3-29-19 - Found and Lost

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

We’ve barely scratched the surface of this powerful parable in five days. To go deeper, I recommend Henri Nouwen’s classic, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which explores this story and especially its three main characters through the lens of Rembrandt’s painting of the same name.

We haven’t spent nearly enough time on this “prodigal father,” whose extravagant forgiveness and restoration of his wastral son strikes some as no less wasteful than that son’s squandering of his inheritance. First among those who feel that way is the father’s elder son, who gets wind of the reunion and is horrified:

“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’"

For the second time that day, the father goes out to meet a son where he is, not waiting for him to come in. He loves his sons equally – and that in itself is an affront to this elder boy who has faithfully served and done everything right. In his view, his father should love him more, for he has earned it.

In this outlook he has a lot of company. When I ask people to whom they relate in this parable, most say the older brother. We like fairness. We like earning our rewards. Yet Jesus made it clear in parable after parable that the Realm of God is not a place of fairness so much as grace. Grace extended to others, undeserving others – and grace by definition comes to the undeserving – can make us feel cheated.

But God’s economy is one of abundance. Had the elder brother wanted a party, he could have had one every week. But how can he expect the father to love his other son less? The father’s love is a full measure, pressed down, over- flowing. As I once sensed God say to me in prayer, “I already love you the most. There is nothing you have to do, or can do, to make me love you more – I love you the most already.”

“Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

Jesus leaves the story unresolved. Does the elder son relent, allow grace to flow into him? Or does he define himself “lost” by his hardness of heart, like the religious leaders to whom Jesus was likely referring?

And what about us? Are we willing to count ourselves “found” if the company includes people we would have trouble forgiving? What if we let God do the forgiving for us? 

All we have to do is come to the feast of love.

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3-28-19 - Home Comes To You

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

As a young teenager, I was enthralled with the movie Love Story, with its famous tagline, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Such a statement can pretty much be made only after someone’s just said, “I’m sorry…” The truth is closer to, “Love means always having to say you’re sorry,” by which I mean we need always be aware of the ways in which we hurt or fail to notice our loved ones’ feelings. Learning to say you’re sorry quickly and naturally is one of the building blocks of a healthy relationship.

But working up to “I’m sorry” can be a struggle. Once we’ve wrestled away our self-justifications and acknowledged the need to repair a breach, we often find ourselves rehearsing, trying to find the right words. That’s exactly what the young man in Jesus’ story does: writes his speech ahead of time.

“I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.' So he set off and went to his father."

When we head off to ask forgiveness of another person, we can never be sure of the reception we’ll get. This man, who had in effect disowned his father, and possibly caused him to liquidate assets at a loss, may have assumed his father had disowned him. When we offer repentance, we have to simply offer it, willing to lay it down and walk away. We can’t compel forgiveness or even a hearing.

But Jesus suggests that it’s different with God. If this story is a picture of how the Realm of God works, let’s pay special attention to what happens next: forgiveness doesn’t wait for this young man to express his sorrow. Forgiveness is out in the road, waiting for him: 

"But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him."

The son tries to make his speech, but his father is way ahead of him: 

"But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!'"

Did the father look down that road every day, hoping against hope to see his son return? Did he even care if the boy was sorry, or did he only want to be reunited with his beloved? Does God really love us that much?

Jesus said “yes.” Jesus showed us “yes,” just how much God loves us. Jesus left Home and came into our roads to wait for us. We don’t even have to get home – Home comes to us, with royal robes and signet rings and sandals for our tired feet. This is one “I’m sorry” for which we don’t have to doubt the reception. We need only turn ourselves toward home.

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3-27-19 - Coming To Oneself

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

This week's gospel story speaks well to people in recovery from addiction. Many can relate to a guy who leaves home, loses everything and finds himself starving in a pig pen. Millennia before 12-step groups were developed, Jesus found perfect language to describe hitting bottom:

“When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger.’”

I am captured by that line, “But when he came to himself….” It so economically describes what happens when we’ve gone off the rails, deep into toxic behaviors or thinking – it’s like we’ve parted ways with our true self. The first step in reconciliation is to return to ourselves and reintegrate.

This younger son suddenly saw himself and his surroundings clearly. He recognized the truth of what had happened, where his choices had brought him. Sure, he didn’t cause the famine, but the actions he’d taken since leaving home had left him with no resources to weather it. And when he saw himself for who he was, he remembered who he had been, the status he had given up when he estranged himself from his family. In a moment of true humility, he also saw clearly that he had forfeited that status forever. Forming a plan to get out of his dire straits, he did not presume to regain his sonship, but resolved to beg his father to allow him to be a servant in his former home.

True repentance begins when we stop blaming other people, our history and circumstances for where we find ourselves now. That can be one of the hardest steps to take, to accept where we are, regardless of whose choices helped get us there. Certainly our own responses played a part, and that’s where we start the road toward reconciliation.

Today I invite you to take stock of what “pig pens” you endure in your life:
Where are you stuck in patterns that keep you from thriving? 

Who do you need to forgive or get out of the way of?
What are you clinging to?  What are you using to anesthetize you from pain and the real work of healing into which the Spirit invites you?

