2-20-26 - Devils Flee

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

“Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

There’s nothing like getting to the finish line, is there? Whether we’re running a race or finishing chemo or turning in a final paper – to suddenly have the pressure lifted, know we’ve survived, be able to let down our guard, rest, recharge – it’s a wonderful feeling. So Jesus comes to the end of his trial period, knowing he’s prevailed. Matthew says angels came and waited upon him.

The presence of angels reminds us of the level of cosmic entity we’re dealing with when we talk about the devil. The New Testament is unequivocal about his existence, as was the early church, as are our Anglican baptismal rites. But the Christian tradition has never considered the devil as God’s equal – he is among a sub-order of angelic beings. The devil is described in the Bible as a fallen angel, who turned against God in pride and rebellion; a tempter always seeking to draw humans away from God; the Accuser; and the Father of Lies. The label I like best is "The Enemy of Human Nature."

Early Christian thinkers held that evil is the absence of good – evil is what you get where God is not. And the source of evil, in the Christian worldview, is the devil, or Satan. C.S. Lewis once said, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

Martin Luther likewise had a strategy, “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” (He also said, “The best thing you can do is rap the Devil on the nose at the very start. Act like that man who, whenever his wife began to nag and snap at him, drew out his flute from under his belt and played merrily until she was exhausted and let him alone.” Must have been interesting in the Luther home!)

Because we assert that Christ has overcome the devil, we don’t have to be afraid. Alert and wary, yes, about one who seeks to corrupt and harm us, but not so much that we give him attention we might better direct to God. As with a poisonous snake, you want to avoid its bite, yet also know how to deal with its venom. We have been given the antidote – the love and forgiveness of the Father; the comfort and advocacy of the Holy Spirit; the power of Christ in us.

In prayer today, we might simply thank God for providing us protection from this ancient enemy. If you ever feel threatened, pray your way through Ephesians 6, putting on the full armor of God. It was always God’s fight, not ours, and Jesus has won it. As Luther also wrote, in the great hymn A Mighty Fortress:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us.

We will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; 

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; One little Word shall fell him.

That Word is Jesus, the name that frightened demons back to hell. It is the only defense we need, whenever we feel ourselves under spiritual attack. The name of Jesus, who lives in us. He is still winning.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.

2-19-26 - Power

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

Who has more real power – the emperor or the counselor? The president or the chief of staff? The CEO or the COO? In the third temptation Jesus faces, the devil is willing to put him in charge of all the kingdoms of the world – as long as he acknowledges him as the real power behind the scenes: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’"

This has always struck me as a really dumb temptation – didn’t the devil know that Jesus had no interest in temporal power? Of course, this Jesus, in whom more divine power resided than the world had ever seen in a human being, was even less interested than most in world domination. He cared more about demonstrating the power to be gained in giving away our prerogatives.

There are at least three ways to wield power – there’s “power over,” when we have dominion over others, and use it to control them. There’s “power under,” the indirect, passive aggressive power seized by those who use their sacrifices and victimhood to try to control others. And then there’s the kind of power Jesus wielded, what I would call “power with.” This comes from a true sense of who we are, joined with an awareness of the power of God alive in us, so that we use power in a way that empowers others.

As we read the Gospels, we see Jesus constantly empowering people who had been robbed of power, whether by the Romans, by the religious authorities, by illness or prejudice or poverty. This was ultimately what made him such a threat to those who thought they had power over him. It’s what makes him such a threat to the Evil One – because Jesus is still alive, still in the business of empowering us. And empowered, we can resist evil.

When you look at your life, what kind of power is most often at play in your relationships, in your work, in your health?

• Are there things and people you’d like to dominate?
• Are there things and people whom you feel have power over you? Neither is a good position to be in.
• Are there ways you employ “power with” in a way that allows you to be true to yourself, true to God, and empowers others to be the same?

This is part of what it means to participate in God’s mission to bring wholeness to the world. When everyone exercises “power with,” the power of God overwhelms the power of evil. That old devil really never had a chance.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.

2-18-26 - Security

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

On the face of it, this devil’s bargain is for the birds:
Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Who on earth would toss himself off a high tower to see if God will protect him? Yet don’t we often take lesser risks with big consequences? “Sure, cancer and smoking are highly related, but it won’t get me…” “Sure, the doctor said if I keep on getting fries with everything I’m headed for quadruple bypass, but what I eat today is okay…” Or, “Sure, pesticides kill bees and birds and marine wildlife, threatening the worldwide food supply, but it won't hurt if I treat my lawn…”

Feeling safe and protected is important to most of us. Yet the further away dangerous consequences are, the more risks we seem to take. Is this one of the ways we fall prey to the temptations of the Enemy? Maybe… Christian belief says that the devil desires to draw us away from the love of God. Often God is the first one we blame when bad things happen, because we forget human complicity, and because we may believe we have an unspoken contract with God guaranteeing our safety. Dig yours out of the file and check it – God never signed it. God promises us presence and power and peace in all circumstances, not protection.

