Water Daily

9-21-21 - Cups of Water

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

Many people who don't go to church love Pope Francis. He speaks the truth about what matters – financial inequities, environmental destruction, intolerance, war-mongering, all of it. Many people who don't go to church love the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, who burst onto the worldwide scene when he preached at the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle. Since then he is often sought out by news shows to comment on current events – his unfailing ability to put love front and center, and the joy that shines through him even when he speaks of painful realities, have made him a media star.

It is gratifying to see Christian leaders generating such excitement from such a wide range of people. In their humility and authenticity and commitment to the Gospel that Jesus actually preached, Francis and Michael can do much to restore the tarnished image of Christianity. I see in their popularity among the “unchurched” a shade of what Jesus said to his disciples after they complained that someone outside their group was attempting to work miracles in his name:

“Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

Many churches feel increasingly isolated from their communities as efforts to attract people to worship services meet with so little success. What institutional religion is selling does not seem to be of great interest to many in today’s Western societies. Where churches can expand is by inviting people to join them in works of service. That is a most natural way to share faith, serving alongside people who are not part of our congregations, making space for them to bring “cups of water” to us and those with whom we work to address needs and change structures. From inviting people to help us serve meals in soup kitchens to promoting gun violence prevention, there are many access points that might appeal to the un- or de-churched.

What works of service or advocacy are you involved in? Who from beyond your congregation might you invite to join you? How might you lift up the gifts of such people, making them full partners in your work? How might you communicate that your commitment to this work is rooted in your relationship with Christ, that you work in his name?

Put another way: Who around us is offering us cups of water because we bear the name of Christ, affirming our work and our commitments? By all means, let’s take the water and drink it, and build on the friendship from there. We know a little something about the water of life and how to share it.

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9-20-21 - The Interfaith Gospel?

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

I used to lead a large regional interfaith organization in Southwestern Connecticut. Now I live in Southern Maryland, and was asked by the President of my county's Board of Commissioners to help establish an interfaith commission here – that is about to get off the ground. God has a sense of humor, I guess – I was never much interested in interfaith work, being more focused on helping Christians become more connected to Christ, and much more aware of what he actually taught and did.

Yet I have discovered that people of other faith traditions often recognize the power of Jesus, and live according to the values of the Kingdom, even if they don’t acknowledge him as the Son of God. Evidently this is not a new phenomenon:

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

That’s a far cry from “whoever is not for us is against us,” which is the kind of rhetoric you hear from those who claim that “Christianity is under attack in this country." Jesus makes a radically open statement here – that those who honor him, even if they have not made the choice (or been offered the choice…) to follow him as Lord, are to be honored as allies and co-laborers.

I have a Muslim friend with a powerful ministry of healing prayer. That challenge me at first – I think of Christ as the one who heals. And maybe He is healing through the prayers of this very faithful, very humble, very devout Muslim. I have a Jewish friend who loves to worship Jesus. I have Sikh friends steeped in peaceful anti-violence work, and Baha’I friends who offer hospitality beyond measure. I know countless people who claim no faith or religious affiliation whatsoever doing amazing work to restore people and communities and generously give of their resources. In a time when highly visible Christians in our country vocally support hatred, racism, misogyny, discrimination, violence, xenophobia and a bias against the poor, we need to look beyond labels to words and actions.

I am not saying there is no distinction between religious traditions – I don’t subscribe to the “all religions are the same” view. As a committed follower of Christ, I believe he is Lord, Messiah, Redeemer, the Way, the Truth and the Life, and I seek to introduce people in my life to this Lord who is the source of peace, power, presence and purpose for me. Yet I also affirm the goodness and love present in many of the world’s religious traditions – and that perhaps God is bigger than the categories in which we try to contain him. Big enough even to work through people who don’t know Jesus as Lord, but work in his name.

Who do you know like that? How can you support their work? If people are to see something of value in the Way of following Christ, it’ll be because we park our judgmentalism and start celebrating love wherever we find it.

9-17-21 - Welcoming God

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

More than once, Jesus tells his disciples that how they treat the vulnerable directly affects their relationship to him. In Matthew 25, it’s those who are hungry, naked, imprisoned, sick or outsiders. In our passage this week, it is the child, the child who has nothing obvious to offer, who is raw potential.

