Water Daily

5-1-23 - Somewhere

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

There’s a place for us; somewhere a place for us.
Hold my hand and we’re halfway there; Hold my hand, and I’ll take you there…

In the musical version of Jesus’ last night with his disciples, maybe he’d break into song. Somewhere. A place for us. (I’m reminded of a lot of pop songs in this reading… stay tuneful this week!). He is trying to comfort his followers, as they begin to realize he is soon to be taken from them.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

If only we could believe it when people say they’re coming back for us. If small children could trust that mom’s not disappearing for good, they’d need fewer blankets and bears. If young women could trust that men really do just “want some space,” there’d be fewer bad love songs. We cannot believe what we cannot conceive – and how could Jesus’ friends conceive a life beyond death, not to mention a place “out there” with him and lots of dwelling places and plenty of room for everyone?

How can we? This passage is often used at funerals. Perhaps it comforts the bereaved to know their loved one has a front-door key waiting on a hook somewhere – though I doubt anyone who’s enjoying Total Love has much use for a zip code. But we like to know where our people are, to imagine them in a place. Maybe we like to imagine ourselves in a place, so we've have taken the Bible's few symbolic hints about heaven and worked them into a city with golden streets and gem-encrusted gates.

I’m not overly concerned about arranging for my pied-a-terre in the afterlife. I know I can start living that life where I am now. We can access the heavenly places in all kinds of ways – in worship, in prayer, in a walk on a fine day – anywhere and anytime we feel ourselves connected to Jesus, in the presence and light and love of God.

What is your view of the afterlife – your afterlife?
Where and how do you best find yourself in touch with God in the here and how?

Is that anything like the heaven you imagine?
Maybe in prayer today you can ask the Spirit to make you aware of the Somewhere God intends for you to dwell in.

We are invited to live already as though we know that place, that Somewhere, where Jesus is, where God is. When we live out of that conviction, we bring it into being in the here and now. Forgiveness and love and giving our stuff away to people who need it become a lot more natural – we’re living the life of heaven.

Somewhere. We'll find a new way of living/ We'll find a way of forgiving …Somewhere …
Somewhere is here, my friends. Some time is already.

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4-28-23 - The Abundant Community

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

Abundance has its drawbacks, I reflect when allergies strike. The spring growth spurt that bedecks our streets in pink and purple and green also generates a super-abundance of pollen. When a whole community is living the abundant life, it generates as much growth as the flowers and trees. Jesus calls us to live abundantly, and Sunday’s reading from Acts about the early church gives us a glimpse (perhaps slightly idealized…) of just how beautiful and fruitful abundance can be in community:

Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.

It’s a simple recipe for the good life – and yet most Christ-followers find it impossible to live this way. This is a puzzle, and a shame, for observers outside the faith have pointed out how much more appealing Christianity would be if its followers were more Christ-like. (Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps the most noted, saying, “Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.” He is said to have continued with something like, “If Christians were more like Christ, all India would be Christian.”)

Yet even that early community didn’t stay focused on mutuality and abundance. We read in Acts that early on someone decided to withhold some of the proceeds of a land sale, and lied about it, which was the more community-breaking act. Conflict and scarcity raised their ugly heads.

So, should we abandon this as an impossible ideal? I hope not. All it takes is one person to recommit to living Jesus’ abundant life. Two is even better. They begin to influence others, who decide to reorder their lives, and on it goes. Sociologists have shown that human behavior is remarkably contagious. Greed, fear, and control are having a pretty good run, don’t you think? Might we regain some ground for love, faith and peace?

If you made the lists yesterday of things and people who steal your goodwill, peace, confidence, joy; and the people and places that help you gain those gifts, you have a blueprint for action. If you’re in a covenant relationship with someone else, hold each other accountable when the “scarcity thinking” starts to mess with your abundant joy. As our communities commit to live this way, increasing our capacity to trust that resources we need will be there when we need them; learning to stop and shift whenever we start to make a decision based on fear of scarcity – we will grow, in faith, in joy, and even in people.

Abundant life has a generative principle – abundance generates more abundance. That passage from Acts ends with this: “And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” If we mourn the scarcity of people in our pews, let’s take on the discipline of abundant living and abundant trusting. Few things are more attractive than someone living at peace and trusting in “enough.”

When all the energy in the tree is focused on pushing out buds, it bursts into flower. And when all the energy in our communities is focused on living into Jesus’ promise of Life in abundance, we’ll burst into flower too. That's nothin' to sneeze at...

4-27-23 - The Abundant Life

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

Want a simple principle to guide life choices? Discern which option leads to more life, and which is likely to drain life away. When energy and time are finite, we need to invest in people and activities we find life-giving, and which give life to others, rather than ones which run us down, involve unnecessary criticism or lead to toxic thinking or behavior. It's not always that simple, of course, and might involve some rewiring. Yet that is the kind of transformation the Holy Spirit works as we make room for God’s life in us.

