Water Daily

10-19-23 - Church and State

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

Can institutional religion and institutional government co-exist in harmony when their aims are often so divergent? The Pharisees, in their sly interrogation of Jesus, implied that support for the state (admittedly, in this case a brutal occupying force…) was incompatible with support for God. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Jesus refused to indulge that duality – he seemed profoundly disinterested in engaging the question. After all, from the point of view of eternity, support for both the civil state and the church are temporal. Jesus is interested not so much in where we give our money as in how we give our hearts.

As human beings, we are both political and spiritual. So our societies necessarily contain both such structures, with different goals and ways of operating. Religious and civic life exist in essential and overlapping but basically distinct realms. When those realms live in creative tension, somewhat equally balanced in power and influence, human societies do alright. We go off the rails when either becomes too dominant - especially, I'm sorry to say, when it's religion that tries to run the show. Such is the power of Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” seeing new life as an award-winning television series, warning a new era about the incompatibility of theocracy and democracy. The danger to democracy posed by the "Christian Nationalism" movement is profound.

This week we are exploring how best to live in the tension of our dual citizenship, how to reflect the values of heaven on earth, and hold up the needs of earth before the power of heaven. How do you feel called to live that dual citizenship, bringing your spiritual self into the public square? When do we challenge secular values with gospel values? How and when might we invite the power of the Holy Spirit to work through us for secular good?

It's easy to get disgusted with government. We can instead wield the spiritual power we've been given as well as our civic freedoms, being both engaged citizens and prayer warriors. The healthiest way for church and state to mingle might just be in us.

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10-18-23 - God and Government

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

Did God ordain governments? Some see governments as purveyors of chaos and corruption, when their very purpose is to prevent those things and secure a safe and equitable society in which all citizens might thrive. We know too many cases where government works against the values we hold, though it is also society’s chief agent of justice.

Some passages in scripture read as though God very much works through political systems and leaders, even ones outside the people of Israel (read up on the Cyrus passages in Isaiah, also appointed for this Sunday…). St. Paul, writing in Romans 13, seems to feel that no ruler on earth can exercise power without God’s authority – which makes me wonder what he thinks about corrupt and oppressive rulers, of which his day saw as many as ours. Jesus, in the passage we are exploring this week, seems to take governments as a given, not saying where they fit in God’s plan. As he tells Pilate under interrogation, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

Government is a natural human phenomenon, as is institutional religion. Human beings have to organize around power, supplies and spirituality, and all organizations soon take on a life and culture of their own. Like the human beings of which they are comprised, governments exist on a spectrum between good and evil, helpful and self-serving, visionary and banal. Government, in a functioning democracy, is us, and we are it. We don’t get to call it a “them.”

So where does that leave us as people of faith? Perhaps it leaves us with a call to be agents of healthier government and a more life-bringing body politic. In recent years our rhetoric has grown more and more polarized and shrill, though the urgency of justice often seems to call for turning up the volume. Many Christians have sought to find an appropriate place as promoters of equality and resisters of evil. What if Christ followers participated primarily as peacemakers, not trying to convince the irrational, but refraining from demonizing, holding up the values of justice and equity and freedom?

Sound like a pipe dream? We have at our hands the power that transforms worlds. Surely we can pray for our governments and those who claim a desire to lead us.

I don’t know if God ordains governments. I do believe God will work through anyone who asks. Let’s ask.

10-17-23 - Giving With God

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

Then Jesus said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Sounds simple, right? Give to God the things that are God’s. But what belongs to God? Doesn’t the emperor also belong to God? And if everything belongs to God – why does God need our gifts? Our pledges? Our offerings?

Maybe God doesn’t need anything from us. Maybe we need to give, because things get squirrely when we don’t, and because we are transformed when we do.

It is tempting to see the two kinds of “giving” that Jesus talks about here as similar, parallel tracks. We owe the government our taxes to pay for the goods and services we need governments to render. We owe God our “dues” to pay for… what? Clergy and church buildings? Charity?

