You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Anytime we see a “then,” or an “after,” or a “therefore” in the Bible, we need to ask what the “therefore” is there for. So it is with the gospel reading for the Liturgy of the Palms, which we will explore in Water Daily this week. The reading begins, “After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.” After he said what?
Just prior to his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus told a rather harsh parable about a man who went on a trip to gain “kingly power.” His own citizens sent him word that they did not want him as their king. On his return he sought an accounting from servants to whom he had entrusted one pound each. The first had traded successfully, yielding a ten-fold profit; the second had made five pounds. The third had buried his pound so as not to lose anything, provoking his master to take away his one pound and give it to one who’d made ten. The ending is vengeful, even violent: “I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them - bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.”
Is Jesus the man in the parable who will return with kingly power and deal with those who rejected him? That would be a hard message from the Prince of Peace – especially one who will in coming days resist all attempts to manifest a worldly show of kingship. He knows that those who want him to be king will be militant this week – and those who are disappointed that he is not the kind of king they want will turn violent. Is he subverting the whole notion of “kingship” from the very beginning of the week, riding into the city not on a steed but on a donkey, lauded not by leaders and soldiers but by children and multitudes of the ordinary?
“After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.” Jesus knows what will happen to him in Jerusalem; he’s told his followers several times: "The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem, be arrested, tried and killed. And on the third day he will rise again.”
That question, “After what?” leads us to more questions than answers – and maybe that’s not bad as we approach our own journey to Jerusalem during Holy Week. We’re not there yet. We’re still outside the city, making preparations. Maybe for us that means reflecting on any spiritual practices or activities we’ve taken up during Lent, asking how they have brought us closer to Jesus. Maybe it means looking at our calendars for next week and making sure we’ve set aside time to participate in Holy Week and Easter activities. (You can find our services, many online, here.)
I pray that exploring this story, the story before The Story, will bring us closer to Jesus this week, close enough to pet the donkey, feel the cloaks and palm branches, hear the “Hosannas!” of the crowd. We don't necessarily want to go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaits us there. Yet it is there that we are born anew. So let's go up.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. 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.
4-4-25 - It's About Jesus
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Was ever a saying of Jesus' more often misconstrued, with such devastating consequences? When Judas protests that the cost of the ointment Mary “wasted” on Jesus could have fed the poor, Jesus defends Mary: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
That one reference to the persistence of poverty has led some to a “so, why bother?” stance about remedying economic inequality. Others have gone so far as to see in those seven words a mandate for poverty, despite the full record of Jesus’ pronouncements about justice and giving. I actually heard someone quote these words and say Jesus does not want us to help the poor.
Such an interpretation makes a mockery of the Good News, which Jesus said he came to proclaim to the poor, as well as to other marginalized groups. The imperative to share our resources so that no one is in need, an ideal oft proclaimed by the prophets of Israel (and briefly achieved in the early church, according to Acts 4…) should be a driving force for Christians engaged in God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and renew all people to wholeness in Christ. In God’s realm no one is defined by how much or how little she has, but by his belovedness.
An even deeper distortion of the first seven words of that sentence can result when the second seven get ignored. That was the main point Jesus was trying to make – that his presence in human, embodied form was finite and soon to end. Those who emphasize the “social gospel” and Jesus’ love for the poor, as though he did not equally value the humanity in those with resources and privilege, can be in as great a danger of misinterpretation. It is Jesus who matters, more than his teaching and example and ministry and power. When we reduce him to “teacher” or “moral example,” "social worker” or even “healer,” we miss the most important part of his identity: Son of God, Redeemer, right here in your living room.
Mary, better than anyone else there, seemed to grasp what was happening: that Jesus, in the way they had known and come to love him, would soon be dead and gone. She alone understood that it was about him, all about Jesus, and she expressed that insight in a profoundly sacramental action.
Can we value him that much? Can we make Jesus our priority? Spend time with him, seek his counsel, ask to be filled with his Spirit, make him known among the people in need whom we encounter? I’m pretty sure that if more Christians put Jesus first, our hearts would be so transformed we could not tolerate poverty or injustice, violence or warfare. As Gandhi famously observed, if Christians were more like Christ, there would be a lot more of them. (That’s a paraphrase; the actual quote and its context can be found here.) If more Christians put Jesus first, I suspect there would be a lot more of us too.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. 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.
Was ever a saying of Jesus' more often misconstrued, with such devastating consequences? When Judas protests that the cost of the ointment Mary “wasted” on Jesus could have fed the poor, Jesus defends Mary: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
That one reference to the persistence of poverty has led some to a “so, why bother?” stance about remedying economic inequality. Others have gone so far as to see in those seven words a mandate for poverty, despite the full record of Jesus’ pronouncements about justice and giving. I actually heard someone quote these words and say Jesus does not want us to help the poor.
