7-30-21 - Swimming To Jesus

For the next few weeks, we will have a worship series at the Christ Churches on Summer Pastimes and how they speak to us of the life of faith. Each Friday I will turn from the lectionary gospel to the one I’ve selected for worship at my churches - this week John 21:3-7. You can listen to this reflection here.

The summer pastime we will explore at the Christ Churches this Sunday is swimming. Swimming is one of my very favorite summer pastimes – especially going into the ocean on a hot day, feeling the rush of cold, cold water, being lifted and dropped by the swell, lost in the vastness of water. I may feel the most free in the ocean, but lakes, ponds, even swimming pools will do just fine.

The Christian life is water-life. We begin our God-Life in the waters of baptism and are sustained by the living water welling up inside us for eternity which Jesus said was Holy Spirit. The prophet Ezekiel wrote of a vision he was shown of a river flowing from the altar of the temple, a flow which gradually got deeper until it was “deep enough to swim in,” a river that brought life to the stagnant places. These images and others have given me the notion of the “healing stream” which flows in and through each of us, and around us, into which we can step for renewal and repair. Jesus likened the Holy Spirit to the river of God – we literally jump into the Spirit-life and let it heal and carry us instead of trying to make it all happen ourselves.

Our gospel story this Sunday reminds us that we move through water to get to Jesus, as Peter hops out of the fishing boat (taking care to put on clothes before he gets wet…) to swim to shore when he realizes the resurrected Jesus stands on the beach. It’s not the first time Peter hops out of a boat to get to Jesus – the first time is when he sees Jesus walking on the water and decides to join him, which he does for a few moments until he realizes what he’s doing and begins to sink. This time, he swims. What if we thought of the life of faith as swimming to Jesus, who awaits us with breakfast on the beach? Isn’t that much more fun than our often dry and dusty church patterns?

As followers of Christ, we are invited to jump into the baptismal waters and swim, taking the risk of getting out of the boat and into the freedom and the danger of water-life. The boat might be a symbol for the church – that place from which we jump, to which we return to regroup. Maybe part of the reason our churches don’t have the vitality they might is that we are spending too much time in the boat with each other, and not enough in the water.

I can beat a metaphor to death better than anyone I know (and this Summer Pastimes series offers me lots of fodder!), so I will stop there, and simply invite you to think of living the life of faith as jumping into cool, refreshing water and swimming, entirely surrounded and supported by the water’s density, and yet also having to move forward in it to avoid sinking. We are held in the life of God, cleansed, refreshed and renewed, and yet we also propel ourselves forward in that life. We have no life apart from God – and total freedom to swim in that life for eternity.

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7-29-21 - Jesus Is the Bread?!?

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

A friend of mine was once teaching Sunday School, and had just tried to explain to her class of 5-year-olds the significance and symbolism of Holy Eucharist. As she lined the children up to come into church for communion, she taught them a little song with the words, “Jesus Is the Bread.” After singing this refrain once, one little girl paused and said loudly, “Jesus is the bread?” with an intonation that indicated this was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard.

Some of the folks listening to Jesus that day when he was talking about the bread of life that comes from heaven probably had a similar reaction to what he said next. When they said, “Okay, then, give us this bread always,” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” That probably sounded to many like the most preposterous thing they’d ever heard. And what did he mean, he was the bread of life?

We need a mind for metaphor when we encounter Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. And we need to mine the metaphor to its depth, where we discover that he means it as he says it: He is the staff of life and has to be taken in, accepted, received and digested - take up residence in us - in order for us to grasp the life of God around us. He was telling those people, so hungry for manna from heaven, that everything they thought was in the manna – provision, protection, presence – is to be found in him.

Indeed, everything we’re hungry for - which we seek in so many places – is to be found in Jesus the Christ, taken in, accepted, received, integrated, living in us. And it doesn’t stop there. As we allow him to reside in us, fill us with the life of God through the Spirit, we become communally the bread of life.

We enact this at the Eucharistic table – we take the bread, now become the body of Christ, broken for us; we receive him into ourselves, his life renewing our lives; and as we disperse, we become the body of Christ, broken for the life of the world. How might we operate differently in the world if we were more aware of being the bread of life in Christ? Whose hunger and thirst might we address?

One day another little girl, eyeing me as I came down the altar rail giving out communion, said loudly to her grandmother, “I want Jesus bread!” She understood. On our best days, so do we.

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7-28-21 - The Bread That Gives Life

You can listen to this reflection here.

I love bread. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent one year. If my metabolism allowed, I would start every day with a basket of French rolls, butter and jam, and work bread into lunch and dinner too. (But I’d soon look like a French roll.) Bread is the staff of life, but not the Life Jesus invites us into.