Once we equate giving our money and resources for God’s mission to “taxes” or “dues,” it becomes an obligation, a contractual exchange. That is not what giving is intended to be for Christians. We are not called to give to God. We are called to give in relationship with God, to give because it is the best way we know to reciprocate in gratitude for all that we’ve received, to join into the celebration of blessing.

When our giving is stunted, it may be that we are not all that grateful, not feeling very blessed. We give because it sets us free, opens us up, changes our hearts. We give because we love seeing what happens for others when we do.

Where does giving bring you the most joy? Where do you feel the least willing?
Both answers offer ground for prayer – and action. Maybe we are being invited to give additionally in both categories. Maybe we want to strengthen our gratitude muscles.

We are to give as God has given us – and in Christ, God gave us everything. The great U2 song, “With or Without You” is not about a human relationship, but the struggle to exist in faith and intimacy with the God you cannot see. (The “she” in U2 songs often refers to the Holy Spirit or to grace…)
See the stone set in your eyes See the thorn twist in your side. (A Pauline reference.)
I can’t live, with or without you,” Bono sings.

And then comes the repeated refrain which applies to both God, and to us in relationship with the God whose essential nature it is to give, a nature we gradually take on: And you give, and you give, and you give yourself away. And we never run out.

10-16-23 - God's Currency

You can listen to this reflection here.

In this week's gospel story we witness yet another confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders, this time over whether to pay taxes to the Roman oppressors. They thought this a tidy trap – if he said "No," they could have him arrested for sedition; if "Yes," they could brand him a collaborator before his adoring crowds. Win/win, right?

Not for them. Jesus asks for a Roman coin. "Whose image do you see imprinted here?" he asks. "Caesar," they answer. "It's easy," he replies, "You owe this to the one who issued it. Give to the emperor what belongs to him, to God what belongs to God." And he dances out of another trap.

Genesis tells us that humankind was made in the image of God. St. Paul asserts that Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God, and that we are united with Christ in baptism. So we are stamped with the image of God in birth, and in rebirth. We are the coins God has issued to the world, if you will, the currency by which God's generosity is realized.

What are coins? They are utilitarian, sure, yet also precious. And they are used to purchase things of value to their possessor. They can bring dreams into being. What is God’s dream? That all of God's children thrive in freedom and plenty and wholeness.

Does it change your self-perception to think of yourself as a coin bearing the image of your creator, the currency of the Almighty in the creation? How might we be expended as "God's coins" to bring that dream of God into being?

In prayer today, we might offer ourselves anew to God for service, and ask the Holy Spirit to show us where God wants to spend us today, or this week, or this year, or this lifetime. What visions come up as you sit in stillness with that question? Does anything resonate with your own dreams?

The currency we have bears the likeness of temporal authorities, and that's the realm in which we spend it. We bear the likeness of God, and so we give ourselves to be spent in God's realm. Bought with a price, we can more than double our value.

10-13-23 - In Or Out?

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

Jesus' parables often end with a tag line; this one's is:

"For many are called, but few are chosen.”

I guess this refers to the banquet hall being full of people who were invited without regard to their suitability, to be evaluated and sorted out later. It’s not much comfort, is it, the idea that just being in the room doesn’t guarantee inclusion in the household of God.

Are we “in?” Do we want to be? Are we actually at the party, or just hanging out on the sidelines? Put another way, are we lukewarm church-goers or passionate Christ-followers? I've heard an Episcopal version of this verse goes: “Many are cold, but few are frozen.” What is our temperature at this feast?

Today try to imagine yourself at a feast, a celebration, whatever that looks like for you. Bring the details to mind.
The room is crowded. Where are you? Near the table, hugging a wall somewhere, or in between? Why are you where you are?
Where is Jesus in that room? Can you have a chat with him?

