As Jesus moved through his final days in this life, many details seemed to be supernaturally pre-arranged. Twice when he sends out disciples to take care of needs, there is a mysterious element – “Go to x, do y, and if anyone asks you, here’s what you say…” When they need to find a room in which to celebrate the Passover feast, it’s very “cloak and dagger” - “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.”
And here, when the need is for a donkey, the disciples sent are also told what signs to look for: "'Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately.’”
How did Jesus know they would find a donkey as soon as they entered the next village? And that the donkey’s owner would respond affirmatively to the notion that “the Lord” needed the animals? That means he was someone who knew Jesus to be Adonai, the Lord, not just Master and Teacher.
We can see a principle at work in the Bible, that God provides what God needs in order to accomplish God’s mission, whether it’s stables, rooms, loaves and fish, donkeys – or tombs. AND we see that God relies upon human beings to cooperate, collaborate in that mission if it is to bear fruit. Theoretically the man with the donkeys could have refused, or asked a fee, or the man with the guest room say, “It’s already rented.”
Can you think of a time when you’ve received provision unexpectedly as you went about God’s work?
I bet that’s a story to tell… who needs to hear it?
And how would you respond if something as precious as livestock were asked of you?
Think back… What have you given for God’s use? What have you held back?
What do you sense God asking you to lend at this time in your life?
Time? Family? A skill or talent? A house or car?
I’m not asking what you have to offer – I’m asking what you sense the Holy Spirit asking for? It could be that there isn’t anything… or it could be that we need to ask, to offer, to make ourselves receptive to the request.
Think about it: God tied himself in with human beings a long time ago, at least in the Story we have (maybe God has a whole other story going with wolves or pigeons or bees…). God created the world without help, and then created humankind to help tend the whole enterprise. And even after that little initiative ran into trouble, God continued to rely upon people - upon the movement of patriarchs and the voices of prophets and the hands and feet of apostles to spread God’s message and reveal God’s power. It’s an intricate relationship between us and the Holy Spirit at work in us – and it’s how God’s going to continue to reveal God’s self in the world until he has restored all things to wholeness.
Which makes me wonder how much more whole things would be if we all offered our donkeys and extra rooms and special gifts as generously as the unnamed people in our stories did. What you got?
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4-8-14 - The Donkey(s)
Okay – this is why it’s good to really spend some time with a passage. You notice all kinds of things that you often miss. Like, a donkey and a colt? Which was it?
“When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately.’”
This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.”
He sat on them? That’s a stretch, to say the least! Now, maybe we can chalk this up to Matthew’s insistence on tying every event he can to an Old Testament prophecy, no matter how far a reach (ba-dum-bum...) Mark and Luke each speak only of a colt, singular. Maybe Matthew wants to be sure we get the connection to kingship, even at the risk of absurdity. This event is not a mere victory lap – it is the entry of a king into his capital. But this is a king so humble, he not only rides upon a donkey, but even upon its foal.
Kingship and humility don’t always go together – but they do in so many stories of Jesus’ earthly life, from his birth in a rough-hewn animal shelter to his traveling company of fishermen, prostitutes and tax collectors. In fact, the humility isn’t hard to locate in this story – the kingship is. We have the royal gifts presented by the magi, the defensive measures of King Herod, and ultimately the crown of thorns to remind us of Jesus’ true nature, a monarch disguised as a commoner. That is why the epistle reading for Palm Sunday is always the hymn about Jesus found in Philippians 2:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.
Unless we really think about where the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, came from, it can be hard to grasp just how dramatic a lowering of status he endured, consenting to be bounded in a human body, in time and space, to be subject to the care and cruelties of limited human beings. (Matthew West and Vince Gill sing a Christmas song I like, called Leaving Heaven, which flips the perspective… )
Today in prayer let’s try exalting Jesus, even imagining him in the courts of heaven or a throne room, whatever those might look like for you. And then let’s imagine ourselves there with him. What feelings come up in you? Do you want to praise him? Flee from that presence? Go nearer? Go with the feelings, pray into them.
The divine reality we celebrate is that the God who made everything loved us so much, God decided to come into our earthly reality to woo us, to court us, to come and sit with us. Maybe that other colt is meant for you, for me, to ride along next to him, to the cross and beyond, into Life.
“When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, “The Lord needs them.” And he will send them immediately.’”
This took place to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet, saying Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.”
