Water Daily: June 2021

7-1-21 - Radical Hospitality

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

Many churches use the term “radical hospitality” to describe their processes for welcoming visitors. In practice, this often means good signage, an alert and well-trained cadre of greeters, easy-to-follow service booklets, and people who are ready to help newcomers navigate the liturgy and escort them personally to coffee hour. On a deeper level, it can mean that a congregation is trained to welcome people who come “as they are,” not to impose its norms upon visitors, to create an atmosphere of warmth and acceptance and openness to the gifts a visitor might bring.

This is the kind of hospitality which Jesus’ disciples were to seek out as they went out in twos on their first mission without Jesus:

He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.”

Since he’d already told them not to take any money or extra clothing, it was clear they wouldn’t be bearing hostess gifts. They would be bringing the power to heal, authority over unclean spirits, and the Good News of release and wholeness to be found in Jesus Christ. If they found people willing to take them in and care for them under those conditions, they were to remain there, not moving from house to house looking for the best breakfast. The point was to leave their time and energy free for preaching and healing.

And if they couldn’t find that kind of hospitality, or the people in a given town didn’t want to hear their message? Then they should keep moving, and find somewhere more fruitful: "If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

This might sound harsh to us, but Jesus wasn’t sending his disciples on a Grand Tour. He was sending them to proclaim the Good News and to exert authority over evil. To do that they would have to become what a New Yorker writer humorously described herself to be: “fiercely dependent" - and discerning about where to spend time.

Hospitality that is truly radical allows a wonderful exchange between visitor and host. It does not treat a visitor as a guest, but welcomes her as family the very first time she comes. It does not put all the focus on what we can offer, setting up an “us and them,” or subtly seek to exert power through generosity. We should seek a mutual sharing of gifts when we bring dinner to the homeless shelter as much as when someone joins us for worship.

Truly radical hospitality recognizes that each person may well be an apostle of Jesus Christ, with gifts and a message for us. I wonder how many more church visitors might come a second time if, instead of asking, “What can we do for you?” we asked, “What are the gifts you bring? We welcome them as we welcome you.”

Sometimes radical hospitality is what we're called to find, and sometimes it's what we're called to offer. Both ways, we are called to give and to receive, all at the same time. And in that giving and receiving, community is formed.

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6-30-21 - Packing Light

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

My luggage volume varies greatly according to mode of transportation, potential range of temperature and likelihood of a social life. If I’m flying to our cottage in Michigan, I pack pretty light, since I’ll have to carry my luggage and need little in the way of dress-up attire. Going somewhere by car, where there’s likely to be parties? I can take as many outfits and pairs of shoes as I like.

I would have flunked Jesus' Packing 101. As he headed out on another teaching tour, he sent his disciples out too: He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

I guess he didn’t mean sandals in seven colors, did he? They were to carry nothing, no luggage, no change of clothes, no money. As we will see when we look at his instructions about where they were to stay, he insisted they rely completely on the resources they could find in the villages to which they went. They had to live by faith and the Spirit's guidance.

Could do this for even one day? Some do; others have tried it. I know of a bishop who lived homeless in New York City for a month, and there is Barbara Ehrenreich’s experience detailed in her book “Nickel and Dimed,” in which she attempted to live in America on minimum wage jobs, which would be even more challenging today. I don’t think many of us would get very far.

Why would Jesus insist on such stringent conditions for his disciples on their first trip out? To go with nothing, no money, no safety net? Perhaps it’s because he didn’t send them out with nothing. For one thing, he sent them in twos; nobody went alone. And He sent them with the Spirit’s power and authority over unclean spirits. They had ammunition against the strongest danger they faced, spiritual temptation and interference from the minions of the Evil One. Physical challenges they could handle, if they could learn to trust.

Absolute faith would be required for those who were to carry forward the mission of God revealed in Christ. Absolute faith is still required. And all our safety nets and insurance policies and savings accounts hold us back from putting “our whole trust in his grace and love,” as Episcopalians promise in baptism. And no, I’m not ready to part with my retirement account. I am ready to look at and pray about how my resources compromise my faith.

St. Francis of Assisi, when he renounced his family’s wealth and severed his relationship with his father, even took off his clothes so as to carry nothing from that life with him. One requirement of those who would join him, at least in the early days when he was still in charge of his order, was that brothers sell all they had and give the proceeds to the poor, owning no property at all.

What Christians are to do with wealth is one of the most vexing questions that face us. Giving a lot away makes us feel better about having it – and for those who are content to be on the outer edges of Christ’s life, that is just fine. Jesus did commend generosity.

But for those who would be his closest followers? I suspect our baggage is weighing us down more than we’d like to contemplate. What can we part with today?

6-29-21 - The Power of Unbelief

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

Have you ever had a wifi signal so weak you couldn’t get anything done? There is a trickle of connectivity but not enough juice to actually power anything? This comes to mind when I read about the effect his townspeople’s skepticism had on Jesus’ ability to wield the power of God in his usual way:

Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

All he could do was cure “a few sick people.” It is hard to imagine that anything could impede the power of God to effect what it will, especially when invoked by one whose faith lacks nothing. But Jesus attributed the “connectivity problem” to the unbelief he encountered in that place where they thought they knew him so well. Crowds further away accepted him fully as he was; his homies could not believe that the Y’shua they’d grown up with was the Messiah. Their lack of faith held him back.

This should not surprise us. We think of Jesus as the power behind miracles – yet over and over he commends the faith of the people whom he heals, saying, “Your faith has made you well." Jesus responded to the faith he encountered – and I guess he still does. This puts a lot of pressure on us, doesn’t it, to think that God responds to the faith of those praying.

It can be a quick jump from there to the notion that when someone who is sick or hurting doesn’t experience healing it is because they lack faith – and unfortunately, some in the healing ministry tell people that. Wrong. The faith to which God responds needs to be in the community that is praying for someone to be healed. God does not punish people for lack of faith – it just appears that God’s power is impeded when there is a lot of disbelief in a system. That’s why communities in which healing is regularly invited and expected tend to see a lot more of it than those who think it’s rare and don’t exercise their faith in prayer.

