12-4-20 - Baptized in Spirit

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

The baptism that John the Baptist administered was more than a bath, but not quite what we know as baptism. It was a ritual submersion in water to enact symbolically the repentance entered into by those who flocked out to the desert to hear John’s message. Even John knew this was a rite of preparation, not the whole deal.

John knew he had a mission, to help prepare people for a revelation of God no one could truly anticipate - not even John. Who could imagine God incarnate before experiencing that mystery? John only knew that the One to come was holier and more powerful than could be conceived. He had one job: to invite repentance, a clearing of spiritual space. His water ritual could convey that reality. Beyond that was another baptism that only Christ could effect: baptism with the Holy Spirit.

[John] proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

What does it mean to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit?” Such "Pentecostal" language can make mainline religious folks kind of twitchy. But here it is, right in the gospels. What do we suppose it means? In some traditions, it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit to the point where there is a discernible manifestation, some indication that spiritual gifts have been imparted. This was what it meant to Paul’s Corinthian congregation, who were very focused on discernible manifestations of the Spirit’s power like speaking in tongues or prophesying.

But what might “baptism in the Spirit” mean to us? Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine being submerged in water, which is the way many people are baptized. Take a moment to let yourself experience it in your mind. What happens when you sink into deep water? You get wet all over; the water even gets into your nose and mouth. Depending on temperature differential with the air, you might find yourself pleasantly warmed or cooled, refreshed, comforted. You are supported by the water’s density; it’s not all up to you.

Let’s assume that’s what baptism in the Spirit means – we are bathed and we are filled with the Spirit of the Living God, uniting with our spirit to fill us with Life. We might find ourselves getting very warm, or cool. We feel energy come into us, and we are refreshed. We find ourselves in the presence of another Presence – we are not alone. We are vessels of power from outside us; it’s not all up to us.

I wish more Christians would crave being filled with the Holy Spirit, would ardently seek spiritual gifts to support them in the ministries to which they feel called. The Holy Spirit is the Gift that gives more gifts, that is always replenishing us – as we ask. For some reason, the Spirit seems to want our invitation. If you desire a deeper experience of the Holy Spirit, pray for it. Be open to the sensations you might experience. Be open to not experiencing anything in that moment – you might know something has changed later on.

The Holy Spirit is our gift at baptism, renewed in eucharist, replenished whenever we are active in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness. In fact, the Spirit is how we find ourselves reclaimed, restored and renewed.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

12-3-20 - All the Rage

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

Imagine people taking buses out of town to hear some wild guy in the desert rail about sin, and lining up to get dunked in a river. Imagine people lining up to get into a church. Oh, wait, that does happen in some parts of the world. Religious spectacles can still draw crowds, but it’s rare. What was it that drew throngs out to the wilderness to see John? What was it about him, or the moment, that caused them to respond?

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

We read in Luke’s Gospel that later, after John has languished in Herod’s dungeon for years, he sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he was the one they'd been waiting for; doubts must have crept in to John's mind. Jesus cites as evidence the miraculous healings and transformations that people around him were experiencing. And then he chides the crowd about John. “Who did you go out there to see?” he asks. “A reed swaying in the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes?”

What did they go out there to see? Was it John’s fierceness? As Mark tells the story, John is fairly mild; in Matthew and Luke he appears wilder, raging about judgment and fire. “The ax is already laid at the root of the trees,” he thunders. “The one who is coming after me will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” That fire does not sound like the cozy kind. Yet still they came, still they repented, still they were baptized. Scared straight? Maybe… Or maybe they responded to his holiness.

John appears to have had a remarkable clarity about his mission and a single-mindedness about fulfilling it. He never forgot who he was, the advance man for a bigger show. His mission was to prepare a people to receive their Lord. He had amazing integrity alongside a blazing intensity. People came, they wept, they repented, they received his baptism, they went home and told their friends to come. Maybe they came for the show and stayed for the reality. Maybe they stayed because they wanted to connect with God, and John was the closest they’d come in ages.