I understand how facile this can sound if we think of people in Ukraine or Gaza or Sudan – or Minneapolis – and I don’t wish to undervalue the very real desire for life and safety. I share it. I’m just trying to remember there’s a bigger story. When security becomes our objective, we often try to get it for ourselves, turning away from God’s provision. And why not, if God hasn’t promised to protect us?

Well, because we gain a deeper gift in the relationship when we decide to trust God with all that we cannot control. This temptation the devil poses to Jesus is really about trying to control our circumstances. What do you most need to control? Can you in prayer today entrust – to the extent you’re able – the people and things you value most to God’s care, knowing you can’t keep them safe from everything, and trusting in God’s love? See how far you can extend your trust today, and then see if you can stretch a little further in ceding control tomorrow.

As we claim the fullness of our identities as beloved of God and chosen in Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, we can move past a focus on security and live from an eternal perspective. From that vantage point, though what happens in this life matters a great deal, and when others are hurt, we hurt, we also see that this life is not the end of all things. Rather, for Christ followers, it is the beginning, the training zone, the love lesson.

That perspective doesn’t change our circumstances; it transforms the way we live them. Not a bad reminder on a day when many of us will hear the words, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.

2-17-26 - Hunger

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

What were the temptations that Jesus faced in the desert? This year we hear Matthew’s version, which begins simply: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” Ya think?

After Jesus has spent over a month fasting and praying, and perhaps fending off temptations we don’t know about, the devil brings on the big guns. He begins with the most obvious area of need – physical hunger: The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Jesus did not refuse because he wasn’t hungry, nor because his power was limited – at other times, he readily commands molecules, plants and animals. I believe he was unwilling to employ the power he possessed on a party trick or to prove his identity. That power in him – which, by faith, is also in us, when we but trust it – is connected to the will of the Father. Maybe Jesus was unwilling to try to bend the will of God to this end for an audience and purpose so unworthy of it.

Once again, the temptation begins with an attempt to undermine the target’s sense of self: “If you are the Son of God…” Jesus is too smart to fall for it. We aren’t always so confident. If we remembered who we are, and whose we are as beloved children of the Living God, we might not be so prone to taking matters into our own hands or falling into patterns destructive to ourselves and others.

Our appetites are an area in which we are most vulnerable to making choices that are not life-giving. Today let’s take stock of how our perceived need for some things can become distorted and cause us to turn away from the Life of God and toward things we think will fill us. In "some things” I include food, alcohol, sex, work, power, screen time, relationships, affirmation, productivity, accomplishment – even exercise can become excessive if our motives are unhealthy.

It’s not the “what,” or even the “how much,” so much as “why do I need this,” and “how much of my energy goes into craving this, securing it, consuming it.” If this is an area of distorted need in our lives, we can feel somewhat empty as soon as we've finished that cycle.

How do we interrupt the cycle when it hits us? We might use Jesus’ words, substituting our need in the blank: “One does not live by alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We might ask the Holy Spirit to fill us with God’s presence so we don’t hunger for things that can’t fill us. We might ask Jesus to sit with us and give us his peace until temptation subsides..

This may not be a welcome suggestion on a day when many of us will gorge on pancakes at church, but perhaps tomorrow might we even dare to sit with our hunger or desire or need and not rush to fill that empty place? It's important to feel the feelings that come from that emptiness. Certainly our Good News tells us that God shows up in empty spaces in pretty amazing ways.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.

2-16-26 - Temptation

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

The first Sunday in Lent is nearly upon us – time for the story of Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. This event comes on the heels of Jesus’ baptism, and is presented as a necessary step as he prepares for his mission to reconcile humanity to the God from whom we had become estranged, and to make known to the world God's power and love. Why was Jesus led by the Spirit into the desert? Did he need to know his adversary? Did he need toughening up? Did the Son of God have to prove his sinlessness? Whatever the objective, this was not a retreat; he went to be tested.

We’ll get into Jesus’ forays with the tempter as the week progresses. Today, let’s talk about temptation itself. How does it work, and why are we vulnerable to it? Our tradition has a “root story” to explain it, the story of First Man and First Woman in the Garden of Eden.  In this ancient mythic story woven to explain the disconnect between Creator and creation, we see some classic temptation tricks wielded to great effect:

• Divide and conquer. The tempter doesn’t approach both humans – he starts with the woman.
• Distort reality. The serpent asks the woman, “Did God say not to eat of any tree?,” when God had said they could eat of every tree, except one.
• Undermine your target’s sense of identity. When the serpent contradicts God’s instructions, he causes the woman to question God’s goodness and authority, and her place in that relationship.
• Make disobedience appealing – Chances are, they wouldn’t have flouted God’s instructions for a wormy, overripe piece of fruit.
• Get an accomplice. The woman is quick to invite the man to join her transgression, and he puts up no fight.