I can be pretty good at wallowing. And maybe too good at compartmentalizing myself. But Jesus invites me, and you, with this young man, to take the risk of true humility and clarity. And as we reconnect with our deepest self, Jesus invites us to find our way home.

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3-26-19 - Independence

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

Growing up can be described as one long, push-and-pull struggle for independence. We strive to be who we truly are, separate from our parents and their expectations and desires. Psychologists call this process individuation, and how one navigates it strongly affects the maturity and self-integrity one displays as an adult. Pushing out and pulling back enact a basic inner conflict we all share: We want to be our own person, and we want to be enfolded in Home, be it real or idealized. And we can’t have both.

Some people push out harder than others. The young man in the story Jesus told pushed farther than many – he not only struck out on his own, he pretty much burned his bridges.

"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living."

Asking for his inheritance before his father died was tantamount to wishing the old man dead. And going to a distant country was as good as saying to those at home, “I’m getting as far away from you as I can. I can take care of myself.” Only it turns he couldn’t – he lacked the maturity to spend his inheritance wisely. He squandered it living the high life, no doubt buying drinks for any number of hangers-on who disappeared as soon as his cash was gone. This young man went as far away from Home as he could.

Was he rebelling against his father? The three glimpses we get of this father show him to be a wise and compassionate man, excelling in grace with his difficult sons. Was this young man’s behavior a response to losing his mother - Jesus mentions none. Or was this younger son rebelling against the rectitude of his older brother, whom we learn is obedient to a fault? Some schools of psychology root personality development in sibling relationships as much as in parental ones. Did this “goody two shoes” take all the gold stars, leaving his younger brother to define himself by separating?

Oh dear, here I go again, treating this like a real story. As of course it is, in one way or another. 

How is it real for you? Where do you find yourself in this younger son? 

When have you rebelled, and against who or what? In what ways do you try go it alone, to make it on self-saving strategies rather than relying on God and community?
Are you comfortable in being the person you are, or do you feel incomplete?

Our God desires wholeness for us, within ourselves, and in our relationships with others. Often that requires knowing where we are “unwhole” – or unholy. If you feel like making a conscious a self-examination, here is a form you can download to help think through the areas of your life.

We may not be squandering our property in riotous living, but I dare say most of us are some distance from the Love that made us and calls us home. Awareness of what is causing that distance can help reduce it.

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3-25-19 - Eating With Sinners

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Oh joy! This week we reflect on one of the best stories in the entire bible: Jesus’ parable about a man and his two sons and their very different approaches to sin and forgiveness. This story is told in such vivid detail, some forget it is a parable Jesus told; they think it really happened. In some ways, it did, and does, every single day. But it is not reporting; it is Jesus’ attempt to answer in story the religious leaders who looked askance at the company he kept:

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So Jesus told them this parable: ‘There was a man who had two sons…"

Before we get into the story, let’s think about the context in which it is being told, which also provides the reason. Jesus wasn’t just spinning a cool yarn. He was making a point in narrative form, in a story which he knew would have resonances for all his hearers. The context was the fact that many of the people responding to Jesus’ invitation to “Come, follow me,” were the wrong sorts of people, tax collectors and “sinners.” Good Lord!

Remember, tax collectors in that day had little in common with IRS auditors; they were Jews who collected the Romans’ taxes for them, often strong-arming their fellow Jews and adding on a hefty surcharge for their own “fees.” They were corrupt and often extortionist, and hated as collaborators with the occupying empire. The term “sinners” probably included low-lifes, petty thieves, prostitutes and party girls, as well as invalids – those who did not measure up in fidelity to the law and traditions as well as did the religious leaders.

So Jesus tells a story about one son who is as notorious a sinner as you can get, who comes to repentance and is forgiven, and another son who does everything right – except for his utter inability to show mercy, which just might exceed other forms of sin in its virulence. Those who point at others and label them sinners are often the ones most in need of God’s grace, and least able to accept it.

Who do we regard as “sinners?” Few of us are so full of God’s grace that we don’t find one sort of person or another offensive. We might be fine with tax collectors and prostitutes, but have trouble with hypocritical candidates, or people who would exterminate animals for sport, or the ultra-wealthy, or terrorists, or … you name it. Who is it that you have trouble forgiving, even accepting that God might forgive? Make a list today.

We need to know who it is that we label “sinners” so that we might contemplate eating with them. That’s what Jesus did – he hung out with those whom others thought unworthy. He was able to stomach some pretty rough company – and by breaking bread with such people and offering relationship, to lead them to repentance and transformation.

When you think about it, every Sunday Jesus breaks bread with a bunch of sinners. And he hasn’t kicked us out yet.

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3-22-19 - The Gardener

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

The more I reflect on this parable Jesus told, the more I like this gardener. To the owner who wants to cut down a fig tree that has borne no fruit for three years, he says this:

“Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

Jesus shows us a character who has both compassion and the inclination to think strategically about ways to remedy a bad situation. Rather than blaming the victim and diverting resources, this gardener thinks transformationally. He is also realistic. He knows you can improve a situation and do your best to get resources where they’re needed, and may still end up fruitless. Anyone who has worked with addicts or people mired in chronic poverty recognizes that heartbreak. And yet, such workers also see transformation of people and lives – that’s what keeps them digging and fertilizing, tending and watering.