Such an interpretation makes a mockery of the Good News, which Jesus said he came to proclaim to the poor, as well as to other marginalized groups. The imperative to share our resources so that no one is in need, an ideal oft proclaimed by the prophets of Israel (and briefly achieved in the early church, according to Acts 4…) should be a driving force for Christians engaged in God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and renew all people to wholeness in Christ. In God’s realm no one is defined by how much or how little she has, but by his belovedness.
An even deeper distortion of the first seven words of that sentence can result when the second seven get ignored. That was the main point Jesus was trying to make – that his presence in human, embodied form was finite and soon to end. Those who emphasize the “social gospel” and Jesus’ love for the poor, as though he did not equally value the humanity in those with resources and privilege, can be in as great a danger of misinterpretation. It is Jesus who matters, more than his teaching and example and ministry and power. When we reduce him to “teacher” or “moral example,” "social worker” or even “healer,” we miss the most important part of his identity: Son of God, Redeemer, right here in your living room.
Mary, better than anyone else there, seemed to grasp what was happening: that Jesus, in the way they had known and come to love him, would soon be dead and gone. She alone understood that it was about him, all about Jesus, and she expressed that insight in a profoundly sacramental action.
Can we value him that much? Can we make Jesus our priority? Spend time with him, seek his counsel, ask to be filled with his Spirit, make him known among the people in need whom we encounter? I’m pretty sure that if more Christians put Jesus first, our hearts would be so transformed we could not tolerate poverty or injustice, violence or warfare. As Gandhi famously observed, if Christians were more like Christ, there would be a lot more of them. (That’s a paraphrase; the actual quote and its context can be found here.) If more Christians put Jesus first, I suspect there would be a lot more of us too.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. 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.
4-3-25 - Anointing
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When Mary of Bethany poured a full jar of expensive oil of nard all over Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair, she wasn’t just trying to relax him with a little aromatherapy. She was anointing him, while she still could, guessing that his time on earth was short. Nard, an essential oil derived from spikenard, a flowering plant in the Valerian family (thanks, Wikipedia…) had many uses, although, except for a reference in the Iliad to its use in perfuming a body, it does not appear to have had funerary use. The spices brought after Jesus’ crucifixion were a mixture of myrrh and aloes. Yet Jesus answers Mary’s critics with this cryptic observation: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”
The Bible relates many kinds of anointing – of priests and prophets, of kings and kings-to-be; anointing for healing; the hint of anointing in baptism; and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This act of Mary’s doesn’t fit any of those categories. And if she bought the oil for Jesus’ burial, why does she use it all now?
Knowing the danger he was in, perhaps she wanted him to feel in a tactile way the love of those who surrounded him. Perhaps she had a sense of the horrors ahead, and wanted him to have one moment of pampering. Perhaps she wanted to show the others how to give it all. Perhaps she thought the day of his burial would be too late to do him any good. And six days later, Jesus will be washing the feet of his disciples, perhaps inspired by this incident? He will let them know in a tactile way what love feels like, the love of one who lays aside his power and prerogatives for the beloved. They don’t really understand then, any more than they likely understood Mary’s gesture. But later they would.
Who in our lives needs to feel our love in that way?
Who needs us to relinquish power or privilege and give of our time, our gifts, our pride?
Maybe someone to whom we are close; maybe someone we don’t know at all.
Feet are intimate, way too much so for many people; some churches wash hands instead of feet on Maundy Thursday. That breaks my heart a little: intimacy is the point. Being met at the place of our least attractive feature is the point. Being pampered and loved – and yes, anointed – is how God makes effective saints out of ordinary people.
All it requires is submitting to love. Even Jesus did that.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. 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 Mary of Bethany poured a full jar of expensive oil of nard all over Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair, she wasn’t just trying to relax him with a little aromatherapy. She was anointing him, while she still could, guessing that his time on earth was short. Nard, an essential oil derived from spikenard, a flowering plant in the Valerian family (thanks, Wikipedia…) had many uses, although, except for a reference in the Iliad to its use in perfuming a body, it does not appear to have had funerary use. The spices brought after Jesus’ crucifixion were a mixture of myrrh and aloes. Yet Jesus answers Mary’s critics with this cryptic observation: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”
The Bible relates many kinds of anointing – of priests and prophets, of kings and kings-to-be; anointing for healing; the hint of anointing in baptism; and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This act of Mary’s doesn’t fit any of those categories. And if she bought the oil for Jesus’ burial, why does she use it all now?
Knowing the danger he was in, perhaps she wanted him to feel in a tactile way the love of those who surrounded him. Perhaps she had a sense of the horrors ahead, and wanted him to have one moment of pampering. Perhaps she wanted to show the others how to give it all. Perhaps she thought the day of his burial would be too late to do him any good. And six days later, Jesus will be washing the feet of his disciples, perhaps inspired by this incident? He will let them know in a tactile way what love feels like, the love of one who lays aside his power and prerogatives for the beloved. They don’t really understand then, any more than they likely understood Mary’s gesture. But later they would.
