Water Daily

5-11-22 - What God Has Made Clean

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

After reflecting on Sunday’s Gospel reading for two days, let’s spend the rest of the week on the reading from Acts. These stories have so much life. This week’s in particular amplifies the message of “love one another.” The story of what the apostle Peter experienced in Joppa radically expanded the early church’s understanding of its mission.

We hear this tale as Peter tells it to his brethren in Jerusalem. They are suspicious about Gentile converts to faith in Jesus Christ. Many of the Jewish believers fear this is too great a departure from their tradition (here they are, only a few years since Jesus’ resurrection, already defending the tradition…) So Peter goes to Jerusalem to explain to these “circumcised believers” why it is he eats and drinks with Gentiles, non-Jews. Have they so quickly forgotten that Jesus too had to explain his choices of eating companions?

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision…”

Peter relates a bizarre vision in which a sheet is lowered from heaven containing mammals, reptiles, birds, as a voice says, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter protests that he has never eaten anything non-kosher, but the voice replies, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happens three times, and the moment he emerges from his trance he receives word that some men want to see him. They ask him to come and speak to a group gathered at the home of a Roman centurion, Cornelius. (These stories appear in greater detail in Acts 10 - what we have here is Peter’s re-telling). Normally, Peter would not have gone off with Gentiles, but with this vision fresh in his mind, and the Spirit’s nudging, he goes.

We’ll explore later what wondrous things happen in the home of Cornelius. Today let’s stay with the vision and message Peter received, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Do we have here a hint of how the Holy Spirit expands our understanding of God’s word? Extending the Good News to Gentiles, and the early church’s grappling with that, is instructive for us in our church conflicts over biblical interpretation and social issues. Christians on the more “liberal” end of these tensions believe that the Spirit has enlarged our interpretative lens, if you will, while those on the more conservative side feel that the tradition must be honored and upheld. Yet it seems to me you can’t get a more radical expansion of Mosaic food laws than, “Do not call profane what God has made clean.” What else might the Spirit be inviting us to re-examine?

What are some areas in which you have had to wrestle with scripture, traditional interpretation of that scripture, and a call to a more expansive view? Does this vision of Peter’s help or hinder your struggle?

For Peter, this experience provided critical data that he needed right away when called to a Roman centurion’s home. What happened when he got there confirmed the vision a thousand times. That’s how God works – he shows us something new, leads us into the unfamiliar, and then let’s us know we are exactly where she wants us to be.

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5-10-22 - Commanded To Love

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

We don’t tend to think of love as something one must be commanded to do. In fact, a commandment to love seems an oxymoron – love by its nature is freely given. Yet we also know that when love is only a feeling and not a choice, it can fluctuate the way feelings do, resulting in chaos and heartbreak. So we put structures around love with vows and norms and tax laws. People pledge commitments to one another for the days they don’t feel so loving.

Jesus must have known it wouldn’t be any easier to be his church than it was to be married. The commandment he gives his disciples on his last night with them is directed to those who would carry forward his name in the world, the community of Christ-followers. And he is direct: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Love was to mark the Christian community. Not congregation size or feeding programs or how many missionaries supported or peace marches participated in. Love. For each other.

How we doing by that measure, 2000+ years later? Does it surprise us that many churches have more real estate than people? Poll after poll shows that many, especially the Gen X- through Z-ers everyone wants in their churches, feel the Church is marked by judgmentalism, commercialism, hypocrisy, intolerance, greed and irrelevance. If Christians are not in the news for offending someone, we’re boring people to death. The liberal/conservative fault lines are so deep, there are such discrepancies between how certain scriptures are interpreted, and even which scripture to focus on - we’ve lost the heart of Jesus in the scramble to represent him.

We need to figure this out, because God has a dream for God's Church. It is intended to be the mystical Body of Christ, his hands and feet and voice and conscience given for the life of this world. There is still power in this ancient idea, this sacred community across time and space. This is the way God has chosen to make her love abundantly real to the world, the vessel through which his transforming love can work most powerfully.

But the only message the world will truly understand is love. How do we live into Jesus’ command to love our fellow Christ-followers, even when they seem to flout his commands? We can only get there by allowing God to love us, to fill us with his love. We can only get there by acknowledging the ways we judge and belittle others. We need to invite God to show us what she treasures about our brothers and sisters who offend us, to see the wounds that might cause behavior or words we consider harmful.

Today, think of a Christian you have trouble with. Hold him or her in your mind’s eye. And then pray for her or him to be blitzed with God’s blessing. Rinse and repeat tomorrow.

Jesus said his disciples were no longer servants, but friends, chosen in love, appointed to bear fruit, enduring, life-changing fruit. If we want to do that, be that, we need to learn how to love one another in the worst of times.

5-9-22 - Separation Anxiety

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

Nobody likes to be left, not even Jesus’ disciples. In our lectionary time travels through Eastertide, we’re back to the night Jesus was arrested, in that upper room where they have just had supper. He has washed their feet, said strange things about bread and wine, and predicted that one of them would betray him. Judas has just left to do that. Now he gives a lengthy farewell speech. Jesus has a lot to say to his followers before they go out into the Garden of Gethsemane.