As I read the parable again (remembering that we can see it differently from one time to the next), I see this gardener as Jesus, who came that we might have life and have it in abundance, who yearned for his followers to bear abundant fruit. Though he could be ruthless with the powerful and self-righteous, he was both clear and compassionate with people who struggled with failure. He invited the broken and the sinful into relationship, offered forgiveness and friendship and the opportunity to serve others. And one by one those who followed him became transformed and fruitful. The extra care and time yielded fruit.

Jesus has done the same for us. We may not always want his hand reaching toward us; we’d rather he kept his digging and fertilizing for someone else. Other times we’re well aware of how much like that fig tree we are. What Good News it is to know we have a gardener who wants to tend and nurture us to greater growth. Just accepting that News can strengthen our roots, as we’re humble enough to receive it.

Our scriptures offer two images of gardeners. One is in the story of Creation in Genesis, when we’re told that, after creating the first human being, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” Man’s primal purpose was to be a gardener, to tend and nurture all life for growth and fruitfulness.

The other image, which I cannot but hold together with this first, comes on the first day of the New Creation, when the resurrected Jesus stands in a garden speaking to one of those reclaimed fig trees, Mary Magdalene. She does not recognize him, taking him for a gardener. In a way, she was right.

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3-21-19 - Fertilizer

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

The landowner in the story Jesus told about an unfruitful fig tree makes a harsh assessment about this tree: It is wasting the soil. The response of his gardener is not to blame the tree, but to improve the soil:

So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”’

This gardener is a believer in second chances, in improving the conditions in which something (or someone…) can thrive. He does not condemn the tree for squandering the very soil in which it sits. He realizes the soil needs some enrichment, and aerating, so water and oxygen can get to the tree’s roots. And he thinks it needs fertilizing, to add nutrients and catalyze growth.

I am no biologist, but I am fascinated by the efficiency of eco-systems, whether within the human body or in the natural world. The way leaves fall and decay, generating nutrients which help bring about new growth in the next season is but one example of organic economy. Nothing is wasted – even waste products.

The same can be true of our lives. In what ways has “manure” generated in your life functioned to fertilize new growth? Often we don’t want to look at our emotional waste – it’s ugly, and smelly, and dark, like its biological counter-part. We’d rather flush it away. But what if we invited God to help us use that matter for growth? What if we asked what use that failed relationship or thwarted professional venture could possibly be for our future fruitfulness?

I’m venturing into icky territory, but I am intrigued by the uses which medicine is finding for human waste. The careful reintroduction of “cleaned” excrement back into someone’s system can restore the balance of gut biomes, resolve ailments like cDiff, Chrohn’s and celiac disease, and possibly even cure conditions such as MS. (Here is a compelling and easy New Yorker article from a few years back about medical uses of excrement…) I think there is a spiritual analogy here.

This is one purpose for repentance – not to wallow in our “manure,” but to bring into the light things of which we are not proud, to bring healing and redemption into our failures – and just maybe render them useful to us in the future. Unacknowledged, they just accumulate and decay, building up noxious gases in our psyches. But when we aerate our soil, inviting in light and air, that which seems most useless can become the ground of new growth. We can do this in therapy, in the confessional, or both.

This is true of societal detritus as well as personal. Our tendency to blame the poor and the weak for their plight instead of improving the soil in which they might thrive results only in greater disparity of wealth and access to basic human needs like housing, education and healthcare. Our attempts to flush away cultural sins such as racism and economic inequality have not brought healing. Maybe learning how to repurpose our waste – composting our failures – will result in more fruit of justice and peace.

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3-20-19 - Fruitful

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

It is fashionable in corporate and non-profit circles to talk about markers of effectiveness, data-driven strategies, measurable goals and outcomes. Jesus used one word for all of that: fruitful. “Each tree is known by its fruit,” he taught. (Luke 6:44). “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matt 7:19). “No branch can bear fruit by itself." (John 15:4b). “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” (John 15:16b).

And in this week's parable:
‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.’

Anytime we want to evaluate our effectiveness as bearers of Christ and ministers of the Good News, there’s our criterion: are we bearing fruit, good fruit, fruit that will endure? That can be a highly subjective determination – sometimes there’s lots of fruit, but not where we’re looking, or it’s not yet ripe, or doesn’t look like good fruit. And sometimes we think we’re rolling in fruit – as when numbers are up – and it turns out there isn’t much depth of transformation going on.

The marker of good fruit I look for is this: Are lives being changed? Are people turning their hearts God-ward and becoming less reliant on their own strength in the traps and pitfalls life throws our way? Are they becoming more gentle, more generous, more gracious? Are they less tolerant of injustice and inequity, and quicker to right a wrong?

Three years ago, when I reflected on this passage, I saw little "fruit" in my church ministry; I wondered whether all my activity was yielding any transformation at all. A few months later, I was transplanted into a vastly different vineyard in Washington DC. This year, in my current ministries, I’m seeing wonderful growth in numbers, spiritual engagement and missional endeavors; the fruit seems too abundant to count. Yet either way, I am just a farm worker, helping to plant, weed, water and shade. The fruit itself is up to the Gardener, who has different strategies to try with unfruitful trees.

