You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
It is God’s greatest invitation that is also one of the “Big Ten” commandments. It was inaugurated at the dawn of creation. It is essential to our maintaining our health, our sanity, our society, even our work animals. And most Jesus followers routinely ignore the invitation and flout the commandment. Why do we so resist the gift of Sabbath blessing?
Of the many ways that “My ways are not your ways, nor my thoughts your thoughts,” says the Lord, Sabbath is among the most counter-intuitive. The lure of the completed to-do list is powerful, though we know its tail keeps growing no matter how many tasks we tick off the top. The notion that if we just keep working we will get more done seems to make logical sense, despite the wisdom of mystics and neuro-scientists. We understand the need for rest, for sleep, for “down-time,” for fields to go fallow, but the drive to push forward often overrides that deeper knowledge.
And there can be fear in our resistance to taking a period of time with no work – fear of feelings that might come up if we’re not distracted with tasks and data; fear of feeling alone; fear of feeling unworthy because we’re not “producing,” have nothing to show for our day. I can feel that way even after a day of meetings and pastoral care, which are very much my “work” but don’t leave a visible product.
For a few seasons in my life, I have kept Sabbath – maintained a day each week with no productive work, nothing that would be on a to-do list. No email, no computer – unless I felt inspired to some creative writing. No housework unless I wanted to be creative in the kitchen or indulge my gift of hospitality by crafting a lovely meal to be shared with people I love. I even saw a pay-off – I was so much clearer, more energized, creative and ready to work the next day. My Sabbath, when I take one, is a Friday, my day off. I suppose I would do even better to take a sabbath Monday in addition to my day off, but that seems profligate.
And there lies probably the deepest issue: Perhaps we don’t feel we deserve a day of rest, because no one has told us, or we don’t really believe, that the God who made us; who wired us to need a day of rest; who loves us with an extravagant love that is so profligate, he allowed his own Son to live among us and die for us; that this God wants joy and love for us far beyond anything we might produce or achieve. God made us royalty, not beasts of burden (and never forget that beasts of burden also need at least a day off…). Why don’t we take God at his word, obey his commandment to rest, take his invitation to rest, and see what happens?
It is summertime. If ever we were to experiment with the holy practice of Sabbath-keeping, it would be in this season when some even get extra time off each week. Choose a day of the week when you do not have many obligations.
If you consider cooking drudgery, try to make some things ahead or eat out.
Sleep in, enjoy your morning routines without hurry.
Do whatever you feel like, but nothing that would be on your to-do list.
Nap if you feel like it, take a walk, do something artistic. Play.
Enjoy time with people you love, if you can.
Does that seem too great a challenge? Consider the domestic housecat. It neither toils nor spins (except when chasing its own tail…); it accomplishes nothing, builds nothing, produces nothing (beyond the occasional hairball). And yet no creature on earth is more beloved than most pet cats. Their owners lavish time and attention, food and toys upon them, delighting in their little rituals and antics. If this is how much we love something who “achieves” so little, imagine how much God wants to see us enjoying this life and world God has created for us. At least one day each week.
© 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.
5-30-24 - Collateral Blessing
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Imagine you have a defective hand; it just hangs limp at the end of your arm, a useless appendage, but still your hand, still a part of you. You know the Law of Moses says you are less than, not whole and therefore not holy. Yet you come to worship on the Sabbath day, hoping not to be noticed, hoping just to listen and pray once again for God’s mighty hand to heal your withered one.
Today, instead of blending into the crowd, you find yourself at the center of a debate – no, an altercation between the learned doctors of the Law and that teacher who heals people. The Pharisees are baiting Jesus to heal you – not so he’ll reveal God’s power, but so they can charge him with violating Sabbath law. In the middle of this argument Jesus calls you forward. There is no hiding. He says, “Stretch out your hand.” You and your useless hand are front and center for all to see. If you do as he says, will the religious leaders accuse you too? But how could you disobey this holy man?
You stretch your hand toward Jesus, and as you do, you see life returning to its flesh and bone. Sensation pulses down your arm into your fingers, which tingle and hurt, but lo and behold, begin to move. You make a fist, and relax the muscles. It is impossible, but your hand is alive again.
Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
This is not the only time in the Gospels that we see Jesus heal someone to make a point in an argument, to prove his power and connection to his Father in heaven, to shut down his detractors. Jesus has different motivations in different healing stories. It doesn’t matter why Jesus heals – the power comes through even when he’s angry, locking horns with the religious authorities. The man’s hand was restored no matter what else was going on in that room.
I call this “collateral blessing,” the notion that any time we engage in the mission of God, blessings can flow to those around us, just as in war “collateral damage” is unintended harm to allies or bystanders. One person consciously filled with the life of God brings Christ into any room, any conflict, any place of pain or deprivation or cruelty or injustice. Everyone around may be touched by God’s grace just by being in the vicinity.
The key is intentionality. What if each time we left our homes or set out on our day or evening, we prayed, “Come, Holy Spirit. Fill me.” And when we found ourselves confronted with tension or injury, we prayed, “Come, Lord Jesus, be here now.” Who knows how many might be encouraged or refreshed or even healed by being around us as we go about the mission of God to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness in Christ?
God’s blessing cannot be contained. Once we begin to release it, it spills out over everything and everyone, even those we aren't focused on. God is in the business of blessing, and has chosen to work through us. Get ready to bless!
© 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.
Imagine you have a defective hand; it just hangs limp at the end of your arm, a useless appendage, but still your hand, still a part of you. You know the Law of Moses says you are less than, not whole and therefore not holy. Yet you come to worship on the Sabbath day, hoping not to be noticed, hoping just to listen and pray once again for God’s mighty hand to heal your withered one.
Today, instead of blending into the crowd, you find yourself at the center of a debate – no, an altercation between the learned doctors of the Law and that teacher who heals people. The Pharisees are baiting Jesus to heal you – not so he’ll reveal God’s power, but so they can charge him with violating Sabbath law. In the middle of this argument Jesus calls you forward. There is no hiding. He says, “Stretch out your hand.” You and your useless hand are front and center for all to see. If you do as he says, will the religious leaders accuse you too? But how could you disobey this holy man?
You stretch your hand toward Jesus, and as you do, you see life returning to its flesh and bone. Sensation pulses down your arm into your fingers, which tingle and hurt, but lo and behold, begin to move. You make a fist, and relax the muscles. It is impossible, but your hand is alive again.
Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
This is not the only time in the Gospels that we see Jesus heal someone to make a point in an argument, to prove his power and connection to his Father in heaven, to shut down his detractors. Jesus has different motivations in different healing stories. It doesn’t matter why Jesus heals – the power comes through even when he’s angry, locking horns with the religious authorities. The man’s hand was restored no matter what else was going on in that room.
I call this “collateral blessing,” the notion that any time we engage in the mission of God, blessings can flow to those around us, just as in war “collateral damage” is unintended harm to allies or bystanders. One person consciously filled with the life of God brings Christ into any room, any conflict, any place of pain or deprivation or cruelty or injustice. Everyone around may be touched by God’s grace just by being in the vicinity.
The key is intentionality. What if each time we left our homes or set out on our day or evening, we prayed, “Come, Holy Spirit. Fill me.” And when we found ourselves confronted with tension or injury, we prayed, “Come, Lord Jesus, be here now.” Who knows how many might be encouraged or refreshed or even healed by being around us as we go about the mission of God to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness in Christ?
God’s blessing cannot be contained. Once we begin to release it, it spills out over everything and everyone, even those we aren't focused on. God is in the business of blessing, and has chosen to work through us. Get ready to bless!
© 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.
5-29-24 Holy Bread
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
What a thing to get in trouble for – picking grain on the Sabbath. Snacking, really: "One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain."
The Pharisees, always watching for a reason to question Jesus’ bona fides as a holy person, ask why his disciples are breaking the law by doing “work” on the Sabbath. Jesus replies with an example of “situational ethics”: "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions."
Jesus makes two bold rhetorical moves here. First, he evokes a story of the great King David, from whose line the Messiah was to come. Who could argue with King David's choices? And the story is about David and his men raiding the sacramental bread in the temple of God – a much more serious breach than picking off a few heads of grain on the sabbath, yet one for which David seemingly faced no punishment. Feeding the hungry overrides than the letter of the law.
The Pharisees, like all people given to legalism and self-righteousness, liked to interpret the Law in black and white. “This is what it says; obey it, or else.” Jesus asserted that the Law was to serve humankind, not inhibit normal human actions and interactions. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” He was not tossing out the Law; he was grounding its interpretation in love, recognizing that it cannot be applied blindly in all circumstances.
In citing this example, implicitly comparing the holy bread of the Presence with heads of grain in a field, Jesus also broadens the scope of what might be deemed holy. Those heads of grain become sacramental bread to feed Jesus’ followers because Jesus is there. Perhaps we need not make quite so strong a distinction between Sacrament and sacramental. Yes, the elements we bless at eucharist are invested with particular holiness, as we believe Christ is truly present in them in a mysterious way when his Church is gathered for worship.
Yet Christ’s presence also infuses the bread we break at our tables and desks, as we remember he is with us. Christ’s presence infuses the wheat as it grows, as we bless our fields. Christ’s presence infuses the preparation in factories and kitchens, as we invoke his holiness in those places. To live a sacramental life is to be mindful of Christ’s presence in everything and everyone as we move through the day. The Celtic church had such an awareness, and has left us beautiful prayers of blessing over brooms and hearths, cooking pots and garden patches. Here is one for today:
A New day
As I wake from sleep, rouse me,
As I wash, cleanse me,
As I dress, gird me with your power,
As I eat, energize me,
As I journey, protect me,
As I relax, calm me,
As I sleep, surround me.
What ordinary sacraments might God be inviting you to participate in today? What eucharistic feasts? What baptismal blessings of new life? Pray for the grace to see and hear and touch and taste God today.
© 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.
What a thing to get in trouble for – picking grain on the Sabbath. Snacking, really: "One sabbath he was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain."
The Pharisees, always watching for a reason to question Jesus’ bona fides as a holy person, ask why his disciples are breaking the law by doing “work” on the Sabbath. Jesus replies with an example of “situational ethics”: "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions."
Jesus makes two bold rhetorical moves here. First, he evokes a story of the great King David, from whose line the Messiah was to come. Who could argue with King David's choices? And the story is about David and his men raiding the sacramental bread in the temple of God – a much more serious breach than picking off a few heads of grain on the sabbath, yet one for which David seemingly faced no punishment. Feeding the hungry overrides than the letter of the law.
The Pharisees, like all people given to legalism and self-righteousness, liked to interpret the Law in black and white. “This is what it says; obey it, or else.” Jesus asserted that the Law was to serve humankind, not inhibit normal human actions and interactions. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” He was not tossing out the Law; he was grounding its interpretation in love, recognizing that it cannot be applied blindly in all circumstances.
In citing this example, implicitly comparing the holy bread of the Presence with heads of grain in a field, Jesus also broadens the scope of what might be deemed holy. Those heads of grain become sacramental bread to feed Jesus’ followers because Jesus is there. Perhaps we need not make quite so strong a distinction between Sacrament and sacramental. Yes, the elements we bless at eucharist are invested with particular holiness, as we believe Christ is truly present in them in a mysterious way when his Church is gathered for worship.
Yet Christ’s presence also infuses the bread we break at our tables and desks, as we remember he is with us. Christ’s presence infuses the wheat as it grows, as we bless our fields. Christ’s presence infuses the preparation in factories and kitchens, as we invoke his holiness in those places. To live a sacramental life is to be mindful of Christ’s presence in everything and everyone as we move through the day. The Celtic church had such an awareness, and has left us beautiful prayers of blessing over brooms and hearths, cooking pots and garden patches. Here is one for today:
A New day
As I wake from sleep, rouse me,
As I wash, cleanse me,
As I dress, gird me with your power,
As I eat, energize me,
As I journey, protect me,
As I relax, calm me,
As I sleep, surround me.