He sat on them? That’s a stretch, to say the least! Now, maybe we can chalk this up to Matthew’s insistence on tying every event he can to an Old Testament prophecy, no matter how far a reach (ba-dum-bum...) Mark and Luke each speak only of a colt, singular. Maybe Matthew wants to be sure we get the connection to kingship, even at the risk of absurdity. This event is not a mere victory lap – it is the entry of a king into his capital. But this is a king so humble, he not only rides upon a donkey, but even upon its foal.
Kingship and humility don’t always go together – but they do in so many stories of Jesus’ earthly life, from his birth in a rough-hewn animal shelter to his traveling company of fishermen, prostitutes and tax collectors. In fact, the humility isn’t hard to locate in this story – the kingship is. We have the royal gifts presented by the magi, the defensive measures of King Herod, and ultimately the crown of thorns to remind us of Jesus’ true nature, a monarch disguised as a commoner. That is why the epistle reading for Palm Sunday is always the hymn about Jesus found in Philippians 2:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.
Unless we really think about where the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, came from, it can be hard to grasp just how dramatic a lowering of status he endured, consenting to be bounded in a human body, in time and space, to be subject to the care and cruelties of limited human beings. (Matthew West and Vince Gill sing a Christmas song I like, called Leaving Heaven, which flips the perspective… )
Today in prayer let’s try exalting Jesus, even imagining him in the courts of heaven or a throne room, whatever those might look like for you. And then let’s imagine ourselves there with him. What feelings come up in you? Do you want to praise him? Flee from that presence? Go nearer? Go with the feelings, pray into them.
The divine reality we celebrate is that the God who made everything loved us so much, God decided to come into our earthly reality to woo us, to court us, to come and sit with us. Maybe that other colt is meant for you, for me, to ride along next to him, to the cross and beyond, into Life.
4-7-14 - To Jerusalem
I was unsure how to work Water Daily the next two weeks – the Gospel for Palm Sunday is the whole Passion narrative, and the following week it’s the Easter story. But I don’t want us exploring the empty tomb while we’re still in Holy Week; that’s like peeking at the last page while you’re still in chapter 5. So his week we’ll do the “other” Gospel story for next Sunday, the one for which the day is named, which we routinely dispense with in the first ten minutes of the service… and we’ll spend Holy Week on the passion story.
So… onward, to Jerusalem, where the week begins with Jesus’ riding in triumphantly, lauded by crowds, and goes horribly, horribly wrong, ending with his brutal crucifixion. Jesus had been saying for some time that he must go to Jerusalem, where he will be arrested, tried and executed. Earlier, Pharisees had warned him to avoid Jerusalem, because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus responded,
“Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” - Luke 13:32-35
The people of Israel had a funny relationship to their prophets – they revered them, and frequently sought to have them killed because they didn’t like their messages. Those messages often veered between, “You’d better, or else…” or “It’s too late; you’re in trouble now..” Amidst those, however, we can hear another strand of message from God: “I love you. I want so much for us to be together. If you might only do what you promised, honor me, honor each other…” But the people never could. How could they relate to such a fearsome God?
Philip Yancey offers a great analogy to the incarnation in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew – he talks about how the fish in his fish tank regarded him with terror, even though he fed them faithfully, and kept their water clean and chemically balanced. His interventions seemed to them like destruction, and they fled to their hiding places whenever he came near. “To my fish I was a deity. I was too large for them, too incomprehensible.” He thought one day, “I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
Only, it turned out that even when God came among us in a form like ours, those who were deeply invested in the old ways, who had gained power by fostering people’s fear of God, weren’t any more receptive. This prophet, too, must be silenced, eliminated.
How do you think you would have regarded Jesus in his earthly time?
Would you have been drawn to his miracles and messages, or put off?
Would you have gone to him for healing or forgiveness?
Would you have been unsettled by the threat to good order he represented, or thrilled that at last deliverance from oppression might be at hand?
With what aspect of Jesus do you most easily connect? Least?
Knowing how we most naturally connect to Jesus can help us strengthen the relationship, and balance it. And there’s no wrong answer, even if we identify with the Pharisees. We know Jesus forgave them too.
