7-11-17 - Of Paths and Birds

"Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up."  (This week's gospel parable is here.)

Paths can be beautiful, but they’re not places for growing, are they? We call a path full of greenery “overgrown.” One of the first things I do when I get to our cottage in Michigan each summer is take a broom and reclaim the path down to the lake (laid by my great-grandmother…) from the weeds and sod encroaching upon its surfaces.

Paths are for journeying, arteries that carry us from one place for growing to another. When the Good News is told to people who are on the path, on the move, they may not receive it fully – it remains on the surface, easy pickings for other messages and other priorities that conflict with it.

And what do you see as the birds, these entities that gobble up the newly scattered seed so it has no time to take root? Distractions, competing claims, yes – and also something deeper: lies the Enemy tells us to undermine our ability to trust in the goodness of God, and the goodness of God in us. Those lies can take many forms, and are often disguised in advertising. Competitiveness. 60-80 hour workweeks. Stress. Anxiety. What’s on your list?

Today, name some paths in your life, in-between spaces. (Work can be a field, or a path; relationships can be a field or a path…)What are the growing places in your life that you can name and celebrate?

Do you know some people for whom the Word of God has fallen onto the path and been picked off?
How might you help them become rooted in good soil?

The birds are a given. They even have their place.We just need to shoo them off when they threaten our spiritual health, or someone else’s.

Maybe being active and intentional in the Life of God is like the netting people put over growing berries and vegetables – the sun and water get through, but the birds have to do their munching somewhere else.

7-10-17 - Story Seeds

Ah – story-time. We’ve arrived at a stretch of parables in our Sunday Gospel selections. Parables were stories Jesus told to show what the Kingdom of God, or the Life of God, looks like, how it operates in ways that are often very different from the ways of this world. Parables invite us to play, to turn them this way and that, see how our interpretation shifts according to our angle. Some are short, some long; some are challenging to figure out; some are explained (which can take some fun out of it…).

This week’s story is one of those, which Jesus explained to his disciples in private. But let’s pretend we don’t have that interpretation and wonder about the images he offers.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: "Listen! A sower went out to sow."

What do sowers sow? Generally, seeds. But we can sow doubt, or anger, or fear, or joy, or hope, or faith... Where do sowers sow it? Ideally, in good soil.

This sower seems to have been a little careless – or maybe carefree. He, or she, just seems to have tossed the seeds randomly rather than laying them down in carefully plowed rows. We know this because some land in places where seeds have trouble rooting and growing.

Who do you think this sower is?
Is it God in creation?
Is it Jesus, the one who came to reveal and redeem?
Is it the Holy Spirit, showing up wherever he is invited?
Is it us when we share our faith with another, or when we show love in the name of Christ?

Yes…

Why the randomness? Are all seeds meant to take root, and some just don’t?
Are we meant to seek those and help replant them?

What are the seeds – the Word of God, the Good News of freedom in Christ?
Are we the seeds? Hmmm…. How does the story look when it we turn it that way?

Today in prayer let’s put ourselves into this parable – where do you find yourself? 

Are you sower or seed or soil? 

Ask God to show you where God might have you sow love and spirit in your life at this time.

There is something frustrating and wonderful about the scattered seeds – it means that the Life of God can spring up anywhere at any time. Watch for it!

7-7-17 - Cure for Inner Conflict

Let’s switch over to Romans for the end of the week. The reading appointed for Sunday is convoluted in language but deeply important in message, as Paul expresses a basic human conundrum: 

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

This plight will be familiar to anyone who’s ever found himself unable to put down the ice cream container, or stick to one cocktail, or stop herself from telling someone else’s secret… we know what “right” is in most circumstances, and sometimes we just watch ourselves walk right over to the “wrong” side of town. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Paul sees two forces at work in himself, two competing laws – the law of God, or spirit, and the law of the mind, or “flesh.” Describing the turmoil wrought by the effort to navigate these skirmishes, he ends up with a cry from the heart we’ve all felt at some point or other: 

“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

His answer is close at hand: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 

The way to stop the cycle of self-destructiveness when we’re in its grip is not by trying harder, but by surrendering more to the one force in the universe more powerful than our own desires: the God who made us, who sent his Son among us to draw us into a relationship in which our internal battles are overwhelmed by Love.