When you look around your life, what feels fruitful? 

Where are you making God connections?  How are you growing in faith?
And what feels stunted and not growing? Can you have a conversation with God about that?

We can count fruit all we want - it's not really until we take a bite that we know if it’s any good. As tempting as it is to measure ourselves and others by worldly standards, only God is entitled to judge us. God might prune our branches or dig around us, but we can be sure s/he is invested in our bearing beautiful and abundant fruit.

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3-19-19 - Figs in a Vineyard

(You can listen to this reflection here. Yesterday's, which had a faulty link, can be heard here. 

This week's gospel reading is here.)

Jesus had a strange relationship to fig trees. One of the most negative uses of divine power recorded in the Gospels occurs when he curses a fig tree that has no fruit on it, though the writer tells us it was not the season for figs. Now, after reminding his listeners that they are called to repent and return to the Lord, he tells this mystifying parable:

‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”'

We will play with this parable this week, seeking to understand what Jesus was saying about the ways of God and his own mission of redemption. Parables invite us to wonder and question, to interpret them one way and then turn them upside down and see them entirely differently. So let’s start with the first question that pops into my mind: Why is this fig tree planted in a vineyard? Do fig trees belong in vineyards?

Who or what does the fig tree represent? Is it the religious system into which Judaism had evolved by Jesus’ time, a constrained and codified system of sacrifice and legalism? Or is that represented by the vineyard?

Who is the “owner” – God the Father? Or is the "owner" the prince of this world, the evil one, who claimed to have been given dominion over the earth? That changes the way we look at the parable. And is the gardener Jesus? Or let’s flip it: is Jesus the fig tree who, after three years of ministry, still isn’t seeing the kind of fruit he was hoping to? Is cutting the fig tree a reference to his own death?

Going beyond what Jesus may have meant, how does this parable play if we put ourselves into it? Our churches? Are we bearing the kind of fruit the Gardener wants? Are there any areas of our lives in which we are “wasting the soil?” Are we planted in the right place?

There is no one right answer or one right interpretation. Jesus taught in parables to invite his followers to see things in new ways, from new angles. Read the parable over to yourself today, and see what fruit emerges. And then do it again tomorrow – it may yield something entirely different - sort of like finding a fig tree among the grapevines.

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3-18-19 - Bringing Life Into Suffering

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

If the only impression we got of Jesus came from this week’s Gospel passage, I don’t think he’d have many followers. When asked about some of the great tragedies of his day, he seems to sweep aside the suffering involved and reduce each incident to a warning:

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’ 

Going back to chapter 12, we can see that Jesus is already wound up. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!,” he says. He has told parables about being ready to give account when the end comes. So maybe he’s not in the mood for philosophizing. When told about what appears to have been a particularly sacrilegious atrocity committed by the Roman governor, he says those Galileans were not singled out for punishment by God – God doesn’t work that way. But he is quick to point out that everyone listening is vulnerable to eternal death unless they repent and choose eternal life in Christ. Similarly with some people who were killed in an accident; they were no worse sinners than anyone else, nor being punished – “but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” By “perish” Jesus is not talking about physical death, but a spiritual one.

As this passage makes clear, God does not visit suffering upon people, and certainly does not punish through tragedy. God is in the business of life, not death. We can quote Jesus to those who suggest, when a child dies, that “God wanted another angel,” or “Everything happens for a reason.” There is not always a reason for suffering, but we can be sure God will be present in the midst of pain. We are invited to go deeper than the mystery of tragedy and loss. Jesus is saying, “More important than why someone suffers or dies is this: What eternal choice will you make? Are you going to repent – i.e., turn from living on your own terms to living on God’s terms, and live? Or are you going to continue to live as though this world is all there is, and ultimately perish?"

Atrocities and horrible accidents will likely shadow us this side of glory; they are often the consequences of humans exercising free will. Each time we encounter suffering, we have an opportunity to proclaim God’s goodness in the face of it, and invite people to choose life over death, love over vengeance. God does not promise protection from harm. God promises a Life that goes beyond life into infinity, a Life in God’s presence, a Life that begins in the here and now and continues long after we have ceased to draw breath. As we live more deeply into that Life, we have more to offer in the face of tragedy.

As the caption on a Salvation Army ad depicting relief workers in the aftermath of a hurricane reads:
“We fight natural disasters with acts of God.” That's how we can bring life into suffering.

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3-15-19 - When God Makes a Promise

(You can listen to this reflection here. Today's reading is here.)

Today let’s look at the reading from the Hebrew Bible appointed for Sunday, about a surreal experience Abram has. God has promised the childless Abram that he will have descendants more numerous than the stars in the skies. If that is not preposterous enough, he promises to give him all the land around him. Abram reasonably asks, “How will I know I am to possess it?” and God instructs him to get a heifer, female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon, and cut the mammals in half (why not the birds?). Abram then sits guard over the carcasses, chasing away birds of prey.

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him. When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."

