You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
How often has Easter fallen on April Fools Day? There can hardly be a better April Fools twist than the Resurrection. And it kept happening to Jesus’ friends and followers, that Easter day and in the weeks to come. Jesus just kept showing up in places he would never be expected – often unrecognized. They fell for it every time.
On the second Sunday of Easter (Easter being so big a mystery, we take seven weeks to explore it each year), we eavesdrop on one of these unexpected appearances by Jesus. He shows up in the very room where the disciples last broke bread with him the previous Thursday – what must have seemed a hundred years ago. So much had happened since that Passover meal; Jesus’ arrest, sham trials, mocking and torture, execution. They’d endured all the shock and sorrow and fear that they, his closest followers, would be next.
And then another shock in finding his tomb empty – with several indicators that this was not a case of body snatching, but that the very laws of death and life had been overturned. And then – reports. More reports. A sighting in the garden. A sighting in Galilee. What must they have been feeling?
And now he appears among them, just materializing, for he did not come through the locked doors or windows: 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."
Peace would be the last thing I can imagine anyone in that room feeling. Yet Jesus is suddenly there among them, inviting them to the impossible: “Peace be with you.” When Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” it is more than a suggestion – it is a declarative action, one that accomplishes what it proposes. They were at peace. They must have been, for John tells us, “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”
What word best describes your circumstances these days? Happiness? Turmoil? Stress? Love? Joy? Anxiety? Can you imagine Jesus showing up in the middle of those circumstances? In the middle of your life, uninvited and yet very much there? Can you hear him say to your spirit, “Peace be with you?” And receive it as a declarative action with power to accomplish what it purposes? That is what the Word of God always does.
What happens to your circumstances when you are at peace within them?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-30-24 - Holy Saturday: The Other Mary
Each day this week we hear from one of the main characters in the gospel reading appointed for the day, 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.
The Other Mary: That’s what I’m called in these accounts of Jesus’ death – “The Other Mary.” Like these gospel writers couldn’t bother to get my full name or where I’m from. I’m not Mary, Jesus’ mother; nor Mary of Bethany or Mary of Magdala. I am Mary, mother of James. And I was there.
I watched them murder him. I watched his mother’s agony, watching him in agony. I heard the scoffers and the mockers. I saw them take his body down. I helped wrap him in a clean cloth and went along to the tomb that Joseph so generously offered for our use. There was no time to prepare his body – the sabbath was about to begin, and this is the Passover sabbath. We had to put his body somewhere safe until this sabbath is over. We will be there at dawn on Sunday with our spices and ointments to anoint him for a proper burial.
But now we must wait. Doing nothing. This is the worst sabbath I have ever endured. I love my sabbaths – the God-commanded day of rest when I can put down my cooking and cleaning and mending and tending. My only chores are feeding my family and our animals; the rest of the time I can nap, or read, or walk slowly enough to notice the new growth on the fields and trees, appreciate the birds and creatures around me. God’s greatest gift, this sabbath day each week.
But not this week. To bear this weight of pain and loss, with no tasks to distract us? To have nothing to do BUT think and talk and remember how our Lord we loved so much, who gave us so much, was tortured to death for no reason but to protect the pride and arrogance of insecure men? To have nothing to hold back the waves of feelings that threaten to drown us – terror, rage, confusion, and sorrow, sorrow so deep I don’t think we’ll ever get to the end of it. What have they done? How will we live?
So I will sit, and feel what I don’t want to feel. I will rest, like God rested on the seventh day. Was he gathering up his energy to create even more new life?
What would new life even look like, now?
Will you spend this day in Sabbath time – resting, walking, praying, not doing anything productive? That is one of the best ways to honor Jesus and prepare to celebrate the joy of Easter Day…
You are welcome to join our Great Vigil of Easter service online tonight at 8 pm here.
The Other Mary: That’s what I’m called in these accounts of Jesus’ death – “The Other Mary.” Like these gospel writers couldn’t bother to get my full name or where I’m from. I’m not Mary, Jesus’ mother; nor Mary of Bethany or Mary of Magdala. I am Mary, mother of James. And I was there.
I watched them murder him. I watched his mother’s agony, watching him in agony. I heard the scoffers and the mockers. I saw them take his body down. I helped wrap him in a clean cloth and went along to the tomb that Joseph so generously offered for our use. There was no time to prepare his body – the sabbath was about to begin, and this is the Passover sabbath. We had to put his body somewhere safe until this sabbath is over. We will be there at dawn on Sunday with our spices and ointments to anoint him for a proper burial.
But now we must wait. Doing nothing. This is the worst sabbath I have ever endured. I love my sabbaths – the God-commanded day of rest when I can put down my cooking and cleaning and mending and tending. My only chores are feeding my family and our animals; the rest of the time I can nap, or read, or walk slowly enough to notice the new growth on the fields and trees, appreciate the birds and creatures around me. God’s greatest gift, this sabbath day each week.
But not this week. To bear this weight of pain and loss, with no tasks to distract us? To have nothing to do BUT think and talk and remember how our Lord we loved so much, who gave us so much, was tortured to death for no reason but to protect the pride and arrogance of insecure men? To have nothing to hold back the waves of feelings that threaten to drown us – terror, rage, confusion, and sorrow, sorrow so deep I don’t think we’ll ever get to the end of it. What have they done? How will we live?
So I will sit, and feel what I don’t want to feel. I will rest, like God rested on the seventh day. Was he gathering up his energy to create even more new life?
What would new life even look like, now?
Will you spend this day in Sabbath time – resting, walking, praying, not doing anything productive? That is one of the best ways to honor Jesus and prepare to celebrate the joy of Easter Day…
You are welcome to join our Great Vigil of Easter service online tonight at 8 pm here.
3-29-24 - Good Friday: Mary of Nazareth
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Each day this week we hear from one of the main characters in the gospel reading appointed for the day, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus.
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 can’t 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 I could ever forget that there would be an end like this. I just didn’t ever know how or when it would 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 me… And his birth, those crazed shepherds running, finding us, yelling 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… suffocating… In agony. And yet I can’t leave.
A little while ago 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 felt I could have touched him – 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… And there they were, and a spike… Oh God, what have you done?
He looked at John, his faithful friend. He looked at me. “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. 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 God? 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?
A soldier spoke a moment ago, a Roman. He said, “I am sure this man was the Son of God.” That’s what that angel said, so long ago, the words are seared into my memory: “The Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” So how did this Roman know? Did God tell him too? Maybe it is all true! I believed once and said yes; can I believe again? Maybe God hasn’t finished? Maybe the story isn’t over…
Ah, now John wants to usher me away, already taking up his duties. I am staying till they take him down. They have promised to take care of the body, these women, these Marys, his friends, my friends. And some important men – Joseph, who gave us the tomb; Nicodemus, another one of the Sanhedrin. They brought the ointments and cloths – 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes, Mary said.
I will help. I will anoint my son’s body with oil and touch his bruised skin one more time, look at his face, now just an empty space, before they put him away in that tomb in the garden. Then I will go home.
What has been your greatest loss? Have you let God into that heartache? Let God fill that space with something that brings life? We can't rush it - but in time, our greatest pain will be overshadowed by the Life of God that cannot be quenched, even in death... Wait for it. Wait with Mary.
You are welcome to join our Good Friday service online tonight at 7 pm here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Good Friday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Each day this week we hear from one of the main characters in the gospel reading appointed for the day, as I imagine they might speak. I hope this will help engage your own imagination as you walk this story with Jesus.
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 can’t 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 I could ever forget that there would be an end like this. I just didn’t ever know how or when it would 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 me… And his birth, those crazed shepherds running, finding us, yelling 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… suffocating… In agony. And yet I can’t leave.
A little while ago 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 felt I could have touched him – 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… And there they were, and a spike… Oh God, what have you done?
He looked at John, his faithful friend. He looked at me. “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. 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 God? 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?
A soldier spoke a moment ago, a Roman. He said, “I am sure this man was the Son of God.” That’s what that angel said, so long ago, the words are seared into my memory: “The Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.” So how did this Roman know? Did God tell him too? Maybe it is all true! I believed once and said yes; can I believe again? Maybe God hasn’t finished? Maybe the story isn’t over…
Ah, now John wants to usher me away, already taking up his duties. I am staying till they take him down. They have promised to take care of the body, these women, these Marys, his friends, my friends. And some important men – Joseph, who gave us the tomb; Nicodemus, another one of the Sanhedrin. They brought the ointments and cloths – 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes, Mary said.
I will help. I will anoint my son’s body with oil and touch his bruised skin one more time, look at his face, now just an empty space, before they put him away in that tomb in the garden. Then I will go home.
What has been your greatest loss? Have you let God into that heartache? Let God fill that space with something that brings life? We can't rush it - but in time, our greatest pain will be overshadowed by the Life of God that cannot be quenched, even in death... Wait for it. Wait with Mary.
You are welcome to join our Good Friday service online tonight at 7 pm here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Good Friday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-28-24 - Maundy Thursday: Andrew of Capernaum
You can listen to this reflection here. Today's gospel reading is here.
This Holy Week, Water Daily looks at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Andrew of Capernaum: My brother! Jesus sure nailed it with the nickname he gave him, Petros. The rock. Never met anyone so hard-headed. And lovable, ornery, faithful, cowardly – all rolled into one ball of leap-before-you-look, speak-before-you-think energy. He’s been like that since we were kids – got me into trouble more times than I care to remember, and usually all I was doing was watching.
So tonight, when Jesus got up from the table, tied on that towel and began to wash our feet, and we’re all looking at each other, mortified – it’s Peter who put into words what a lot of us were thinking. “Lord, you’re gonna wash my feet? Think again!” Jesus just looked at him with that mix of irritation and love he so often had for Peter, and said, “If you don’t let me wash you, you have no part with me.” But Peter doesn’t let it rest – he has to argue. With our Master! On this night of all nights! “Okay, wash all of me, then! Why stop with my feet?”
Jesus had an answer for him, of course. He always did. It was part of their game – Peter pushing as hard as he could, Jesus coming right back at him. Oh, how they loved each other. Love each other.
It was hard for Peter to submit to being cared for. Hard for all of us. When Jesus got to me, I didn’t want him to touch my feet. They’re not pretty. They were filthy, as feet were in our time. But he focused on that task like it was the only thing in the world he had to do. He got them clean, he rinsed and dried them, and I just had to sit there and receive that gift. I think that was the hardest of all the things Jesus has asked us to do in the three years since I met him along the banks of the Jordan. Just sit and receive his gift. Helpless.
Little did I know that that’s all I would be doing for the next 24 hours – watching him give his life away for me, powerless to help him, nothing left for me but to receive his gift. And if I have trouble being this still and helpless, what on earth must my poor brother be going through?
How are you at receiving care from others? How are you at receiving the gifts God wants to give to you?
It’s harder for most people to submit to having someone else wash their feet than it is to wash another’s (unless we’re paying for a pedicure…). Yet arguably our most important spiritual task is learning to take in the love and grace and power of God so we can share it freely with others.
