You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus was usually on the move, but in this week’s gospel story we see him sitting still, watching: He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.
What induced Jesus to sit and watch people putting money into the temple treasury? He has just lambasted the scribes for their corruption, greed and exploitation of widows – maybe he wanted to see if he was proved right by their actions. All we’re told is that he watched the crowds putting money into the treasury, which is depicted as being funnel-shaped and narrow at the top, presumably so you can put coins in but not take them out.
Jesus observes a great deal of generosity - “Many rich people put in large sums.” While Jesus said it is hard for the wealthy to enter into the Life of God, and that one cannot serve both God and wealth, he never accused the wealthy of lacking generosity. He simply states a reality – wealth and faith don’t dance well together. It is extremely difficult to have wealth and not put our trust in it or fear losing it. That’s what gets in the way of our relationship with God.
Giving out of plenty is pretty easy, just as is loving those who love us. Yet Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.” (Luke 6:32-35)
Jesus invites us to go beyond giving out of our plenty to giving even when it costs us; to give out of our harvest, our income, not only out of our savings. That widow was free of the obstacles that kept the wealthy bound. She gave it all, maybe because she had nothing to lose. When we have wealth, we have everything to lose.
Does this mean we have to give everything away? I hope not! I’m not ready. But it may mean we are ready to give everything should we sense God’s call to do so, and to reduce our reliance upon our wealth and comfort. It may mean we ask God regularly where God would have us use our wealth, and tune our antennae to God’s response. Each of us may be faced with a need that invites us to give way beyond our comfort – and we will do it if we feel God calling us to that.
In the meantime we can build up our giving muscles by releasing more and more of our wealth, putting it into play in God’s service. This is the season when many churches are inviting members to determine how much they think they’ll give in 2025 to support God’s mission at that church. Think of this as exercise season for your generosity and trust muscles.
How far are you willing to trust God’s provision?
How excited are you to invest in what you see God doing through your congregation?
How free do you want to be?
© 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.
11-5-24 - Citizen Saints
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Last week we celebrated All Saints Day – a major feast day in the Christian calendar. It is a day that affirms your sainthood and mine. The term “saint” is conferred not only on those who are “holy” or “a good person.” In the New Testament it is simply a label assigned to those who follow Christ, however straight or wobbly our path may be. Paul’s letters are often addressed to “the saints who are at Ephesus,” or “the saints in Thessalonika.” We know from the contents of those letters those folks weren’t always “holy.” They were saints by virtue of their baptism into the holiness of Christ. You are too.
Today is Election Day the United States of America. How does our identity as saints of God affect the way we exercise our citizenship, the way we seek to protect liberty and justice for all, especially those most vulnerable to having those things taken away? How does our identity as saints in the body of Christ dictate the way we deal with conflict in the “body politic?”
We are made saints at baptism. We grow into our sainthood as we increase our capacity to love, to hold God’s power and grace, and learn to carry that contagious love into the world. At our best, as saints of God we spread viral love, clustering to infect people with hope and dignity, scattering to carry this love far and wide. What if we think of saints as viral cells that strengthen rather than weaken the bodies with whom they come into contact? Who help people become whole?
Who might you want to “infect” with hope, compassion, dignity, love? How can you, working with the other saints with whom you worship and work, carry God’s contagious love into your community?
Whatever the outcome of this election, and however long it takes to determine that outcome, a good half of our citizenry is likely to have strong feelings of fear, anger, confusion and perhaps animosity. We will be called upon to take up our mission as citizen saints, crossing boundaries of difference, seeking to forge unity wherever we can, being intentional about spreading viral love.
It is not our own love we spread – that can be a flimsy and fickle thing. It is the love of the God who is Love, who cannot but love – that’s what we carry and share. And that Love is stronger than death.
© 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.
Last week we celebrated All Saints Day – a major feast day in the Christian calendar. It is a day that affirms your sainthood and mine. The term “saint” is conferred not only on those who are “holy” or “a good person.” In the New Testament it is simply a label assigned to those who follow Christ, however straight or wobbly our path may be. Paul’s letters are often addressed to “the saints who are at Ephesus,” or “the saints in Thessalonika.” We know from the contents of those letters those folks weren’t always “holy.” They were saints by virtue of their baptism into the holiness of Christ. You are too.
Today is Election Day the United States of America. How does our identity as saints of God affect the way we exercise our citizenship, the way we seek to protect liberty and justice for all, especially those most vulnerable to having those things taken away? How does our identity as saints in the body of Christ dictate the way we deal with conflict in the “body politic?”
