You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
It’s a Kodak moment: Jesus picks up a small child to illustrate his point about humility and servanthood: He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
We find this moment sweet, because children are accorded high status in our culture. Not so much in Jesus’ time, when children were viewed as among the last – maybe ahead of slaves, but valued largely for the labor they would one day perform for the household. (Mark can’t be bothered to record this child’s gender, referring only to “it.”)
For Jesus to equate welcoming a child with welcoming him was radical, not sentimental. And he is more subversive still – for he implicitly links welcoming the child to welcoming God the Father. God represented by a powerless, status-less child? What kind of God is this?
Perhaps the kind of God who would send his son into human life as a helpless infant, at the mercy of forces political, historical and familial. The kind of God who demonstrated his power in vulnerability, who allowed that son to die the death of the “last," naked, nailed to a cross, as powerless as can be. This not the first time in the Jesus story that welcoming a child is equivalent to welcoming him. His parents, the shepherds, the magi – they all did it first.
In what ways are we called to welcome children in the name of Jesus? Certainly by according them dignity and respect in our worshiping communities, making room for their voices and wisdom (and artwork). We welcome them by spending time getting to know them as people, not adults-in-training, but already saints of God with gifts for the rest of us.
And we are called to welcome children in Jesus’ name outside our congregations too. We are called to place such value on children that we happily provide tax monies for their education, and support laws to keep them safe from harm. We come to regard every child in every country on this earth as precious and worthy of food, water, housing and education - and security.
More Kodak moments: The body of a small Palestinian boy lying on a street in Gaza, so still he could be sleeping. But he is dead, the victim of global conflicts and policies. A small girl held on America’s southern border, separated from her parents, alone and at the mercy of law enforcement officials not trained to deal with her. A young boy in an American school, standing over the body of his dead friend, killed in front of him in yet one more incidence of unfettered gun violence.
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-18-24 - Doormats - or Doorways?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
We all know people like this – and some of us have been people like this. People who jump up to fetch anything anyone might need, who are always asking, “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?,” who put aside their lives and careers to care for children or infirm parents, who show up at events even when they’re tired. As a culture, we’re ambivalent about such folks – sometimes we say, “What a saint!” and other times, “How codependent is she!”
Some of Jesus' teaching sounds like we are to be holy doormats, laying aside our own agendas, never seeking to be in charge, always serving. For instance, when he heard his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Does the virtue of Christian humility demand that we sacrifice our dreams and passions? Or does being the servant of all rather require that we be true to who God made us to be? Think about it: we cannot empty ourselves if we are not full of ourselves.
Our culture defines being “full of oneself” as conceited, self-promoting. But that way of being comes from a place of insecurity, a heart that is empty, a self that is not quite full. A healthy person knows who she or he is, faults and blind spots, strengths and gifts. Only as we truly own the fullness of who God made us to be can we empty ourselves for the sake of God’s mission. After all, Jesus did not pour himself out from stocks that were running low; he poured himself out from the fullness of his humanity and divinity.
If we want to excel as disciples of Jesus Christ, it is our calling to serve the world in his name. How does serving others sit with you? Is it comfortable? Challenging? Too familiar? Demeaning? If it is your default position, make sure your giving is in balance with your being nourished by God and the community. If serving others is uncomfortable, practice. Go serve a meal at a shelter or soup kitchen. Take on a clerical task in your work life, even if you’re an executive.
First or last, we are never alone in our serving. We serve alongside the One who had everything and gave it all in service to an ungrateful world. He can show us how to be servants of all with dignity and grace, so that we become not doormats, but doorways into God's presence.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
We all know people like this – and some of us have been people like this. People who jump up to fetch anything anyone might need, who are always asking, “Are you okay? Can I get you anything?,” who put aside their lives and careers to care for children or infirm parents, who show up at events even when they’re tired. As a culture, we’re ambivalent about such folks – sometimes we say, “What a saint!” and other times, “How codependent is she!”