What ordinary sacraments might God be inviting you to participate in today? What eucharistic feasts? What baptismal blessings of new life? Pray for the grace to see and hear and touch and taste God today.
© 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.
5-28-24 - Showdown On the Sabbath
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
They thought this time they could catch him red-handed. Jesus would never be able to resist healing this poor man, even if they were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And if he did, they’d have a case against him:
They thought this time they could catch him red-handed. Jesus would never be able to resist healing this poor man, even if they were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. And if he did, they’d have a case against him:
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so they might accuse him.
Jesus, who can read their hearts, knows what they’re up to: Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…
I wonder how it must have been for this man with the withered hand, to be the battleground on which Jesus and the Pharisees set to. These doctors of the Law seem uninterested in him or his fate; the Mosaic Law deemed people with defects to be ritually impure. Maybe it never occurred to these lovers of literal interpretations of the Law that he might have value just as a child of God.
Jesus engages them before healing the man; he never gives up trying to open their hard hearts. He poses them a lawyerly question –is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? In another altercation with these leaders, he brings it closer to home – if one of their sheep were to fall into a well on the Sabbath, would they not rescue it? Why should he not exercise the power of God in love to restore a person to wholeness? But he does not seem to have moved them, since we’re told: The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
They were so obsessed with bringing Jesus down they see this man only as a means to their ends. This is where rule-bound legalism leads – to objectifying other people and created things, rendering them of lower value than the rules meant to assure their well-being. When we see others as less than human we make ourselves less than human. For we were created in the image of the God who is Love, whose nature is to love at all costs. Any time we fall short of love, we tarnish our selves, and God’s Life becomes less discernible in us.
Can you think of a time when your adherence to a rule or principle caused you to overlook, even degrade the humanity of another? How does a story like this, and Jesus’ words and actions in it, play out in some of our national issues, such as how we treat immigrants, or those at risk of violence, or those mired in poverty due not to their own choices but to national policies that privilege the well-off?
In prayer today, we might place ourselves in that synagogue, watching this story unfold before us. How do you react? Where do your sympathies lie? What is God inviting you into?
The mission of God is about life, saving life, restoring life, upholding life. Life and love must govern how we wield the power of law.
© 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.
Jesus, who can read their hearts, knows what they’re up to: Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart…
I wonder how it must have been for this man with the withered hand, to be the battleground on which Jesus and the Pharisees set to. These doctors of the Law seem uninterested in him or his fate; the Mosaic Law deemed people with defects to be ritually impure. Maybe it never occurred to these lovers of literal interpretations of the Law that he might have value just as a child of God.
Jesus engages them before healing the man; he never gives up trying to open their hard hearts. He poses them a lawyerly question –is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? In another altercation with these leaders, he brings it closer to home – if one of their sheep were to fall into a well on the Sabbath, would they not rescue it? Why should he not exercise the power of God in love to restore a person to wholeness? But he does not seem to have moved them, since we’re told: The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
They were so obsessed with bringing Jesus down they see this man only as a means to their ends. This is where rule-bound legalism leads – to objectifying other people and created things, rendering them of lower value than the rules meant to assure their well-being. When we see others as less than human we make ourselves less than human. For we were created in the image of the God who is Love, whose nature is to love at all costs. Any time we fall short of love, we tarnish our selves, and God’s Life becomes less discernible in us.
Can you think of a time when your adherence to a rule or principle caused you to overlook, even degrade the humanity of another? How does a story like this, and Jesus’ words and actions in it, play out in some of our national issues, such as how we treat immigrants, or those at risk of violence, or those mired in poverty due not to their own choices but to national policies that privilege the well-off?
In prayer today, we might place ourselves in that synagogue, watching this story unfold before us. How do you react? Where do your sympathies lie? What is God inviting you into?
The mission of God is about life, saving life, restoring life, upholding life. Life and love must govern how we wield the power of law.
© 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.
5-27-24 - Above the Law
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The passage from Mark we will hear next Sunday tells two stories. In both of them Jesus does something on the Sabbath day that the Pharisees consider against God’s law. In the first story, he defends his disciples snacking on the Sabbath as they walk through a grain field. In the second, he heals a man in the synagogue on the Sabbath – his detractors call that “work.” We’ll take up each story in turn, but today let’s look at the way Jesus defends his actions. He says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had so elevated the Law of Moses and the rules and regulations to which that Law had given rise, it was as though they worshipped the rules more than God. Jesus had a deep respect for the Law, but constantly set it into the broader context of God’s love. And here he unequivocally asserts that people matter more to God than the rules meant to keep the people blessed.
In our time there are many who claim to follow Jesus, but make an idol of the Law, even literally making statues of the Ten Commandments. Every time we worship the rules above the God who made them we depart from the Jesus Way. Indeed, it is harder to follow our Lord than to follow the rules. Jesus continually poured himself out for those around him; he did not stand aloof and point fingers. Jesus continually ascribed value to people the “righteous ones” discarded as being too broken, too blemished, too poor, too sinful, too foreign. That’s why his message was Good News – he was living out God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness.
This reading invites us to examine our own relationship to “the rules.” Where do we draw lines that condemn more than they bless? Are there particular rules or laws you are drawn to? Particular “rule-breakers” you despise? Ask God to reveal the love at the heart of his law.
Episcopalians are particularly good at rules about worship. Worship tools like the lectionary were made for worshippers, not worshippers for the lectionary. Same with the texts of the prayer book, the hymns of the 18th and 19th centuries we still sing, and whether we stand or sit or kneel. If it brings us closer to God, great. If it keeps us at a distance, or worse, makes it harder for others to draw near to God, reevaluate it. Let love rule.
© 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.
The passage from Mark we will hear next Sunday tells two stories. In both of them Jesus does something on the Sabbath day that the Pharisees consider against God’s law. In the first story, he defends his disciples snacking on the Sabbath as they walk through a grain field. In the second, he heals a man in the synagogue on the Sabbath – his detractors call that “work.” We’ll take up each story in turn, but today let’s look at the way Jesus defends his actions. He says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had so elevated the Law of Moses and the rules and regulations to which that Law had given rise, it was as though they worshipped the rules more than God. Jesus had a deep respect for the Law, but constantly set it into the broader context of God’s love. And here he unequivocally asserts that people matter more to God than the rules meant to keep the people blessed.
In our time there are many who claim to follow Jesus, but make an idol of the Law, even literally making statues of the Ten Commandments. Every time we worship the rules above the God who made them we depart from the Jesus Way. Indeed, it is harder to follow our Lord than to follow the rules. Jesus continually poured himself out for those around him; he did not stand aloof and point fingers. Jesus continually ascribed value to people the “righteous ones” discarded as being too broken, too blemished, too poor, too sinful, too foreign. That’s why his message was Good News – he was living out God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness.
This reading invites us to examine our own relationship to “the rules.” Where do we draw lines that condemn more than they bless? Are there particular rules or laws you are drawn to? Particular “rule-breakers” you despise? Ask God to reveal the love at the heart of his law.
Episcopalians are particularly good at rules about worship. Worship tools like the lectionary were made for worshippers, not worshippers for the lectionary. Same with the texts of the prayer book, the hymns of the 18th and 19th centuries we still sing, and whether we stand or sit or kneel. If it brings us closer to God, great. If it keeps us at a distance, or worse, makes it harder for others to draw near to God, reevaluate it. Let love rule.
© 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.
5-24-24 - Heavenly Minded
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
“So heavenly minded, you're no earthly good,” Johnny Cash charges the self-righteous in No Earthly Good. The Pharisees certainly fit that bill, if by “heavenly minded” we mean religious. But a person can be religious and not spiritual. That may have been what Jesus thought about Nicodemus' sect, the Pharisees. Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”
Jesus says that the Pharisees have not “received my testimony.” “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
He keeps trying to convey that the realm in which he operates is that of the spiritual – and he infers that Nicodemus, and perhaps the Pharisees in general, operate too much in the realm of the religious, the material. In their insistence on keeping the finer points of the Law in every aspect, Jesus charges, they’ve lost sight of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s children. And in their pride at their ability to uphold God’s law, they fail to uphold the centrality of God's love and mercy.
What a delicate balance we are to keep, living as people of Spirit in this lush and complex, beautiful and painful world of flesh and matter. Can we keep our feet flat on the ground while tuned to the music of heaven? One way to achieve that balance is to think of ourselves as conduits between these two realms, tuning forks that thrum with the pure notes of God-music as we touch the surface of this world.
If we really learn to live by the guidance of the Spirit, trusting our intuition in prayer, powered by the Breath of God, we can fully engage with the life of this earth. There’s a song I like called “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” That title describes the way we can combine our vertical and horizontal existences - forming a cross.
Do you feel balanced between attentiveness to the Spirit and engagement in the world? Do you list toward one or the other? Which way do you lean? What spiritual practices might help us tune our spiritual receptors, to live in the heavenly and the earthly spheres at once?
The Gospel does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to this conversation with Jesus, whether he was able to make the leap to perceiving by Spirit, or was persuaded by Jesus’ explanation about “God so loved the world,” sending his Son not to condemn but to save. He does reenter our story at the end, after the crucifixion, when he helps to wrap Jesus' body, providing 75 pounds of embalming spices to anoint him until he can be buried after the Sabbath. That was a risky undertaking, given the danger Jesus’ followers faced in those traumatic days. That strikes me as the action of a man who now understood, and was willing to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow him where it would; who was now so truly heavenly-minded, he was of great earthly good.
© 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.
“So heavenly minded, you're no earthly good,” Johnny Cash charges the self-righteous in No Earthly Good. The Pharisees certainly fit that bill, if by “heavenly minded” we mean religious. But a person can be religious and not spiritual. That may have been what Jesus thought about Nicodemus' sect, the Pharisees. Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”
Jesus says that the Pharisees have not “received my testimony.” “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”
He keeps trying to convey that the realm in which he operates is that of the spiritual – and he infers that Nicodemus, and perhaps the Pharisees in general, operate too much in the realm of the religious, the material. In their insistence on keeping the finer points of the Law in every aspect, Jesus charges, they’ve lost sight of the Spirit indwelling all of God’s children. And in their pride at their ability to uphold God’s law, they fail to uphold the centrality of God's love and mercy.
What a delicate balance we are to keep, living as people of Spirit in this lush and complex, beautiful and painful world of flesh and matter. Can we keep our feet flat on the ground while tuned to the music of heaven? One way to achieve that balance is to think of ourselves as conduits between these two realms, tuning forks that thrum with the pure notes of God-music as we touch the surface of this world.
If we really learn to live by the guidance of the Spirit, trusting our intuition in prayer, powered by the Breath of God, we can fully engage with the life of this earth. There’s a song I like called “Touching Heaven, Changing Earth.” That title describes the way we can combine our vertical and horizontal existences - forming a cross.
Do you feel balanced between attentiveness to the Spirit and engagement in the world? Do you list toward one or the other? Which way do you lean? What spiritual practices might help us tune our spiritual receptors, to live in the heavenly and the earthly spheres at once?
The Gospel does not tell us how Nicodemus responded to this conversation with Jesus, whether he was able to make the leap to perceiving by Spirit, or was persuaded by Jesus’ explanation about “God so loved the world,” sending his Son not to condemn but to save. He does reenter our story at the end, after the crucifixion, when he helps to wrap Jesus' body, providing 75 pounds of embalming spices to anoint him until he can be buried after the Sabbath. That was a risky undertaking, given the danger Jesus’ followers faced in those traumatic days. That strikes me as the action of a man who now understood, and was willing to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow him where it would; who was now so truly heavenly-minded, he was of great earthly good.
© 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.
