2-10-20 - The Company We Keep

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

How much more likely are you to respond to an email or phone call if it’s prefaced with, “Our mutual friend So-and-So suggested I get in touch with you…?” Knowing someone is connected to someone we know goes a long way to reducing suspicion and increasing our openness to new people.

So it’s significant that the next event in this “long, strange trip” the disciples enjoy up on that mountain is the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus. Leaving aside the question of how they knew who those two were, here’s a deeper one: why Moses and Elijah?

I can think of at least two reasons: Tradition and Testimony. Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets, and Jesus and his followers took care to communicate that Jesus’ teaching and ministries were a fulfillment of previous revelation, not a departure therefrom. On Easter afternoon, when the risen Jesus comes upon a couple of sad disciples on the road to Emmaus, we’re told: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)

Moses was the great giver of the Law, Torah, the commandments sent from God. And Elijah was one of the greatest of the prophets of Israel, said to have been carried up into heaven in a chariot of fire at the end of his life. This is why the Jewish people held an expectation of Elijah’s return.

These two great heroes of the tradition had something else in common: they were both recipients of mountain “theophanies,” encounters in which God made himself known to them. Moses spent time in the presence of God, both on Mount Sinai and in the Tent of Meeting. And Elijah was told, in a moment of despair, to stand outside the cave on Mount Horeb in which he was hiding, and that God would pass by - and God did.

And then there is the matter of testimony. I suggested earlier this week that Jesus was preparing these three followers to bear witness to his true identity after his resurrection. Jewish law required at least three witnesses. Perhaps Moses and Elijah appear here to serve as witnesses to the witnesses, their presence a vivid testimony that this vision was real and true.

What difference does it make for us that Peter, James and John saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus on the mountain? It connects this odd revelation with the great tradition out of which our religious heritage emerged. While that might not be persuasive to a skeptic, it was enough to ground the claims about Jesus in a larger story, and that did help Jews of his day believe that Jesus was more than a teacher, was in fact the Son of God.

Perhaps this is how the communion of saints functions for some. Those who have spiritual encounters with saints (and I don’t mean ghosts…) can find their faith encouraged and strengthened by the testimony of those who have been with God. Nothing beats being in the presence of Jesus himself, of course, but we all have different filters and different ways of connecting, and sometimes we believe more readily when people we trust have gone there first.

Which gets us back to telling the stories of our encounters with God. You never know when you might function as Moses or Elijah to someone considering this strange and wondrous revelation of ours. Maybe if people see us hanging out with Jesus - or at least hear about it - they’ll be more open to meeting him themselves.

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2-9-21 - Dazzling

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

Maybe women did have a hand in writing the gospels; would a man use a laundry image to convey how white something was? And Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.

It’s hard to avoid associating "light" and "white" with God and godliness. Jesus spoke of himself using the image of light, and light is generally white. Too often we use these terms without questioning their impact, which can vary according to skin color, geography and temperament. We need to take care not always to equate whiteness with goodness, light with purity.

But here we are, up on that mountain with three disciples – and their experience is of dazzling light, whiter than any bleach can achieve. It’s a wonder they weren’t blinded, as were the Israelites when Moses came down Mount Sinai glowing so brightly after his time in God’s presence, they had to veil him for their own sakes. In this story light and white are linked to divine revelation. I believe that what the disciples saw was Light itself, Jesus revealed as a beam of pure energy, in which there is no darkness at all, as God is pure good without a trace of not-good.

No doubt there is much to be gained by exploring the spiritual gifts of darkness – many spiritual writers, from the unknown 14th century author of The Cloud of Unknowing to Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. But this week we celebrate Jesus as the Light of the World, and this moment when that Light was made known to witnesses, who made it known to the world.

How is Jesus the “light of the world” for you? How have you experienced God as light?
What is your experience of light spiritually?

Jesus said not only that he was the Light of the World – he said his followers were also to be light for the world. “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The light we shine is reflected light, the way the moon reflects the sun’s light rather than being a source itself. If we make it our intention to put ourselves in the way of the Light of the World each day, and keep our reflectors in peak condition, we will indeed let our lights shine before others. And if it’s Jesus’ light we’re reflecting, they may well be dazzled.

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2-8-21 - Prepping the Witness

You can listen to this reflection here.