Some of Jesus' teaching sounds like we are to be holy doormats, laying aside our own agendas, never seeking to be in charge, always serving. For instance, when he heard his disciples arguing about who was the greatest, He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Does the virtue of Christian humility demand that we sacrifice our dreams and passions? Or does being the servant of all rather require that we be true to who God made us to be? Think about it: we cannot empty ourselves if we are not full of ourselves.
Our culture defines being “full of oneself” as conceited, self-promoting. But that way of being comes from a place of insecurity, a heart that is empty, a self that is not quite full. A healthy person knows who she or he is, faults and blind spots, strengths and gifts. Only as we truly own the fullness of who God made us to be can we empty ourselves for the sake of God’s mission. After all, Jesus did not pour himself out from stocks that were running low; he poured himself out from the fullness of his humanity and divinity.
If we want to excel as disciples of Jesus Christ, it is our calling to serve the world in his name. How does serving others sit with you? Is it comfortable? Challenging? Too familiar? Demeaning? If it is your default position, make sure your giving is in balance with your being nourished by God and the community. If serving others is uncomfortable, practice. Go serve a meal at a shelter or soup kitchen. Take on a clerical task in your work life, even if you’re an executive.
First or last, we are never alone in our serving. We serve alongside the One who had everything and gave it all in service to an ungrateful world. He can show us how to be servants of all with dignity and grace, so that we become not doormats, but doorways into God's presence.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-17-24 - Jockeying For Position
You can listen to this reflection here.
Squabbling in the car on an endless road trip; that’s what I think of when I read this week’s gospel passage, and Jesus’ questioning of his disciples: Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
There is something about traveling that increases tension – and when your leader has just announced that soon he will be arrested, tried and executed, that tension can go through the roof. Afraid to ask Jesus what he was talking about, his disciples instead turned on each other, talking about who was greater than the next. They appear to have been jockeying for position, little realizing that the more visible they were as leaders in Jesus’ community, the more at risk they were.
Jockeying for position is something humans tend to do when we are insecure about where we are. Oh, there are some ruthlessly ambitious people who are always looking for an angle to get ahead, but most of us stay pretty content unless the ground starts to shift. Then it suddenly matters how we’re perceived and where we’re received.
As Christ-followers, we don’t have to do that. One of the huge gifts that come with membership in the household of God is freedom from having to position ourselves. In a community in which no one has more value than anyone else, no matter their level of accomplishment or productivity, we don’t have to compete with one another for attention or reward. If God already loves us the most, and is already as delighted with us as God could possibly be, why worry about being seen as worthy or getting ahead of other people?
Of course, many of us still do, because we’re human and it takes a long time for the knowledge of God’s unmerited and limitless grace to replace the messages of competition and progress we ingest from family, school and workplace. It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves daily of our infinite worth in the eyes of the Infinite Being. Or to remind each other. If Jesus’ disciples had grasped that sooner, they would have had a different experience of being with him. They got it eventually - and so, God willing, will we.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Squabbling in the car on an endless road trip; that’s what I think of when I read this week’s gospel passage, and Jesus’ questioning of his disciples: Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
There is something about traveling that increases tension – and when your leader has just announced that soon he will be arrested, tried and executed, that tension can go through the roof. Afraid to ask Jesus what he was talking about, his disciples instead turned on each other, talking about who was greater than the next. They appear to have been jockeying for position, little realizing that the more visible they were as leaders in Jesus’ community, the more at risk they were.
Jockeying for position is something humans tend to do when we are insecure about where we are. Oh, there are some ruthlessly ambitious people who are always looking for an angle to get ahead, but most of us stay pretty content unless the ground starts to shift. Then it suddenly matters how we’re perceived and where we’re received.
As Christ-followers, we don’t have to do that. One of the huge gifts that come with membership in the household of God is freedom from having to position ourselves. In a community in which no one has more value than anyone else, no matter their level of accomplishment or productivity, we don’t have to compete with one another for attention or reward. If God already loves us the most, and is already as delighted with us as God could possibly be, why worry about being seen as worthy or getting ahead of other people?
