A Daily Lent

Thursday after Ash Wednesday -- February 23, 2012

2012-02-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

Luke 9:24a

If you want to save your life, you will destroy it.

"Life" in this passage is "soul," and the human soul is made for expansiveness . . . made to soar . . . made to express itself in creativity. The soul resists being locked up or squeezed.

To confine the human soul is to sap the life out of it; therefore, the self-protective person, living tightly and closed in on himself/herself, will not be a person who lives with soul.

Notice two things today. First, if you spend time in a small room, an office, or a cubicle, notice how it feels to be in a confined space. Then find a way to spend some time in an open space, perhaps by taking a walk outside, going to a park, or just sitting under a tree.

Spend some time reflecting on the two experiences. How did they feel in relationship to one another? In which setting did you feel yourself more creative? Did you sense yourself to be more alive in one than the other? Let God teach you through these experiences.

Ash Wednesday -- February 22, 2012

2012-02-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

Matthew 6:6 - 8a

When you pray, go into a room alone and close the door. Pray to your Father in private. He knows what is done in private, and he will reward you.

When you pray, don't talk on and on as people do who don't know God. They think God likes to hear long prayers. Don't be like them.

Lent begins with Jesus' guidance on prayer (in Matthew 6, Jesus also includes "giving alms" and "fasting").

Since the foundation of prayer is relationship, there is no good template for how to do it. Plans and outlines for what to say and how to do it can come across as hollow. In a sense, we all find our own way into the unique relationship we have with God.

How is one to stay alive and loving in a significant relationship? Does intimacy happen in public? Do long sentences and flowery words grow a relationship?

The most significant prayer is not public discourse. Prayer is inhaling a few minutes of stillness. It is a whispered plea. It is the quiet weeping of brokenness. It is the private broken heart that holds the pain of a loved one in God's tender gaze.

Spend time today in a quiet place. Intend to pray there. Don't try to force any words. Sit in a favorite chair or take a quiet walk. Don't force any words. Don't script a speech. You don't have to manufacture a feeling. Simply be aware that God is present -- God is present there because God is present everywhere! -- with you.

If words arise, fine. If not, just be with God. Spend 10 - 15 minutes that way. Your intention to be present to God, and your attentiveness to God for those few minutes may be the greatest prayer you can pray.

Tomorrow Is Ash Wednesday; Lent Is Coming!!

2012-02-21T17:45:00.000-08:00

The season of Lent is the 40 day journey that leads to Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter. It invites us to an intentional journey with Jesus, who early in his ministry spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting, praying and communing with God before his public ministry. During his time in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by Satan, the Adversary, and his identity as the Son of God was confirmed within him.

During Lent we walk with Jesus through this wilderness. We travel lighter. We may choose to fast regularly, or to adopt different prayer practices for the duration of these days. Those who step into Lent generally will begin with some intention, some spiritual practice that will help tend them through the season.

Lent begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. In Ash Wednesday services around the world, persons will be marked on their foreheads with a cross of ashes as a symbol of our humanity and our intention for the Lenten season.

On this blog for the next 40+ days I will provide the daily scripture reading for that day in Lent. To the scripture passage I will add a very brief meditation thought that might be used in your prayer, meditation or reflection time. Those postings will begin tomorrow.

You might also be interested in another daily Lenten resource compiled by The Center for Christian Spirituality and Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston. This online resource will provide you with a poem-a-day throughout Lent, along with a suggestion for prayer and reflection. A different poem will be posted each day of Lent and Holy Week.

You can find this online poetry resource, called, "A Lenten Mosaic," at this web address:

www.chapelwood.org/lent

A Holy and Blessed Lent to You,
Jerry

Resurrection Sunday -- April 24, 2011

2011-04-24T04:53:00.000-07:00

John 20:1 – 9

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

I cannot sleep. I get out of bed early. I go to my room. I sit in my chair. I light the candles.

No trumpets. No loud “hosannas” from the crowds. No angelic “alleluias”. Just a silence, a silent proclaiming of newness . . . a Cosmic silence that for a moment has quieted the din of the world at unease.

