1-1-21 - A New Years Wish

You can listen to this reflection here.

Poor 2020. It started out great. Such an auspicious set of numbers, suggesting perfect vision, the doubling of multiples of fours and fives… And now one of the most loathed years in history, when it seemed that everything that could go wrong, did. Repeatedly.

We do know, don’t we, that it’s not 2020’s fault? And yet, what rejoicing, even relief we feel with the turn of that calendar, and the first writing of “2021.”

As we savor the hopes of this new year, this new set of 52 weeks and 365 days, here are some wishes for you and for me:

That we work no more than we rest and play.

That we buy no more than we need.

That we give away more than we think we can.

That we open ourselves to the discomfort of relationship with people who think differently than we do.

That we come into deeper relationship with the natural world, cherishing and protecting its life.

That we learn to expect blessing from a God who lavishes love on us.

That we deepen our essential relationship with Jesus/Y’shua, who makes God’s love real for us.

That we allow the Spirit of God/Y’shua to truly empower us to believe and do more than we can ask or imagine.

We do not know what 2021 holds, but we do know that if our sense of well-being rests in our relationship with the living God, and not in our circumstances on a given day, it will be a year of grace and the peace that defies understanding. And then we will be agents of that peace.

I wish you a Happy, Hopeful New Year!

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12-31-20 - God's Plan - Or Adjustments?

You can listen to this reflection here.

A family forced to flee across the border in order to keep their son safe from violence: this part of Jesus’ ancient story is as up-to-the-minute as the latest news cycle. This part of Jesus’ story is often overlooked, yet it surely resonates with the millions in our world who have been torn from their families and birthplaces by geo-political realities, vengeance and violence. This is a Syrian family, a Salvadoran family, a ghetto family.

This is a dark topic on which to end our year, but perhaps right on point for a year so marked by darkness and terror. So let’s turn our focus from the reasons for Joseph and Mary’s flight to the hand of God in ensuring Jesus’ safety. This prompts a tricky question: did God always intend that Jesus spend his early childhood in Egypt and end up in Nazareth, as Matthew – ever seeking to link the details of Jesus’ life to Israel’s prophecies, no matter how obscure – would have it? Or does God adjust to human choices, inviting us to follow the new route as it unfolds?

If we hold to a strong view of free will, believing that God gives humankind the free exercise of will, then we must also affirm God’s voluntary non-interference in the exercise of those choices. I believe the biblical record, certainly the accounts of Jesus’ life, bears out this view. Herod had a choice not to pursue his murderous campaign. Judas had a choice not to betray. Pilate had a choice not to condemn. Even Jesus had a choice, as we see in his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Where God intervenes, it seems, is in the aftermath of our choices, offering comfort and guidance into new choices that can bring healing and hope, even redemption as we move through the consequences of human will. As I have often been reminded, God does not prevent the messes – God shows up in them. There could be no greater “mess” than the brutal death of God’s own son; yet look at what God brought about three days later.

As we turn from this year when so many of the consequences of human choices hit us, one after another (remembering that even pandemics and forest fires and floods, and certainly racism are rooted in human choice), we can see even more clearly the Good News in this story. God’s shepherding Jesus’ family into exile, and Joseph’s choice to agree to this divine instruction, allowed God’s plan to be carried out. Jesus got to Nazareth in the end, whether or not that was always intended to be his home town.

And God continues to make adjustments to God’s plan in our lives. Millions dead of Covid-19, many preventably, was not God’s plan, not the God who is Love. Lives, careers, educations, relationships massively disrupted are not God’s plan. The persistence of racial discrimination, economics and politics are not God’s plan.

What is God’s plan is us: our willingness to make ourselves available as agents of God’s adjustments to the plan; our desire to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit and attentive to the Spirit’s leading; our capacity to carry the Spirit’s power and make visible God’s love. Where are you being invited to do that?

2020 may have been a year when the messes overwhelmed us, but God is still showing up in right smack dab in the midst of the messes, bringing hope and healing. This new year will not magically undo the messes – it just offers us another 365 days to allow God to bring redemption through us.

I want to offer my deep gratitude to you for your reading and responding to these offerings - I love what God is doing with this far-flung community. Water Daily continues to be my own offering of love and Spirit and you are welcome simply to receive. If you wish to support the ministry that supports my work, feel free to make a donation to the Christ Churches here, selecting Open Plate and indicating "Water Daily" if you have the chance to leave a note. 

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12-30-20 - The Frightened King

You can listen to this reflection here.