Of course, many of us still do, because we’re human and it takes a long time for the knowledge of God’s unmerited and limitless grace to replace the messages of competition and progress we ingest from family, school and workplace. It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves daily of our infinite worth in the eyes of the Infinite Being. Or to remind each other. If Jesus’ disciples had grasped that sooner, they would have had a different experience of being with him. They got it eventually - and so, God willing, will we.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-16-24 - Afraid To Ask
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
You know that awful feeling when you sense something is amiss, and you don’t know what it is, and that even asking about it might make it worse? Often we will do all we can to suppress that niggling worry, afraid to ask what’s actually going on. That’s how Jesus’ disciples felt as they traveled with him through Galilee and he continued to talk about the bitter treatment he was going to encounter. They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
It’s not that he was unclear – he says this at least three times as they journey on. But his words make no sense in light of their understanding that he is the Messiah, the Savior. The idea that their Jesus, so sought after by the rich and influential as well as the poor and marginalized, could be betrayed was unthinkable. And that he could be killed, he who held the power of God in his hands, who could command storms to be stilled and blind eyes to see? How could that be? And what is this he said about rising again? I suspect that made so little sense they hardly heard it. His words were so unsettling in every way, they were afraid to ask him to explain what he was talking about.
Even we, so long after the fact, left with a story we celebrate but can’t fully comprehend, let alone find Good News in, can find it hard to ask God to explain it. We might fear finding ourselves adrift in a sea of doubt, or losing our faith entirely. So we hold it at arm’s length, celebrating the high points, acknowledging the cross and empty tomb, but not wandering too close.
I believe Jesus yearns for us to wander close, just as I suspect he wished his followers would have asked him directly what he meant. Asking God to help make sense of what makes no sense is central to a living faith. It is how we deepen our relationship with God.
What are your biggest questions about the Christian faith and story? Have you asked those in prayer? Try, “Jesus, why did you have to die? Why would a sacrifice be necessary for a God of love?” and listen for an answer. A thought might pop into your head, or over the next few weeks you might find yourself encountering a response. We can do the same with questions about our own lives and this heart-breaking, beautiful world. "Why, Lord?" "What, Lord?"
A friend has a phrase, almost a mantra, she repeats often, “Be open, be curious.” Freedom comes as we surface the hard questions and open ourselves to exploring the answers. We draw closer to the God of mystery in the asking. In the end, that may be the only answer we really need.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
You know that awful feeling when you sense something is amiss, and you don’t know what it is, and that even asking about it might make it worse? Often we will do all we can to suppress that niggling worry, afraid to ask what’s actually going on. That’s how Jesus’ disciples felt as they traveled with him through Galilee and he continued to talk about the bitter treatment he was going to encounter. They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
It’s not that he was unclear – he says this at least three times as they journey on. But his words make no sense in light of their understanding that he is the Messiah, the Savior. The idea that their Jesus, so sought after by the rich and influential as well as the poor and marginalized, could be betrayed was unthinkable. And that he could be killed, he who held the power of God in his hands, who could command storms to be stilled and blind eyes to see? How could that be? And what is this he said about rising again? I suspect that made so little sense they hardly heard it. His words were so unsettling in every way, they were afraid to ask him to explain what he was talking about.
Even we, so long after the fact, left with a story we celebrate but can’t fully comprehend, let alone find Good News in, can find it hard to ask God to explain it. We might fear finding ourselves adrift in a sea of doubt, or losing our faith entirely. So we hold it at arm’s length, celebrating the high points, acknowledging the cross and empty tomb, but not wandering too close.
I believe Jesus yearns for us to wander close, just as I suspect he wished his followers would have asked him directly what he meant. Asking God to help make sense of what makes no sense is central to a living faith. It is how we deepen our relationship with God.
What are your biggest questions about the Christian faith and story? Have you asked those in prayer? Try, “Jesus, why did you have to die? Why would a sacrifice be necessary for a God of love?” and listen for an answer. A thought might pop into your head, or over the next few weeks you might find yourself encountering a response. We can do the same with questions about our own lives and this heart-breaking, beautiful world. "Why, Lord?" "What, Lord?"
