A Daily Lent

John 11:47 - 52 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. Always we find ourselves with competing interests when it comes to living a life centered in God. We hold other loyalties to be important, and to give ourselves fully to God or to the Good News which Jesus embodies, would be to ...

John 10:31 - 38 Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came — and Scripture cannot be broken — what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” I've come to believe that God's nature is to be endlessly Self-giving. God is generous with God's Self, giving away the peace, love, mercy and co...

John 8:58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” In many ancient cultures -- and in some contemporary cultures -- antiquity trumps the contemporary. That which is oldest, most historic or traditional is most highly prized, and often assumed to be most true. For those who traced their lineage to Abraham, the Patriarch at the source-point of Jewish faith and practice, Jesus was a newcomer who had nothing to offer greater than their ancestor Abraham. Jesus' dialed up a reference to the Infinite, Boundlessness, Essence which we call "God" when he said, "I am." His response refers back to the self-revelation of God to Moses in Exodus 3 at the burning bush. "I AM WHO I AM," spoke the voice from the bush. "I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE." God is self-described not by function, that is, by what God does; rather, God is self-revealed as Being, Essence, by All-That-Is. I AM. Jesus, then, not only claimed to pre-da...

John 8:31 - 42 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.” “Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from G...

John 8:21 - 30 Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.” This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?” But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.” “Who are you?” they asked. “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied. “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.” They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I a...

John 8:2 - 11 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one...

John 12:24 "What I'm about to tell you is true. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only one seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." In John's Gospel, Jesus offers these words when he entered the season of his life in which he set his course for Jerusalem and what would be his crucifixion. Thus, there is a sense in which these words are grandly true for him, and will be his lived experience on the path ahead. He also, though, speaks a universal truth, a truth about the way life is ordered, a truth about what it means to be a part of life on this planet. The human heart sees death as an ending, whether it is the death of a job, of a relationship, of a dream, of good health. Because we see life from the perspective of, "What does the event or happening mean for me ?", death is an ending. But the Gospel invites us to a wider, more expansive vision. You and I are not the center of the universe. We may be one poin...

John 7:40 - 43 On hearing his words, some of the people said, Surely this man is the Prophet. Others said, He is the Christ. Still others asked, How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David's family and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived? Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. There was a division among the people because of Jesus. I wonder why Christianity, from its beginnings, has been so beset by divisions, by splinterings? I imagine there are some folks who would say, in response, that Jesus was a polarizing figure. They might say that with Jesus, you are either in or you are out , that you are with him or against him, and that by his very nature, Jesus sets up this division. I know some of these mental impulses, some of these arguments. I've advocated for them at times in my past. The history of institutional Christianity has largely been about deciding what the boundaries are or fig...

John 7:29 "But I know the one who sent me, because I came from him." Jesus slipped into Jerusalem secretly during a Feast. Those who heard him speak questioned his origins. The words in today's text form a part of Jesus' response. His origins were in God. Jesus knew who he was in God. For whatever his early life was like -- and we have few clues in Scripture about his early life -- we know that at the beginning of his public ministry, he first went to the Jordan River to submit to John's baptism. In that experience, he heard the voice of God say to him, "You are my son, the one I love; my heart delights in you." Jesus knew who he was. He knew where he had come from, where he was sent, and to whom he was going. Immediately after his baptism, God's Spirit led him into the wilderness, where his identity was challenged. He lived, though, out of an interior connection to God. He was intimately connected to the Source of all life. Isn't th...

John 5:31 - 37 “If I were to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid. But someone else is also testifying about me, and I assure you that everything he says about me is true. In fact, you sent investigators to listen to John the Baptist, and his testimony about me was true. Of course, I have no need of human witnesses, but I say these things so you might be saved. John was like a burning and shining lamp, and you were excited for a while about his message. But I have a greater witness than John—my teachings and my miracles. The Father gave me these works to accomplish, and they prove that he sent me. And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself." As I allowed myself into this passage, I was struck by the idea of giving testimony to who Jesus is. In the tradition of my roots, giving a testimony was common practice. Even before my life as a "preacher," I gave my share of testimonies in worship and revival settings. Usually, the testimo...

John 5:24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life." To "cross over" or "pass over" from death to life runs counter to how we experience reality. Our experience is typically that we move from life to death, that in many ways, our life is preparation for our ending or our death. [I spent several hours in Psalm 90 this week. It is a psalm that encourages us to "number our days" and to recognize how fleeting life is, that we may live life well.] But Jesus strangely says that the pass over is from death to life. Frankly, Jesus' scheme lines up more cleanly with the rest of the created world. As I write these words, I sit in front of a window that looks out at a tree that has been bare and spindly all winter. Now, within the last week, there are buds sprouting up and down the tree. It is obviously alive, having moved from dorman...

John 5:2 - 7 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” I'm thinking about the man who had been disabled for 38 years, and who could not answer Jesus' question, "Do you want to get well?" Most all of us have stories we tell ourselves and tell others about ourselves, and many of them are stories that rob us of our personhood. They are stories that define us in certain ways, stories that tell only a partial truth about who ...

