Three years ago on Ash Wednesday, I first went to the train station with some colleagues at the crack of dawn to offer the imposition of ashes and a prayer to commuters as they rushed past. Well, they did rush past, and then some would do a double take and come back, “I can get ashes here? That's so great!,” they'd say, lowering their foreheads to my reach. I offered a brief prayer with those who had the time.
The “Ashes on the Go” movement has its share of critics who note, correctly, that the imposition of ashes with its reminder of mortality, “Dust you are and to dust you shall return,” makes little sense outside the context of the Ash Wednesday liturgy. It can be considered “cafeteria Christianity” at its worst, giving people access to blessing without any commitment or knowledge. These are valid concerns – and must be considered in tandem with the benefit of giving people access to the holy in the midst of the every day, not to mention getting Christians out from behind our pretty church walls into the open. Sometimes the blessing has to precede the understanding. Perhaps always.
So I am cheered by this depiction of Jesus blessing his followers even as he is carried up into heaven:
“Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.”
"While he was blessing them.." Even as he ascended into heaven!
Luke tells us that this blessing of Jesus’ was so galvanizing, the apostles continued it: “And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.”
How wonderful if it could be said of us that we were “continually blessing God,” in the temple or in the world. God's blessing is no passive wave of the hands. It is an active transfer of love and commendation. To bless and be blessed is to increase the Life of God in us and around us. Blessing is one way we communicate with God, and pass along what God has given us to others. We might even say it is to be the chief activity of God's family – more central than much of what church people spend our time and energy on.
When did you last feel blessed? If you’re a church-goer, you receive a pastor's blessing at the end of the worship service. But when did you last feel God’s blessing, God’s pleasure and delight in you? Try to recall that, and put yourself in the way of it more often. I believe God’s blessing is always there for us; we experience it in different ways, so know yours.
When have you been aware of blessing someone else, whether they knew it or not? We can bless people in person. We can also call blessing down on people we pass on the street, on animals, on countries, on marriages, on houses and workplaces – you name it. When you say, “God bless you,” know that you are invoking the power that made the universe and inviting it to bring blessing to whomever or whatever you bless. It's a powerful action.
Who or what do you feel called to bless today? Go do it!
You can do it sitting in your house, or you bless as you go. Jesus did it. And I think He still is.
5-29-14 - Witnesses
“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’”
I often joke that many Episcopalians seem to be enrolled in a Witness Protection Program, staying as low-profile as possible about their faith and spirituality. That can happen when we focus more on church than on Christ. Jesus calls those who would bear his name in the world to bear witness to his story, and to the power of God he taught and demonstrated. And witnesses testify.
Maybe “testify” is the problematic word. A witness in a court room does not necessarily tell their story voluntarily. So let’s leave that formal, sterile, judicial context and think about the way we talk about things we’ve witnessed in every day life. An amazing encounter with wildlife. That video of the cat chasing away the dog that bit the baby. The adorable thing our granddaughter said. The two-mile back-up with no known cause we endured. The new restaurant we love. The movie we just saw. We bear witness all the time.
So let’s start talking about our encounters with the Holy when we have them. Let’s talk about our outreach activities and our worship experiences and the joy of community. And let’s talk about Jesus and his story, and how it interweaves with our stories… or better yet, how it frames our stories. For our faith is not meant to be one strand of our life, woven in with all the other strands – it is meant to be the frame in which the tapestry sits, the frame that holds and contains our work and relationships and play and rest - our life.
Bearing witness is not even something we have to “do.” It is something we need only allow God to do through us. This Witness Program comes with built-in power supply.
Jesus says in Acts: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And in Luke: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
That power came at Pentecost. We receive it at baptism, confirmation, ordination - and any time we exercise faith in the name of Jesus. If we find ourselves in a situation that could get “spiritual,” we can say a quick prayer: “Okay, God, you promised power… give me the courage and the words.”
Exercise your faith in prayer if called on. Tell a story that is meaningful to you. Talk about how Jesus is meaningful to you. We can do that in ways that give people space for their own experiences and views. A witness is not there to persuade, but to tell a story that is true and authentic.
“…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
From the perspective of Jerusalem in 33 CE (give or take...), we are the ends of the earth. If we’ve received blessing from God, let’s bear witness.