Tonight, I hope you’re going to church (our service is at 6 pm at Christ Church Wayside, if you’re in southern Maryland…). I hope you’ll have a chance to receive the ministry of footwashing, and to offer it. In that order. Don’t miss this opportunity to grow in grace.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Maundy Thursday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This Holy Week, Water Daily looks at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Andrew of Capernaum: My brother! Jesus sure nailed it with the nickname he gave him, Petros. The rock. Never met anyone so hard-headed. And lovable, ornery, faithful, cowardly – all rolled into one ball of leap-before-you-look, speak-before-you-think energy. He’s been like that since we were kids – got me into trouble more times than I care to remember, and usually all I was doing was watching.
So tonight, when Jesus got up from the table, tied on that towel and began to wash our feet, and we’re all looking at each other, mortified – it’s Peter who put into words what a lot of us were thinking. “Lord, you’re gonna wash my feet? Think again!” Jesus just looked at him with that mix of irritation and love he so often had for Peter, and said, “If you don’t let me wash you, you have no part with me.” But Peter doesn’t let it rest – he has to argue. With our Master! On this night of all nights! “Okay, wash all of me, then! Why stop with my feet?”
Jesus had an answer for him, of course. He always did. It was part of their game – Peter pushing as hard as he could, Jesus coming right back at him. Oh, how they loved each other. Love each other.
It was hard for Peter to submit to being cared for. Hard for all of us. When Jesus got to me, I didn’t want him to touch my feet. They’re not pretty. They were filthy, as feet were in our time. But he focused on that task like it was the only thing in the world he had to do. He got them clean, he rinsed and dried them, and I just had to sit there and receive that gift. I think that was the hardest of all the things Jesus has asked us to do in the three years since I met him along the banks of the Jordan. Just sit and receive his gift. Helpless.
Little did I know that that’s all I would be doing for the next 24 hours – watching him give his life away for me, powerless to help him, nothing left for me but to receive his gift. And if I have trouble being this still and helpless, what on earth must my poor brother be going through?
How are you at receiving care from others? How are you at receiving the gifts God wants to give to you?
It’s harder for most people to submit to having someone else wash their feet than it is to wash another’s (unless we’re paying for a pedicure…). Yet arguably our most important spiritual task is learning to take in the love and grace and power of God so we can share it freely with others.
Tonight, I hope you’re going to church (our service is at 6 pm at Christ Church Wayside, if you’re in southern Maryland…). I hope you’ll have a chance to receive the ministry of footwashing, and to offer it. In that order. Don’t miss this opportunity to grow in grace.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Maundy Thursday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-27-24 - Holy Wednesday: Judas, Son of James
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. This Holy Week, Water Daily looks at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Judas, son of James: Why is this night SO different from any other night! The tension at the Seder table was thick enough to cut. Even after the weirdness of the footwashing, it was clear the troubles were getting to him. Jesus can bear pressure better than most, but nobody can take weeks of death threats and rumors and not be affected. Nothing he said this evening made sense, not the washing, not the words about the bread and the wine; his body, his blood?
And then he said one of us would betray him. One of us? We love him! We’ve left everything to follow him. Why would one of us hand him over to the authorities? We all looked at each other, at Jesus. Then Peter signaled John to ask him who. Jesus wouldn’t give a name – he just said, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” I am so glad he didn’t say the name – because it was Judas! He handed the bread to Judas, the Iscariot. The other Judas. Or is it me who is the other Judas?
Jesus had two disciples named Judas. You know a lot about the Iscariot. Me, you only know by name, in a list of those called by Jesus to be among his twelve closest followers. I don’t even make every list – only Luke’s gospel includes me.
But I was there, day in, day out, traveling with him, helping to heal the sick, proclaim the Good News to those who would listen. I was with him in the rain, in the mud, in the sunshine, at the dinner tables. We never knew what was going to happen next. Only that he could transform the worst circumstances into something with life and hope.
The other Judas was with us through it all too, committed. What could have happened? I saw how upset he was a few nights ago at dinner, when Mary poured all this expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet. He looked like a walking thunder cloud. Would that be enough to cause him to sell Jesus out?
Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do,” and Judas left the room. Left our company. We thought maybe he'd gone to pick up some supplies before the Sabbath began tomorrow…
I still believe Jesus can transform the worst circumstances into something with life and hope. But even this?
You’ve probably been at some tense family meals in your life… you may even have known betrayal. How does it help our faith to know Jesus experienced those things?
Can we spare some sympathy for Judas Iscariot? Can we forgive those who have betrayed us? Now’s a good time to start if we haven’t… we can begin by asking God to give us the grace to see that person as God sees them, with compassion. And then allow God’s grace to take hold of us, gradually or all at once. New life...
You are welcome to join my congregations for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Wednesday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Judas, son of James: Why is this night SO different from any other night! The tension at the Seder table was thick enough to cut. Even after the weirdness of the footwashing, it was clear the troubles were getting to him. Jesus can bear pressure better than most, but nobody can take weeks of death threats and rumors and not be affected. Nothing he said this evening made sense, not the washing, not the words about the bread and the wine; his body, his blood?
And then he said one of us would betray him. One of us? We love him! We’ve left everything to follow him. Why would one of us hand him over to the authorities? We all looked at each other, at Jesus. Then Peter signaled John to ask him who. Jesus wouldn’t give a name – he just said, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” I am so glad he didn’t say the name – because it was Judas! He handed the bread to Judas, the Iscariot. The other Judas. Or is it me who is the other Judas?
Jesus had two disciples named Judas. You know a lot about the Iscariot. Me, you only know by name, in a list of those called by Jesus to be among his twelve closest followers. I don’t even make every list – only Luke’s gospel includes me.
But I was there, day in, day out, traveling with him, helping to heal the sick, proclaim the Good News to those who would listen. I was with him in the rain, in the mud, in the sunshine, at the dinner tables. We never knew what was going to happen next. Only that he could transform the worst circumstances into something with life and hope.
The other Judas was with us through it all too, committed. What could have happened? I saw how upset he was a few nights ago at dinner, when Mary poured all this expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet. He looked like a walking thunder cloud. Would that be enough to cause him to sell Jesus out?
Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do,” and Judas left the room. Left our company. We thought maybe he'd gone to pick up some supplies before the Sabbath began tomorrow…
I still believe Jesus can transform the worst circumstances into something with life and hope. But even this?
You’ve probably been at some tense family meals in your life… you may even have known betrayal. How does it help our faith to know Jesus experienced those things?
Can we spare some sympathy for Judas Iscariot? Can we forgive those who have betrayed us? Now’s a good time to start if we haven’t… we can begin by asking God to give us the grace to see that person as God sees them, with compassion. And then allow God’s grace to take hold of us, gradually or all at once. New life...
You are welcome to join my congregations for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Wednesday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-26-24 - Holy Tuesday - Philip of Bethsaida
You can listen to this reflection here. The gospel for Holy Tuesday is here.
This Holy Week, Water Daily will look at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Philip of Bethsaida: People always wanted to see Jesus; what was so different about these Greeks, that their request should cause Jesus 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 am. Together we went to Jesus. And his response surprised me. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." I didn't know what that meant but then he looked at us with what seemed like resignation, 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 business. The leaders are not happy with Jesus’ popularity, or his miracles. And now even Greeks in Jerusalem for Passover want to see him? This attention is not good.
Or is it “good” in a much bigger way? 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 as amazing as Jesus? Whom I 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 we 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.
You are welcome to join Christ Church for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Tuesday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This Holy Week, Water Daily will look at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Philip of Bethsaida: People always wanted to see Jesus; what was so different about these Greeks, that their request should cause Jesus 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 am. Together we went to Jesus. And his response surprised me. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." I didn't know what that meant but then he looked at us with what seemed like resignation, 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 business. The leaders are not happy with Jesus’ popularity, or his miracles. And now even Greeks in Jerusalem for Passover want to see him? This attention is not good.
Or is it “good” in a much bigger way? 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 as amazing as Jesus? Whom I 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 we 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.
You are welcome to join Christ Church for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Tuesday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-25-24 - Holy Monday: Lazarus of Bethany
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. This Holy Week, Water Daily will look at the readings appointed for each day and reflect from the perspective of one the people on the fringes of the story. We too are on the fringes of this story – and we are invited to come into its heart this week. May these holy men and women draw us closer.
Lazarus of Bethany: So, they want to kill me – I, who have already tasted death. More than tasted – spent four days in that place where there is no light. Came back to myself in a cold, dark, rancid place; came back to myself at the sound of his voice calling me. Stumbled toward the light beyond the rock they’d just moved to let me out, not sure where I was, or who.
If I hadn’t seen the power and love in this man who became my friend, I might say Jesus was the worst thing that could have happened to my family. His visits caused my sisters to squabble, his friendship drew unwanted attention. But I can say with my whole heart that Jesus was the best thing. He drew out the gentleness in Martha, who so often uses her intelligence and competence to control events and other people. And I’ve seen our sister Mary show a new boldness and courage since coming to know Jesus.
Like tonight, at dinner at our house – she took a whole jar of nard that must have cost her the earth, and anointed Jesus’ feet with it. Just got on her knees and anointed him and then wiped his feet with her hair. It was extraordinary, and unsettling. Didn’t make his disciples happy – don’t know if it was the extravagance or the intimacy that bothered them most. But Jesus defended her, talking about her having “bought it for the day of my burial.” He knew the end of this life was coming soon; I wonder if he knew how ghastly that end would be? Did he fear it? The suffering? The dying? Did he know what would come next – really know? Or did he have to walk by faith, like all of us?
And now, because so many have come to believe in Jesus because he raised me, they want to kill me. The symbol. The forerunner. You know what? They don’t scare me. Death no longer scares me. Like my sisters, I believe Jesus is who he says he is, the Anointed of God, the Messiah we’ve been awaiting.
And I know that the next time I leave this life, it won’t be to the place of complete darkness. For he will be with me, the Light of the World will illumine even that darkness and make it holy. I just wish he didn’t have to pass through the darkness himself…
What in Lazarus’ story – or Martha’s, or Mary’s – brings up a story in you? A story of new life returning from dead places? A story of hospitality and service? A story of extravagant sacrifice to honor Jesus or your faith? What do you want to offer Jesus today?
You are welcome to join Christ Church for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Monday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Lazarus of Bethany: So, they want to kill me – I, who have already tasted death. More than tasted – spent four days in that place where there is no light. Came back to myself in a cold, dark, rancid place; came back to myself at the sound of his voice calling me. Stumbled toward the light beyond the rock they’d just moved to let me out, not sure where I was, or who.
If I hadn’t seen the power and love in this man who became my friend, I might say Jesus was the worst thing that could have happened to my family. His visits caused my sisters to squabble, his friendship drew unwanted attention. But I can say with my whole heart that Jesus was the best thing. He drew out the gentleness in Martha, who so often uses her intelligence and competence to control events and other people. And I’ve seen our sister Mary show a new boldness and courage since coming to know Jesus.
Like tonight, at dinner at our house – she took a whole jar of nard that must have cost her the earth, and anointed Jesus’ feet with it. Just got on her knees and anointed him and then wiped his feet with her hair. It was extraordinary, and unsettling. Didn’t make his disciples happy – don’t know if it was the extravagance or the intimacy that bothered them most. But Jesus defended her, talking about her having “bought it for the day of my burial.” He knew the end of this life was coming soon; I wonder if he knew how ghastly that end would be? Did he fear it? The suffering? The dying? Did he know what would come next – really know? Or did he have to walk by faith, like all of us?