Does that put a lot of responsibility on us as people of faith? You bet it does! It means our faith matters more than maybe we wish it did. It means we do all we can to strengthen the faith of those around us. We make space for questions, sure, but we don’t encourage disbelief. The stronger the faith that resides in the community, the more invitation there is for Jesus to do his works of power.

As St. Augustine famously said, "Without God we cannot; without us, He will not.” Quoting that, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry adds, “Together with God we can and we will.”

Without us, God will not. The Omnipotent can, of course, but has chosen to give us that much power to participate in God’s work. Let’s turn the service on and let the connectivity and power flow!

6-28-21 - Too Close To See Clearly

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

The stories we’ve read the past few weeks show a very busy Jesus, preaching to massive crowds, stilling a storm, healing many, restoring a young girl to life. Maybe he needed a break? A little of Mom’s home cooking? We don’t know why, but Mark tells us that his next move was to go home.

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joss and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Whoever said familiarity breeds contempt was on to something. When people have known you for a long time, or before you became successful, they often feel they know the “real you” better than anyone else. They're too close to see you clearly. The people of Nazareth may have been proud to hear of Jesus’ exploits, but when he’s right there, teaching in their synagogue, they don’t seem able to celebrate his wisdom or his power. It makes them profoundly uncomfortable to see him break out of the box they built for him.

Our viewpoint can be similar to that of Jesus’ neighbors – after all, many of us have known him all our lives, or at least known about him. We know his bio – his wondrous birth, horrific death, miraculous resurrection, even if we might be a bit muddy on what happens in between. Whatever our level of engagement with Jesus, it’s easy to put him in a box along with a lot of other preconceived notions we cling to.

But Jesus is ever breaking out of the boxes we build for him. As we begin to know the Jesus of the Gospels (not always the same as the culturally laden Jesus of the church …), to hear for ourselves his often sardonic wisdom, to encounter the uncontainable power he brings even from beyond the grave, to recognize the claims he makes on us as people of faith who are to be seekers of justice… we might react like those townsfolk. “Who is this guy? I thought he was all about being a good person. You mean he’s really about undoing structures that hold back the less privileged? You mean he really asks me to lay down my prerogatives in the cause of peace? He’s really about healing my wounds, not just some lepers back then? Maybe I don’t want him near my wounds. Maybe I don’t want to tear down injustices when they benefit me or my people.”

If we have grown up with Jesus, the gentle shepherd in children’s bibles (as though shepherds don’t have to be fierce!), we might have to let a lot go and start fresh, seeking to know him in our lives now. We can start with our bibles – but that is not the end. To know him, we need to spend time in his presence, in prayer. If you’re not already in that habit, simply sit in a room with some quiet and say, “Come, Lord Jesus. What do you want for me today?” And do that again the next day, maybe write down what comes to you in that time of quiet encounter.

I have a feeling we’ll get an answer, and that can be the beginning, or the continuation, of an acquaintance that always breaks out of the box – and maybe even breaks us out of our own boxes.

6-25-21 - Not Dead, But Sleeping

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

Remember Jairus, the synagogue leader who fell at Jesus’ feet, begging him to come and heal his dying daughter? Imagine what he felt as Jesus stopped on the way, asked who had touched him, and then held a conversation with this woman. He must have been in agony – his little girl was at death’s door. There was no time to waste! Why wasn’t Jesus moving?

And then, as can happen, his worst fears were confirmed: While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

What Jairus didn’t know, what none of the people keening at his house knew, was that this story was not yet over. Jesus knew that this little girl’s life was not ended, that she was deeply asleep, perhaps in a coma.

When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him.

So how about when someone has really and finally died, which is more often the case? We don’t know what Jesus knows. Are we to pray for healing in the face of what looks like death? Sometimes… maybe more often than we do. Death is a reality of life, yes, and the power of God to heal is very real and very strong when communities exercise faith. The community around Jairus only saw death; Jesus saw life.

Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years old).

His voice, his power, his Spirit were able to reach her spirit, and her spirit responded to his command. And she got up and began to walk about – a mini-prefiguring of Jesus’ later resurrection.

We are called to see life, even in the face of death. At times, that life is in the people around the person dying; sometimes the dying revive. (More rarely, even the recently dead revive…) When someone we know is gravely ill, we can ask the Spirit how to pray. If we feel a sense that physical healing can happen, invite the healing stream of God’s love into that person. I specify “physical healing,” because sometimes the healing a person receives is spiritual, preparing them for life after death.

These are great mysteries – if we knew how to “work it,” we’d all be doing it, right? That’s why it’s called faith; we don’t get a road map or guarantees. But we walk forward anyway. We can agonize about how long Jesus seems to be taking, but in the end he knows. That’s all we can count on – he knows.

At the end of this story of two dramatic healings, Jesus is delightfully practical. Looking at the young girl now well and out of bed, he says simply, “Give her something to eat.” Because Life goes on.

6-24-21 - Into the Light

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

The woman who crept forward in the crowd to touch Jesus’ garment, believing that his spiritual power to heal was so great even his clothes would be charged with it, felt immediately that her bleeding had stopped. Twelve years of hemorrhage from what today might be diagnosed as uterine fibroids, and just like that, she felt the flow stop. She knew she was healed. She began to make her way out of the crowd again, rejoicing, yet unable to tell anyone what she’d done.

But she was not to make a neat escape. For Jesus felt the power go out of him as vividly as she felt the healing take hold – Mark uses the word “immediately” to describe both their experiences. And Jesus wanted to know who had touched his clothes.

