rules. Jesus continually poured himself out for those around him; he did not stand aloof and point fingers. Jesus continually ascribed value to people the “righteous ones” discarded as being too broken, too blemished, too poor, too sinful, too foreign. That’s why his message was Good News – he was living out God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness.

This reading invites us to examine our own relationship to “the rules,” where we draw lines that condemn more than they bless. Are there particular rules or laws you are drawn to? Particular “rule-breakers” you despise? Ask God to reveal the love at the heart of his law.

Episcopalians are particularly good at rules about worship. Worship tools like the lectionary were made for worshippers, not worshippers for the lectionary. Same with the texts of the prayer book, the hymns of the 18th and 19th centuries we still sing, whether we stand or sit or kneel.

If it brings us closer to God, great. If it keeps us at a distance, or worse, makes it harder for others to draw near to God, reevaluate it. Let love rule.

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5-25-18 - Spiritual and Religious?

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

“So heavenly minded, you're no earthly good,” Johnny Cash charges the self-righteous in a song by that name. The Pharisees certainly fit that bill, if by “heavenly minded” you mean religious. But a person can be religious and not spiritual (to flip our modern “I’m spiritual but not religious” cliche). And that may have been just the charge Jesus leveled at the Pharisees, of which Nicodemus was one: Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"

Jesus says that the Pharisees have not “received my testimony.” “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

He keeps stressing that the realm in which he operates is that of the spiritual – and he infers that Nicodemus, and the Pharisees in general, operate too much in the realm of the religious, the material. In their insistence on keeping the finer points of the Law in every aspect, they’ve lost sight of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s children. And in their pride at how well they uphold God’s law, they cut themselves off from the love and mercy of God.

What a delicate balance we are to keep, living as people of Spirit in this lush and complex, beautiful and painful world of flesh and matter. Can we keep our feet on the ground while enjoying the music of heaven? I think we can – and maybe one way to achieve that balance is to think of ourselves as conduits, go-betweens between these two realms, tuning forks that thrum with the pure notes of God-music as we are placed upon the surface of this world.

If we really learn to live by the guidance of the Spirit, trusting our intuition in prayer, powered by the Breath of God, we can fully engage the life of this earth. There’s a song I like called “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” That title describes the way we can combine our vertical and horizontal existences - forming a cross.

Do you feel balanced between attentiveness to the Spirit and engagement in the world? Do you list toward one or the other? Which way do you lean? What spiritual practices might help us tune our spiritual receptors, to live in the heavenly and the earthly spheres at once?

The Gospel does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to this conversation with Jesus, whether he was able to make the leap to perceiving by Spirit, or was persuaded by Jesus’ explanation about “God so loved the world,” sending his Son, not to condemn, but to save. But he does reenter our story at the end, after the crucifixion, when he helps to wrap Jesus' body, providing 75 pounds of embalming spices to anoint him until he can be buried after the Sabbath. That was a risky undertaking, given the danger Jesus’ followers faced in those traumatic days.

That strikes me as the action of a man who now understood, and was willing to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow him where it would, who was now so truly heavenly-minded, he was of great earthly use.

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5-24-18 - Holy Sailboats

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

I don’t know what Nicodemus' Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator type would be, but based on this encounter recorded in John, we might label him very “J." He is a concrete thinker, likes to receive information without too much nuance and mystery. And here is Jesus (likely to score in the perfectly balanced center of each Myers-Briggs continuum), telling him that his senses and intellect won't help him perceive all of reality; that there is a spiritual realm contiguous with this material world of ours, equally knowable, not by physical senses or “flesh,” but by spirit.

Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.'"

Jesus says this is not a realm you can control – you can only be in it and attentive to it:
"The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

Poor Nicodemus. This makes his head hurt. Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?"

How can these things be? People who approach life more mystically might ask, “How could these things not be?” God made all kinds of people, who are then further shaped by genes, upbringing, traumas, gifts, friends, teachers… no wonder we approach reality so differently. Even so, I do believe Jesus is saying that those who like their information very concrete will need to stretch and give their spirits some play in perceiving spiritual reality.

How do you tend to perceive and process information?
Does abstraction make you anxious, or too much concreteness make you feel hemmed in?
How do you respond to this word of Jesus’ about perceiving and receiving the Kingdom of God? It could be a good conversation to have with him in prayer…

Our physical senses will not help us perceive the Realm of God, any more than our eyes can discern a light wave. Our senses can show us the effects of the power of that Realm – healing, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation. But how these came about? That we can only perceive with our spiritual vision. When Jesus says, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit,” he is saying we need to let our natural approaches drown, and float on the Living Water of Life, opening ourselves to the radically different seascape of God’s kingdom, or realm, or energy field.

We might say we are being invited to become sailboats, supported by Water and powered by Wind. Nicodemus wanted to be a motor boat, providing his own momentum, able to stop and start at will. Motor boats give us more control than sailboats.

But the realm of God is for those willing to hoist their sails into the breath of God and go where God wills, at whatever pace God decides. Wind power – that's how it is when we're born of the Spirit.

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5-23-18 - Born Yesterday

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

The expression, “born yesterday” suggests naiveté, even ignorance (as in the 1950 Judy Holliday film classic, remade in 1993 with Melanie Griffith.) But the phrase comes to mind as I read Jesus' response to Nicodemus: "I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus chooses to take that literally - "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?" He does have a point. What does Jesus mean by "born from above?"

