Water Daily

10-10-23 - No Thanks

You can listen to this reflection here.

I once had a friend who would decline to do things with me if she received other offers she preferred, even if she’d already accepted my invitation. While I admired her honesty, I felt I didn’t rate very high on her list. Not that I was about to burn down her village or anything…

The invited guests in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet have no qualms about turning down the king’s invitation to his feast – in fact, they seem to have no respect for this king at all. The first group just say, “No.” Then the king sends out other servants and says, “'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them."

One to his farm, another to his business. In Luke's version the excuses are more creative – one just got married and didn’t want to leave his new wife just yet. Who are these people who so little value God's invitations?

On any given day it can be you or me or anyone we know. There can be no end to other priorities when it comes to engaging the spiritual life. Connecting with God has to be on our schedule, and not when the coach has called a practice, or the boss a new deadline, or there’s anything else we’d rather do. Just think of all the reasons people give for not coming to church.

And yet, if you’re reading this you have put engaging with God-Life above quite a few other demands on your time. Something about spending time and energy in the presence of God or God’s people, in praise and worship, in acts of mercy and justice, has been compelling enough that you’ve actually said yes to God's invitation to the banquet, not once but many times.

What made the difference for you? If we can identify that, we might be able to better frame the invitation so that other people can respond to it. Are there ways that we practice our faith that can obscure the life at its heart? Inviting people in needn't mean lowest-common-denominator consumer Christianity – some of the highest-commitment faith communities are the most robust. But the banquet does have to be lively, full of life, real, true life. That’s what people are hungry for.

Make a list today of all the reasons you’ve said yes to God’s invitation, and why you stay at God’s table. If there is a list of excuses you’ve made or continue to make, list those too. Look at both lists and see what common threads emerge. Where in these gifts and obstacles might you find the seeds of an invitation to a friend or acquaintance?

God’s banquet is waiting. In this life, we only experience the feast in parts – but oh, how rich even those morsels can be. Who is God sending you out to invite?

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10-9-23 - Who Doesn't Love a Wedding?

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

Oh, a nice story about a wedding; what a relief after the violence of last week’s vineyard parable. Who doesn’t love a wedding? Except that this nice parable about a wedding looks more like a Quentin Tarantino flick, with an enraged host, slaughtered guests and a bewildered party crasher. Granted, this is how Matthew relates Jesus’ story, and he seems often to ratchet up the violence; in Luke’s telling it is a lot milder.

This parable is not actually about a wedding – it is a story about invitation. An invitation spurned by indifferent guests. It’s a story about a host who won’t take “no” for an answer.

The nutshell version: A king gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sends servants to gather the invited guests, but they won’t come to the feast. He sends other servants with the message that the feast is ready, but these are mocked and given excuses, and then molested and killed. The enraged king retaliates, killing the offenders and burning their city, and then sends his servants out to the streets to invite everyone they find, “both good and bad,” to fill his wedding hall. One, who is not appropriately dressed, gets thrown out. Nice story, huh? (It makes a LOT more sense in Luke…)

What is this parable actually about? Like many of Jesus’ tales, it illustrates his claim that the leading religious figures have ignored God’s invitation offered through the prophets, and ultimately through Jesus, to come to the feast prepared for them. Since the “holy people” have not been faithful to the Lord their God, God will send representatives to the “highways and byways,” gathering up the good and the not-so-good – and sort out later who gets to stick around. If the King in Jesus’ story represents God, it’s not a lovely depiction of God – especially the part about killing the would-be guests and burning down their city.

On another level, this is a story about how easy it can be to put aside the claims and gifts of God and lose ourselves in the mundane and the worldly. We’ll explore that aspect more tomorrow.

Today, try reading the story aloud to yourself, and notice where you get snagged. Give it some thought and read it again… what questions arise? What invitations do you hear? What warnings?

It can be hard to find the Good News in this story. It is very bad news for the people who have ignored God’s call to be his people, and so-so news for the ones scooped up on the streets, who may get to stay at the feast, or may be tossed into outer darkness. Where is the Good News for you?

10-6-23 - The Fruits of the Kingdom

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

As we read the Gospels and even the book of Acts, it seems clear that neither Jesus nor his followers had any intention of starting a new religious system. They sought to reform the tradition they’d inherited, a temple- based Judaism that had become leadership-heavy and legalistic.

Yet, as Jesus interprets this parable he's just told, it also seems clear that he expected the reform to involve a total change of leadership and operation: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

So, what exactly are the “fruits of the Kingdom,” the markers and outcomes of Life in the realm of God? We can glean what Jesus meant by the way he taught and the way he interacted with people:

Chief among the fruits is repentance – that is often where we start in our relationship with God, by seeing ourselves honestly and clearly and finding out that God loves us as we are – and too much to leave us that way.