This covenant is formalized by a ritual common in the Ancient Near East at that time – this bizarre cutting in half of sacrificial animals goes back to covenant ceremonies of the 2nd millennium BCE. The bloody ceremony is what scholars call a “self-maledictory oath” – the parties to the covenant would walk between these cut up animals to signify their agreement that this should happen to them if they violate the covenant; their bodies should be broken like the bodies of these sacrificial animals.

But here God moves between the pieces in the form of a smoking firepot with a flaming torch; in the Bible God often manifests in the form of fire. It is God, not Abram, who goes between the pieces – meaning the penalty will fall on him if the covenant is broken. That is what God has done in the New Covenant (or Testament) that he has made with us through Christ. He met the terms of the Old Covenant. He himself provided the offering for the sacrifice, his own son, whose body was broken on the cross, as the ceremony signified would happen if the covenant was broken.

Jesus, sitting on a hill overlooking Jerusalem, laments this broken covenant, knowing he will pay the price with his own blood: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

It was not God who broke the covenant, but humankind, over and over. Yet it was not we who paid the price, but God Himself, in Christ. This man who is revered as a model of non-violence; this man whom we recognize as the Living God; this Prince of Peace who never attacked anyone becomes a victim of the violence we call the Cross. Not a chance victim – a willing victim, going deep into the heart of evil in order to break its hold. Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was the end of a system of blood sacrifice that had operated until then. In Christ the New Covenant was born, which ended all previous covenants. It was sealed in His blood – and never needs to be repeated. We celebrate our freedom in the meal of broken bread and blood we share each Sunday, but we do not repeat his sacrifice. That was once, and for all – for all time, for all humanity, for all creation.

Lent is not a time to wallow in our sin and regret; it is a time to sharpen our focus on how we live in the freedom from fear Christ has won for us. How will we respond to this gift, sealed by a covenant in which God makes all the promises, and all the guarantees?

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3-14-19 - #Blessed

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

Was Jesus blessed as he faced his passion and death? At the end of this week’s Gospel scene, as he utters his lament over the recalcitrance of Jerusalem, he says, in effect, “You’ve made your bed.” His words are “See, your house is left to you,” referring to the temple which is the center of religious life – but perhaps not the center of God-Life. And if that remark were not troubling enough, he adds this:

And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’

He means, we assume, his triumphal entry into the city on the back of a donkey, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday. On that day, they all called him blessed – and he was. But blessing was very soon to take an odd turn.

What does it mean to be blessed? I often think of it as having good things happen, swimming in a sweet spot. What if “blessed” only means, “Living in the Life of God?” That can sometimes feel good, and sometimes be hard and challenging, and sometimes put you face to face with death, as Jesus found that week.

I have been learning to orient myself to “expect blessing,” to become aware of the blessing in which I move always. And I do believe God wants us to expect blessing, and that we experience it more when we expect it. But I also know that we never get to dictate what that blessing looks like or in what part of our life it may land. It doesn’t always come in the areas we’re worried about; sometimes it comes in a side door and helps us to move through the hard stuff.

I once read a beautiful and difficult op-ed on this subject, by a professor at Duke Divinity School who wrote a book on the American prosperity gospel entitled “Blessed” – and then found herself diagnosed with stage four cancer. She pointed out the ubiquity of the “#blessed” hashtag in social media, as a way for people to both delight in their good fortune and (sort of) give God the credit for it.

Maybe we can be more nuanced about what blessing is. If it is "living in the Life of God," can we start to see blessing in its less obvious disguises? To recognize times of stagnation as “cocoon” or “seed” times, in which all kinds of growth may be happening unseen? Can we seek blessing in bad news and in loss, not in a Pollyanna “always look on the sunny side of life” way, but inviting God to show God’s face in our pain and sorrow, and not only in our joy and fruitfulness?

In what areas of your life do you feel blessed? In what areas do you not feel blessed?

Many people that day shouted to Jesus that he was blessed - and had Twitter been invented, #blessed would have been trending like mad. And Jesus was blessed. They just didn’t have a clue what that blessing was going to look like, or how deeply we would be blessed in its outcome.

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3-13-19 - Jesus the Brood Hen

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

People concerned about gender-inclusive language in Christian worship and theology find a dearth of maternal or feminine imagery in the bible. There is Spirit language that can skew feminine. Late Isaiah has a startling passage in which the restored Jerusalem is likened to a nursing mother (in quite graphic language…). Paul writes about having been like a nurse to a community he has been mentoring. But references are few and far between. So many make much of this remark of Jesus’ about Jerusalem:

“How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…”

If we’re seeking the maternal, this is hardly the scene. Jesus may desire to gather the children of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her brood, but he’s just noted their penchant for killing God’s messengers, and what follows this nurturing image is a stark negative: “…and you were not willing!”

Whatever maternal feelings Jesus may be expressing here are those of a mother who’s been rejected by her offspring (much as he brushed off his own mother when she tried to persuade him to stop all this foolishness and come home?). This is a thwarted mother, whose invitations to loving embrace have been spurned, who knows her beloved children are more than capable of turning on her next. Hardly the feminine imagery we are looking for.

Yet, a thwarted mother is not a bad way to understand God’s experience with a faithless people (and perhaps less jarring than the way the prophet Hosea depicts God, as a cuckolded husband). Most of us can relate to times when we pushed away our mothers or fathers and tried to go our own way. Sometimes it’s the only way we can attain independence.