I often joke that many Episcopalians seem to be enrolled in a Witness Protection Program, staying as low-profile as possible about their faith and spirituality. That can happen when we focus more on church than on Christ. Jesus calls those who would bear his name in the world to bear witness to his story, and to the power of God he taught and demonstrated. And witnesses testify.
Maybe “testify” is the problematic word. A witness in a court room does not necessarily tell their story voluntarily. So let’s leave that formal, sterile, judicial context and think about the way we talk about things we’ve witnessed in every day life. An amazing encounter with wildlife. That video of the cat chasing away the dog that bit the baby. The adorable thing our granddaughter said. The two-mile back-up with no known cause we endured. The new restaurant we love. The movie we just saw. We bear witness all the time.
So let’s start talking about our encounters with the Holy when we have them. Let’s talk about our outreach activities and our worship experiences and the joy of community. And let’s talk about Jesus and his story, and how it interweaves with our stories… or better yet, how it frames our stories. For our faith is not meant to be one strand of our life, woven in with all the other strands – it is meant to be the frame in which the tapestry sits, the frame that holds and contains our work and relationships and play and rest - our life.
Bearing witness is not even something we have to “do.” It is something we need only allow God to do through us. This Witness Program comes with built-in power supply.
Jesus says in Acts: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And in Luke: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
That power came at Pentecost. We receive it at baptism, confirmation, ordination - and any time we exercise faith in the name of Jesus. If we find ourselves in a situation that could get “spiritual,” we can say a quick prayer: “Okay, God, you promised power… give me the courage and the words.”
Exercise your faith in prayer if called on. Tell a story that is meaningful to you. Talk about how Jesus is meaningful to you. We can do that in ways that give people space for their own experiences and views. A witness is not there to persuade, but to tell a story that is true and authentic.
“…You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
From the perspective of Jerusalem in 33 CE (give or take...), we are the ends of the earth. If we’ve received blessing from God, let’s bear witness.
5-28-14 - Play It Again
Jesus hung out for forty days after his resurrection, the Gospels tell us, instructing and inspiring his followers to believe the impossible, and to act as though they believed it. It’s hard to convince the world all things are possible with God, while holed up in a room in Jerusalem for fear of your life. So Jesus kept showing up when least expected, and going through the lessons again. Once more, with feeling…
Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
This time he does more than tell them where they’ve been – he tells them where they’re going: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations, starting from Jerusalem. In the Acts version of the Pentecost story, Jesus gives a fuller itinerary: “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The book of Acts shows us how closely the spreading of the Good News followed that trajectory.
Why do we so often need to be reminded of where we’ve been in order to get on with where we’re going? I’ve grown impatient of late with the daily office readings from the Hebrew Bible – it strikes me more and more as scriptures for an ancient, alien people, not for today’s followers of Christ. And yet I know why I continue to read it, and why we read it in church on Sundays, why we do well not to get too far away from it: it reminds us where we stand in the big picture of God’s courtship of an alienated humanity. We may not always like the way those ancient people spoke of God, or the words or motives they attributed to God, but the overarching story is one of love. As Jesus reminded his followers of what he'd taught them in the recent past, we too need to be reminded.
What is your relationship with the Old Testament? Close? Distant? Fond? Suspicious?
Does it help you to proclaim forgiveness and wholeness to the people you know?
How about Jesus’ story – how do you connect with that?
If you’re not in the habit of reading the bible regularly, spend some time with a small chunk today.
The bible is our anchor as we grow in faith and in the love of God. It tethers us to a rich tradition and a vast and diverse community of faith, living and gone before. Consider it the rearview mirror of faith – if we want to go forward in God’s mission as Jesus tells us, we have to keep our eyes on the road and at the same time be aware of what’s behind us. It’s called driving.
Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
This time he does more than tell them where they’ve been – he tells them where they’re going: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations, starting from Jerusalem. In the Acts version of the Pentecost story, Jesus gives a fuller itinerary: “… you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The book of Acts shows us how closely the spreading of the Good News followed that trajectory.
Why do we so often need to be reminded of where we’ve been in order to get on with where we’re going? I’ve grown impatient of late with the daily office readings from the Hebrew Bible – it strikes me more and more as scriptures for an ancient, alien people, not for today’s followers of Christ. And yet I know why I continue to read it, and why we read it in church on Sundays, why we do well not to get too far away from it: it reminds us where we stand in the big picture of God’s courtship of an alienated humanity. We may not always like the way those ancient people spoke of God, or the words or motives they attributed to God, but the overarching story is one of love. As Jesus reminded his followers of what he'd taught them in the recent past, we too need to be reminded.