What would draw us to John the Baptist? How does his call to repent, prepare the way of the Lord, land in our spirits 2000 years later?
Are there aspects of his mission we would like to share, to prepare hearts to receive Christ?
Are there ways we might call the powers of our world to repentance and transformation?
Are there ways we might call people we know to repentance and transformation?
Are there ways we might call ourselves to repentance and transformation?

I believe we want to connect to God too, deep in our spirits. We want to make more space for God in our lives, and John’s call resonates through the ages to us. Repentance creates space, space that God can fill. Repent, make some space. Your God is coming to you, and God wants to hang out.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

12-2-20 - Level Ground

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

In his lifetime, John the Baptist was often associated with the prophet Elijah – many wondered if he were in fact Elijah returned to the world. But the prophet the Gospel writers most closely linked him with was Isaiah, particularly his prophecy of an estranged Israel reconciled with her God. This passage, also a reading for this Sunday, speaks tenderly of restoration; it provides much of the libretto of the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah. (Here is a rendition conducted by Sir Colin Davis at the Barbican.)

We looked yesterday at this passage's command to  

“prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
But the prophet has more in mind than just building roads – in his vision, the whole topography is to be reconfigured: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”

There seems to be a leveling principle at work here – we see it paralleled in the song of Mary, which speaks of equity – “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” We can see both of these movements in the incarnation of Jesus, Son of God, born to the lowly woman to whom these words are attributed, lifting her up even as he consents to leave his throne.

Is the in-breaking realm of God about smoothing out the uneven ground, bringing down the hills and raising up the valleys? That could make for a dull landscape. Yet it would also enable movement, reduce barriers between peoples.

And what if, once more, we look inward and view this leveling process as an inner movement. What if the hills and valleys of our hearts, of our moods, became more even, our “rough places” became a plain? Would that make us dull – or would it make us more serene, content, better containers for God’s power and love, vessels of God’s healing?

Today in prayer explore the valleys inside you; reflect back on your life and look at the “valley times.” Do the same with the mountains and hills, the high points, the high places. What if they came together more?

Where is the ground in your life uneven? Would you like God to smooth it? Where are your “rough places?” Envision them as flat and true as a prairie – is that a fruitful image for you?

Isaiah, speaking for God, said that a beautiful thing will follow this great leveling:
"Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

We glimpse God’s glory every time we level a road so everyone has the same access, whether in the realm of money, power, justice – even feelings. We help reveal God's glory. Amen!

If you would like to join my Wednesday Bible Study online from 7-8pm, click here tonight. If you need a passcode, it's LPWay. This Advent we'll explore how we live in an upside world - and hint, Jesus already turned it upside down. Or did he turn it right side up?

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

12-1-20 - Voice In the Wilderness

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

Oh, for the placement of a comma! Is John the Baptist “one crying out in the wilderness?” (as Hymn 75 in the Episcopal hymnal would have it), or is he one crying out, “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord?” The lack of punctuation in New Testament Greek leaves plenty of room for confusion. Luckily in this case, the gospel is quoting from a section of Isaiah in the Old Testament:  A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

The comma confusion has always left me an impression of John as a lone voice crying in the wilderness for God’s people to repent and return to their Lord. Clarification reminds me that his invitation is to prepare a way for God in the wilderness. And that generates all kinds of other questions. Why in the wilderness? Why make straight a highway for God in the desert? Is there too much clutter in our urban and suburban lives, too much noise to hear a voice crying out, “Prepare the way?”

Or shall we take “wilderness” as a metaphor, internalizing it to represent the chaos of our multiply committed lives? Wilderness can suggest a stark emptiness. It can also invoke chaos, lack of order. Which description better fits your inner landscape today?

Perhaps preparing a way for God in our wilderness means locating the wild, untamed places within ourselves, our most essential “me-ness.” That is surely the place God’s spirit best meets our own. Or maybe it means that the messiest parts of our lives are where we are invited to prepare a way for the Lord – de-cluttering in order to access our most essential selves.

We may be quite cut off from our own wilderness, so distracted by our tasks and data, our commitments and the priorities others impose upon us, that we haven’t dealt with or dwelt in our own wilderness for quite some time. Advent offers a particular invitation to do that – to intensify the spiritual practices that connect us to God and to ourselves; to take some retreat time either daily or going on an actual retreat; to rediscover the desert within and straighten out the highway for God’s presence to enter our lives with more fullness.

