Water Daily

11-3-23 - No Rose Garden

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

When I was young(er), there was a hit on the radio that went “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden; along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometimes.” (Yikes, I even remember the lyrics – worse yet, there’s a video!)

I’m reminded of this little ditty by the last two Beatitudes:
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Lest Jesus’ disciples think that following him was their road to glory, he tells them right up front to expect flack, slander, even persecution. This will signal that they’re in the big leagues, up there with the great prophets of Israel who had messages from God their leaders didn’t want to hear. Look at what happened to them: flogging, imprisonment, job loss – sometimes death. Jesus does specify that it’s persecution for the sake of righteousness, or for his sake. Ordinary suffering and mistreatment don’t buy us a reward. But suffering for the revelation he has come to proclaim and demonstrate? That will be honored.

In Europe and America we don’t face much persecution for being Christian – assuming that we present enough evidence to convict us. But if we’re serious about our faith and vocal about how our relationship with God in Christ affects our choices, decisions, priorities in how we spend our time, money and relationships, we may face derision, even some social cost. And to assert equity and justice for the poor and marginalized, in line with Jesus and the prophets before him, can put us at odds even with other Christians.

Now, if you’ve been keeping score, you’ll notice I skipped one Beatitude:

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."

This may be the most important one - and, thanks to Monty Python’s Life of Brian (“Did he say, 'Blessed are the cheesemakers?”) perhaps the best known. I’ve grouped it with these persecution clauses because a true peacemaker is apt to make enemies, ironic as that may seem. Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart – just ask Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, Jr., to cite some obvious examples. Or Jesus. As we are reminded all too clearly in the actual enmities between Israel and its neighbors, and social/ political skirmishes about that conflict, many people are deeply invested in their enmities, in us/them thinking, in the political and economic gains to be had by demonizing others. If we take up the ministry of forging peace, we should expect flack, even shrapnel.

How do these beatitudes hit you today? Can you relate to the promise of persecution, and to the eventual reward? How have you experienced the ministry of peace-making? Are there ways your church community could become more active in that focus? What prayers rise up in you today?

Jesus doesn't promise us a rose garden. He doesn’t promise us a return to the garden of Eden. He promises to make us part of God’s mission to reclaim, restore, and renew the garden of this earth and all its inhabitants. That breathtaking invitation is worth suffering for.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for All Saints Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

11-2-23 - Poor, Sad and Passive?

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

Now here’s a recruitment slogan: “Calling all who are poor, all who are sad, all who are passive – I’m going to change the world with you!”

These may not be the qualities we associate with leadership and success… Maybe Jesus is inviting us to reconsider our criteria for leadership. His closest followers were not the cream of society’s crop – they were Galilean fishermen, tax collectors, women with “reputations.” And yet we honor them and know their names 2000 years later.

The first three “beatitudes” deal with emotional conditions:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are the grief-stricken, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

What does “poor in spirit” mean? I think of it as being at a low ebb, spiritual energy sapped by fatigue or sadness or disappointment, faith less than robust. I suspect most of us have felt poor in spirit. But we, Jesus promises, will inherit the fullness of God’s spiritual realm, the Life of God.

Similarly, most of us know what it’s like to mourn; for some grief seems to go on forever. But Jesus says we will be comforted. This doesn’t end the mourning, but can shift it into a different key, so that we manage to sing a new song even in our grief.

Meekness may be the one attribute here that is less common to us. I think of “meek” as passive, not pushy, not forwarding ones own agenda. We often associate “meek” with being a doormat. But I once heard that “meek” may not be the best translation of the Greek. In French Bibles the word is rendered “debonair.” That gives a different slant. As an essay I found online (the link no longer live, alas) says, “Gone was Casper Milk Toast. Instead, my mental images were of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or of Gene Kelly, singing in the rain. I would so much rather be debonair than meek! The debonair are people who move with grace through life. They have style. Blessed are the debonair!”

The writer goes on to say that the Greek word can be translated ‘gentleness.’ "The word can refer to a strong animal such as a horse, who is well-trained and gentle in spirit, in spite of its strength. It can also mean the quality of being teachable — modest, generous, humble and considerate. In other words, those who are blessed are those who have strength, and yet use it with gentleness.”

You may or may not feel debonair today, but I hope you have a sense of your strength and your gentleness. God can work through us best when we combine the two. Perhaps that’s what it means to “inherit the earth” – to participate fully in God’s mission in strength and gentleness.

And when grief and dispiritedness are upon us, we might pray for more of the gentle power of the Spirit to fill us, to pump up our tires (the word for spirit is pneuma, after all…), to transform our mourning into joy. In making these feelings markers of discipleship, Jesus honors our emotional truth and invites us to bring all of who we are each day into the fullness of our God-Life.

And he offers hope for us when we’re not feeling so strong, reminding us, “This is not the end of your story.” He is the end of our story, and he will lead us there, as we follow.