To keep vigil is to wait and watch, to pray in the darkness, perhaps to pray for the light while in the darkness.

So it is this morning.

Every life is wired for resurrection. It is part of our DNA, part of how we are put together as humans. It may be yet another aspect of the God-seed within us, that as God is fully completely life, so too we are wired for life, for resurrection.

For all of our talk about “life,” about newness and transformation, butterflies and fluffy bunnies, it may be this life that we resist most of all. At least when it first breaks upon us, when the stone is first rolled aside, it doesn’t feel like life at all. It feels threatening, overwhelming, too much to handle.

That’s why I stand at the door of the tomb with the unnamed disciple. The door becomes a threshold, the liminal space into which I am invited where everything is in question and everything is up for grabs. Inside is an all-things-are-possible world, and I’m not sure I can handle that kind of world. It may be too large for me, to expansive for me. It may be a place where I am not “King”. To step into that threshold means the shaking of life to the foundations.

It may be easier to deal with a dead Jesus whose noble ideas live on than a living Jesus who reorients life down to its very structure. To go into the tomb, to find that he is not there, would invite me to let go of the way I see life, the way I relate to God, others and the world, the way I see myself.

So I stand at the door. I’m not so sure I want to go in.

This much I know from my own experience: Singing Easter songs and reading “alleluias” and hearing inspirational Easter sermons don’t mean a thing – their power and influence will be gone by the time you reach for the second slice of ham over lunch today – if you are not able to identify in your real life this pattern of death, then waiting, then new life . . . if you cannot see the way that, within your actual experience, attitudes and relationships and dreams and your own spirit has died . . . and then you’ve grieved, waiting and watching for what would come next when it felt like absolutely nothing would come next . . . and then the slow emergence of something new, some new life, a dream, a relationship, a calling, a vocation, a complete reordering of your world, a newness so large and complete that you wonder how you existed before without it.

Somewhere, at some time in your life you have gone through this pattern, probably many, many times. Indeed, everyone reading these words is at some place in that movement right now.

I stand with you at the threshold of the tomb, my friend.

I, like you, am wondering if I have the courage to enter in.

Holy Saturday -- April 23, 2011

2011-04-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

Luke 23:50 – 56

Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.

The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

For a long, long time I took a very “literal” approach to Lent and Holy Week. Thus, for years the season tended to be pretty flat for me.

Over the last decade or so I’ve been especially drawn to the more sensory expressions of the season, reflected in the symbols of Lent and Holy Week. The sounds and sights appeal to me, and the meanings that lie beneath the obvious draw my heart.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are full of such symbols. On Good Friday, for example, the lights are dimmed during the Tenebrae and the altar paraments gradually removed. The symbolism is striking to me.

The Holy Saturday symbolism is more subtle, yet nonetheless stark. The day rests on the Jewish Sabbath.

In Jewish tradition, the Sabbath means complete rest. Nothing happens. Activity stops. Ordinary work ceases.

That cessation on this Holy Saturday is important because those who loved Jesus and those who crucified Jesus all stopped for the Sabbath. So Luke comments in verse 56, “They rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.”

But there is another “resting” here. Jesus is resting – that’s what we call death sometimes – and out of sight. This is not empty time, but pregnant time. The tomb is becoming a womb, and something is going to come forth in birth. But before that birthing happens, we wait and watch.

In the Christian tradition there are no liturgical services on Holy Saturday. Out of respect for the Christ who was crucified, we stop. It is a day of rest. The drama of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the excruciating events of Good Friday are over. The movement of Holy Week is exhausting.

Holy Saturday is a day of rest, not only because it’s the Jewish Sabbath, but because the Church is waiting and watching, keeping vigils before this stone-covered womb. I think of it as a kind of “bridge-day,” that is, the day that bridges Good Friday (crucifixion) to Easter (Resurrection).

You will note, no doubt, that waiting and watching, resting and vigils are not the ways of the culture that surrounds many of us. The day is commemorated in many circles as one of the biggest retail days of the year, the day to buy clothing and goodies for Easter baskets. Easter sales abound in the stores. For many folks it is a day of scurrying around, busy activity and final plans before large Easter Sunday gatherings.