What is your relationship with the Old Testament? Close? Distant? Fond? Suspicious?
Does it help you to proclaim forgiveness and wholeness to the people you know?
How about Jesus’ story – how do you connect with that?
If you’re not in the habit of reading the bible regularly, spend some time with a small chunk today.
The bible is our anchor as we grow in faith and in the love of God. It tethers us to a rich tradition and a vast and diverse community of faith, living and gone before. Consider it the rearview mirror of faith – if we want to go forward in God’s mission as Jesus tells us, we have to keep our eyes on the road and at the same time be aware of what’s behind us. It’s called driving.
5-27-14 - Up, Up and Away
(I left my laptop in Maryland on Sunday, and as I wait for its return, am somewhat hampered in composing and posting Water Daily. Please forgive the delay...)
This Thursday is Ascension Day, one of the church's major feast days - one often ignored by most churches, unless they are named Ascension. So I intend to spend the week, and Sunday, on this story.
Maybe this holiday is overlooked because it is such an odd one. We don't know what to make of this dramatic departure of the already quite dramatically risen Christ. It's hard to imagine such a bizarre event, which only Luke records in any detail, in both his gospel and in Acts. Yet it is the final scene in the incarnate life of the Son of God, and tells us how he gets back to the place our story tells us he started from: the heavenly precincts, where from now on he will be seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, which strikes me as a somewhat sedentary eternity for one who moved around so much. (Not to mention the vexing question a child once asked me, "Who is on the left side of God?")
This story mirrors the whirlwind final act of Elijah's story, and it set up the expectation early Christians held that Christ, when he comes again in glory, will come back in the same way he left. "Lo, he comes with clouds descending..." as the hymn goes.
What does it mean for us that Christ ascended bodily into heaven? What does it mean for us to know he dwells with the Father, not embodied in this world? And what does it mean that he is present through the Holy Spirit?
Those are just a few of the questions that Ascension raises for me. How about you?
One way the church has seen Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father is as an intercessor, bringing our prayers into the center of the Godhead. Jesus becomes our "inside man," as it were.
So what would you like to ask him to do for you today?
This Thursday is Ascension Day, one of the church's major feast days - one often ignored by most churches, unless they are named Ascension. So I intend to spend the week, and Sunday, on this story.
Maybe this holiday is overlooked because it is such an odd one. We don't know what to make of this dramatic departure of the already quite dramatically risen Christ. It's hard to imagine such a bizarre event, which only Luke records in any detail, in both his gospel and in Acts. Yet it is the final scene in the incarnate life of the Son of God, and tells us how he gets back to the place our story tells us he started from: the heavenly precincts, where from now on he will be seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, which strikes me as a somewhat sedentary eternity for one who moved around so much. (Not to mention the vexing question a child once asked me, "Who is on the left side of God?")
This story mirrors the whirlwind final act of Elijah's story, and it set up the expectation early Christians held that Christ, when he comes again in glory, will come back in the same way he left. "Lo, he comes with clouds descending..." as the hymn goes.
What does it mean for us that Christ ascended bodily into heaven? What does it mean for us to know he dwells with the Father, not embodied in this world? And what does it mean that he is present through the Holy Spirit?
Those are just a few of the questions that Ascension raises for me. How about you?
One way the church has seen Jesus seated at the right hand of the Father is as an intercessor, bringing our prayers into the center of the Godhead. Jesus becomes our "inside man," as it were.
So what would you like to ask him to do for you today?
5-23-14 - Swimming in Love
Language fails (as this sentence demonstrates) when we try to convey the overlapping unity of love and persons in God, a triune swirl of inter-relatedness in which we are invited to swim. I comfort myself that Jesus, at least as his remarks are rendered in John’s Gospel, seemed to have almost as much trouble making it clear:
“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Where does Jesus end and the Father begin? Where do we end and Jesus begin? Are we in the Father and in Jesus, or vice versa, or (g) all of the above? The answer is (g)… maybe (z). God is love. Jesus is love. We love and are loved, and so are drawn into the eternal and present Love of God.
