4-30-20 - The Abundant Life

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

Want a simple principle to guide life choices? Here’s one: Which option leads to more life, and which is likely to drain life away?

Our energy and time are finite; we may as well invest in people and activities we find life-giving, and which give life to others, rather than ones which run us down, lead to dark or toxic thinking or behavior, or involve unnecessary criticism. I realize it's not always that simple, and sometimes involves a rewiring process. Yet that is the transformation the Holy Spirit works in us as we make room for God-Life.

Jesus draws a contrast between life-giving and death-dealing in this week’s passage: 

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” he says. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“The thief” might be anything or anyone who stunts our life or brings oppression, be it emotional, political, spiritual, economic, or any other kind. Jesus was painting the religious leaders with that brush, and of course the Roman occupiers. He probably also meant our spiritual adversary, the devil, intent on drawing people away from trusting in God's love. We know what death-dealing looks and feels like.

The abundant life is harder to describe, since life is hard to quantify – but we know it when we’re living it. It consists not so much in an abundance of things or time or even love, as in our awareness of richness, our being tuned to abundance. The abundant life is a balanced life, where we are renewed as we pour ourselves out for others. It is a life of laughter and insight and rich conversations, of wonder and play. It is life that we live here and now, and it does not end with death. That, Jesus says, is why he came – that we might have life, and have it in abundance.

What are the “thieves” of your good will, peace, confidence, and joy? Make a list of all the culprits. It might include people you love; surfacing that can give you incentive to work on those relationships. This exercise is not without complications!

In what places do you find the most life? List those too. Do you get to put enough of your time and energy into those things? Can you find a way to invest more? Any investment advisor will tell us to put our resources into things with a good yield, what Jesus called “fruitfulness.” Are we investing wisely with our time and gifts and love?

When our hearts are tuned to abundance, we find feasts large and small. We make feasts for others at the drop of a hat. We trust that resources will be there when needed, and usually find they are. We move with the wind of the Spirit in our sails, and when we’re becalmed, we rest in it. We feel our feelings fully, even the less happy ones. We forgive ourselves and others easily. We love ourselves and others.

The abundant life is not where I started out, and it’s still a place I need guidance to navigate. As the Holy Spirit reshapes me, in union with my spirit, I’m starting to dwell there more and more. I hope you are too.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-29-20 - Feeding and Being Fed

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

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
Earlier this week we talked about Jesus saying he was the gate of the sheepfold, the means of entry. Presumably, he meant entry into the Life of God; he often spoke of the challenges of entry (easy for children; harder for those with wealth). I couldn't imagine a person being a gate, and forgot something about sheepfolds in Jesus’ day. Scholars think they often had no gate. The shepherd, when the flock was safely enclosed, would lie down to sleep in the opening as a way of securing the flock. Thus, the shepherd became a gate.

Besides the amusing image this prompted, of a sleepy shepherd trampled one morning by hungry sheep going out to pasture, it helped make sense of Jesus’ words. At night, the shepherd is the gate. In the daytime, the shepherd is the one who leads the flock in and out of the fold. Jesus says those who enter the Life of God by way of relationship with him will come in and go out and find pasture.

Sheep don’t get sustenance in the sheepfold – they get rest and security. For nourishment, they go out to seek pasture. What does that say to us as churchgoers? Often people say they go to church to be fed. What if instead we saw church-time as a time to rest and recharge, be renewed, safely enclosed in the fold with the rest of our flock – and then sent back out to find nurture in our lives the rest of the week?

This time of social distancing and staying home to contain the contagion is a perfect opportunity to practice this principle. People are craving connection; they’re more open and willing to talk about matters of spirit. In our many online and phone conversations, we have opportunities to be fed and feed others in spiritual conversation, sharing our faith journey with people who aren’t in our “fold.” Maybe God wants us to be pastures in which others are fed. The going out becomes as important as the coming in, maybe more.

Why do you go to church? What do you seek there? 

What do you seek when you head back to your “life?”
Where do, or where might you find spiritual nurture in the week between worship services? 

 Where might you offer it?

A prayer for today: “God… what pastures are you leading me to in my life right now? Who might you be asking me to provide a feast for?” See what occurs to you, or who crosses your path.

We don’t come and go alone. The Good Shepherd goes with us, coming in and going out. The shepherd leads us to green pastures and the shepherd leads us home again. We don’t have to search for pasture – we only have to learn the voice of the Shepherd and follow him.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-28-20 - The Shepherd's Voice

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

I don’t know enough about sheep to know how responsive they are to sound, but animals are usually attuned to the voice of their keepers. And Jesus says that sheep know the shepherd’s voice: 

“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

This passage calls to mind Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter morning. In her grief at finding the tomb empty, and assuming someone has taken the body of her Lord, Mary has a conversation with Jesus, whom she mistakes for a gardener. It is only when he speaks her name that she recognizes him. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

I can’t claim to know Jesus’ voice, but I have had enough interior prayer conversations with him that I believe I recognize his voice – not by timbre but by tone and content. When I get a response in prayer that is simple and profound and sometimes a little sharp, something that I’m pretty sure I would never have thought of, I attribute it to Jesus. If it bears good fruit, I feel that hunch confirmed.

One way to grow spiritually as a Christ-follower is to allow our spirits to become familiar with the Shepherd’s voice, so that we are led to green pastures and still waters, to fruitfulness and refreshment. Christ’s leading, which comes to us through the Holy Spirit, can also steer us away from ravines and precipices. As we learn to trust that guidance, we also become more able to recognize false shepherds who seek to lead us away from the One who makes us whole.

How do you experience Jesus’ voice in your life? Through scripture or prayer? In worship? Inner promptings? Other people offering interpretations?

If the very idea of “hearing” Jesus seems strange to you, consider offering a prayer like this:
“Okay, Jesus, if you call your own sheep by name and lead them out, call me in a way I can understand.” And then see what happens – over the next hours or days or weeks… check in periodically with that prayer and see if your relationship is changing at all. It’s not up to the sheep, it’s up to the shepherd. Yet it helps if the sheep are paying attention.