Passages in the gospels often begin with phrases like, “On the third day…”, or “In the sixth month,” that require you to look back and see what came before. So it is with this week’s gospel, the story of Jesus’ transfiguration: Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

A high mountain. Apart. By themselves. Just the three fishermen and Jesus. Quite a treat – or retreat. Why did Jesus take them on this outing? What had happened six days earlier? Jesus had asked his followers who they thought he was, and Peter answered, “The Messiah.” Then Jesus started talking about taking up your cross, and how the Son of Man would have to suffer and die, and Peter tried to stop him, earning a harsh rebuke. Maybe Jesus thought it was time his closest followers had an experience to match their heart knowledge. Maybe it was time Peter saw how right his first answer had been.

The Transfiguration is one of the odder stories in the gospels, one that we read every year at the end of Epiphany, maybe because it was the penultimate revelation of Jesus’ divinity. For a short while on that mountain, those disciples saw Jesus’ true nature revealed. Why did Jesus give them that glimpse of glory?

I wonder if he was setting up his witnesses. Peter already knew he was the Son of God; now let him see it, and other witnesses with him, so that they can later testify to Jesus’ messianic identity. After the experience, he instructs them not to tell anyone until after “the Son of Man is risen from the dead,” a phrase they did not understand. But later they would. And then this experience would reinforce their faith so that they could boldly testify to the truth of that greater revelation.

One New Testament definition of apostle is a person who knew Jesus in his earthly ministry and can witness to his resurrection life. I’m intrigued by the notion that Jesus is giving those who will serve as key witnesses to the in-breaking Kingdom of God a crucial experience to strengthen their testimony later. Because it is the witness of these men and women that laid the structure of the Church. They are the reason we are here.

And we are here to carry on their apostolic witness. We are here to testify to the glory and power and love of the Risen Christ as we have experienced him in our lives. Perhaps we aren’t treated to the dazzling display Peter, James and John got to see… but maybe we don’t need to be. We are apostles on the other side of Jesus’ resurrection. We can see his power poured out in our midst whenever we speak or pray or love or act in his name.

If we don’t feel we have had enough experience of Christ to truly bear witness… well, there’s a prayer, isn’t there? Ask the Holy Spirit to make the presence and peace and power of Jesus known to you. I believe God will answer that prayer, as we open ourselves. I truly believe God wants us to experience God’s goodness. Jesus is still preparing witnesses - you and me.

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2-5-21 - The Neighborhood

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

The people of Capernaum, where Jesus stayed when he wasn’t traveling, must have been thrilled that someone of such wisdom and power should settle among them. He was theirs! They wasted no time bringing to him everyone in need of healing and deliverance, and when he went off to pray in private, they went looking for him. But Jesus’ mission was larger than one town. When his disciples found him and said, “Everyone is searching for you!,” he answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

As we know, Jesus’ mission was greater than Galilee too, greater than Israel and the Middle East, greater even than the boundaries of this world. He did not belong to any one community, but to all. Jesus’ mission was to redeem all of creation, to proclaim the reign of Life over death, disease, despair, the demonic. That is the message he proclaimed and that is the message he demonstrated over and over again as he set people free.

The phrase, “Let us go to the neighboring towns” snagged my attention. An early theologian, John of Damascus, used the Greek word perichoresis to describe the active, ongoing, interrelated life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This word has connotations of movement, of swirling, even of dance – and one definition is “circulating about the neighborhood.” It suggests that the triune, relational life of God is not static but circulating, bringing life to the whole cosmos.*

We might say that that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, even in his incarnate life continued to live out that principle of perichoresis, circulating with his followers among the neighborhoods of his region. And his followers continued to live out that principle of perichoresis, circulating among the neighborhoods of the Roman Empire, starting new churches and baptizing new believers, who circulated among their neighborhoods – until even we received this proclamation of Good News and transformed Life.

This moving, communal life of the Trinity is our inheritance as well. We are called to circulate among the neighborhoods in which we find ourselves, proclaiming the message of renewed life to the people we encounter, casting out demons of fear, injustice, complacency, disease, despair.

Where do you feel called to exercise the ministry of an apostle? Among what people? In what neighborhoods, remembering that many of our neighborhoods are in online space these days. The Love of Christ is desperately needed in every neighborhood, poor, rich, urban, suburban, blighted or beautiful and in between, and we are called to make it known.