God’s power is right here – power to resist evil, turn away from temptation, turn to life instead of death. The only thing we need do is invoke the power of God: "Jesus, be here now!” That was my prayer once when I’d fallen down a flight of stairs; it should be my prayer every time I struggle with choosing the best course. As any recovering addict will tell you, will power doesn't get us very far; surrender to help allows us to go the distance.

Let’s not forget the loving invitation we’ve been looking at from our Gospel reading this week:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Turning toward Jesus, calling on the power of the Holy Spirit to fill and transform our desires gets easier the more we do it. It takes awhile for anything to become habitual, but with practice, this can become our first response. Just as oxen that are yoked to a cart have to travel together, spirits that are yoked to Christ no longer try to go their separate ways.

7-6-17 - Come Unto Me

Were sweeter words ever found in Scripture for a harried people? 

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

To be a disciple means taking on the discipline of a master, doing whatever he or she tells you to do. The Pharisees and teachers of the law demanded much of their followers, to keep the Law of Moses perfectly in every particular. Nuances of love, mercy and relationship often fell by the wayside. The burdens of these demands were heavy indeed, and never satisfactorily met - except by the Teachers, of course.

We can say the same of the demands our culture places upon us – to be more productive, more successful, more financially secure, more fashionable, attractive, sweet-smelling, popular… you name it. The new law is no less onerous than the old. And so Jesus’ invitation is alive for us as well.

We too take on a yoke when we take on Christ’s life, as oxen are fitted with an apparatus so they can pull a cart. We offer our obedience to him and take on the ministry of being his apostles, his witnesses – proclaiming the Good News, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, freeing the captives. Like his original disciples, we may be called to give up things or people we find precious for rewards only known later.

But Jesus says his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. Unlike the burden of the Law-bound, his is the yoke of freedom in God. Unlike the arrogant Teachers, he is gentle and humble in heart; he was never ashamed to eat with obvious sinners and people on the margins.

Do you want to find rest for your soul? In many of us, our soul feels restless, especially in a culture that does not privilege space for the spiritual.
Have you experienced knowing Jesus as restful or stressful? 

 If stressful, we might take a look at what part of his message we’re focusing on.

What can you do today to find rest for your soul?
Whether you are in the midst of work stress, or easing into a summer vacation, I suggest you start with some “soul rest” time in Jesus’ presence. Hand off your burdens and take on his promise of peace, and then spread it around.

7-5-17 - You're Such a Baby!

How do you feel about being called a baby? 

At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” 

(This week's gospel reading is here.)

Some might take it as an insult. We might rather receive it as an invitation to total trust in God. Infants are receiving machines - they do not feed, clothe or even move themselves. The only thing they can “do” is ask for help by using their voices – and reward their helpers with big smiles, which they quickly learn will get them far. If it were true that “God helps those who help themselves,” a deeply destructive maxim which is nowhere to be found in Christian scripture, none of us would see our second birthdays.

The most challenging part of faith-life for many is having to depend upon the grace and mercy and power of God for what matters most in the long-term. Learning to receive God’s goodness and not worry so much about repaying – for we cannot – is a mark of maturity in faith.

Infants are clear about their needs and quick to ask. They are fully in relationship with their care-givers. We can learn from them to go first to God when we need something instead of making it our last resort. And, as with those babies who reward us with gurgles and smiles, our praise can become immediate when we’ve received a gift.

Of course, infants are anything but simple. In their tiny minds and bodies are contained all the systems and equipment that adults have, just waiting to mature. I believe that, whether we are young or mature in faith, we too have everything we need to live a God-reliant, praise-filled life – it is all given to us by the Holy Spirit in baptism, maybe even in birth, waiting to be developed.

What are some attributes of infants that you would like to borrow and try on as you approach God?
What are the things you cannot do for yourself that you are afraid to trust God with? Or eager to?