And now, because so many have come to believe in Jesus because he raised me, they want to kill me. The symbol. The forerunner. You know what? They don’t scare me. Death no longer scares me. Like my sisters, I believe Jesus is who he says he is, the Anointed of God, the Messiah we’ve been awaiting.
And I know that the next time I leave this life, it won’t be to the place of complete darkness. For he will be with me, the Light of the World will illumine even that darkness and make it holy. I just wish he didn’t have to pass through the darkness himself…
What in Lazarus’ story – or Martha’s, or Mary’s – brings up a story in you? A story of new life returning from dead places? A story of hospitality and service? A story of extravagant sacrifice to honor Jesus or your faith? What do you want to offer Jesus today?
You are welcome to join Christ Church for online worship at 7 this evening - here is the link. Our Holy Week line-up of mostly online services is here.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Holy Monday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-22-24 - Already Late
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
What must it have been like for Jesus coming into Jerusalem that day? Knowing this was the last time he would enter this city where holiness and violence, yearning for God and insistence on human power mingle so potently? “Bittersweet” is too mild to convey the feelings that must have jostled within him. In other passages, we learn that he wept over Jerusalem with its legacy of conflict. Was he also weeping for his own coming loss?
He did not remain long in the city after his triumphal entry: Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
What a poignant phrase, “already late.” It was late in the day. Also late in the game for the cheering crowds to turn his way; the events that would lead to his suffering and death were already in motion. And while I think God’s gift of free will means that Judas could have refused to betray him, Pilate refuse to condemn him, even his persecutors stop and choose another way to deal with the threat he represented – it was unlikely that this story could turn out another way.
Especially not if we bear in mind that Jesus’ chief adversary was not the people around him, but the personified force of evil choking the life out of this world and its creatures. That fight had to be fought, and this was the way Jesus would take on that enemy and his ultimate weapon, death.
So Jesus did not linger in Jerusalem that evening, but returned with his inner circle of disciples to Bethany, the town where Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived. Was that the night Mary anointed his feet with a whole jar of expensive perfume? Was that the night Judas made the decision to betray him? It was one of Jesus’ last nights in human form, with those whom he had come to love. I hope it was a night among friends, with good food and laughter enough to push the dread and anxiety to the corners of his mind. Time enough to return to Jerusalem in the daylight and engage his final battle.
It is “already late” for us as well, as Lent draws to a close and we prepare to enter the drama of Holy Week on Sunday. Maybe we too should rest – take some time for family and ordinary chores, get together with friends, prepare for our walk to the cross with Jesus by not thinking too hard.
I hope you will do some resting and preparing – and then take seriously the offers of Holy Week to fully experience this story with your community of faith. (You’re welcome to join me online here for worship Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at 7 pm.) Yes, no doubt you’ve heard this story before. But it reveals new gifts to us each year. As late as it may be, God’s love is never too late to overwhelm us. That is my Holy Week prayer for you.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
What must it have been like for Jesus coming into Jerusalem that day? Knowing this was the last time he would enter this city where holiness and violence, yearning for God and insistence on human power mingle so potently? “Bittersweet” is too mild to convey the feelings that must have jostled within him. In other passages, we learn that he wept over Jerusalem with its legacy of conflict. Was he also weeping for his own coming loss?
He did not remain long in the city after his triumphal entry: Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
What a poignant phrase, “already late.” It was late in the day. Also late in the game for the cheering crowds to turn his way; the events that would lead to his suffering and death were already in motion. And while I think God’s gift of free will means that Judas could have refused to betray him, Pilate refuse to condemn him, even his persecutors stop and choose another way to deal with the threat he represented – it was unlikely that this story could turn out another way.
Especially not if we bear in mind that Jesus’ chief adversary was not the people around him, but the personified force of evil choking the life out of this world and its creatures. That fight had to be fought, and this was the way Jesus would take on that enemy and his ultimate weapon, death.
So Jesus did not linger in Jerusalem that evening, but returned with his inner circle of disciples to Bethany, the town where Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived. Was that the night Mary anointed his feet with a whole jar of expensive perfume? Was that the night Judas made the decision to betray him? It was one of Jesus’ last nights in human form, with those whom he had come to love. I hope it was a night among friends, with good food and laughter enough to push the dread and anxiety to the corners of his mind. Time enough to return to Jerusalem in the daylight and engage his final battle.
It is “already late” for us as well, as Lent draws to a close and we prepare to enter the drama of Holy Week on Sunday. Maybe we too should rest – take some time for family and ordinary chores, get together with friends, prepare for our walk to the cross with Jesus by not thinking too hard.
I hope you will do some resting and preparing – and then take seriously the offers of Holy Week to fully experience this story with your community of faith. (You’re welcome to join me online here for worship Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at 7 pm.) Yes, no doubt you’ve heard this story before. But it reveals new gifts to us each year. As late as it may be, God’s love is never too late to overwhelm us. That is my Holy Week prayer for you.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-21-24 - Hosanna!
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
If all we knew was the crowd spreading their cloaks and palm branches before Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, we might wonder why the adulation. But when we bring in the audio, it becomes clearer: Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
Jesus was being given a conqueror’s welcome before he’d conquered anything. Those who shouted “Hosanna!” must have been convinced he was more than a brilliant teacher, a holy man, a miracle-worker – he was the Son of David. In the gospels we more often see Jesus’ Messianic identity perceived by those on the margins of society – the diseased, the sinful, the demonic. In the story just before this one, it is a blind beggar, Bartimaeus, who shouts, “Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me.” Now, it appears, there has been a tipping point and the general populace has taken up the cry. “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”
Jesus never argued against the Davidic title, but neither did he talk about the restoration of a royal line or an earthly kingdom. He insisted that God’s coming kingdom was Good News for the poor and the lame, the blind and the deaf, the despairing and the destitute. Yet somehow that wider focus got narrowed by the crowd dancing alongside him; the “coming kingdom of our ancestor David” suggests freedom, a restoration of past glory, victory over the hated Romans - dare I say MIGA?
That was something Jesus never promised. He proclaimed freedom for humanity from the greater oppression of sin and death, leading to justice for all. But who can focus on sin and death when being oppressed by a cruel and corrupt regime? Can we blame the crowds for writing the script they wanted Jesus to live out, ignoring his own predictions about the script his Father had provided?
Their fervor here helps make sense of the sudden reversal to condemnation a few days later, as they see their hero arrested, held, beaten, mocked – and not lifting a finger to defend himself. Where was all that power that had been on such glorious display for three years? If he wasn't able to save himself, how was he to save them? Was this Jesus another fraud like all the rest, his promises empty, his miracles magic tricks? If political and military restoration was what they wanted, no wonder they were so bitterly disappointed.
Are there things we’ve wanted from Jesus, from this “Christian thing,” that we have not received? Are we holding back on giving ourselves more fully to relationship with God in Christ because we’ve been disappointed? Those are good things to surface and to talk to Jesus about in prayer. How do we feel about the promises we believe God has made? And what promises have we made to God?
Sometimes our “hosannas” are just phrases we mumble by rote. If we can be honest before God about our hopes and disappointments, and ask Jesus to truly reveal himself, there is a much greater chance that our “Hosannas” will be heartfelt, authentic outpourings of praise and love.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
If all we knew was the crowd spreading their cloaks and palm branches before Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, we might wonder why the adulation. But when we bring in the audio, it becomes clearer: Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
Jesus was being given a conqueror’s welcome before he’d conquered anything. Those who shouted “Hosanna!” must have been convinced he was more than a brilliant teacher, a holy man, a miracle-worker – he was the Son of David. In the gospels we more often see Jesus’ Messianic identity perceived by those on the margins of society – the diseased, the sinful, the demonic. In the story just before this one, it is a blind beggar, Bartimaeus, who shouts, “Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me.” Now, it appears, there has been a tipping point and the general populace has taken up the cry. “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”
Jesus never argued against the Davidic title, but neither did he talk about the restoration of a royal line or an earthly kingdom. He insisted that God’s coming kingdom was Good News for the poor and the lame, the blind and the deaf, the despairing and the destitute. Yet somehow that wider focus got narrowed by the crowd dancing alongside him; the “coming kingdom of our ancestor David” suggests freedom, a restoration of past glory, victory over the hated Romans - dare I say MIGA?
That was something Jesus never promised. He proclaimed freedom for humanity from the greater oppression of sin and death, leading to justice for all. But who can focus on sin and death when being oppressed by a cruel and corrupt regime? Can we blame the crowds for writing the script they wanted Jesus to live out, ignoring his own predictions about the script his Father had provided?
Their fervor here helps make sense of the sudden reversal to condemnation a few days later, as they see their hero arrested, held, beaten, mocked – and not lifting a finger to defend himself. Where was all that power that had been on such glorious display for three years? If he wasn't able to save himself, how was he to save them? Was this Jesus another fraud like all the rest, his promises empty, his miracles magic tricks? If political and military restoration was what they wanted, no wonder they were so bitterly disappointed.
Are there things we’ve wanted from Jesus, from this “Christian thing,” that we have not received? Are we holding back on giving ourselves more fully to relationship with God in Christ because we’ve been disappointed? Those are good things to surface and to talk to Jesus about in prayer. How do we feel about the promises we believe God has made? And what promises have we made to God?
Sometimes our “hosannas” are just phrases we mumble by rote. If we can be honest before God about our hopes and disappointments, and ask Jesus to truly reveal himself, there is a much greater chance that our “Hosannas” will be heartfelt, authentic outpourings of praise and love.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-20-24 - Laying Down Our Cloaks
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
We ought to call it “Leafy Branch Sunday” or “Cloak Sunday,” for there is no mention of palms. And those leafy branches weren’t being waved around – people were placing them on the colt which carried Jesus through the streets, and even on the road on which the colt would walk. So revered was Jesus in this moment, people didn’t even want the hooves of the beast on which he rode to touch the bare ground: Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.
In just a few days, this same man whose feet were too holy to touch the ground would walk these streets, bloodied and bruised, ground into the mud by the weight of the cross beam he must now carry. How did the people go from such extravagant reverence to contempt in such a short time?
The human success of Jesus’ earthly ministry reaches its apotheosis in the Palm Sunday story. And maybe the over-the-top frenzy of adulation directed toward Jesus fueled the degradation he endured later that week. We do like to put people on pedestals, and then watch them topple down. But Jesus wasn't here for human success. He had his heart and mind set on a victory that was impossible to explain even to those who knew him best. I can only imagine how dislocating this event must have been for him.
Where are we to place ourselves in this story, especially in worship on Palm Sunday, when we make this transition from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” in a matter of minutes? Each year, we can find ourselves in a different place in the story, and in a different relationship to the man at its center.
I wish I could meet this Jesus for the first time. I wish I could feel the zeal and the love I’ve seen in people who have more recently come to know him. Even in my own prayer life, my experience of Jesus is domesticated and muted. He is too familiar – and not well enough known – to engage my feelings the way I wish.
How might we experience the reverence of those who spread their cloaks on the road? How do we get back in touch with the God-ness of this man who came to make God knowable? It’s a hard balance to find. Jesus didn’t want to be on a pedestal, or on the back of a colt. I believe he wants us to have tea with him in the ordinariness of our lives. And yet, this one who invites us to make ourselves known intimately to him, to speak the desires of our heart and confess our blemishes, is God!