Matthew 1:18 - 25 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. This Fo...

John 3:14 - 21 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. "Whoever believes in him" . . . . Rea...

Luke 10:1 - 6 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If the head of the house loves peace, your peace will rest on that house; if not, it will return to you." Jesus sent his followers into the world "like lambs into the midst of wolves." He instructed them not to take provisions for the journey with them, but to travel light and live off the land, so to speak. Jesus was not a very good business man (in the contemporary sense), and his plan for "success" is not a model that many have adopted. Though some contemporary folks have ...

Mark 12:28 - 31 So he asked him, "Which is the most important of all the commandments?" Jesus answered, "Here is the most important one. Moses said, 'Israel, listen to me. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your mind and with all your strength.'—(Deut. 6:4,5) And here is the second one. 'Love your neighbor as you love yourself.'—(Lev. 19:18) There is no commandment more important than these." For all of our fractured ideas about God, about who God is and what God does, the Scriptures affirm the oneness and wholeness of God. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses affirmed the oneness of God. The many deities of the other nations each had their niche, but this God permeated everything with a wholeness that brought everything together. Jesus quoted Moses in this dialogue with a teacher of the Law, affirming the oneness of God. Paul later said that in Christ, Go...

Luke 11:14 After the demon had gone out, the man started speaking, and the crowds were amazed. In this longer passage (Lk. 11:14 - 23), I notice this first verse and the amazement of the crowds at this miracle. What caused them to be amazed? Why did this miracle do it for them, when many other things had gone unnoticed to that point? As humans, we are so accustomed to not seeing, that when we finally do see, it seems amazing. We become acclimated to the darkness, so that seeing the little-bit offered in darkness seems like full sight. When the fullness of light, then, does shine, it can be overwhelming and blinding. I believe that for the person who can see, who has eyes to see and ears to hear, these kinds of miracles are happening all the time. In fact, they are such "ordinary miracles" that they may defy classification as miracles. Once we begin to see them, once we start to notice the ways the Holy is woven through the fabric of everyday life, they seem common...

Matthew 5:19 "Whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom of heaven is not a kingdom of right belief. It is not a kingdom of orthodox thinking. It is an enacted kingdom, a kingdom of living, practicing, experiential belief. Ultimately, what you believe in your head may seem important, but it matters little if it is not soaking into your life, if it doesn't get down to where your roots grow, if it doesn't inform your speaking and living, if it doesn't shape who you are in connection with God, self, others, and the world. Belief, in and of itself, is very hollow and has almost no power to transform. In the United States, current conversations nationally and politically are being shaped by those who adhere to particular beliefs and who project themselves as people of principle. By their public discourse, they imply that belief and principle are the most important things. Not surprisingly, they say little a...

Matthew 18:21 - 22 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive someone who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." "How often should I forgive someone?" I've always thought of Peter's question as referring to the same person who continues to offend or injure me in different ways at different times . . . multiple offenses, so to speak. Today I'm reading it differently. How often should I forgive the same person for the same offense? Jesus answered in effect, that there is no limit to forgiveness, no outer edge to it. Forgiveness, even for the same injury, must be continual, persistent, never-ending. I used to think that when I forgave someone, it was a one-time-forever kind of thing. That is, once I forgave, I forgave forever. Once I did it, I did it. That settled it. I said the words, "I forgive you," and then moved on, as if the matter we...

Luke 4:24 - 30 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “prophets are not accepted in their hometowns. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Jesus gave two examples from Israel's history of God extending mercy, generosity, and healing to foreigners -- the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian. Those who heard him in the synagogue were furious that he included ...

John 2:17 "Zeal for your house will consume me." Those who observed Jesus' actions in the Temple -- what we call the "cleansing of the Temple" -- used this verse from Psalm 69:9 to describe his motivation for upsetting the Temple (John 2:13 - 25, which is the entire lesson for today). They interpreted his actions as "zeal." "Zeal" and "consume" are the old words, used in the King James Version, and followed by most of the older translations. The more contemporary Bible translations use "love," "strong love," or "passion" instead of zeal, and they use the image of that love burning or being on fire instead of "consume". "My love for your house burns in me like a fire" (CEV). The cultural way to think about zeal and passion is that everyone needs a little bit, that if you're not at least a little passionate about something you're not really living. But we have such a b...

Luke 15:21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’" The full text for today is the larger parable of the lost and found son who is received back home by the father (Luke 15:1 - 3; 11 - 32). I'm going to concentrate on the son's short speech to the father after returning home. The son makes his speech to the father assuming that his acceptance back in the father's house is all about how worthy he is. He understands -- as do we -- that he is "unworthy" of the father's house by virtue of the quality of his life to this point. "Worthiness" is ingrained in us, as well. We fill churches and prayer-language with the language of worthiness and deserving, with conditional propositions of the "if . . . then . . ." variety. We have made the religious or spiritual quest about somehow attaining a worthiness or a state of deserving in order to receive God...