He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

This is even braver than her stealth “power grab.” She could have pulled a “Who, me?” and kept moving until she was safely away. But something made her come forward and reveal herself. Which meant revealing the whole truth – of her embarrassing disease, her impurity in the eyes of the religious law, her attempt to remain anonymous. She simply had too much integrity to sneak away. And maybe she also felt too much gratitude. So she came forward into the light, fearful, humble and probably humiliated, falling at his feet just as Jairus had done. And Jesus affirmed her faith and confirmed her healing – a complete healing, in body and spirit. Now she could go in peace, for the first time in a very long time.

Are there burdens or infirmities of mind or body that you have carried for a long time? Illness? Chronic pain? Anxieties, resentments, disappointments, shame, poverty, disease, fear of disease? Can you imagine feeling freed of that burden? That is what happened for that woman. I believe God wants us to experience the same freedom and peace.

One step is to reach out for healing as she did. The next is to come fully into the light of Jesus’ presence, to tell our whole story – either directly in prayer, or mediated to another person of faith – and open ourselves to God’s mercy. It is hard to relinquish control like that. Yet so many have found it to be the beginning of freedom and wholeness. That is where every addict begins recovery, and I suspect it is a universal principle, that we need to surface and bring into the light all that holds us back from experiencing the fullness of love and life God desires for us.

That includes confessing our sin, being willing to forgive others and ourselves. And mostly it means telling our stories, getting them out of the storage bins in our psyche and into the light, shared with others to bring life and hope to their lives. More and more in our day we are recovering the power of story to bring healing – for survivors of abuse or crime, gang members breaking free, people in recovery, even in courtrooms for nations seeking to heal after decades of corruption and violence. The Truth and Reconciliation movement that began in South Africa after apartheid and has been successfully implemented elsewhere is based on telling hard stories and having them heard. Amazing freedom and healing can flow from that simple act.

Our unnamed woman was healed in body before she came forward. In telling her story, she opened herself up to the full healing Jesus had for her, wholeness in mind and spirit. That can be our gift too, as we share our stories and invite healing in.

6-23-21 - Christ the Transformer

You can listen to this reflection here.

I once served a congregation which was the result of a merger between two parishes. They had just stuck the two names together, resulting in one that was long, theologically confusing and hard for many to remember. I suggested that we choose a new name to reflect our new life. The question then became: what? On the way to “Christ the Healer,” which is what we became, we went through quite a few. The name I wished with all my heart we could have chosen, would it not have required so much explaining, was “Christ the Transformer.”

In this week’s gospel story, when the unseen woman who suffered from incessant bleeding touched Jesus' clothes in hopes of being healed, he says he felt power go out from him: Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?"

It is amazing that Jesus could feel something had happened to him in that moment, and knew someone had touched his clothes. His disciples are incredulous, saying to him,

"You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”'"

Beyond that awareness, though, is the fact that he felt energy transfer from him to another person. This is yet another of the bible passages that suggest to me that God is pure energy, of a frequency we could not withstand were it not mediated for us. And that is what an electric transformer does: it takes energy running on one current and transforms it so it can be used by appliances wired for a different current. Transformers were common in my house when we lived overseas.

Jesus was the Transformer extraordinaire, taking the energy current that birthed the universe and translating, mediating, making it usable for God’s creatures. Even so, we can sometimes find the current too strong; that’s why sometimes people rest in the Spirit during Pentecostal services, or we feel heat or tingling when we pray. Part of what it means to grow in faith is to build up our capacity to hold and channel a higher and higher frequency of spiritual power.

For we too are transformers, as we grow into the likeness and ministry of Christ. We too receive the power of the heavens and transform it into a current that “runs appliances” – lifting up the lowly, healing the infirm, forgiving the unforgivable, feeding the forgotten. Every single time we exercise faith in the name of Christ, we are mediating the power of the heavens to bring transformation and life to the things and creatures and people of this world.

Where have you been a transformer lately?

Where are you called to mediate the power of heaven into someone’s life?

Every time we invoke the Spirit of God in prayer, in worship, in witness, we bring the heavenly into the earthly. We allow God to redeem, renew, revive, restore all things to wholeness. Even this broken world. Even our broken hearts. The power of God has gone out – can you feel it?

6-22-21 - Stealing a Healing

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Sunday’s gospel story is a tale with many twists. It begins as Jesus returns across the Sea of Galilee, greeted by multitudes. Jairus, a synagogue leader, claws through the crowd to fall at Jesus’ feet, begging him to come to his house and heal his daughter, who lays dying. Jesus agrees – and the whole crowd follows along, pressing in on Jesus and his disciples.

In this crowd is another person in desperate need of healing, but where Jairus could be public about his request, this woman cannot let anyone know. For one thing, she is a woman, a person of little status in that culture. For another, she suffers perpetual bleeding. This not only makes her ill; it renders her ritually unclean – anyone touching her would also be made unclean and thus unable to go to the temple until they’d been cleansed.

So she sets out to “steal a healing,” going low in the crowd, making her way closer and closer to Jesus’ side, so she can just touch the hem of his cloak as he goes past.

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well."

Was this women just driven by faith – or did she, like many of us, turn to the Healer only when conventional methods failed her? Twelve years of medical treatment with no improvement – that's a familiar story. Many are willing to try procedures with only a 10 percent rate of success, but rely on prayer? That’s way too risky!

I love the way this woman, like Jairus, is determined to get what she needs, and how much she believes in Jesus’ power to heal her. I think of her as a base runner stealing third, trying to get to her goal undetected. Her faith is so strong she knows that the merest touch of his clothes will access the power that heals. And her faith is rewarded – she feels the healing in her body at the instant of her act of faith. She knows, without a doubt, that healing is hers.

When have you or I last prayed with such faith about something that mattered deeply to us? It can feel risky because we are not supported by a culture in which such acts of faith are considered normal or rational. But in communities that do uphold healing, that actively invite the power of the Spirit into those who are ill in body, mind or spirit, it is a wholly acceptable, faith-building practice.