We might begin by adding some reverence into our spiritual practice – the consecrating of the time, the lighting of the candle, the closing of the Ipad (which is hard if that’s where you’re reading the bible…), the focus on gratitude.
Jesus doesn’t need our hosannas, I don’t think, but I do believe he wants us to be real, "uncloaked," if you will. Maybe laying our cloaks on the road before him is a way of letting him know us fully, as we truly are.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
We ought to call it “Leafy Branch Sunday” or “Cloak Sunday,” for there is no mention of palms. And those leafy branches weren’t being waved around – people were placing them on the colt which carried Jesus through the streets, and even on the road on which the colt would walk. So revered was Jesus in this moment, people didn’t even want the hooves of the beast on which he rode to touch the bare ground: Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.
In just a few days, this same man whose feet were too holy to touch the ground would walk these streets, bloodied and bruised, ground into the mud by the weight of the cross beam he must now carry. How did the people go from such extravagant reverence to contempt in such a short time?
The human success of Jesus’ earthly ministry reaches its apotheosis in the Palm Sunday story. And maybe the over-the-top frenzy of adulation directed toward Jesus fueled the degradation he endured later that week. We do like to put people on pedestals, and then watch them topple down. But Jesus wasn't here for human success. He had his heart and mind set on a victory that was impossible to explain even to those who knew him best. I can only imagine how dislocating this event must have been for him.
Where are we to place ourselves in this story, especially in worship on Palm Sunday, when we make this transition from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” in a matter of minutes? Each year, we can find ourselves in a different place in the story, and in a different relationship to the man at its center.
I wish I could meet this Jesus for the first time. I wish I could feel the zeal and the love I’ve seen in people who have more recently come to know him. Even in my own prayer life, my experience of Jesus is domesticated and muted. He is too familiar – and not well enough known – to engage my feelings the way I wish.
How might we experience the reverence of those who spread their cloaks on the road? How do we get back in touch with the God-ness of this man who came to make God knowable? It’s a hard balance to find. Jesus didn’t want to be on a pedestal, or on the back of a colt. I believe he wants us to have tea with him in the ordinariness of our lives. And yet, this one who invites us to make ourselves known intimately to him, to speak the desires of our heart and confess our blemishes, is God!
We might begin by adding some reverence into our spiritual practice – the consecrating of the time, the lighting of the candle, the closing of the Ipad (which is hard if that’s where you’re reading the bible…), the focus on gratitude.
Jesus doesn’t need our hosannas, I don’t think, but I do believe he wants us to be real, "uncloaked," if you will. Maybe laying our cloaks on the road before him is a way of letting him know us fully, as we truly are.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-19-24 - Why Are You Doing This?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The Palm Sunday story begins with a cryptic message. Jesus sends two of his followers to a village on the road ahead, and gives them instructions worthy of Mission Impossible: When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’”
How Jesus knows this colt will be there, we are not told. But it likely didn’t take clairvoyance to anticipate the colt’s owners' objections to total strangers coming along, untying and leading it away. Jesus foresaw the question, “Why are you doing this?” and provided an answer he thought would satisfy.
Has anyone ever asked you that question regarding your commitment to Jesus and/or his church? “Why do you spend so much time at that church?” “Why do give money to that church?” “Why do you go to Bible study?” “Why would you pray for healing? It doesn’t work, you know.”
As Christ-followers, we are part of a profoundly counter-cultural enterprise. It was so when Jesus first came on the scene and remained so through the church's early centuries. To allocate time, money, emotions, resources to this odd sect with its strange forms of worship and bizarre claims about a crucified and risen Lord, who was fully human and fully God, a triune God, yet; and who allows terrible things to happen to those he loves… it was hard to defend. Add in periods of persecution, when being part of the Christian movement could imperil your life, livelihood and loved ones… “Why are you doing this?” was a reasonable question.
Then came many centuries, right up to the 20th, when Christendom was the dominant religious tradition in many parts of the world, and that question grew more muted – as did commitment to the radical Gospel Jesus proclaimed. But now we live in a post-Christendom age, at least in America and Europe. No one has to be part of a church, and not many are looking to be. Millions have no frame of reference at all when it comes to religious affiliation, and Christian commitment competes with many other claims on people’s time, money and allegiances (often true even among church-goers!) There are fewer people asking, “Why are you doing this,” if they notice what we’re doing at all.
Still, we should each have an answer at the ready. We can use part of the answer the disciples picking up the colt were to give: “The Lord has need of me.” No one can argue with that, and some might even want to know more about this “Lord” who successfully claims your time and investment. You might even ask yourself that question – and invite the Holy Spirit to be part of the answer. Ask God, “What need do you have of me?” While I believe God delights in our identity far more than our utility, let’s pose the question and see how the answer comes to us. It might point us in a whole new direction.
Wherever it takes us, be assured that God already knows the route, as surely as Jesus knew that colt would be tied up in the village up ahead. The instructions may still be cryptic, but God will provide what we need as we participate in his mission of making all things whole, colts, answers and all.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
The Palm Sunday story begins with a cryptic message. Jesus sends two of his followers to a village on the road ahead, and gives them instructions worthy of Mission Impossible: When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’”
How Jesus knows this colt will be there, we are not told. But it likely didn’t take clairvoyance to anticipate the colt’s owners' objections to total strangers coming along, untying and leading it away. Jesus foresaw the question, “Why are you doing this?” and provided an answer he thought would satisfy.
Has anyone ever asked you that question regarding your commitment to Jesus and/or his church? “Why do you spend so much time at that church?” “Why do give money to that church?” “Why do you go to Bible study?” “Why would you pray for healing? It doesn’t work, you know.”
As Christ-followers, we are part of a profoundly counter-cultural enterprise. It was so when Jesus first came on the scene and remained so through the church's early centuries. To allocate time, money, emotions, resources to this odd sect with its strange forms of worship and bizarre claims about a crucified and risen Lord, who was fully human and fully God, a triune God, yet; and who allows terrible things to happen to those he loves… it was hard to defend. Add in periods of persecution, when being part of the Christian movement could imperil your life, livelihood and loved ones… “Why are you doing this?” was a reasonable question.
Then came many centuries, right up to the 20th, when Christendom was the dominant religious tradition in many parts of the world, and that question grew more muted – as did commitment to the radical Gospel Jesus proclaimed. But now we live in a post-Christendom age, at least in America and Europe. No one has to be part of a church, and not many are looking to be. Millions have no frame of reference at all when it comes to religious affiliation, and Christian commitment competes with many other claims on people’s time, money and allegiances (often true even among church-goers!) There are fewer people asking, “Why are you doing this,” if they notice what we’re doing at all.
Still, we should each have an answer at the ready. We can use part of the answer the disciples picking up the colt were to give: “The Lord has need of me.” No one can argue with that, and some might even want to know more about this “Lord” who successfully claims your time and investment. You might even ask yourself that question – and invite the Holy Spirit to be part of the answer. Ask God, “What need do you have of me?” While I believe God delights in our identity far more than our utility, let’s pose the question and see how the answer comes to us. It might point us in a whole new direction.
Wherever it takes us, be assured that God already knows the route, as surely as Jesus knew that colt would be tied up in the village up ahead. The instructions may still be cryptic, but God will provide what we need as we participate in his mission of making all things whole, colts, answers and all.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-18-24 - Approaching Jerusalem
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus has performed his last healing, at least as Mark tells the story of his life and death. He healed blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho, and now he is approaching Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, named for peace (“salem”), but so often the site of religious violence and bloodshed. Jerusalem, where Jesus is to face violence and bloodshed – his own blood poured out to fulfill God’s mission to restore creation to wholeness. He has told his disciples yet again what he faces in Jerusalem, and once again they have squabbled, unable to take in the magnitude of his words. From this point on Jesus does no more healing or soothing. He faces down his accusers, cleanses the temple of corrupt influences and tells pointed stories. And moves inexorably toward his passion and death.
In our church year we too are approaching Jerusalem, closing in on Holy Week. For those who draw near, “close enough to smell the blood,” as one preacher I knew used to say, it is a time of discomfort and disjunction as we hover near the mystery of such a life, such a death, and such life emerging from such death. Death and Life are inextricably linked in this passion and resurrection story of ours.
Of course, death and life are inextricably linked in our own lives and our world as well: the natural world around us with its seasons and evolutions and swift brutality; the social worlds around us with all their violence and conflict... and sometimes peace emerging through it all. Even in our own bodies, life and death compete, as the rate of cells dying gradually overtakes the generative impulse toward life and the system runs down for good. Life and death are always joined, but it is human nature to focus on life, glancing at death only when we are forced to do so.
Thus Palm Sunday is a weird occasion for those who take their Christian commitment seriously. We voluntarily focus our attention on the mistreatment and murder of a man of pure wholeness, complete integrity. If we allow the horror to penetrate us it can leave us unsettled, even frightened. I once spoke to a child who had attended our Stations of the Cross service; as she put it, "It freaked me out." She was able to handle it in the safety of a loving family and church community, but it’s a lot to take in, no matter what age. If we’re paying attention, it freaks us all out.
So we tiptoe up to it. It’s still a week away; but the Palm Sunday story we focus on this week brings us to the threshold of that walk to the Cross. Let’s take this week to prepare ourselves, which really just means opening our spirits to the drama and the trauma, the horror and the overwhelming love. Let’s ask God where in our lives we are called to live this story, and to make it known.
In our lives as Christ followers we are always approaching Jerusalem, that place where our ministry comes into sharpest focus, where God desires to make the world whole through us. We believe Christ accomplished that once and for all on the cross, yet somehow that redemption needs to be made real through us, one person at a time.
For Jesus, it was the cross. What ministry is it for us, on this side of Calvary and Easter? What work of redemption does God want to complete through you?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus has performed his last healing, at least as Mark tells the story of his life and death. He healed blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho, and now he is approaching Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, named for peace (“salem”), but so often the site of religious violence and bloodshed. Jerusalem, where Jesus is to face violence and bloodshed – his own blood poured out to fulfill God’s mission to restore creation to wholeness. He has told his disciples yet again what he faces in Jerusalem, and once again they have squabbled, unable to take in the magnitude of his words. From this point on Jesus does no more healing or soothing. He faces down his accusers, cleanses the temple of corrupt influences and tells pointed stories. And moves inexorably toward his passion and death.
In our church year we too are approaching Jerusalem, closing in on Holy Week. For those who draw near, “close enough to smell the blood,” as one preacher I knew used to say, it is a time of discomfort and disjunction as we hover near the mystery of such a life, such a death, and such life emerging from such death. Death and Life are inextricably linked in this passion and resurrection story of ours.
Of course, death and life are inextricably linked in our own lives and our world as well: the natural world around us with its seasons and evolutions and swift brutality; the social worlds around us with all their violence and conflict... and sometimes peace emerging through it all. Even in our own bodies, life and death compete, as the rate of cells dying gradually overtakes the generative impulse toward life and the system runs down for good. Life and death are always joined, but it is human nature to focus on life, glancing at death only when we are forced to do so.