So… onward, to Jerusalem, where the week begins with Jesus’ riding in triumphantly, lauded by crowds, and goes horribly, horribly wrong, ending with his brutal crucifixion. Jesus had been saying for some time that he must go to Jerusalem, where he will be arrested, tried and executed. Earlier, Pharisees had warned him to avoid Jerusalem, because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus responded,
“Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” - Luke 13:32-35
The people of Israel had a funny relationship to their prophets – they revered them, and frequently sought to have them killed because they didn’t like their messages. Those messages often veered between, “You’d better, or else…” or “It’s too late; you’re in trouble now..” Amidst those, however, we can hear another strand of message from God: “I love you. I want so much for us to be together. If you might only do what you promised, honor me, honor each other…” But the people never could. How could they relate to such a fearsome God?
Philip Yancey offers a great analogy to the incarnation in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew – he talks about how the fish in his fish tank regarded him with terror, even though he fed them faithfully, and kept their water clean and chemically balanced. His interventions seemed to them like destruction, and they fled to their hiding places whenever he came near. “To my fish I was a deity. I was too large for them, too incomprehensible.” He thought one day, “I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.”
Only, it turned out that even when God came among us in a form like ours, those who were deeply invested in the old ways, who had gained power by fostering people’s fear of God, weren’t any more receptive. This prophet, too, must be silenced, eliminated.
How do you think you would have regarded Jesus in his earthly time?
Would you have been drawn to his miracles and messages, or put off?
Would you have gone to him for healing or forgiveness?
Would you have been unsettled by the threat to good order he represented, or thrilled that at last deliverance from oppression might be at hand?
With what aspect of Jesus do you most easily connect? Least?
Knowing how we most naturally connect to Jesus can help us strengthen the relationship, and balance it. And there’s no wrong answer, even if we identify with the Pharisees. We know Jesus forgave them too.
4-4-14 - Life Trumps
Why did Jesus restore Lazarus to life when he was so very, very dead? Was it “for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it,” as he indicated to his disciples a few days earlier? Was it because he was so moved by Mary’s weeping that he started to weep himself? “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The King James Version rendered that verse, “Jesus wept,” the shortest verse in the Bible.
Or was he “greatly disturbed in spirit” because he knew what God was equipping him to do next, and it scared the daylights out of him? Certainly, Jesus was in some turmoil – the most literal translation suggests actual gut-wrenching. Jesus weeps – and then Jesus acts. “Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’” It can be hard for us, reading from this side of Easter Sunday, not to hear the echo of the women on their way to Jesus’ tomb, wondering who will roll away that stone. Stones are there to keep death in, and the living out. And here comes God to overturn all of that order… just as he had said long ago he would.
There is also reviving of the dead in our reading from the Hebrew Bible this Sunday – but it is only a vision, in which dry bones, representing Israel’s defeat and dead hopes, are given sinews and flesh and have the life, the breath of God, blown back into them. Included in Ezekiel’s bizarre vision, though, was a prophetic promise: “’And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:12-14)
Scripture suggests that death is something God merely tolerates until he can do away with it – which is what we claim God did in Christ on Good Friday, and proved Easter Sunday. That is central to our belief as those who bear the name of Christ. And one of our greatest faith challenges is to live that belief, that death has been neutralized, while in this life it is still so very real and so very destructive. These stories we read and learn and tell are counter-narratives to the one we live out in this physical life. So we must develop our spiritual selves as well as our physical selves – to see Life beyond death, and to see it so fully and clearly it carries us through “the valley of the shadow of death” when we find ourselves there.
What is your relationship with death? Do you fear it? Dread it? See it as natural, as a release, or an enemy?
Does your view change when it’s the death of another you’re contemplating?
What is your relationship with life – the kind of life that transcends death? Does it feel real?
Where is God for you in the whole subject of death?
In another nine days or so, the Church will enter into a deep, week-long contemplation of death and life, so this could be a good time to entertain these questions and take them into prayer. If it feels to you like death still has the upper hand, still wins – that’s something to talk with God about, to ask questions and see where answers might emerge. We can say, “Lord, I don’t understand death, why it’s still part of life when you’ve vanquished it – but I do understand life.”
Our promise is that God’s life is already in us, and as we learn to dwell in that, it will carry us into the life beyond this one. We can ask daily to be filled with that Life that truly trumps death – and gradually that Life is what we become.
Or was he “greatly disturbed in spirit” because he knew what God was equipping him to do next, and it scared the daylights out of him? Certainly, Jesus was in some turmoil – the most literal translation suggests actual gut-wrenching. Jesus weeps – and then Jesus acts. “Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’” It can be hard for us, reading from this side of Easter Sunday, not to hear the echo of the women on their way to Jesus’ tomb, wondering who will roll away that stone. Stones are there to keep death in, and the living out. And here comes God to overturn all of that order… just as he had said long ago he would.