We are made saints at baptism. We grow into our sainthood as we increase our capacity to love, to hold God’s power and grace, and learn to carry that contagious love into the world. At our best, as saints of God we spread viral love, clustering to infect people with hope and dignity, scattering to carry this love far and wide. What if we think of saints as viral cells that strengthen rather than weaken the bodies with whom they come into contact? Who help people become whole?
Who might you want to “infect” with hope, compassion, dignity, love? How can you, working with the other saints with whom you worship and work, carry God’s contagious love into your community?
Whatever the outcome of this election, and however long it takes to determine that outcome, a good half of our citizenry is likely to have strong feelings of fear, anger, confusion and perhaps animosity. We will be called upon to take up our mission as citizen saints, crossing boundaries of difference, seeking to forge unity wherever we can, being intentional about spreading viral love.
It is not our own love we spread – that can be a flimsy and fickle thing. It is the love of the God who is Love, who cannot but love – that’s what we carry and share. And that Love is stronger than death.
© 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.
11-4-24 - Hypocrisy
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Last week we explored the story of an encounter between Jesus and one of the temple scribes, who’d asked him what he considered to be the greatest commandment. Compared to many of Jesus’ confrontations with religious leaders, their conversation was quite cordial, and the scribe affirmed Jesus’ interpretation of the scriptures and his insight. But shortly after this encounter, Jesus speaks of scribes with withering condemnation: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Ouch! Maybe this is why I cringe a little when accorded honor simply because of my position as a clergyperson. "Religious professionals” can as easily fall into the trap of wanting respect and goodies and good seats as anyone else. Long-winded prayers trip easily off our tongues, and Episcopalians particularly need to watch out for the lure of walking around in robes and fancy vestments!
These trappings of position are not necessarily bad in themselves – but if the appearance is masking behavior that is indifferent to or even exploiting the poor and vulnerable, look out. This is the most serious charge Jesus lays at the feet of these temple functionaries, that they “devour widow’s houses.” Presumably this refers to religious leaders’ demanding offerings or insisting on temple “taxes,” even at the cost of a widow’s meagre estate. This predatory greed, cloaked in the name of Torah, was actually a perversion of the Mosaic Law, which commanded care for orphans and widows, resident aliens and Levites – even if that was to come after the tithes to the temple had been fulfilled.
There are plenty of predatory religious leaders dunning widows for donations in our time. Mainline clergy tend to operate with more compassion and flexibility – but we are also generally quite privileged economically. Does a good pension plan and housing allowance put us in the “hypocrite’s” camp? We need always be on guard against this – not just clergy, but congregations in general as they set their spending priorities. When is a new carpet or landscaping essential, and when does it take resources away from mission? Every spending decision needs to be weighed against the church’s mission – or more properly, God’s mission through that church.
The antidote to hypocrisy is humility – seeing oneself clearly, as neither more nor less important than we really are. Humility leads to authenticity, which is arguably the most important quality a religious leader must possess. Seeing ourselves clearly before God, repenting for the ways we fail to make Christ known, invites us to polish our lanterns so that Christ’s light shines through us more brightly. That is our truest vocation, to have less of us, and more of Jesus shining through.
© 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.
Last week we explored the story of an encounter between Jesus and one of the temple scribes, who’d asked him what he considered to be the greatest commandment. Compared to many of Jesus’ confrontations with religious leaders, their conversation was quite cordial, and the scribe affirmed Jesus’ interpretation of the scriptures and his insight. But shortly after this encounter, Jesus speaks of scribes with withering condemnation: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Ouch! Maybe this is why I cringe a little when accorded honor simply because of my position as a clergyperson. "Religious professionals” can as easily fall into the trap of wanting respect and goodies and good seats as anyone else. Long-winded prayers trip easily off our tongues, and Episcopalians particularly need to watch out for the lure of walking around in robes and fancy vestments!
These trappings of position are not necessarily bad in themselves – but if the appearance is masking behavior that is indifferent to or even exploiting the poor and vulnerable, look out. This is the most serious charge Jesus lays at the feet of these temple functionaries, that they “devour widow’s houses.” Presumably this refers to religious leaders’ demanding offerings or insisting on temple “taxes,” even at the cost of a widow’s meagre estate. This predatory greed, cloaked in the name of Torah, was actually a perversion of the Mosaic Law, which commanded care for orphans and widows, resident aliens and Levites – even if that was to come after the tithes to the temple had been fulfilled.