Thus Palm Sunday is a weird occasion for those who take their Christian commitment seriously. We voluntarily focus our attention on the mistreatment and murder of a man of pure wholeness, complete integrity. If we allow the horror to penetrate us it can leave us unsettled, even frightened. I once spoke to a child who had attended our Stations of the Cross service; as she put it, "It freaked me out." She was able to handle it in the safety of a loving family and church community, but it’s a lot to take in, no matter what age. If we’re paying attention, it freaks us all out.
So we tiptoe up to it. It’s still a week away; but the Palm Sunday story we focus on this week brings us to the threshold of that walk to the Cross. Let’s take this week to prepare ourselves, which really just means opening our spirits to the drama and the trauma, the horror and the overwhelming love. Let’s ask God where in our lives we are called to live this story, and to make it known.
In our lives as Christ followers we are always approaching Jerusalem, that place where our ministry comes into sharpest focus, where God desires to make the world whole through us. We believe Christ accomplished that once and for all on the cross, yet somehow that redemption needs to be made real through us, one person at a time.
For Jesus, it was the cross. What ministry is it for us, on this side of Calvary and Easter? What work of redemption does God want to complete through you?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-15-24 - God's Embrace
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
There is a prayer for mission in the Episcopal rite of Morning Prayer that begins like this: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.
It is a lovely thought, to take the brutal image of a man nailed to a cross beam, his arms spread wide, and call it an embrace. Or it’s a horrible thought. Or both. A child once asked me, “Why do they call it Good Friday? How can it be a good day If Jesus died?” We call it “good” because we believe that we are drawn into that saving embrace, whether or not Jesus chose the position of his arms.
And, in part, we believe that because of what he said, at the end of this passage we read on Sunday - “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die."
By “ruler of this world” he means Satan, the personification of corrupting, life-sapping evil, whose power to tempt humanity away from the love of their Creator gained him authority over this world, this limited, created realm. Satan, not the authorities with whom Jesus so often tangled, was Jesus’ adversary. He was the one from whom humanity needed saving. His weapon of choice has always been death, and Jesus had to put death to death.
In using this language, Jesus anticipated the horror ahead and framed it in the context of his mission in this world, his Father’s mission to reclaim, restore, renew all of creation to wholeness. In being lifted up on that cross, the very picture of powerlessness, Jesus would exercise all the power that created worlds to break “death’s fearful hold.” That’s why the earth shook and the sun was blocked out when he died. Because he’d broken the power of evil and death, once and for all. For all of creation.
This was to be the way God would draw all people back to himself. Yet we know that all people have not come within reach of that saving embrace. Some have come near and chosen not to stay; others have grown up around this tale and never knew it was a love story. And some have never heard, because we haven’t told them.
We are approaching the powerful mysteries of Holy Week, when we tiptoe closer to this awful love story than we really want to. “Did you really have to go through that to save me?” we think. I hope you will choose to walk closely the way of the cross this year, along with your faith community. (Our services on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Good Friday will be online here at 7 pm… you’re welcome to join.)
Jesus' embrace on the cross was wide enough to include people who don’t believe in him, or are hostile to him, or don’t know anything about him. It was wide enough to include those who had him killed, and those who did the killing. It was wide enough to include every enemy, every stranger. And it was wide enough for you and me, even when we allow the things of this world to claim our focus. Can we turn and receive the love God has poured out for us in Christ? Come into that saving embrace and find Life.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
There is a prayer for mission in the Episcopal rite of Morning Prayer that begins like this: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.
It is a lovely thought, to take the brutal image of a man nailed to a cross beam, his arms spread wide, and call it an embrace. Or it’s a horrible thought. Or both. A child once asked me, “Why do they call it Good Friday? How can it be a good day If Jesus died?” We call it “good” because we believe that we are drawn into that saving embrace, whether or not Jesus chose the position of his arms.
And, in part, we believe that because of what he said, at the end of this passage we read on Sunday - “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die."
By “ruler of this world” he means Satan, the personification of corrupting, life-sapping evil, whose power to tempt humanity away from the love of their Creator gained him authority over this world, this limited, created realm. Satan, not the authorities with whom Jesus so often tangled, was Jesus’ adversary. He was the one from whom humanity needed saving. His weapon of choice has always been death, and Jesus had to put death to death.
In using this language, Jesus anticipated the horror ahead and framed it in the context of his mission in this world, his Father’s mission to reclaim, restore, renew all of creation to wholeness. In being lifted up on that cross, the very picture of powerlessness, Jesus would exercise all the power that created worlds to break “death’s fearful hold.” That’s why the earth shook and the sun was blocked out when he died. Because he’d broken the power of evil and death, once and for all. For all of creation.
This was to be the way God would draw all people back to himself. Yet we know that all people have not come within reach of that saving embrace. Some have come near and chosen not to stay; others have grown up around this tale and never knew it was a love story. And some have never heard, because we haven’t told them.
We are approaching the powerful mysteries of Holy Week, when we tiptoe closer to this awful love story than we really want to. “Did you really have to go through that to save me?” we think. I hope you will choose to walk closely the way of the cross this year, along with your faith community. (Our services on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Good Friday will be online here at 7 pm… you’re welcome to join.)
Jesus' embrace on the cross was wide enough to include people who don’t believe in him, or are hostile to him, or don’t know anything about him. It was wide enough to include those who had him killed, and those who did the killing. It was wide enough to include every enemy, every stranger. And it was wide enough for you and me, even when we allow the things of this world to claim our focus. Can we turn and receive the love God has poured out for us in Christ? Come into that saving embrace and find Life.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-14-24 - Glorified
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I've always been puzzled by the idea of “glorifying God.” You can’t get any more glorified than the maker of the universe, right? So what does it mean to glorify God? And what did Jesus mean when, dreading the pain and death that was ahead for him, he trades the prayer, “Father, save me from this hour” for “Father, glorify your name?”
“Glorification” is not a word we use much nowadays – and when we do, it tends to be hyphenated after the word “self.” A quick google search on “glorify” elicits several sets of definitions, each of which include two slants on the word. One meaning is to praise, or to act in such a way as to make manifest the glory of God. The other meaning is nearly opposite – it appears the word “glorify” has become associated with attempts to garner praise or affirmation when it is not justified.
I’m pretty sure Jesus meant the first definition. But he doesn’t say he is going to glorify God – rather he says to God, “Father, glorify your name.” God is to glorify himself – and if we take Jesus as our model, it seems that the way God glorifies himself is through the actions of faithful men and women laying down their privileges and prerogatives, even their self-interest, for the sake of others.
This is not how we tend to think about glory! But then, at the very heart of our Christian story is a Master washing the filthy feet of his followers to demonstrate what their ministry was to look like. And one day later we see that same King naked, caked with muck and blood, suffocating on a cross, abandoned and humiliated. That, the Gospel of John suggests, is his moment of greatest glory. That is when the Father is most glorified in the Son.
That heavenly Father answered Jesus’ prayer: “Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’” It is a voice of affirmation and reminder to Jesus that he is walking in his Father’s will, living out the fullness of God’s mission to restore and redeem all of creation. Perhaps it kept him going in the dark and tense days ahead.
As followers, imitators of Christ, how can we best glorify the God who made us, loves us, empowers and nurtures us? Where are we called to lay down our privileges and prerogatives, even at cost to ourselves? Sometimes we can discern that best by noticing when and where we do not want to serve or humble ourselves. Sometimes that is exactly where God is calling us to allow Him to work through us.
And never forget it is God who will work through us. We can’t glorify God if we’re cut off from God. Just as a flower in bloom brings glory to the plant of which it is a part, so we bring glory to God as a part of God. If we don’t know exactly how to glorify God, we can allow God to glorify himself through us. Jesus did.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
I've always been puzzled by the idea of “glorifying God.” You can’t get any more glorified than the maker of the universe, right? So what does it mean to glorify God? And what did Jesus mean when, dreading the pain and death that was ahead for him, he trades the prayer, “Father, save me from this hour” for “Father, glorify your name?”
“Glorification” is not a word we use much nowadays – and when we do, it tends to be hyphenated after the word “self.” A quick google search on “glorify” elicits several sets of definitions, each of which include two slants on the word. One meaning is to praise, or to act in such a way as to make manifest the glory of God. The other meaning is nearly opposite – it appears the word “glorify” has become associated with attempts to garner praise or affirmation when it is not justified.
I’m pretty sure Jesus meant the first definition. But he doesn’t say he is going to glorify God – rather he says to God, “Father, glorify your name.” God is to glorify himself – and if we take Jesus as our model, it seems that the way God glorifies himself is through the actions of faithful men and women laying down their privileges and prerogatives, even their self-interest, for the sake of others.
This is not how we tend to think about glory! But then, at the very heart of our Christian story is a Master washing the filthy feet of his followers to demonstrate what their ministry was to look like. And one day later we see that same King naked, caked with muck and blood, suffocating on a cross, abandoned and humiliated. That, the Gospel of John suggests, is his moment of greatest glory. That is when the Father is most glorified in the Son.
That heavenly Father answered Jesus’ prayer: “Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’” It is a voice of affirmation and reminder to Jesus that he is walking in his Father’s will, living out the fullness of God’s mission to restore and redeem all of creation. Perhaps it kept him going in the dark and tense days ahead.
As followers, imitators of Christ, how can we best glorify the God who made us, loves us, empowers and nurtures us? Where are we called to lay down our privileges and prerogatives, even at cost to ourselves? Sometimes we can discern that best by noticing when and where we do not want to serve or humble ourselves. Sometimes that is exactly where God is calling us to allow Him to work through us.
And never forget it is God who will work through us. We can’t glorify God if we’re cut off from God. Just as a flower in bloom brings glory to the plant of which it is a part, so we bring glory to God as a part of God. If we don’t know exactly how to glorify God, we can allow God to glorify himself through us. Jesus did.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-13-24 - Seeds
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When we are faced with doing something difficult, it can help to remind ourselves what good will come of it. That’s what gets me to exercise and keeps me eating healthfully most of the time. But those are pretty superficial examples.
How about a parent who works a couple of jobs to ensure college money for her children? That outcome is a long way off, yet worth the sacrifice. Or “altruistic organ donors” like a Connecticut woman who offered a kidney to anyone who was a match, kicking off a round robin of surgeries in which four couples who were not matches for each other donated kidneys to other’s spouses, resulting in four kidney transplants and eight surgeries in one day.
In this gospel passage, we see Jesus confront his upcoming passion and death, and remind himself why he had so much pain and loss ahead. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, 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.”
In the natural world, whether in our gardens or our bodies, there is no growth without death. New skin grows as old cells die and are sloughed off. Chicks hatch only by breaking their eggs. A baby’s birth wreaks trauma on the mother’s body. Butterflies must demolish their cocoons to get free. And yes, seeds bear fruit only as they are buried in dark earth and broken open so that the new life within can come to fullness.
That is our calling as followers of Christ – to follow him into the dark, allow ourselves to be broken and transformed from a seed into a seedling, and then a plant that bears abundant fruit. That’s pretty much the trajectory of a disciple. Every ounce of energy we spend clinging to what we have, what we love, what we can see, is energy not spent allowing ourselves to be planted, broken, transformed and flourishing. "Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
This is also our calling as the Body of Christ, our calling as congregations: to allow ourselves to be broken open, inconveniently, sometimes painfully; our patterns and presuppositions challenged and changed, so that we can bring life and fruit to hungry people around us.