5-23-24 - Wind and Water
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I don’t know what Nicodemus' Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator type would be, but based on this encounter recorded in John, we might label him very “J." He is a concrete thinker, prefers to receive information without too much nuance and mystery. And here is Jesus (likely to be in the perfectly balanced center of each Myers-Briggs continuum) telling him that his senses and intellect won't help him perceive all of reality; that there is a spiritual realm contiguous with this material world, equally knowable, not by physical senses, or “flesh,” but by spirit.
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’”
Jesus says this is not a realm you can control – you can only be in it and attentive to it: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Poor Nicodemus; this makes his head hurt. Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
How can these things be? People who approach life more mystically might ask, “How could these things not be?” God made all kinds of people, each further shaped by upbringing, genes, trauma, gifts, friends, teachers… no wonder we approach reality so differently. Yet I do believe Jesus is saying that those who like their information very concrete will need to stretch and give their spirits some play in perceiving spiritual reality.
How do you tend to perceive and process information? Does abstraction make you anxious, or too much concreteness make you feel hemmed in? How do you respond to this word of Jesus’ about perceiving and receiving the Kingdom of God? It could be a good conversation to have with him in prayer…
We cannot perceive this Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about with our physical senses, any more than we can see a light wave. Our senses can show us the effects of the power of that realm – healing, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation. But how these came about? That we can only perceive with our spiritual vision. When Jesus says, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit,” he is saying we need to let our natural approaches drown, float on the Living Water of Life, and open ourselves to the radically different seascape of God’s life, realm, energy field.
We might say we are being invited to become sailboats, supported by Water and powered by Wind. Nicodemus wanted to be a motor boat, providing his own momentum, able to stop and start at will. Motor boats give us more control than sailboats. But the realm of God is for those willing to hoist their sails into the breath of God and go where God wills, at whatever pace God decides. Wind power – that's how it is when we're born of the Spirit.
© 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.
I don’t know what Nicodemus' Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator type would be, but based on this encounter recorded in John, we might label him very “J." He is a concrete thinker, prefers to receive information without too much nuance and mystery. And here is Jesus (likely to be in the perfectly balanced center of each Myers-Briggs continuum) telling him that his senses and intellect won't help him perceive all of reality; that there is a spiritual realm contiguous with this material world, equally knowable, not by physical senses, or “flesh,” but by spirit.
Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’”
Jesus says this is not a realm you can control – you can only be in it and attentive to it: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Poor Nicodemus; this makes his head hurt. Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”
How can these things be? People who approach life more mystically might ask, “How could these things not be?” God made all kinds of people, each further shaped by upbringing, genes, trauma, gifts, friends, teachers… no wonder we approach reality so differently. Yet I do believe Jesus is saying that those who like their information very concrete will need to stretch and give their spirits some play in perceiving spiritual reality.
How do you tend to perceive and process information? Does abstraction make you anxious, or too much concreteness make you feel hemmed in? How do you respond to this word of Jesus’ about perceiving and receiving the Kingdom of God? It could be a good conversation to have with him in prayer…
We cannot perceive this Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about with our physical senses, any more than we can see a light wave. Our senses can show us the effects of the power of that realm – healing, peace, forgiveness, reconciliation. But how these came about? That we can only perceive with our spiritual vision. When Jesus says, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit,” he is saying we need to let our natural approaches drown, float on the Living Water of Life, and open ourselves to the radically different seascape of God’s life, realm, energy field.
We might say we are being invited to become sailboats, supported by Water and powered by Wind. Nicodemus wanted to be a motor boat, providing his own momentum, able to stop and start at will. Motor boats give us more control than sailboats. But the realm of God is for those willing to hoist their sails into the breath of God and go where God wills, at whatever pace God decides. Wind power – that's how it is when we're born of the Spirit.
© 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.
5-22-24 - Born Yesterday
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The expression “born yesterday” suggests naiveté, even ignorance (as in the Judy Holliday 1950 film classic, remade in 1993 with Melanie Griffith.) But the phrase comes to mind as I read Jesus' response to Nicodemus: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus chooses to take that literally – “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” He's got a point. What does Jesus mean by "born from above?" That phrase can also be translated “born again,” giving rise to insistence by some Christian groups that only those who are “born again” are real Christians – and they know who’s who. This has occasioned much grief and confusion over the centuries, causing some to doubt their salvation and others to court self-righteousness because they have met their own criteria.
Most agree we are “born again” or “born from above” in the waters of baptism. Some say we are only born again when we are baptized in the Spirit, proved by the ability to speak in tongues. Some say we were born again on Good Friday, when Jesus suffered the consequence of humanity’s sin and opened the way for reconciliation with God.
Any and all of these can be true. Maybe “born from above” isn’t a moment but a series of birthings. Maybe we are ever being born from above as we allow the Spirit of God to transform us ever more into the likeness of Christ.
Being born happens to us. We cannot birth ourselves, or get ourselves born, or will ourselves born, any more than a baby in the womb can arrange its own birth. We find ourselves born anew "from above," sometimes with a dramatic before-and-after, and sometimes gradually throughout our lives. It is God's action, God's love that births us anew, not our own.
What if we live as those who are still being born, knowing we’re evolving as people of the New Covenant? We wouldn’t expect ourselves to be further along in faith than we are, any more than we expect a baby just out of the womb to walk and talk and teach philosophy.
I propose we claim "born yesterday" to remind ourselves we have been born anew, and that the birthing is ongoing. As Paul wrote, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22) We are part of the new creation God is bringing into being. So let's celebrate being "born yesterday." Whenever we are confronted with all that we are not yet able to do or be, we can remind ourselves, “Hey, I was just born yesterday.” It’s true every morning.
© 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.
The expression “born yesterday” suggests naiveté, even ignorance (as in the Judy Holliday 1950 film classic, remade in 1993 with Melanie Griffith.) But the phrase comes to mind as I read Jesus' response to Nicodemus: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus chooses to take that literally – “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” He's got a point. What does Jesus mean by "born from above?" That phrase can also be translated “born again,” giving rise to insistence by some Christian groups that only those who are “born again” are real Christians – and they know who’s who. This has occasioned much grief and confusion over the centuries, causing some to doubt their salvation and others to court self-righteousness because they have met their own criteria.
Most agree we are “born again” or “born from above” in the waters of baptism. Some say we are only born again when we are baptized in the Spirit, proved by the ability to speak in tongues. Some say we were born again on Good Friday, when Jesus suffered the consequence of humanity’s sin and opened the way for reconciliation with God.
Any and all of these can be true. Maybe “born from above” isn’t a moment but a series of birthings. Maybe we are ever being born from above as we allow the Spirit of God to transform us ever more into the likeness of Christ.
Being born happens to us. We cannot birth ourselves, or get ourselves born, or will ourselves born, any more than a baby in the womb can arrange its own birth. We find ourselves born anew "from above," sometimes with a dramatic before-and-after, and sometimes gradually throughout our lives. It is God's action, God's love that births us anew, not our own.
What if we live as those who are still being born, knowing we’re evolving as people of the New Covenant? We wouldn’t expect ourselves to be further along in faith than we are, any more than we expect a baby just out of the womb to walk and talk and teach philosophy.
I propose we claim "born yesterday" to remind ourselves we have been born anew, and that the birthing is ongoing. As Paul wrote, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." (Romans 8:22) We are part of the new creation God is bringing into being. So let's celebrate being "born yesterday." Whenever we are confronted with all that we are not yet able to do or be, we can remind ourselves, “Hey, I was just born yesterday.” It’s true every morning.
© 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.
5-21-24 - By Night
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
What is symbol, and what merely detail? When it comes to the Gospel of John, we can be tempted to see symbols everywhere. More literary than the other gospels, more informed by philosophical thought, further removed from the time it portrays, it invites allegorical interpretation, that way of seeing multiple layers in a biblical text, bringing out the interplay among different texts and ideas.
So what are we to make of the time this story takes place? John is often very precise about time, noting things happening at “six o’clock” or “noon,” or “on the second day.” Here he offers just one temporal clue: “He [Nicodemus] came to Jesus by night.”
By night. There are many possibilities for Nicodemus’ choice of time. Some assume he came furtively, under cover of dark, because he was afraid of what his colleagues would think if they saw him talking with Jesus. Possible. Or maybe, given the demands on both of them, he sought Jesus out at a time when he could have a real conversation with him, without crowds and onlookers around. He wanted a personal conversation.
That’s the surface layer. Let’s go deeper – what does “at night” mean to you? Night suggests mystery, offering less clarity than daylight. There is light, but lunar light is less direct than solar, being itself a reflection. “Night” conveys insights gained in borrowed light, refracted from multiple angles, form emerging from shadows.
Nighttime is also – for those who work days and manage to stop – a time when we can be in a different mode. Our bodies in motion come to rest; we slow a bit, are solitary or social in a different way than during the day, perhaps gathering over a meal at which we can digest our experiences. Conversations at night can be different than in the daytime – longer, deeper, more connective.
And night is when we allow our conscious mind to recharge; a different way of processing information and reality comes out to play. Our dreams are full of stories and images – we don’t get didactic teachings in dreamscapes. And, like the scriptures, our dreams can contain contradictory images, mash-ups of feelings and information we have trouble processing straight on. Dreams are the land of paradox and nuance, as is the life of faith.
Who knows if the writer of John intended all this with those two words, “by night,” but allegorical interpretation sees everything as fair game. Knowing this encounter took place by night invites us to put on different lenses as we try to make sense of it.
We might say the whole enterprise of faith is a walk in the dark. If faith means believing in what is unseen, to walk by faith means stumbling in the dark. We can only really grasp God with our night vision. And doctrines such as the Trinity, God as one and yet three persons existing in perpetual community? That takes dream vision to see if we are to see it at all.
Let’s polish up our night goggles as we attempt to understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus about flesh and spirit. Night vision can help us get what our rational minds cannot quite grasp. By night we might just encounter Jesus afresh.
© 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.
What is symbol, and what merely detail? When it comes to the Gospel of John, we can be tempted to see symbols everywhere. More literary than the other gospels, more informed by philosophical thought, further removed from the time it portrays, it invites allegorical interpretation, that way of seeing multiple layers in a biblical text, bringing out the interplay among different texts and ideas.
So what are we to make of the time this story takes place? John is often very precise about time, noting things happening at “six o’clock” or “noon,” or “on the second day.” Here he offers just one temporal clue: “He [Nicodemus] came to Jesus by night.”
By night. There are many possibilities for Nicodemus’ choice of time. Some assume he came furtively, under cover of dark, because he was afraid of what his colleagues would think if they saw him talking with Jesus. Possible. Or maybe, given the demands on both of them, he sought Jesus out at a time when he could have a real conversation with him, without crowds and onlookers around. He wanted a personal conversation.
That’s the surface layer. Let’s go deeper – what does “at night” mean to you? Night suggests mystery, offering less clarity than daylight. There is light, but lunar light is less direct than solar, being itself a reflection. “Night” conveys insights gained in borrowed light, refracted from multiple angles, form emerging from shadows.
Nighttime is also – for those who work days and manage to stop – a time when we can be in a different mode. Our bodies in motion come to rest; we slow a bit, are solitary or social in a different way than during the day, perhaps gathering over a meal at which we can digest our experiences. Conversations at night can be different than in the daytime – longer, deeper, more connective.
And night is when we allow our conscious mind to recharge; a different way of processing information and reality comes out to play. Our dreams are full of stories and images – we don’t get didactic teachings in dreamscapes. And, like the scriptures, our dreams can contain contradictory images, mash-ups of feelings and information we have trouble processing straight on. Dreams are the land of paradox and nuance, as is the life of faith.
Who knows if the writer of John intended all this with those two words, “by night,” but allegorical interpretation sees everything as fair game. Knowing this encounter took place by night invites us to put on different lenses as we try to make sense of it.
We might say the whole enterprise of faith is a walk in the dark. If faith means believing in what is unseen, to walk by faith means stumbling in the dark. We can only really grasp God with our night vision. And doctrines such as the Trinity, God as one and yet three persons existing in perpetual community? That takes dream vision to see if we are to see it at all.