That phrase can also be translated “born again,” prompting some Christian groups to insist that only those who are “born again” are real Christians – and they know who’s who. Needless to say, this has occasioned much grief and confusion through the ages, causing some to doubt their salvation and others to court self-righteousness because they have met their own criteria.

Most agree we are “born again” or “born from above” in the waters of baptism. Some say we are only born again when we are baptized in the Spirit, proven by the ability to speak in tongues. Some say we were born again on Good Friday, when Jesus paid the price for humanity’s sin and made possible reconciliation with God.

Any and all of these can be true. Maybe “born from above” isn’t a moment but a series of birthings. Maybe we are ever being born from above as we allow the Spirit of God to transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ.

Being born is not something we can make happen. It happens to us. We cannot birth ourselves, or get ourselves born, or will ourselves born, any more than a baby in the womb can arrange its own birth. We find ourselves born anew "from above," sometimes with a dramatic before-and-after, and sometimes gradually throughout our lives. It is God's action, God's love that births us anew, not our own.

What if we choose to live as those who are still being born, knowing we’re evolving as people of the New Covenant? We wouldn’t expect ourselves to be further along in faith than we are, any more than we expect a baby just out of the womb to walk and talk and teach philosophy.

I propose we claim "born yesterday," to remind ourselves we have been born anew, and that the birthing is ongoing. As Paul wrote, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22) We are part of the new creation God is bringing into wholeness of being.

So let's celebrate being "born yesterday." Whenever we are confronted with all that we are not yet able to do or be, we can remind ourselves, “Hey, I was just born yesterday.”

It’s true every morning.

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5-22-18 - Night Vision

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

What is symbol, and what merely detail? When it comes to the Gospel of John, it is tempting to see symbols everywhere. More literary than the other gospels, more informed by philosophical thought, furthered removed from the time it portrays, it invites allegorical interpretation, that way of seeing multiple layers in a biblical text, bringing out the interplay among different texts and ideas.

So what are we to make of the time this story takes place? John is often very precise about time, noting things happening at “six o’clock” or “noon,” or “on the second day.” Here he offers just one temporal clue: “He [Nicodemus] came to Jesus by night.”

By night. There are many possibilities for Nicodemus’ choice of time. Some assume he came furtively, under cover of dark, because he was afraid of what his colleagues would think if they saw him talking with Jesus. Possible. It’s equally likely that, given the demands on both of them, he sought Jesus out at a time when he could have a real conversation with him, without crowds and onlookers interfering. He wanted a personal encounter.

That’s the surface layer. Let’s go deeper: what does “at night” mean to you? Night suggests mystery, offering less clarity than daylight. Lunar light is less direct than solar, being itself a reflection. “Night” intimates insights gained in borrowed light, refracted from multiple angles, form emerging from shadows.

Nighttime is also – for those who work days and manage to stop – a time when we can be in a different mode. Our bodies in motion come to rest; we slow a bit, are solitary or social in a different way than during the day, perhaps gathering over a meal at which we can digest our experiences. Conversations at night are often different than in the daytime – longer, deeper, more connective.

And night is when we allow our conscious mind to recharge; a different way of processing information and reality comes out to play. Our dreams are full of stories and images – we don’t get didactic teachings in dreamscapes, do we? And, like our scriptures, our dreams can contain contradictory images, mash-ups of feelings and information we have trouble processing straight. Dreams are the land of paradox and nuance, as is the life of faith.

Who knows if the writer of John intended all this speculation with those two words, “by night,” but with allegorical interpretation, everything is fair game. Knowing this encounter took place at night invites us to put on different lenses as we try to make sense of it.

We might say the whole enterprise of faith is a walk in the dark. If faith means believing in what is unseen, to walk by faith means stumbling in the dark. We can only really grasp God-Life with our night vision – our “infra-red goggles,” to borrow an image from a powerful dream I once had. Infra-red vision sees heat as light; it finds Life.

And doctrines such as the Trinity, God as one and yet three persons existing in perpetual community? That requires dream vision if we are to see it at all. Let’s polish up our night goggles as we attempt to understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus about flesh and spirit. Night vision will help us to get what our rational minds cannot quite grasp.

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5-21-18 - Interviewing Jesus

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

We’ve been here before, and recently, with Nicodemus and Jesus and their theological discussion about spirit and flesh, comprehension and new birth. Is it already time for a rerun? So says the Lectionary.

And one beauty of Scripture, if we’re open to it, is that it never says exactly the same thing, because we’re never in exactly the same space when we receive it. We can revisit one passage many times and not exhaust its meaning. So let’s have another look at this conversation to see how it might illuminate the mysteries of the Triune God for us.

We might begin by treating it as story, not as theology. What if we enter this as a story we’ve never heard. Who are the main characters? What do we know about them?

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

Okay, so we know this Nicodemus is a Jewish religious leader, and that he is a Pharisee. Research tells us the Pharisees were a sect of Jews known for their fidelity to the Law. Though we find in the Gospels many contentious encounters between Jesus and Pharisees, and Jesus is quoted as being highly critical of what he perceived to be the hypocrisy and heavy-handedness of many Pharisees, their goals were honorable: to keep God’s law in every particular and so reflect the holiness and righteousness of God.

Beyond this, we know little about Nicodemus, but that he was a person who chose to come and see Jesus at night instead of in the broad light of day. Was he too busy during the day? Or was Jesus too surrounded by crowds by day? Or did Nicodemus not want to be seen?