This is pretty much how temptation works, in our lives - and in advertising. If we want to stay grounded in the goodness and love we are offered as children of God and followers of Christ, we need to get hip to the wiles of the evil one and say, “No thanks,” when temptation comes along. Of course, that's over-simplified; sometimes the temptation seems to originate in our own hearts and minds. That’s a mystery for another day – and for the rest of our lives.

Today, how about we think through the last time we submitted to temptation to do or say something that was not in our best interest or harmful to another, whether it was consuming more than we needed, or passing along a tidbit of gossip, or indulging in some judgment about someone. Break down the process if you can, and see where you might tighten your defenses. And think of a time when you resisted and stayed true to yourself and to God.

The point of this exercise is not to feel bad about ourselves – we are vulnerable because we are alive and have been given the gift of free will, to choose and choose again. Reflection can help us become more aware of how temptation works on us, so we are able to develop strategies for resisting it.

At Jesus’ baptism, he heard God’s voice proclaim, “This is my son, whom I love.” Our best strategy is to remember that we are beloved of God, and that God doesn’t turn away from us no matter how often we stumble. God’s forgiveness and mercy abound. That’s the best defense of all.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. 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.

3-7-25 - Round 1

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, slithery, humanoid 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 and even dares 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 we do know that Jesus saw much of his work of healing, forgiveness and deliverance as setting people free from the power of Satan. So one can imagine his enemy would have been riled up.

But what about us? Do we need to worry about the devil – in whom many modern Christians profess not even to believe? I am ever challenged by the disjuncture between our doctrinal assertion that Jesus has vanquished the devil, and evil’s seemingly unfettered destructive power so widespread 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. (Another reason to pray for our enemies!) If God has given human beings the free will to choose, that must mean 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, the enemy of human nature continues to snap at the heels of God’s beloved, and often to dominate those who say they believe in nothing. We should be aware of the choices beneath the choices of our actions. And we can ever pray, as I do fairly constantly these days, “Deliver us from evil.” 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, or 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 know and believe that, the less foothold the devil has in this world. There’s another reason to share our faith.

© 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.

3-6-25 - Security

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. But, other than Psalm 91, 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 made any such deal with us. What the devil is doing here 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 do we continue to pray for protection? And 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 quite 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, and rest, and play?

Lent is a great time to examine where in our lives we put the Lord 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; I feel acutely at risk these days, despite the protections my privileges afford me. I will continue to pray for physical protection for me and those I love, and for total strangers like the thousands facing deportation, the millions suffering as US AID and domestic grants have been frozen, the refugees barred from safe harbor here, the wildlife and increasingly scarce wild places facing ruin.

And I intend to watch for 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, power, and peace that defies understanding. Those we can count on.

© 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.

3-5-25 - Worship

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


They say in advertising it’s 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 somebody a priceless work of art they had donated in the first place. Did the devil did 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 condition? He wasn’t interested in that kind of glory, especially not at the price of worshipping the enemy of human nature. Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Does this suggest that when we stray from the presence of God, when we go against God’s will and choose our own gratification, that we are worshiping the devil? No – but it does mean we have turned our worship away from the Living God. Whatever it is that tempts us away from the Lord – whether a behavior, or a commodity, or letting a feeling run riot in us – in that moment that 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 big temptation, it becomes all we can see.

Thanks be to God, it’s not difficult to turn back. We need only become aware that we’ve turned our attention to an unworthy object, and redirect our gaze back toward the God who loves us. The Greek 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. Worship means worth-ship – ascribing worth to someone or something. When we turn back to God, we once again ascribe all worth to God.

If you go to church today for the Liturgy for Ash Wednesday, you will be invited into a lengthy and thorough confession of sin and repentance. No one 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 see how they've become central.

And let’s enact this 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. A blessed Ash Wednesday to you.

© 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.

3-4-25 - Hunger

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

It is ironic to talk about hunger on a day when many of us will stuff ourselves with pancakes and all the fixings at our Shrove Tuesday suppers. I confess I'm not big on fasting or deprivation of any kind. I never knew anyone who fasted regularly until I got to know more Muslims. I am amazed at how many of my Muslim friends fast during Ramadan, even those who aren’t particularly observant or active the rest of the year. For thirty days, from sun-up to sundown, they refrain from eating, drinking, even water, having sex, gossiping. They are more attentive to prayer and hospitality and charity and the needs of people around them. It’s extraordinary how normative it is for many Muslims.

The fast Jesus took on during his forty days in the wilderness was even more stringent. We’re told he 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 a while it fades and one becomes more aware of what’s happening around us and inside us. Those who fast for spiritual reasons find they become more attuned to what God is saying or doing as their focus on feeding their appetites recedes.