A friend has a phrase, almost a mantra, she repeats often, “Be open, be curious.” Freedom comes as we surface the hard questions and open ourselves to exploring the answers. We draw closer to the God of mystery in the asking. In the end, that may be the only answer we really need.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-13-24 - Losing Our Life(style)
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This month my parishes are having a worship series on “Celebrating Creation,” following the “Season for Creation”resources developed for worship by the Episcopal church. This week we reflect on what Jesus' teaching that we must “lose our life for the sake of the gospel in order to save it” might mean when it comes to saving our planet. Being a disciple of Jesus and a lover of God includes caring for the creation God made, especially when it has been damaged almost beyond repair by human over-consumption and practices that degrade the earth, its habitats and creatures.
If we choose to live like we care in order to heal our earth (the first two themes in our worship series…) we will have to be willing to lose our lifestyle (the third) – or at least dial back our addiction to three “c’s” – convenience, comfort and consumption. Those happen also to be things that impede our Christian discipleship.
Convenience – so much of the garbage choking our planets waterways and wildlife is a consequence of our addiction to convenience – fast food and its packaging; online ordering and its packaging and use of fossil fuels; processed foods with their high chemical content; paper towels and disposable wipes for the spills we can’t take an extra five minutes to clean with reusable sponges – these are just a few examples. Where is convenience driving your consumption and increasing your trash volume? Where are some places you can cut back or change your patterns to so you can reduce, reuse, recycle even if it takes a little longer and a little more effort? What can we teach our grandchildren?
Comfort – Americans are increasingly addicted to living in a very narrow temperature range – too cold in the summers and too warm in the winters. Feeding this addiction to total comfort all the time contributes directly to the overheating of our planet, to extreme heat and weather that is making life untenable for many of the rest of the planet’s residents and wildlife. Air conditioners in a city can raise the outside temperature by 3 or 4 degrees – when we’re already at 85 or 90, think about the implications. This narrow comfort range is also unhealthy, causing our bodies to lose the ability to adapt. Where might we compromise our desire for “comfort” for the sake of the rest of the world?
Consumption – So much of our climate crisis has been driven by our insatiable desire for more stuff, more food, more drink – perhaps to help stuff down our feelings at seeing the damage our over-consumption has done to our earth. Consumption drives us to mine precious metals at great cost to the habitats around them, to torture and slaughter chickens, pigs, cows and other animals, to over-fish our oceans, over-farm our land… just think of the implications of our lust for a certain kind of avocado, which has fueled cartel violence and the degradation of the landscape. Can we train ourselves to eat locally sourced foods and become more moderate in our appetites?
What if we tweaked Jesus’ words to his disciples: He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to heal this earth God has given us, let them deny themselves and take up their care for creation and follow me. For those who want to save their lifestyle will lose it, and those who lose their lifestyle for my sake, and for the sake of my creation, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
It is our lives in the balance, my friends – and certainly the lives of our grandchildren consigned to live on a planet that can no longer sustain human life. If that doesn’t get us moving, what will?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This month my parishes are having a worship series on “Celebrating Creation,” following the “Season for Creation”resources developed for worship by the Episcopal church. This week we reflect on what Jesus' teaching that we must “lose our life for the sake of the gospel in order to save it” might mean when it comes to saving our planet. Being a disciple of Jesus and a lover of God includes caring for the creation God made, especially when it has been damaged almost beyond repair by human over-consumption and practices that degrade the earth, its habitats and creatures.
If we choose to live like we care in order to heal our earth (the first two themes in our worship series…) we will have to be willing to lose our lifestyle (the third) – or at least dial back our addiction to three “c’s” – convenience, comfort and consumption. Those happen also to be things that impede our Christian discipleship.
Convenience – so much of the garbage choking our planets waterways and wildlife is a consequence of our addiction to convenience – fast food and its packaging; online ordering and its packaging and use of fossil fuels; processed foods with their high chemical content; paper towels and disposable wipes for the spills we can’t take an extra five minutes to clean with reusable sponges – these are just a few examples. Where is convenience driving your consumption and increasing your trash volume? Where are some places you can cut back or change your patterns to so you can reduce, reuse, recycle even if it takes a little longer and a little more effort? What can we teach our grandchildren?