Lots of questions today – where did they hit you? Where did you feel yourself reacting?
What invitation to prayer do you discern out of your reflection on inner wilderness?
Where in yourself do you want to “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight a highway for our God?”

I get an image of a community-service gang in orange jumpsuits, clearing up litter by the side of the highway. Not a bad Advent image for us to entertain today; we are all prisoners of our selves, to some degree, on the way to liberation. Why not clear a highway for our Liberator to hasten our freedom?

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

11-30-20 - Into the Desert

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

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Black Friday is over. Colored lights are blinking on every other house. Must be about time for John the Baptist to saunter out of the desert just as our tinkly-twinkly Christmas frenzy revs up – even if “frenzy” is a little strong this year.

We only let him out once a year, this not-so-cuddly prophet of repentance. Repentance is never popular, and John is more than a bit odd, in his weird attire and diet of locusts and wild honey. We could consider him a proto-vegan, but for the camel skin coat and leather belt he sported (makes him sound like a fashion icon… not!)

But John is where all four gospels begin to tell “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” John is the one sent to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” as the angel Gabriel told his father Zechariah when announcing John’s improbable conception. (Luke 1:17) Zechariah himself sings out when John is born: "And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins." (Luke 1:76-77)

This suggests that repentance is our entryway into the “knowledge of salvation.” Repentance is a pre-requisite to feeling the need of salvation – it reminds us what we need saving from. If we feel we’re hunky-dory without Jesus, there was really no need for him to have bothered with all that incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and redemption business. We need to buy some level of estrangement with God, and accept some degree of human culpability for the state of the world, in order to comprehend salvation.

Accepting those realities is repentance. Repentance doesn’t have to be a laundry list of personal sins and short-comings. It is an awareness of being less than what we were created to be, acknowledgment that we hurt ourselves and others, and a desire to invite the kind of healing that remedies the fault.

So let’s begin Advent with repentance, since that is John’s specialty. Like those who traveled out of their safe zones to see him in the wilderness, to hear his call to repent, to receive his baptism of cleansing, let’s wander away from our patterns of stuckness, our self-justifications, our self-saving strategies, and ask the Holy Spirit to show us how we have grown apart from God. We might try this each day this week, and see what gets freed and released.

Where does our pride kick up? Where do our relationships cause us to wince or get defensive? Where is shame rooted in us, a deep sense of unworthiness? Whatever comes up, bring it into the light of God’s love, feel the feelings related to each root of bitterness, and begin to release it to God for forgiveness and healing.

The forgiveness has already been given. The healing begins as we accept the forgiveness and desire new growth.

On Wednesday evenings, I lead an online Bible Study from 7-8, followed by Night Prayers (optional). Now that geography is no issue, you're most welcome - 7 pm here. If you need a passcode, it's LPWay. This Advent we'll explore how we live in an upside world - and hint, Jesus already turned it upside down. Or did he turn it right side up?

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

11-27-20 - Rattling the Powers

You can listen to this reflection here.

The theme for Advent at my Christ Churches is “The Word’s Turned Upside Down.” 2020 has been a year of such traumatic turmoil and terror, so much in our daily lives upended in addition to the national and global disruptions. In many ways, this year has teed us up for Advent, that paradoxical season of darkness and foreboding, expectation and hope. Our gospel reading starts us off in the shadows, with Jesus’ perplexing discourse about cataclysmic suffering soon to befall his followers. Is he talking about Roman persecution, or the end of the world?

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

Jesus sounds most like Israel's prophets here, foretelling gloom and doom. In what comes before this passage, he’s been discussing the onset of a crisis in human terms. Here the warning signs are cosmic, with a darkened sun, a weakened moon, falling stars. And what does it mean to say that “the powers in the heavens will be shaken?”