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…” Guess what? 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 be more easily convinced that we deserve to be full. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing? Why should we want for anything?

Yes, God is – 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 more than is good for us, or manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we need not look elsewhere.

We don’t have to stay hungry, but we thrive best when we look to God for blessing. Sometimes being hungry is the best way to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not.

© 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.

3-3-25 - 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 immediately 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 so often seems that really fruitful, beautiful times in our lives are followed by seasons 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 times aren’t as joy-filled as those seasons when we feel ourselves to be in the flow of the Living Water flowing from the throne of God. But maybe they’re as important.

Later this week we will enter the season of Lent, a season when we often 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. Sometimes we give things up in order to listen better or focus more; sometimes we take things on. I am inviting my congregations to take on the spiritual practice of Sabbath-keeping – enjoying one unproductive day of rest and peace out of the seven we get each week. You might consider joining us, or ask, “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?”

Of course, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness for a specific purpose, to be tested and tried and tempted and strengthened for the mission ahead. I can’t be sure where the Spirit would have us go, but I do believe s/he 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 maybe it's wilderness time.

© 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.

3-14-24 - Glorified

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

I've always been puzzled by the idea of “glorifying God.” You can’t get any more glorified than the maker of the universe, right? So what does it mean to glorify God? And what did Jesus mean when, dreading the pain and death that was ahead for him, he trades the prayer, “Father, save me from this hour” for “Father, glorify your name?”

“Glorification” is not a word we use much nowadays – and when we do, it tends to be hyphenated after the word “self.” A quick google search on “glorify” elicits several sets of definitions, each of which include two slants on the word. One meaning is to praise, or to act in such a way as to make manifest the glory of God. The other meaning is nearly opposite – it appears the word “glorify” has become associated with attempts to garner praise or affirmation when it is not justified.

I’m pretty sure Jesus meant the first definition. But he doesn’t say he is going to glorify God – rather he says to God, “Father, glorify your name.” God is to glorify himself – and if we take Jesus as our model, it seems that the way God glorifies himself is through the actions of faithful men and women laying down their privileges and prerogatives, even their self-interest, for the sake of others.

This is not how we tend to think about glory! But then, at the very heart of our Christian story is a Master washing the filthy feet of his followers to demonstrate what their ministry was to look like. And one day later we see that same King naked, caked with muck and blood, suffocating on a cross, abandoned and humiliated. That, the Gospel of John suggests, is his moment of greatest glory. That is when the Father is most glorified in the Son.

That heavenly Father answered Jesus’ prayer: “Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’” It is a voice of affirmation and reminder to Jesus that he is walking in his Father’s will, living out the fullness of God’s mission to restore and redeem all of creation. Perhaps it kept him going in the dark and tense days ahead.

As followers, imitators of Christ, how can we best glorify the God who made us, loves us, empowers and nurtures us? Where are we called to lay down our privileges and prerogatives, even at cost to ourselves? Sometimes we can discern that best by noticing when and where we do not want to serve or humble ourselves. Sometimes that is exactly where God is calling us to allow Him to work through us.

And never forget it is God who will work through us. We can’t glorify God if we’re cut off from God. Just as a flower in bloom brings glory to the plant of which it is a part, so we bring glory to God as a part of God. If we don’t know exactly how to glorify God, we can allow God to glorify himself through us. Jesus did.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-29-24 - Other Temples

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

The temple complex where Jesus cast out purveyors of sacrificial animals and turned the tables on money changers was the second one since King Solomon's splendid edifice. Foreign powers overrunning your small nation can be hard on the architecture. The plans for this rebuild must have been ambitious, for at this point it is decades into construction and still not finished.

The temple leaders did not eject Jesus after his scene. But they sure had a few questions for him: “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The leaders then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

It’s an audacious challenge Jesus lays down – and a safe bet, as there’s no way they would have risked harming the temple. (Within forty or so years, the Romans would demolish it.) The leaders take his words literally – “You’re going to raise it up in three days?” But our narrator tells us what Jesus apparently does not tell his interlocutors, that he’s not talking about the bricks and mortar in which God was said to dwell on earth. He is talking about the fullest revelation of God on earth – himself, the Son of God, made human flesh and yet containing the fullness of the Godhead.

During his time on this earth, Jesus was this living temple, Emmanu-el, God with us, mediating the presence of God to those who drew near. That’s where his power to heal and teach and forgive came from, God in him. That’s why he was so threatening to those who held power. They couldn’t put their finger on why he was so unsettling – it was God in him. That’s a pretty scary force.

But God’s plan was even bigger. Jesus told his followers that after his ascension God would send his Holy Spirit upon all flesh; that happened at Pentecost. Now anyone who believes that Jesus is Lord becomes a temple in which God’s presence is made known to the world - not little “gods,” but vessels of the one true God. That’s why Paul exhorts us to honor our bodies and treat them with holy reverence – because our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Wow.