And who is this Jesus he came to see? Nicodemus labels him a teacher, from God, who can do amazing miracles. (What John’s gospel terms “signs,” we call miracles.) So we can infer that he is a holy person, someone with authority, and probably pretty special to be sought out by a man of Nicodemus’ standing. Nicodemus wants to learn something: it appears that he wants to know, for himself, whether or not this strange man, so holy and powerful, yet willing to spend time with people who are sick, sinful, or both, is for real: Is he really God-sent?

Isn’t that what we’d like to know too? We who have put our faith in a man we’ve never met in flesh, in a story that we tell and re-tell because we’ve seen its power to open the human heart. Don't we want to know Jesus is for real?

Imagine you are Nicodemus. You want to find out more about this Jesus you’re pretty sure is the Real Thing. You find a time and a place where you can talk with him face to face. Set that up in your imagination - where do you meet Jesus?

What do you say?

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5-18-18 - The Three Ps

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

This week, preparing for Pentecost, we have explored the ways the Holy Spirit helps us pray and praise, live “pneumatically,” be like pie with the Spirit’s fruit and filling, and accept the Spirit’s gifts for ministry (can’t think of a “P” word for that…). Let’s end by looking at the way the Spirit brings us supernatural peace, presence and power, through prayer (there we go, four more Ps!).

We need nothing more in our multi-faceted, out-of-control lives than peace and power. And though both are states we can try to achieve on our own, something extraordinary kicks in when we ask the Holy Spirit to give them.

When we are in turmoil and pray for God’s peace, and feel ourselves begin to settle, that is the Holy Spirit at work. Paul calls this peace from the Spirit “the peace that defies understanding.” It comes in profoundly unpeaceful circumstances and is all the more wondrous for being beyond our ability to reason or meditate ourselves into. As he wrote to the Philippians, we can pray in times of anxiety, with thanksgiving, and then this peace of Christ will be ours.

Similarly, the power of God comes into us most fully when we are at our weakest. Paul wrote that, in a moment of crisis, he heard God say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”(II Corinthians 12:9) This is so counter-intuitive, it can be hard to remember when we’re at a low ebb. When I am facing a deadline or an event and I think, “I got nothin',” I am reminded of this principle. If I do remember to ask for inspiration when creating a sermon or a flyer, ideas soon come to me.

Paul – and Jesus before him – also relied upon that power of the Spirit revealed in what looks to us like miracles to back up their message of radical forgiveness and transformation in God’s love. It is not our power or our persuasiveness or our gifts that reach another’s heart – it is the power of God's Spirit working through us.

The Holy Spirit is right here, as close as our breath. In fact, we need only stop and breathe in with intention to begin to feel the Spirit’s presence. If I pray in tongues for a moment, I feel the Spirit's presence. Praying in tongues may be unfamiliar to some, who associate it with the occasional emotional excess of Pentecostalism, but it is a great gift of the Spirit, one intended as a prayer language. It enables us to allow the Spirit to pray through us. In that way, the prayer begins and ends with God. We are just part of the loop, though an integral part, for if we don’t add our faith and intention, God’s own desire may not be realized on earth.

Hmmm…. Did I just stumble into a sticky theological thicket there? Maybe... but here's Paul, again, in a passage we’ll hear Sunday: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

We don’t even have to pray on our own strength! Nothing we do as Christ-followers needs to be done alone. God is with us in all of it, all the time, or wants to be. And how do we experience God with us in it all, all of the time? Through the Spirit of the Father and of the Son – the Holy Spirit of God.

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5-17-18 - Gifts That Keep Giving

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Among the blessings promised us as God’s saints are spiritual gifts. These are Spirit-given abilities that help the church carry out the mission of God. They are not quite the same as talents and abilities we are born with or train for. Sometimes our spiritual gifts overlap with our natural talents, as with musicians who also lead worship music, or talented speakers who also preach, or naturally gregarious people who also have a gift of evangelism. Other times, spiritual gifts are abilities we discover we have, or others notice in us. We discover them because they bear fruit.

Where spiritual gifts overlap with our talents or traits, we identify them as spiritual gifts if they help the church proclaim the Good News of life in Jesus Christ, and sometimes by the intensity with which we manifest that gift. For instance, many people have faith; but someone with the spiritual gift of "faith" has a supernatural ability to believe in God’s power to transform a situation. Their assurance can ignite the faith of others and bring about healing. Many people are well organized, but someone with the spiritual gift of administration is able to facilitate the ministries of the whole group for mission.

The New Testament includes several lists of spiritual gifts. The more obvious are gifts like teaching, preaching, healing, evangelism. There are others, listed and not: prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues, administration, compassion, generosity. What are some spiritual gifts that you’re aware of having? What ministries do they empower you to live out? When did they surface? Sometimes when our circumstances change, new gifts emerge for ministries we can now take on. What gifts have others identified in you, that you may not have thought you had?

It’s also good to look at our “gift mixes.” Taking an inventory of our spiritual gifts and seeing how they combine can point us to ministries. Someone with a gift of healing and compassion (beyond the average) might be called to minister to people on the streets, or someone with a gift for teaching and music to lead choirs.

St. Paul wrote a lot about gifts, because he wanted his churches to know that God equips us for every ministry to which God calls us. He wanted them to crave the gifts – and to recognize that they are all Spirit-given and equally important. To the Corinthians, who were very keen on certain “flashier” gifts, he wrote, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” He enumerates some of the diverse gifts for ministry, concluding, “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.” (ICorinthians 12:4-11)

Paul also reminded his readers that there is no point having all the gifts in the world if we’re lacking in love. That’s what that famous hymn to love often read at weddings is really about – how to exercise the gifts of the Spirit in community, a community that is to be marked by love.