One of the hardest things for clergy is to see people drift away from the congregation and not be able to reach them. I think Jesus had to watch a lot of people who wandered into his community be drawn away again by fear-mongering leaders who warned people not to trust him, or by their own inability to commit to him when it became inconvenient. I imagine it pained him to watch people come close to the love he offered and then wander off.

But Jesus never forced anyone to follow him, and he doesn’t now. He only calls to us, with open arms.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-27-20 - The Gateway

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

Someday, someone will explain to me the Easter season lectionary. After a few Sundays exploring the events of Easter Sunday, we jump every Fourth Sunday of Easter to one of the “I am the good shepherd” passages.

At first glance, “Good Shepherd Sunday” sounds comforting. But these passages are anything but cuddly. Thieves, rustlers, predators and unreliable hired men abound. It turns out that Jesus is really talking – as usual – about the corrupt and oppressive religious leaders whom he feels misrepresent God and choke the spiritual life of their people: “Very truly, I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

It’s easy to get tangled up in the words as John presents them, but Jesus clarifies it, saying a bit later, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

Is it any wonder the leaders wanted to kill Jesus? He explicitly compares them to thieves and bandits, robbing people of their assurance of God’s love and mercy. And he likens the people to sheep, not the most flattering of allusions. But how is Jesus a gate?

It is hard for my literal mind to imagine Jesus as a gate – a gate is empty space when open; a person fills space. Maybe it helps if we think of him as one who creates entry space for connection with God – a threshold we cross to gain access to the Holy One, the Creator of all. After all, we affirm that it is by Jesus’ holiness, not our own, that we have access to the Father. He’s our way in… and out, our "gateway drug" to the fullness of Life we're promised in God.

Does Jesus function that way in your spiritual life? Does he open the way to a deeper relationship with God? Do you think you need Jesus to get closer to God? Do you want him in that between-space?

Maybe you have suffered from poor shepherds in the past, who made intimacy with God more difficult. Try to pray for them, and even forgive. That creates space too.

My prayer for today is, “Jesus – if you’re the gate, show me how I can come closer to the fullness of God by coming closer to you.”

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-24-20 - To Have, Not To Hold

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

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

The post-resurrection Jesus had super powers – he could appear in locked rooms, and disappear at will. Perhaps it wasn’t so much “appear” and “disappear” as “materialize” and “dematerialize.” After all, the risen Jesus was spirit – not a ghost, he points out, but spirit. He seemed to be able to take on substance, or matter, when he needed to be seen. (Perhaps he had those properties before resurrection as well… His little stroll upon the Sea of Galilee and transfiguration on the mountain offer tantalizing clues into the physics of Jesus’ incarnation…)

He hints at his impending departure in several resurrection appearances, the Gospels tell us. He says to Mary in the garden, “Don’t hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” He did hang out and have breakfast with the disciples on the beach after the great catch of fish, but his interview with Peter implies his coming absence. In Luke’s account of the upper room appearance, he talks about sending the Spirit to them.

It is clear Jesus was not back to stay. This post-Resurrection, pre-Ascension walkabout had a purpose, to reinforce what he'd been teaching his followers for three years, and to prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit, who would kick the whole operation into gear. And here we are, more or less still in gear, two thousand-plus years later.

We tend to want to keep what feels good, to rest in it. And that is not God’s gift to us. Jesus seems always to be moving on to the next place we will find him. Maybe we’re not wired to withstand the frequency of God’s presence all the time. I know I have trouble staying put when I sense his presence in prayer, for even a little while. Maybe Jesus’ appearances, whether in those 40 days, or in our prayer and worship and ministry and community now, are always brief and for a purpose. He leads us on to new ways to experience him, and new ways to make him known to the world, because so many do not know him and need a multiplicity of on-ramps.

Where did you last experience the presence of Christ/the Father/the Spirit… Three in One? How long did that experience last? Did you feel ready for it to end? If you would you like to experience the presence of Christ, and aren’t aware of having done so, here’s a prayer: 

“Risen Lord – I want to know you, to feel your presence, your love. Open my eyes, ears, heart and hands, and find me where I am today. Amen.”

I don’t know what will come of that prayer, but you can pray and release it, and not think about it – God will answer in God’s time and in a way that works for you. And whenever you do encounter that presence, tell someone! Those disciples got up from the table and ran seven miles back the way they’d just come to tell the story, only to find that Jesus had showed up in Jerusalem the same evening.

I don’t think anyone, even the most prayer-soaked mystic, experiences God’s presence in a constant, unbroken way. Yet Jesus did make a promise that we can rest in, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the ages.” At the end of the ages, we will be able to sit in his presence full time. For now, we take the moments and string them together like pearls of great price.

http://lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster3_RCL.html

4-23-20 - Breaking Bread

You can listen to this reflection here.

“Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past…” So begins a well-loved prayer from the Episcopal service of Compline, or “night prayer.” It comes from this week’s Gospel story. The two disciples do not recognize Jesus, despite his insight and authority on sacred history, but they want to continue conversation with him, to remain in his presence. Even as they reach their destination, and he is preparing to walk on, they urge him to stay:

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…

Jesus’ resurrection body must have been looked different – in nearly every post-Easter appearance we read in the Gospels, people who knew and loved Jesus did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. At the supper table that night in Emmaus, when Jesus took the bread, blessed, broke and gave it to them, they suddenly saw who it was they’d spent the afternoon with. How often had they seen him bless and break bread – sometimes in amazing circumstances: when they fed 5,000 people on a hillside with five loaves and two fish; when they’d gathered only a few nights ago for the Passover feast; such strange words had accompanied that action: “Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me.” The familiar action made manifest the holy.

Breaking bread is a universal rite of community, whether at table, on a special occasion, to reconvene family, reconcile the estranged. It became a central act for Christians, not only the Eucharistic blessing, breaking and sharing, but also at common meals celebrating the people gathered.