Does it feel like God’s presence is powerfully present in us? Do we feel like temples? We are also vessels of accumulated detritus that has nothing holy about it, that in fact can obscure the holy in us. The work of the spiritual life is to become aware of, name, and transform everything in us that is not holy, and to become aware of, name and lift up all that is. Gradually the God-Life in us becomes more and more apparent and the natural, passing-away life dims.

How might we become more conscious of our “temple-dom?” Like any spiritual practice, we can develop this with, yes, practice. Sow reminders into your day – when you eat something healthy, when you take a rest, when you stop and pray, when you offer a kind word. “Oh yeah – I am God’s temple.” We can also remind each other, when we make choices that are destructive or not life-giving – “Hey, remember, the Spirit of God wants to hang out in you.”

There are those who await a third temple to be built as a sign of God’s reign breaking out. The third temple is already here. Christ-followers can see that it every time we look at one another, for God’s reign has already broken out and we are helping it spread.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-23-24 - Holy Emptiness

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

You have to embrace paradox if you’re going to be a Christian. Our more fundamentalist brethren seem to have difficulty with paradox and nuance, and so twist themselves and the Word of God into pretzels trying to unify it in a linear, rational way. It won’t work. Just ask Nicodemus, whom Jesus told the Kingdom of God was truly knowable by spirit only, not by intellect alone. The very effort to understand circles as squares takes us further and further away from the Truth, whom we know as Jesus, the master of the paradox.

Here he is again, telling his followers about the cost of being his disciple. They must be prepared to deny themselves, take up their cross – a metaphor for complete helplessness, though in Jesus’ case, much more than a metaphor – and follow him. There’s no room in the suitcase for self-preservation: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

How we interpret this hinges on our definition of “life.” If it’s just about breathing, this makes little sense. What person in their right mind would want to lose their physical life before it’s time? If by “life,” however, Jesus means the rich web of interaction and consciousness we call existence, then we might see how a willingness to let go of “the whole world” could make us more receptive to the Life of God, a life beyond what we can make for ourselves.

It is a matter of emptying ourselves and allowing ourselves to filled with God’s power, God’s love, God’s purpose. I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about empty. I do a lot of filling… my time, my to-do list, my conscious attention, just to avoid confronting the emptiness inside. And yet that emptiness is where God can show up most powerfully, if we will allow the space to develop and not rush to fill it.

What does it mean to you to “gain the whole world?” Another way of asking that is, what are you the most afraid of losing, of getting taken away from you? That’s the place to start in prayer, asking the Spirit to show us why we’re so attached to that thing or person or status. Ask God to help us loosen our grip, to feel the feelings that come up when we think about emptying ourselves of that. Ask Jesus what it looks like to “lose your life” in this world – and to gain the life that truly is Life.

A holy body suddenly filling an empty womb. The inexplicable absence of a body filling an empty tomb. From birth to death and beyond, Jesus’ life was one of God showing up in emptiness. As Paul wrote, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are." (I Cor 1:27-29)

Can we give up our lives – all the “stuff” that we fill our minds and bodies with, and see what God might do with our emptiness if we offer God the space?

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

LENTEN RETREAT MORNING SATURDAY MARCH 2!



Register here by February 26!

2-22-24 - Losing Our Self

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

Sometimes I wish Christianity could loosen its association with self-denial. That emphasis misses so much of the Good News – the life-affirming, “…and God saw that it was good,” “God is love,” “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” “The Kingdom is now!” elements of the faith we proclaim.

On the other hand, we lose the essence if we stress only that happy stuff and ignore the sin and redemption, cross and glory parts of the story. If we’re going to be faithful to what Jesus taught and lived, we can’t just pull out this thread and hope to retain a coherent picture in our tapestry. This thread is woven into everything, the wholeness of what we proclaim Jesus did for us. Certainly, he said it often enough: 

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."

What does Jesus mean by “deny yourself.” For many, this phrase connotes ascetism, doing away with comfort and frivolity and things that feel good. It’s hair shirts and pinched faces, dull clothing and hard work on behalf of others. It’s all vegetables and no chocolate. To quote a line from one of my favorite movies, Cold Comfort Farm, said in a sermon given to a sect of “quiverers, “There’ll be no butter in hell!” (Watch Ian McKellan’s masterful performance of that scene here; it’s a very fun movie!)

What if, rather than focus on behavior and consumption, we redefine self-denial as cultivating an orientation toward others and toward God? Denying self means laying aside our own prerogatives, our gratification, our convenience, our ego strokes, and giving our selves away to help others grow in faith. Of course, the phrase, “Giving our selves away” could seem to promote doormat-ship, a masochistic willingness to do for others until there’s nothing left of us. Certainly we’ve all known people like that – or been people like that.