I suppose I have done my share of the scurrying, but over the last 15 years or so I’ve felt more drawn to be still, to reconnect with the center, to rest and reflect. In following the rhythm of Lent and Holy Week, someone beloved has just died, and it seems almost insulting for me to indulge in something flippant during the hours Jesus is in the tomb.

For me Holy Saturday provides space for reflection. I may reflect over the Lenten season and ask: “How did that go?” or “What were my awarenesses during Lent?”

I may bring into my prayer the willingness (or unwillingness) I had to following Jesus all the way to the cross. “How fully did I join You as You walked toward the cross?”

Or I may pay special attention to invitations I sensed from God through Lent and Holy Week. “What stirrings did I notice within me as I journeyed with You?” “In what ways are You inviting me into the next season of my life?”

This much I know: You can observe all the Lenten disciplines you want and you can attend all the Holy Week services offered, but if you don’t connect these events in Jesus’ life to your own real life, it’s all just a bland exercise. “Observing and attending” may be good and helpful and it may all be inspirational. At some point, though, we are invited to consider these rhythms in our own lived-experience.

Because we all have . . .

. . . our own Maundy Thursdays (meals with family and friends that are fraught with both tension and betrayal, as well as with mercy and acts of love);

. . . our own Good Fridays (the death of someone or something we didn’t think we could live without);

. . . our own Holy Saturdays (a period of waiting and watching for whatever is next, a period of trying to be faithful in the mystery and darkness of what has just happened, a period of “keeping vigils” in light of that which we don’t fully understand).

A restful, watchful Holy Saturday to you.

Good Friday -- April 22, 2011

2011-04-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

John 19:17 – 30

Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

“Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”

This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,

“They divided my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.”

So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”

A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

There is something inside us that is ready for a part of us to die. Really. It is ready for a death. You could name this “something” the soul, that part of us that wants us to live the life we were created to live. The soul is that within you that is most alive, most intimately connected to God, most ready to live with creativity, freedom and generosity.

I believe our soul intuits that death is necessary for new life, that endings lead to new beginnings, that crosses come before empty tombs. So the soul waits patiently until we are ready to step into that life for which we were created. The soul is waiting for the death of that which holds us back from life.

But there is something else within us which fights death. The ego hates to die and resists dying with all of its energy.

Another image for the ego is the self. The self is not all villain here. It is so necessary for our day-to-day functioning in the world . . . it gets us up in the morning and moves us from this task to that task and helps us navigate our way from home to the grocery store. We could not exist in the world without it.

But the ego was never intended to be king or queen of your life and my life. In truth, though, my self and your self absolutely love to be the center of the universe. We even have all sorts of self-language that describes our penchant for ordering life around ourselves: Self-centered, self-absorbed, self-referenced, self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-assured . . . well, you get the point.

This is the part of us that can’t stand death. It will protect itself at all costs. It wants to “gain the whole world”, even if it means losing our very soul.

When Jesus said that we are to take up our cross daily, this is the part of us that has to die, that self-referenced and egocentric part of our inner world that is most concerned for its own survival and well-being. The cruel truth is that we will even demean or kill (literally or figuratively) someone else who we feel diminishes our own ego-centeredness. This is the human condition – human “sin”, if you will – that we prefer to put to death someone else who threatens our perceived well-being, rather than undergoing the death of our own self-centeredness.

Those who put Jesus to death felt it expedient to kill him, rather than deal with the consequences of who he was and the life he offered.

Yes, he died for us . . . in our place . . . a substitute . . . but his death is more than a doctrine whose reality I am invited to espouse so I can get spiritual goodies.

In his death he also carried our illusions and false realities and self-deceptions to the cross. He is took everything phony and illusory that we have relied upon and let it die along with him.

In order to truly live, something must die. Jesus did that. You and I are invited to the same dying ourselves.

Maundy Thursday -- April 21, 2011

2011-04-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

John 13:1 – 15

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.

I hear Jesus’ question to his disciples in verse 12, after he washed their feet: “Do you understand what I have done for you?”