At our Eucharistic feast, the bread represents Christ’s body – it is broken so as to be shared, given away, as his life was. So, too, the community (also the Body of Christ) is broken apart after worship to feed the world. As a friend once explained her understanding of eucharist: “You give us this little piece of bread, and we give it away all week, and come back for more.” Yes. And when next the Body comes back together, reconstituted, there is a new loaf of bread to be broken. And on it goes, this breaking and making whole in Jesus’ name. (Theological question: In this time of social distancing, is the Body reconstituted at Sunday worship, or do we remain broken? Mystically, we are united – but that’s hard to experience when we’re physically apart, united only by Zoom and the Holy Spirit…)

With what do you associate “the breaking of bread?” What are the holy feasts in your life? They may not be centered around worship, but on family or holidays or celebrations – picnics, banquets. Do you think of Jesus when the bread is broken and shared in those feasts? Such moments can remind us that his presence is a promise to us, and an invitation to enter his brokenness and his wholeness.

We might make that Compline prayer part of our end-of-day practice: 

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

For the sake of his love, he has already granted that prayer. That way is ready for us to walk in.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-22-20 - Guidebook

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

Do you ever read guidebooks about a place before you visit it? I try, and find I can’t really retain the details – it’s too abstract, too flat. Once I’ve been there, though, I enjoy going back to the book, to let its information fill out what I’ve now seen and experienced.

The Bible can be that way – a whole lot of information and other people’s stories, until we experience God for ourselves and have a personal context from which to process those writings. Perhaps that’s how the Scriptures were for Jesus’ followers before the resurrection, sacred writings that spoke of God’s activity in the past and promised some future restoration that they couldn’t imagine. But after he was risen? Ah, now, let’s read that prophecy again.

Is this what the two disciples on the Emmaus road felt when the stranger walking with them began to teach?  Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

Later, they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” With interpretation, all those words and stories of God suddenly made a kind of sense. They were leading somewhere. Yes, they had their own validity in their original times and communities – and now they also had a new interpretation, both broader and narrower, pointing to what God was up to in the mission of Jesus Christ on earth.

Guidebooks are great, but we often benefit from a guide as well - a person who’s been further up the road, to help us interpret the path we’re traveling. In Jesus, those sojourners found a Guide who could help interpret the Guidebook. In the Holy Spirit, we get the same gift – as we read the Scriptures alone or with others, aided by the presence of Christ’s Spirit, they often come to life, and bring life to us.

Who has helped you better understand parts of the Bible that you’ve read? Who have you helped? What other guides have come alongside you on the spiritual path, to help make sense of your surroundings – spiritual directors, teachers, authors?

If reading the bible is a challenge for you, you might take a small chunk each day and pray before you read, “Holy Spirit, please be with me in my reading and receiving – show me what gifts your Word has for me today.” Read and see what catches your attention. Read it again. Try reading it aloud. Stay with it for another day if it’s giving you life.

If you’re not part of a bible study group, I highly recommend joining one – having other people’s insights and perspectives opens it up for us. (I am starting an online Bible study tonight, Christ Church Connects, which will meet Wednesday evenings at 7 pm EDT on Zoom – link here; pw: LPWay. We're starting with the Gospel of Mark. You’re welcome to join!)

This Book of ours is a pretty good guidebook, yet some parts can be dull, others seem out of touch, even angering. The terrain it describes is vast and intricate, ancient and yet to come. And with the Spirit’s help, this Word can nurture our spirits and strengthen our faith… and occasionally even start a fire in our hearts.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-21-20 - Under a Rock

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

Do you think it is possible, anywhere in the world today, to find someone who has not heard of Covid-19? Sometimes we meet people who seem to have been under a rock, unaware of major events, celebrities, social moments or movements. (Sometimes I am that person, if I skim the news too lightly.) The stranger (who actually has been under a rock) whom the two disciples encounter on the road to Emmaus seems shockingly ignorant of what’s been going on. Even those beyond Jesus’ circle had surely heard the weekend’s big story, the holy man condemned by temple leaders, crucified by the Romans – and mysteriously missing from the tomb into which his body had been placed just 48 hours ago earlier.

Yet here he is, asking, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.”

Maybe there’s something about this stranger that invites them to go deeper, for they go beyond facts to the feelings they are wrestling with: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” There it is. “We had hoped…” Beyond the trauma of the past week, they are face to face with their own lost hopes. It was hard enough to put their trust in someone of such simple origins, from Galilee; a rabbi, teacher. Oh yes, there were the miracles, but also the upside-down teachings… But were they just plain wrong?

Are we? Have you never felt disappointed by God? I’m not sure it’s possible to be a person of faith and not be disappointed by God. We are invited to put our trust, our weight on someone we cannot see, touch or feel, except in indirect and inward ways. Anyone who’s ever gone out on a limb in prayer and not seen it answered in any positive way, or faced a disappointment in life, can have a beef with God. Our Scriptures are full of people who had a beef with God, and often expressed it in eloquent and poetic ways. That’s the key – to express it, to have it out with God in prayer, just as we would in any relationship we hope will be lasting and life-giving.

Those two didn’t know they were confessing their disappointment to the Lord himself – but we do. Tell God, the big life stuff, and the little, niggling things. If you feel like you’re at a wall in your faith, say so. The very act of expressing it creates space for the Holy Spirit’s healing, restoring love to work in us.

And, while we're at it, give thanks for the times we have not been disappointed. It’s all part of the picture, and the more complete the picture is, the stronger our faith can be.

Those travelers on the road had more to say, crazy stuff: "Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”

We don’t always know what God is up to when our hopes are dashed. Sometimes we find out later that God has moved heaven and earth on our behalf. Sometimes we discover that Jesus is right in front of us, even if we don’t see him.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-20-20 - Strangers On the Way

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

One summer, my friend walked El Camino del Santiago – the pilgrimage route through France and Spain to the shrine of St. James (Sant’Iago) at Campostella. Many pilgrims told her that the people they came with were often not the people they walked with. Walking speeds and rhythms vary; disagreements can crop up. People often fall in with strangers on that trail, and sometimes those strangers have just the gifts they need for the spiritual journey that parallels the physical one. (For a film about this, check out “The Way,” starting Martin Sheen as a reluctant pilgrim on the Camino.) That's what happened to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the companion who joined them.