Who in our lives needs to feel our love in that way?
Who needs us to relinquish power or privilege and give of our time, our gifts, our pride?
Maybe someone to whom we are close; maybe someone we don’t know at all.
Feet are intimate, way too much so for many people; some churches wash hands instead of feet on Maundy Thursday. That breaks my heart a little: intimacy is the point. Being met at the place of our least attractive feature is the point. Being pampered and loved – and yes, anointed – is how God makes effective saints out of ordinary people.
All it requires is submitting to love. Even Jesus did that.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. 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.
4-2-25 - What a Waste
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I am uncomfortable with hugely generous gestures, when someone sacrifices everything to help someone else, or to serve God. I probably would have told St. Francis of Assisi, “Why don’t you leave some of it behind? Why all of it? Don’t you want a little insurance?” Everything in moderation, right? Even sacrificial giving. So I’m not in particularly nice company this week – for the person in our story who articulates this more pragmatic way of thinking about resources is none other than Judas: But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
In an aside John tells us that Judas didn’t actually care about the poor, but wanted to steal the offering for himself. How about we give him the benefit of the doubt? Maybe he actually did care about the poor, actually did care about the radical equality that Jesus was preaching, actually did want to see the Romans sent home and the revolution come to pass. To someone with economic justice on his mind, Mary’s extravagant gesture could seem an unconscionable waste of resources. Three hundred denarii’s worth of high-priced perfumed oil on one person’s feet? Stinking up the whole house?
It is outrageous, when you think about it as stewardship. It makes no sense. About as much sense as it made for God to offer up that One who was most precious to him, his only begotten Son. About as much sense as it made for that Son to take upon himself the catastrophic estrangement which was our due as those who rebelled against God; to give up his position, his dignity, his life.
One grey and rainy Good Friday I found myself in New York City’s Union Square after the three-hour Preaching of the Cross at Grace Church. Everything was dingy and dirty; everybody looked harried and downcast, me included. And I thought, “For this? You gave it all for this miserable lot? What a waste.”
Yes, what a waste; what ridiculous extravagance, to kill the Son of God so that we might be free to dwell in love with God for all eternity. As that beautiful hymn, My Song is Love Unknown, says, “Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. / Oh, who am I, that for my sake, my Lord should take frail flesh and die?”
Becoming a person who can offer it all starts with our willingness to accept that Christ has given it all for us; to accept that we are that precious to God, that God finds us worthy because God said so, not because of anything we think or do or say. Perhaps today we might meditate on that extravagant, profligate, wasteful, over-the-top love lavished upon us, try to let it soak into our bones, into our spirits, into all the dents the world’s “no’s” have left in us. You are loved, beyond measure, beyond sense. Deal with it!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
I am uncomfortable with hugely generous gestures, when someone sacrifices everything to help someone else, or to serve God. I probably would have told St. Francis of Assisi, “Why don’t you leave some of it behind? Why all of it? Don’t you want a little insurance?” Everything in moderation, right? Even sacrificial giving. So I’m not in particularly nice company this week – for the person in our story who articulates this more pragmatic way of thinking about resources is none other than Judas: But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
In an aside John tells us that Judas didn’t actually care about the poor, but wanted to steal the offering for himself. How about we give him the benefit of the doubt? Maybe he actually did care about the poor, actually did care about the radical equality that Jesus was preaching, actually did want to see the Romans sent home and the revolution come to pass. To someone with economic justice on his mind, Mary’s extravagant gesture could seem an unconscionable waste of resources. Three hundred denarii’s worth of high-priced perfumed oil on one person’s feet? Stinking up the whole house?
It is outrageous, when you think about it as stewardship. It makes no sense. About as much sense as it made for God to offer up that One who was most precious to him, his only begotten Son. About as much sense as it made for that Son to take upon himself the catastrophic estrangement which was our due as those who rebelled against God; to give up his position, his dignity, his life.
One grey and rainy Good Friday I found myself in New York City’s Union Square after the three-hour Preaching of the Cross at Grace Church. Everything was dingy and dirty; everybody looked harried and downcast, me included. And I thought, “For this? You gave it all for this miserable lot? What a waste.”
Yes, what a waste; what ridiculous extravagance, to kill the Son of God so that we might be free to dwell in love with God for all eternity. As that beautiful hymn, My Song is Love Unknown, says, “Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. / Oh, who am I, that for my sake, my Lord should take frail flesh and die?”
Becoming a person who can offer it all starts with our willingness to accept that Christ has given it all for us; to accept that we are that precious to God, that God finds us worthy because God said so, not because of anything we think or do or say. Perhaps today we might meditate on that extravagant, profligate, wasteful, over-the-top love lavished upon us, try to let it soak into our bones, into our spirits, into all the dents the world’s “no’s” have left in us. You are loved, beyond measure, beyond sense. Deal with it!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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