Today in prayer we might try an imagination exercise – imagine yourself as an infant being held or watched over by Jesus… how does he interact with you in that prayer space? Does he say anything? Do you? What do you feel?

Infants have a huge learning curve, because they have everything about life to learn. As Christ followers, we are in a similar position – we have everything about Life to learn. Let’s open our spiritual senses and breathe it in.

7-4-17 - Land of the Free

Today is America’s Independence Day, which many will celebrate by being freed from a day at work.

Independence means something different in the Christian life than it might politically. The kind of liberty Jesus invites us into is strongly inter-dependent. He invites us to be tethered to God, to one another and to serving the world, not because we are being forced, but by our free choice.

Paul writes in Romans that we have been set free from sin so as to be enslaved to God, the reward for which is being made holy, or sanctification. Would we voluntary enslave ourselves to anything? Well, yes… Our lives are full of ways in which we yield our freedom – on a limited basis – to achieve a goal. We become employees working under the policies and procedures of our employers; we pay personal trainers large sums to make us perform painful and arduous exercises; we follow certain diets.

And we voluntarily take on the yoke Jesus offers, which he says is easy. And when we truly trust him, it is. It is only when we pull away that we find it chafes.

I believe that God’s greatest desire for us is freedom, to be free from all that holds us back and makes us less than who we were intended to be, less than who God already knows us to be. That freedom does not make us independent, however – it makes us interdependent.

We are asked to become more dependent on God, to throw all our weight and trust on this One we cannot see but discern in our lives and around us. As we grow in that relationship, we learn the ways that God is depending upon us to be the vessels by which God’s transforming love and healing power are enacted in the world. We cannot do it without God; God will not do it without us.

We are also invited to become interdependent with others in our communities of faith, and with those whom we would serve. We will see peace and justice reign when we truly understand that to seek the good for our neighbor will create good and security and plenty for us. Even better will be the day when we don’t think in “us” and “them” terms at all – as U2 sings in Invisible, “There is no them; there’s only you, there’s only me.”

And we are interdependent in service to the world, willing to be served as well as to serve.

Today I wish you a day of perfect freedom and fun – with the prayer that, as we celebrate our unfathomable liberties as a nation, we find a pattern of “tethered freedom” in Christ that allows us to be truly free.

7-3-17 - Hidden From the Wise

Summertime – and the living is easy… or should be. I'll try to make Water Daily a little shorter and hopefully sweeter. I’ve even shortened the chunk of Gospel we are going to consider this week. There are two sections, the first of which requires a lot of unpacking. So let’s just go with the second, especially as it contains Jesus’ beautiful invitation to “come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Perfect for a holiday week, right?

In the section we're skipping, Jesus inveighs against the faithlessness of his critics, chiefly the Pharisees and their ilk. He is also angered by the fickleness and lack of faith he finds among his own people relative to what the Gentiles show. Forget the scholars – give me the simple-hearted:

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

Sometimes knowledge can get in the way of our understanding, expectations cloud our ability to see the surprising, familiarity obscure the fullness of revelation. People envy those who have a “simple faith,” an ability to say “yes” to the story of God’s revelation in Christ, and to participate in that. Blessed are the simple-hearted – for they are often better able to get on with living by the Spirit.

And yet the Gospel is also given for those of us who think too much. Sometimes we just make it harder for ourselves. In the final analysis, analysis is not going to yield full understanding, any more than playing with the food on our plate is going to get us fed. The Good News is a gift to be taken and received, ingested, allowed to play in our minds, hearts and spirits.

Is the life of faith simple or complex for you?
How do you most fully connect with God – through your mind or your emotions or both?
If your analytical self gets in your way spiritually, you might try on a prayer practice of inviting Jesus to make his presence known, and just be with him, letting your feelings become known.
And if you tend to shy away from theological thinking, you might try a bible study and let your mind play.

Thanks be to God, even the most “wise and intelligent” among us are also invited to be “infants” in Christ, to put all our weight on the One who made us, loves us and renews us.