Jesus draws a contrast between life-giving and death-dealing in this week’s passage: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” he says. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“The thief” might be anything or anyone who stunts our life or brings oppression, be it emotional, political, spiritual, economic, or any other kind. Jesus was painting the religious leaders with that brush, and of course the Roman occupiers. He probably also meant our spiritual adversary, the devil, intent on drawing people away from trusting the love of God. We know what death-dealing looks and feels like.

The abundant life is harder to describe, since life is hard to quantify – but we know it when we’re living it. It consists not so much in an abundance of things or time or even love, as in our awareness of richness, our being tuned to abundance. The abundant life is a balanced life, where we are renewed as we pour ourselves out for others. It is a life of laughter and insight and rich conversations, of wonder and play. It is life that we live here and now, and it does not end with death. That, Jesus says, is why he came – that we might have life, and have it in abundance.

What are the “thieves” who steal your good will, peace, confidence, joy? Make a list of all the culprits. It might include people you love; surfacing that can give you incentive to work on those relationships. This exercise is not without complications!

In what places do you find the most life? List those too. Do you get to put enough of your time and energy into those things? Can you find a way to invest more? Any investment advisor will tell us to put our resources into things with a good yield, what Jesus called “fruitfulness.” Are we investing wisely with our time and gifts and love?

When our hearts are tuned to abundance, we find feasts large and small. We make feasts for others at the drop of a hat. We trust that resources will be there when needed, and usually find they are. We move with the wind of the Spirit in our sails, and when we’re becalmed, we rest in it. We feel our feelings fully, even the less happy ones. We forgive ourselves and others easily. We love ourselves and others.

The abundant life is not where I began, and it’s still a place I need guidance to navigate. As the Holy Spirit remakes me, in union with my spirit, I’m learning to dwell there more and more. I hope you are too.

4-26-23 - Coming In and Going Out

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

“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

Earlier this week we explored Jesus’ saying that he was the gate of the sheepfold, the means of entry. I said it was hard to imagine a person as a gate. But here’s something I learned about sheepfolds in Jesus’ day: scholars think they often had no gate. The shepherd, when the flock was safely enclosed, would lie down to sleep in the opening as a way of securing the flock. Thus, the shepherd became a gate.

Putting aside the amusing image this prompts of a sleepy shepherd trampled one morning by hungry sheep going out to pasture, it helps make sense of Jesus’ words. The shepherd is the one who leads the flock in and out of the fold. Jesus says those who enter the Life of God by way of relationship with him will come in and go out and find pasture.

It occurs to me that sheep don’t get sustenance in the sheepfold – for nourishment, they go out to pasture. What they get in the sheepfold is rest and security. What does that say to us as churchgoers? Often people say they go to church to be fed. What if instead we saw church-time as a time to rest and recharge, be renewed, safely enclosed in the fold with the rest of our flock – and then sent back out to find God’s nourishment in our lives the rest of the week?

What if we were fed in spiritual conversation with other people, by sharing our faith stories with people who aren’t in our “fold?” What if God wants us to be "pasture" by which others to be fed? The going out becomes as important as the coming in, maybe more.

Why do you go to church? What do you seek there? What do you seek when you leave and head back to your “life?”
Where do you, or where might you find spiritual nurture in the week between worship services? Where might you offer it?

In prayer today, we could ask, “God… what pastures are you leading me to in my life right now? Who might you be asking me to provide a feast for?” See what occurs to you, or who crosses your path.

We don’t come and go alone. The Great News is that the shepherd goes with us, coming in and going out. The shepherd leads us to green pastures and the shepherd leads us home again. We don’t have to search for pasture – we only have to learn the voice of the Shepherd and follow him.

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4-25-23 - The Shepherd's Voice

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

Are sheep responsive to sound? I don't know, but Jesus - who must have known more about sheep-keeping than I do - says that sheep know the shepherd’s voice:
“The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

This passage evokes for me Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene in the garden on Easter morning. Deep in grief at finding the tomb empty, assuming the body of her beloved lord has been stolen, Mary has a conversation with someone she takes for a gardener. It is only when he says her name that she recognizes Jesus by his voice. “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.”

I can’t claim to know Jesus’ voice, but I have had enough prayer conversations with him that I believe I recognize his voice – by content if not by tone. When I get a response in prayer that is simple and profound and sometimes a little sharp, something I’m pretty sure I would never have thought of, I attribute it to Jesus. And if it bears good fruit, I feel that hunch confirmed.

One way to describe spiritual growth for Christ-followers is to become familiar with the Shepherd’s voice, so that we are led to green pastures and still waters, to fruitfulness and refreshment. Christ’s leading, which comes to us through the Holy Spirit, can also steer us away from ravines and precipices. As we learn to trust God’s guidance, we also become more hip to false shepherds who try to lead us away from the One who makes us whole.

How do you experience Jesus’ voice in your life? Through scripture or prayer? In worship? Inner promptings? Other people offering interpretations?