In our Sunday readings, it's still the Day of Resurrection. On Easter Sunday, we visit the events of that morning. On Easter 2, it’s that evening. On Easter 3, this year, we find ourselves with two of Jesus’ disciples in the late afternoon of that same day, on a road outside Jerusalem:

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”

I wish I knew why “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” It seems from other resurrection appearances that Jesus must not have looked like himself. It is also true that often we just don’t see what we don’t expect to see, especially if it is outside the bounds of probability. These two were already under great stress from the events of the past few days – seeing their Lord betrayed, arrested, tried, mocked, flogged, crucified… and just as they were coming to terms with that reality, Reality itself was turned upside down with the empty tomb and reports that people had seen Jesus alive, had talked with him. How could these things be? Was it a conspiracy? A hoax? Could it possibly be true?

We process things by talking about them. So these two, in the midst of great upheaval, were discussing it all, trying to make some sense of it. And along comes a stranger who doesn’t even seem to know what they’re talking about – it would be like someone who had never heard of coronavirus. Yet he knows more than anyone they've ever met. He helps them understand, and sends them running seven miles back the way they’d come, their world transformed.

Have you ever found yourself talking about traumatic events with total strangers? In our time of global trauma, in which reality has been turned upside down, such conversations may be happening more often. Are you aware of Christ with you in such encounters? Of Christ in you, or in another?

Ask God to send you alongside someone today who needs the gift you bring, the gift of the presence of Christ in you. Tonight, think back and see how that prayer was answered. Try it again tomorrow. Where will the risen Christ join us on the Way today?

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

4-18-20 - Saturday in Easter Week: Believing

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Easter week we’ve been exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today’s passage from Mark sums up several of Jesus’ resurrection appearances – and in each paragraph we find some variant of “… but he/they did not believe it.” John says, in the passage set for this Sunday, why he wrote his version of the Jesus story: so that his readers may come to believe in Jesus’ messianic and divine identity, and “through believing you may have life in his name.” Paul, too, links spiritual vitality with believing in Jesus’ divinity. Even Jesus says that those who believe he is who he says he is will have eternal life. This believing stuff is not a minor detail.

Yet, if seeing Jesus risen from the dead did not quell doubt in his early followers, how will reading stories about his resurrection activities and conversations confer faith on us? What the written record does is invite us into the Great Story of God’s love for us expressed in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. It brings us to the threshold. It’s up to us to step in and live it, as it was up to those disciples to say “yes” with their hearts to what their eyes and ears reported. We need to experience the Risen Christ for ourselves.

Do you feel you have experienced the reality of Christ in some way or fashion? If we expect to see him the way Mary or the Eleven or the two on the Emmaus road did, we may feel we’re lacking that experience. Visual and aural Jesus sightings are rare… possibly non-existent. Jesus said as much to his followers; he said when he left, the Father would send the Holy Spirit to them. So it is the Spirit who brings the presence of Christ to us in a way we can experience him.

When we feel the Holy Spirit in or around us – whether by a sensation, or an insight, by answer to prayer or some other way – it is the Spirit of Christ we are experiencing. When we have a holy encounter with another person, it may be that we are meeting Christ in them. As we learn to become more aware of that presence, we more readily accept that Christ is a part of us, in our lives – and thus we are led to believing more fully. His life in us leads to believing, and believing leads to more of his life in us. We become instruments for others experiencing his life, and on and on it goes.

That’s what the last verse of my song “Was That You?” is about. (You can listen to the whole song here; simple iphone recording; with Denise Bassett on piano and harmonies):

So where did you last see him, where he wasn’t supposed to be?
He told us he’d be with the poor, the lost, the last, the least …
He said that we would know him in Word and bread and wine;
He promised to be with us, now – and to the end of time.

Is that you breathing peace to me when storms rage in my head?
Is that you releasing power in me, the power that raised the dead?
Is that you, loving me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That it’s you, always next to me. Jesus, you, right here, next to me.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here. The readings for Saturday in Easter Week are here.

4-17-20 - Friday in Easter Week: Out To Sea

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Easter week we are exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we’re in a fishing boat with Peter and six other of Jesus’ disciples, two unnamed. (John takes care to mention the exact number of fish caught in the nets – someone counted them? – but can’t be bothered to find out the names of two of the crew?). These disciples must have fled Jerusalem for the safer home turf in Galilee (like those heading to vacation homes in our season of contagion?), and Peter figures he may as well do what he knows, now that everything he thought he learned since leaving his fishing boat has been turned upside-down.

As happened when Jesus first called him away from his nets (Luke 5:1-11), Peter and the crew fish all night and catch nothing. In the morning they’re ready to call it a day, but someone on the shore suggests they throw their nets over to the right. Though that’s pretty much what Jesus had done three years earlier, they don’t recognize the guy as Jesus – not until their nets become so full they’re ready to burst. Then they know who he is, though perhaps he looks different. (“Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”) Peter, who I guess has been fishing in the buff? throws on some clothes to jump into the water and get to Jesus as fast as he can. That’s love – when you can’t wait to reach the other.

Then Jesus utters my favorite words in the whole Bible: “Come and have breakfast.” He’s got a fire going and some bread, and he invites them to add fish from their catch – his catch, which he has allowed to become their catch; that’s how God’s abundance works in our lives. He blesses the bread and the fish – and thankfully doesn’t say, “Do this in remembrance of me,” or our Sunday mornings would be a lot messier. He reminds them that feasting is a sign of God’s kingdom, and that no goodbye is really final in that realm.

Where has Jesus provided you with a feast lately? Where are you seeing abundance in this time of scarcity and turmoil? Here is the verse of “Was That You?” that goes with this story.” (Iphone recording of the song here, with thanks to Denise Bassett for piano and harmony.) Guess you’ll have to come back for a special Saturday Water Daily for the verse about Jesus’ latest appearance…

A bunch of us were fishing, just out doing what we knew.
The blues are all we’re catching, but what else we gonna do?
At dawn some guy calls from the shore, “Over there, you’ll find some fish.”
As nets start bursting from the haul, we meet our deeper wish:

Was that you, with abundance when I never see enough?
Was that you, showing what strength is, when all I know is being tough?
Was that you forgiving more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, watching out for me.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here. The readings for Friday in Easter Week are here.