Let’s polish up our night goggles as we attempt to understand what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus about flesh and spirit. Night vision can help us get what our rational minds cannot quite grasp. By night we might just encounter Jesus afresh.
© 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.
5-20-24 - Interviewing Jesus
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
It feels like we’ve been here before, and recently, with Jesus and Nicodemus and their theological discussion about spirit and flesh, comprehension and new birth. Is it already time for a rerun? So says the Lectionary. And one beauty of Scripture, if we’re open to it, is that it never says exactly the same thing, because we’re never in exactly the same space when we receive it. We could spend a year on this passage and not exhaust its meaning. So let’s look again at this conversation, and explore how it might illuminate the mysteries of the Triune God for us.
We can start by treating it as story, not as theology. What if we enter this as a story we’ve never heard. Who are the main characters? What do we know about them?
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Okay, so we know this Nicodemus is a leader in the Jewish community, and that he is a Pharisee. Research tells us the Pharisees were a sect of Jews known for their fidelity to the Law and to holiness. Though we find in the Gospels many contentious encounters between Jesus and Pharisees, and Jesus is quoted as being highly critical of what he perceived to be the hypocrisy and heavy-handedness of many Pharisees, their goals were honorable: to keep God’s law perfectly and so reflect the holiness and righteousness of God.
Beyond this, we're told little about Nicodemus, but that he was a person who chose to come and see Jesus at night instead of in the broad light of day. Was he too busy during the day? Or was Jesus too surrounded by crowds by day? Or did Nicodemus not want to be seen?
And who is this Jesus he came to see? Nicodemus labels him a teacher, from God, who can do amazing miracles. (What we call miracles, John’s gospel terms “signs.”) So we can infer that he is a holy person, someone with authority, and probably pretty special to be sought out by a man of Nicodemus’ standing. Nicodemus wants to learn something: it appears that he wants to know, for himself, whether or not this strange man, so holy and powerful, yet so dismissive of religious traditions and so open to people who are sick, sinful, or both, is for real: Is he really God-sent?
Isn’t that what we’d like to know too, we who have put our faith in a man we’ve never met in flesh, in a story that we tell and re-tell because we’ve seen its power to open the human heart? Don't we want to know Jesus is for real?
Imagine you are Nicodemus. You want to find out more about this Jesus you’re pretty sure is the Real Thing. You find a time and a place where you can talk with him face to face. Set that up in your imagination - where are you? What do you say? What does he say?
© 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.
It feels like we’ve been here before, and recently, with Jesus and Nicodemus and their theological discussion about spirit and flesh, comprehension and new birth. Is it already time for a rerun? So says the Lectionary. And one beauty of Scripture, if we’re open to it, is that it never says exactly the same thing, because we’re never in exactly the same space when we receive it. We could spend a year on this passage and not exhaust its meaning. So let’s look again at this conversation, and explore how it might illuminate the mysteries of the Triune God for us.
We can start by treating it as story, not as theology. What if we enter this as a story we’ve never heard. Who are the main characters? What do we know about them?
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
Okay, so we know this Nicodemus is a leader in the Jewish community, and that he is a Pharisee. Research tells us the Pharisees were a sect of Jews known for their fidelity to the Law and to holiness. Though we find in the Gospels many contentious encounters between Jesus and Pharisees, and Jesus is quoted as being highly critical of what he perceived to be the hypocrisy and heavy-handedness of many Pharisees, their goals were honorable: to keep God’s law perfectly and so reflect the holiness and righteousness of God.
Beyond this, we're told little about Nicodemus, but that he was a person who chose to come and see Jesus at night instead of in the broad light of day. Was he too busy during the day? Or was Jesus too surrounded by crowds by day? Or did Nicodemus not want to be seen?
And who is this Jesus he came to see? Nicodemus labels him a teacher, from God, who can do amazing miracles. (What we call miracles, John’s gospel terms “signs.”) So we can infer that he is a holy person, someone with authority, and probably pretty special to be sought out by a man of Nicodemus’ standing. Nicodemus wants to learn something: it appears that he wants to know, for himself, whether or not this strange man, so holy and powerful, yet so dismissive of religious traditions and so open to people who are sick, sinful, or both, is for real: Is he really God-sent?
Isn’t that what we’d like to know too, we who have put our faith in a man we’ve never met in flesh, in a story that we tell and re-tell because we’ve seen its power to open the human heart? Don't we want to know Jesus is for real?
Imagine you are Nicodemus. You want to find out more about this Jesus you’re pretty sure is the Real Thing. You find a time and a place where you can talk with him face to face. Set that up in your imagination - where are you? What do you say? What does he say?
© 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.
5-17-24 - Peace, Power, Presence
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week we have explored the ways the Holy Spirit helps us pray and praise, live “pneumatically,” be like pie with the Spirit’s fruit and filling, and accept the Spirit’s gifts for ministry (can’t think of a “P” word for that…). Let’s end by looking at the way the Spirit brings us supernatural peace, presence and power, through prayer (phew, four more Ps!).
I can think of nothing we need more in our multi-faceted, out-of-control lives than peace and power. And though both are states we can try to achieve on our own, something extraordinary kicks in when we ask them of the Holy Spirit.
When we are in turmoil and pray for God’s peace, and we feel ourselves begin to settle, that is the Holy Spirit at work. Paul calls this peace from the Spirit “the peace that defies understanding.” It comes in profoundly unpeaceful circumstances and is all the more wondrous for being beyond our ability to reason or meditate ourselves into. He told the Philippians to pray in times of anxiety, making petitions, with thanksgiving, and then trust that this peace of Christ will fill us.
Similarly, the power of God comes into us most fully when we are at our weakest. Paul wrote that he heard God say, in a moment of crisis, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (II Corinthians 12:9) This is so counter-intuitive, it can be hard to remember at those times when we’re at a low ebb. Sometimes, when I am facing a deadline or an event and I think, “I got nothin',” I am reminded (by the Spirit?) of this principle. If I remember to ask for inspiration when creating a sermon or a flyer, ideas soon come to me.
Paul – and Jesus before him – also relied upon that power of the Spirit revealed in what look like miracles to back up the message of radical forgiveness and transformation in God’s love. It is not our power or our persuasiveness or our gifts that reach another’s heart – it is the power of God's Spirit working through us.
The Holy Spirit is right here, as close as our breath. In fact, we need only stop and breathe in with intention to begin feeling the Spirit’s presence. If I pray in tongues for a moment, I am dropped into the Spirit's presence. Though praying in tongues is unfamiliar to some who associate it with the fervor and occasional emotional excess of Pentecostalism, it is a great gift of the Spirit, one intended as a prayer language. It allows us to allow the Spirit to pray through us. In that way, our prayer begins and ends with God. We are just part of the loop, though an integral part, for if we don’t add our faith and intention, then God’s own desire may not be realized.
Hmmm…. Did I just say we could thwart God's desires? Maybe... and here's Paul again: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:22-27)
We don’t even have to pray on our own strength! Nothing we do as Christ-followers needs to be done alone. God is with us in all of it, all the time, or wants to be. And how do we experience God with us in it all, all of the time? Through the Spirit of the Father and of the Son – the Holy Spirit of God.
© 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.
This week we have explored the ways the Holy Spirit helps us pray and praise, live “pneumatically,” be like pie with the Spirit’s fruit and filling, and accept the Spirit’s gifts for ministry (can’t think of a “P” word for that…). Let’s end by looking at the way the Spirit brings us supernatural peace, presence and power, through prayer (phew, four more Ps!).
I can think of nothing we need more in our multi-faceted, out-of-control lives than peace and power. And though both are states we can try to achieve on our own, something extraordinary kicks in when we ask them of the Holy Spirit.
When we are in turmoil and pray for God’s peace, and we feel ourselves begin to settle, that is the Holy Spirit at work. Paul calls this peace from the Spirit “the peace that defies understanding.” It comes in profoundly unpeaceful circumstances and is all the more wondrous for being beyond our ability to reason or meditate ourselves into. He told the Philippians to pray in times of anxiety, making petitions, with thanksgiving, and then trust that this peace of Christ will fill us.
Similarly, the power of God comes into us most fully when we are at our weakest. Paul wrote that he heard God say, in a moment of crisis, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (II Corinthians 12:9) This is so counter-intuitive, it can be hard to remember at those times when we’re at a low ebb. Sometimes, when I am facing a deadline or an event and I think, “I got nothin',” I am reminded (by the Spirit?) of this principle. If I remember to ask for inspiration when creating a sermon or a flyer, ideas soon come to me.
Paul – and Jesus before him – also relied upon that power of the Spirit revealed in what look like miracles to back up the message of radical forgiveness and transformation in God’s love. It is not our power or our persuasiveness or our gifts that reach another’s heart – it is the power of God's Spirit working through us.
The Holy Spirit is right here, as close as our breath. In fact, we need only stop and breathe in with intention to begin feeling the Spirit’s presence. If I pray in tongues for a moment, I am dropped into the Spirit's presence. Though praying in tongues is unfamiliar to some who associate it with the fervor and occasional emotional excess of Pentecostalism, it is a great gift of the Spirit, one intended as a prayer language. It allows us to allow the Spirit to pray through us. In that way, our prayer begins and ends with God. We are just part of the loop, though an integral part, for if we don’t add our faith and intention, then God’s own desire may not be realized.
Hmmm…. Did I just say we could thwart God's desires? Maybe... and here's Paul again: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:22-27)
We don’t even have to pray on our own strength! Nothing we do as Christ-followers needs to be done alone. God is with us in all of it, all the time, or wants to be. And how do we experience God with us in it all, all of the time? Through the Spirit of the Father and of the Son – the Holy Spirit of God.
© 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.
5-16-24 - The Gift Who Keeps On Giving
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Among the Spirit's blessings promised us as saints of God are spiritual gifts. These are Spirit-given abilities that help the church carry out the mission of God. As such they are distinct from talents and abilities we are born with or train for. Sometimes our spiritual gifts overlap with our natural talents, as with musicians who also help lead worship music, or talented speakers who also preach, or naturally gregarious people who also have a gift of evangelism. But sometimes spiritual gifts are abilities we discover we have or others notice in us - say, an accountant who happens to be a wonderful Sunday School teacher. We discover them because they bear fruit.
We find several lists of spiritual gifts in New Testament letters by Paul and Peter (though Peter’s list might be cribbed from Paul…). The more obvious are ones like teaching, healing, preaching, evangelism. There are others, listed and not: prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, administration, compassion, generosity. Where spiritual gifts overlap with talents or traits we have, we identify them as spiritual gifts if they help the church proclaim and share the Good News of life in Jesus Christ, and sometimes by the intensity with which we manifest that gift. For instance, many people are generous; but someone with the spiritual gift of "giving" gives abundantly and with such joy and often in situations where their gift makes all the difference. Many people are well organized, but someone with the spiritual gift of administration is able to facilitate the ministries of the whole group for mission.
What are some spiritual gifts that you are aware of having received? What ministries do they empower you to live out? When did they surface? Sometimes when our circumstances change, such as when we retire or become empty nesters, new gifts emerge for ministries we are now able to do. What gifts have others identified in you, that you may not have thought you had?
It’s also good to look at our “gift mixes.” Taking an inventory of our spiritual gifts and seeing how they combine can point us to ministries. (Here are Methodist, Lutheran and other online inventories; there are more.) Someone with a gift of healing and compassion (beyond the average) might be called to minister to people on the streets, or someone with a gift for teaching and music to lead choirs.
St. Paul wrote a lot about spiritual gifts, because he wanted his churches to know that God equips us for every ministry to which God calls us. He wanted them to crave the gifts – and to recognize that they are all Spirit-given and equally important. To the Corinthians, who were very keen on certain “flashier” gifts, he wrote, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” He enumerates some of the diverse gifts for ministry, concluding, “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.” (I Corinthians 12:4-11)
Paul also reminded his readers that there’s no point being spiritually gifted if we’re lacking in love. That’s what that famous hymn to love read at weddings is really about – how to exercise the gifts of the Spirit in community, a community that is to be marked by love.