When we fall in love with someone, there is often a period where identities merge. We don’t want to be separate people. We want to fuse, to lose ourselves in the glorious other, whose every word and movement is wondrous. This is an intoxicating stage of in-love-ness – and it’s not forever. If the relationship is to grow and strengthen, we need to differentiate again, to carry our own identities, loving and respecting the other person, being with but not needing to be one with.
So is Jesus saying we lose our identity when we let the love of God become a part of us, and we of God? I don’t think so. The Christian tradition suggests that each of us is unique and precious. Our self does not get obliterated as we enter the stream of God’s love. Rather, being loved for who we are allows us to become more fully who we truly are, shedding the inauthentic carapaces and personas we grow to protect ourselves and cope with adversity.
We don’t lose ourselves swimming in God’s love any more than we do when we swim in the vast, refreshing ocean. Rather, we are fully alive. We are contained in our bodies, and yet somehow one with a primal element. We exult as we move in that unbounded water, which allows us to dive and dance and turn somersaults and ride waves, all kinds of things we can’t do on land, just as dwelling in God's love enables us to do and think and say and offer all kinds of things we can’t in our natural selves.
Today in prayer let's go swimming. Imagine a waterfall flowing into the sea. Let’s say the sea is the Love of God, the waterfall is Jesus, and the spray that rises as they meet is the Holy Spirit. This sea is always being renewed, refreshed, replenished, the water one, so you don’t know what’s sea, what’s waterfall, what’s spray. Imagine jumping in. How does the water feel? How does it make you feel? How do you want to move in it?
If this is God’s love – how does it feel to be immersed in love? How would you share the water with others? How would you invite others to join you in that pool?
Swimming in the love of God allows us to access the source of Love that has no limit, so that we love out of the reservoir of God’s infinite love, not our own limited supply. As we enter the summer “swimming season,” I hope you’ll have lots of opportunities to be reminded of the water in which we were reborn, in which we will swim always. Splash!
“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Where does Jesus end and the Father begin? Where do we end and Jesus begin? Are we in the Father and in Jesus, or vice versa, or (g) all of the above? The answer is (g)… maybe (z). God is love. Jesus is love. We love and are loved, and so are drawn into the eternal and present Love of God.
When we fall in love with someone, there is often a period where identities merge. We don’t want to be separate people. We want to fuse, to lose ourselves in the glorious other, whose every word and movement is wondrous. This is an intoxicating stage of in-love-ness – and it’s not forever. If the relationship is to grow and strengthen, we need to differentiate again, to carry our own identities, loving and respecting the other person, being with but not needing to be one with.
So is Jesus saying we lose our identity when we let the love of God become a part of us, and we of God? I don’t think so. The Christian tradition suggests that each of us is unique and precious. Our self does not get obliterated as we enter the stream of God’s love. Rather, being loved for who we are allows us to become more fully who we truly are, shedding the inauthentic carapaces and personas we grow to protect ourselves and cope with adversity.
We don’t lose ourselves swimming in God’s love any more than we do when we swim in the vast, refreshing ocean. Rather, we are fully alive. We are contained in our bodies, and yet somehow one with a primal element. We exult as we move in that unbounded water, which allows us to dive and dance and turn somersaults and ride waves, all kinds of things we can’t do on land, just as dwelling in God's love enables us to do and think and say and offer all kinds of things we can’t in our natural selves.
Today in prayer let's go swimming. Imagine a waterfall flowing into the sea. Let’s say the sea is the Love of God, the waterfall is Jesus, and the spray that rises as they meet is the Holy Spirit. This sea is always being renewed, refreshed, replenished, the water one, so you don’t know what’s sea, what’s waterfall, what’s spray. Imagine jumping in. How does the water feel? How does it make you feel? How do you want to move in it?
If this is God’s love – how does it feel to be immersed in love? How would you share the water with others? How would you invite others to join you in that pool?
Swimming in the love of God allows us to access the source of Love that has no limit, so that we love out of the reservoir of God’s infinite love, not our own limited supply. As we enter the summer “swimming season,” I hope you’ll have lots of opportunities to be reminded of the water in which we were reborn, in which we will swim always. Splash!