We don’t need to steal healing – it has been freely offered to us, a healing stream of living water always flowing in us and around us, into which we can step at will, in faith, in fear, in trust, in doubt. We don’t always see the fullness of the healing we desire in this life. Yet we see a lot more when we do what this woman did – just reach out and take hold.

6-21-21 - Ain't Too Proud To Beg

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

Last week we crossed the Sea of Galilee with Jesus and his disciples. This week he crosses back to where he started, and again he is met at the lakeshore by a crowd, hungry for his teaching and healing. There are even some religious leaders there, full of faith in Jesus’ power to heal:

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” So he went with him.

I am moved by the humility of this synagogue leader whose name has been handed down along with his story – that doesn’t happen with everyone in the Gospels, as we will see in the second part of this week’s reading. This Jairus is completely and utterly focused on getting help for his daughter. He falls at Jesus’ feet, and begs him – repeatedly, we’re told – to come and heal his beloved daughter.

This is what I do when I am anxious and distraught about someone or something – I repeat over and over, “Please Jesus, please, please be where I cannot be; please fill this person (or cat…) with your healing peace.” Only when I've heard things are better do I slow it down to every other waking thought.

All Jairus could think of was getting help for his dying daughter – and most likely Jesus was the only hope he had left. I can imagine him seeing the boat returning, the seemingly endless minutes until it put ashore and Jesus disembarked. And then the crowd gathering around – Jairus had to push his way through, fall at Jesus’ feet and beg. That begging tells us he had faith that Jesus could, just by laying his hands upon his little girl, make her well, give her life. This wasn’t just desperation, it was faith. And Jesus honored it. He went with him.

What in your life do you want as badly as Jairus wanted his daughter to live? Are you willing to throw yourself at Jesus’ feet? Jesus doesn't need for us to humble ourselves like that – he needs nothing from us. We need to be that humble, willing to lay aside our dignity, our disappointments, our doubts, and just let the prayers rise from our gut, even when we don’t know what will happen. As we’ll see, Jairus’ story takes a few more turns before he knows the outcome.

Sometimes I have prayed like this, desperately, completely, full of faith in what I know God can do, and not seen the answer to prayer I wanted with all my heart; the answer was not the life I wanted to see. I have since learned that to pray in faith means to expect blessing, even if it’s not the one we look for.

And I know this: when we fall at Jesus’ feet, praying over and over again, we’re as close to him as we can get. That can help us live through the outcomes we grieve and those in which we rejoice.

6-18-21 - Where's Your Faith?

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

When I’m in a crisis of fear, I know the roller coaster ride, that cycle of anxiety, getting to calm (usually in response to good news, not because of my faith…), then being jolted back to panic by the next bit of less-good news. It can be hard to put my trust in Jesus in the face of all the information coming in. I deserve the words Jesus had for his disciples once the seas were still: He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’”

Why does fear grip us? Because when winds whip up and waves crest our bow, that’s all we can see. And anxious situations do more than define our present – they dominate our thoughts of the future as well. And the past, where so often we’ve been delivered from what we most feared? That recedes when the thunder and lightning start.

How can we stay focused on the One in the stern rather than the storm all around us? There’s an interesting “throwaway” line at the start of this story: “They took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as he was.” What does that mean? How else were they to take him? Why did Mark include that odd detail?

I don’t know – but we always get Jesus with us “just as he is,” which is rarely how we expect him to be. He is so different from us, so unfazed by what troubles us. He may be compassionate, but he is never hooked by the anxiety swirling around us. So in difficult times, we can ask him to reveal himself in that situation “just as he is,” to let us see his reaction so we can borrow that instead of staying locked in our own fear.

And then, when we experience the peace we so badly need, we can take our cue from the disciples: And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’"

We need to speak of our experiences and tell everyone around us, not forget about it the minute the crisis is over. Our stories of deliverance might sound crazy – I heard one this week from a Water Dailyreader about a series of people strategically placed as she navigated a medical crisis - but so did the disciples when they told of the storm and the sudden calm. Yet many must have heard that story and believed it, for it was passed along and shared and finally written down by Mark, from whom Matthew and Luke got it… and so to us.

We have this story to build our faith. We need to tell each other our “God stories” to build each other’s faith. Bigger storms may come, but we can allow ourselves to come to know and trust this Jesus of Nazareth, who lives among us even now, who can command the wind and the sea – and even our feeble human hearts when we say "yes."

6-17-21 - Calm

You can listen to this reflection here.

Sometimes it seems like God can take an awfully long time to swing into action. Maybe that’s because things that seem insurmountable to us are just a matter of a word for God, and what strikes us as nail-bitingly late is right on time for the Creator of the universe.

In this week’s gospel, when the disciples find themselves imperiled in a sudden squall on the Sea of Galilee, and they discover Jesus in the stern, blithely sleeping through all the excitement, they wake him up, saying, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ Jesus does not get up and join the hysteria. He just calmly exercises his authority over creation: He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

One word from Jesus, and it all died down. No more wind, no more waves, no more panicked heartbeats. In fact, we’re told, there was a dead calm. It went not back to normal, but to a complete calm. Jesus did not have to pray in a dramatic fashion, whip up a frenzy of faith, plead with the heavens – he just calmly spoke peace to the elements, and his word had the power to calm, to make things so still it could only have been by his action – Jesus doesn’t do things by halves.

But why did he wait so long? Well – was it so long? Didn’t Jesus act as soon as he was asked? The better question might be, why did the disciples take so long to ask for help? Why do we so often get ourselves into a state, deep into a difficult situation before we think to ask Jesus for help?

The tensions in our national life in the past year often had me in spasms of anxiety and outright fear. Each time I remembered to invite Christ’s peace to fill me and overwhelm the fear; every time I invoked the perfect love that casts out fear, I would come into calm. Sometimes I reminded another to do that, and others reminded me, and prayed for me. Christian community is a wonderful gift that way.