The gifts of the Spirit are gifts, not assets or rewards. We cannot buy or earn them, but we can pray for the ones we believe we want or need. We can trust the Spirit to give us what we need to live fully into God's purposes for us.
© 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.
Among the Spirit's blessings promised us as saints of God are spiritual gifts. These are Spirit-given abilities that help the church carry out the mission of God. As such they are distinct from talents and abilities we are born with or train for. Sometimes our spiritual gifts overlap with our natural talents, as with musicians who also help lead worship music, or talented speakers who also preach, or naturally gregarious people who also have a gift of evangelism. But sometimes spiritual gifts are abilities we discover we have or others notice in us - say, an accountant who happens to be a wonderful Sunday School teacher. We discover them because they bear fruit.
We find several lists of spiritual gifts in New Testament letters by Paul and Peter (though Peter’s list might be cribbed from Paul…). The more obvious are ones like teaching, healing, preaching, evangelism. There are others, listed and not: prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking in tongues, administration, compassion, generosity. Where spiritual gifts overlap with talents or traits we have, we identify them as spiritual gifts if they help the church proclaim and share the Good News of life in Jesus Christ, and sometimes by the intensity with which we manifest that gift. For instance, many people are generous; but someone with the spiritual gift of "giving" gives abundantly and with such joy and often in situations where their gift makes all the difference. Many people are well organized, but someone with the spiritual gift of administration is able to facilitate the ministries of the whole group for mission.
What are some spiritual gifts that you are aware of having received? What ministries do they empower you to live out? When did they surface? Sometimes when our circumstances change, such as when we retire or become empty nesters, new gifts emerge for ministries we are now able to do. What gifts have others identified in you, that you may not have thought you had?
It’s also good to look at our “gift mixes.” Taking an inventory of our spiritual gifts and seeing how they combine can point us to ministries. (Here are Methodist, Lutheran and other online inventories; there are more.) Someone with a gift of healing and compassion (beyond the average) might be called to minister to people on the streets, or someone with a gift for teaching and music to lead choirs.
St. Paul wrote a lot about spiritual gifts, because he wanted his churches to know that God equips us for every ministry to which God calls us. He wanted them to crave the gifts – and to recognize that they are all Spirit-given and equally important. To the Corinthians, who were very keen on certain “flashier” gifts, he wrote, “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” He enumerates some of the diverse gifts for ministry, concluding, “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.” (I Corinthians 12:4-11)
Paul also reminded his readers that there’s no point being spiritually gifted if we’re lacking in love. That’s what that famous hymn to love read at weddings is really about – how to exercise the gifts of the Spirit in community, a community that is to be marked by love.
The gifts of the Spirit are gifts, not assets or rewards. We cannot buy or earn them, but we can pray for the ones we believe we want or need. We can trust the Spirit to give us what we need to live fully into God's purposes for us.
© 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.
5-15-24 - Holy Pie
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When I start reading what St. Paul has to say about the Holy Spirit, I soon get to thinking about pie. Why’s that, you ask? Because there’s a lot of talk about fruit and filling!
St. Paul had much to say about the Holy Spirit – the Spirit’s function in the life of the church; the gifts, or charisms, given to us by the Spirit; the way the more charismatic of the charisms should be lived out in worship and community; and the fruit and the filling ("... be filled with the Spirit..." Eph 5:18). Paul said he accompanied his proclamation of the Good News with signs of the power we're given as heirs to the Gospel: “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (I Cor 2:4-5)
It is the Spirit’s power that makes our message and our ministry effective at opening hearts and making peace and calling forth justice. The Spirit equips us with the gifts and character we need as saints of the Living God on an ongoing basis. There are personality traits that Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit”: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23a).
Human beings are capable of such attributes without God, I’m sure – but not often, and rarely in a sustained manner. When we truly allow the Holy Spirit to fill and transform us, we find ourselves manifesting these fruits in a way that surprises us and the people around us. We can tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and depression meds when someone who's always been downcast becomes a person of joy. Likewise, when someone known for her temper develops forbearance, you know God is up to something.
What if we were to make a list of these “fruits” Paul names, adding ones we feel are missing, like humility. Then we might do an inventory, noting the levels of each of these we feel we possess – give it a number or fill in a circle with a rough percentage. Have you experienced more of any of these since you became more conscious about following Jesus? Which are the attributes you particularly crave? We could revisit the list periodically, check our "levels."
God desires that each of us experience this fruit. And we don't get the fruit without the filling. One way we get Spirit-filled, allowing God to sow the seeds of these traits in us, is to intentionally invite the Spirit to take up residence in us. That prayer is as simple as “Come, Holy Spirit!” It is a prayer I utter frequently before and during worship, or when my spirits are low, or at times when I realize I’m trying to do something on my own. If we could get to the point where that prayer rose up in us all through the day, as well as spending lengthier times bathing in the Spirit’s love and peace, we’d find ourselves both filled and fruitful.
In my experience, the Spirit is an eager guest, but one who awaits our invitation. She does not insist or break down the door. He doesn’t even knock all that hard, just is happy when we say, “Oh, I forgot you were there. Please come in... Have some pie?”
© 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.
When I start reading what St. Paul has to say about the Holy Spirit, I soon get to thinking about pie. Why’s that, you ask? Because there’s a lot of talk about fruit and filling!
St. Paul had much to say about the Holy Spirit – the Spirit’s function in the life of the church; the gifts, or charisms, given to us by the Spirit; the way the more charismatic of the charisms should be lived out in worship and community; and the fruit and the filling ("... be filled with the Spirit..." Eph 5:18). Paul said he accompanied his proclamation of the Good News with signs of the power we're given as heirs to the Gospel: “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (I Cor 2:4-5)
It is the Spirit’s power that makes our message and our ministry effective at opening hearts and making peace and calling forth justice. The Spirit equips us with the gifts and character we need as saints of the Living God on an ongoing basis. There are personality traits that Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit”: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galatians 5:22-23a).
Human beings are capable of such attributes without God, I’m sure – but not often, and rarely in a sustained manner. When we truly allow the Holy Spirit to fill and transform us, we find ourselves manifesting these fruits in a way that surprises us and the people around us. We can tell the difference between the Holy Spirit and depression meds when someone who's always been downcast becomes a person of joy. Likewise, when someone known for her temper develops forbearance, you know God is up to something.
What if we were to make a list of these “fruits” Paul names, adding ones we feel are missing, like humility. Then we might do an inventory, noting the levels of each of these we feel we possess – give it a number or fill in a circle with a rough percentage. Have you experienced more of any of these since you became more conscious about following Jesus? Which are the attributes you particularly crave? We could revisit the list periodically, check our "levels."
God desires that each of us experience this fruit. And we don't get the fruit without the filling. One way we get Spirit-filled, allowing God to sow the seeds of these traits in us, is to intentionally invite the Spirit to take up residence in us. That prayer is as simple as “Come, Holy Spirit!” It is a prayer I utter frequently before and during worship, or when my spirits are low, or at times when I realize I’m trying to do something on my own. If we could get to the point where that prayer rose up in us all through the day, as well as spending lengthier times bathing in the Spirit’s love and peace, we’d find ourselves both filled and fruitful.
In my experience, the Spirit is an eager guest, but one who awaits our invitation. She does not insist or break down the door. He doesn’t even knock all that hard, just is happy when we say, “Oh, I forgot you were there. Please come in... Have some pie?”
© 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.
5-14-24 - Pumped
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Theological doctrines relating to the Holy Spirit are called “Pneumatology,” pneuma being the ancient Greek word for breath, spirit, soul. It is also the root of our word “pneumatic,” referring to compressing air to create power. (On the other end of the intellectual spectrum, there's the old Saturday Night Live sketch with the body builders Hanz and Franz and their catch phrase, “Pump you up!"…)
Definitions of pneumatic refer to things being “filled with air,” or “using air pressure to move or work.” We see how inflated tires will help a vehicle move, or steam-fed pistons power machinery. The compressed air moves the pistons, which move other parts, small things powering the whole. That’s a pretty good image of the church engaged in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. What if we were to think of ourselves as vehicles or machines working pneumatically to accomplish far more than we could on our own?
The New Testament has many references to people being “filled with the Spirit.” This is one way the Holy Spirit seems to work in the world – by filling human beings. We even read of Jesus, before certain miracles, that “the Spirit was with him.” When we are filled with the Spirit, we are able to do “immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine,” to use Paul’s phrase. We are able to exercise faith, mobilize others, speak boldly, pray powerfully, organize brilliantly, joyfully aware that God is working with and through us.
What does it feel like to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It can be a gentle experience, waves of comfort or well-being or peace washing over us. It can feel like an influx of energy, with a physiological effect on our nervous system – increased heartbeat, tingling, trembling, feeling heat in extremities or all over. It can come with an intensity of emotion – joy, hope, faith, love – or give us total clarity about something we’re doing or saying. What does it feel like for you?
I can feel the difference between when I do something on my own steam (writing Water Daily, for instance), using natural talents and ideas, and when it feels like the Holy Spirit is filling me, writing through me. Sometimes I don’t feel different – I only know by the result that the Spirit added more than I brought. And sometimes I’m in a flow that I know to be Spirit-filled. We might call that pneumatic ministry. I think God desires us to be filled with compressed power that moves us so that the whole enterprise functions at peak effectiveness. God wants our faith tires filled so we can move mountains.
Of course, “pumped” is also slang for “excited,” “psyched up,” anticipating great things. If we truly want the gifts and blessings and ministries that are our inheritance as beloved believers in Christ, we will allow the Holy Spirit to "pump us up," and seek to live “pumped.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
© 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.
Theological doctrines relating to the Holy Spirit are called “Pneumatology,” pneuma being the ancient Greek word for breath, spirit, soul. It is also the root of our word “pneumatic,” referring to compressing air to create power. (On the other end of the intellectual spectrum, there's the old Saturday Night Live sketch with the body builders Hanz and Franz and their catch phrase, “Pump you up!"…)
Definitions of pneumatic refer to things being “filled with air,” or “using air pressure to move or work.” We see how inflated tires will help a vehicle move, or steam-fed pistons power machinery. The compressed air moves the pistons, which move other parts, small things powering the whole. That’s a pretty good image of the church engaged in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. What if we were to think of ourselves as vehicles or machines working pneumatically to accomplish far more than we could on our own?
The New Testament has many references to people being “filled with the Spirit.” This is one way the Holy Spirit seems to work in the world – by filling human beings. We even read of Jesus, before certain miracles, that “the Spirit was with him.” When we are filled with the Spirit, we are able to do “immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine,” to use Paul’s phrase. We are able to exercise faith, mobilize others, speak boldly, pray powerfully, organize brilliantly, joyfully aware that God is working with and through us.
What does it feel like to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It can be a gentle experience, waves of comfort or well-being or peace washing over us. It can feel like an influx of energy, with a physiological effect on our nervous system – increased heartbeat, tingling, trembling, feeling heat in extremities or all over. It can come with an intensity of emotion – joy, hope, faith, love – or give us total clarity about something we’re doing or saying. What does it feel like for you?
I can feel the difference between when I do something on my own steam (writing Water Daily, for instance), using natural talents and ideas, and when it feels like the Holy Spirit is filling me, writing through me. Sometimes I don’t feel different – I only know by the result that the Spirit added more than I brought. And sometimes I’m in a flow that I know to be Spirit-filled. We might call that pneumatic ministry. I think God desires us to be filled with compressed power that moves us so that the whole enterprise functions at peak effectiveness. God wants our faith tires filled so we can move mountains.