But try this on for size: What if the “self” that Jesus suggests we lose is the one that is passing away in the first place, the natural human self before it becomes joined with the Spirit of the Living God? That self was never going to be robust enough to move us through life and into eternity. When we give our “selves” away for the Gospel, in the power and love of Christ, we become more fully our truest selves. Whatever we need from what we lay down will come back to us in a form we can use, as we allow God's Spirit to transform us.

Is that risky? Sure. Jesus demonstrated just how risky, as he laid down his life in this world all the way to death. That will not be the call for most of us. But anytime we give up something, a voice inside – and often outside – says, “You’re going to need that! Don’t give it up.” It takes faith and trust to put aside our own agendas and live a path that seeks to bring life to others, that seeks to allow God’s life to take up ever more space in us.

In what ways do you feel called to put aside your self, your prerogatives or agenda? Think of times you’ve done so successfully. Did you feel like a chump, or did you feel God’s pleasure as you saw someone else thrive? What is your response to Jesus today when he says to deny yourself? I believe we will experience that, far from a pinched and parched asceticism, denying ourselves is the most joyful thing we ever do.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-19-24 - You Call This Good News?

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

The term “ Good News,” which is what “Gospel” means, is all over the New Testament. But do we find the “news” about Jesus Christ being the risen Son of God all that new (come on, 2,000 years?), or all that “good” in the “Wow! Yippee!” way we associate with “good news?” God’s promise of eternal life is not one we hope to collect on any time soon; God’s promise of forgiveness is great, on days we’re willing to acknowledge how much we need it. But if we’ve been in the church awhile, we know too much.

We know that following Christ does not make for an easier life. We know it’s no picnic – at least not the kind of picnic we’d choose; more like the picnic described in Psalm 23 – “You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.” Gee, thanks, God. I'll take the ants.

Jesus’ original band of followers discovered just how mixed this “Good News” was to be when Jesus started talking about what was going to happen to him. He did not mince words: Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.

We’ll see later how this message went over with Peter. I doubt any of them liked it. They had given up a lot to follow Jesus – homes, jobs, reputations. And up until now they had seen one healing and brilliant teaching and miracle after another. Why would Jesus predict such dire events when everything was going so well?

The disciples were being asked to adjust their vision of what God was up to, as are we. We live on the far side of the events Jesus predicted, so far beyond them we have to re-enact them each year. We don’t experience the fear and protectiveness the disciples did; Jesus is not going to die again. But we too must continually adjust our vision of what God is up to, and what the Good News means.

That can be easier to grasp if we look at what it does not mean. It does not mean success, financial or vocational or any other kind we crave as human beings. We might be blessed with success in many areas of life, but let’s not confuse that with the Gospel. Even harder for many to accept, the "Good News" does not mean security or safety, for us or for our loved ones. It does not mean serenity and never-ending joy and love, at least not in this life.

It does mean what it meant from the beginning: Emmanuel, God With Us. In all circumstances. It does mean New Life – resurrection, that what we think are endings are never final because God always has the last word, and God’s Word is Life. God’s Word is Jesus the Christ.

And it does mean that all those things we cannot change can be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we invite the Spirit in. She seems to wait for our invitation – but boy, when we invoke the power of God, things become redeemed, transformed, made new in ways we cannot imagine.

In what ways has the “Good News” seemed less than good to you? Where would you like to see some transforming power at work, in the world and in your life? Invite the Spirit of God into that situation. Envision changed lives. Even picnics with our enemies are good news, if it means we become friends. That’s the Good News in action.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

Register here by February 26!

2-16-24 - Repent and Believe

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

When Jesus had finished his forty-day trial, he commenced his mission: Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

That one sentence contains everything we need to focus on during Lent – and the rest of our lives as Christ-followers. We are to live in the Already – the time is fulfilled! We are to proclaim the Good News that the Life of God has come near. We are to repent of the ways we fail to live in the fullness of that message, and we are to believe in the Good News. Live it, proclaim it, repent, and believe it.

Ash Wednesday is kind of a threshold to lead us into Lent. Lent too is a threshold, an antechamber if you will, into the greater mystery and promise of Easter life. And the life we inhabit in this world, embodied, governed by time and the laws of nature – this life is itself a threshold, a foyer, an antechamber into the Life we will enjoy with God for eternity. That’s our Good News, that that Life begins here and now, in this life, as we open ourselves to it.

Okay, but why, if we’re to focus on life, do we need to bother with the “downer” of repentance? Because big parts of us are not on board with entering that Life God invites us into. We fear too much will be asked of us, it's too hard to pin down, we can't see it. And the point of repentance is not to feel bad about ourselves. Repentance is about inviting our whole selves to join into the movement toward God.

And why stress believing? Because we’re more convincing when we talk about things we believe in. There is always room in belief for questions and doubts – but we don't have to make up a bed and invite them to settle in.