There are plenty of predatory religious leaders dunning widows for donations in our time. Mainline clergy tend to operate with more compassion and flexibility – but we are also generally quite privileged economically. Does a good pension plan and housing allowance put us in the “hypocrite’s” camp? We need always be on guard against this – not just clergy, but congregations in general as they set their spending priorities. When is a new carpet or landscaping essential, and when does it take resources away from mission? Every spending decision needs to be weighed against the church’s mission – or more properly, God’s mission through that church.
The antidote to hypocrisy is humility – seeing oneself clearly, as neither more nor less important than we really are. Humility leads to authenticity, which is arguably the most important quality a religious leader must possess. Seeing ourselves clearly before God, repenting for the ways we fail to make Christ known, invites us to polish our lanterns so that Christ’s light shines through us more brightly. That is our truest vocation, to have less of us, and more of Jesus shining through.
© 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.
11-1-24 - God's Priorities
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Phew! Jesus passed the test set him by the scribe who asked, “Which commandment is first of all?” Though Jesus’ answer may have been both predictable (“Love your one God”) and surprising, (“And love your neighbor as yourself”), his insight seems to have led his questioner to an “Aha!” moment. .
Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
The scribe’s understanding that God wants us focused on love, not on religiosity and ritual, echoes many passages in the writings of Israel’s prophets and psalms. “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased,” and “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." says the Psalmist. “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,”God thunders through the prophet Amos. “Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings, I will not accept them...But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
If Jesus was promoting a reform movement it was aimed at rooting out religious leaders’ distorted emphasis on rules and rituals, on a bloody – and remunerative – system of sacrificing animals to appease an angry God. Religious systems have often learned to prosper financially by sowing spiritual insecurity. Jesus’ message was, and is, “No! God is love. God has drawn near to you, with power and forgiveness and healing and restoration. The realm of God is now! The realm of God is here.” So he says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” He is so close to grasping the breathtaking reality of God With Us, Emmanu-el. He is so close to learning to dwell in that realm, and not in the death-dealing precincts of legalism and fear-mongering and distorted sacrifice.
How about us? Are we “close to the Kingdom of God?” Have we ingested the Good News that God is love, that God cannot but love, even the most unlovable and unworthy?
Are we ready to take on Jesus’ Love Challenge – to truly love God with all our hearts and minds, soul and strength? Are we ready to turn to our neighbors in love, and love ourselves with compassion and clarity? Whatever happens on Election Day we will have lots of opportunity to practice loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus’ answer finally put a stop to the incessant challenges from religious leaders. It opened the way for much more fruitful exploration into the nature of God and love. It opens the way for us to approach the throne of grace and be soaked in love.
© 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.
Phew! Jesus passed the test set him by the scribe who asked, “Which commandment is first of all?” Though Jesus’ answer may have been both predictable (“Love your one God”) and surprising, (“And love your neighbor as yourself”), his insight seems to have led his questioner to an “Aha!” moment. .
Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
The scribe’s understanding that God wants us focused on love, not on religiosity and ritual, echoes many passages in the writings of Israel’s prophets and psalms. “For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased,” and “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." says the Psalmist. “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies,”God thunders through the prophet Amos. “Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings, I will not accept them...But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
If Jesus was promoting a reform movement it was aimed at rooting out religious leaders’ distorted emphasis on rules and rituals, on a bloody – and remunerative – system of sacrificing animals to appease an angry God. Religious systems have often learned to prosper financially by sowing spiritual insecurity. Jesus’ message was, and is, “No! God is love. God has drawn near to you, with power and forgiveness and healing and restoration. The realm of God is now! The realm of God is here.” So he says to the scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” He is so close to grasping the breathtaking reality of God With Us, Emmanu-el. He is so close to learning to dwell in that realm, and not in the death-dealing precincts of legalism and fear-mongering and distorted sacrifice.
How about us? Are we “close to the Kingdom of God?” Have we ingested the Good News that God is love, that God cannot but love, even the most unlovable and unworthy?
Are we ready to take on Jesus’ Love Challenge – to truly love God with all our hearts and minds, soul and strength? Are we ready to turn to our neighbors in love, and love ourselves with compassion and clarity? Whatever happens on Election Day we will have lots of opportunity to practice loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus’ answer finally put a stop to the incessant challenges from religious leaders. It opened the way for much more fruitful exploration into the nature of God and love. It opens the way for us to approach the throne of grace and be soaked in love.
© 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.
10-31-24 - Love Your Neighbor
You can listen to this reflection here.