Of course, “pumped” is also slang for “excited,” “psyched up,” anticipating great things. If we truly want the gifts and blessings and ministries that are our inheritance as beloved believers in Christ, we will allow the Holy Spirit to "pump us up," and seek to live “pumped.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
© 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.
5-13-24 - Inspired
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's New Testament reading is here.
Next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This week, rather than looking at a specific biblical text, we will reflect on the Holy Spirit generally. After all, the Holy Spirit is the God-Person who makes possible everything we experience as Christians, our faith, our praise, our prayers, our ministries. There can be no Church without the Holy Spirit.
In fact, I once wrote a sermon drama called “It’s a Wonderful Trinity," the ridiculous premise of which was borrowed from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The Holy Spirit is feeling depressed about his usefulness, since the Father and the Son seem to get a lot more attention. (Theologians would call this a weak Pneumatology, or Doctrine of the Holy Spirit...) An angel has to show him what the world and the church might be like if there were no Holy Spirit. We see a really dull sermon, a choir singing listlessly and out of tune, people unable to carry out ministries with any effectiveness, and the like. It was very silly - and I hope it got people thinking about how the Spirit affects our lives as carriers of the Gospel.
It is easy to overlook the operation of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit focuses our attention on Jesus. Jesus likened the Spirit to the wind, which we know by its effects on other things and only “see” as it carries matter through the air. So it is with the Holy Spirit – we know her presence by the fruit our ministries bear, or by our experience of the presence of God in prayer or worship, or by what we see in other people, or others see and hear in us.
The Holy Spirit enables us to pray and praise, to experience peace, to wield spiritual power, to bear the fruit of love and healing in our lives. The Bible shows the Holy Spirit to be the source of power, wisdom, creativity, comfort, prophecy, gifts for ministry, and virtues like joy and patience. The Spirit, who is the spirit of the Father and the Son, is the way we experience God.
When and where do you most often experience or discern the movement of the Spirit?
Next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This week, rather than looking at a specific biblical text, we will reflect on the Holy Spirit generally. After all, the Holy Spirit is the God-Person who makes possible everything we experience as Christians, our faith, our praise, our prayers, our ministries. There can be no Church without the Holy Spirit.
In fact, I once wrote a sermon drama called “It’s a Wonderful Trinity," the ridiculous premise of which was borrowed from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The Holy Spirit is feeling depressed about his usefulness, since the Father and the Son seem to get a lot more attention. (Theologians would call this a weak Pneumatology, or Doctrine of the Holy Spirit...) An angel has to show him what the world and the church might be like if there were no Holy Spirit. We see a really dull sermon, a choir singing listlessly and out of tune, people unable to carry out ministries with any effectiveness, and the like. It was very silly - and I hope it got people thinking about how the Spirit affects our lives as carriers of the Gospel.
It is easy to overlook the operation of the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit focuses our attention on Jesus. Jesus likened the Spirit to the wind, which we know by its effects on other things and only “see” as it carries matter through the air. So it is with the Holy Spirit – we know her presence by the fruit our ministries bear, or by our experience of the presence of God in prayer or worship, or by what we see in other people, or others see and hear in us.
The Holy Spirit enables us to pray and praise, to experience peace, to wield spiritual power, to bear the fruit of love and healing in our lives. The Bible shows the Holy Spirit to be the source of power, wisdom, creativity, comfort, prophecy, gifts for ministry, and virtues like joy and patience. The Spirit, who is the spirit of the Father and the Son, is the way we experience God.
When and where do you most often experience or discern the movement of the Spirit?
Can you tell the difference when you're praying or acting on your own steam or in the Spirit? When and where are you conscious of seeing the movement of the Spirit in people or situations?
The word "spirit" is at the root of our words for inspiration and for respiration, or breathing. As we focus this week on the various ways the Holy Spirit works in our lives as Christians, I pray we will increase our lung capacity, as it were, making more space within for God's loving presence, God's transforming power. Be inspired; breathe God in!
© 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.
The word "spirit" is at the root of our words for inspiration and for respiration, or breathing. As we focus this week on the various ways the Holy Spirit works in our lives as Christians, I pray we will increase our lung capacity, as it were, making more space within for God's loving presence, God's transforming power. Be inspired; breathe God in!
© 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.
5-10-24 - Sent and Sanctified
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Yesterday was Ascension Day, when the church marks Jesus’ final bodily exit from this world. From this time on he would be present with his followers as he promised, but in spirit, not flesh. He told them he was going to the Father, and we envision him “seated on the right hand of the Father.” After the activity and stress of his incarnate life, sitting down might have sounded good, but to spend eternity seated, even at the right hand of the Father? That’s a lot of sitting. Of course, he did have a job to do: to intercede for these followers he launched into the world he was leaving.
This prayer we’ve been studying this week articulates in human language Jesus’ eternal work. It is a prayer for protection, a prayer of sending, and a prayer for holiness: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
That same world he told his disciples not to become too attached to is where he sent them. Lest they wonder why, Jesus reminds them it is to continue his mission – “As the Father sent me, so I send you…” Lest they wonder what their work was to be, it was to do anything they had seen Jesus do: proclaiming, teaching, healing, forgiving, restoring. Their passion and energy was to be spent loving the people they would encounter in the world as they had been loved: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
Lest we wonder what our apostolic mission is, there’s our answer – the same as those original apostles. We too are sent into the world to love in Jesus' name. We can be sure that his aims and desires have not changed – he still wants people to believe in him, to be united as one. We can be sure that Jesus is interceding for us as we go about his mission.
It is both daunting and comforting to know that Jesus is praying for those who will believe in him through our word. It is daunting, because it puts the pressure on us to share his word; otherwise, how will any meet him and come to believe? And it is comforting because it reminds us that Jesus does not send us out without equipping us for the transforming work he is doing through us.
To be sanctified is to be made holy, saint-like. Sanctification is an already/not yet proposition – we are already made holy by Jesus’ action, and we experience it gradually, as we allow the Spirit to take root in us, to transform us from the inside. As we engage in ministries of transformation for others, we are simultaneously being transformed ever more into the likeness and stature of Christ. This plane is being built as it flies.
The mantle of those apostles has passed to us. Christ’s intercession for us continues too – if not in these words set down in John’s gospel, then in ways that articulate the dream of God better than we can imagine, with the power that answers the prayer before the words have been uttered. The power and love flow from the heavenly places to us and through us – and ultimately will welcome us home, wholly sanctified.
© 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.
Yesterday was Ascension Day, when the church marks Jesus’ final bodily exit from this world. From this time on he would be present with his followers as he promised, but in spirit, not flesh. He told them he was going to the Father, and we envision him “seated on the right hand of the Father.” After the activity and stress of his incarnate life, sitting down might have sounded good, but to spend eternity seated, even at the right hand of the Father? That’s a lot of sitting. Of course, he did have a job to do: to intercede for these followers he launched into the world he was leaving.
This prayer we’ve been studying this week articulates in human language Jesus’ eternal work. It is a prayer for protection, a prayer of sending, and a prayer for holiness: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
That same world he told his disciples not to become too attached to is where he sent them. Lest they wonder why, Jesus reminds them it is to continue his mission – “As the Father sent me, so I send you…” Lest they wonder what their work was to be, it was to do anything they had seen Jesus do: proclaiming, teaching, healing, forgiving, restoring. Their passion and energy was to be spent loving the people they would encounter in the world as they had been loved: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
Lest we wonder what our apostolic mission is, there’s our answer – the same as those original apostles. We too are sent into the world to love in Jesus' name. We can be sure that his aims and desires have not changed – he still wants people to believe in him, to be united as one. We can be sure that Jesus is interceding for us as we go about his mission.
It is both daunting and comforting to know that Jesus is praying for those who will believe in him through our word. It is daunting, because it puts the pressure on us to share his word; otherwise, how will any meet him and come to believe? And it is comforting because it reminds us that Jesus does not send us out without equipping us for the transforming work he is doing through us.
To be sanctified is to be made holy, saint-like. Sanctification is an already/not yet proposition – we are already made holy by Jesus’ action, and we experience it gradually, as we allow the Spirit to take root in us, to transform us from the inside. As we engage in ministries of transformation for others, we are simultaneously being transformed ever more into the likeness and stature of Christ. This plane is being built as it flies.
The mantle of those apostles has passed to us. Christ’s intercession for us continues too – if not in these words set down in John’s gospel, then in ways that articulate the dream of God better than we can imagine, with the power that answers the prayer before the words have been uttered. The power and love flow from the heavenly places to us and through us – and ultimately will welcome us home, wholly sanctified.
© 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.
5-9-24 - Dual Citizens
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I lived in New York City for 22 years. The rhythms and pulse of the city were my way of life – I could navigate the streets and subways, theatres and restaurants, even drive like a maniac on the rare occasions I was behind a wheel. Like most New Yorkers, I felt I was where I belonged and thrived in the environment best suited to my energy. I didn’t think I would ever leave.
Until I did, to go to Yale Divinity School in New Haven. I had an easy transition, going back and forth on weekends for a few months, until gradually I went less often, and built up friendships and activities in New Haven. Even while living in Stamford, a commuter train ride away, I rarely went in, despite friends to see and such a wealth of culture to enjoy. Yet when I do find myself in “the city,” I easily drop back into its pace and flow. I can get around like a New Yorker, though I am no longer one. “New York” is a language I can speak, but rarely use.
Maybe that hints at what Jesus meant when he prayed about his followers not “belonging to this world.” This world is clearly not a place to rest for citizens of God's realm. “… I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”
Why such suspicion of “the world?” By the time these words were set down, the early church was into its fourth or fifth, maybe sixth decade. It had grown and spread and developed structures. It had become familiar with controversy, resistance and fierce persecution, not only from the occupying Romans, but from the Jewish establishment which saw this reform movement as a blasphemous threat. It's easy to read back into these words the opposition the early Christians who wrote them were facing. Yet even apart from that history there is a clear distinction expressed here, between the values of the world and those of the Christian community.
In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with “the world," right? After all, God created it and called it good. Jesus entered into human life to dwell in it and save it. Yet Jesus, and Paul and other leaders after him, often used "the world" to mean human-centered society – corrupt, materialistic, full of oppression and inequity. It is the realm which is passing away, of which the saints of God, called to reflect the holiness of God’s realm, are to be wary. Paul writes to the church in Rome, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) The pattern we are to conform to is the one Christ laid down for us, and in which the Spirit leads us.
Are we "of the world?" Or "In the world but not of the world?" I tell the newly baptized that they now have dual citizenship – they are still very much a part of this world, and now simultaneously citizens of the kingdom of God, that supra-national realm of supernatural power and peace. That realm is where we will spend eternity. This realm is where we live now, preparing for that other world, and participating in Christ’s redeeming, transforming work here.
Our spiritual work is to love this world as Christ does, because it is filled with creatures and people God loves, AND to live ready to leave it when we’re called to New Heaven (the original name for New Haven…) See? Someday we all leave the City and go to Divinity School.
© 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.
I lived in New York City for 22 years. The rhythms and pulse of the city were my way of life – I could navigate the streets and subways, theatres and restaurants, even drive like a maniac on the rare occasions I was behind a wheel. Like most New Yorkers, I felt I was where I belonged and thrived in the environment best suited to my energy. I didn’t think I would ever leave.
Until I did, to go to Yale Divinity School in New Haven. I had an easy transition, going back and forth on weekends for a few months, until gradually I went less often, and built up friendships and activities in New Haven. Even while living in Stamford, a commuter train ride away, I rarely went in, despite friends to see and such a wealth of culture to enjoy. Yet when I do find myself in “the city,” I easily drop back into its pace and flow. I can get around like a New Yorker, though I am no longer one. “New York” is a language I can speak, but rarely use.