The gifts of the Spirit are gifts, not assets or rewards. We cannot buy or earn them, but we can pray for the ones we believe we want or need. We can trust the Spirit to give us what we need to live fully into God's purposes for us.

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5-16-18 - Holy Pie

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

When I start reading what St. Paul has to say about the Holy Spirit, I get to thinking about pie. Why’s that, you ask? Well, there’s a lot of talk about fruit and filling. (Ba-dam-bam…)

St. Paul had a lot to say about the Holy Spirit – the Spirit’s function in the life of the church; the gifts, or charisms, given to us by the Spirit; the way the more “charismatic” of the charisms should be lived out in worship and community; and the fruit and the filling ("Do not get drunk on wine... Instead, be filled with the Spirit..." Ephesians 5:18). He said his proclamation of the Good News of restoration in Christ was accompanied by signs of the power we're given as heirs of the Gospel. As he wrote to the church in Corinth, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (I Corinthians 2:4-5)

It is the Spirit’s power that makes our message and ministry effective at opening hearts and making peace and calling forth justice. Beyond power in the moment, the Spirit equips us with the gifts and characteristics we need as saints of the Living God. There are personality traits that Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit”: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23a).

Human beings are capable of such attributes without God, I’m sure – but not often, and rarely in a sustained manner. When we truly allow the Holy Spirit to fill us and transform us, we find ourselves manifesting these fruits in a way that surprises us and the people around us. When someone who's always been downcast becomes a person of joy, we can tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and Prozac. Likewise, when someone known for her temper develops forbearance, you know God must be up to something.

What if we were to make a list of these “fruits” Paul names, and add things we feel are missing, like humility. Then we can do an inventory, noting the levels of each of these we feel we possess – give it a number or fill in a circle with a rough percentage. Have you experienced more of any of these since you became more conscious about following Christ? Which are the attributes you particularly crave? We could revisit the list periodically, check our "levels."

God desires that each of us experience this fruit. And we don’t get the fruit without the filling. And one way we get Spirit-filled, allowing God to sow in us the seeds of these traits, is to intentionally invite the Spirit to dwell in us. That prayer is as simple as “Come, Holy Spirit!” It is a prayer I utter frequently before and during worship, and at other times when I realize I’m trying to do something on my own, or when my spirits are low. If we can get to the point where that prayer rises up in us all through the day, and spend lengthier times of quiet just bathing in the Spirit’s love and peace, we'll find ourselves both filled and fruitful.

In my experience, the Spirit is an eager guest, but one who awaits our invitation. She does not insist or break down the door. He doesn’t even knock all that hard, just is happy when we say, “Oh, I forgot you were there. Please come in... Want some pie?”

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5-15-18 - Pumped

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Theological study relating to doctrines of the Holy Spirit is called “Pneumatology,” pneuma being the ancient Greek word for breath, spirit, soul. It is also the root of our word “pneumatic,” referring to compressing air to generate power. And, on the other end of the intellectual spectrum (and a lifetime ago…), there was that recurring Saturday Night Live sketch, with the body builders Hanz and Franz and their catch phrase, “Pump you up!"

Definitions of pneumatic speak of things being “filled with air,” or “using air pressure to move or work.” Inflated tires help move vehicles; steam-fed pistons power machinery. The compressed air moves the pistons, which move other parts (or something...), small things powering the whole. That’s a pretty good image of a church engaged in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. We are parts working pneumatically to accomplish far more than we could on our own.

The New Testament contains many instances of people being “filled with the Spirit.” This is the way the Holy Spirit often seems to work in the world – by filling human beings. We read of Jesus, before certain miracles, that “the Spirit was with him.” When we are filled with the Spirit, we are able to do “immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine,” to use Paul’s phrase. We are able to exercise faith, mobilize others, speak boldly, pray powerfully, organize brilliantly, joyfully aware that God is working with and through us.

What does it feel like to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It can be a gentle experience, waves of comfort or well-being or peace washing over us. It can be feel like an influx of energy, with a physiological effect on our nervous system – increased heartbeat, tingling, trembling, feeling heat in extremities or all over. It can come with an intensity of emotion – joy, hope, faith, love, or give us total clarity about something we’re doing or saying. What does it feel like for you?

I can feel the difference when doing something on my own steam (writing Water Daily, for instance), using natural talents and ideas, and when it feels like the Holy Spirit is filling me, writing through me. Sometimes I don’t feel anything different – I only know by the result that the Spirit added more than I brought. And sometimes I’m in a flow that I know to be Spirit-filled. We might call that pneumatic ministry. God desires us to be filled with compressed power that moves us so that the whole enterprise functions at peak effectiveness. God wants our faith tires filled so we can move mountains.

Of course, “pumped” is also slang for “excited,” “psyched up,” anticipating great things. If we truly want the gifts and blessings and ministries that are our inheritance as beloved believers in Christ, we will allow the Holy Spirit to "pump us up," and seek to live “pumped.”

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

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5-14-18 - Inspired

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This week I will reflect on the Holy Spirit generally, rather than on specific biblical texts. (If you want to explore the Acts 2 story, see Water Daily, June 2-6, 2014) After all, the Holy Spirit is the God-Person who makes possible everything we experience as Christians, our faith, our praises, our prayers, ministries. There would be no Church without the Holy Spirit.