Ah, sweet little lord Jesus, tucked away in a manger, asleep on the hay… Well, sleep while you can, little buddy. For you, as for too many babies in this world, this story is not so sweet. Mom and Dad are far from home complying with Roman law, administered at the point of a sword. And if the Romans aren’t bad enough, their puppet, the Jewish King Herod, will soon hear of your birth – and he doesn’t behave well when threatened.

We turn now to another passage appointed for Sunday, in which the infant Jesus and his parents become refugees in a strange land. 

Now after they [the magi] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’

Few things are as frightening as taking power. Once you have it, you have to worry about it being taken from you. Herod heard from some foreign visitors that they’d seen celestial signs of a “king of the Jews” having been born. Well, he was the king of the Jews, wasn’t he? And he hadn’t had any new offspring. How seriously was he to take these clowns from the East?

According to Matthew, Herod took this threat seriously indeed, calling together all the advisors and prognosticators he could muster, interrogating the magi themselves and directing them toward Bethlehem. If they found something there, he’d know about it. If they didn’t, he could relax… for a little while.

Herod is only the first of many human rulers to be alarmed by Jesus. That’s what happens when we become attached to human power. We can forget the God who entrusts us with leadership in the first place. Our world is full of Herods. And what do Herods do when threatened? They slaughter children and wipe out communities, and they never, ever feel safe.

How are we to respond to these terrified and terrorizing figures? Few of us are in a position to confront directly. But we can pray for, and pressure our governments to stand against tyrants. And we can wield the power that so fills despots with fear – the power of Jesus, of whom Simeon said, “He is destined to cause the rising and falling of many in Israel.” Wielding the power of Jesus means refusing to seek human power ourselves. Power over others always makes human beings prey to the power of evil.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, knew that. In his practice of non-violent confrontation he invited those with human power to unleash their worst - and as they did, they revealed their inhumanity. The wounds they inflicted were real, but they gave away true power with every blow. We are not finished learning those lessons.

In his earthly life, Jesus refused to be drawn into the power game. In seeming to yield to human power, he modeled the strongest power the world has ever seen, power that overturned death and the source of evil itself. We who bear his name are invited to subvert human power by committing ourselves to non-violence, to reconciliation, to praying for our enemies, to making peace. That’s power without fear. That's Jesus' Way of Love.

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12-29-20 - A New Star

You can listen to this reflection here.

I don’t know how one looks at the heavens and discerns the significance of a new star, but our magi seemed to have had that ability: 

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage."

They must have been acute observers of the night skies to notice a new star. We now know that a new light in the sky can signify the death throes of a star, its light only becoming visible to us long after it has ceased to be. That’s not how our magi would have seen it, I suspect – they saw a new and wondrous light, so bright it had to be of great import, telling of a new king.

A pinpoint of light. There are days when this world can seem so dark that the light of Christ is no more than a tiny point. There are those who find it completely irrelevant, who claim his star flamed out years ago. That’s not how our magi would have seen it, I suspect – nor how we are invited to see it. With the eyes of faith, and our experience of God, we know that that pinpoint is the merest echo of the vast presence of the One who is light itself, energy in its purest form.

At Christmas, we celebrate the dawning of a new star, the “Bright Morning Star,” one of the names by which Jesus is known. And we claim that Jesus was that vast presence, unknowable to our human senses, who made himself knowable in human flesh, the One who said, “I am the light of the world.”

That One also told his followers they were to be lights for the world. We are to be reflectors of that star. Our spiritual work in this life is keeping our mirrors clean and de-fogged, the better to reflect the radiance of the Bright Morning Star.

Do you feel anything dimming your radiance today? Are you under the shadow of a feeling or a memory or a loss? How might you identify that, and offer it to God in prayer? How might we experience the Holy Spirit as glass cleaner, making us more radiant?

This star we celebrate is ancient, and yet ever-new. The darkness we’ve experienced this year will not automatically vanish with the turning of the calendar in a few days. It’s still up to us to bear Christ’s light, to shine more and more brightly with the radiance of Christ’s splendor. That’s way more than a pinpoint of light in the darkness – that’s a light that obliterates the dark.

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12-28-20 - Star-Chasers

You can listen to this reflection here. 

Next Sunday we will still be in the Christmas season, but our gospel reading is an Epiphany story (no time to stretch it out – by the second Sunday in January, Jesus will be all grown up and getting baptized…) We will encounter those mysterious wise men from the “East,” who followed the star so far from home – right into our pageants and crèche sets.

Where did Matthew hear this story that has come down to us in the nativity narratives? Did Luke not hear it, or not include it?

And who were these star chasers? A new light had appeared in their night sky, and their interpretations suggested a new king had been born for the Jews. What had these people to do with the Jewish people? We do not know that, or where they came from, or how many they were. We can reasonably assume that their names were not Caspar, Melchior or Abednego, or whatever the third guy is said to have been called.