5-22-14 - Not as Orphans
Orphans. It’s a strong word. In 2005 I joined with others to raise the money to build and launch a residential school for children orphaned by AIDS in Western Kenya, one of the poorest regions in that country, where at the time there were no services for the growing number of orphans. As the chief communicator drafting brochures, web pages and fundraising appeals, I used the word “orphans” as often as I could; it tugs at hearts strings more effectively than do terms like “at-risk” or “OVC” (orphans and vulnerable children).
Then I learned that it is a word our Kenyan partners avoid whenever possible. In an extended-family culture, to say a child is orphaned means that no one in her family or even village is prepared to care for her, a scenario which suggests the whole community is disabled. Many prospective students at the Nambale Magnet School had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS; few were to be labeled orphans.
"I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus tells his disciples on his last night with them. “I am coming to you.” It’s not what a boss would say to employees, or a coach to players, a teacher to students. This language acknowledges that the community of Jesus followers had become a family, with ties as thick as blood. Jesus recognizes that his departure from their daily lives, and the violence with which he will be wrenched from them, is likely to be as dislocating for them as it is for a child to lose his father or mother.
And it is yet another hint that death will not be the end of Jesus’ story. Only death can cause orphans. Certainly Jesus’ followers were going to feel like orphans after his death, and we see that sorrow depicted in the passion story. But they were not to be orphans, he says, because death was not to be his permanent condition.
How would it change us if we could live in that confidence whenever we’re facing great loss or sorrow? That we have not been left as orphans, no matter how abandoned we may feel in a given moment? It can be as difficult for me to trust that God is real and present as it is for my cats to understand, when I go on a trip, that I am indeed returning. We don’t have the capacity to truly comprehend it – so we learn to trust it little by little, strengthening our faith muscles, testing God’s love and Jesus’ promise:
“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
When did you last have an experience of “seeing” Jesus?
In another person, in a movement of God, in prayer, in song?
I feel I suggest this question a lot – but it’s the best way I know to reinforce our faith.
Keep a record of those sightings; they help encourage us when we feel orphaned.
And, as my cats do when I return (I think!), we can relax and rejoice whenever we do experience Jesus’ life with us and in us again. Whatever our version of rubbing and purring is, I’m sure it pleases our heavenly Father when we offer our praise in love.
Then I learned that it is a word our Kenyan partners avoid whenever possible. In an extended-family culture, to say a child is orphaned means that no one in her family or even village is prepared to care for her, a scenario which suggests the whole community is disabled. Many prospective students at the Nambale Magnet School had lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS; few were to be labeled orphans.
"I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus tells his disciples on his last night with them. “I am coming to you.” It’s not what a boss would say to employees, or a coach to players, a teacher to students. This language acknowledges that the community of Jesus followers had become a family, with ties as thick as blood. Jesus recognizes that his departure from their daily lives, and the violence with which he will be wrenched from them, is likely to be as dislocating for them as it is for a child to lose his father or mother.
And it is yet another hint that death will not be the end of Jesus’ story. Only death can cause orphans. Certainly Jesus’ followers were going to feel like orphans after his death, and we see that sorrow depicted in the passion story. But they were not to be orphans, he says, because death was not to be his permanent condition.
How would it change us if we could live in that confidence whenever we’re facing great loss or sorrow? That we have not been left as orphans, no matter how abandoned we may feel in a given moment? It can be as difficult for me to trust that God is real and present as it is for my cats to understand, when I go on a trip, that I am indeed returning. We don’t have the capacity to truly comprehend it – so we learn to trust it little by little, strengthening our faith muscles, testing God’s love and Jesus’ promise:
“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”
When did you last have an experience of “seeing” Jesus?
In another person, in a movement of God, in prayer, in song?
I feel I suggest this question a lot – but it’s the best way I know to reinforce our faith.
Keep a record of those sightings; they help encourage us when we feel orphaned.
And, as my cats do when I return (I think!), we can relax and rejoice whenever we do experience Jesus’ life with us and in us again. Whatever our version of rubbing and purring is, I’m sure it pleases our heavenly Father when we offer our praise in love.
5-21-14 - God Within
I often hear people talk about “the God within,” or “the divine spark” in each of us. It is language I would use with great care. It can be a very short distance from that statement to saying that we are all little gods, with the ultimate power to control our own destinies. As attractive as that notion might be to some (not very appealing to me – God help me if I am my own god!), it is not the Way that Jesus invites his followers to travel.