“The heavens” is bible-speak for the spiritual realm where both good and evil operate. Jesus' mission involved engaging spiritual warfare. Indeed, in much of his ministry he was doing battle with forces of evil, reclaiming and freeing people from bondage to sin and death. That work he supremely accomplished on the cross, and he invites us to help bring it to completion in the fullness of time. When Christ is on the move, then and now, it rattles “the powers in the heavens.” In light of the victory he has already won, still unfolding in our view, that’s good news.

Every time we carry out an apostolic ministry, we rattle the powers of heaven. Every time we challenge untruth or injustice or misused power, we rattle the powers of heaven. Every time we defend the vulnerable from bullies, whether personal or corporate, we rattle the powers of heaven. Every time we invoke the power of God to forgive, heal and restore the broken, we rattle the powers of heaven. Sometimes it gets us in trouble, but Jesus promises to be with us.

What "powers in the heavens" are you feeling called to rattle? Political powers, emotional powers, corporate powers, social powers, cosmic powers? Name a realm and ask Jesus what action he is preparing for you to take. Pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and you can be sure you are fighting with God, serving God’s purposes.

“The world is about to turn,” goes the chorus to Canticle of the Turning, a hymn setting of the Song of Mary which we will sing throughout this season. We can help to bring about that turning in our time.

On Wednesday evenings, I lead an online Bible Study which now has participants from Toronto, Connecticut and Georgia. Why not Water Daily Land? If you'd like to join, you're most welcome - 7 pm here. If you need a passcode, it's LPWay. This Advent we'll be exploring how we live in an upside world - and hint, Jesus already turned it upside down. Or did he turn it right side up?

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.

11-26-20 - Spiritual Lessons From the Turkey

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

Who wants to talk about the end of the world on Thanksgiving? Who wants to be told to “Keep Awake!” in the one guaranteed, nap-allowing four-day weekend in our ever-more-jammed national calendar? How will we engage Advent today when we’re preparing stuffing, preparing pies, preparing turkeys, pre…

Wait a minute. What’s that word? Preparing? Isn’t that the quintessential Advent word? Prepare ye the way for the Lord? Maybe this won’t be so tough. We’ll just have to mash up our holidays a little before we mash our sweet potatoes.

We might take a spiritual lesson or two from preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner – and no, I’m not going to compare the turkey’s sacrifice to Jesus’. What I will do is invite us to think about the things we do to get a turkey ready to be feasted upon, and see how those might be applicable to our spiritual growth.

First, we buy the turkey. We have decisions to make about what kind – fresh, organic, frozen. We don’t expect the turkey to plop into our lap – we select it. We might be as intentional about our choices to grow spiritually as we are about selecting our turkey.

We prepare the turkey – we wash it (baptism? repentance?). We might brine it in salt water - Jesus did say his followers were to be like salt for the world, tenderized, full of flavor…

On the big day, we get up early to get that thing ready for the oven. What if we regularly got ourselves up early to get ready for the world, spending some of our prep time in prayer and quiet with God?

Next we oil or butter the outside of the turkey so it shines with a nice glow as it bakes. Some add some paprika to that process, to enhance the golden color. (The first time I ever roasted a turkey, I mistakenly grabbed cayenne instead of paprika – that was a spicy bird!) In the same way, we as Christ-followers can be anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit, to shine with joy whatever our circumstances.

And we stuff that bird full of good things that help make it moist and flavorful. So we might stuff ourselves with holy-making ingredients… the bread of life, the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, worship with others, prayer, ministry, contemplation, the sacraments, ministry to others. All these things make us tender and flavorful too, more conscious as disciples.

Then we roast the bird… we allow heat to transform it into something we can consume. I would like to think we do that as Christians too – really allow the heat of the Spirit to get to us, to transform us so we become more useful to the people around us.

And while the bird is roasting, we baste it, frequently, so it doesn’t dry out. Our regular immersion in worship and spiritual practices are meant to serve the same function, to keep us well-oiled and limber. If you feel dried out as a Christian, get more basting! That might be a good prayer for us today.

If we can be as intentional about our spiritual lives as we are about our Thanksgiving turkeys, I have no doubt God will feed many, many people through us. Here endeth the metaphor! Gobble, gobble.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Next Sunday’s readings are  here.

Water Daily is now a podcast!Look for it wherever you get your podcasts, and please subscribe.