In fact, I once wrote a sermon drama called “It’s a Wonderful Trinity," the ridiculous premise of which was borrowed from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The Holy Spirit is feeling depressed about his usefulness, since the Father and the Son seem to get a lot more attention. (Theologians would call this a weak Pneumatology, or Doctrine of the Holy Spirit...) An angel has to show him what the world and the church might be like if there were no Holy Spirit. We hear a really dull sermon, a choir singing listlessly and out of tune, people unable to carry out ministries with any effectiveness, and the like. It was very silly - and I hope it got people thinking about how the Spirit affects our lives as carriers of the Gospel.

It is easy to overlook the operation of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit focuses our attention on Jesus. Jesus likened the Spirit to the wind, which we know by its effects on other things and only “see” as it carries matter through the air. So it is with the Holy Spirit – we know her presence by the fruit our ministries bear, or by our experience of the presence of God in prayer or worship, or by what we see in other people, or others see and hear in us.

The Holy Spirit enables us to pray and praise, to experience peace, to wield spiritual power, to bear the fruit of love and healing in our lives. In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is seen as the source of power, wisdom, creativity, comfort, prophecy, gifts for ministry, and virtues like joy and patience. The Spirit, who is the spirit of the Father and the Son, is the way we experience God.

When and where do you most often experience or discern the movement of the Spirit?
Can you tell the difference when you're praying or acting on your own steam or in the Spirit?
When and where are you conscious of seeing the movement of the Spirit in people or situations?

The word "spirit" is related to our words for inspiration and for respiration, breathing. As we focus this week of the various ways the Holy Spirit moves in our lives, I pray we will increase our lung capacity, as it were, making more space within for God's loving presence, God's transforming power. Be inspired; breathe God in!

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5-11-18 - Witnesses

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Jesus said to his disciples, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”  (The Gospel for Ascension Day is here.)

I like to joke that many Episcopalians seem enrolled in a Witness Protection Program, staying as low-profile as possible about their faith and spirituality. That can happen when we focus more on church than on Christ. Jesus calls those who would bear his name to bear witness to his story, and to the power of God he taught and demonstrated. And witnesses testify.

Maybe “testify” is the problematic word. A witness in a court room may not tell his story voluntarily. So let’s leave that formal, sterile, judicial context and think about the way we talk about things we’ve witnessed in everyday life. An amazing encounter with wildlife. That viral video that made us laugh till it hurt. The adorable thing our granddaughter said. The two-mile back-up with no known cause we endured. The new restaurant we love. The movie we just saw. We bear witness all the time.

So let’s start talking about our encounters with the Holy when we have them. Let’s talk about our mission activities and our worship experiences and the joy of community. And let’s talk about Jesus and his story, and how it interweaves with our stories… or better yet, how it frames our stories. Our faith is not meant to be one strand of our life, woven in with all the other strands. It is meant to be the frame in which the tapestry sits, the frame that holds and contains our work and relationships and play and rest - our life.

Bearing witness is not even something we have to “do.” It is something we allow God to do through us. This Witness Program comes with a built-in power supply. Jesus says:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1)

And in Luke: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

That power came at Pentecost. We receive it at baptism, confirmation, ordination - and every time we exercise faith in the name of Jesus. If you find yourself in a situation that could skew “spiritual,” say a quick prayer: “Okay, God, you promised power… give me the courage and the words.”

Exercise your faith in prayer if called on. Tell a story that is meaningful to you. Talk about how Jesus is meaningful to you. We can do that in ways that give people space for their own experiences and views. A witness is not there to persuade, but to tell a story that is true and authentic.

“…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
From the perspective of Jerusalem in 33 CE (give or take...), we are the ends of the earth. If we’ve received blessing from God, let’s bear witness.

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5-10-18 - Blessing As We Go

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Today is Ascension Day, yet I am thinking of Ash Wednesday, when I, like so many colleagues, go out at the crack of dawn to offer the imposition of ashes and a prayer to any commuters who want to pause in their morning rush. The “Ashes To Go” movement can be considered “cafeteria Christianity” at its worst, conferring God’s blessing without any commitment or understanding. Yet such concern lives in tension with the benefit of giving people access to the holy in the midst of the everyday, not to mention getting Christians out from behind our pretty church walls into the open. Sometimes the blessing has to precede the understanding. Perhaps always.

So I am cheered by this depiction of Jesus blessing his followers even as he is carried up into heaven:
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.

"While he was blessing them.." Even as he ascended into heaven! Luke tells us that this blessing of Jesus’ was so galvanizing, the apostles continued it: And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

How wonderful if it could be said of us that we were “continually blessing God,” in the temple or in the world. God's blessing is no passive wave of the hands. It is an active transfer of love and commendation. To bless and be blessed is to increase the Life of God in us and around us. Blessing is one way we communicate with God and pass along what God has given us to others. We might even say it is to be the chief activity of God's family – more central than much of what church people spend our time and energy on.

When did you last feel blessed? If you are a church-goer, you receive a pastor's blessing at the end of the worship service. But when did you last feel God’s blessing, God’s pleasure and delight in you? Try to recall that, and put yourself in the way of it more often. I believe God’s blessing is always there for us; we experience it in different ways, so know yours.

When have you been aware of blessing someone else, whether they knew it or not? We can bless people in person. We can also call blessing down on people we pass on the street, on animals, on countries, on marriages, on houses and workplaces – you name it. When you say, “God bless you,” know that you are invoking the power that made the universe and inviting it to bring blessing to whomever or whatever you bless. It's a powerful action.