No one can get another person to put God first. All we can do is call out from our own place on the path, “Hey, the view’s pretty good over here. Come walk with me a ways.” That’s why clergy want their congregants to participate in everything, all the time – not to make us feel good, but because we’ve found satisfaction in shifting our center God-ward and we want that for everyone.

Lent is a time to walk intentionally so that we might find our center shifting… and then we’ll want to stay on that path all the way to its End.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-15-24 - Wild Beasts and Angels

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

Ash Wednesday behind us, we return to our gospel passage for Sunday, focusing on the two sentences about Jesus’ forty days of testing in the wilderness. Mark may be short on information about the actual temptations Jesus faced, but he does include an odd detail: “He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Wild beasts and angels: two kinds of creatures over which human beings have no control. Was that part of Jesus’ trial? To have to rely on help he couldn’t control, to get used to a ministry in which he would always have to depend on others for basic sustenance? Or are wild beasts and angels two kinds of creatures who recognized Jesus’ authority and helped him out? Mark doesn’t tell us. Mark doesn’t even tell us that Jesus fasted – Matthew and Luke throw that in. Maybe Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness was not so much about withstanding deprivation as boot camp for the spirit.

This line evokes stories about the prophet Elijah, who during his time on the lam from the wicked Queen Jezebel was fed by angels, and another time was fed by ravens. Is Mark drawing a parallel to Jesus as the new Elijah? I envision a beautiful wolf and a chipmunk and maybe an owl hanging out with Jesus, with tray-carrying angels hovering around. God’s prophets have it hard, but God provides.

Today we are fully in the season of Lent. We’ve crossed the threshold of Ash Wednesday and now make our first foray into whatever wilderness is drawing us. Let’s keep our eyes out for “wild beasts” – companions who may at first seem scary, but might have gifts for us. These “wild beasts” may be other people, ambitious callings, wrestlings with failure. They may come from inside us, what Jungians would call our "shadow” parts, even buried or wounded parts that are calling us to look, notice, welcome, re-integrate. Making changes in our daily life, allowing more silence or space, can invite these parts of us out of hiding. If we can bear with the discomfort their presence elicits, we might be able to receive their gifts and experience some healing.

And let’s stay tuned to the presence of angels bearing the gifts we need to most fully benefit from this Lenten sojourn. We do not do this work of growing in God alone.

Some indigenous American cultures teach that when one encounters a wild creature, it has a message for us. I pray we experience some wildness this Lent, within and without, and just enough angelic waiters, as we wait upon the Spirit.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-13-24 - Of Pancakes and Fasting

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

“Tempted” is a loaded word, and can have associations beyond what Biblical translators may have meant. When we read that Jesus was “in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan,” we may imagine him out there with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit Issue, or faced with the loaded buffet tables I encounter at my churches’ annual meetings. Since Mark, unlike Luke and Matthew, includes no details about the nature of these temptations, our imaginations have free rein.

The other Gospels explain that Jesus faced temptations more cosmic than venial; not so much garden variety sin as being tempted to misuse – or relinquish – his divine nature. Perhaps a more useful word for what happened to Jesus in that wilderness is that he was tested. His faith in the unseen power he had received was tested. His trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit was tested. His commitment to the mission for which he had come into human life was tested.

Thinking of Jesus' humanity, imagine how bewildering all the experiences related in the gospels must have been for him. Many of us have a sense of mission. But how does a human embrace the mission we believe Jesus had, to break the hold of sin and death on humankind, to release the cosmos from the grip of evil – and not be daily wracked by questions and doubts?

Perhaps this is why the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, to test his confidence in his identity until he could withstand such doubts, whether they came from within or from others. Jesus could not have exercised the ministry the gospels describe were he not able to return time and again to his solid center as beloved, his sure knowledge of his Father’s love and power flowing through him. Indeed, faith in Jesus could not have spread so far and endured for so long had he not maintained that center to the grave and beyond.

What if we look at Lent as a forty-day period of testing rather than temptation? Do we really need to know we can resist chocolate or wine, or that we can sustain a spiritual discipline for six weeks? Wouldn’t we be better off, more joyful followers, more effective apostles if we knew our faith and sense of mission to be bearers of Christ could withstand the arrows of scheduling, convenience, complacency, embarrassment, priorities and their like?

We don’t have to go to the wilderness looking for testing. Life hands it to us (and I’m not even talking about tonight’s Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, all pancakes and no shriving.) Every time we are tempted to allow an item on our to-do list to co-opt time we had planned to spend in quiet prayer; every time a friend or family member tries to talk us out of investing in our spiritual life; every time we are tempted to look at an area of pain or disease and agree with the world that God has no power there… such are the tests that come our way.

How has your faith or your commitment to God in Christ been tested lately? How might you respond differently? We may need to become more aware of the tests themselves, and then how to resist.