I consider how those words stir around inside me. “What is it I don’t understand?” I find that there are moments when I “get it” pretty quickly. My capacity for understanding can be immediate . . . but only on rare occasions.

More often, though, it takes awhile. I can be overwhelmed in my self-sight, unable to see beyond my narrow existence. When I feel slighted, when I’m overcome with anger, when I feel resentful of someone else’s situation, it may take awhile before I snap to it and realize that the real issue is within me and not in the outside world.

And that includes those things that originate in God. Do I understand the workings of God in my life? Am I so sensitive to God that I never miss the promptings of the Spirit in my life? No way. I spend my life catching up with what God is doing in my life and in the world.

In fact, I waver on whether or not I should understand what Jesus is doing. There is a part of me that knows I will always play catch-up in understanding the action of God in my life. Whether Jesus is washing my feet or the Spirit is shifting circumstances in my relational world, I will always miss a significant amount of the God-work within me.

Beyond that, though, I have to acknowledge my human limitations. I’ve had enough of trying to play the role of God, trying to be perfect in order to supplant God, working hard to make myself presentable to God and to others.

God invites me into an open and free world, a world (or “kingdom”) much more expansive than anything I could possibly imagine. I can never live into the totality of that world. Things will happen continually in various parts of that world that I will not understand. I’ll simply miss them in my humanity. Somehow, as I take on the eyes of Jesus, over time I may understand more.

Never, though, will I catch all of it.

Wednesday of Holy Week -- April 20, 2011

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Matthew 26:14 – 25

Then one of the Twelve — the one called Judas Iscariot — went to the chief priests and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.

On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?”

He replied, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’” So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover.

When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.”

They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?”

Jesus replied, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?”

Jesus answered, “You have said so.”

We walk deeper into Holy Week with each day, moving with Jesus toward the cross of Good Friday.

We join Jesus on this walk through betrayals, trials and suffering. It is part of the discipline we deliberately take on for these days.

We shouldn’t miss, though, that Holy Week also represents Jesus joining us. As difficult as it may be to join Jesus in suffering and death, you may find it to be a greater challenge to accept that Jesus joins you on your journey.

It sounds like polite theology to talk about how Jesus joins us in our suffering. I, and perhaps you, find it difficult to consider the vulnerability of Jesus, though. We tend to be more comfortable with his divinity than with his humanity.

In this passage, though, Jesus was vulnerable. He was vulnerable to a friend’s betrayal and he was vulnerable to the same suffering that afflicts you and me.

He was human. We want Jesus to know more than he knows and do more than he does, to display some super-human powers. We default to, “But he’s God!” so easily. But his humanity was on full display through these days of Holy Week.

Think about the difficulties you have faced in your life, the terrible pain you’ve suffered, the incredibly hard choices you’ve had to make, the wrench of separated relationship, the sting of being betrayed by a trusted friend . . . anything that has caused you to walk under dark shadows for any length of time. None of that was foreign to Jesus.

Jesus stepped fully into the human condition. He did not step in tentatively, hiding behind a Superman cape or a God-façade. He entered fully into what it meant to be human. He did not skirt humanity.

If you’ve felt it or experienced it, Jesus joins you in that feeling or experience.

Tuesday of Holy Week -- April 19, 2011

2011-04-19T01:54:00.000-07:00

John 13:21 – 38

After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

“My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”

Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

The longer I live, the more I realize that each of us lives a large part of our lives in the “night.” I look back on the days when I thought I knew a whole lot and realize how little I actually knew. I could even say that I didn’t know much of anything until I admitted that I didn’t know much of anything!

So much of my life has been spent stumbling in the darkness, wandering and bumbling. Often I thought I could see, and then only in hindsight realized that I was walking in darkness. At other times, I knew the darkness around me was deep, so I had to rely on a kind of intuitive “night vision” and the guidance of those with better sight than I had to see me through the difficulty.

Jesus had his own night, here the descriptive statement for the setting just after Judas left to betray him: “And it was night” (v. 30). Of course, the “night” was a statement about the time of day; but even more, in the symbolic lexicon of John’s Gospel, “night” was also a statement about the spiritual atmosphere. It was nighttime of the spirit. The betrayal was conceived when spiritual darkness cloaked the scene.