4-16-20 - Thursday in Easter Week: At the Table

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Easter week we are exploring the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we’re back in that upper room with Jesus’s disciples, grieving unimaginable loss (“How could he have died?"), processing unimaginable news (“He is risen?” “Some of the women saw him?” “Was it just a vision?”), enduring unimaginable terror (“They’re coming for us next…”). Into that swirl of emotions, Jesus appears. He doesn’t come in through a door or a window – he is just there, speaking peace, showing his wounds, explaining God’s Word and naming them witnesses of what God has done and is doing.

And, to quell their fears that they are seeing his ghost, in Luke’s version of the scene (we had John’s on Monday), Jesus invites them to touch the healed wounds in his hands and feet. “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." He asks for something to eat; they give him broiled fish. Not much of a meal for someone who’s returned from the grave, but they get the point.

Luke makes a wonderful statement: “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering…” The joy the risen Christ brings is our gift in the midst of disbelieving and wondering and grieving, not only after. We are invited to be people of joy in all circumstances, and especially this Eastertide. The dislocations caused by Covid-19 may not rise to the level of what Jesus’ followers were going through, but we might have more insight than in other years into their situation. We too are having to process intense and competing emotions, too much information – and too little – and cope with communal trauma if not personal. No wonder so many of us are more tired than we think we should be. (I found this piece very helpful on that subject.)

I was reminded by some post or sermon (they blur together!) that Jesus’ first followers didn’t know it was “Easter” either. It was just a Sunday, and they knew he had died, and learned he was risen, and being seen. And there he was. If we can let go of our expectations of what “Easter” is or should be, and remain present to where Jesus is around us, we might find ourselves filled with joy while disbelieving and wondering.

Here’s another verse from my song “Was That You.” (Modest iphone recording of it here.) This verse didn’t make the cut in what is already too long a song, but it’s the one that goes with this resurrection appearance:

Tonight we hid for safety, just huddled there in fear;
Though we’d locked the doors, he just suddenly appeared.
He spoke to us of peace, and he showed his hands and feet,
As if to prove he’s not a ghost, he asked for food to eat.

   Was that you coming back where you’d spoken your goodbyes?
   Was that you inciting joy in the face of all our “whys?”
   Was that you imparting more than we could ever understand?
   Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
   That was you, bearing peace to me.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here. The readings for Thursday in Easter Week are here.

4-15-19 - Wednesday in Easter Week: On the Road

You can listen to this reflection here. 

This Easter week we will explore the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we hit the road to Emmaus with two of Jesus’ followers. We don’t know why they are going to this village seven miles from Jerusalem, but we are told their conversation is all about the events of the weekend, Jesus’ awful crucifixion and burial, and then the astonishing reports from the women who found his tomb empty and angels announcing that he had risen. How could this be?

Then something more confounding occurs: they are joined by a stranger who asks what they are talking about. Is there anything else they could be discussing at this time? Has this guy been under a rock? They fill him in, and he surprises them further by interpreting all these events in light of their scriptures and what the prophets had foretold about the Messiah. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” he asks. Had they thought to see the events of the past few days in terms of God’s deliverance? It just looked like God’s failure.

But still they do not recognize their companion on the way as Jesus. It is not until they sit down to supper with him, and he takes the bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them that their eyes are opened – and as soon as they realize who they are with, he vanishes. It is that familiar gesture, which he had done just three nights earlier at the Passover feast, that reveals Jesus to them, just as his saying Mary’s name had revealed him to her.

We don’t have the advantage of lived experience with Jesus to draw upon – how do we know when he is with us? Sometimes we have an experience of our “hearts burning within us,” as these men had on the road when Jesus explained the scriptures to them. That happens to me more often in prayer or song than in bible study, but all of these are forms of worship. Sometimes we realize we’re in Jesus’ company in an intimate encounter with a friend who sees and knows and loves us. And churchgoers have experience of seeing the bread taken, blessed, broken and given – we too can recognize Jesus in that action.

Could it be that Jesus is always on the road with us, always willing to illuminate scripture for us, always ready to sit at table with us? Maybe we just have to open the eyes of our hearts and name him – invoking his name is always an invitation to him to be right here.

The second verse of my song, “Was That You?" goes like this (you can listen to it here – just an iphone recording… ):

Met a stranger last night, just outside of town
He didn’t seem to understand why we were so cast down.
But he sure did know where God had been, and he stayed with us to eat;
When he broke the bread and blessed it, the picture came complete:

Was that you coming close when I didn’t have a friend?
Was that you giving me hope when I was facing a dead end?
Was that you blessing me more  than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, walking next to me.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here. The readings for Wednesday in Easter Week are here.

4-14-20 - Tuesday in Easter Week: In the Garden

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Easter week we will explore the Gospel appointed for each day. Today, we go to back to that garden with Mary, distraught and bereft at reports that Jesus’ body has been taken from the tomb in which she saw him laid on Friday.  …She turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’

We tend to see what we expect to see. Blind is blind. Over is over. Dead is dead. And a man in a garden is likely to be a gardener, right? The man in this garden was solicitous, asking Mary why she wept. In reply, she speaks her urgent need to locate Jesus’ body, which she assumes to have been stolen, as had been threatened. Answering the angels a few moments earlier, she articulated her deeper pain in these poignant words, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” Someone she loved deeply, and depended on, and centered her life around has been taken from her, and she does not know how she will endure a loss of that magnitude.

That is a feeling most of us have experienced, or will, in our lifetime. Facing loss is inevitable when we love; I remember where I was sitting the moment that little insight hit me. But something happened for Mary, in this moment where she made herself vulnerable to a stranger, crying out her pain. Jesus revealed himself, though she had not recognized him. Once he spoke her name, she knew without any doubt whatsoever that it was him, that he was alive. She wanted to touch him, and he said no. Is it possible that this resurrection body that could pass through walls could not be embraced? That is mystery, as is all of this. But he had instructions for her: “Go and tell my brothers.”

Could it be that Jesus is with us in our moments of deepest loss and despair, and we don’t know? We can, in prayer, bring to mind some of those times and ask Jesus to show us where he was, even if we couldn’t see him or recognize him. It is a way of praying healing into those wounds.

Some years ago, I wrote a song exploring several of the encounters people had with the resurrected Jesus, in many of which they did not recognize him until he did or said something familiar. You can listen to it here – not a great recording, but it’s all I have. The first verse is about Mary; I will share other verses through this week (the last is about us).