In this week’s story, the people looking for Jesus want bread from heaven, and they think Jesus might just have access. But they want a guarantee before they trust him. So when he says they are to believe in him as sent by God, they reply, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

You’d think the miracle of the loaves and fishes would have been sign enough, but they wanted God to do what God had done before. It’s often our tendency, when we’ve been blessed, to look for blessing in the last place we found it, and in the same form. In my experience, God rarely goes back over the same ground. The trajectory of the Life of God is forward, to new life.

So Jesus tells them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

They were more interested in the temporal bread than the eternal. In fairness, having enough to eat is an urgent matter for an occupied, oppressed, over-taxed populace. Yet feeding the hungry was not what Jesus was up to. He told his followers to do that. He came to nourish souls starved for the presence of the Living God. He came to invite everyone to God’s banqueting table, and to clear the obstacles that kept people away. His priority was to proclaim the reign of God in which generosity and justice flourish so broadly, everyone will be welcome at the table and fed in abundance.

We too are called to proclaim the bread that gives life. It's great that so many churches are involved in the sharing of food with those who hunger; that is part of the Gospel life. Yet the invitation to us as Christ followers is to be as much or more involved in sharing Jesus, who called himself the Bread of Life – introducing people to Jesus as we know him, feeding thirsty spirits and broken hearts, inviting people to feast on him in Word and sacrament. Who can you think of who is hungry for the bread of Life? How might you offer it to that person?

That is the bread we will feast on in eternity. It will never run out, and it will never make us fat, only full.

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7-27-21 - The Work of God

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

I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid on the whole “It’s God’s mission, not ours” thing. I bandy about the words “the mission of God,” and have even developed a nice neat definition of what I think it is in general, a definition that makes room for any number of specifics: “The mission of God is to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.” That’s so neat, God may want to print it on her stationery!

Only it may be wordier than need be – for Jesus defined the work of God far more succinctly. When he told the crowds, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you,” they asked the next logical question:

“What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

That’s all? Believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, “the one on whom God the Father has set his seal?” What about all that other work we think we’re supposed to do? All that feeding and housing and proclaiming and peacemaking? Not to mention the worship planning, vestry meeting, bulletin folding, Facebook posting that occupies our church lives?

It’s a question of sequence. Doing all of that without believing that Jesus is who he said he was, “I AM,” leaves us busy working, and working out of our own very finite strength and vision. Believing first, putting our whole focus on faith in Jesus as Lord, leads us naturally to live out that belief in the places to which the Holy Spirit directs us – some of which may include peacemaking and proclaiming and planning and posting. Jesus told Martha of Bethany straight out, when she complained that her sister was listening to Jesus instead of helping put lunch on: “Mary has chosen the better part; it will not be taken from her.”

Where is your emphasis as you live out your journey as a Christ-follower? It's easy to get sucked into the works and neglect the Work. One way to reorder our priorities is to recommit ourselves to spending some minutes each day seeking Jesus’ presence, allowing ourselves to be filled with his peace and love. Just sit quietly and say, "Come, Lord Jesus." See what develops.

When we know we’re doing the Work, the works flow forth like that mighty stream of Living Water.

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7-26-21 - Sleight of Hand

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

Who doesn’t enjoy a good magic trick? Even as some part of us feels foolish for being taken in, it’s also fun to be dazzled. And a good illusionist knows how to dazzle by diverting our attention. I read a profile of one of the world’s most talented pickpockets (he only does it in his act…), who can lift a watch off a wrist or remove keys from people’s pockets without them being aware. How could anyone be so dumb?, we think. They’re not. They’re normal. The pickpocket is able to get in close, direct their attention where he wants, and then do what he wants.

Jesus certainly got people’s attention with both his teaching and his “deeds of power,” or “signs,” as John’s Gospel calls them. As this week’s passage begins, we see that the crowd whom Jesus had given the slip is now searching for him. They can’t figure out how he got to the other side of the lake.

So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

Their attention, he says, is on their immediate needs, not on the Life of God at loose in the world. Another group he admonishes for only being interested in the miracles – for their flash value, not the life-altering power they point to. One way or another, if our attention is on the temporal, on what we think we need, or what we’re impressed by, we’re apt to miss so much of what God is doing in and around us. Jesus invites us to focus on the eternal – and thus to bring transforming power into the everyday.

“Do not work for the food that perishes,” he says, “but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”

The evil one tries to get us to focus on all the things that don't matter, so that he can rob us of our peace, our power. Then anxiety and depression and conflict increase - as do advertising budgets. Is your focus today on things that give life or sap life? There's something to pray about...