From my human vantage point, I find it amazing that Jesus walked through this “nighttime” without a hint of bitterness or resentment, without belittling Judas or “making him pay” for what is to come.

I can tell you it wouldn’t happen that way with me. I can ramp up the anger or the passive-aggressiveness or the resentment. Any or all of them might bubble up from my insides. It would be an ugly scene.

Jesus walked through the scene without malice or any apparent anger. Throughout the scene, Jesus seemed to speak out of a center that is foreign to me.

Jesus did not play the victim. He did not look for persons and situations in the outer world to blame. He did not allow his outer circumstances to determine his responses.

This is the fruit of an inner life that is connected deeply to God, an inner life that is borne of a quiet center and works its way out into action.

So this is how Jesus embodies God’s life in the world.

Monday of Holy Week -- April 18, 2011

2011-04-18T01:17:00.000-07:00

John 12:1 – 11

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

“Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.

Jesus affirmed Mary’s extravagant act of anointing him for his death. She offered a gift of totality, a complete gift of self that would mirror Jesus’ complete gift of self on the cross. By breaking the jar and pouring the expensive, fragrant oil over Jesus she gave a gift that could not be recaptured or taken back. Once spent, the gift was given forever.

And so it was, too, with Jesus’ gift of himself.

Judas’ objection to this offering sounds a little hollow, at least in John’s reporting of it. Remember, John was writing much later – probably the latest of the four Gospel writers – and had the benefit of hindsight. He was able to filter these events through his interpretive lens, as Judas’ character emerged in the events of the final days of Jesus’ life.

John’s editorial comments about Judas – that he didn’t care about the poor and that he was a thief who regularly stole from the disciples’ money bag – suggest that John felt Judas’ objection was a ploy, a one time put-up-job.

When Jesus responded to Judas, he leaned on a passage in the Old Testament. The quote sounds like Jesus is denigrating concern for the poor – Judas’ stated concern – and elevating devotional piety instead. In fact, this passage has been used to justify that kind of devotion for centuries, while Christians neglected the poor and those in need. The rationale typically has been that pious practice is better than social action because Jesus said so.

I think that’s a misreading of Jesus’ words. Maybe it would help to see the Old Testament passage from which his words come.

There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward those of your people who are poor and needy in your land. (Deut. 15:11)

Strangely, Jesus (or John!) only quoted the first sentence of the verse, the part that affirmed there would always be poor people in the land.

The rest of the verse was God’s command that the people of God open their hands toward those who are poor and in need.

In other words, concern for and openhandedness toward the poor was to be an ongoing life-stance, not a one-time opportunity for posturing.

And that, I believe, was Jesus’ problem with Judas’ stance. Even given his shady character, had concern for the poor been a regular part of his life’s framework, it would not have been an issue. But he took up the issue and the cause this one time as a way of digging at Jesus.

To take up a cause one time for the sake of show does not feather one’s spiritual cap. One-and-done blitzes into social causes do not evidence life-change or heart-transformation.

Palm Sunday -- April 17, 2011

2011-04-17T05:19:00.000-07:00

Matthew 21:1 – 11

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

“Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

The Gospels give account of Jesus entering Jerusalem for the last week of his life. All four record the event with language that includes strange allusions and veiled references. In Matthew’s version, there are allusions to an obscure passage in Zechariah (9:9) and to Psalm 118:25 – 26.

Matthew intended to show that Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew Scriptures, that he was the one anticipated who would come to bring freedom to the people.

Only this year have I noticed another piece of Matthew’s record that seems strange to me. When the disciples fetched the animal on which Jesus would ride into Jerusalem, they were given instructions to prepare two beasts of burden, one a mature donkey and the other a colt. Somehow all these years I’ve missed that detail.

In fact, after both animals had been secured, the disciples prepared both of them to be ridden into town. Matthew reported that after they prepared both animals, Jesus “sat on them.”