I’d like to believe we are both called and chosen; I’ve never held to doctrines like predestination or election. At the very least, we are all invited, and we all have a choice to be present to the feast or pass it by. I hope you pull up a chair and pick up a fork – a sentiment conveyed much more eloquently in the 17th century by the priest and poet George Herbert:

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

- George Herbert, 1593-1633

10-12-23 - Fashion Police

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

A few years ago I attended my goddaughter’s wedding in England, and faced a big question: Did I have to wear a hat? My airport driver said yes; the mother of the bride said most would not wear one. Whew! Heaven forbid the godmother from America be unsuitably attired.

Had I been in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet, the consequences might have been severe. As Matthew tells it, the tale takes an odd turn after the influx of late arrivals from the streets and lanes: “Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"

Why does correct attire matter so much to this king in Jesus’ story? This part of the tale is puzzling; it seems so unjust. This man didn’t know he was coming to a wedding, right? How could he have been expected to wear a “wedding robe,” whatever that is? And isn’t Jesus the one who said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Actually no… but close - Jesus did say to judge what’s inside a person, not externals. What the heck is going on here?

No one fully knows, of course. Some scholars think there were certain items of clothing people wore to weddings. Here’s my guess: that even those who don’t have much advance invitation to God’s feast have the opportunity to turn, to repent, to “clean up,” as it were. Is that what is meant by the “wedding robe?” Maybe this person was wandering around, clueless, unconscious, unrepentant and unresponsive.

There are verses in the New Testament that speak of being “clothed in righteousness,” and “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

And in Revelation 19:7-8 we have this promise: “...for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure — for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

Do you feel “clothed in righteousness” today, or in some other attire? How well does it fit? How does it look on you? Might you try on another "emotional outfit" that better expresses how you want to be seen at God’s table?

Martin Luther wrote of God’s grace in Christ as the “Great Exchange,” by which Christ took on our filthy beggars’ rags and gives us his royal robes to wear. Christ has clothed us in HIS holiness. He covers even the most shameful parts of us, the parts we think are unlovable. He loves us into love.

In his righteousness, his holiness, his glory, we can stand unashamed, unhidden. We can allow our true selves to be seen, knowing that we are loved beyond measure by the God who made us, redeemed us, and loves us to the end of time. We are princes and princesses at a royal wedding – let’s dress like we know it, hats and all.

10-11-23 - Get Me Some Guests!

You can listen to this reflection here.

It is hard to read this parable of the wedding banquet and not think of the many half-empty churches all over America on Sunday mornings. In the story, the King has prepared a beautiful wedding feast for his son and invited all the people who used to come to his house… and now none of them will. Enraged, he says to his servants,

“'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests."

Given how Jesus has been lambasting the religious leaders for their unmerciful self-righteousness, and how he’s been known to interact with the not-good-enough of his society – the lame, lepers, extortioners, “loose women” – it seems obvious that in this story these are who the folks on the streets represent. These outsiders are found, herded onto the king’s buses and brought back to populate his banquet hall. The servants aren’t choosy – they bring everybody in.

What would it look like if we sent buses around shelters and parks – and tony brunch places – on Sunday mornings and invited people to come to our feasts? Would we be prepared to deal with strangers, people’s disappointment and addictions, the chips on their shoulders? Would we be prepared to see them not as wounded strangers but as gifts, with assets and strengths we need in our congregations?

What would it look like if we took church out to them instead of asking them into our buildings? For a time, my church in Stamford did this in a “tougher” section of town. We started just bringing sandwiches to the curb as people sat in their lawn chairs with their bottles on Sunday afternoons, then began offering healing prayer, and before long I was telling “Jesus stories,” preaching on the street. It was amazing - until gentrification struck and the people who hung out there were dispersed, and that ministry faded away. But we had the muscle memory of doing it, a vivid reminder of what church can be outside our walls.

The poor and the lame are not the only people God wants at the feast. God also wants the stressed over-achievers, the multi-tasking moms, the doubters and questioners. This parable suggests that God wants everybody at God’s table. Who are we not inviting?

That is the spiritual task I suggest today: make a list of the sorts of people to whom your congregation does not seem to be extending an invitation. Who is calling to you? Many of the ones who are being invited are not coming. Who else are we to invite?