Why were they willing to travel so far to offer obeisance to a foreign king? What was it about that star? Its brightness? Its sudden appearance? Some astronomers think a super nova was visible in the heavens around that time, and that this is what the magi saw. (I once read such a book – The Once and Future Star; here’s a link, though I can’t tell if it is the same book.)

Why did these men care about a king for the Jews? Did the star they saw signify great power? Did they want to be the first to get in his good graces? The gifts they are said to have brought are of extremely high value and very symbolic: gold as treasure; frankincense, a resin prized for its scent; and myrrh, also a fragrant resin, from which ointment was made for anointing bodies for burial. These are gifts for a king indeed. What did they think when they found a mere child? Matthew only tells us that knelt and worshipped him and offered the gifts they had brought. 

What do these visitors signify for us? How do you find your way into this story?
Do you feel like one who is seeking and has found, or is still on the road hoping you’ve read your guidance correctly? If you heard about Jesus, would you travel to see him? What is the most precious gift you might offer him?

We can start with our time. As we begin another round of Jesus stories, we might invest more deeply in getting to know Him in these stories. That means not only reading, but spending some time contemplating, meditating on the story, discerning who you most identify with in that tale on a given day, asking Jesus to be real for you as you allow the story to usher you into prayer.

When we truly find ourselves in Jesus’ presence, we have no need to look further. Perhaps that is why those magi, for all their wealth and knowledge and sophistication, knelt and paid homage to this small child. As unlikely a king as he appeared to be, they knew they had found the Real Thing. There was no need to look further, only to bask in his presence, offer what they had come with, and take the long way home, their hearts full, their longing satisfied.

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12-26-20 - Word Made Flesh

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

How do you take your theology? Straight up or with a twist? Abstract or concrete? Philosophy or story? The gospels are flexible enough to incorporate many learning styles.

On Christmas Eve, we are steeped in story, personal and intimate, sweeping and glorious, each element a rich vein of symbol and language to speak of how much God loves us. And then, on the first Sunday after Christmas, in Episcopal churches we go to the prologue of the Gospel of John, which is as abstract as a love story could possibly get.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Right away we are invited to suspend our literal mindedness (“how can something be with God and be God?”) and enter a swirl of words that convey a truth. What does “Word” mean? Most likely “logos,” translated as “word,” means something closer to the “mind” or the “primal thought” of God. Does that make it more or less confusing?

That first paragraph tells the whole story – of what was before we were, of creation, of life and light, and light overcoming darkness. In theological language, we see the doctrines of God, Creation, Incarnation, Salvation – all in a few short lines.

But on the Saturday after Christmas, who is thinking about theological doctrines? Some of us are cleaning up or eating leftovers. We may be enjoying another day with family, if we were able to safely gather, or just resting. I hope none of us is taking down Christmas decorations, as we have a full eleven more days of Christmas to celebrate. (That siren you hear is the liturgical police ready to pull you over….)

If you want to take a little devotional time today, read over the passage several times, slowly, and see where you get snagged. If something is confusing, take note. If something is pleasing, read that part again. What is the overall sense you come away with? What is the heart of the passage?

For me, the heart is “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

The story of God, so far away, so holy, so “other,” moving into our neighborhood and settling down so that we can draw near – that’s a story that never gets old. I feel frustrated in how to convey it as Good News to a people for whom it has become hum-drum, and to others for whom “God” is entirely irrelevant, and in the midst of so much global pain and trauma – yet I believe it is the heart of the gift Christians have for the world. I will continue to try to get inside that mystery and discover the “Word made flesh” who wants to know me and be known by me.

However it is that you best comprehend the story of God’s amazing love and desire to be close to you, I hope you are both shaken and stirred.

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12-25-20 - Merry Christmas!

You can listen to this reflection here.

A BLESSED FEAST OF THE INCARNATION TO YOU!

No post today - there will be a Water Daily tomorrow.

I'm sending a gratitude for you, along with a heartfelt prayer that your Christmas is a joy, whatever the circumstances this year.

Perhaps this year the words my favorite Christmas carol, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, resonate for us, especially the last verse:

It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old
From angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold
"Peace on the earth, good will to men
from heaven's all gracious King"
The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing

Still through the cloven skies they come
with peaceful wings unfurled
And still their heavenly music floats o'er all the weary world
Above its sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing
And ever o'er its Babel sounds the blessed angels sing

O ye beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow
Look up! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing

For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold
When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
And all the world send back the song which now the angels sing.

They are still singing... can you hear them?

Blessings,
Kate