[Note: Some of the translations, wanting to help us with the fact that physically you can’t ride two animals at once (without trick-riding), clean up the translation, leaving less ambiguity. That’s what the translation above seems to do. It says simply that “they placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.” Others, however, leave the ambiguity of Jesus riding two animals at once, saying, “Jesus sat on them,” using the plural “them” to indicate both animals.]

I’m grateful to my friend Peter Johns for an insight into the passage as a spiritual story. Peter took the image of “colt” to represent that which is wild and untamed, the undomesticated part of himself. “What,” he wondered, “would it mean to me if Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the untamed, wilder parts of my personality?”

That’s certainly not how we typically think of religious faith. We tend to think of faith as that which is tame, certain and nailed down. I can imagine that a colt, though, would be all over the place, bucking and lurching down the road.

I think Peter is probably onto something.

I took Peter’s insight into the untamed colt and thought about the donkey, the mature animal (probably the mother of the colt), who would be a steady pack animal, not speedy, but sure and reliable.

I wonder if Jesus also rides into Jerusalem on my steadiness, on my ordered life, on my reliability.

We generally want to put these two parts of ourselves at the extremes – our untamed creativity and our steady reliability – but what if Jesus brings them to one, and acknowledges that both live within us? What if both are the carriers of God’s grace?

To be sure, most of us spend our lives living out the script of one of these animals or the other, either full of imagination and creativity or well-ordered and full of structure. In reality, both live in each of us. We simply tend to cultivate one to the detriment of the other.

I’m wondering today if we can let Jesus ride on both, and if both can become carriers of God’s grace. It’s not “either-or,” but rather “both-and.”

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 16, 2011

2011-04-16T01:55:00.000-07:00

John 11:45 – 56

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 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. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the festival at all?”

How do you bring people together? How do you make separated people one? Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest in Jesus’ day, thought that putting Jesus to death would unify the people: The death of one man would bring all the people to unity.

In John’s editorial statement a line later, he asserted that Caiaphas believed that killing Jesus would bring the scattered nation together, that it would “bring the people together and make them one” (v. 52).

It’s a gruesome way to bring about unity, but it does seem to be the human way. I remember a high school sociology teacher talking about “herd mentality,” that is, the tendency of people to do in a group what they will not do on their own. It’s pretty easy to gather a group of people together if you appeal to their hatreds and common dislikes. Once you’ve rallied them around hatred and fear, it’s not so difficult to take even the most heinous action.

Governments are good at this.

Politicians are skilled at demonizing other politicians and developing a fear-based following.

Religious groups have a long history of gaining a following by aligning themselves against certain groups of people, ideological causes or social issues.

There are many folks who get much more energy from what they oppose rather than what they support.

In reality, it’s a pseudo-unity. Eliminating the presenting problem never gets rid of the hatred and fear beneath the problem. It simply removes the person or thing that triggers the hatred or fear. It’s a huge illusion to think that the way to deal with the outer problem is to eliminate it from sight.

It’s something like feeling miserable in Houston and thinking that if I just moved to Denver everything would be fine.

Eliminating Jesus did not make life easier for Caiaphas and the religious leaders. It simply took out of the picture the one who triggered their inner angst.

It’s always easier, though, to eliminate the outer problem rather than deal with the inner angst.

If you are a politician (Caiaphas) or a person interested in eliminating the outer problem rather than dealing with the inner realities, it is expedient that one man die for the many.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 15, 2011

2011-04-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

John 10:31 – 42

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.” Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed and many people came to him. They said, “Though John never performed a sign, all that John said about this man was true.” And in that place many believed in Jesus.

Through Jesus, God lived in the world.

Jesus was not the only one, though, invited to live God’s life in the world. The ongoing invitation is extended to all of us, that we might embody God in our world. Within each of us, as within Jesus, there is a God-seed, which is the shape of God’s life that touches us and animates us at soul-level.

The religious leaders saw this essence in Jesus, but it did not bring them to a sense of their own souls. They didn’t trust that the God-seed could live in them or in anyone else.

They said to Jesus, “You are a mere human, and yet you are claiming to live God’s life.”

Jesus responded by quoting Scripture to these leaders.