What does it mean to welcome God in a child? It means to welcome joy and wonder, unpredictability, rule-breaking – or rule reinterpreting. It means to welcome the instinctual along with the intellectual, the emotional in concert with the organizational. It means to welcome the whole person, mind, body and spirit, just as he is, not yet fully formed but already representing the God in whose image she is made.

What does it mean to welcome God in the vulnerable and marginalized? It goes way beyond meeting their needs. That’s too low a bar for Christ-followers. It means engaging them as full persons, as equals, according them the same dignity as we would God, or anyone we consider important. It means seeking out their gifts and assets and making space for them to give to us. It means risking vulnerability ourselves by entering into relationship, not the uneven power relationship of giver to recipient, but a relationship of equals, strangers who might become friends.

The disciples thought God was best represented by the one who could be considered greatest among them, so they engaged in what we might crudely call a “pissing contest” to determine who that might be. Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Jesus. The one who might be considered greatest is the one who is willing to be the most vulnerable.

One of the best examples of that in our day is Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who said she saw Christ in the lepers and outcasts whom she nursed and loved. Lepers and outcasts come in all shapes and sizes – some even have sizable bank accounts. It isn’t for us to determine worthiness, just to commit to being about the ministry of welcoming God.

What would it feel like if we went through our days not looking for God so much as looking to see where we might welcome God into our lives? “Who will God show up in today?” is a question we might ask each morning. “In whom did I welcome God?” we could ask at the close of day.

Even asking that question will open us up. And then we are likely to be one through whom God is revealed to another. And then we’ll know what it’s like to be welcomed in Jesus’ name.

9-16-21 - To Welcome the Child

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

It’s a Kodak moment: Jesus picks up a small child to illustrate his point about humility and servanthood: He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

We find this moment sweet, because children are accorded high status in our culture. Not so much in Jesus’ time, when children were viewed as among the last – maybe ahead of slaves, but valued largely for the labor they would one day perform for the household. (Mark can’t be bothered to record this child’s gender, referring only to “it.”)

For Jesus to equate welcoming a child with welcoming him was a radical example, not a sentimental one. And he is more subversive still – for he implicitly links welcoming the child to welcoming God the Father. God represented by a powerless, status-less child? What kind of God is this?

Perhaps the kind of God who would send his son into human life as a helpless infant, at the mercy of forces political, historical and familial. The kind of God who demonstrated his power in vulnerability, who allowed that son to die the death of the “last," naked, nailed to a cross, as powerless as can be. This not the first time in the Jesus story that welcoming a child is equivalent to welcoming him. His parents, the shepherds, the magi – they all did it first.

In what ways are we called to welcome children in the name of Jesus? Certainly by according them dignity and respect in our worshiping communities, making room for their voices and wisdom (and artwork). We welcome them by spending time getting to know them as people, not adults-in-training, but already saints of God with gifts for the rest of us.

And we are called to welcome children in Jesus’ name outside our congregations too. We are called to place such value on children that we happily provide tax monies for their education, and support laws to keep them safe from harm. We come to regard every child in every country on this earth as precious and worthy of food, water, housing and education - and security.

More Kodak moments: The body of a small Syrian boy washed up on a beach, so still he could be sleeping. But he is dead, drowned, the victim of global conflicts and policies. A small girl held in a cage on America’s southern border, separated from her parents, alone and at the mercy of law enforcement officials not trained to deal with her. A young boy on a gritty street, standing over the body of his dead brother, killed in front of him in yet one more incidence of unfettered gun violence.

Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."

9-15-21 - Doormats or Doorways?

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

We all know people like this – and some of us have been people like this. People who jump up to fetch anything anyone might need, who are always asking, “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?,” who put aside their lives and careers to care for children or infirm parents, who show up at events even when they’re tired. As a culture, we’re ambivalent about such folks – sometimes we say, “What a saint!” and other times, “How codependent is she!”

Some of Jesus' teaching sounds like we are to be holy doormats, laying aside our own agendas, never seeking to be in charge, always serving. For instance, when he heard his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Does the virtue of Christian humility demand that we sacrifice our dreams and passions? Or does being the servant of all rather require that we be true to who God made us to be? Think about it: we cannot empty ourselves if we are not full of ourselves.