Repentance is related to another prime Kingdom fruit – healing, the manifestation in this world of the transforming love and power of God’s realm.

Generosity is another major fruit of the kingdom - an ability to loosen our grip on what is “ours” and share with all as any have need. We can really only do this when we truly love our neighbors as ourselves.

So we’d have to put love of neighbor as self on our list. From that flows all kinds of other fruits.

A desire for justice and peace-making are fruits of the Kingdom, as is a commitment to community in the Body of Christ.

What would you add to this list?
What fruits do you see most often in your life?
What do you wish you saw more of, in yourself and in the church around you?

If the Realm of Good has been entrusted to us, are we helping to bring forth transformed lives and a transformed world? That is the ultimate fruit Jesus looks for.

10-5-23 - Gotcha!

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

These parables Jesus told his “frenemies,” the scribes and Pharisees, have a pattern: story, question, gotcha. Jesus would describe a situation of obvious injustice and then ask how they would resolve it. They would give an answer that, once they realized who in the parable stood for them, indicted them. It’s amazing how often they fell for it.

So it is here. Jesus tells the story of the vineyard and the wicked tenants, and then asks, “’Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’”

“Gotcha,” Jesus says – “Have you never read in the scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

God will take the leadership away from you, he says, and give it to others, outsiders, outcasts, outliers, who will produce the fruit at harvest time, the fruit of repentance, the fruit of good works, the fruit of worship. Jesus uses an image from Psalm 118:22, of a stone, once rejected as unsuitable, now become the cornerstone of a new building. This theme is oft-repeated in salvation history, as God chooses unlikely candidates on which to build his community, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David. We see it fulfilled in Jesus.

Jesus takes this familiar verse and turns it against the leaders: "The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

Now the Pharisees and scribes realize he’s been talking about them, and the gloves are off. They begin to actively seek his arrest, but are afraid to offend the crowds, who see Jesus as a prophet. They might have taken what Jesus said to heart and examined their leadership, or welcomed the “unworthy" as full members of the religious community. But they were too stuck in their own pride and self-righteousness to choose a different course of action.

In prayer today, let’s remember leaders, religious or secular, who seem stuck or blind to the big picture. Let’s pray especially for those leaders whom we don’t trust – they need God’s blessing the most. And let’s pray for those who appear to be outsiders, whom we don’t want to welcome in.

It seems to be a principle that as soon as we start to think we’re insiders, God upsets the apple cart and invites outsiders to our party, challenging our notions of what should be. We may as well try to get there first, and invite those outliers in ourselves. Or better yet, go out and join them, so we can be invited in.

10-4-23 - The Son

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

Many religious traditions revere figures who received a revelation which inspired that expression of spiritual life. Some have prophets, some gurus, some gods or goddesses, some martyrs. The Christian tradition goes further, claiming that, in addition to prophetic and angelic messengers, God sent his own son to reveal his truth and to set people free from the consequences of sin and death.

If an important person sends her daughter or son to represent her, it carries more weight than if an aide or staffer shows up. A daughter or son is more like that person, bearing her very DNA. The claim that Jesus of Nazareth was not only a good and holy man chosen by God as Messiah, but actually the incarnated son of God is a pretty big claim.

Why does it matter that we consider Jesus the fully human, fully divine Son of God? Jesus' incarnation is a gift for many reasons, an indication of how far God was willing to go to bridge the chasm to humankind. But perhaps it is in his sacrifice on the cross that the son-ship of Jesus matters most. As the sacrifice to end the whole bloody system of sacrifice, God offers the ultimate victim. As a friend once said, trying to explain the Cross – “You can’t get a bigger sacrificial victim than the Son of God.”

We can discuss another day whether Jesus had to die and how his sacrifice set us free… traditional Christian understanding says he did and it does; we must each find our way into that mystery. Today, let’s explore a smaller mystery – that in this parable, this very Son of God tells a story about a fictional son who will be beaten and killed by those charged with nurturing the harvest with which they’d been entrusted. Once again, Jesus is predicting his own death – and charging his listeners with murder. If they hadn’t already wanted to kill him, now they surely did.

In Jesus’ story, the wicked tenants seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. Jesus was himself cast out by the temple leadership who could not swallow his claims of divinity – or his growing influence. They told themselves they were just getting rid of yet another troublemaker, not the Son of God. And yet Jesus’ son-ship remained a fact they had to deal with – even more after his death.

How does Jesus’ “son-ship” affect your faith? Do you feel closer to God through knowing Jesus, however imperfectly we may know him in this life?

These are questions worth exploring as we live into a relationship with God through the Son whom we meet in Yeshua of Nazareth. They are worth exploring in prayer – we can say simply, “Jesus, I want to know God more fully. Let me see you," and see what unfolds.