Where are you discerning a call to be like a seed that is planted, broken, transformed and made fruitful? Where are you on that cycle? It’s one we repeat more than once in our lives… sometimes more than once in a week! It can help to remember that we are following Jesus into that dark earth, that he is with us in the seed process. As he said, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”
We not only follow him into the dark earth. We live in the promise that, like him, we have emerged into new Life, that Life which never ends. Do all seeds know the glorious outcome of their process? If we must cling to anything, let it be that promise, this Life we have already begun to live.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
When we are faced with doing something difficult, it can help to remind ourselves what good will come of it. That’s what gets me to exercise and keeps me eating healthfully most of the time. But those are pretty superficial examples.
How about a parent who works a couple of jobs to ensure college money for her children? That outcome is a long way off, yet worth the sacrifice. Or “altruistic organ donors” like a Connecticut woman who offered a kidney to anyone who was a match, kicking off a round robin of surgeries in which four couples who were not matches for each other donated kidneys to other’s spouses, resulting in four kidney transplants and eight surgeries in one day.
In this gospel passage, we see Jesus confront his upcoming passion and death, and remind himself why he had so much pain and loss ahead. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, 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.”
In the natural world, whether in our gardens or our bodies, there is no growth without death. New skin grows as old cells die and are sloughed off. Chicks hatch only by breaking their eggs. A baby’s birth wreaks trauma on the mother’s body. Butterflies must demolish their cocoons to get free. And yes, seeds bear fruit only as they are buried in dark earth and broken open so that the new life within can come to fullness.
That is our calling as followers of Christ – to follow him into the dark, allow ourselves to be broken and transformed from a seed into a seedling, and then a plant that bears abundant fruit. That’s pretty much the trajectory of a disciple. Every ounce of energy we spend clinging to what we have, what we love, what we can see, is energy not spent allowing ourselves to be planted, broken, transformed and flourishing. "Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life."
This is also our calling as the Body of Christ, our calling as congregations: to allow ourselves to be broken open, inconveniently, sometimes painfully; our patterns and presuppositions challenged and changed, so that we can bring life and fruit to hungry people around us.
Where are you discerning a call to be like a seed that is planted, broken, transformed and made fruitful? Where are you on that cycle? It’s one we repeat more than once in our lives… sometimes more than once in a week! It can help to remember that we are following Jesus into that dark earth, that he is with us in the seed process. As he said, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”
We not only follow him into the dark earth. We live in the promise that, like him, we have emerged into new Life, that Life which never ends. Do all seeds know the glorious outcome of their process? If we must cling to anything, let it be that promise, this Life we have already begun to live.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-12-24 - Now Is the Hour
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
You’d think it would have pleased Jesus to hear that Greeks were asking to meet him. It meant his message of freedom and transformation in God’s love was spreading beyond his own community. I would have said, “Yay! Growth! Expansion! My efforts are paying off!”
But Jesus' mission went deeper than the healing and conversion of individuals. His mission was to bring freedom and transformation to the entire cosmos. Hearing that these Greeks wanted to meet him seems to have signaled to him that the final part of his mission was about to begin.
Philip had gone to Andrew with the message from those visitors, and together they’d come to tell Jesus. “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He talks about dying and bearing fruit, losing your life and servanthood. And then he gives voice to his anxiety and sorrow. “‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’”
Matthew, Mark and Luke show Jesus wrestling with his mission in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his betrayal by Judas and his arrest by the temple guard. But as John tells the story, it is here, some time before his passion fully begins, that Jesus starts to feel the dread and turmoil, the desire for some other plan to be revealed. It’s a poignant reminder of how much he suffered as a full human person, with all that emotional load to carry. He had to anticipate the betrayal, the abandonment by his closest friends, the injustice, the physical pain. He had to carry that load long before they beat him and made him carry his cross to Calvary. It begins now, here. The hour has come.
“The hour has come.” So much human experience can be contained in those words. The hour to give birth or to leave this world. The hour of an examination, an interview or being fired. The hour of diagnosis, being sentenced, hitting bottom, admitting a deep truth about ourselves.
Does it help us to know that Jesus experienced anxiety and dread, irritation and anger, that his soul could be troubled? I hope so – it reminds us that there is really nothing we can suffer that Jesus did not, including rejection and loneliness, misunderstanding and exhaustion. It gives us another way to connect with him in our spirits, when we feel such emotions, when we face challenges.
What comes up for you when you hear those words, “The hour has come?” Are you overtaken by dread of what lies ahead or regret for what cannot be recovered? Either is ground for prayer, to ask for the grace to receive the gifts and the challenges of this day, and remain centered in God’s presence here and now.
In his earthly life and ministry, Jesus was bound by time as we are, time moving inexorably toward an event, a conclusion, a beginning. He inhabited that hour and every hour afterward until he hung for those six hours on the cross. And then he was released into the eternal Now, where he exists forever, outside of time, from which he inspires and empowers us to participate in his mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness.
When we are made anxious by the “hours” that are momentous for us, we have a remedy. We can meet Jesus, in prayer, in that land where it is always Now.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You’d think it would have pleased Jesus to hear that Greeks were asking to meet him. It meant his message of freedom and transformation in God’s love was spreading beyond his own community. I would have said, “Yay! Growth! Expansion! My efforts are paying off!”
But Jesus' mission went deeper than the healing and conversion of individuals. His mission was to bring freedom and transformation to the entire cosmos. Hearing that these Greeks wanted to meet him seems to have signaled to him that the final part of his mission was about to begin.
Philip had gone to Andrew with the message from those visitors, and together they’d come to tell Jesus. “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He talks about dying and bearing fruit, losing your life and servanthood. And then he gives voice to his anxiety and sorrow. “‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’”
Matthew, Mark and Luke show Jesus wrestling with his mission in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his betrayal by Judas and his arrest by the temple guard. But as John tells the story, it is here, some time before his passion fully begins, that Jesus starts to feel the dread and turmoil, the desire for some other plan to be revealed. It’s a poignant reminder of how much he suffered as a full human person, with all that emotional load to carry. He had to anticipate the betrayal, the abandonment by his closest friends, the injustice, the physical pain. He had to carry that load long before they beat him and made him carry his cross to Calvary. It begins now, here. The hour has come.
“The hour has come.” So much human experience can be contained in those words. The hour to give birth or to leave this world. The hour of an examination, an interview or being fired. The hour of diagnosis, being sentenced, hitting bottom, admitting a deep truth about ourselves.
Does it help us to know that Jesus experienced anxiety and dread, irritation and anger, that his soul could be troubled? I hope so – it reminds us that there is really nothing we can suffer that Jesus did not, including rejection and loneliness, misunderstanding and exhaustion. It gives us another way to connect with him in our spirits, when we feel such emotions, when we face challenges.
What comes up for you when you hear those words, “The hour has come?” Are you overtaken by dread of what lies ahead or regret for what cannot be recovered? Either is ground for prayer, to ask for the grace to receive the gifts and the challenges of this day, and remain centered in God’s presence here and now.
In his earthly life and ministry, Jesus was bound by time as we are, time moving inexorably toward an event, a conclusion, a beginning. He inhabited that hour and every hour afterward until he hung for those six hours on the cross. And then he was released into the eternal Now, where he exists forever, outside of time, from which he inspires and empowers us to participate in his mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness.
When we are made anxious by the “hours” that are momentous for us, we have a remedy. We can meet Jesus, in prayer, in that land where it is always Now.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-11-24 Are You Philip?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One of my favorite things to do with church groups is to go out to a public space – a mall, a street corner, a park – and hold up signs saying, “Want a Prayer?” And then pray with whoever comes over. Many walk by without a glance, some do a double-take and keep walking – and some of those come back and say, “Wow. This is really nice. I’d like a prayer.”
It’s a great way to open conversations about faith. It would be even easier if we experienced what Jesus’ disciple Philip did during a festival in Jerusalem one day: “Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’”
News about Jesus, his teachings and miracles, had traveled beyond the Jewish community into the Roman and Hellenistic cultures of that region. Did these Greeks come hoping to see a miracle they could talk about in the agora? Did they crave a nugget of divine wisdom to chew on? Or did they want to get to know Jesus as the Messiah? We aren’t told what motivated them, only that they were eager enough to meet Jesus, they found someone they hoped could introduce him.
There are more such folks in our lives than we think. Doing prayer in a shopping mall one Saturday, many more people passed by than stopped, but at least nine came up to strangers for prayer in public during the hour we were there. That tells me this spiritual thirst I’m always hearing about actually does exist. And we have Living Water to share.
We don’t have to go looking for such people; the Spirit is already stirring their hearts. But we sure need to stop hiding from those who are looking for the spiritual blessings we have! Most are not going to cross the threshold of our odd, if beautiful, buildings at the odd times of the week we happen to be in them. We need to go out to where people are, and let them know how to find us. And we need to introduce them to Jesus as we know him, not just invite them to church. Share your experience. Ask about theirs. Ask if there’s anything they’d like to pray about. See where it goes.
Where and how are you being called to make Jesus known in your community? If you have an idea, ask God to bless it. If you don’t have a clue, tell God you’re open to ideas. And then look for how God might answer that prayer. God is not shy – when God wants us to do something, and we’re open, we’ll know.
We may not often hear those words, “We want to see Jesus,” but I believe there are many, many people who hold that desire. And the way they’re going to see Jesus in our time is through us, the Body of Christ, getting out of our buildings and beyond our Sunday schedules and making Jesus visible. We are all Philip. All we are asked to do is introduce people to the Jesus we love and worship. He’ll do the rest.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
One of my favorite things to do with church groups is to go out to a public space – a mall, a street corner, a park – and hold up signs saying, “Want a Prayer?” And then pray with whoever comes over. Many walk by without a glance, some do a double-take and keep walking – and some of those come back and say, “Wow. This is really nice. I’d like a prayer.”
It’s a great way to open conversations about faith. It would be even easier if we experienced what Jesus’ disciple Philip did during a festival in Jerusalem one day: “Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’”
News about Jesus, his teachings and miracles, had traveled beyond the Jewish community into the Roman and Hellenistic cultures of that region. Did these Greeks come hoping to see a miracle they could talk about in the agora? Did they crave a nugget of divine wisdom to chew on? Or did they want to get to know Jesus as the Messiah? We aren’t told what motivated them, only that they were eager enough to meet Jesus, they found someone they hoped could introduce him.
There are more such folks in our lives than we think. Doing prayer in a shopping mall one Saturday, many more people passed by than stopped, but at least nine came up to strangers for prayer in public during the hour we were there. That tells me this spiritual thirst I’m always hearing about actually does exist. And we have Living Water to share.
We don’t have to go looking for such people; the Spirit is already stirring their hearts. But we sure need to stop hiding from those who are looking for the spiritual blessings we have! Most are not going to cross the threshold of our odd, if beautiful, buildings at the odd times of the week we happen to be in them. We need to go out to where people are, and let them know how to find us. And we need to introduce them to Jesus as we know him, not just invite them to church. Share your experience. Ask about theirs. Ask if there’s anything they’d like to pray about. See where it goes.