Peacefulness and calm are markers of God-Life. Not that the Spirit is some kind of spiritual Prozac, evening everything out – Jesus certainly displayed emotions like righteous anger, grief, praise. But storminess is not the way of God. A Lord who can rebuke the wind and command the sea is a Lord who can still our spirits, as we ask, and as we allow.

Maybe the reason it sometimes takes us so long to feel his peace is because our spirits, with all their freedom, are not yet as responsive to Jesus’ command as are the winds and waves.

6-16-21 - God, Don't You Care?

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

Fear has a way of taking over so that danger is all we can see. And, like most forms of misery, fear loves company, intensifying as it multiplies. Together, we can come up with many more scenarios of doom than we can alone, right? (Witness just about any day of the past 16 months…) And when we’re in that cycle, it can almost be an affront to encounter someone who’s not hooked by the anxiety of the moment, who is calm or hopeful. “What’s the matter with you?” we cry. “Can’t you see how bad this is?”

That’s how Jesus’ disciples reacted as the squall blew up and the waves swamped their little boat. (The boat is always little when we’re afraid, isn’t it? I’ve been in 50-foot waves in a storm in the North Atlantic, in an ocean liner, the water in its pool sloshing around like someone’s martini – and I’m sure people felt that boat was small…) The reality of the storm was so great, they forgot the power of the man they had with them.

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

They were outraged at his lack of concern, took his refusal to join the chorus of doom as a sign of uncaring. “How can you sleep for God’s sake?!? Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”

Does that ring a familiar note for you? When things go really wrong, that is often my response, to pray, “How could you let this happen, God? Don’t you care?” If I’m really ticked, I get even more passive aggressive: “You know I’m only doing this to help people. Don’t you want me to help people?”

Are there situations you have faced or do currently that cause you to ask, “Lord, don’t you care?” I hope you take that question right to God. It is way better to pray that than to turn away in disappointment and resignation, to allow your faith to be depleted. It’s also good to invite other people in to our crises – not so we can feed each other’s fear, but so we can feed each other’s faith, so we can believe for one another when our faith seems hard to find.

“Don’t you care, God?” in the face of difficulty or danger or despair is a close cousin to “How could God allow suffering,” probably the number one question people ask when resisting faith in God. And I am often reminded that God does not prevent the squalls. God does not prevent all cancer or car accidents or pandemics or wars. Oh, sometimes when we pray specifically that certain harms be avoided, they are. But generally we find ourselves praying from the midst of hurt or crisis.

Our God is not in the prevention business; God is about redemption. God redeems situations into which God’s life and power is invited. God renews us when our faith is flagging. God brings life out of death – death is still there, but it’s not the end of the story. We need to be willing to believe in a bigger story.

A friend told me about a conversation with her mother, who suffers from dementia. My friend was wondering why a perfect God wouldn’t have made a happier world. When she said “Why would a good God allow so much suffering?” her mother said right away, “Oh honey, I think we are the ones who do that.”

Best answer to that question I’ve ever heard. Humans have a tremendous capacity to allow, even to inflict suffering. That's where it comes from. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can also be the agents of God’s love, coming together to heal the damage, to sow hope, to banish fear. All we need is love.

6-15-21 - Swamped

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

We often use “swamped” to describe our schedule or workload. Its essential meaning is scarier – a boat getting covered by water in a big wave, making everything wet and at risk of capsizing or being swept away - literally overwhelmed. There are times in our lives when we get swamped, and by lot more than work.

This past year was swampy for many – a highly contagious and deadly virus touching every corner of our world; the fear and isolation of lock-down; grief at losing loved ones and big parts of our lives; extreme political divisions threatening our civil order; a virulent resurfacing of racist speech and action; further evidence of irreparable harm to our earth and environment; the need to suddenly learn new technology and new ways to do seemingly everything - our decks were swamped regularly. It’s scary how suddenly we can go from battling a strong head wind to being buffeted in a gale.

Which kind of puts us in the boat with those disciples. “A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.”

We need to remember who they had along in that boat – the Lord of heaven and earth, though he didn't seem to be much help: "But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion."

The best thing we can do when we’re overwhelmed by fear or adversity is to stay as close as possible to that guy asleep on the cushion, because he has power we do not have; he has peace we cannot manufacture; he has love way bigger than our fear. As the bible reminds us, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear...”(I John 4:18a) We can, like those disciples, call on Jesus to rise up, not to join the anxiety, but to calmly command the winds to cease and the waves to be still.

Are there situations in your life in which you feel your boat is being swamped by the wind-whipped waves? Can you recall the times when the storm was stilled?
Bishop Gene Robinson was once quoted as saying something like, “Sometimes God stills the storm, and sometimes God stills us within the storm.”

Even as we emerge from the worst of Covid-time into a return to what life was before the pandemic, many of these storms are still with us. Yet we can sail on, for we know that the God-Life is one of peace amidst unpeaceful circumstances, love in the face of fear. I pray we hold so firmly to that love that fear cannot gain a foothold.

6-14-21 - To the Other Side

You can listen to this reflection here.

This week we get a wonderful and dramatic story from the Gospels – the tale of Jesus quieting a storm. It’s not a long story, so we can really sink our teeth into it and chew a bit. The set-up is simple – in the evening, after a busy day of ministry, Jesus says to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.”

The other side of what, we might ask? The other side of the lake, the Sea of Galilee. That’s the surface answer. But words like “the other side” and "crossing," invite us to think of liminal spaces, thresholds, boundaries, transitions from one mode of being or understanding into another. Crossing water evokes classic dream interpretation, in which water often stands for the unconscious, depths, mysteries that must be navigated in order for healing and growth to occur. None of that may have been in Mark’s mind when those words were written, but that simple phrase sets up many echoes.