Maybe that hints at what Jesus meant when he prayed about his followers not “belonging to this world.” This world is clearly not a place to rest for citizens of God's realm. “… I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”
Why such suspicion of “the world?” By the time these words were set down, the early church was into its fourth or fifth, maybe sixth decade. It had grown and spread and developed structures. It had become familiar with controversy, resistance and fierce persecution, not only from the occupying Romans, but from the Jewish establishment which saw this reform movement as a blasphemous threat. It's easy to read back into these words the opposition the early Christians who wrote them were facing. Yet even apart from that history there is a clear distinction expressed here, between the values of the world and those of the Christian community.
In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with “the world," right? After all, God created it and called it good. Jesus entered into human life to dwell in it and save it. Yet Jesus, and Paul and other leaders after him, often used "the world" to mean human-centered society – corrupt, materialistic, full of oppression and inequity. It is the realm which is passing away, of which the saints of God, called to reflect the holiness of God’s realm, are to be wary. Paul writes to the church in Rome, “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) The pattern we are to conform to is the one Christ laid down for us, and in which the Spirit leads us.
Are we "of the world?" Or "In the world but not of the world?" I tell the newly baptized that they now have dual citizenship – they are still very much a part of this world, and now simultaneously citizens of the kingdom of God, that supra-national realm of supernatural power and peace. That realm is where we will spend eternity. This realm is where we live now, preparing for that other world, and participating in Christ’s redeeming, transforming work here.
Our spiritual work is to love this world as Christ does, because it is filled with creatures and people God loves, AND to live ready to leave it when we’re called to New Heaven (the original name for New Haven…) See? Someday we all leave the City and go to Divinity School.
© 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.
5-8-24 - One
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One day I was reading Amos, a prophet to whom God gave symbolic visions. So I said to God, “If I were a prophet, what would you show me?” Right away a picture formed in my mind. To my left, I saw a crowd of people, frantic, their faces turned toward the sky, their mouths open like baby birds waiting for food. I understood they were ravenous. Then my attention was drawn to another crowd nearby, angry, shouting at each other. I realized these were bakers, arguing about who had the best recipe for bread. The interpretation came into my mind almost as quickly as the images: the bakers were the churches, squabbling over their differences, while people hungered for the Bread of Life.
If we were to draw out one strand of the many in Jesus’ farewell discourses, we might pick unity among Christ-followers. In his prayer for his disciples on his last night among them, Jesus expresses a deep concern. He prays that they be protected from the world, and from the evil one. And it seems that what he most wants to see them protected from is disunity. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he tells them. As he prays for them, he says, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
It’s as though the worst thing that could happen to the worldwide community of Christ-followers is not injury or failure, but breaking faith with one another. When we look at how fractured the church of Jesus Christ is and has been, we can understand his concern. The power of God is unlimited except when it comes to the human heart. God gives us choice, and we can hear the longing in Jesus that we exercise our choice to come together, not stand divided.
I don’t see in this passage an indictment of denominations and different expressions of Christianity – that’s just the way human nature and human institutions work. Jesus doesn’t need us all worshipping the same way or even emphasizing the same points of doctrine. What Jesus does plead is that we love one another and that the world see his church as united in love for him and for God’s children. So much divides us – interpretation of scripture, history, theology, divergent views on justice and holiness. Much of this is real and important. Can we possibly set aside those things that divide and focus on the One True thing – or, more biblically, the True One, our Lord Jesus, Son of God, risen savior of the world?
Or is it the worst sort of denial to say, “Oh, let’s just get together and love Jesus, and I'll overlook your homophobia/ racism/defense of privilege/disregard for the sanctity of life/ cherry-picking Scripture/[fill in your own rant here]?” Where do the claims for Christian unity crash against God's call for justice? That’s a huge question. I can’t answer it. I only know this polarization, even injustice, is not Jesus’ will. Jesus prayed, “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.” He promises he is still praying for his apostles, those called to reveal the Good News of restoration in Christ. I don’t know how to lay aside my outrage at some of the things my fellow Christians say or do, any more than some of them know what to do with what they might term my “Godless liberalism.”
But we all know how to pray to the One we call Lord, whose power to heal and transform can work even on our stubborn hearts as we’re willing to invite him in. Enough prayer and enough humility, enough allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us, one day we might fulfill Jesus' prayer that we be one.
© 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.
One day I was reading Amos, a prophet to whom God gave symbolic visions. So I said to God, “If I were a prophet, what would you show me?” Right away a picture formed in my mind. To my left, I saw a crowd of people, frantic, their faces turned toward the sky, their mouths open like baby birds waiting for food. I understood they were ravenous. Then my attention was drawn to another crowd nearby, angry, shouting at each other. I realized these were bakers, arguing about who had the best recipe for bread. The interpretation came into my mind almost as quickly as the images: the bakers were the churches, squabbling over their differences, while people hungered for the Bread of Life.
If we were to draw out one strand of the many in Jesus’ farewell discourses, we might pick unity among Christ-followers. In his prayer for his disciples on his last night among them, Jesus expresses a deep concern. He prays that they be protected from the world, and from the evil one. And it seems that what he most wants to see them protected from is disunity. “Love one another as I have loved you,” he tells them. As he prays for them, he says, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
It’s as though the worst thing that could happen to the worldwide community of Christ-followers is not injury or failure, but breaking faith with one another. When we look at how fractured the church of Jesus Christ is and has been, we can understand his concern. The power of God is unlimited except when it comes to the human heart. God gives us choice, and we can hear the longing in Jesus that we exercise our choice to come together, not stand divided.
I don’t see in this passage an indictment of denominations and different expressions of Christianity – that’s just the way human nature and human institutions work. Jesus doesn’t need us all worshipping the same way or even emphasizing the same points of doctrine. What Jesus does plead is that we love one another and that the world see his church as united in love for him and for God’s children. So much divides us – interpretation of scripture, history, theology, divergent views on justice and holiness. Much of this is real and important. Can we possibly set aside those things that divide and focus on the One True thing – or, more biblically, the True One, our Lord Jesus, Son of God, risen savior of the world?
Or is it the worst sort of denial to say, “Oh, let’s just get together and love Jesus, and I'll overlook your homophobia/ racism/defense of privilege/disregard for the sanctity of life/ cherry-picking Scripture/[fill in your own rant here]?” Where do the claims for Christian unity crash against God's call for justice? That’s a huge question. I can’t answer it. I only know this polarization, even injustice, is not Jesus’ will. Jesus prayed, “While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me.” He promises he is still praying for his apostles, those called to reveal the Good News of restoration in Christ. I don’t know how to lay aside my outrage at some of the things my fellow Christians say or do, any more than some of them know what to do with what they might term my “Godless liberalism.”
But we all know how to pray to the One we call Lord, whose power to heal and transform can work even on our stubborn hearts as we’re willing to invite him in. Enough prayer and enough humility, enough allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us, one day we might fulfill Jesus' prayer that we be one.
© 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.
5-7-24 - Yours, Mine and Ours
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When I was young, one of my favorite books was Yours, Mine and Ours, the true story of a blended family (a widower with 10 children married a widow with 8, and they had 2 more…). I got the biggest kick out of the shenanigans in that household. (The book was made into a film with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in 1968, and then a more forgettable remake in 2005.) None of which has anything to do with this week’s gospel, except that the way Jesus talks to his heavenly Father about his disciples always reminds me of the title:
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours."
This prayer for Jesus’ disciples, like his instructions to them which we explored the past two weeks, is elliptical, moving forward like a tide in overlapping waves. In this first part, it’s hard to track who belongs to whom. Jesus refers to his disciples as “those you gave me,” those entrusted to him by the Father. “They were yours, and you gave them to me…”
What if clergy more often thought of their congregants in this way – as those who belong to God, entrusted into their care for a time? And the same for the way a congregation might view its pastor. And a wife her husband; and parents their children; and teachers their students, doctors their patients, stockbrokers their clients. How different the web of human relationships would be if we all viewed the people in our lives as belonging to God first and foremost, and only secondarily and in a very limited way, to us. How much heartache might be avoided.
If we thought of other people as belonging to God, we might treat them with more reverence and care. Maybe this is why Jesus was so easy sitting with lepers and outcasts, the greedy and the deranged – because he knew they were God’s precious creatures and therefore worthy of honor. He healed not to make them more acceptable; he healed because wholeness more perfectly reflected their status as God’s beloved.
Periodically I encounter the advice to “Remember you are a child of God” or words to that effect. That is a valuable spiritual practice; most of us would be kinder to ourselves if we lived it. And let’s turn it around. Think of a person or group or type of person in whom you find it hard to see anything good, to respect, let alone love. Call that person to mind. And then overlay this message over that picture: “Belongs to God.” How does that change the way you regard that person? Try it every day this week. Note what feelings come up, and pray through them.
Jesus ended with a statement of mutual possessing: “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” We are invited into that mutual belonging in this gigantic blended family we call the human race, beloved beyond measure by the God who created, redeemed and sustains us. We continue to bring Jesus glory as we treat everyone around us as both ours and God’s.
© 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.
When I was young, one of my favorite books was Yours, Mine and Ours, the true story of a blended family (a widower with 10 children married a widow with 8, and they had 2 more…). I got the biggest kick out of the shenanigans in that household. (The book was made into a film with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in 1968, and then a more forgettable remake in 2005.) None of which has anything to do with this week’s gospel, except that the way Jesus talks to his heavenly Father about his disciples always reminds me of the title:
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours."
This prayer for Jesus’ disciples, like his instructions to them which we explored the past two weeks, is elliptical, moving forward like a tide in overlapping waves. In this first part, it’s hard to track who belongs to whom. Jesus refers to his disciples as “those you gave me,” those entrusted to him by the Father. “They were yours, and you gave them to me…”
What if clergy more often thought of their congregants in this way – as those who belong to God, entrusted into their care for a time? And the same for the way a congregation might view its pastor. And a wife her husband; and parents their children; and teachers their students, doctors their patients, stockbrokers their clients. How different the web of human relationships would be if we all viewed the people in our lives as belonging to God first and foremost, and only secondarily and in a very limited way, to us. How much heartache might be avoided.
If we thought of other people as belonging to God, we might treat them with more reverence and care. Maybe this is why Jesus was so easy sitting with lepers and outcasts, the greedy and the deranged – because he knew they were God’s precious creatures and therefore worthy of honor. He healed not to make them more acceptable; he healed because wholeness more perfectly reflected their status as God’s beloved.
Periodically I encounter the advice to “Remember you are a child of God” or words to that effect. That is a valuable spiritual practice; most of us would be kinder to ourselves if we lived it. And let’s turn it around. Think of a person or group or type of person in whom you find it hard to see anything good, to respect, let alone love. Call that person to mind. And then overlay this message over that picture: “Belongs to God.” How does that change the way you regard that person? Try it every day this week. Note what feelings come up, and pray through them.
Jesus ended with a statement of mutual possessing: “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” We are invited into that mutual belonging in this gigantic blended family we call the human race, beloved beyond measure by the God who created, redeemed and sustains us. We continue to bring Jesus glory as we treat everyone around us as both ours and God’s.
© 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.
5-6-24 - Eavesdropping
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Everyone knows it’s bad form to listen in on other people’s conversations. Yet that’s exactly what we are invited to do in the gospel passage appointed for next Sunday. We are eavesdropping on Jesus’ conversation with his heavenly Father on the night he takes leave of his beloved disciples and prepares to enter into the suffering which will complete his mission in this world.
We will explore the text of this prayer, but first let's deal with a “meta-question.” How is it that we know what Jesus prayed that night? Was one of his followers listening and feverishly writing it all down as a transcript which got passed along for the forty or fifty years before John’s gospel was composed?
Or perhaps what was passed down was the tradition of what Jesus prayed. “And then, do you remember, after he talked to us all that while, he started to pray for us, that we would be protected and know the truth….”
It’s also possible this is a literary device used by the author of John to reiterate the themes he has been emphasizing all along. Would that make this text any less valid for us? It doesn’t have to. Remember, what we receive as Holy Scripture bears the fingerprints of many, many fallible human beings. We receive it as holy and authoritative, not as a court transcript but as a Spirit-inspired record given authority by the early church and generations afterward.