In this week’s gospel reading, we overhear a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who has asked him, “Which commandment is first of all?” His first reply is unsurprising; he quotes the Shema Yisrael and adds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Got it. Religious people know about loving God.
But then he adds an obscure half-verse from the book of Leviticus, and raises it to the same status as the first commandment: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” That was a game-changer.
This verse comes from Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Chapter 19 of Leviticus details a series of laws governing all sorts of human relationships, commercial, sexual, familial, occult – you name it. These six words barely stand out, yet Jesus elevates them to core commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in another gospel version of this story.
Jesus’ piercing intellect and knowledge of Scripture allowed him to strip away the thicket of words and hone in on the one commandment that enables us to keep all the others. If we could only love God with our whole being, and truly love our neighbors and ourselves, we would need no other commandments.
Why is it so hard to love our neighbors? For starters, there are too many of them. We’re overwhelmed, so we rank and sort them by all kinds of categories – how like us or not they are; how needy or resourced they are; how much or little we approve of how they conduct themselves. As soon as we start to rank and pick and choose, love is compromised. When Jesus was asked by another scribe, “Then who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling a story in which the neighbor who cared for a person in need turns out to be someone his questioner had defined out of his neighbor list.
We cannot control what our neighbors do – that can make them hard to love. In the fraught and fractured times in which we live, it is even harder to name someone as “neighbor” (let alone fellow Christian) who holds views and takes actions that we consider hateful and destructive to human life. But, as the sign that has appeared in front of many churches reads, “Jesus said, “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” We may have to find God’s love for some neighbors and borrow that until we can find our own. There’s a place to start. Everything gets easier when we love our neighbors.
This verse includes another challenge: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah – there’s a deeper reason we can find it hard to love our neighbors. It’s hard to love ourselves, especially if the world or family or an inner sense of shame or unworthiness tell us that’s ridiculous. But God says, “I love you, I made you, I delight in you.” Are we not to love what God loves? We may have to find God’s love for ourselves and borrow that until we can find our own. And when we love ourselves, with compassion and clarity about all that’s lovable in us and all that is not, we are better able to love our neighbors the same way.
Sigh! As my friend Peter says, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Maybe we make it harder than it has to be. Anything God calls us to, God equips us for. Maybe we can stop trying to do this loving on our own, and let God’s love flow through us – to ourselves, to our neighbors and back to 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.
In this week’s gospel reading, we overhear a conversation between Jesus and a scribe who has asked him, “Which commandment is first of all?” His first reply is unsurprising; he quotes the Shema Yisrael and adds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Got it. Religious people know about loving God.
But then he adds an obscure half-verse from the book of Leviticus, and raises it to the same status as the first commandment: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” That was a game-changer.
This verse comes from Leviticus 19:18: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Chapter 19 of Leviticus details a series of laws governing all sorts of human relationships, commercial, sexual, familial, occult – you name it. These six words barely stand out, yet Jesus elevates them to core commandment. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets,” he says in another gospel version of this story.
Jesus’ piercing intellect and knowledge of Scripture allowed him to strip away the thicket of words and hone in on the one commandment that enables us to keep all the others. If we could only love God with our whole being, and truly love our neighbors and ourselves, we would need no other commandments.
Why is it so hard to love our neighbors? For starters, there are too many of them. We’re overwhelmed, so we rank and sort them by all kinds of categories – how like us or not they are; how needy or resourced they are; how much or little we approve of how they conduct themselves. As soon as we start to rank and pick and choose, love is compromised. When Jesus was asked by another scribe, “Then who is my neighbor?” he answered by telling a story in which the neighbor who cared for a person in need turns out to be someone his questioner had defined out of his neighbor list.
We cannot control what our neighbors do – that can make them hard to love. In the fraught and fractured times in which we live, it is even harder to name someone as “neighbor” (let alone fellow Christian) who holds views and takes actions that we consider hateful and destructive to human life. But, as the sign that has appeared in front of many churches reads, “Jesus said, “Love your neighbor. No exceptions.” We may have to find God’s love for some neighbors and borrow that until we can find our own. There’s a place to start. Everything gets easier when we love our neighbors.
This verse includes another challenge: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Ah – there’s a deeper reason we can find it hard to love our neighbors. It’s hard to love ourselves, especially if the world or family or an inner sense of shame or unworthiness tell us that’s ridiculous. But God says, “I love you, I made you, I delight in you.” Are we not to love what God loves? We may have to find God’s love for ourselves and borrow that until we can find our own. And when we love ourselves, with compassion and clarity about all that’s lovable in us and all that is not, we are better able to love our neighbors the same way.