To be “full of oneself” in our culture is to be conceited, self-promoting. But that way of being comes from a place of insecurity, a heart that is empty, a self that is not quite full. A healthy person knows who she or he is, faults and blind spots, strengths and gifts. Only when we truly own the fullness of who God made us to be can we empty ourselves for the sake of God’s mission. After all, Jesus did not pour himself out from stocks that were running low; he poured himself out from the fullness of his humanity and divinity.

If we want to excel as disciples of Jesus Christ, it is our calling to serve the world in his name. How does serving others sit with you? Is it comfortable? Challenging? Too familiar? Demeaning?

If it is your default position, make sure your giving is in balance with your being nourished by God and the community. If serving others is uncomfortable, practice. Go serve a meal at a shelter or soup kitchen. Take on a clerical task in your work life, even if you’re an executive.

First or last, we are never alone in our serving. We serve alongside the One who had everything and gave it all in service to an ungrateful world. He can show us how to be servants of all with dignity and grace, so that we become not doormats, but doorways into God's presence.

9-14-21 - Jockeying For Position

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

Squabbling in the car on an endless road trip; that’s what I think of when I read this week’s gospel passage, and Jesus’ questioning of his disciples:

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

There is something about traveling that increases tension – and when your leader has just announced that soon he will be arrested, tried and executed, that tension can go through the roof. Afraid to ask Jesus what he was talking about, his disciples instead turned on each other, talking about who was greater than the next. They appear to have been jockeying for position, little realizing that the more visible they were as leaders in Jesus’ community, the higher the risk.

Jockeying for position is something humans tend to do when we are insecure about where we are. Oh, there are some ruthlessly ambitious people who are always looking for an angle to get ahead, but most of us stay pretty content unless the ground starts to shift. Then it suddenly matters how we’re perceived and where we’re received.

As Christ-followers, we don’t have to do that. One of the huge gifts that come with membership in the household of God is freedom from having to position ourselves. In a community in which no one has more value than anyone else, no matter their level of accomplishment or productivity, we don’t have to compete with one another for attention or reward. If God already loves us the most, and is already as delighted with us as God could possibly be, why worry about being seen as worthy or getting ahead of other people?

Of course, many of us still do, because we’re human and it takes a long time for the knowledge of God’s unmerited and limitless grace to replace the messages of competition and progress we ingest from family, school and workplace. It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves daily of our infinite worth in the eyes of the Infinite Being. Or to remind each other.

If Jesus’ disciples had grasped that sooner, they would have had a different experience of being with him. They got it eventually - and so, God willing, will we.

9-13-21 - Afraid To Ask

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

You know that awful feeling when you sense something is amiss, and you don’t know what it is, and that even asking about it might make it worse? Often we will do all we can to suppress that niggling worry, afraid to ask what’s actually going on. That’s how Jesus’ disciples felt as they traveled with him through Galilee and he continued to talk about the bitter treatment he was going to encounter.

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

It’s not that he was unclear – he says this at least three times as they journey on. But his words make no sense in light of their understanding that he is the Messiah, the Savior. The idea that their Jesus, so sought after by the rich and influential as well as the poor and marginalized, could be betrayed was unthinkable. And that he could be killed, he who held the power of God in his hands, who could command storms to be stilled and blind eyes to see? How could that be? And what is this he said about rising again? I suspect that made so little sense they hardly heard it. His words were so unsettling in every way, they were afraid to ask him to explain what he was talking about.

Even we, so long after the fact, left with a story we celebrate but can’t fully comprehend, let alone find Good News in, can find it hard to ask God to explain it. We might fear finding ourselves adrift in a sea of doubt, or losing our faith entirely. So we hold it at arm’s length, celebrating the high points, acknowledging the cross and empty tomb, but not wandering too close.

I believe Jesus yearns for us to wander close, just as I suspect he wished his followers would have asked him directly what he meant. Asking God to help make sense of what makes no sense is central to a living faith. It is how we deepen our relationship with God.

What are your biggest questions about the Christian faith and story? Have you asked those in prayer? Said, “Jesus, why did you have to die? Why would a sacrifice be necessary for a God of love?” and listen for an answer. A thought might pop into your head, or over the next few weeks you might find yourself encountering a response. We can do the same with questions about our own lives and this heart-breaking, beautiful world.

A friend has a phrase, almost a mantra, she repeats often, “Be open, be curious.” Freedom comes as we surface the hard questions and open ourselves to exploring the answers. We draw closer to the God of mystery in the asking. In the end, that may be the only answer we really need.