He says something rather confusing about glorifying and being glorified, but the next part is painfully clear: "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'”

It makes me think of a child wailing, “Wanna come with! Wanna come with!” as his parents gently but firmly explain why he cannot join them for an evening out. “Where I am going, you cannot come.” But a parent usually adds, “I’ll be home later,” while here Jesus tells his disciples the worst: “I am with you only a little longer.” And soon he will be gone, gone, gone… and then mysteriously back, but not in the same way. Never again in the same way.

The movement of God is always forward, not back. The mystery of God is One in unity yet with Three distinct persons. And one of the mysteries we live with as followers of the risen and ascended Christ is being separate from him while mystically united with him. We claim his life lives in us through the Spirit, yet when we pray, it is to an Other distinct from us.

The disciples had to get used to Jesus’ absence. We have a different challenge: to become used to his presence, real though not embodied. For when Jesus made his final departure in bodily form, he promised that his Father would send his Spirit to be with his followers, that he would be with them through his Spirit.

Children learning to deal with separation from parents are often given a “transitional object,” a blanket or toy or stuffed animal that carries some of the presence of the parent and eases the separating process. Well, Christ-followers are given what we might call the ultimate in transitional objects, the Spirit of the Holy God to fill us, surround us, comfort us, empower us – and remind us that God will never leave us or forsake us.

Separation anxiety is real, and varies in intensity for each of us relative to our experiences in early childhood. But in the spiritual life, the Life we live in God’s realm, Jesus is always here, always present. And not only is he never leaving again; he wants us to come out and play with him.

5-6-22 - The Not-So-Gentle Shepherd

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

Reading the Gospels, we can see Jesus in different lights – and come away with a picture very different from the one our culture presents. Popular art and hymnody often portray him as gentle and mild, serene, a peacemaker and solemn teacher. Maybe it’s all those pictures of him carrying a cuddly little lamb in his arms, and our desire for a world in which the meek inherit the earth. He did say they would, and he meant it in the long-term, but “meek” was not the way Jesus went about doing business.

In fact, the image of Jesus as a gentle shepherd shows ignorance about what went into shepherding in his day. It was a dirty, dangerous, fierce and sometimes nasty business. Shepherds were hired to tend valuable livestock; if they lost a sheep to a predator or a poacher or a ravine, they were responsible for the cost. It was not a field that attracted the finest of men. I wonder if Jesus' taking on the label “shepherd” itself raised some eyebrows.

The Jesus we find in the Gospels is strong; fierce on behalf of the broken and marginalized; merciless with the self-righteous; challenging to the wealthy and powerful; harsh with his followers; often sarcastic and occasionally rude. He is frequently seen arguing with the religious leaders, whom he mocked to their faces and in his parables. He spoke with authority and did not hold back, even when threatened with death. He was “in your face” to the max – especially when it came to his claims about his relationship with God, as he does again in this week's Gospel reading: “What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

More clearly than we see in other passages, Jesus defines his “flock” and his mission as a gift from his Father, and with all humility elevates himself above all others. I say “with all humility” because humility means having an accurate, “right-sized” view of yourself, and Jesus was, after all, God. But he didn’t look like God to the religious leaders around him, so they often took great offense at such claims. After hearing him say, “The Father and I are one,” we’re told, “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.”

How we see Jesus matters, because it shapes how we reveal him to the world. Our churches often reflect the cultural view of Jesus – solemn and contented, comforting and complacent, slow to challenge the structures of society or provoke our members to action. No wonder we’re in decline. Too often the Jesus we project is someone to have tea with, not one to join in reclaiming, restoring and renewing all of creation.

Let’s become reacquainted with the Jesus of the Gospels, even if it means reading them back-to-back several times over. Let’s look at our congregations and see how well we reflect the Jesus that multitudes found so compelling they left everything to follow him, whom thousands testified rose from the dead, bearing that conviction to a martyr’s grave.

And let’s look at ourselves, how we walk with Jesus among the people we know, how well we reflect the Jesus of the Gospels. That’s a guy people want to know better. Let’s make him known.

5-5-22 - Held Fast

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. Do you ever want to feel you belong to someone, someone who desires the best for you and will hold your heart, and not let anyone take you away? That is the basis of many a good marriage – and maybe some stalker scenarios. We want to be held tight and to have our freedom, often at the same time.

This is one of the promises Jesus gives those who follow him as Lord. We have the freedom to walk away, but he will not let anyone take us from him: My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

I reflect on this promise when I think of people who seem to have been snatched away from Jesus by greed or mental illness or addiction or trauma, people who claim to have no use for the gift of life he promises. I have to believe that if they have once considered themselves as belonging to Jesus, even if it was only as children, they are still his, no matter what happens later.

And I wonder, if I were more conscious about being tethered to Jesus, would I feel more grace in daily life? Would I go easier on myself? Would I be easier on other people? What does it mean to feel held fast and fully alive, all at once?