We can always call on the power of Jesus to help us and re-center us. After all, Hebrews 4:15 tells us that he was “tempted in every way as we are, yet he did not sin.” That means he did not give in to other demands or to what the devil told him was “reality.” With his Spirit in us, we can withstand those darts too.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-12-24 - Desert Time

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

Thirty years living at home, presumably apprenticed to his father’s carpentry trade, settled into the rhythms of small town life – work, meals, rest, punctuated by weddings and funerals and festivals… we know nothing about the longest part of Jesus’ earthly life. It was probably uneventful, the imaginative exertions of some novelists notwithstanding. Did he have friends? Girlfriends? Why didn’t he marry?

And then, suddenly, at the age of 30 he is activated, like a member of some sleeper cell who gets the cue to commence his mission. Did he ever know an “ordinary” day after that? Certainly the beginning of his ministry is marked by the highest possible affirmation followed by forty days of trial: In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

Immediately. No resting in the spiritual high of the anointing, the voice from heaven, the assurance of belovedness before embarking on a process of emptying himself. This Holy Spirit had no sooner anointed him than it drove him away from everything that sustains a human being, to be tested in a setting of deprivation and danger.

It can be like that for us. A time of felt spiritual connection may last days, weeks, even months – and then it seems like the line went dead, or we’re going through motions and rituals that used to bring us closer to God but now leave us empty. The literature of Christian saints and mystics tells that story over and over – “What happened, God? You were right here, and now it seems you’ve gone away.” Among the most eloquent was St. Theresa of Avila, writing about the loss of what she called the “consolations” God gave her. In our own day, we have the testimony of another Teresa, of Calcutta, who wrote that she experienced the absence of God much more than moments of connection.

When we are enjoying a time of spiritual engagement, we can bask in it and allow God to fill us, the way animals squirrel away food for times of hunger. In our connected times, we don’t need to think about the wilderness. But when we find ourselves in more desolate spaces, let’s remember this is also part of the deal. It’s not an aberration, only another way in which we can open ourselves to receive more of God’s life. (Desert Song explores these different states, affirming that in every season, God is still God.)

We are about to embark upon a six-week season in which we invite desert time into our lives. Some years that matches where we are spiritually and other years it doesn’t. That’s why I’m more keen on taking on spiritual practices than giving up comforts during Lent. How are you feeling about your relationship with God going into Lent? Are you already in a "dry" place, or feeling the flow of Spirit? What spiritual practices might you take on to grow toward God?

Whatever you choose to do this Lent, which begins Wednesday, remember that Jesus in the wilderness was still “my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Wherever you find yourself in your spirit, know that your belovedness has not gone away; perhaps God has just allowed some other space to open up in you, to increase your capacity for love.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

2-27-23 - Seeking Out Jesus

You can listen to this reflection here.

This Lent, our Sunday passages come from the Gospel of John, richly drawn encounters with Jesus. The passages are lengthy and told elliptically in John’s sometimes tortured style, and can be hard to follow. They’re worth the work; I will do my best to highlight themes in them.

This week’s story concerns a meeting between Jesus and an important Jewish leader: Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Maybe Nicodemus came by night because he wasn’t ready to be seen publicly talking with this controversial miracle-worker, or he wanted to see him when he wasn't surrounded by a crowd. What is clear is that Jesus’ miracles have gotten his attention: “For no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”

This is one reason miracles are referred to as “signs” in John’s Gospel; they are demonstrations of how things work in the Life of God, signs pointing beyond themselves to the power that animates them. Water into wine, sight to the blind – these transformations have a purpose beyond the immediate needs they address.

So does the church, meant to be the Body of Christ made visible in the world. We are called to more than meeting needs. We are to be making known, showing forth the Life of God that is around us and in us. Our mission is to reveal the spiritual reality of God as we go about God’s mission of restoration and wholeness. So what we do as church always has a mystical purpose beyond the short-term good.

In what ways do you make known the spiritual reality of God-Life in your life and ministry? When have you last experienced that spiritual reality, even in ways that appear miraculous - maybe in timing that seems suspiciously God-driven, or with unexpected answers to prayer, or urges to reach out to another person in a way that bears fruit?

If you have answers to those questions, note them, give thanks, and explore why you may have been open to manifesting or discerning that God-Life. What are the optimal conditions for you?

If you find yourself unable to answer, there in itself is a question to explore – how might you be more open to the mysterious, the movement of spirit? Might “religion” be getting in the way of “relationship” with the Holy?

Jesus answers Nicodemus’ opening statement with a comment that puzzles: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Whatever else “born from above” means, at the very least it is being able to discern a reality not immediately apparent to our physical sight. That might be a good prayer for today, “Open our eyes, Lord, to see your hand at work in the world around us.” Let me know what you see.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are here. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.