2-14-24 - Our Funny Valentine

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

You want to dip that chocolate in ashes? Here's our mash-up of two incompatible holidays, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. Yet it's a great reminder that Lent is really all about going deeper into the love story of our faith: the story of our relationship with the God who made us, and how we drift away or walk away or storm away, and are drawn back through the sacrifice of love. In this love story God does all the sacrificing; Jesus leaves home, lays it all down. We do all the receiving, until we are loved into being able to respond.

We celebrate that sacrifice and triumph of love supremely in Holy Week and Easter – a mystery so big, so vast, we take five weeks to prepare for it. In that season of preparation, Lent, we draw near to God, are drawn near by the One who made us, loves us, and will not let us go, who wants passionately for us to be close.

One of our earliest sacred stories speaks of temptation and primal rebellion against the goodness of God in the mythic tale of first man, first woman, a snake and an apple. That fateful bite, as our ancient forebears described it, resulted in four fatal breaches in relationship:

• between humans and their Creator – suddenly they hide from God;
• between man and woman – they start blaming each other;
• between humankind and the natural world – animals are killed to make covering for the humans, newly aware of their shame.
• within the human psyche, as shame creates a divided self.

Our Good News asserts that these four breaches were healed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we experience that healing, we become a people of restored relationship, of reconciled and reconciling love. Repentance and reconciliation can be hard work, shining the light of Christ into dark corners in our psyches and our world. This is healing work, love work, which we do not do alone. We do it with the power of God’s love running through us as sap through a vine. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you," said Jesus. “Abide in my love.” Keeping to his way, living a life of integrity and authenticity and holiness – that is how we abide in his love.

And that love spreads out. In God’s love story, the love cannot be contained between two. It spills over to encompass the whole community of love. “Love one another,” Jesus commanded, “as I have loved you.” The reconciliation we experience becomes shared, as we keep expanding the circle of love.

The beautiful hymn, “Come down, O Love divine,” comes to mind – in particular these words:

O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight, and clothe me round, 

  the while my path illuming.

As we allow the fire of God to burn away everything in us that is passing away, as we embrace the ashes and the dust, let’s remember that we do this work in the glorious light of the One who showed us what it means to truly empty oneself. Lent is a season of sober reflection, not of stumbling in the dark. God will illumine our path, in 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.

12-22-22 - A Child For Us

You can listen to this reflection here.

Abstract or concrete? Philosophy or story? How do you take your theology? Straight up or with a twist? The gospels are flexible enough to incorporate many learning styles.

On Christmas Eve, we will be steeped in story, personal and intimate, sweeping and glorious, each element a rich vein of symbol and language to speak of how much God loves us. But the way the Gospel of John tells the story, and the way the prophets foretoldl it can be more abstract. John begins: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Right off the bat, we are invited to suspend our literal mindedness (“how can something be with God and be God?”) and enter a swirl of words that convey a truth. What does “Word” mean? Most likely “logos,” translated as “word,” means something closer to “mind” or the “primal thought” of God. Does that make it more or less confusing?

That first paragraph tells the whole story – of what was before we were, of creation, of life and light, and light overcoming darkness. That is what is promised in the prophecy from Isaiah often read on Christmas:
"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined."

This great light, the prophet says, will shake up the nations and put an end to war – 

"For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire."

And who will bring about this world transformation? A child. An infant with the weight of the world on his shoulders: "For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders..."

And from John again: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

This Son of God is a son given to us. Entrusted to humanity. Imagine. We wouldn't have known to ask for a child - God's people asked for a rescue mission, a savior, a bringer of justice, maybe a healer. Who would have known that this One would have to be one we could have relationship with?

The story of God, so far away, so holy, so “other,” moving into our neighborhood and settling down so that we can draw near – that’s a story that never gets old. It is hard to convey it as Good News to a people for whom it has become hum-drum, and to others for whom “God” is entirely irrelevant, but I believe it is the heart of the gift Christians have for the world. I will continue to try to get inside that mystery and discover the “Word made flesh” who wants to know me and be known by me.

However it is that you best comprehend the story of God’s amazing love and desire to be close to you, I hope you are both shaken and stirred.

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