What If we put aside the context in which that phrase is uttered and just go with the image itself, with Jesus’ desire that God’s people would consent to be brooded over, to be gathered under God’s almighty wings. In this image, we are little fledglings, not fully able to take care of or protect ourselves. We like to think we’re big and tough and self-sufficient, but look at us from God’s perspective: we are barely hatched, still trying to figure out how to move in a straight line. And Jesus desires to gather us in community, and hold us in his love.

Puts a whole new spin on Easter chicks, doesn’t it?

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3-12-19 - Jerusalem, Jerusalem

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

Jesus’ observation on the outskirts of Jerusalem – often depicted on a hillside overlooking the city – is sometimes seen as a nurturing lament for the great city which had for many centuries been the center of Israel’s religious life. Maybe it’s that repetition of “Jerusalem,” and the hen thing, that make it sound that way.

But when we look at what he actually says, and what’s going on at the time, it’s hard to read much nurture into it. Jesus is passing judgment on the ancient city, which he says has always excelled in missing the point, often violently so. After noting – with sarcasm? – that “it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem,”  he goes on:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you.”

Israel’s history was replete with prophets whose dire warnings of judgment to come went unheeded, who were rebuked, imprisoned, tortured and sometimes killed by the powers against whom they inveighed. Prophets were seen as holy men who spoke for God – unless their message was too harsh or unpopular, or perhaps conflicted with the message of another self-acclaimed prophet. Who’s to know who to believe? People will generally stay with the one whose message is most palatable, much in the way Americans now choose which media from which we get our news, and what friends’ opinions are likely to show up on our Facebook feeds. We didn’t invent the narrow feedback loop.

It’s awfully hard to know who is a true prophet until after the fact. But we have been given full revelation in Jesus Christ, and it’s not so hard to know him. Many who knew him in the flesh ultimately turned away, rejecting, betraying, even condemning him. What would we have done? Would we have recognized him as a true representative of God or rejected him as one more disappointment, one more person out of touch with how the world really is, one more would-be mouthpiece distorting God’s word?

Go back and read the words of Jesus in the Gospels this week. What is he really saying? 
Do we accept his often hard teaching, or dismiss him?

Jesus may have been uttering judgment upon Jerusalem, so soon to repeat its tradition of death-dealing, but we would be foolish if we thought this lament doesn’t cover us too. Jerusalem was and is a place with a particular history and customs, but in the Bible it is also a symbolic place where God and humankind meet. The Book of Revelation speaks of the “new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband.” Jerusalem represents the hope of reconciliation, of fidelity and obedience, of that mystical place where God himself will dwell, “and they shall be God’s people, God himself shall be with them.”

We have a choice of which Jerusalem we will be – the one that kills its prophets and stones its messengers, or the new Jerusalem where heaven and earth can truly meet.

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3-11-19 - Day After Tomorrow

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

I don't know why our lectionary offers up the passage appointed for Sunday; it’s short, not really a story, and somewhat inscrutable. But let's see. It begins with a warning to Jesus: At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’

Were the Pharisees being helpful – or did they just want him out of the way? If their warning to Jesus about escaping Herod’s clutches was meant to scare him, it didn’t work:
He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.”

We've been told that Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem; maybe the Pharisees are trying to divert him. But he will be moved neither from his itinerary nor his agenda: the work of proclaiming and demonstrating the inbreaking Kingdom of God. His work of healing and deliverance is the work of the moment and the near future. And on the “third day” he must finish that work, offering the most complete revelation of God’s love to the world in what looks like complete defeat.

And if they think he’s going to be swayed by threats of death, he makes it clear: the death he is to undergo – which, he says, could happen nowhere but in Jerusalem – is part of the work. I’m sure it made no sense to anyone listening, but it wasn’t the first time he’d said such things.

I’m intrigued by this repetition of “today, tomorrow and the third day,” “Today, tomorrow and the next day.” It focuses our attention on time. For Christians the phrase “third day” always evokes Easter Sunday. But here it refers also to living in the rhythm of God’s mission, which always has a future-bound momentum.

We are to be about the work of God today, the day which is now, in which we trust for daily bread. We are to plan for tomorrow – we’re not just adrift in time. And the day after tomorrow – which we cannot really predict with any accuracy – we finish the work God has given us to do. But by that time, it’s today, like we’re living in a wave which starts, builds and then dissipates, by which time it is already being swept into the next one.

Perhaps I make too much of this phrase, but it suggests to me a constantly forward-rolling movement of present ministry, future planning and then release into God’s hands. Every ministry we undertake, small or large, must get “finished” and a new one entered, one which is already underway, because it comes from God and is completed in God.

This way of seeing our engagement in God's mission makes us less generators of work than surfers of God’s movement – and surfers know how to relax and ride the wave. The day after tomorrow maybe we'll see what God was doing through us today. Gnarly.

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3-8-19 - Round One

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

In Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the devil is depicted as a grey, humanoid, slithery creature with malevolent eyes, lurking at the edges of the scenes of Christ’s passion and death. He is there in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus confronts the agony he is about to endure, even daring to wish he might be spared before once more laying down his will before his heavenly Father. He is there as Jesus is paraded down the streets of Jerusalem, and on the hillside where Judas commits suicide. Was Jesus constantly having to do battle with him?