We are always facing journeys and transitions to new conditions, new relationships, new understandings of our lives and ourselves and the God who made us. We make these journeys in whatever craft are available to carry us, and there is always some risk of wind and weather. Even more, there is a risk of death, and that we will be changed. Change is an inevitable consequence of growth. We are altered, expanded, exposed to new perspectives and ways of seeing. We let some things die or find they are taken from us, and in that emptiness and grief we might find space for new life. We are ever invited across the sea, the deep, the threshold to a new place.

The alternative is staying where we are. Sometimes we exercise that option for a long time, staying stuck in jobs, relationships, habits, addictions, ways of being or thinking, long after they have ceased to be life-giving.

What expanses do you need to cross in your life at this time, or have crossed recently?
Are there areas of life in which you feel stuck?
Are you being invited into a boat, and ready to put out to sea, even if there might be a storm brewing?

We do not go alone - we go with Jesus, who came in the boat "just as he was." Just as He Is, he is with us.

I’m reminded of a quote which Edwin Friedman cites in his great book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix: “The safest place for ships is in the harbor. But that’s not why ships were built.”

6-11-21 - Why Parables?

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

The parable of the mustard seed might be considered a parable of a parable. For parables are a lot like that seed – they appear small or simple (some of them) but contained in that little package is the fullness of God’s kingdom, waiting to be revealed.

Matthew, Mark and Luke include many parables among the teachings of Jesus. In fact, they insist that the parable was his primary form of teaching: With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

Why might Jesus have chosen to tell stories about the ways of the Realm of God? Maybe because it makes absolutely no sense if you try to say it straight. The values of that realm are so distinct from our “natural” or “worldly” way of operating, that one formed by the world can only begin to grasp the difference if surprised by a story.

And people listen more fully to stories than they do to lectures. Stories engage the imagination, the memory, the heart; they can put us into a receptive mode. Stories also allowed Jesus to set up what felt like familiar situations to his listeners – planting seeds, baking bread, tending vineyards, herding sheep, giving parties – and then have characters or events go off in unexpected, even shocking directions. This is a wonderful method for teaching – start with the familiar and lead into the new.

Jesus’ parables run the gamut from one-liners to the paragraphs we read this week to full-on dramas with multiple characters and scenes, such as the story of the prodigal son. Some are hard to interpret, like the story of thedishonest manager, and some strike many as unfair, like the one about the workers in the vineyard. They invite us to play, to explore, to wonder – what does it mean if this character represents one kind of people, and this character other kinds? Is God a character in this parable, and if so, who? Who stands in for you in the parable? Are you the sower, the seed, the bird?

If you haven’t played in the parables for awhile, you might make it a summer project to read your way through them (Luke has the most…). Stay with one until you feel you’ve mined its depths.

Of couse, we never truly get to the bottom of these little gems – they have a sneaky way of revealing new truths to us when we encounter them afresh. Just like the Realm of God.

6-10-21 - Ugly Fruit

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

Food waste has a colossal impact, not only on world hunger, with people starving while thousands of tons of edible food are thrown out daily, but also on our environment. The amount of fuel and water that go into producing our food, 40 percent of which is thrown away in America, would make you weep.

One of the biggest areas of waste is produce – and a lot of that waste could be avoided if we would adjust our expectations of what fruit and vegetables have to look like to be considered “buyable,” and what hours of day and night we expect to find a full display in our local grocery store. In many places, efforts are underway to change those expectations, to push the virtues of “ugly fruit” and “inglorious vegetables” through clever ad campaigns and discounted pricing.

And what does this have to do with mustard seeds, you ask? This week's parable is about things that look small or worthless having great value as part of the kingdom of God. The mustard seed in Jesus’ story may not have looked like much, but when planted it showed what it was made of – broken open in the dark earth, it yielded a magnificent plant that could provide shade and a place for nests. That is the story of the realm of God, a place where things are so much more than they appear to be.

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

We have expectations of people too. We often prize the lovely, the strong, the healthy, the gifted. We assume these will be the best leaders. Sometimes we hold to that assumption even when we’re proved wrong – and thus overlook so much potential in those who may not appear to have as much to offer, but in fact are capable of much more than we can imagine, often because of the very qualities that cause us to regard them as lesser.

When have you been surprised to discover that someone you had assumed had little to offer actually made a tremendous contribution? ? I once had a parishioner with mental disabilities – but oh, how eloquently she spoke of her faith. She built us up.
When have you discovered that you could make a much bigger impact than you had thought possible, as you offered your gifts to God for ministry?

Let's go deeper: In what ways do you feel small or inadequate, like "ugly fruit?" How about we ask God to show us how to plant that very seed in the dark earth of God’s mysterious love, allow it to break open and grow into a life-giving gift to the world?

We all have ways in which we feel like “ugly fruit” or seeds too small for any use. And here comes Jesus to tell us that, in his Father’s kingdom, there is a purpose to every single life, two-headed carrots, bruised apples and all. We are all made for fruitfulness, and God will help us grow.

6-9-21 - The Power In Small

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

I know two people who started a school in a challenging inner-city neighborhood. They wove Christian principles into its operation, delighted in diversity, and had a huge commitment to helping the under-served, often under-privileged children of that city learn and thrive. They called it The Mustard Seed School, because they knew that things - and people - that look too small, too poor, too shabby to amount to much, can achieve greatness. That is how things work in the realm of God.

Jesus also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

This is one of many ways in which the values of God’s realm run counter to the values of our culture. We often think big is better, strong is mightier, talent prevails. There is nothing wrong with big, strong or talented, but those labels don’t tell the whole story about a person or a community – or a church. Some people are big because they come from large stock; some are gifted because they’ve been treated to a great education. These are not the values by which we are to measure one another, and certainly not the values by which we are to measure the effectiveness of our churches. But it takes a lot of prayer and reordering our values to truly look for the power and greatness in what appears small or weak.

When have you seen greatness in something that appeared small or less than desirable?
When has someone seen greatness in you at a time when you felt you had little to offer?
Where do you appreciate “small" and "unimpressive?”