11-1-23 - Holiness and Mercy

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

Today is All Saints Day, so let’s talk about holiness. Holiness is not a word we hear a lot these days. People speak of “the holy,” and of “wholeness,” but holiness is not in vogue. In an age when the disadvantaged hunger for food and thirst for water, while the well-fed hunger for things and thirst for distraction, who yearns for righteousness?

Holiness is at the heart of Jesus’ prescription for disciples:
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Righteousness and purity of heart are overlapping categories. Righteousness, being right, true, justified (as in a printer’s margin), means being grounded in God’s love and goodness, aligned to God's will. Purity of heart is an undivided focus on God. To thirst for righteousness is to desire integration, to be authentically ourselves, to have our inner and our outer life cohere; to say what we mean and mean what we say. When we really yearn only for God, we are promised we will see God - and people will see God in us.

Between righteousness and purity of heart on his list, Jesus places mercy, perhaps in recognition that there is no such thing as personal righteousness without engaging with other people. As soon as we engage other people, we face the need to be merciful, as we hope they will be with us. Trying to be righteous without being merciful makes us self-righteous. Purity of heart requires compassion.

As we pray today, let’s locate in ourselves that thirst for holiness and “singleness of heart,” as the Prayer Book puts it. Let’s let that hunger fill us like an empty stomach does. Let’s ask ourselves where the flow of mercy in us might have hit a dam, and invite the Holy Spirit to help us remove those obstacles. The promise for us, as we orient ourselves to desire righteousness, mercy and purity of heart, is that we will be filled, we will receive mercy, and we will see God.

The multi-talented priest, composer and jazz-band leader Andy Barnett composed a lovely setting of the Latin American Bread Prayer. The words are simple and sink into the soul. Listen, and pray:
To all those with bread, give hunger for justice, And to all those hunger, give bread.

10-31-23 - #Blessed

You can listen to this reflection here.

There is only one gospel passage assigned for All Saints Day – each year, it’s the same old Beatitudes. I’ve often grumbled at this, dismissing the Beatitudes as a how-to guide (albeit, Jesus’ how-to guide...) and I’m not big on the idea of people striving for sainthood. That’s God’s to give. But if I can look past this little prejudice and more fully explore this famous laundry list of saintly characteristics – remembering that “saint” means Christ-follower – I just may find some gold.

Jesus is speaking to his followers on a “mountain” – probably a hill, but perhaps Matthew wants to draw parallels between Moses giving the Law on Mount Sinai in the old covenant, and Jesus giving the “law” of the new covenant. (Luke, a Gentile, seems less interested in demonstrating continuity between the Jesus movement and its Jewish roots. In his Gospel, this scene takes place on a plain, on level ground – in line with his theme of Jesus as the great leveler, equalizer.)

Jesus has been teaching every chance he gets, but on this day he has a particular message. In the face of the hardship his followers will endure, he wants them to understand an important marker of their identity as his disciples. He wants them, above all, to know they are, blessed. This is the one word he repeats over and over.

What does it mean to be blessed? It means to stand in the light of God’s love and favor. Just as we cannot make ourselves saints, we cannot bless ourselves – we have to let it happen to us.

And God’s blessing is often counter-intuitive – the attributes Jesus associates with blessing are not what the world equates with success. Once again Jesus overturns the “logical” order of human priorities and introduces the upside-down reality of God’s realm. The people of Jesus’ day thought prosperity and health and offspring were signs of God’s blessing… Jesus says, “Look deeper.”

With what do you associate blessing? In what ways do you feel blessed or unblessed?
Might you ask the Holy Spirit to show you in what ways God sees you as blessed? I often invite us to hold other people in our mind’s eye and imagine them showered with God’s holy, healing light – that is an image of blessing. So today maybe we want to imagine ourselves in that light. And know we are blessed, no matter what we feel like on a given day.

As followers of Christ, we are blessed to be a blessing. We are one of the ways God is blessing the world. And we’re a whole lot more effective when we’re in touch with our blessedness. The next time someone says to you, “God bless you,” whether or not you’ve sneezed, say, “I'll take it!”

10-30-23 - Saints Alive

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

Next Sunday has a normal set of passages in sequence with what we’ve been reading. It is also the Sunday after All Saints Day, which has different readings that will be heard in many churches.We will focus on the gospel for All Saints Day this week.

Let’s start by defining what is a saint. Or, more properly, who is a saint. There is a reason we call it "All Saints" – it reminds us that all who follow Christ as Lord are saints of God. “Saints” was the term used in the early church for Christ followers; Paul would write a letter to “the saints who are in Corinth,” or “the saints in Philippi.” Saints were those called out and set aside, consecrated, made holy to the Lord, the way we use special consecrated vessels for holy rituals.