At the end of his trial in the wilderness, Jesus seems to have bested his foe. But Luke writes these fateful words, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” You can just about hear the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony.

We don’t know if the devil was constantly seeking to trip up Jesus, but the gospels tell us that Jesus saw his work of healing, forgiveness and deliverance as setting people free from the power of Satan. He was always poking that bear.

And what about us? Do we need to worry about the devil – in whom many modern Christians profess not even to believe? One of the most challenging theological disconnects for me lies between our doctrinal assertion that Jesus has vanquished the devil, and his seemingly unfettered destructive power still very evident in the world. The devil may not be behind our temptation to eat more ice cream than is good for us, but wherever evil is done, violence perpetrated, terror wrought and destruction unleashed, we can be quite sure that some person has lost a battle with temptation. If God has given human beings the free will to choose, it follows that God will not protect us from making choices. And much of the pain we suffer and inflict comes from choosing the wrong instead of the right.

So yes, this “enemy of human nature” continues to snap at the heels of Christ’s beloved, and often to dominate those who say they believe in nothing. We should be aware of the choices beneath the choices we make. But we need not fear. As Martin Luther wrote so memorably in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress, “His craft and power are great…” but “One little word shall fell him.”

That word is simply the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only protection we need. When we feel tempted to despair or to try to control a situation or to impose our will upon another; when we find ourselves beset by negative emotions, or up against evil in a more clear and threatening way, we need only remember whose we are and say, “Thank you, Jesus, for being my shield and protector.” As St. Peter wrote, “Rebuke the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Jesus did win the war. And the more people experience and believe that, the less foothold the devil has in this world. Now, there’s a motivation for sharing our faith.

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3-7-19 - Danger

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

I have always placed the devil’s third temptation of Jesus in the category of security, God’s protection of God’s own. But, Psalm 91 notwithstanding, which the devil quotes at Jesus, the Bible contains no promise of physical protection for God’s people. And a quick look at the sufferings of saints throughout history, not to mention the passion of Christ himself, should quickly disabuse us of the notion that God has promised to shield us from harm.

Reading it now, I see rather that the devil is tempting Jesus to test his value to God as an asset. “Surely, he’s not going to let you die? Before your time, that is...?”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

If God has not promised to protect us, why bother praying for protection? Because God wants us to communicate our fears and our needs. A better question is, why do we so often court damage to our bodies, minds and spirits by living in ways that we know can hurt us? While not in the category of risk as throwing oneself off the pinnacle of the temple, we don’t always treat ourselves as the precious assets we are. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Where in your life do you push the boundaries of good sense and healthy self-maintenance? 

What do you consume too much of, or too little? 

What is your relationship with exercise, rest, and play?

Lent is a great time to examine where in our lives we put the Lord our God to the test, expecting God to save us from ourselves, as well as from other people. I don’t mean to make light of the dangers in the world – they are real, and I will continue to pray for physical protection for me and those I love. But I also intend to become more aware of the ways I contribute to my own destruction and invite the Spirit of God to help me live into the promises God has made: if not protection, then presence always, and peace that defies understanding. Those we can count on.

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3-6-19 - Who Will We Worship (Wx4)

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

They say in advertising it’s very important to know your audience, especially their vulnerabilities. You’d think the Tempter would have done better market research on Jesus before he tried to sway him by offering him adulation and authority. Jesus showed very little interest in such things.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

This is like trying to sell a priceless work of art to the one who created it. Did the devil not know that Jesus had had all authority in heaven and earth, that he had voluntarily given it up in order to enter into human nature and submit himself to our circumstances? That he wasn’t into that kind of glory, especially not at the price of worshipping the devil?
Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

So, when we stray away from the presence of God, when we go against God’s will to choose our own gratification, are we worshiping the devil? I don’t think so – that needs to be an actual intention. But it does mean we have turned our worship away from the Living God. As that theologian Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody; it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” (2018 rendition here.)

Whatever it is that is tempting us away from the Lord – a behavior, a commodity, a feeling running riot in us – in that moment it becomes the object of our worship. We don’t think of it as worship, but that’s what it is. We have placed that thing or person or condition at the center of our life and oriented ourselves around it. If it’s a really big temptation, that’s all we can see.

Thanks be to God, it’s not difficult to turn back. We need only become aware that we’ve directed our attention to an unworthy object, and turn our gaze back toward the God who loves us. An ancient word for repentance is metanoia, which suggests turning, turning away from what is less than life-giving and turning back to the Source of our life. You might ask, "WWWW?" or "Who Will We Worship?" (Wx4!)

If you go to church today for the Liturgy for Ash Wednesday, you will be invited into a lengthy and thorough confession of sin. I don’t believe any of us can avoid being snagged by at least one part of that litany. So let’s go through it aware of how we have turned toward some of these things we confess, and how they have become central.

And then let’s enact our repentance with joyful hearts, for God delights in seeing us turn back toward him, which we do, over, and over, and over again, until at last we are Home and there is no more turning to be done, for we are in God.