Jesus is not an illusionist – but as we allow him to get close to us, he can draw our attention to where it needs to be, on his love and power and grace. He just may pick our pockets of all the valuables that mean nothing, and then, presto!, from behind our ears produce a pearl of great price, and invite us to take it and treasure it.

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7-23-21 - Grounded In Love

You can listen to this reflection here.

At week’s end, let’s look at the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. There may be more than one letter contained in this document, as this section from the end of chapter 3 is a clear sign-off. (Chapters 4, 5 and 6 start new threads.) This “sign-off” is a beautiful, doxological prayer from the heart for Paul’s listeners – and, I think, all those who would be followers of Christ. So let’s hear these words as if addressed to us: "I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name."

Paul begins as all prayers should, acknowledging the One to whom the prayer is made, the One who often has inspired the prayer in the first place. This naming of God, Father, Source roots us in the relationship of which our prayer is an expression. Then Paul asks of that Source specific gifts for his beloveds:
"I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love."

How wonderful to think of being strengthened on the inside, that Christ might dwell in our hearts as we are rooted and grounded in love. Let’s stay with that for a moment – if Christ dwells in our hearts, we are rooted and grounded in love. Not rooted in condemnation or grounded in anxiety – rooted and grounded in love. Wow. Christ does dwell in us, by virtue of God’s promise to us in baptism, activated by our faith – so love is our foundation. Think about starting each day with that knowledge.

Paul knows how hard it is to hold that knowledge and live in it, so next he prays that his listeners – and all the saints, including us – may have the ability to grasp the full extent of that love: "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

“To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” Our minds alone cannot know the fullness of God’s love; our minds are too small to contain such a mystery. We need to know it in our bodies, in our senses, in our spirits, in the beauty and intricacy and grandeur that surrounds us in this world. And we really only begin to grasp the extent of that love in community with others trying to know it. I daresay only in community can we be filled with the fullness of God.

So Paul ends with this doxology, recognizing that we are entirely reliant upon the power of God to know and to act out of the fullness of that love: 

"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."

God’s power – the power that made the heavens and the galaxies and the complexity of each cell – is at work in each of us. That power, not our own, enables us to accomplish things far beyond the realm of the possible, even more than we can imagine.

Only one thing is up to us, really: to invite and release that power, to believe that God can accomplish abundantly more than we can ask or imagine. If we just leave it sitting inside, nothing in this world will change. But if we let it out – look out! Love can change everything.

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7-22-21 - Master of Molecules

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

It can be hard to fathom the pressure Jesus was under, from his celebrity, notoriety, people’s expectations. After the miracle of the loaves and fish, the stakes got even higher: When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

As people began to grasp Jesus’ messiah-ship, the danger went way up. There were divergent views about who the messiah would be and why he would come. In times of war and hardship, messianic hopes became conflated with dreams of military victory, a restoration of Israel’s autonomy. Jesus could see how quickly people might make the leap from “the prophet who is to come” (i.e, Messiah) to king – and he wanted to be very sure not to get caught in that crossfire. So he went off alone to pray and recharge.

Ironically, what happened next demonstrated how much more power Jesus had than any prophet or king before or since. Needing to catch up with his disciples who’d gone ahead in the boat, Jesus simply exercised the authority he had over all of creation, molecules and all, and took a shortcut across the water:

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

But wait, there’s more – not only did he walk on the water; when he caught up with the boat, it immediately reached its destination: Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. No more battling the head winds – Jesus said, “We’re going home,” and that was it. Home they were.

Jesus didn’t often circumvent the laws of nature with the laws of Spirit – but on this day, he did it many times. Last week I quoted a definition of faith: “Faith is a spiritual force that becomes a catalyst to activate spiritual laws that have authority over natural laws.” That’s what Jesus was doing, multiplying molecules of food, solidifying molecules of water, teleporting a boat to the shore. He was activating spiritual laws that have authority over natural laws.

So… can we do that? I believe we can do a lot when the faith moving through us is strong enough. The apostle Peter took a few steps on the water (in Matthew’s version of this story). Agnes Sanford, a healer, exercised faith over storms and earthquakes, and tells stories of commanding wild animals and being obeyed. Madeleine L’Engle remembers as a child routinely going down stairs without touching them. There are many stories. Yet I know that it is very, very hard for us to disconnect from all the data that says “impossible” and open ourselves to the Power for whom all things are possible. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stroll on the waves. Today, anyway...

But I can build up my faith with prayers for healing and guidance, and the occasional rebuke of wind and weather. Our faith is a spiritual force, and like our muscles, it gets stronger as we exercise it.

 

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