Only we don’t need to go alone. Jesus goes with us. Once he was no longer confined to a body in time and space he became available, as it were, to indwell every single person through his Holy Spirit. We carry him “around the neighborhood,” and he directs us when to speak and when to listen, when to challenge and when to offer healing. I pray we will all get moving out of our comfort circles and church life, moving with Jesus to the “neighboring towns,” eager to proclaim the gospel of peace – for, like him, that is what we are sent to do!

*Many thanks to Dwight Zscheile for making me aware of this translation, in People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity (2012, Morehouse Publishing), pp. 46-7

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2-4-21 - Where Is Jesus?

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

Jesus may have thought he could go off for a time of quiet prayer and refreshment after a long day and night of ministry – but already his time was not his own. We read that:  Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”

“Everyone is searching for you.” All his earthly life, people were looking for Jesus. When he was twelve, his parents searched for him after he went missing on a trip to Jerusalem. When they found him, they said, “Didn’t you know we would be looking for you?” When Lazarus was ill, and Jesus came days later, Mary and Martha said, “Where were you?” When chief priests and scribes wanted to arrest him, they went looking for him in Gethsemane, though he’d been “hiding in plain sight” all over Jerusalem for weeks. “Why didn’t you just arrest me at the temple?” he asked.

And on Easter morning, we find Mary Magdalene in another garden, lamenting, “They have taken my Lord and I don’t know where they have put him!” And there he is, once again hiding in plain sight, risen from the dead, mistaken for a gardener.

Is Jesus still “hiding in plain sight?” I don’t believe Jesus hides from us. Yet he can be hard to find, even when we're looking. Maybe that’s because the faculties with which we perceive spiritual reality are different than the organs that sense physical realities. And in many of us, especially in Western cultures, those faculties are underdeveloped. Jesus told Nicodemus that the Kingdom cannot be perceived with human senses, saying, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again,” which he defines as being “born of water and the Spirit.”

Even those of us who have been born of water and Spirit in baptism may not have developed our spiritual perception if no one told us we needed to. Paul prays for the Ephesians and Colossians that “the eyes of their hearts will be enlightened,” their “inner vision” sharpened as they come to recognize the Life of God around them.

If we want to see and experience Jesus more fully, we may need spiritual exercise, just as we expand our mental capacities or our physical strength and stamina. What we call spiritual disciplines are practices that help us to expand our ability to perceive and receive God. We wouldn’t expect to run ten miles our first time out; we gradually increase our capacity. In the same way, our spiritual “muscles” must be exercised. Sure, sometimes we have a glimpse or an encounter with Jesus unexpectedly, unbidden. Perhaps God gives us those experiences to draw us closer, to get us on the path, the way falling in love gets us to the place where we're willing to work at a relationship. We will see and experience more as we cultivate the intimacy Jesus promises us.

What spiritual practices are you drawn to? Increasing your reading of the Bible? Developing a more consistent life of prayer and contemplation? Getting more involved in ministries with the sick, the poor, the marginalized, where Jesus also promised he could be found? Lent is approaching – why not ask the Spirit to lead you to a spiritual practice that might help you grow your inner vision. Ask your pastor or a spiritual director for help (you're welcome to ask me).

Long ago, God made a promise through the prophet Jeremiah: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) It can be hard for us to do anything with our whole heart. Wherever we start, know that Jesus is not hiding from us, and will honor our desire to find him, as we seek him with the eyes of our hearts.

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2-3-21 - Retreat

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

What do you do after a whole evening spent healing a town's populace? If you’re Jesus, you try to get out of Dodge, at least for a little while: In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

I would probably just sleep in – but there are better ways to nurture your spirit, and Jesus led the way. After an intense period of spiritual output, or sometimes after hearing bad news, he often sought to go apart, either by himself, or with some or all of the Twelve. These mini-retreats were often interrupted, but that didn’t stop him from going.

When we just give and give without taking the time to recharge our spiritual batteries, to reconnect with the One whose life we are sharing with the world, we soon find ourselves with little to offer, tiring more quickly, becoming easily irritated. Jesus models the value of time set apart for prayer, no matter how long it is. He knows he has another busy day of ministry ahead, so he gets up while it’s still dark to grab some alone time with his heavenly Father. That’s what prayer is – a time of conversation with God, and we don’t need five days away to do that.