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3-5-19 - Hunger

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

I’m not big on fasting. I don’t like deprivation, even if it is my choice. And I never knew many people who fasted regularly until I got to know more Muslims. I am astonished at how many of my Muslim friends fast during Ramadan, even those who are not particularly observant or active the rest of the year. For thirty days, from sun-up to sundown, they refrain from eating, drinking (even water), sexual relations, gossiping. They are more attentive to prayer and hospitality and charity and the needs of people around them.

The fast Jesus took on during his forty days in the wilderness was even more stringent. We are told his fast was total, 24/7, as he prayed and did spiritual battle with the devil:

He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Why did Jesus refrain from eating? People who fast regularly find it focuses them spiritually. Yes, the hunger can be distracting, but after awhile it tends to fade and one becomes more aware of what’s happening inside. Those who fast for spiritual reasons find they become more attuned to what God is saying or doing as their focus on satisfying their appetites recedes to the background.

After forty days, though, Jesus is ravenous, and this is when the devil tries to tempt him to misuse his spiritual power to create food for himself. He approaches when he thinks Jesus is vulnerable, and starts by tempting Jesus to doubt his identity as Son of God. “If you are…”

The Tempter hasn’t changed his tactics. He still approaches us in those areas where we feel depleted or deprived, where we’re vulnerable to scarcity-thinking, where we can more easily be convinced that we deserve what we want. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing? Doesn’t God want us to be fed, even full?

Yes - and that is exactly what we need to remember in those times when we’re tempted to take what has not been given us, or to manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we don't need to look elsewhere.

We don’t have to stay hungry, but perhaps we should wait until we’re sure we are looking to God for blessing. Choosing to be hungry can be the best way to remind ourselves where our daily bread comes from. (Now go and enjoy a good pig-out at your Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper tonight!)

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3-4-19 - From River to Desert

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

On the first Sunday in Lent, we skip back to where we were the first Sunday in Epiphany, back to that Jordan River where Jesus is baptized, anointed by the Holy Spirit and affirmed by the voice of God proclaiming, “This is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit in that moment, but he doesn’t get to dwell for long in the water or the delight of his heavenly father. No, the Spirit who fills him hurries him on to the next step in his mission: a period of trial.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.

It often seems that really fruitful, beautiful times in our lives are followed by dry periods, times of trial and testing. Is this a pattern of God’s design? Are there things we can only learn in the wilderness times? Certainly the dry spells aren’t as joy-filled as those seasons when we feel ourselves alive in the current of Living Water flowing from the throne of God. But maybe they’re as important.

Later this week we will enter the season of Lent, when we might voluntarily choose desert over river, seeking to strip away some of the clutter and chatter that fill our lives and can keep us from learning to depend wholly on God. Do you feel led to give something up (social media, dessert), or take something on (a ministry of giving, a spiritual discipline)? 

My congregations have been learning and taking on spiritual practices during our Way of Love journey this Epiphany season, and there may be some you’ve been wanting to try out or incorporate. Ask the Holy Spirit, “Where are you leading me this Lent? What comfort zones or avoidance activities are you leading me away from? What practices and patterns are you leading me into?” Listen before deciding.

Of course, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness (or drove him, as Mark has it…) for a specific purpose, to be tested and tried and tempted and toughened for the mission ahead. I can’t be sure where the Spirit will have us go, but I do believe she wants us ready for action. So let’s be open to how the Spirit will prepare us for our part in God’s great mission of wholeness and reconciliation.

The river is lovely, and we'll get to come back. Now it just might be desert time.

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3-1-19 - Down With a Bump

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

After a rich and nurturing spiritual experience, it’s nice to coast on that high for awhile. I once enjoyed a retreat whose “glow” and sense of focus lasted several months. Not so for Jesus, James, John and Peter… their spiritual high on the mountain was quickly obliterated as they descended into a scene of trauma, anxiety, failure and discord.

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

The plight of the man and his son seems to have made Jesus cranky. Perhaps he was ticked off by the failure of his followers to act on the training they’d received, and exercise the faith necessary to take authority over evil. Maybe that time on the mountain in the regard of his Father, the sojourn with Moses and Elijah, made him anxious to be done with the messy business of saving humanity from itself.

It’s comforting to know that Jesus himself experienced the kind of let-down we so often do when our “regular” life intrudes upon any spiritual serenity we’ve managed to find. But regular life is where we live, not on the mountain but at its base. Jesus did not lift himself above the mess, but plunged into it, to experience it and to redeem it. And bringing his spirit into it, he restored peace.

How can we find the balance between expecting blessing, expecting to dwell in the experience of God even in the midst of ordinary days, and not base our expectations upon spiritual high points? How might we learn to cultivate the awareness of the Spirit in with and through the human mess in which we live, both for our own wellbeing and so we can bring Christ’s restoring peace into all situations?

That, one might say, is the task of the spiritual life. It is why we develop and strengthen spiritual practices that keep our faith strong and our peace pervasive, even in the most challenging and unpeaceful circumstances. We celebrate the mountaintop experiences as tremendous gifts, the memories of which sustain us in difficult times. But the most amazing gift is learning how to live in God when it seems like our prayers are not effective and no one is listening.

That’s how saints are made.

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