There is also reviving of the dead in our reading from the Hebrew Bible this Sunday – but it is only a vision, in which dry bones, representing Israel’s defeat and dead hopes, are given sinews and flesh and have the life, the breath of God, blown back into them. Included in Ezekiel’s bizarre vision, though, was a prophetic promise: “’And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:12-14)
Scripture suggests that death is something God merely tolerates until he can do away with it – which is what we claim God did in Christ on Good Friday, and proved Easter Sunday. That is central to our belief as those who bear the name of Christ. And one of our greatest faith challenges is to live that belief, that death has been neutralized, while in this life it is still so very real and so very destructive. These stories we read and learn and tell are counter-narratives to the one we live out in this physical life. So we must develop our spiritual selves as well as our physical selves – to see Life beyond death, and to see it so fully and clearly it carries us through “the valley of the shadow of death” when we find ourselves there.
What is your relationship with death? Do you fear it? Dread it? See it as natural, as a release, or an enemy?
Does your view change when it’s the death of another you’re contemplating?
What is your relationship with life – the kind of life that transcends death? Does it feel real?
Where is God for you in the whole subject of death?
In another nine days or so, the Church will enter into a deep, week-long contemplation of death and life, so this could be a good time to entertain these questions and take them into prayer. If it feels to you like death still has the upper hand, still wins – that’s something to talk with God about, to ask questions and see where answers might emerge. We can say, “Lord, I don’t understand death, why it’s still part of life when you’ve vanquished it – but I do understand life.”
Our promise is that God’s life is already in us, and as we learn to dwell in that, it will carry us into the life beyond this one. We can ask daily to be filled with that Life that truly trumps death – and gradually that Life is what we become.
4-3-14 - Lazarus, the Unbound
The Gospels tell us almost nothing about Lazarus, and yet he is the centerpiece of Jesus’ most powerful and unsettling miracle. We’re told he lived in Bethany outside Jerusalem, that he and his sisters were beloved in Jesus’ inner circle. We hear he was felled by an illness and died somewhat unexpectedly, from which we might surmise that he was not old. And he made a four-day journey into death and back into life – only to die again at a riper age. He has inspired numerous works of literature and art - and yet the only scene in which he appears, he enters bound in grave cloths, four days dead:
“Jesus said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus.. cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”
We are endlessly fascinated with tales of those who have physically died and somehow been revived. Proof of Heaven, Heaven is for Real, 90 Minutes in Heaven are only a few recent bestsellers. But we have no record of Lazarus’ experience being awakened after so long, what it would be like to undergo a reversal of decay, movement in limbs long still. In that silence, Lazarus can become a universal symbol for all victims as Jesus’ command, “Unbind him, and let him go!” reverberates through the centuries, a powerful metaphor for release and new life.
Few of us have experienced being physically revived, but I suspect we have all seen life returning to people bound in one way or another, whether by poverty, addiction, crime, illness, abuse, self-destructive patterns. Tonight I saw parts of a documentary in progress, Our Little Roses, about an extraordinary orphanage for girls – the only one - in the desperately poor, crime and murder-ridden city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Spencer Reece, a poet and Episcopal priest, spent a year there teaching poetry and helping the girls to write. The film (which is being scored by Dar Williams, who also came to the program and played a few songs..) tells that story, and he is writing a book to accompany it. He read some excerpts. He said he’d witnessed resurrection in these girls, abandoned, sick, starving – and brought back to wholeness and strength in the community of love in the home. He experienced a profound spiritual renewal himself, coming to know Jesus in that place in a way he’d never experienced him.
Have you had a death-into-life experience? When? What was it about? Have you observed life returning to a person or thing or place? Take note of it, so you can become more aware when it’s happening to you or around you.
You know who I think had the most faith of anyone in this scene? The guys who rolled away that stone, and Lazarus, who came out when Jesus called him. Few people are so open to the impossible they are willing to go with it when it comes their way. I think the more open we are to the impossible, the more possible it becomes every day.
“Jesus said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. And Jesus.. cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”
We are endlessly fascinated with tales of those who have physically died and somehow been revived. Proof of Heaven, Heaven is for Real, 90 Minutes in Heaven are only a few recent bestsellers. But we have no record of Lazarus’ experience being awakened after so long, what it would be like to undergo a reversal of decay, movement in limbs long still. In that silence, Lazarus can become a universal symbol for all victims as Jesus’ command, “Unbind him, and let him go!” reverberates through the centuries, a powerful metaphor for release and new life.