How does knowing Jesus help us draw nearer the mystery of God? Jesus told his followers that if they’d seen him, they’d seen the Father. The best way to find out is to invite the Holy Spirit to dwell with us. It is the Spirit who brings us the presence of Christ, every time.

10-3-23 - Tenants

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

Many landlords can tell horror stories about bad tenants – people who never clean bathrooms, who damage walls in riotous parties, allow animals to roam the basement, or cart off appliances when they leave in the middle of the night, six months’ rent unpaid. But the tenants in Jesus’ parable about the leased vineyard? This is like renting your property to a drug cartel.

What does the landlord desire in letting out his vineyard? He wants it to be well tended, to bear good fruit, of which he is due a portion as income. These are the terms which allow the tenants to live on the beautiful land and produce good grapes and fine wine. But these tenants don’t honor their agreement, and they communicate their refusal violently. They want to seize the vineyard and own it outright.

Jesus was suggesting to the religious leaders hearing this that they, as stewards of Israel’s religious life, were like those tenants. They had not heeded the prophets. They perpetuated a highly remunerative system of temple sacrifice, and left ordinary people thinking they could never be right in the sight of God. They had set themselves as arbiters of right and wrong instead of seeing themselves as stewards of God’s power and mercy.

Yesterday I said it was human nature to ignore warnings. It is also human nature to appropriate what has been freely loaned to us. Religious communities in particular can fall prey to this danger, to focus their energy and resources on perpetuating their own life at the expense of fostering a living relationship with the God of surprises.

If we assess ourselves as tenants of God’s vineyard, how do we measure up? Compared to the larcenous, murderous lot in Jesus’ story, we’re golden. But let’s look at ourselves straight on. God has entrusted us with the care of the earth, of our families, our money and income, our gifts, our neighbors… how are we doing? Is there good fruit? Are we returning to God a portion of what we have received?

Take an inventory of all the areas of life in which God has entrusted you with resources or ministry. Name the fruit. For instance, if you think of your family, what good is discernible in and through the people with whom you share a home or a name? If the resource is your body, what good fruit do you see from how well you care for it? If the resource is work, what fruit do you see? Let’s name the fruits, and also the stagnant, unfruitful things connected to those areas. More prayer fodder.

Everything we have is a gift from God – a gift not to be seized but to be invested, nurtured, grown, and returned, at least in part. And always ready to be shared. What kind of tenant on this earth do you want to be? What kind of steward of God's love can you become?

10-2-23 - Kill the Messenger?

You can listen to this reflection here.

Another week, another vineyard. In this week’s parable, Jesus continues the conversation he was having with the priests and Pharisees we looked at last week. After putting them in their place with the tale of the two sons, he says, “Listen to another parable.” This time, he borrows from Isaiah 5:1-7, starting his story almost the same way.

A landowner plants, fences and equips a vineyard, and then leases it to others to run. As rent they owe a portion of the harvest. At picking time, he sends collectors – but the tenants won’t pay: “But the tenants seized his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” They do the same to the next delegation, so the owner decides to send his son to collect the rent, “…saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

Jesus is laying another trap for the religious leaders. In not-so-thinly-veiled language, he alludes to the reception which Israel’s leaders had traditionally given God’s prophets. Most often, when they didn’t like what the prophets had to say, they tried to silence or even kill them. And what were the prophets usually saying? “God doesn’t want your sacrifices and your legalistic rituals. God doesn’t want your lip-service about holiness while you cheat the orphan and the widow and dishonor God’s Sabbath. God wants your heart, your repentance, your compassion.” Or, as Isaiah says of the vineyard, “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”

It is human nature to turn away from messages that challenge us to change. As we observe unprecedented devastation from climate change we are reminded of the failure over the past sixty years to get people to take seriously the risks to human, plant and animal life of a rapidly warming planet. On a smaller scale, think how hard it can be for an addict to take that first step in recovery, or for people to begin a weight-loss program. Often we wait until we see the effects of what we’ve been warned about – and then it can be too late. And sometimes, seeing the danger we’ve feared come to pass drives our heads further into the sands of denial and over-consumption.

Are there messages you have you been trying to ignore? Messages from God, from the Bible, from friends, from your own gut? Take some time in quiet today and ask that question of yourself and the Spirit, and see what emerges. “What am I pretending not to know?”

Are there issues on which you feel called to speak prophetically – i.e., messages that you believe God wants you to deliver? Are you offering them? How are they being received? Is there another way to communicate them?

This parable was a direct condemnation of the religious leaders of Israel in Jesus’ time. But its imagery resonates for us in many ways today, as citizens of the world and citizens of God’s realm. Isaiah tells us,
"For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"

God’s call to us to be people of justice and righteousness still sounds. May we not leave those cries unheard.