Who or what do you feel called to bless today? Go do it!
You can do it sitting in your house, or you bless as you go. Jesus did. And I think He still is.

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5-9-18 - Play It Again

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Tomorrow is Ascension Day, so we’ll look at that story for the rest of this week. Ascension is an odd story and an odd doctrine – but it does get Jesus back to the heavenly precincts where he is said to be seated on the right hand of the Father. (Which inspired a child once to ask me the vexing question, “Who’s sitting on God’s left hand?”)

Jesus hung out for forty days after his resurrection, the Gospels tell us, instructing and inspiring his followers to believe the impossible, and to act as though they believed it. It’s hard to convince the world all things are possible with God when you’re holed up in a room in Jerusalem for fear of your life. So Jesus kept showing up when least expected, and going through the lessons again. Once more, with feeling…

Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

This time he does more than tell them where they’ve been – he tells them where they’re going: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations, starting from Jerusalem. In the Acts version of the Pentecost story, Jesus gives a fuller itinerary: “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The book of Acts shows us how closely the spreading of the Good News followed that trajectory.

Why do we need to be reminded of where we’ve been in order to get on with where we’re going? I can be impatient with readings from the Hebrew Bible – they strike me more and more as scriptures for an ancient, alien people, not for today’s followers of Christ. And yet I know why I continue to read them, and why we read them in church on Sundays, why we don't want to get too far away from them: they remind us where we stand in the big picture of God’s courtship of an alienated humanity. We may not always like the way those ancient people spoke of God, or the words or motives they attributed to God, but the overarching story is one of love. As Jesus reminded his followers of what he'd taught them in the recent past, we too need to be reminded.

What is your relationship with the stories of the Hebrew bible? What about the New Testament?
Does the bible help you to proclaim forgiveness and wholeness to the people you know?
If you’re not in the habit of reading the bible regularly, spend some time with a small chunk today.

The bible is our anchor as we grow in faith and in the love of God. It tethers us to a rich tradition and a vast and diverse community of faith, living now and gone before. Consider it the rearview mirror of faith – if we want to go forward in God’s mission as Jesus tells us, we have to keep our eyes on the road and at the same time be aware of what’s behind us. It’s called driving.

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5-8-18 - Is Unity Possible for Christians?

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Split decision this year: I will spend two days on the Gospel appointed for next Sunday, and three on the readings for Ascension Day, which is Thursday. Here's Day 2 of Easter 7:

One day I was reading Amos, a prophet to whom God gave symbolic visions. So I said to God, “If I were a prophet, what would you show me?” Right away a picture formed in my mind. To my left, I saw a crowd of people frantic, their faces turned toward the sky, their mouths open like baby birds waiting for food. I understood they were ravenous. Then my attention was drawn to another crowd nearby, angry, shouting at each other. I realized these were bakers, arguing about who had the best recipe for bread. The interpretation came into my mind almost as quickly as the images: the bakers were the churches, squabbling over their differences, while people hungered for the Bread of Life.

One prominent strand among many in Jesus’ farewell discourse is unity among Christ-followers. In his prayer for his disciples on his last night among them, Jesus expresses a deep concern for them. He prays that they be protected from the world, and from the evil one. And it seems that what he most wants to see them protected from is disunity.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” he tells them. And he prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

It’s as though the worst thing that could happen to them is not bodily harm or failure, but breaking faith with one another. When we look at how fractured the church of Jesus Christ is and has been, we can understand his concern. The power of God is unlimited except when it comes to the human heart. God still gives us choice, and we can hear the longing in Jesus that we exercise our choice to come together, not stand divided.

I don’t see in this passage an indictment of denominations and different expressions of Christianity – that’s just the way human nature and human institutions work. Jesus doesn’t need us all worshipping the same way or even emphasizing the same points of doctrine. What Jesus does plead is that we regard one another with love, and that the world see his church as united in love for him and for God’s children.

So much divides us – history, theology, interpretation of scripture, divergent views on justice and holiness. Much of this is real and important. Is it possible for us to set aside those things that divide, and focus on the One True thing – or, more biblically, the True One, our Lord Jesus, Son of God, risen savior of the world?

Or is it the worst sort of denial to say, “Oh, let’s just get together and love Jesus, and I'll overlook your homophobia/ racism/defense of privilege/disregard for the sanctity of life/cherry-picking Scripture/fill-in-your-own-rant-here?” Where do the claims for Christian unity crash against the call for justice? That’s a huge question. I can’t answer it. I only know this polarization, even injustice, is not godly.

Jesus prayed, “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.” He promises he is still praying for his apostles, those called to reveal the Good News of restoration in Christ. I don’t know how to lay aside my outrage at some of the things my fellow Christians say or do, any more than some of them could honor my positions.

But we all know how to pray to the One we call Lord, whose power to heal and transform can work even on our stubborn hearts if we’re willing to invite him in. Enough prayer and enough humility, enough allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us, we might live into Jesus' prayer that we be one.

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5-7-18 - Yours, Mine & Ours

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Split decision this year: I will spend two days on the Gospel appointed for next Sunday, and three on the readings for Ascension Day, which is Thursday. Here's Day 1 of John 17:

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Yours, Mine and Ours, the true story of a blended family (a widower with ten children married a widow with eight, and they had two more…). I got the biggest kick out of the shenanigans in that household. (The book was made into a film with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in 1968, and then a more forgettable remake in 2005.)

None of which has anything to do with this week’s gospel, except that the way Jesus talks to his heavenly Father about his disciples always reminds me of the title:
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me… they are yours.”