Ran into a gardener, my eyes were blind with tears
Pretty hard to see straight when you’re living your worst fears.
The one I loved the most, gone without a trace -
Then he said my name, I knew that voice… my heart began to race:

Was that you standing next to me when all my hopes were done?
Was that you, alive and breathing, when it looked like death had won?
Was that you loving me more than I could ever understand?
Don’t know why it always takes a while for me to open up my eyes and see:
That was you, standing next to me.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here. The readings for Tuesday in Easter Week are here.

4-13-20 - Easter Monday: Peace Be With You

You can listen to this reflection here.

Our Sunday lectionary doesn't let us linger on Easter morning; by next Sunday we’ve jumped to the evening. So today we will look at next week's Gospel, and the rest of the week use the Gospel appointed for each day in Easter Week, encounters Jesus’ followers had with his resurrected self.

By the time we meet Jesus’ disciples huddled in that upper room, they’ve had a very long, strange, dislocating day. It began before daybreak, when some women hurried to the tomb to do for Jesus’ body what Sabbath laws forbade them to do when he died; a day that went from sad to both joyful and bizarre as they were met at that now-empty tomb by an angel (or two) announcing that Jesus was risen. And then, there he was, right there on the road in front of the women, saying, “Tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee,” a travel bulletin which has always struck me as a bit prosaic from someone who’s just been to Death and back…

And Jesus’ disciples have not gone to Galilee but are holed up in that room – perhaps the one where they’d celebrated the Passover a few nights earlier, a lifetime ago: 

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

“Peace be with you.” I can imagine many emotions those men and women probably experienced that day, and none of them involve peace. Here they are, trying to process the cosmic developments they’ve witnessed, while hiding in a locked room because the threat to their lives has just intensified. And here is Jesus, just suddenly there, despite the doors shut and locked? “Peace be with you?”

But Jesus doesn’t only say, “Peace” – he can impart peace. This is the man whom they saw still a violent storm, and calm a violent man. This is the friend they watched endure ridicule and torture and betrayal and a horrible death. When Jesus says, “Peace,” he has the power to generate it. It worked on them – soon they are rejoicing.

And then he breathes upon them, imparting the Holy Spirit and authorizing them to release or to retain sins, to bind or to set free. Jesus’ mission was to set humanity free. Now he sends us to participate in that mission, and he breathes upon us his Holy Spirit. Take a deep breath in…. hold it, let it expand in you…. Feel the life of God fill you. And then exhale, breathing God’s forgiving love out upon someone (maybe yourself..). Then do it again.

Jesus invites us to rejoice too, even in the pain and disruption of a global pandemic. Jesus is still risen! He still speaks peace to us, and as we let his presence live in us, we can feel that peace spreading through our minds and bodies and spirits. This is one way we know we have received God’s Spirit. This is one way Easter becomes real for us.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Sunday’s readings are  here.

The readings for Monday in Easter Week are here.

4-11-20 - Holy Saturday: Joseph of Arimathea

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day, and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Am I to have the last word, then? I, who am most on the edges of this story? Even my friend Nicodemus, who helped me prepare his body for burial, even he has his own chapter in the tale. But what do you know about me?

That I am a rich man, rich enough to have my own tomb set aside, waiting for my death. That I come from Arimathea – a place you’ve never heard of, a village in the hill country of Ephraim, in Judea, 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem. That I am a member of the Council, the Jewish leadership, like Nicodemus. That I had become one of Jesus’ disciples, but secretly, because, unlike my Lord, I was afraid of what my brethren on the Council would do to me if they knew what I believed. Who I believed in. I was not ready to lose my position, my livelihood, my life. I was not ready to die.

But I can offer what I can offer. That’s all any of us can do. I had a tomb, and Jesus’ broken, bloodied body needed a place of rest. I had the connections to approach Pilate and get permission to take Jesus’ body away from that place of skulls. I had the means to provide proper linens and spices for burial, so in death Jesus’ body would receive the care it never had in life. I offered what I could. What can you?

God never asks us to give something we don’t have… and among all that we do have, there is much that can advance God’s mission of restoration and renewal in this world. What might you offer?

Today, offer the gift of time and worship – come to the Great Vigil of Easter online tonight (pw:LPWay). It is a magical, mysterious, multi-media experience that takes us from the shadows of death into the light of Life. Even on a computer! Have some candles and bells ready….

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today’s readings are  here.

4-10-20 - Good Friday - Mary of Nazareth

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day, and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Mary of Nazareth: They keep offering to take me away, my sister, the two Marys. They keep trying to take me home, to get me away from here, from watching him… But I don’t want to go. I must feel some need to finish this. He said a moment ago… “It is finished.” Or, that’s what they said he said. I couldn’t hear him. His voice was so faint…

But still I can’t leave. Not yet. It wasn’t like there was ever a time I was allowed to forget that there would be an end like this. I just didn’t ever know how or when it was going to be. I always knew that he was a gift with strings attached – From the beginning, what that angel, or whatever he was, said to me, “He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High… his kingdom will never end.” And the whole way he… just suddenly… was there, in my belly… And his birth, those crazed shepherds running, finding us, telling us about choirs of angels on the hills…

I always knew he was no ordinary child; I always knew he was never mine to keep. But this – this was not a day I ever imagined, to see my own first son, flesh of my flesh, there…naked, pinned…. In agony. And yet I don’t want to leave.

A little while before he spoke again. Oh God, he barely had the strength to lift his voice. He was looking at me, he wanted me. And there was nothing I could do for him! They took me by the arm, Joanna and Mary, they led me closer. I could have touched him – I could have reached out and touched his feet, those feet that were once so small they fit into my hand, those toes I used to tickle, and he would laugh and laugh like an angel… But there they were, and a spike…

I could have touched him, but I was afraid. What was I afraid of? The soldiers? What on earth could they do to me now? But still, I didn’t try. He looked at John, his faithful friend. He looked at me. “Dear woman, behold your son,” he said. “No, you are my son!” I wanted to cry out. “Take him down!”