If the very idea of “hearing” Jesus seems strange to you, consider a prayer like this: “Okay, Jesus, if you call your own sheep by name and lead them out, call me in a way I can understand.” And then see what happens over the next hours or days or weeks… check in periodically with that prayer and see if your relationship is changing at all. It’s not up to the sheep, it’s up to the shepherd… yet it helps if the sheep are open to possibilities.

Jesus had to watch a lot of people who drifted into his community be drawn away by fear-mongering leaders who warned people not to trust him. I imagine it pained him to watch people come close to the love he offered and then wander off. But Jesus never forced anyone to follow him, and he doesn’t now. He only calls to us, with open arms. Do we hear with open ears?

4-24-23 - The Gate

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

Someday maybe I'll understand the Easter season lectionary. After a few Sundays exploring the events of Easter Sunday, on Easter 4 we leave behind the Resurrection of Christ and jump to one of the “I am the good shepherd” passages. At first glance, “Good Shepherd Sunday” sounds nice and comforting. But as we read these passages, we find they are anything but cuddly. Thieves, rustlers, predators and unreliable hired men abound.

It turns out that Jesus is talking – as usual – about the corrupt and oppressive religious leaders whom he feels misrepresent God and choke the spiritual life of their people: “Very truly, I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

Is it any wonder they wanted to kill Jesus? He compares them to thieves and bandits who would rob people of their assurance of God’s love and mercy. Of course, comparing the people to sheep is not the most flattering allusion either.

And it is easy to get tangled in the words as John presents them; isn't Jesus the shepherd? But later Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

My literal mind has trouble imagining Jesus, a person, as a gate. Maybe it helps if we think of him as one who creates entry space for contact with God – a threshold we cross to gain access to the Holy One, the Creator of all. After all, we affirm that it is by Jesus’ holiness, not our own, that we have access to the Father. He’s our way in… and out.

Does Jesus function that way in your spiritual life? Is he a threshold you can cross into the holy, a space-creator? Do you think you need Jesus to get closer to God? Do you want him in that between-space?
Have you suffered from poor shepherds in the past, who made intimacy with God more difficult? Perhaps you can pray for them, and even forgive. That makes space too.

My prayer for today is, “Jesus – if you’re the gate, show me how I can get closer to the fullness of God by getting closer to you.”

4-21-23 - To Have, Not To Hold

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

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

The post-resurrection Jesus had astonishing properties – he could appear in locked rooms and disappear at will. Perhaps it wasn’t so much “appear” and “disappear” as “materialize” and “dematerialize.” After all, the risen Jesus was spirit – not a ghost, he points out, but spirit. He seemed to be able to take on substance, or matter, when he needed to be seen. (Perhaps he had those properties before resurrection as well… His little stroll on the Sea of Galilee and transfiguration on the mountain offer tantalizing hints into the physics of Jesus’ incarnation…).

Jesus pulls this disappearing act in several resurrection appearances, the Gospels tell us. He says to Mary in the garden, “Don’t hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” (John 20:11-18) He did hang out and have breakfast with the disciples on the beach after the miraculous catch of fish (John 21), but his interview with Peter implies his coming absence. In Luke’s account of the upper room appearance, he talks about sending the Spirit to them (Luke 24:36-49). It is clear he’s not sticking around.

Jesus was not back to stay. His post-Resurrection, pre-Ascension walkabout had a purpose, to reinforce the teaching he’d given his followers for three years, and to prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit, who would kick the whole operation into gear. And here we are, more or less still in gear, two thousand-plus years later.

We tend to want to keep what feels good, to rest in it. And that is not the way of God. Jesus always seems to be moving on to the next place we will find him. Maybe our wiring is too weak to withstand the frequency of God’s presence all the time. I know I have trouble abiding with Jesus for even a little while, though there is something about that presence that I crave. Maybe Jesus’ appearances, whether in those 40 days, or in our prayers and worship and ministry and community now, are always brief and for a purpose. Maybe he leads us on to new ways to experience him and new ways to make him known to the world, because there are so many who do not know him and need a multiplicity of on-ramps.

Where did you last experience the presence of Christ? How long did that experience last? Did you feel ready for it to end? If you would you like to experience the presence of Christ, and aren’t aware of having done so, here’s a prayer for today: “Risen Lord – I want to know you, to feel your presence, your love. Open my eyes, ears, heart and hands, and find me where I am today. Amen.”

I don’t know what will come of that prayer, but you can pray and release it. God will answer in God’s time and in a way that works for you. I don’t believe God hides from us. And whenever you do encounter that presence, tell someone! Those disciples got up from the table and ran seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the story, only to find that Jesus had showed up in there the same evening.

I don’t think anyone, even the most prayer-soaked mystic, experiences God’s presence in a constant, unbroken way. Jesus did make a promise, though, that we can rest in, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the ages.” At the end of the ages, we’ll be able to sit in his presence full time. For now, we take the moments and string them together like pearls of great price.