Comfort – Americans are increasingly addicted to living in a very narrow temperature range – too cold in the summers and too warm in the winters. Feeding this addiction to total comfort all the time contributes directly to the overheating of our planet, to extreme heat and weather that is making life untenable for many of the rest of the planet’s residents and wildlife. Air conditioners in a city can raise the outside temperature by 3 or 4 degrees – when we’re already at 85 or 90, think about the implications. This narrow comfort range is also unhealthy, causing our bodies to lose the ability to adapt. Where might we compromise our desire for “comfort” for the sake of the rest of the world?
Consumption – So much of our climate crisis has been driven by our insatiable desire for more stuff, more food, more drink – perhaps to help stuff down our feelings at seeing the damage our over-consumption has done to our earth. Consumption drives us to mine precious metals at great cost to the habitats around them, to torture and slaughter chickens, pigs, cows and other animals, to over-fish our oceans, over-farm our land… just think of the implications of our lust for a certain kind of avocado, which has fueled cartel violence and the degradation of the landscape. Can we train ourselves to eat locally sourced foods and become more moderate in our appetites?
What if we tweaked Jesus’ words to his disciples: He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to heal this earth God has given us, let them deny themselves and take up their care for creation and follow me. For those who want to save their lifestyle will lose it, and those who lose their lifestyle for my sake, and for the sake of my creation, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
It is our lives in the balance, my friends – and certainly the lives of our grandchildren consigned to live on a planet that can no longer sustain human life. If that doesn’t get us moving, what will?
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-12-24 - Thinking Like God
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
When Jesus tells his followers the horrors that are to befall the “Son of Man,” Peter takes him aside and admonishes him. “Don’t be talking like that! How can anything bad happen to you? I’ve just said I believe you are the Messiah!” And Jesus in turn rebukes Peter, quite harshly, telling him: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Jesus was asking a lot of Peter. Yet that neatly describes the task of discipleship: learning to think like God. Paul writes that those who would follow Jesus “Have the mind of Christ.” This makes sense – if we are united with Christ in baptism, if he takes up residence in us through the presence of the Holy Spirit, then we have his mind as well, not replacing our own, but informing, even transforming ours.
Our minds and capacity for thought are among God’s greatest gifts to us. They are also the seat of our strongest resistance to God. Funny how that is… Before we can set our mind on the things of God we have to become aware of the distinction between our own thoughts and God’s thoughts. Whenever we become aware that we are thinking out of our own reality – say, when anxiety or anger are leading the way, or we're convinced faith is irrational, or when we’re set on a course that we know is other than the way God would work in us – we can ask God to show us situations or people as God sees them. Often a broader perspective opens immediately.
This week, try to notice when your thoughts are purely human, and when they seem tinged with the holy. This is a spiritual practice we can cultivate; as we become conscious, gradually we learn to think more like God. As Paul exhorts us in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
It is a delicate balance to prize the gift of human nature and yet allow God’s life to grow in us and uproot everything that is not of God. Perhaps this is best summed up in the adage, “God loves us just the way we are – and far too much to leave us that way.”
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
When Jesus tells his followers the horrors that are to befall the “Son of Man,” Peter takes him aside and admonishes him. “Don’t be talking like that! How can anything bad happen to you? I’ve just said I believe you are the Messiah!” And Jesus in turn rebukes Peter, quite harshly, telling him: “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Jesus was asking a lot of Peter. Yet that neatly describes the task of discipleship: learning to think like God. Paul writes that those who would follow Jesus “Have the mind of Christ.” This makes sense – if we are united with Christ in baptism, if he takes up residence in us through the presence of the Holy Spirit, then we have his mind as well, not replacing our own, but informing, even transforming ours.
Our minds and capacity for thought are among God’s greatest gifts to us. They are also the seat of our strongest resistance to God. Funny how that is… Before we can set our mind on the things of God we have to become aware of the distinction between our own thoughts and God’s thoughts. Whenever we become aware that we are thinking out of our own reality – say, when anxiety or anger are leading the way, or we're convinced faith is irrational, or when we’re set on a course that we know is other than the way God would work in us – we can ask God to show us situations or people as God sees them. Often a broader perspective opens immediately.