Sigh! As my friend Peter says, “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.” Maybe we make it harder than it has to be. Anything God calls us to, God equips us for. Maybe we can stop trying to do this loving on our own, and let God’s love flow through us – to ourselves, to our neighbors and back to 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.
10-30-24 - The One-Ness of God
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When Jesus is asked, “Which commandment is first of all?,” he doesn’t have to reach far for an answer. The Shema Yisrael would have been on his lips and in his heart from his earliest youth. The Shema is considered the most important part of a Jewish prayer service, and observant Jews recite it at least twice each day as a mitzvah, or commandment. Traditionally the Shema form a Jew’s last words, and many children are taught to say it at bedtime.
The heart of this prayer, drawn from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41 (thank you, Wikipedia…) is “Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” “Lord” is rendered as the tetragrammaton, the four-character symbol that spells what we transliterate as “Jahweh.” This emphasis on God’s nature as one Almighty God, not many lesser gods, caused some trouble for early Christian theologians when they were driven, in reckoning with other things Jesus says, to affirm God’s three-ness as well as God’s one-ness.
But Jesus doesn’t stop with affirming who God is. He commands us to love this Lord our God with every fiber of our being, breaking it down: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” I don’t know if we’re capable of doing anything with a whole heart and mind, let alone soul and strength. How might we go about living into this seemingly impossible command?
Let’s start with love. Do we love God? How can we love someone we can’t see or touch, who has ultimate power over life and death, whose ways are utter mystery, who blesses us yet allows us so much pain and suffering? So much of our interaction with God is rooted in asking for provision or protection, healing or forgiveness – the relationship feels too one-sided, too contractual, to be truly loving. Yet I have known moments when my heart was so filled with blessing – on a gorgeous day, in a wonderful encounter, when a ministry is firing on all cylinders – that I have said to God, to Jesus, to the Spirit, “I love you.”
If love is a choice, not a feeling, we can cultivate that awareness of loving God at moments when it hasn’t hit us in a blinding rush. We can learn it, as we learn to fully love a spouse once the flush of in-love-ness has abated. We can make some time and space in prayer and say with intention:
“God, I love you with my whole heart.” And pause; reflect on that. What else does our heart love?
Then, “God I love you with my whole soul.” Pause, reflect – can we control our soul?
Then, “God, I love you with my whole mind.” Pause, reflect – what does that mean? How might we bring our whole mind into the act of loving God?
Then, God, I love you with my whole strength.” Pause, reflect – Our whole strength is a lot of strength.
God is one, and God is love. When we love God we are simply responding to love that surrounds and supports us like water. Learning to live into this commandment will make us better at loving everyone. And ourselves.
© 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 Jesus is asked, “Which commandment is first of all?,” he doesn’t have to reach far for an answer. The Shema Yisrael would have been on his lips and in his heart from his earliest youth. The Shema is considered the most important part of a Jewish prayer service, and observant Jews recite it at least twice each day as a mitzvah, or commandment. Traditionally the Shema form a Jew’s last words, and many children are taught to say it at bedtime.
The heart of this prayer, drawn from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41 (thank you, Wikipedia…) is “Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” “Lord” is rendered as the tetragrammaton, the four-character symbol that spells what we transliterate as “Jahweh.” This emphasis on God’s nature as one Almighty God, not many lesser gods, caused some trouble for early Christian theologians when they were driven, in reckoning with other things Jesus says, to affirm God’s three-ness as well as God’s one-ness.
But Jesus doesn’t stop with affirming who God is. He commands us to love this Lord our God with every fiber of our being, breaking it down: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” I don’t know if we’re capable of doing anything with a whole heart and mind, let alone soul and strength. How might we go about living into this seemingly impossible command?
Let’s start with love. Do we love God? How can we love someone we can’t see or touch, who has ultimate power over life and death, whose ways are utter mystery, who blesses us yet allows us so much pain and suffering? So much of our interaction with God is rooted in asking for provision or protection, healing or forgiveness – the relationship feels too one-sided, too contractual, to be truly loving. Yet I have known moments when my heart was so filled with blessing – on a gorgeous day, in a wonderful encounter, when a ministry is firing on all cylinders – that I have said to God, to Jesus, to the Spirit, “I love you.”
If love is a choice, not a feeling, we can cultivate that awareness of loving God at moments when it hasn’t hit us in a blinding rush. We can learn it, as we learn to fully love a spouse once the flush of in-love-ness has abated. We can make some time and space in prayer and say with intention:
“God, I love you with my whole heart.” And pause; reflect on that. What else does our heart love?