Matthew 22:33 - 41 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who ...

Luke 16:19 - 21 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores." These are the set-up lines of a story Jesus told in Luke 16:19 - 31. This week we've explored some great themes related to the spiritual life: mercy, humility, prayer. Today the passage points us toward compassion. The rich man in Jesus' story had a beggar named Lazarus at his gate every day. As the story goes on, he didn't even recognize Lazarus during life. Only when both entered the afterlife did the rich man recognize Lazarus, and then only because he wanted to maintain a master-servant relationship with the beggar. I hear an invitation in the passage to bring to mind the people who are at my "gate." I pass by scores of them every day. Some I notice, some I ignore, and some I b...

Matthew 20:20 - 22 Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. Very often, the beginning place of prayer is hearing Jesus ask, "What do you want?" To that question we are invited to respond honestly, out of the way life really is for us -- as opposed to responding according to some religious script of what we think we should say or ask for. Obviously, our honest response opens the door to some rather self-interested, even juvenile requests. But the honest, self-centered response is much to be preferred over the insincere, pious-sounding response. Jesus is more concerned with our honesty than with how pious our request sounds. [This is the spirit of the psalms, which very often come across as s...

Matthew 23:12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. To be humble means to know the truth about yourself . . . you are not your success (or as my father used to say to me, "Don't believe all your press clippings!") and neither are you your failures. You are both. You are strengths and giftedness, as well as weakness, brokenness and limitation. Like mercy (yesterday's scripture), humility does not come to the one who seeks humility. Trying to be humble does not get you there. If that's the track you take, it ends up being just one more way you are controlling the perception others have of you. Humility, as does mercy, comes by indirection. Acknowledge your weaknesses. Don't do violence to your own brokenness. Discover your limitations. Learn to be at home with who you are, not who you ought to be or who you wish you were. At the same time, honestly hold your gifts. Don't belittle your str...

Luke 6:36 "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." The modern translations find "mercy" to be too difficult for contemporary ears. Some of the recent translations use "pity" or "compassion" for mercy. They are fine words, but none communicates quite like "mercy" does. [Could it be that "mercy" is so difficult to translate because it is so foreign to our day-to-day experience? . . . Just thinking out loud here . . .] Mercy is a state of being. One does not become a person of mercy by aiming at it head-on. It is elusive that way. I don't know of 4 easy steps to mercy. With mercy, I believe, you begin by softening the soil of your being, by plowing up some ground in your heart so that the seed of God can find fertile loam. This God-seed is scattered into the world all the time, but too often it finds in us so much hardpan, weed, and rocky soil that it cannot adequately come to fruit. When we begin to recei...

Mark 9:2 - 6 Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed, and his clothes became dazzling white, far whiter than any earthly bleach could ever make them. Then Elijah and Moses appeared and began talking with Jesus. Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials[a]—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified. Peter wanted to build a memorial to commemorate the place and experience of Jesus' transfiguration. The human tendency is to freeze-frame significant experiences, take a picture of them or build a monument to them, and then try to replicate the experience in other times and settings . . . or constantly pull the picture out of our pocket to remind ourselves of what once was . . . or continually revisit the monument for re-li...

Matthew 5:43 - 44 "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." "You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . ." "You have heard it said" . . . in Jesus use of the phrase, he referred to the Hebrew scriptures and the Law of Moses. In our contemporary life, this is conventional wisdom, the structures and frameworks under which people live without question. These are cultural assumptions, even the traditional teachings of the Church. ** Competition is good. ** You have to have resolve and stand by your principles, no matter what. ** You get what you deserve. ** Success is important. ** Having a lot is better than having little. ** There have to be winners and losers. ** You make your own way in life. ** If you really believe and set your mind to it, you can do anything. ** I have to see it to believe it. "But I...

Matthew 5:23 - 24 “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God." Honestly, I read these words about leaving the altar to be reconciled with another person, and the petulant little child within me screams, "BUT I DON'T WANT TO!!" If stepping toward another person reconciliation is the first step toward offering our lives to God at the "altar," the "altar" will be a pretty desolate place. So few of us have healthy patterns of dealing with anger, forgiveness and reconciliation. And few of us sense ourselves so solidly connected to God in our interior that we are willing to step away from our ego to extend generosity toward another. Yet, Jesus gave us this picture of the kingdom of God, the radical reorienting of life whereby we are not p...

Matthew 7:9 - 10 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" This Jesus-saying is offered in the wider context of prayer and the admonition to keep asking, seeking and knocking. In these two verses, Jesus made a statement about the nature of God to give good gifts to those who asked for the gifts. Let's turn the prism for just a moment. Instead of focusing on the parent who gives wisely to the child, let's think about the child who does the asking. Do children really know what to ask for? Do children really know what they need? Ungoverned, a child would ask for a diet of donuts, candy, and soft drinks, with ice cream for dessert. There's no shame in being a child, in asking for things that are very primitive. For children to act like children is appropriate. Many persons, however, never grow up. Spiritually speaking -- and emotionally, as well -- many, many persons are still asking for d...