There is a realm in which our culture has come to appreciate the small: technology. The smaller the item, the more we prize it – as long as it can pack a huge amount of data and deliver it at lightning speed. So maybe if Jesus were telling this parable today, it would sound like this:

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a processor chip, which, when implanted in a device, is the smallest of all the components; yet when it is activated, it becomes the most powerful of all operating systems, and powers many apps and puts forth many gigs of data, so that whole networks can benefit from its bandwidth.”

Does that work for you? If not, try this:

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a person of faith who seems pretty ordinary, who, when rooted into a community of other ordinary people, is the smallest contributor; yet when s/he is filled with the Holy Spirit, becomes the most powerful of all ministers and reaches out so lovingly, whole communities are blessed in ways they cannot number.”

Yeah. You and me. On our worst days. At our weakest. We provide shade and branches for whole communities. THAT’s how the kingdom of God works!

6-8-21 - First the Stalk...

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

The realm of God is all about growth; organic, even inevitable growth. That is what Jesus suggests in his short and cryptic parable about the scattered seed: “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

Some translations read, “First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn on the ear.” As soon as a stalk or blade begins popping out of the earth, we can be sure a head will develop on that stalk, and then the full grain will appear. It’s an image of hopefulness, encouragement to believe in the fullness of God’s plan when we see only the merest trace.

What did Jesus meant by the harvest, though? That sickle makes me nervous. But no cutting, no harvest. I believe Jesus is speaking about the full cycle of planting, growing and harvesting.

I will even venture an interpretation, hoping it doesn’t get in the way of your own: that Jesus is talking about evangelism. In the parable just before this, about the sower and the seeds, some seeds fell among rocks or thorns or in in shallow soil where the Word of God could not take root and flourish. Maybe Jesus is continuing that theme. The seed scatterers are Jesus’ disciples and he is encouraging them that some of the seeds they scatter will sprout, even when they can’t see how the process worked.

Sometimes we invite someone to join us at church and they are uninterested, or we talk about how important our faith has been to us in a crisis, and there is no response. Perhaps we retreat, concluding no one is interested in hearing about a life of love, joy and transformation in Jesus. We may need a different approach. "Church" is not a big draw - but ask people if they'd like to talk about Jesus... that might get a response. We need to keep scattering seeds, for, unbeknownst to us, some of those seeds are breaking open and starting to grow below ground, even if we can’t see it until a blade or a stalk begins to appear.

This happened to a friend. She invited someone to church “sometime,” only to have that person show up that week, with family – who encountered people they knew whom they didn’t realize were part of that church. There’s a stalk for sure – and soon enough, if the soil is good, an ear will appear and then the full grain. Only then is it time for the harvest, the invitation to a fuller commitment to the Life of God. People who harvest grain know when it’s ready. There’s no question about it. When we’re waiting for an outcome in ministry, we can trust that God will make it clear to us, and to that person, when to go deeper.

This image of gradual visibility has also been used about healing prayer. Canon Jim Glennon frequently likened prayer for healing to planting a seed of faith and trusting in its growth, even before we see any sign of it. “First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn,” was his mantra, and he urged people to give thanks even before they saw how the prayer was being answered. That is praying by faith.

Are there seeds you desire to see sprout and grow? Have you seen the tip of a blade emerging yet? Wait, giving thanks by faith, until faith gives way to sight. That is the way of the seed scatterer in God’s garden. That is the way of the Christ follower growing in faith.

6-7-21 - Scattering Seeds

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

A person tosses a bunch of seeds on the ground, goes to sleep and wakes up for many days in a row, and then is surprised to see plants sprouting all around. This is a description of:

a. Organic farming methods
b. A lifelong city dweller’s first experience in the countryside
c. Me with my vegetable garden (see b…)
d. The way things work in the realm of God

What does the story suggest to you?

It is Seed Week in Bible Camp. I’ve never counted, but it seems that Jesus told more parables about seeds than any other one thing. In the passage just before this, he tells a long story about a sower of seeds and the different results he gets according to where they fall. In this week’s gospel reading we get two more seed parables, short, simple – and if we harvest them well – yielding manifold meanings and gifts. Here is the first:

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

We meet no sower, just “someone” who haphazardly scatters seed on the ground and then seems astonished that it sprouts and grows. How is this like the Kingdom of God? Is Jesus saying that God is the careless scatterer, hoping that the kingdom values of love and faithfulness and power will take root in some? There appears to be no cultivating, weeding, tending, or watering – just “the earth producing of itself.” Does this suggest that some people are just naturally ready to grow and thrive?

Or are we the ones unwittingly scattering the seeds of the gospel, and surprised when some sprout?

Or am I wrong to equate the seeds with people? Maybe the seeds are simply the movement of “getting it,” grasping the truth that Jesus was trying to communicate about the way the Realm of God is already around, among, even in us. The truth grows in us – we don’t have to study and prepare, simply recognize and accept and live it.

Or perhaps we should focus on the sprouting plants rather than the carelessness or cluelessness of the sower. The realm of God is constantly sprouting new life, grown from seeds we scarcely knew had been sown – and day after day, night after night, this growth continues apart from any effort we make.

What do you see when you play with this one?

This is what we do with parables – turn them this way and that, try on different angles and interpretations, see what strikes a spark in us. Come to think of it, parables are kind of like scattered seeds that sprout and grow, we know not how...

6-4-21 - God's Will

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

Welcome to the family! You’re in. Jesus says so. But on what basis were you accepted? Were you born into it? Millions have been over 2,000 some years. Born and baptized, you belong.

Or did you get in on faith? That’s supposed to be a sure-fire way, believing in Jesus the Christ, incarnate, crucified, risen. Don’t need any documents from Column B – you believe, you’re in.

And what about behavior? Some of us “solo gratia” types aren’t so keen on the idea that folks can “do-good” their way into the Kingdom. But Jesus did say something about doing the will of God: And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

We can’t take behaving out of the picture, any more than we can take out believing, birth or baptism. The Realm of God is a “both/and” enterprise. It can be useful, though, to explore what it means to do the will of God. If it were easier to discern God’s will, we wouldn’t worry, wonder or wander as much.