Few of us have experienced being physically revived, but I suspect we have all seen life returning to people bound in one way or another, whether by poverty, addiction, crime, illness, abuse, self-destructive patterns. Tonight I saw parts of a documentary in progress, Our Little Roses, about an extraordinary orphanage for girls – the only one - in the desperately poor, crime and murder-ridden city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. Spencer Reece, a poet and Episcopal priest, spent a year there teaching poetry and helping the girls to write. The film (which is being scored by Dar Williams, who also came to the program and played a few songs..) tells that story, and he is writing a book to accompany it. He read some excerpts. He said he’d witnessed resurrection in these girls, abandoned, sick, starving – and brought back to wholeness and strength in the community of love in the home. He experienced a profound spiritual renewal himself, coming to know Jesus in that place in a way he’d never experienced him.
Have you had a death-into-life experience? When? What was it about? Have you observed life returning to a person or thing or place? Take note of it, so you can become more aware when it’s happening to you or around you.
You know who I think had the most faith of anyone in this scene? The guys who rolled away that stone, and Lazarus, who came out when Jesus called him. Few people are so open to the impossible they are willing to go with it when it comes their way. I think the more open we are to the impossible, the more possible it becomes every day.
4-2-14 - Mary, the Reflective One
Isn’t it amazing how people can grow up in the same family and be so different from each other? As action-oriented as Martha is, Mary seems geared toward reflection and a quiet devotedness. It is Mary who sits at Jesus’ feet listening to his teaching instead of helping Martha cook; Mary who anoints Jesus’ head and feet with a whole jar of expensive ointment shortly before his arrest, an act of extravagant, wasteful worship (arguably the way worship should be…).
And so it is here, in this story. Mary stays at home when word comes that Jesus has arrived. But as soon as Martha tells her that Jesus is asking for her, she goes to him:
"… [Martha] went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, 'The Teacher is here and is calling for you.' And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'”
Mary utters the same words of gentle rebuke and profound faith as Martha did. But where Martha and Jesus engaged in theological conversation about death and life and resurrection and Jesus’ identity, with Mary it is her open display of feelings that communicates with Jesus’ spirit. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”
In these two sisters we see different aspects of a spiritual whole. A healthy spiritual life makes room for emotions and intellect, receptivity and action. Most of us tend to emphasize one mode over another. How is it that you most readily experience holiness or the presence of God? In thoughts and actions? In silence and feelings? Some combination of these?
How do you most naturally express your spirituality?
Are your emotions available to you in your prayer and worship life?
Are you able to sit still on occasion and wait on the Lord, see what the Spirit is saying?
It’s good to know how we’re wired spiritually. Then we can look to see if we’re missing anything. Is God inviting us to play with a form of spiritual expression or reception that comes less naturally to us, but opens us to a new dimension of God-life? If you only ever read the bible (or this...) as a devotion, how about singing a hymn in your personal prayer time? If you only feel connected when serving dinner at the shelter, how about going on a retreat alone, and seeing where God is in silence and inactivity.
Martha and Mary of Bethany are among the most fully drawn characters in the Gospels, and of course we know very little about them. But they are a rich gift to us, these sisters, embodying different ways to love Jesus, and different modes of receiving his love.
And so it is here, in this story. Mary stays at home when word comes that Jesus has arrived. But as soon as Martha tells her that Jesus is asking for her, she goes to him:
"… [Martha] went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, 'The Teacher is here and is calling for you.' And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'”
Mary utters the same words of gentle rebuke and profound faith as Martha did. But where Martha and Jesus engaged in theological conversation about death and life and resurrection and Jesus’ identity, with Mary it is her open display of feelings that communicates with Jesus’ spirit. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”
In these two sisters we see different aspects of a spiritual whole. A healthy spiritual life makes room for emotions and intellect, receptivity and action. Most of us tend to emphasize one mode over another. How is it that you most readily experience holiness or the presence of God? In thoughts and actions? In silence and feelings? Some combination of these?
How do you most naturally express your spirituality?
Are your emotions available to you in your prayer and worship life?
Are you able to sit still on occasion and wait on the Lord, see what the Spirit is saying?