Then he said to John, “Here is your mother.” I thought my heart would stop – it hurt so much. To be given away, even for my own care… like the time he wouldn’t see us, his brothers and me. He said those who followed him, his disciples, those were his mothers and his brothers now. And I tried to understand… he was never mine to keep. But what was it all for? the crowds, the miracles, the healings? All those amazing stories that he told, about forgiveness and the Kingdom of Heaven? Where is all that now?

That’s what I want to know. Maybe that’s why I can’t look away – I’ve been waiting to see what he does now! God, where are you now? Your moment to intervene just passed, it seems. Are you going to finish what you started?

This is the question of Good Friday – are you there, God? Where is your power, your presence, your peace? Are your promises any good? And as much as we want the resolution, to see the story turn out the way we know it will – this is an important space in which to rest, these three days before the promise is revealed. Sit with your questions, and doubts, and faith, and love. Share them with Jesus. He knows…

Join Christ Church for Stations of the Cross at 10 am - link here; pw: LPWay
To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today’s readings are  here.

4-9-20 - Maundy Thursday: Simon Peter of Capernaum

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day, and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Simon Peter of Capernaum: I know what you’re thinking – a tough guy like me? Crying like a baby? But I couldn’t help it. After what I did… after what I didn’t do? He told me, you know? He said one of us was going to betray him and we were all going to deny we knew him, and I said, “Oh, no, Lord, I’ll never deny you! Even if I have to die with you!”

But he told me, he already knew, that before the cock crowed twice this morning, I would. He was right. I was worthless to him! I couldn’t even stand it for an hour. I couldn’t even stay awake with him last night, I couldn’t defend him…

But he didn’t want us to fight. He said it had to happen this way. This, from a guy who has power like you’ve never seen. But this man, last night, got down on his knees and washed our feet. Like a servant. Like a slave. He knelt down in front of me with this basin and started to wash my feet. I pulled them back! The idea of him, touching my feet! My feet… my feet are filthy. They smell like cheese you left lying around your kitchen for too many weeks. They’re caked in mud and dirt and God knows what. They’ve got sores…

But he said, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” Okay, then, I said, don’t stop with my feet. Wash my hands and my head too! But he just said, no, I was clean. Then he washed my feet like they were babies, like they were precious. He washed my feet like he loved them, and me along with them.

Everything he’d ever said made sense right then, because he loved me so much. I don’t understand it. I’m not lovable. I’m loud, crude, ornery. I’m always charging in without thinking… but he loves me. There’s nothing I’ve done to make it so. I betrayed him tonight, as much as Judas. I ran like a coward. I lied about him, three times.

But just now, they brought him out and as he passed, he looked at me. He knew what I had done, but he looked at me with those eyes that see everything, and he still loved me. No matter what I do. It’s an amazing thing. And I’ll tell you something, that is love I’d die for.

How are you at receiving love and care from others?
It’s tricky, this giving and receiving thing – Jesus implies we have to be equally good at both.
Who do you let get close to you, close enough to see your flaws and blemishes? Thank God for them.
Who lets you show them love? How does it feel? 

Would you withhold that feeling from someone who wants to show you love?

Tonight, if you’re participating in a service that includes footwashing, will you let someone wash your feet? If you’re participating from home, alone, wash your own, and in prayer let your hands be Jesus’ hands, washing your feet in love. Even apart, we can “have a part” with him. (You are welcome to join Christ Church for our Maundy Thursday worship online - link here; pw: LPWay

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today’s readings are  here.

4-8-20 - Wednesday in Holy Week: Judas Iscariot

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day (today John 13:21-32; check also passages from Matthew 26 and Matthew 27) and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Judas Iscariot: I know, I’m the bad guy in all this. “How could you?” they all ask. And he asked, “With a kiss? Did you have to betray me with a symbol of love and friendship?” But what did he want? He as good as made me do it. He said, at dinner, “What you have to do, do it quickly.” He knew. I’m just a pawn in all this. But no one’s going to understand that, are they? I’m the bad guy. The one.

You’re wondering how I could betray him, why I would betray someone who showed me so much love and acceptance. But, you see, it wasn’t about him. It couldn’t be about him in the end – it had to be about the work, right? The revolution. Feeding the poor, empowering the weak, kicking out the Romans.

“The Kingdom of God is coming,” he said. Bring it on! We had that parade into Jerusalem and the crowd was all worked up, shouting hosanna. That must have given the Romans something to think about. And then he kicked butt up at the temple, giving it to those accomodationist Jewish leaders, collaborators … it was great.

But then he slowed down again – he’d tell these weird stories that hardly made sense. We were wasting so much time. And there was the thing at that dinner in Bethany, where this woman, Mary, emptied like a whole bottle of really expensive perfumed oil on his head. We could have fed a whole village for a month with what that cost! But he defended her. “She’s preparing me for death,” he said, like that was supposed to make sense. All this death stuff all the time, and he wasn’t even fighting it.

All of a sudden he thought he was more important than the poor? He was completely out of touch. What was I supposed to do, sit back and watch the whole thing unravel? We need a revolution. We need justice. I couldn’t just turn my back on…

But I don’t expect you to understand. And you should know – I gave the money back!

So, who is Judas? Traitor? Zealot? Freedom fighter? God’s patsy? Can you relate to him on any level?
Today, let’s pray for the Judases in our lives, and in ourselves. If we have free will, so do they… and wholeness must be possible for them too.

For a beautiful take on Judas that emphasizes the enormity of God’s grace, listen to U2’s “Until the End of the World,” which imagines a conversation between Jesus and Judas. Concert version; Official video (clearer lyrics, dumber visuals…)

Join Christ Church for worship tonight on this Gospel - link here; pw: LPWay
To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today’s readings are  here.

4-7-20 - Tuesday in Holy Week - Philip of Bethsaida

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day (today John 12:20-26) and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Philip of Bethsaida: People always wanted to see Jesus; what was so different about these Greeks, that their appearing should cause him such sadness?

I wasn’t even sure I should bother him when they approached me. I mean, a LOT of people wanted to see Jesus – not all of them friendly – and he seemed tense and tired. So I checked in with Andrew, who's closer to the inner circle than I. We went together to Jesus. His response surprised me. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” he said. I wasn’t sure what that meant but he looked somehow resigned, and added, “I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

I couldn't pretend not to know what he was talking about – the rumors of plots against him have been flying for weeks now. It got a lot worse after the Lazarus thing. The leadership is not happy with Jesus’ popularity, or his miracles. And now even Greeks in Jerusalem for Passover want to see him? This is not going to be good.