One way to discern God’s will is to ask if we’re doing something Jesus told his apostles to do: proclaim the Good News, heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons. Oh, and feed the hungry, visit the incarcerated, love the unloved, forgive those who have wounded or taken from us. All that.

And what about things that don’t fall easily into "apostolic" categories? What about choices facing us for which we want to know what God wants? A few measures can guide us:

Is what we’re contemplating consistent with what we find in the Bible, or at least not contrary to what Jesus or the apostles taught?
Is there confirmation within our community of faith, even by one other person, for the course we’re taking?
The “gut check.” Do we have an inner sense of peace about it? If not, we should keep praying and exploring.

Those are key components to discerning the will of God in our lives. Each is important, and to be taken in concert with the others. Our instinct matters, but if it clashes with the other factors, we should pay attention.

Are you in discernment about anything in your life at present? What happens when you pray about it? We don't always get a “straight answer” to those kinds of prayers, but if we keep our eyes and spirits open, we might find clues in “coincidences,” or things we observe or song lyrics, you name it. God has our number, if we keep our lines open.

Ultimately, Jesus said, his Father’s will was that “everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life...” (John 6:40). If we can live in that understanding, we will swim in God's will all the way to eternity.

6-3-21 - Is There An Unforgivable Sin?

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

There are enough of things to worry about in this life; you probably aren’t losing sleep over whether or not you’ve committed the Unforgivable Sin. But it might bother the scripture-savvy neurotic overly given to scrupulosity: the nagging worry that I have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. (I’ve been known to tell Jesus jokes… )

Reading the passage afresh, I think I can relax. It appears that the ultimate “diss” on the Holy Spirit was accusing Jesus of having an evil spirit. “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

To avoid the eternal sin, we need only refrain from naming as unholy the Spirit of God. That means we must be able to discern the Holy Spirit from unclean spirits – and that’s not so hard to do. Jesus said one can identify a false prophet by his fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). John said to test those who claim to speak by the Spirit – and the test is whether or not they affirm that Jesus was fully human. (I John 4:1-3) We can also look for evidence of the Spirit in a person by what fruit they bear – are their words and work life-giving, God-oriented, maybe not every second, but overall? Do we see around them the good fruit of transformed lives?

If we focus our energy on all the places and people in which we do see the Holy Spirit at work, we won’t even have time to worry about unclean spirits. Getting us looking at negatives and what’s lacking is one of the evil one’s strategies. For instance, instead of worrying about whether or not we’ve committed the one unforgivable sin, how about we notice the much more startling announcement Jesus makes here: “…people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter.” Wow! Talk about grace and mercy covering a multitude of sins!

I have written a lot this week about evil and the devil – those are big themes in this passage. But it’s worth remembering that the way the Tempter works is to distort the prohibitions and the penalties, and downplay God's promises. In the Garden story (also appointed for Sunday), the man and woman are told they can eat the fruit of every tree except one. And that’s the one the tempter focuses their attention on – that one prohibition. That’s still his strategy, because it works so often.

How about we stop falling for it? How about we stand so firm in our belovedness in Christ, in the amazing mercy covering our petty sins and blasphemies, that we cannot be shaken off course by distortions and lies intended to undermine us? How about we invite the Holy Spirit to be so full and thick in us that we’re much more apt to praise God than condemn ourselves or others?

The clock is running out on the power of evil – God’s love has us covered. That is our Good News.

6-2-21 - Breaking and Entering

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

Tips on breaking and entering from Jesus of Nazareth? Not quite – but he does have a few thoughts on the most effective way to break into someone’s house:

“But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”

Remember, he is disputing a charge that the power by which he casts out demons is itself demonic. He says that’s ridiculous – that a house divided cannot stand. In fact, he says, “And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.”

I’ve always found that statement confusing. Wasn’t the point of Jesus’ mission to put an end to Satan’s power? I think Jesus is predicting his course, asserting that Satan is not divided – Satan is single-mindedly focused on evil and gets stronger with each victory. Therefore Jesus will “tie up the strong man.” Hence, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man.” And that is what Christians claim Jesus accomplished – a definitive conquest over the forces of evil.

So… why doesn’t it seem like Satan is bound at all? Why does it seem like the Enemy of Human Nature still has free run of the place, tempting, corrupting, degrading, destroying life?

That’s probably the hardest question asked of Christians. Don’t all our claims of Easter Life crash against the reality of evil still running amok in our world? Traditional apologists have likened Christ’s victory to D-Day, and the time we live in to the period between D-Day, when Axis forces were defeated, and V.E. Day, when all the battles had ended and peace was declared. That analogy has some legs.

There is also the matter of free will. Yes, Jesus vanquished the destroyer – and each and every person still must choose and exercise free will. No one has it decided for her. The difference for us on this side of the Cross is that the choice is simpler. When we are faced with temptation to be less than who God made us to be, or when we fear evil is stronger than God, we need only remember that Jesus HAS tied up the strong man.

A person single-mindedly focused on his mission will always have more power than one who is ambivalent or unsure or wavering. Evil, personified in the name Satan, has power because he is wholly committed to destruction, to drawing people away from God. When we are equally clear about our commitment to God in Christ, to good, to love, those chains Jesus already put on him get tighter and tighter. Not only can we resist evil ourselves; we can also free those whom he has bound. That’s the work of justice and peacemaking.

We don’t have to fight or bind the evil one – that’s done. We need only stand firm on what Jesus has already done and tell evil to get lost. We can do that in personal crises – just say, “Oh yeah, Jesus already won this battle. Come, Lord Jesus…” And I wonder what might change in the horrors that afflict our world if we were to face those crises the same way, if we were to come together in faith, pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," and focus single-mindedly on Love? Evil wouldn't stand a chance.