The New Testament teaches that the presence of Christ is within each of us by virtue of our baptism. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” Paul writes, not because his identity has been supplanted in an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” way, but because his identity has been fulfilled, perfected in union with Christ through baptism. He has become most truly who he is in union with Christ.
The way we receive the full-time presence of Christ in our persons is through the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ. “You know him,” Jesus says to his disciples, “because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” The promise that Christ’s life abides – rests, stays, hangs out – within us offers tremendous resources; ultimate power, the power that made all things and restores all things. “Same power that conquered the grave lives in me…” we sing.
When we live in the knowledge of Christ’s life within us we pray differently, we act differently, we hope differently. We don’t pray for the power of God to descend on us from above, but that the power already in us by virtue of our union with Christ be released in us, and through us for others. We pray not as though we’re on a long distance call, but like we’re having a heart-to-heart conversation, because we are, Christ’s heart in our heart.
We act differently, because we are acting on the power, promise and presence of God, not waiting for those to be manifest outside us. And we hope differently, knowing that God’s love is so very near, so very “already.” Of course, there is a “not yet fully realized” dimension, but so much more in the here and now than we often recognize.
I came to know “Christ within” through learning the practice of centering prayer, becoming somewhat still and able to tune in to the Spirit’s prayer in me, to “pray/imagine” Jesus in conversation, to be able to praise. I get to that still place most quickly through praying in tongues – which Paul tells us is the Spirit’s prayer released in us. “…for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit prays within us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) I can't say I know Christ well, but he isn’t “out there”; he’s in here.
How do you experience Christ within you? If you want to, you might just sit in stillness, in prayer, and say, “Jesus – I am told you live with me and in me. I would like to experience more of your life in me. How do I do that?” Wait in silence, and pay attention to any images that form in your mind, or words. If your shopping list forms, gently invite it to wait over there, and return your focus to your prayer. You can repeat, “Jesus,” or another word or phrase. Try it for five minutes, and see what comes. Write down whatever transpires, and do it again another day.
Some people experience the reality of Christ within more keenly in action than in contemplation, or in worship. There is no “right” way. There is only invitation to more fullness and life than we’ve ever dreamed of.
The New Testament teaches that the presence of Christ is within each of us by virtue of our baptism. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” Paul writes, not because his identity has been supplanted in an “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” way, but because his identity has been fulfilled, perfected in union with Christ through baptism. He has become most truly who he is in union with Christ.
The way we receive the full-time presence of Christ in our persons is through the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ. “You know him,” Jesus says to his disciples, “because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” The promise that Christ’s life abides – rests, stays, hangs out – within us offers tremendous resources; ultimate power, the power that made all things and restores all things. “Same power that conquered the grave lives in me…” we sing.
When we live in the knowledge of Christ’s life within us we pray differently, we act differently, we hope differently. We don’t pray for the power of God to descend on us from above, but that the power already in us by virtue of our union with Christ be released in us, and through us for others. We pray not as though we’re on a long distance call, but like we’re having a heart-to-heart conversation, because we are, Christ’s heart in our heart.
We act differently, because we are acting on the power, promise and presence of God, not waiting for those to be manifest outside us. And we hope differently, knowing that God’s love is so very near, so very “already.” Of course, there is a “not yet fully realized” dimension, but so much more in the here and now than we often recognize.
I came to know “Christ within” through learning the practice of centering prayer, becoming somewhat still and able to tune in to the Spirit’s prayer in me, to “pray/imagine” Jesus in conversation, to be able to praise. I get to that still place most quickly through praying in tongues – which Paul tells us is the Spirit’s prayer released in us. “…for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit prays within us with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) I can't say I know Christ well, but he isn’t “out there”; he’s in here.
How do you experience Christ within you? If you want to, you might just sit in stillness, in prayer, and say, “Jesus – I am told you live with me and in me. I would like to experience more of your life in me. How do I do that?” Wait in silence, and pay attention to any images that form in your mind, or words. If your shopping list forms, gently invite it to wait over there, and return your focus to your prayer. You can repeat, “Jesus,” or another word or phrase. Try it for five minutes, and see what comes. Write down whatever transpires, and do it again another day.
Some people experience the reality of Christ within more keenly in action than in contemplation, or in worship. There is no “right” way. There is only invitation to more fullness and life than we’ve ever dreamed of.
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