This prayer for Jesus’ disciples is almost tidal, moving forward in overlapping waves. In this first part, it’s hard to track who belongs to whom. Jesus refers to his disciples as “those you gave me,” those entrusted to him by the Father. “They were yours, and you gave them to me…”

What if clergy more often thought of their congregants in this way – as those who belong to God, entrusted into their care for a time, not “mine.” What if a congregation viewed its pastor this way? And a wife, her husband; and parents their children; and teachers their students, doctors their patients, stockbrokers their clients. How different the web of human relationships would be if we all viewed the people in our lives as belonging to God first and foremost, and only secondarily and in a very limited way, to us. How much heartache might be avoided.

Regarding other people as belonging to God, we might treat them with more reverence and care. Maybe this is why Jesus was so easy sitting with lepers and outcasts, the greedy and the deranged – because he knew they were God’s precious creatures and therefore worthy of honor. He healed not to make them more acceptable; he healed because wholeness more perfectly reflected their status as God’s beloved.

Periodically I encounter the advice to “Remember you are a child of God” or words to that effect. It is a valuable spiritual practice; most of us would be kinder to ourselves if we lived it. Today, though, let's turn it around. Think of a person or group or type of person in whom you find it hard to see anything good, to respect, let alone love. Call that person to mind. And then overlay this caption over that picture: “Belongs to God.” How does that change the way you regard that person? Try it every day this week. Note what feelings come up, and pray through them.

Jesus ended with a statement of mutual possessing: “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” We are invited into that mutual belonging, in this gigantic blended family we call the human race, loved beyond measure by the God who created, redeemed and sustains us. We continue to bring Jesus glory as we treat everyone around us as both ours and God’s.

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5-4-18 - Chosen

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Most people like to be chosen. Whether it’s for a team in grade school, a dance in high school, a job, an award, a date, it makes us feel good to be seen and selected (stalkers notwithstanding…). But being chosen is passive – we can’t ensure we’ll be picked, as hard as we might try to be the best candidate.

That makes some people more comfortable being the chooser, even choosy. Choosing puts us in control. Freedom of choice is a huge value in American life. (So don’t say “we only serve Pepsi” when I want a Diet Coke!) We champion the right to choose our jobs, spouses, healthcare and reproduction, even gender. Freedom to choose is a core value for all human life and interaction.

Jesus’ disciples thought they chose to follow him. He didn’t compel them – he came along and said, “Follow me.” They made that choice, often at great cost to their families and communities. So imagine their surprise to hear Jesus say that’s not the way it happened:
“You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”

Did Jesus really choose this motley crew of hard-headed, occasionally thick-headed men and women? Maybe he should have used a head-hunter. Or maybe Jesus has different values than we do. Maybe this mixed up group was just exactly who he wanted to graduate as his first team of apostles. And maybe he has chosen us for the same reason, because he believes that we too are gifted and lovable, capable of bearing fruit, abundant fruit that will endure.

Do you feel chosen by God to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Or did it feel like something you chose, or someone else chose for you? There has to be an element of response on our part; we’re not puppets. I believe it is the realization of being chosen that elicits a response in us. That’s how it works when two people are courting. And this relationship with Jesus is more love story than hiring process.

How do you respond to being chosen by God? Does it affect the way you live your faith?
How does knowing God’s desire for us is fruitfulness affect the way you live your faith?

The fruitfulness and the chosen-ness go together. We cannot make ourselves fruitful any more than we can get ourselves chosen. When we let in the mystery of how precious we are to God, the wonder that God would choose us to participate in God’s great mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness in Christ – that knowledge of our chosen-ness generates a desire in us to bear fruit in that mission, the fruit of lives transformed and hearts opened.

Our hearts become opened by the awareness of Love, and then we bear the fruit of Love into the lives around us, as God's transforming power works through us as Jesus promised. That is how we see fruit that will last.

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5-3-18 - No Longer Servants

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

There are promotions – and then there is the status upgrade Jesus' followers got on his last evening among them. He was telling them what it means to abide in his love, to live by his rules, to love one another with the kind of love they received from him. He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

In a culture in which people attached themselves to a spiritual master, whom they served and revered, followed and learned from, this language of friendship might have sounded jarring. So Jesus explained, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

Being someone’s servant and being their friend are very different. Servanthood can be easier – you have no responsibility to strategize, plan, or achieve the grand vision. You need only fulfill the tasks assigned you with all the skill and commitment you can muster, anticipating needs as appropriate. And then collect your paycheck and take your assigned time off. There is a simplicity to contractual, hierarchical relationships.

Friendship, with its mutuality and intimacy, is much messier; covenantal, not contractual; committed to nurturing the friend and growing the friendship. Friends are responsible for one another in a way that a supervisor and servant are not. Friends are recipients of each other’s joys and worries and confidences. This is what Jesus highlights; he says he has entrusted his followers with everything he has heard from God the Father. That must have been daunting to hear.

Yet it must also have been exhilarating to be told they were no longer servants, but friends. If we work for someone we respect and admire, it’s a rush to be elevated from employee to friend. There is more freedom and collegiality, along with more responsibility.

Have you have taken Jesus up on his offer of friendship? Sometimes in the church we can act more like pack mules struggling up a hill than as independent, respected, friends of the Living God. Is it easier to think we work for Jesus rather than with him?