This week, try to notice when your thoughts are purely human, and when they seem tinged with the holy. This is a spiritual practice we can cultivate; as we become conscious, gradually we learn to think more like God. As Paul exhorts us in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
It is a delicate balance to prize the gift of human nature and yet allow God’s life to grow in us and uproot everything that is not of God. Perhaps this is best summed up in the adage, “God loves us just the way we are – and far too much to leave us that way.”
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-11-24 - Suffering
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Does God want us to suffer? There is a strand in the Christian tradition that looks at the suffering Jesus underwent – which he predicted – and suggests that it is in suffering that we draw closest to our Lord. This is not how Peter saw things: Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Just before this, Peter has identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One of God long foretold, who would come to redeem the people of Israel – redeem, as in buy back a pawned item so it can be restored to its true purpose. It was assumed that the Messiah would bring to an end the suffering and humiliation of God’s chosen people. What good is a Messiah who’s going to suffer and die? Jesus is firm: But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Does Jesus, invoking Satan, see in Peter’s words a temptation, a temptation to veer from the mission he is living out, a temptation to doubt his discernment of what is ahead for him? In Jesus’ case, suffering was part of his mission; redeeming humanity would involve a humiliating and horrible death.
That is not necessarily true for us. The ways in which God might invite us to make God-Life known in the world may not include suffering in any obvious way. We may be called to write or feed or proclaim or organize and never be persecuted for our faith. But there will be pain, if we’re open to letting our hearts be broken by God’s love for this world. In that sense, every mission involves suffering.
God does not inflict suffering upon us, though our God of free will does allow it to happen. Our God who is Love will always be with us in it, and our God who is Life can bring transformation through it. Sometimes I wonder how that message falls on the ears of those in the throes of pain and suffering. Does it help to hear that God is with us in our suffering, even as God often allows it to unfold in our lives, and that God can work redemption through it? I may wonder, but every time I ask a person whom I visit in a pastoral capacity if they feel the presence of God with them, the answer is usually an unequivocal yes.
It is through the presence of Christ with us that we gain the Life that overcomes death, the Life we can share with others, no matter what our condition. God does not visit suffering upon us so we can draw near to Christ. Yet I believe with all my heart that Christ draws near to us as we suffer, and helps break us open so new life can emerge from the dark earth.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Does God want us to suffer? There is a strand in the Christian tradition that looks at the suffering Jesus underwent – which he predicted – and suggests that it is in suffering that we draw closest to our Lord. This is not how Peter saw things: Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Just before this, Peter has identified Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One of God long foretold, who would come to redeem the people of Israel – redeem, as in buy back a pawned item so it can be restored to its true purpose. It was assumed that the Messiah would bring to an end the suffering and humiliation of God’s chosen people. What good is a Messiah who’s going to suffer and die? Jesus is firm: But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Does Jesus, invoking Satan, see in Peter’s words a temptation, a temptation to veer from the mission he is living out, a temptation to doubt his discernment of what is ahead for him? In Jesus’ case, suffering was part of his mission; redeeming humanity would involve a humiliating and horrible death.
That is not necessarily true for us. The ways in which God might invite us to make God-Life known in the world may not include suffering in any obvious way. We may be called to write or feed or proclaim or organize and never be persecuted for our faith. But there will be pain, if we’re open to letting our hearts be broken by God’s love for this world. In that sense, every mission involves suffering.
God does not inflict suffering upon us, though our God of free will does allow it to happen. Our God who is Love will always be with us in it, and our God who is Life can bring transformation through it. Sometimes I wonder how that message falls on the ears of those in the throes of pain and suffering. Does it help to hear that God is with us in our suffering, even as God often allows it to unfold in our lives, and that God can work redemption through it? I may wonder, but every time I ask a person whom I visit in a pastoral capacity if they feel the presence of God with them, the answer is usually an unequivocal yes.
It is through the presence of Christ with us that we gain the Life that overcomes death, the Life we can share with others, no matter what our condition. God does not visit suffering upon us so we can draw near to Christ. Yet I believe with all my heart that Christ draws near to us as we suffer, and helps break us open so new life can emerge from the dark earth.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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