Then, “God I love you with my whole soul.” Pause, reflect – can we control our soul?
Then, “God, I love you with my whole mind.” Pause, reflect – what does that mean? How might we bring our whole mind into the act of loving God?
Then, God, I love you with my whole strength.” Pause, reflect – Our whole strength is a lot of strength.
God is one, and God is love. When we love God we are simply responding to love that surrounds and supports us like water. Learning to live into this commandment will make us better at loving everyone. And ourselves.
© 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.
10-29-24 - Focusing on God
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
On the face of it, the question this scribe asks Jesus seems silly: “Which commandment is the first of all?” All the commandments are important; is one more so than another? But if you’ve devoted your life to God’s law, and keeping the commandments is the measure of pleasing God, maybe knowing you can keep the most important ensures your fidelity to the rest.
And in fact, not everyone would give the same answer that Jesus did. Many would say, “Oh, the most important is ‘thou shalt not kill,’” or “Thou shalt not steal.” Certainly the preoccupation with sexual sin among many American Christians would move “thou shalt not commit adultery” into the top spot. But Jesus says the Number One commandment has to do not with how we regard other people, but how we regard God. “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’”
This is the Shema Yisrael, “Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” This is how we are to live a life of righteousness and holiness, not by focusing on our behavior, but by making God our focus, acknowledging who God is, and loving God with our whole selves.
How easy it is to take our focus off of God and let the life around us, this world and its people, consume our attention. As soon as we do that, we start to focus on behavior, not devotion. When we start with moral behavior, we become more distant from God, trying to please God or walking away from what we feel are impossible demands. When we make God our focus and cultivate our love for God, godly behavior flows from us.
To focus on God, on loving God, puts us in a place of Grace. To focus on moral behavior puts us in the space of Law. That is not a life-giving place to dwell, as Paul articulated so powerfully in Galatians and Romans.
What spiritual practices might we put into place to help us cultivate a God-focused life? Certainly one strategy is having a pattern of daily prayer, or frequent stops throughout the day to return our gaze God-ward. Another is to become mindful when we’re in the grip of a negative emotion – anxiety or anger, despair or envy. Chances are our focus has become consumed by something or someone not-God. Awareness of our emotional state can remind us to pray about the issue troubling us and invite God’s grace to cover it, and us.
One day we will live fully in the presence of God, of love beyond our comprehension. All will be love. We prepare ourselves for that day by cultivating our awareness of God’s presence here and now, and learning to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
© 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.
On the face of it, the question this scribe asks Jesus seems silly: “Which commandment is the first of all?” All the commandments are important; is one more so than another? But if you’ve devoted your life to God’s law, and keeping the commandments is the measure of pleasing God, maybe knowing you can keep the most important ensures your fidelity to the rest.
And in fact, not everyone would give the same answer that Jesus did. Many would say, “Oh, the most important is ‘thou shalt not kill,’” or “Thou shalt not steal.” Certainly the preoccupation with sexual sin among many American Christians would move “thou shalt not commit adultery” into the top spot. But Jesus says the Number One commandment has to do not with how we regard other people, but how we regard God. “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’”
This is the Shema Yisrael, “Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” This is how we are to live a life of righteousness and holiness, not by focusing on our behavior, but by making God our focus, acknowledging who God is, and loving God with our whole selves.
How easy it is to take our focus off of God and let the life around us, this world and its people, consume our attention. As soon as we do that, we start to focus on behavior, not devotion. When we start with moral behavior, we become more distant from God, trying to please God or walking away from what we feel are impossible demands. When we make God our focus and cultivate our love for God, godly behavior flows from us.
To focus on God, on loving God, puts us in a place of Grace. To focus on moral behavior puts us in the space of Law. That is not a life-giving place to dwell, as Paul articulated so powerfully in Galatians and Romans.
What spiritual practices might we put into place to help us cultivate a God-focused life? Certainly one strategy is having a pattern of daily prayer, or frequent stops throughout the day to return our gaze God-ward. Another is to become mindful when we’re in the grip of a negative emotion – anxiety or anger, despair or envy. Chances are our focus has become consumed by something or someone not-God. Awareness of our emotional state can remind us to pray about the issue troubling us and invite God’s grace to cover it, and us.
One day we will live fully in the presence of God, of love beyond our comprehension. All will be love. We prepare ourselves for that day by cultivating our awareness of God’s presence here and now, and learning to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
© 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)