Where and how are you being called to make Jesus known in your community? If you have an idea, ask God to bless it. If you don’t have a clue, tell God you’re open to ideas. And then look for how God might answer that prayer. God is not shy – when God wants us to do something, and we’re open, we’ll know.
We may not often hear those words, “We want to see Jesus,” but I believe there are many, many people who hold that desire. And the way they’re going to see Jesus in our time is through us, the Body of Christ, getting out of our buildings and beyond our Sunday schedules and making Jesus visible. We are all Philip. All we are asked to do is introduce people to the Jesus we love and worship. He’ll do the rest.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-8-24 - Being Trued
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week’s gospel reading has been a challenge - these words of Jesus to Nicodemus are both wonderfully affirming and clearly set a boundary between those who accept the gift of God in Christ, and those who choose darkness. (Jesus does not comment about people of different faiths; we may interpret his words narrowly or generously.) It's been heavy going, navigating the flow of his ideas.
We end on a high note though, as Jesus closes his discourse with this observation: “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
I was struck by that phrase, “Those who do what is true.” I expected it to say, “Those who do what is right.” But “right” is a subjective measure. What one person considers right might be harmful to another. What is true, though – if we define “true” as guileless, transparent, without any falsehood – no one can argue with. It just is.
I do not equate being a Christian with "being good." If we were good, we’d have no need for Christ. Being a Christian means acknowledging how “not good” we can be, and how much we need God. When we accept that Christ did not come to condemn us, and that God receives as we are, we find ourselves more often choosing the good. We can take “being a good person” out of this.
But what about being true? That offers more room for growth. To be a person without guile, without falsehood or hidden agenda, totally transparent – that is a worthy goal we can attain as we learn to see ourselves with humility and clarity. And we can achieve it better as we allow the Spirit of God to work in us, to dismantle the false personae we carry, the fears that cause us to pretend or shade the truth.
In that sense, we not only strive to be true. We must allow ourselves to be trued – the verb form referring to the way a builder brings something into the exact alignment needed for it to function properly. Just as an object cannot “true” itself, so we must be “trued” by the power of God, the only one who knows exactly how we are to be aligned, as he made us.
What we can do is make it our heart’s desire to become a person without guile or falsehood or hidden needs or strategies. We can start to notice when something we say is less than the truth, and revise it. We can pay attention to the circumstances in which we seem to feel the need to hide behind a mask of who we think people want us to be, rather than being fully, gloriously who we are, faults and all.
I once got very anxious because an event I was in charge of was not going well – the person doing the food was late, the speaker was late, many people who’d registered did not show up. I felt it reflected badly on me. I realized that I was only upset because I worried about what people thought of me. When I separated out my role from that of others, and stopped taking responsibility for more than was really mine, I began to calm down, to become more true. That’s what I man by paying attention.
I think the Carpenter of Nazareth knew something about how to "true" materials. I want to let his Spirit true me into proper alignment. And as I become a person who “does what is true,” I come more and more into the light. You too!
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This week’s gospel reading has been a challenge - these words of Jesus to Nicodemus are both wonderfully affirming and clearly set a boundary between those who accept the gift of God in Christ, and those who choose darkness. (Jesus does not comment about people of different faiths; we may interpret his words narrowly or generously.) It's been heavy going, navigating the flow of his ideas.
We end on a high note though, as Jesus closes his discourse with this observation: “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
I was struck by that phrase, “Those who do what is true.” I expected it to say, “Those who do what is right.” But “right” is a subjective measure. What one person considers right might be harmful to another. What is true, though – if we define “true” as guileless, transparent, without any falsehood – no one can argue with. It just is.
I do not equate being a Christian with "being good." If we were good, we’d have no need for Christ. Being a Christian means acknowledging how “not good” we can be, and how much we need God. When we accept that Christ did not come to condemn us, and that God receives as we are, we find ourselves more often choosing the good. We can take “being a good person” out of this.
But what about being true? That offers more room for growth. To be a person without guile, without falsehood or hidden agenda, totally transparent – that is a worthy goal we can attain as we learn to see ourselves with humility and clarity. And we can achieve it better as we allow the Spirit of God to work in us, to dismantle the false personae we carry, the fears that cause us to pretend or shade the truth.
In that sense, we not only strive to be true. We must allow ourselves to be trued – the verb form referring to the way a builder brings something into the exact alignment needed for it to function properly. Just as an object cannot “true” itself, so we must be “trued” by the power of God, the only one who knows exactly how we are to be aligned, as he made us.
What we can do is make it our heart’s desire to become a person without guile or falsehood or hidden needs or strategies. We can start to notice when something we say is less than the truth, and revise it. We can pay attention to the circumstances in which we seem to feel the need to hide behind a mask of who we think people want us to be, rather than being fully, gloriously who we are, faults and all.
I once got very anxious because an event I was in charge of was not going well – the person doing the food was late, the speaker was late, many people who’d registered did not show up. I felt it reflected badly on me. I realized that I was only upset because I worried about what people thought of me. When I separated out my role from that of others, and stopped taking responsibility for more than was really mine, I began to calm down, to become more true. That’s what I man by paying attention.
I think the Carpenter of Nazareth knew something about how to "true" materials. I want to let his Spirit true me into proper alignment. And as I become a person who “does what is true,” I come more and more into the light. You too!
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-7-24 - Cover of Darkness
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Imagine this: Walking in the light. Transparency. Integrity. Truthfulness. Heavens, we’d have nothing to watch on TV if this is how humanity operated! Most drama is driven by bad choices followed by cover-ups, necessitating more lies and bad choices and behaving differently with different people – and before you know it, no one can trust anyone else.
Which, if you attend to the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, is pretty much how we got into this mess in the first place. A bad choice, followed by a cover-up (even if those fig leaves didn’t cover much…), which necessitated more lies and bad choices. For some people this becomes a way of life, so entrenched that even when something wakes them up – tragic consequences of their choices or a crisis of some kind – they are unable to change to a light-based operating system. They are too attached to the darkness.
Such people Jesus calls condemned by their choosing to remain in darkness, even after the light has come: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”
We may all know people like this, lovers of darkness, so given over to self-will and exploitation of others they become evil themselves. There are plenty of those kind about, but they are a distinct minority, and I daresay no readers of Water Daily are to be found among their number. So what does this have to do with us?
We may not love darkness, BUT… can we be a little too comfortable with the shadows? Are we oriented toward the negative, to the bad news, the worse outcome? Are we quicker to criticize than to compliment? Faster with the reasons something won’t work than why it might? Too ready to give voice to unhappy possibilities instead of speaking our desires in faith? This is often how the world shapes our thinking. God-Life invites us to change our way of thinking and speaking. Though not lovers of darkness, many of us can do some work on truly embracing the light. I sure can.
Today try to make a point of listening to yourself – both your internal monologue and external conversation. Hear what you’re saying – are your words life-giving or squashing? Notice when you make a negative assumption about yourself, another, or a situation. And if you do – and believe me, I do it a lot – don’t jump all over yourself. Just say, “Hmmm. Wow. I do that more than I realize. God, where is the life in this situation? Show me how you love this person. Show me how you love me.”
We are so used to dramas based on bad choices, lies and conflict that it’s hard to imagine a story that’s all good having any dramatic tension at all. But maybe we're invited into a dramatic arc of another sort, the joy of seeing the light we emit call others out of darkness.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Imagine this: Walking in the light. Transparency. Integrity. Truthfulness. Heavens, we’d have nothing to watch on TV if this is how humanity operated! Most drama is driven by bad choices followed by cover-ups, necessitating more lies and bad choices and behaving differently with different people – and before you know it, no one can trust anyone else.
Which, if you attend to the story of Adam and Eve and the serpent, is pretty much how we got into this mess in the first place. A bad choice, followed by a cover-up (even if those fig leaves didn’t cover much…), which necessitated more lies and bad choices. For some people this becomes a way of life, so entrenched that even when something wakes them up – tragic consequences of their choices or a crisis of some kind – they are unable to change to a light-based operating system. They are too attached to the darkness.
Such people Jesus calls condemned by their choosing to remain in darkness, even after the light has come: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”
We may all know people like this, lovers of darkness, so given over to self-will and exploitation of others they become evil themselves. There are plenty of those kind about, but they are a distinct minority, and I daresay no readers of Water Daily are to be found among their number. So what does this have to do with us?
We may not love darkness, BUT… can we be a little too comfortable with the shadows? Are we oriented toward the negative, to the bad news, the worse outcome? Are we quicker to criticize than to compliment? Faster with the reasons something won’t work than why it might? Too ready to give voice to unhappy possibilities instead of speaking our desires in faith? This is often how the world shapes our thinking. God-Life invites us to change our way of thinking and speaking. Though not lovers of darkness, many of us can do some work on truly embracing the light. I sure can.
Today try to make a point of listening to yourself – both your internal monologue and external conversation. Hear what you’re saying – are your words life-giving or squashing? Notice when you make a negative assumption about yourself, another, or a situation. And if you do – and believe me, I do it a lot – don’t jump all over yourself. Just say, “Hmmm. Wow. I do that more than I realize. God, where is the life in this situation? Show me how you love this person. Show me how you love me.”
We are so used to dramas based on bad choices, lies and conflict that it’s hard to imagine a story that’s all good having any dramatic tension at all. But maybe we're invited into a dramatic arc of another sort, the joy of seeing the light we emit call others out of darkness.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-6-24 - No Condemnation
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
In the days when one needed screen savers on computers, I adjusted mine to scroll through Romans 8:1 – “There is no now condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” As one whose inner critic can work overtime, that’s how badly I needed to be reminded of God’s affirming love. I consider this verse the heart of the Good News Jesus came to convey – that God has transformed the judgment we so fear into love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Lest we doubt this message of affirmation, Jesus doubles down in the next sentence: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Why did Jesus need to clarify this matter? Was it to counter the message conveyed by religious leaders, that God was not pleased, that people were in trouble? Living under the tyranny of the Romans, the latest in a string of conquerors, could lead to such a conclusion. In a culture that saw prosperity as a sign of blessing and misfortune as the result of sin, people might be quick to see in their circumstances God’s punishment for unfaithfulness. The idea that God’s representative, his very own son, should have arrived on the scene in person – could feel like, “Uh oh, we’re in trouble now….” Hence the importance of these words to soothe and open hearts: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Jesus isn’t saying there is no condemnation anywhere – his next words suggest it is possible, even likely, for those who have been presented with the truth about Jesus Christ and have chosen not to believe: “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Is this “condemnation” for those who do not believe a punishment – or is it simply the consequence of their choice? God may not have sent his Son into the world for condemnation – but he didn’t say he would remove the consequences of our choices. People are free to draw near to God’s love, or to turn away.
Are those who have no interest in Jesus’ salvation still covered by it? What do we mean when we say Jesus took on all the sin of all the world on the cross? Did he redeem even those who choose not to believe in his power to redeem, who deny any need for it? Those who believe in universal salvation would say so. Those who believe each person has to say “yes” are left wondering.
All these questions make my head hurt, and can get in the way of our receiving the gift I believe Jesus offers us – to accept his grace, to allow him to take us off all the hooks we have ourselves dangling from, that we’re not good enough, smart enough, wise enough, compassionate enough.