Jesus didn't ask us to work for him. He wants us working with him, filled with his Spirit, not checking off tasks and having him sign off on our time-sheets. He has entrusted us with the honor and responsibility of being his friends. Have we accepted? Do we hang out in prayer with him as a friend? Do we go out, healing and transforming people with him, sitting with sinners, challenging oppressors, loving the loveless?

How do we move and talk and sit and listen as friend of the Risen and Anointed One? 

Figuring that out - that's the work of ministry.

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5-2-18 - Love One Another

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Jesus set a pretty high bar for friendship. On his last night in human life, he told his followers, 

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

I don’t know many people likely to be asked to lay down their lives for friends, though some under persecution or threat of war are faced with such choices. The highest sacrifice asked of most of us is that we lay aside our prerogatives, preferences, convenience for our friends.

But Jesus knew what was ahead – for him, and for his friends. The persecution that would be unleashed after Jesus' arrest, crucifixion and resurrection would eventually claim the lives of most of those with him at that momentous Last Supper. Before they could offer that kind of sacrifice, though, they would have to be willing to truly love each other. Jesus had said that keeping his commandments would enable them to abide in his love. “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Now he spells out the heart of that mandatum novum.“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” 

"But we do love each other," they may have thought. They had spent three years in close quarters and sometimes no quarters at all. But the gospels tell us how much squabbling and jockeying went on among these disciples. And no matter what affection they may have had for each other, Jesus was now upping the stakes: they were to love each other as he loved them. His was a love that laid down everything to draw near them, that bore their misjudgments and inability to grasp the ways of the Kingdom he was trying to inculcate in them. His was a love that would ultimately lead to sacrificial death, and then an empty grave and new life eternally.

These men and women were to be the agents of sharing that new life with the world. They couldn’t do that if they didn’t love each other as Jesus had loved them. And so he commanded them to love, even unto death.

We are the beneficiaries of their love. The legacy they left, even with all the strains and dysfunction common to human institutions, grew into an incubator from which sacrificial love can pour out in God’s mission. That kind of love is asked of us if we are to be part of God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and renew all things to wholeness.

How do we love like that? We begin by allowing Jesus to love us like that, truly taking in the depth and breadth of his love, not only “back then” but now, forever and always. Those moments in which we grasp the extent of God’s love for us, deserved or not, help form us as vessels of that love for others. We can also ask Jesus to show us his love for people we find it a challenge to love. His vision can help us love people when it’s difficult to get past what we see and hear in them.

The church of Jesus Christ is increasingly divided among factions and peoples who find it nearly impossible to "love one another as he has loved us." It’s no wonder our proclamation has so little impact. So we have ample opportunity to practice loving those who interpret the Good News is ways that radically diverge from our ways of seeing, who seem to us to miss the whole point of Jesus’ grace and love. That's who we are commanded to love. Yikes!

Yet if we can find a way to love one another across the barriers that separate us… I do believe the world might finally know that Love of which we are stewards.

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5-1-18 - Joy

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Joy is an elusive state of being – and a gift. We cannot acquire it, can only receive it. We can't achieve joy by striving, or by talking about it. I’ve tried. And yet joy is something Jesus wants his followers to possess: "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”  (Here is this Sunday's gospel reading.)

Joy defies easy definition. It is not the same as happiness or contentment, though it shares attributes with those conditions. It goes deeper, a way of being and seeing that comes from the core of us, and gives us a sense of “alrightness” no matter what our circumstances. It takes deep faith, decisive faith to believe that “all things shall be well” in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. The evidence God provides, of resurrection life triumphing over evil and degradation, disease and death, can seem flimsy in the face of what our natural senses tell us. Those who possess joy are able to proclaim life in the face of death, not denying the reality of pain and evil, yet living in the "already" of Christ’s victory over these ills.

Joy cannot be acquired or fabricated, but it can be cultivated. We can expand our capacity to receive Christ's joy. We can take the kernel that is there in us, which we are promised as a gift of the Spirit, and help it to grow. How do we cultivate and increase our capacity for joy?

We start with gratitude. The spiritual practice of gratitude waters the seeds of joy in us. Calling to mind God’s gifts to us, unexpected blessings, all the times things do work out against the odds, or in spite of them, creates an atmosphere in us in which joy can grow and flourish. Similarly, compassion for ourselves and for others helps nurture a climate in which joy can thrive.

We can also flex our “joy muscles.” We must decide to be people of joy, apart from how we feel on a given day or hour. If we accept that joy is a gift of the Spirit, and we accept that Jesus names it as a mark of Christ-followers, we can commit ourselves to letting it grow in us. So often we let anxiety or grief take root in us, sometimes so deeply, we can’t imagine life without them. What if we allow God to plant the seed of joy that deep in us, to gradually uproot those life-squashing states of being?

What is your relationship to joy? Is it familiar to you, or rare? Some of us didn’t learn joy growing up, or have had it suppressed by circumstances. We need to make space for it now, as a choice and a decision.

If we allow that God has already planted the seed of joy in us, then we need to water it and weed around it and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight. We water it with gratitude and compassion and generosity. We weed away the cares and preoccupations that threaten to choke our joy – worry, envy, competitiveness, greed, gluttony – the usual suspects. And we give it plenty of exposure to the light of the Son in prayer, and worship and mission.

Jesus told his followers he wanted their joy to be complete. Not just a little – the whole deal. We can feel and show forth joy in times of trial and sadness, stress and adversity. I just lost my best beloved cat Dandelion; I’m inviting joy to spring up in the midst of my grief. Perhaps, like the light cast by a beacon on a stormy night, joy is most visible in the dark.

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