“Saint” does not mean “a really good person” or “holier than thou.” In fact, true saints are humble enough to be quite aware of their faults and weaknesses. Our doctrine of saints recognizes that saints are made, not born. We are made holy by being united with Christ, not through our own attributes. Many of our best known saints, like St. Augustine or St. Francis of Assisi, had quite rakish pasts before the Holy Spirit got hold of them. Some, like St. Teresa of Avila, were quick of wit and sharp of tongue. Some were martyrs, some monastics, some simple, some highly educated. Saints come in all shapes and sizes.

What kind of saint are you? When are you most aware of having been made holy? Another way to ask that is, when are you most aware of the Holy Spirit working through you?

If you want to become more aware of your sainthood, I believe God is always pleased to help you with that. “Make me more holy, Lord.” If you pray that prayer today, ask the Spirit to show you all the ways you already reflect God’s holiness and love. Saints are a work in progress.

The Holy Spirit’s presence always leaves a residue. Thus we become tinged with the holy, and as we keep inviting the Spirit to dwell in, with and through us, that tinge of holiness grows stronger and thicker until the holiness is more obvious than the mere humanity. And then, lo and behold, someone is liable to say of you, “S/He is such a saint!”

10-27-23 - The Perfect Hanger

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

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” Jesus said about the commandments he considered the greatest – to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The literal side of me visualizes an actual hanger, on which hangs the fullness of God’s revelation, perfected in Christ. This hanger, like many in our closets, has three sides. The widest, the bottom stabilizing rod, is our love for God. The two angled sides, which rest on the base and join together at the top, are our love for neighbor and for ourselves – which, as we have observed this week, are interdependent and mutually reinforcing; if one side breaks the hanger goes haywire.

If we can manage to fully engage our love for God, neighbor and self, and give each of these loves equal energy, I believe our lives will be more centered and fulfilling. We will find ourselves thriving in the light of God, putting more and more of our life-blood into the enterprise of love. That is what we are here for, what Jesus came to make possible for us.

How might we orient ourselves into a more conscious, daily engagement with loving God, neighbor and self? We could take the hangers in our closet as a daily reminder. When you take out clothing in the morning, remember: “Oh yeah, my biggest job today is to love God, my neighbor and myself.” And when you put your clothes away in the evening (we all hang up our clothes every night, right?) review how well you remembered. Gradually this can become second nature, and we’ll see the fruit of it in our lives.

And when loving becomes second nature to more and more people, we start to see the fruits in the world around us. That world is frightening me quite a lot these days – yet I am constantly called back to John’s reminder that, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The absolutely best action we can take is to love actively and consciously, and increase our capacity for love every single day.

Paul wrote to the Colossians: Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

We have a closet full of hangers, with all the holy clothing we need. And what supports these hangers? The rod, the perfect love of God, which can bear all the weight we need it to. God’s love enables us to love.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.

10-26-23 - Loving Ourselves

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

I still remember the evening in my twenties, at a Wednesday eucharist in New York City, when I realized that I would never be happy – and maybe not able to truly love another – until I learned to love myself. I’m still working on it.

Some people have a hard time with the notion of loving self. There is a self-suppressing strain in Western culture, and the Christian church has not always presented Jesus’ teachings about self-denial in a very wholesome way. We can equate loving self with selfishness, self-centeredness, self-involvement. And yet, right here at the center of Jesus' greatest commandment, is the order to love ourselves as we love our neighbors. Loving ourselves well is true humility.

If this is no challenge for you, great; you have a wonderful gift of grace and equilibrium to share with the world. If loving yourself does not come naturally, here are some ideas to help move into this way of living. First, see yourself as a child of God, created in love, for love. If you ask the Spirit to give you a glimpse of how God sees you, you may have a revelation of your belovedness. If you want a scriptural reminder of how chosen and precious you are to God, try the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

When we are reminded whose we are, it opens the way to better discovering who we are. So a next step is to look at our wounds and faults with compassion instead of judgment. What prejudices have we been turning on ourselves, perhaps more harshly than we'd apply to our neighbors? If we are given to self-criticism, let’s offer it the way we would correct a small child, not by crushing her spirit, but calling her to her better self. Notice when your internal monologue toward yourself is harsh (“That was dumb,” “You idiot!”) and stop and redirect yourself to more affirming language.

Then we might move beyond accepting our “shadow sides” to actually celebrating our gifts and strengths. What are your best qualities? What is delightful about you? What do other people love in you? What do you love? And what kind of a future do you desire for this special and beloved creature of God? What do you want in your life? What do you want to do /see/ experience/ taste/ give/ receive?

Loving our selves and loving our neighbors must go hand in hand, for fundamental to the whole exercise is the understanding that we are equal in God’s sight. No one is better, or worse, more important or less, more or less worthy of regard and honor and dignity and love.

When we fully comprehend that, loving God with our whole heart and mind and soul will be a piece of cake. We are simply recognizing the inherent beauty of God’s creation, and acknowledging that God does flawless work. You are Exhibit A.