Or is it “good” in a much bigger picture? Jesus keeps hinting at a mission broader than we can imagine, that God is up to something huge. Could something good be accomplished by the death of one so amazing as Jesus? Whom I, we, believe to be the Anointed One, the Messiah himself? What kind of fruit might he bear if he dies, like a grain of wheat?

Is he talking about us too? Are we all called to be grains of wheat, broken open so the life of God can break out?

“Whoever serves me must follow me,” he said. “And where I am, there will my servant be also.” Well, I am his servant. I can think of no greater purpose for my life than to serve Jesus. I will stay as close to him this week as I can, and hope against hope he’s just speaking in metaphors…

How about us? Are we willing to stay close to Jesus this week? What do you find most unsettling about the whole story of Holy Week? Is there a part you routinely want to avoid? Why do you suppose that is?

I pray that we might walk closely with Jesus this week, allowing him to be real in our lives - not the suffering crucified one, but the risen Lord of heaven and earth, bearing abundant fruit through us.

Join Christ Church for worship tonight on this Gospel - link here; pw: LPWay

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today’s readings are  here.

4-6-20 - Monday in Holy Week: Mary of Bethany

Each day this week we will use the gospel appointed for the day, today John 12:1-11, and hear from one of the main characters in the story, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus. You can listen to this reflection here.

Mary of Bethany:

I know it was an intimate thing to do, even scandalous. You should have seen my sister Martha’s face when I poured a whole pound of pure nard on Jesus’ feet! But Jesus was like my brother. I mean, he was my Lord, but I also loved him like I loved my own brother. It seemed the most natural and full way to honor him before he… before he, you know…

How did I know he was going to die soon? It wasn’t because he said so. I just felt it. After Lazarus’ death, when Jesus… raised him… I just stood at that tomb and was filled with a knowing: “Before too long we will have to bury the Teacher.” It was like I saw into his spirit and I knew he would be taken from us. He said it often enough; we just didn’t want to believe him.

This might be the last time he was in our home. I had bought the nard thinking we would need it to anoint him after his death; I didn’t want them using anything cheap on him. I took all the money I’d gotten from the clothes I made and sold. I wanted the best for him. But that night I looked at him in the flickering light, as we all sat at the table after the meal, talking and talking, as we always did… and I thought, “No, this shouldn’t be for him after his death. Why waste it then? He should be honored like this in life.” And that was it; I just got up and took the jar and broke it and poured it all over his feet, the whole thing, everything for him.

“Oh the waste!” they cried, Judas leading the charge. “This could have been sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor!” Well, of course it could have. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to honor Jesus, to give him comfort and love and protection because we would not be able to protect him from what was ahead...

It was shocking to hear him say it so bluntly, that we wouldn’t always have him with us. I still don’t think they really heard him, or understood. But he let me know I had done the right thing, as wrong as it seemed to everyone else there. This was one way I could show love to him.

He was going to lay down his life for us. I didn’t know what would happen after that. He had talked about being raised on the third day. He had said something to Martha about being the resurrection and the life, and “Do you believe this?” But how could we know what would be?

Now I do know, and I ask you: was my action any more “wasteful” than the Son of God pouring out his life for the likes of me? For those who wouldn’t even recognize the gift?

Mary’s act of devotion and worship is unbelievably extravagant, seemingly wasteful. She held nothing back. Do you ever feel that toward Jesus… maybe toward someone else in your life?
The time you are spending now is precious to God… and as we give this, we can begin to look at what we’re holding back and release that too.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Today's readings are  here.

4-3-20 - Who Is This?

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

Sometimes I come across a news item about some reality or sports star I’ve never heard of, who has gained new notoriety or picked up another million or so Instagram followers – and I go, “Who the heck is that?” Evidently that’s how some people on the edges of that crowd hailing Jesus with palm branches and “Hosanna!”s felt:

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Some in the crowd recognized him as the Christ, the Messiah. Many assumed that the Messiah would be a military leader, liberating them from the hated Romans as their forebears had been liberated from Egyptian domination. A greater majority probably saw Jesus as a prophet, for only a messenger of God could do the kind of miracles Jesus was doing, and speak with the authority with which he spoke. It was a big deal to be regarded as a prophet – but to be seen as Messiah? That was less likely.

The proportions in that crowd may be similar to how Jesus is seen in the world today. To many he is a prophet. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and other traditions, as well as some atheists and agnostics, see him as an important world religious figure whose influence cannot be overstated. Probably many who bear the title “Christian” also view him this way, as an important moral teacher and prophet, but not divine. Baha'i see Christ as divine, though somewhat differently than Christians. To creedal Christians, though, and to some in that crowd that day, Jesus had been revealed as more than prophet. They recognized him as Lord, Adonai, the long-awaited Deliverer.

Many in our own day will say, when they hear of Jesus, “Who is this?” It is our privilege to make the introductions, to point to stories of Jesus in the Gospels, to say who we have experienced him to be. We can also be sure people hear of Jesus. We don’t have to spout a "party line" or to tell other people’s stories – we can speak out of our own experience, and out of our own tradition.

This time in our church year, when we mark Holy Week and Easter, is a particularly good time to tell our stories and make our introductions – and invite people to come and experience the story for themselves on Palm Sunday, to feel the dislocation of Maundy Thursday, the horror and sorrow of Good Friday; to hear the scope of God’s love for humanity at the Great Vigil of Easter, to soak up the celebration and joy of Easter Day. This year, when these important worship events will take place not in our sanctuaries, but in homes and online, might be a particularly good time to invite folks to tune in – they don’t even have to get dressed up to go out.

And if our experience of Jesus is limited to what we’ve heard or read; if we’re still asking the “Who is this?” question ourselves, then we can ask him to make himself real to us in a new way this year, so that we can receive, and share, the gift more fully.

Wherever we find ourselves in this story, I hope we will share the ministry of that donkey – to bear Christ into the crowds, humble and patient, lifting him up for all to see, getting him to the places he needs to be in order to transform the world.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Sunday’s readings are  here.