As I write that question, an image fills my head, the famous one from the movie Titanic, Kate Winslet at the bow of the ship, her arms outstretched, face into the wind, exhilarated by freedom, as Leonardo DiCaprio holds her safe. Schmaltzy, yes, but perhaps not a bad way to understand the gift of being held so we can be adventurous and free.

I know God wants us to know his love. And I know God wants us to be free. And I know God wants us to be fully alive – in this world, and in the life that comes next, which flows in unbroken continuity from this one.

We are already living the eternal life Jesus has won for us; we get to explore it here and now, becoming ready for Life Without Any Ends. And we can be free to ride the winds of the Spirit knowing Jesus holds us fast. And no one can snatch us out of his hand.

5-4-22 - Hearing Jesus

You can listen to this reflection here.

In our gospel reading this week, we see the religious leaders of Jesus’ time demand that he state whether or not he is the Messiah. None of this hinting around. “Are you or aren’t you?” they ask. In reply, he throws an “Are you or aren’t you?” back at them: Are they his sheep, or not? He doesn’t even ask, because he knows they are not:

The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

Jesus presents an argument that is hard to refute – and hard to accept. He says, “If you believe in me, you’re one of my sheep. If you don’t, you’re not – so you won’t recognize my voice and become one of my sheep.” He defines his critics “out” as firmly as he defines his followers “in.” That cannot have felt very good to these leaders, already suspicious of him yet desperately hoping he might in fact be the long-awaited Messiah.

How about us, reading this so many thousands of years later? Do you feel like one of Jesus’ sheep? He describes his relationship with his sheep as an intimate one, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Do you feel known by Jesus? Do you let him know you? Do you feel you are following him?

It can be hard to follow him if we don’t hear his voice, and it can be hard to hear his voice in the din in which we live our lives – actual noise, constant input and stimulus from social media and email and voicemail, not to mention the incessant chatter inside our own heads… How can we hear Jesus’ voice? Well, here are some ways:

In prayer, inviting him to speak to us as we wait in silence;
In the Gospels, reading them with an eye to get to know the Jesus we find in them – chewing on his words as we encounter them;
In the sacraments, inviting him to speak through objects and actions both sacred and ordinary;
In hymns and spiritual songs, attending to phrases that stick or come to the surface;
In other people, especially people in need, in whom he said he could be found;
in our responses to suffering and joy;
In our own thoughts, as we invite the Holy Spirit to speak in us.In which of these ways do you hear Jesus most clearly?

We can follow him without hearing him – that’s called faith. Mother Theresa reportedly went for years without a felt sense of connection to God, moving forward on the strength of the revelation she'd experienced earlier. Yet I believe Jesus wants us to hear his voice. Let’s explore and see if one or more of these avenues opens the ears of our hearts to hear Love calling us in.

5-3-22 - Are You Or Aren't You?

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

Some people just want a straight answer. They don’t want to be told a story, or given a demonstration, or be delivered an elliptical discourse that circles around, making its points indirectly. Such people had trouble with Jesus.

Such people still have trouble with Jesus, especially as he is presented in the Gospel of John, much of which shows the Jewish religious leaders (“the Jews” in John’s shorthand) grappling with often contradictory “evidence” about Jesus: he teaches with authority, yet seems to flout the Law at will. He has undeniable spiritual power and holiness, yet he consorts with people who are “impure.” Worst, he makes radical claims about himself and his relationship to God, who he refers to as his “heavenly Father.” Who is this guy?

So the Jewish leaders gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.”

No one will win this argument, Jesus asserts, because the religious leaders will never accept his word; their suspicion blocks their ability to believe. And only believing Jesus’ word can dismantle their suspicions. As far as Jesus is concerned, his works of power (miracles) are incontrovertible testimony supporting his claims. If the leaders won’t accept that testimony, they will never believe. And they can’t accept that testimony because Jesus doesn’t look like or sound like the kind of Messiah they believe in. “The guy comes from Galilee, for Christ’s sake!” they reason (rough paraphrase…).

Not much has changed in the millennia since these encounters. It’s hard to accept Jesus as Risen Lord and Savior without faith, and it can be hard to receive the gift of faith without the Spirit of Christ. Hard, but not impossible for those who want to believe. It is more difficult for those who refuse to believe, or who are so sure that God could never look or sound like a poor, itinerant preacher and miracle-worker from a backwater county who died on a cross. Or those who would only follow a Lord who delivers on their prayer requests with more speed and accuracy than God has promised. Everyone has reasons for holding back their hearts from full faith and trust in Jesus.

There may be times in all of our lives when we want to say, “Are you for real, Jesus, or aren’t you? Because I’m tired of trusting and believing and not feeling the love, not seeing the fruits.” The Good News is that Jesus invites those questions and the longing behind them. Jesus entertains our expressions of doubt as he entertained Thomas’, just as he delights in our affirmations of faith. First and foremost, Jesus invites us into a relationship of knowledge and intimacy and trust – the trust of a sheep for their shepherd.

Where does the balance between faith and suspicion lie for you today? What do you want to know about Jesus? Ask him!