In other words, it is holy in part because it has been regarded as holy, and because it brings life to the communities that regard it as holy. This “high priestly prayer,” as scholars call it, has given life to generations of Christ-followers, who have persevered in mission because of the promise of belonging and love and intercession encompassed in these words attributed to Jesus.
In a sense, we are always eavesdropping when we read Scripture – we overhear God’s words to other people, their stories about their encounters with God, their letters to one another about their encounters with God. This is not meant to be a passive overhearing. We are invited to join this conversation and bring into it our own stories and doubts and connections and joys.
God also speaks to us directly through prayer, through proclamation, through encounters that we realize are “God-moments.” If the records we leave in our journals and testimonies last a fraction of the time these stories did, they might get smoothed out and edited a bit too. I hope you are leaving a record of God’s dealings with you. That is precious and holy writ, if not Holy Scripture.
We believe, by faith, that the pages of Scripture are not merely human documents, though it required human beings to record and preserve them. We believe these are God-breathed words of life. It doesn't matter whether these are the exact words Jesus prayed. The Holy Spirit was with him when he prayed. The Spirit was with those who remembered it. The Spirit was with those who eventually wrote it down, and those who saved it, and those who wove it into the record we now call the New Testament.
And the Holy Spirit is with us as we encounter it and ask God to bring it to life for us. This week, as we explore this prayer, let’s keep asking where we find ourselves in these ancient words. The Holy Spirit with us - that’s what makes this holy for us.
© 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.
Everyone knows it’s bad form to listen in on other people’s conversations. Yet that’s exactly what we are invited to do in the gospel passage appointed for next Sunday. We are eavesdropping on Jesus’ conversation with his heavenly Father on the night he takes leave of his beloved disciples and prepares to enter into the suffering which will complete his mission in this world.
We will explore the text of this prayer, but first let's deal with a “meta-question.” How is it that we know what Jesus prayed that night? Was one of his followers listening and feverishly writing it all down as a transcript which got passed along for the forty or fifty years before John’s gospel was composed?
Or perhaps what was passed down was the tradition of what Jesus prayed. “And then, do you remember, after he talked to us all that while, he started to pray for us, that we would be protected and know the truth….”
It’s also possible this is a literary device used by the author of John to reiterate the themes he has been emphasizing all along. Would that make this text any less valid for us? It doesn’t have to. Remember, what we receive as Holy Scripture bears the fingerprints of many, many fallible human beings. We receive it as holy and authoritative, not as a court transcript but as a Spirit-inspired record given authority by the early church and generations afterward.
In other words, it is holy in part because it has been regarded as holy, and because it brings life to the communities that regard it as holy. This “high priestly prayer,” as scholars call it, has given life to generations of Christ-followers, who have persevered in mission because of the promise of belonging and love and intercession encompassed in these words attributed to Jesus.
In a sense, we are always eavesdropping when we read Scripture – we overhear God’s words to other people, their stories about their encounters with God, their letters to one another about their encounters with God. This is not meant to be a passive overhearing. We are invited to join this conversation and bring into it our own stories and doubts and connections and joys.
God also speaks to us directly through prayer, through proclamation, through encounters that we realize are “God-moments.” If the records we leave in our journals and testimonies last a fraction of the time these stories did, they might get smoothed out and edited a bit too. I hope you are leaving a record of God’s dealings with you. That is precious and holy writ, if not Holy Scripture.
We believe, by faith, that the pages of Scripture are not merely human documents, though it required human beings to record and preserve them. We believe these are God-breathed words of life. It doesn't matter whether these are the exact words Jesus prayed. The Holy Spirit was with him when he prayed. The Spirit was with those who remembered it. The Spirit was with those who eventually wrote it down, and those who saved it, and those who wove it into the record we now call the New Testament.
And the Holy Spirit is with us as we encounter it and ask God to bring it to life for us. This week, as we explore this prayer, let’s keep asking where we find ourselves in these ancient words. The Holy Spirit with us - that’s what makes this holy for us.
© 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.
5-3-24 - Chosen
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Most people like to be chosen. Whether it’s for a team in grade school, a dance in high school, a job, an award, a date, it makes us feel good to be seen and selected, as long as the attention is positive. But being chosen is passive – we can’t ensure we’ll be picked, hard as we might try to be the best candidate.
That makes some people more comfortable being the chooser. Choosing puts us in control. Freedom of choice is a huge value in American life. (So don’t say “we only serve Pepsi” when I want a Diet Coke!) We champion the right to choose our jobs, spouses, healthcare and reproduction, even gender identity. Freedom to choose is a core value for all human life and interaction.
Jesus’ disciples thought they chose to follow him. He didn’t compel them – he came along and said, “Follow me.” They made that choice, often at great cost to their families. So imagine their surprise to hear Jesus say that’s not the way it happened: “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”
Did Jesus really choose this motley crew of hard-headed, occasionally thick-headed men and women? Maybe Jesus has different criteria for leadership than we do. Maybe this mixed up group was just exactly who he wanted to graduate as his first team of apostles. And maybe he has chosen us for the same reason, because he believes that we too are gifted and lovable, capable of bearing fruit, abundant fruit that will endure.
Do you feel chosen by God to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Or did it feel like something you chose, or someone else chose for you? There has to be an element of response on our part; we’re not puppets. Often it is the realization of being chosen that elicits a response in us. That’s how it works when two people are courting. And this relationship with Jesus is more love story than hiring process.
How do you respond to being chosen by God? Does it affect the way you live your faith?
How does knowing God’s desire for us is fruitfulness affect the way you live your faith?
The fruitfulness and the chosen-ness go together. We cannot make ourselves fruitful any more than we can get ourselves chosen. When we let in the mystery of how precious we are to God, the wonder that God would choose us to participate in God’s great mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness in Christ – that knowledge of our chosen-ness generates a desire in us to bear fruit in that mission, the fruit of lives transformed and hearts opened.
Our hearts become opened by the awareness of Love, and then we bear the fruit of Love into the lives around us, as God's transforming power works through us. That's what Jesus promised. That is how we see fruit that will last.
© 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.
Most people like to be chosen. Whether it’s for a team in grade school, a dance in high school, a job, an award, a date, it makes us feel good to be seen and selected, as long as the attention is positive. But being chosen is passive – we can’t ensure we’ll be picked, hard as we might try to be the best candidate.
That makes some people more comfortable being the chooser. Choosing puts us in control. Freedom of choice is a huge value in American life. (So don’t say “we only serve Pepsi” when I want a Diet Coke!) We champion the right to choose our jobs, spouses, healthcare and reproduction, even gender identity. Freedom to choose is a core value for all human life and interaction.
Jesus’ disciples thought they chose to follow him. He didn’t compel them – he came along and said, “Follow me.” They made that choice, often at great cost to their families. So imagine their surprise to hear Jesus say that’s not the way it happened: “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”
Did Jesus really choose this motley crew of hard-headed, occasionally thick-headed men and women? Maybe Jesus has different criteria for leadership than we do. Maybe this mixed up group was just exactly who he wanted to graduate as his first team of apostles. And maybe he has chosen us for the same reason, because he believes that we too are gifted and lovable, capable of bearing fruit, abundant fruit that will endure.
Do you feel chosen by God to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Or did it feel like something you chose, or someone else chose for you? There has to be an element of response on our part; we’re not puppets. Often it is the realization of being chosen that elicits a response in us. That’s how it works when two people are courting. And this relationship with Jesus is more love story than hiring process.
How do you respond to being chosen by God? Does it affect the way you live your faith?
How does knowing God’s desire for us is fruitfulness affect the way you live your faith?
The fruitfulness and the chosen-ness go together. We cannot make ourselves fruitful any more than we can get ourselves chosen. When we let in the mystery of how precious we are to God, the wonder that God would choose us to participate in God’s great mission of reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation to wholeness in Christ – that knowledge of our chosen-ness generates a desire in us to bear fruit in that mission, the fruit of lives transformed and hearts opened.
Our hearts become opened by the awareness of Love, and then we bear the fruit of Love into the lives around us, as God's transforming power works through us. That's what Jesus promised. That is how we see fruit that will last.
© 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.
5-2-24 - No Longer Servants
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
There are promotions – and then there are status upgrades. Jesus' followers got one of those his last evening among them. He told them what it means to abide in his love, live by his rules, love one another with the kind of love they received from him. He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
In a culture in which people attached themselves to a spiritual master whom they served and revered, followed and learned from, this language of friendship might have sounded jarring. So Jesus explained, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
Being someone’s servant and being their friend are very different. Servanthood can be easier – you have no responsibility to get to know, strategize, plan, or achieve a vision. You need only fulfill the tasks assigned you with all the skill and commitment you can muster, anticipating needs as appropriate. And then collect your paycheck and take your assigned time off. There is a simplicity to contractual, hierarchical relationships.
Friendship, with its mutuality and intimacy, is much messier; covenantal, not contractual, with commitment to nurturing and growing the friendship. Friends are responsible for one another in a way that a supervisor and servant are not. Friends are recipients of each other’s joys and worries and confidences. This is what Jesus highlights; he says he has entrusted his followers with everything he has heard from God the Father. That must have been daunting to hear.
Yet it must also have been exhilarating to be told they were his friends. If we work for someone we respect and admire, it’s a rush to be elevated from employee to friend. There is more freedom and collegiality, along with more responsibility.
Sometimes in the church we can act more like polite admirers, or pack mules struggling up a hill than as independent, respected, friends of the Living God. Is it easier to think we work for Jesus rather than with him? Jesus didn't ask us to work for him. He wants us working with him, filled with his Spirit, not checking off tasks and having him sign off on our time-sheets. He has entrusted us with the honor and responsibility and joy of being his friends.
Have we accepted? Do we hang out in prayer with him as a friend? Do we go out, healing and transforming people with him, sitting with the sinful, challenging oppressors, loving the loveless?
How do we move and talk and sit and listen as friends of the Risen and Anointed One? Figuring that out - that's the work of ministry.
© 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.
There are promotions – and then there are status upgrades. Jesus' followers got one of those his last evening among them. He told them what it means to abide in his love, live by his rules, love one another with the kind of love they received from him. He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
In a culture in which people attached themselves to a spiritual master whom they served and revered, followed and learned from, this language of friendship might have sounded jarring. So Jesus explained, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”
Being someone’s servant and being their friend are very different. Servanthood can be easier – you have no responsibility to get to know, strategize, plan, or achieve a vision. You need only fulfill the tasks assigned you with all the skill and commitment you can muster, anticipating needs as appropriate. And then collect your paycheck and take your assigned time off. There is a simplicity to contractual, hierarchical relationships.
Friendship, with its mutuality and intimacy, is much messier; covenantal, not contractual, with commitment to nurturing and growing the friendship. Friends are responsible for one another in a way that a supervisor and servant are not. Friends are recipients of each other’s joys and worries and confidences. This is what Jesus highlights; he says he has entrusted his followers with everything he has heard from God the Father. That must have been daunting to hear.
Yet it must also have been exhilarating to be told they were his friends. If we work for someone we respect and admire, it’s a rush to be elevated from employee to friend. There is more freedom and collegiality, along with more responsibility.
Sometimes in the church we can act more like polite admirers, or pack mules struggling up a hill than as independent, respected, friends of the Living God. Is it easier to think we work for Jesus rather than with him? Jesus didn't ask us to work for him. He wants us working with him, filled with his Spirit, not checking off tasks and having him sign off on our time-sheets. He has entrusted us with the honor and responsibility and joy of being his friends.
Have we accepted? Do we hang out in prayer with him as a friend? Do we go out, healing and transforming people with him, sitting with the sinful, challenging oppressors, loving the loveless?
How do we move and talk and sit and listen as friends of the Risen and Anointed One? Figuring that out - that's the work of ministry.
© 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.
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