Enough! The Son of God did not come into the world to condemn the world. The Son of God came to fulfill his father’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all things and all people to wholeness in Christ. I’m taking that deal.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
In the days when one needed screen savers on computers, I adjusted mine to scroll through Romans 8:1 – “There is no now condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” As one whose inner critic can work overtime, that’s how badly I needed to be reminded of God’s affirming love. I consider this verse the heart of the Good News Jesus came to convey – that God has transformed the judgment we so fear into love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Lest we doubt this message of affirmation, Jesus doubles down in the next sentence: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Why did Jesus need to clarify this matter? Was it to counter the message conveyed by religious leaders, that God was not pleased, that people were in trouble? Living under the tyranny of the Romans, the latest in a string of conquerors, could lead to such a conclusion. In a culture that saw prosperity as a sign of blessing and misfortune as the result of sin, people might be quick to see in their circumstances God’s punishment for unfaithfulness. The idea that God’s representative, his very own son, should have arrived on the scene in person – could feel like, “Uh oh, we’re in trouble now….” Hence the importance of these words to soothe and open hearts: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Jesus isn’t saying there is no condemnation anywhere – his next words suggest it is possible, even likely, for those who have been presented with the truth about Jesus Christ and have chosen not to believe: “Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Is this “condemnation” for those who do not believe a punishment – or is it simply the consequence of their choice? God may not have sent his Son into the world for condemnation – but he didn’t say he would remove the consequences of our choices. People are free to draw near to God’s love, or to turn away.
Are those who have no interest in Jesus’ salvation still covered by it? What do we mean when we say Jesus took on all the sin of all the world on the cross? Did he redeem even those who choose not to believe in his power to redeem, who deny any need for it? Those who believe in universal salvation would say so. Those who believe each person has to say “yes” are left wondering.
All these questions make my head hurt, and can get in the way of our receiving the gift I believe Jesus offers us – to accept his grace, to allow him to take us off all the hooks we have ourselves dangling from, that we’re not good enough, smart enough, wise enough, compassionate enough.
Enough! The Son of God did not come into the world to condemn the world. The Son of God came to fulfill his father’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all things and all people to wholeness in Christ. I’m taking that deal.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-5-24 - God So Loved
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This Sunday we encounter perhaps the most famous of all Bible verses, John 3:16. Well, many people know the words “John 3:16,” though maybe not who John is and what those numbers mean. Those with some Biblical literacy know it as that verse about “God so loved the world.” To many, this verse sums up the Gospel, the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.
Yet it is more complex than one might think at first reading. The part about God loving the world is great… but what about the rest of that sentence? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Let’s not even get into the “perishing if you don’t believe” part. What do we in the 21st century think about a deity who expresses his overwhelming love for his creation by offering his Son to save it? Wouldn’t we rather it said, “God so loved the world that he gave himself up?” Of course, our wacky Trinitarian view of God reminds us that the Father and the Son are one, with the Spirit – so of course God was giving himself up in giving up his Son. But why a sacrifice at all?
That’s the million dollar question. Did someone need to die in order for us to be freed from sin and death? The writer in me wants to answer that nobody really takes a story seriously until someone dies. God dying? That’s pretty much as high as you can jack the narrative stakes.
But did it have to be a sacrifice? Was the Father consigning the Son to certain death? OR did God simply “give him up” to take on human flesh, a mission to free us from the power of evil, come what may? It was humanity who decided Jesus must die, not his heavenly Father.
Our Good News is truly good – and so much more complicated than the “God loves you” message to which it is often reduced. It is a story of an all-powerful Creator who puts into motion a plan of salvation which allows for free will on the part of those to be saved. We can say "No thank you." Ever since Jesus the Christ showed up in human history, people have had to make choices concerning him. Would they believe his claims to be the Son of God? Would they follow his ways, counter-cultural as they were? Would they remain allied with him when it became dangerous?
These choices remain before us daily, with this addition: Do we believe he rose from the dead and has assured eternal life, now and later, for those who believe? How do you choose? Do we want this gift he gave at such a cost?
I don’t know if someone had to die. Some theories of the atonement would say yes, and other interpretations of the Cross find the whole idea of the need for atonement a sick distortion of God’s love. I don't know. I am standing with the story we have, the story we have received. In that story a man, a man who was also God, gave up his divine prerogatives to accept the limitation of human life, to live out in this realm the values of the realm from which he’d come – values so counter to human values, he became a threat that had to be eliminated. Gee, sounds like a science fiction story. Someone ought to write that!
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This Sunday we encounter perhaps the most famous of all Bible verses, John 3:16. Well, many people know the words “John 3:16,” though maybe not who John is and what those numbers mean. Those with some Biblical literacy know it as that verse about “God so loved the world.” To many, this verse sums up the Gospel, the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.
Yet it is more complex than one might think at first reading. The part about God loving the world is great… but what about the rest of that sentence? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Let’s not even get into the “perishing if you don’t believe” part. What do we in the 21st century think about a deity who expresses his overwhelming love for his creation by offering his Son to save it? Wouldn’t we rather it said, “God so loved the world that he gave himself up?” Of course, our wacky Trinitarian view of God reminds us that the Father and the Son are one, with the Spirit – so of course God was giving himself up in giving up his Son. But why a sacrifice at all?
That’s the million dollar question. Did someone need to die in order for us to be freed from sin and death? The writer in me wants to answer that nobody really takes a story seriously until someone dies. God dying? That’s pretty much as high as you can jack the narrative stakes.
But did it have to be a sacrifice? Was the Father consigning the Son to certain death? OR did God simply “give him up” to take on human flesh, a mission to free us from the power of evil, come what may? It was humanity who decided Jesus must die, not his heavenly Father.
Our Good News is truly good – and so much more complicated than the “God loves you” message to which it is often reduced. It is a story of an all-powerful Creator who puts into motion a plan of salvation which allows for free will on the part of those to be saved. We can say "No thank you." Ever since Jesus the Christ showed up in human history, people have had to make choices concerning him. Would they believe his claims to be the Son of God? Would they follow his ways, counter-cultural as they were? Would they remain allied with him when it became dangerous?
These choices remain before us daily, with this addition: Do we believe he rose from the dead and has assured eternal life, now and later, for those who believe? How do you choose? Do we want this gift he gave at such a cost?
I don’t know if someone had to die. Some theories of the atonement would say yes, and other interpretations of the Cross find the whole idea of the need for atonement a sick distortion of God’s love. I don't know. I am standing with the story we have, the story we have received. In that story a man, a man who was also God, gave up his divine prerogatives to accept the limitation of human life, to live out in this realm the values of the realm from which he’d come – values so counter to human values, he became a threat that had to be eliminated. Gee, sounds like a science fiction story. Someone ought to write that!
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
3-4-24 - Snakes On a Pole
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Next Sunday our lectionary takes us into a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a member of ruling Jewish council. He has come to learn more about this Jesus fellow who is stirring up so much trouble. Jesus tells him that the Life of God is not comprehensible by physical senses; it is a spiritual reality, and must be discerned spiritually. He chides Nicodemus, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
This is a big “outing” of his Messianic identity. Jesus implies that he is this “Son of Man” who has descended from heaven. We can only imagine Nicodemus’ shock – and perhaps horror, at what sounds like megalomania or delusion or pure blasphemy. But Jesus has more in store for him. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
What on earth did he mean by “So must the Son of Man be lifted up?” From our vantage point, this meant the cross on which Jesus was to die a brutal death, suffering not only the full brunt of human cruelty, but also the full consequence of sin, separation from God. This was the penalty he took to the grave for us, and left buried there when he rose on Easter morning. But how could such a “lifting up” bring salvation, and its reward, eternal life?
To get that, we need to understand the reference to Moses lifting up the snake in the wilderness, a story from the biblical book of Numbers that Nicodemus would have known well. It’s about the Israelites’ journey after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Their joy at freedom had quickly turned to bitterness. They complained mightily against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." God, angry at their ingratitude, sends poisonous snakes and many die – instigating instant repentance among the survivors. They ask Moses to intercede with God to take away the snakes. And here is God's remedy: And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
This story is where we get our symbol for the medical profession. We can see this principle at work in vaccines and homeopathic remedies – a small amount of toxin introduced into the body can build resistance. But how would it work on sin? How did Jesus’ crucifixion set us free? Here’s a stab at answering that mammoth question.
If we are indeed slaves to sin – wired to act for ourselves at the expense of others, which is one way to define sin – then to stare at an image of the crucified Lord is to look at the full effect of sin, the worst case, all the sin of all the self-seeking, creation-exploiting, God-ignoring human beings that ever lived. Yet I believe the healing power of the cross goes beyond a “scared straight” mentality. We are invited to gaze upon, draw near to the healing love of Christ, demonstrated supremely in his taking on this sin-sickness for us. He did not have to. He did it for love, to set us free.
If we think we have no sin, this makes no sense. But if we’ve ever hurt another living creature, or ourselves, and felt that dull ache of shame at our actions… we know. We were suffering a terminal illness. And now we are healed.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Next Sunday our lectionary takes us into a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a member of ruling Jewish council. He has come to learn more about this Jesus fellow who is stirring up so much trouble. Jesus tells him that the Life of God is not comprehensible by physical senses; it is a spiritual reality, and must be discerned spiritually. He chides Nicodemus, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.”
This is a big “outing” of his Messianic identity. Jesus implies that he is this “Son of Man” who has descended from heaven. We can only imagine Nicodemus’ shock – and perhaps horror, at what sounds like megalomania or delusion or pure blasphemy. But Jesus has more in store for him. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
What on earth did he mean by “So must the Son of Man be lifted up?” From our vantage point, this meant the cross on which Jesus was to die a brutal death, suffering not only the full brunt of human cruelty, but also the full consequence of sin, separation from God. This was the penalty he took to the grave for us, and left buried there when he rose on Easter morning. But how could such a “lifting up” bring salvation, and its reward, eternal life?
To get that, we need to understand the reference to Moses lifting up the snake in the wilderness, a story from the biblical book of Numbers that Nicodemus would have known well. It’s about the Israelites’ journey after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Their joy at freedom had quickly turned to bitterness. They complained mightily against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." God, angry at their ingratitude, sends poisonous snakes and many die – instigating instant repentance among the survivors. They ask Moses to intercede with God to take away the snakes. And here is God's remedy: And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
This story is where we get our symbol for the medical profession. We can see this principle at work in vaccines and homeopathic remedies – a small amount of toxin introduced into the body can build resistance. But how would it work on sin? How did Jesus’ crucifixion set us free? Here’s a stab at answering that mammoth question.
If we are indeed slaves to sin – wired to act for ourselves at the expense of others, which is one way to define sin – then to stare at an image of the crucified Lord is to look at the full effect of sin, the worst case, all the sin of all the self-seeking, creation-exploiting, God-ignoring human beings that ever lived. Yet I believe the healing power of the cross goes beyond a “scared straight” mentality. We are invited to gaze upon, draw near to the healing love of Christ, demonstrated supremely in his taking on this sin-sickness for us. He did not have to. He did it for love, to set us free.
If we think we have no sin, this makes no sense. But if we’ve ever hurt another living creature, or ourselves, and felt that dull ache of shame at our actions… we know. We were suffering a terminal illness. And now we are healed.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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