It’s good to know how we’re wired spiritually. Then we can look to see if we’re missing anything. Is God inviting us to play with a form of spiritual expression or reception that comes less naturally to us, but opens us to a new dimension of God-life? If you only ever read the bible (or this...) as a devotion, how about singing a hymn in your personal prayer time? If you only feel connected when serving dinner at the shelter, how about going on a retreat alone, and seeing where God is in silence and inactivity.
Martha and Mary of Bethany are among the most fully drawn characters in the Gospels, and of course we know very little about them. But they are a rich gift to us, these sisters, embodying different ways to love Jesus, and different modes of receiving his love.
4-1-14 - Martha, the Practical One
Of all Jesus’ close friends and followers, the family we get to know best in the Gospels are three siblings, Lazarus, Martha and Mary, who live in Bethany. Luke gives us a glimpse into their relationships in the story of Martha’s preparations to feed Jesus and his entourage, as she expresses her frustration with her sister’s sitting before Jesus instead of helping with the meal. The way Jesus gently rebukes her and affirms Mary’s choice tells us they are close.
So it surprises everyone that Jesus does not immediately return to Judea at the news of Lazarus’ illness:
“When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’”
Martha is not one for sitting around – we see that in the story of the dinner party. She goes out to meet Jesus on the road. And the way she gently rebukes Jesus tell us they are close: “Lord, if you had been here…” Her faith in Jesus is strong – “…my brother would not have died.” But is she asking for Lazarus to be healed now? “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him…”
Jesus answers her straight on – and she thinks he’s being metaphorical. “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”
So much is made of Peter’s confession of Christ’s messianic identity – the church even marks it with a feast day. But here is Martha, articulating as clearly or more that Jesus is the Son of God, the awaited Messiah. Where is her feast day?
And here is Jesus, talking straightforwardly with a woman about his mission and identity – so much for those who think the Jesus movement was anti-woman. Jesus treats the women around him with the fullness of respect and honor that he accords the men. In that, he was much more controversial than if he’d suppressed the women.
Jesus meets Martha as she is – active, bold, not sitting around waiting. He accepts her “If you’d been here…” as honestly as he accepts her “Yes, Lord, I believe.” How about you? Are you able to be yourself in your relationship with God in Christ? Do you tell God how you feel about things not working out, for prayers that seemed unanswered? What do you think Jesus means when he says, “I am resurrection, and I am life?” What does that mean in your life, in your experience of death and loss?
We don’t all share Martha’s conviction, her ability to say, without hesitation, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Son of God.” What each of us can share is her forthrightness, her refusal to accept without questioning, her taking the initiative to go out and meet Jesus as he approaches.
I believe Jesus yearns for us to know him as Martha did. Let’s go find him on the road to us, and learn just who he is.
So it surprises everyone that Jesus does not immediately return to Judea at the news of Lazarus’ illness:
“When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’”
Martha is not one for sitting around – we see that in the story of the dinner party. She goes out to meet Jesus on the road. And the way she gently rebukes Jesus tell us they are close: “Lord, if you had been here…” Her faith in Jesus is strong – “…my brother would not have died.” But is she asking for Lazarus to be healed now? “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him…”
Jesus answers her straight on – and she thinks he’s being metaphorical. “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”
So much is made of Peter’s confession of Christ’s messianic identity – the church even marks it with a feast day. But here is Martha, articulating as clearly or more that Jesus is the Son of God, the awaited Messiah. Where is her feast day?
And here is Jesus, talking straightforwardly with a woman about his mission and identity – so much for those who think the Jesus movement was anti-woman. Jesus treats the women around him with the fullness of respect and honor that he accords the men. In that, he was much more controversial than if he’d suppressed the women.
Jesus meets Martha as she is – active, bold, not sitting around waiting. He accepts her “If you’d been here…” as honestly as he accepts her “Yes, Lord, I believe.” How about you? Are you able to be yourself in your relationship with God in Christ? Do you tell God how you feel about things not working out, for prayers that seemed unanswered? What do you think Jesus means when he says, “I am resurrection, and I am life?” What does that mean in your life, in your experience of death and loss?
We don’t all share Martha’s conviction, her ability to say, without hesitation, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Son of God.” What each of us can share is her forthrightness, her refusal to accept without questioning, her taking the initiative to go out and meet Jesus as he approaches.
I believe Jesus yearns for us to know him as Martha did. Let’s go find him on the road to us, and learn just who he is.
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