I am lousy at the spiritual practice of retreat, at least in its multi-day form. I used to go regularly on retreat to convents or monasteries, but not in recent years. Maybe it’s easier to think about retreats in smaller chunks. In a previous church I used to offer a monthly half-day retreat, Spa for the Spirit, which I’m thinking of reviving online. Even four hours off the treadmill of our lives can be surprisingly renewing and refreshing.

How about building an hour of retreat into your week? Choose a day when you’re not too busy, and a spot where you can be alone and quiet. Make a date with yourself and with God, and show up. Light a candle. Read a little Scripture and chew on it inwardly. Read a spiritual book. Talk to God about what’s on your mind. Try to get centered and silent and hear what God might be saying back. Write in a journal about what happens as you pray, what your hopes and intentions for the next week might be. Our spirits can get some deep nurture in a time apart like that.

We can even go with smaller increments. Just as they’re finding that exercise can be valuable even in 7-minute increments, so can stepping into “God-space” for a few minutes once a day or more. I know people who set alerts on their computers or phones to cue them to go into quiet for a set period of time.

I don’t suggest these shorter times as a replacement for intentional, multi-day retreats. Retreat is one of the most rewarding spiritual practices in our Christian tradition, and there are things that we can only hear and receive when we’ve stepped out of our regular lives for several days. It takes time for our spirits to rest, for us get in touch with what’s going on deep down, to become receptive to a deeper connection with the Holy Spirit. I always gain invaluable insights on retreat.

When we follow Jesus into the places apart, we can be pretty sure he’ll meet us there with his peace. And we will be refreshed.

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2-2-21 - Many Were Cured

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

Capernaum, where Jesus made his home, could be a tough place for him. Too many people knew about him, too many wanted some of what he was giving out. The story about the healing of the possessed man in the synagogue must have made the rounds – and maybe the tale of Peter’s mother-in-law’s instantaneous recovery also spread quickly. People knew where to find Jesus, and they weren’t shy about it:

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

What I find interesting is not that the “whole city” was gathered around the door. It’s that Mark says Jesus cured “many.” By the time Matthew and Luke get to this material, it's upgraded to “all” and “everyone he met.” The word “many” suggests that not everyone Jesus touched was cured.

The single biggest obstacle to people participating in the ministry of Christian healing, in my experience, is the fact that our prayers are not always answered in the way we desire. One big step of faith not met with “success” can be enough to stop some from taking a second. And so the church is deprived of one of its most powerful ways to demonstrate the transforming love of God, and individuals’ faith can grow weak from lack of exercise.

There can be obstacles to healing, things that must be addressed before a person can receive the healing love flowing toward them. As Agnes Sanford wrote so simply and memorably in her classic, The Healing Light, if we flick a light switch and the light doesn’t come on, we don’t conclude that electricity is impossible and doesn’t work. We look for a break in the current – in the bulb, in the wire, in the outlet, in the house itself.

Obstacles to healing can include a root cause that needs to be brought to the light - sometimes infirmity is a system’s response to trauma that has not been dealt with in a conscious way. When praying about long-term illness, it’s worth asking when it came on, and what happened 6-9 months before it did – or even earlier.Illness or injury can be the result of chronic shame or resentment, an inability to forgive someone else or receive forgiveness ourselves. That is a block that can be brought to the light and dealt with. Sometimes healing follows forgiveness.

There are also people who have become so accustomed to being sick, with the attendant diminished expectations and increased support and attention, that we can pray all we want; the person can't receive it until they're ready. This is not to suggest that it’s the sick person's "fault” when healing isn’t discernible – only that there are factors to look for and deal with. A lack of faith within a community, or among those offering prayer, can also be a barrier, as can conflict. Healing prayer is rarely a one-shot thing – it needs to be undertaken over time, asking questions.

If even Jesus did not cure everyone, we should not feel deficient if our “healing rate” is less than 100 percent. Let’s take this word “many” as encouragement to move forward in our faith, inviting God to release the healing stream in every situation where healing is needed.

And give thanks in advance - God's last word to us is "yes."

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