Religious literalists, who generally love to quote Scripture, tend to hate it when someone else quotes Scripture back to them, especially when the Scripture quoted back to them refutes something within their position. Then things tend to get squirmy and unsettling.

Of course, the matter is hardly ever the Scripture itself, but rather which Scripture you decide to hear and which you choose to ignore.

Then beyond that, the matter is interpretation. That is, how do you interpret what you hear? Do you keep it at arms length, trying to massage it for information or understanding, or even as a prop for your own theological or philosophical life-system? Or do you listen to it with your heart and find a piece of your own soul-life within it?

Jesus quoted Psalm 82:6 to these religious people:

“I said, ‘You are gods’;
you are all sons of the Most High.”

So when they accused Jesus of claiming to be God, he didn’t directly answer their charge. Instead, he looked at them and said plainly:

In your Scripture it says, “I have said, ‘You are gods’.”

He didn’t deny their claim that he was God. In fact, he seemed to embrace it and then to enlarge it, as if to say, “Yes, and not only me, but you also have God’s life hidden within you.”

“You are gods.” The Scripture says it.

These people in John 10 aren’t the only ones to squirm with this kind of information. I find that contemporary religious folks regularly get uncomfortable when talk turns to the fullness of the God-life within us.

The early Church, though, had little problem with it. They saw this embodiment of God’s life incarnated not only in Christ but in the common believer as the fruit of Divine Union to which we are invited. They had a name for this holy movement of transformation, calling it “divinization,” referring to the process of sanctification by which the image of God is embodied within the human person.

If union with God is the goal of Christian spirituality – and it is, in fact, the goal of most all great spiritualities – then we need to be able to talk about it and acknowledge it. Yes, we are sinners. That fact is well-documented. But we were not created to spend a lifetime slumming around in our sin. The great Wesleyan phrase for divinization or sanctification is “moving on to perfection.”

It may be worth spending some time in meditation today to consider not only Jesus’ union with God, but also your own.

Jesus said in verse 38, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Could I, too, say, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father”?

I hope so, because it’s true.

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 14, 2011

2011-04-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

John 8:51 – 59

“Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

At this they exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

In this passage, a common question came to Jesus yet again. “Who do you think you are?” It was another way of asking the identity question.

“Who are you?”

“What is on your insides?”

Jesus responded in a strange way by talking about God’s glory. There are a couple of biblical images for glory that are significant. “Glory” in the Hebrew Scriptures suggested brightness and an overwhelming light. We commonly think of glory in terms of brilliance (shekinah).

Another, more common Hebrew word (chabod) suggested heaviness or weightiness.

So given Jesus’ response to this question of identity, consider what he was saying. The glory evident in his life came from God.

The light in his life was not self-generated. He carried and reflected God’s brilliance.

The weightiness of his being did not come from his self-importance, but arose from his center where he was most unalterably joined to the Father.

This is also the knowing that Jesus had. It is a knowing to which we are invited, but which we often miss. Jesus knew his Source, the One who gave to him brilliance and weightiness. What the religious leaders missed was not only the Source of Jesus’ brilliance and weightiness, but also the Source of their own brilliance and weightiness.

Certainly Jesus was unique in many ways, but what was available to Jesus (God’s brilliance and weightiness) is also available to us. It is available to each of us in one-of-a-kind ways. God initiates and stirs up this knowing within us.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 13, 2011

2011-04-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

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 God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me."

The word “transformation” carries a hefty meaning. It suggests change and alteration. It points to a shift that alters outlook, frameworks and ways of being.

I think most Christians who want to live an intentional, God-connected life anticipate that transformation will be a part of that life.

I also believe that most people believe the transformation will have to do with changes in their actions. We project religious faith as something like a moral house-cleaning, where destructive habits are cleaned up and where we attain a kind of moral holiness.

Many of us came into the Church or we responded to a God-experience because we felt like our lives were out of control. We needed help and we knew that we couldn’t do it on our own. We felt drawn to a conscious connection with God and we needed the caring support of others to make the changes that would open up life for us.

Some of us even believed that the pay-off for that kind of change would be a smoother, less-tenuous existence where all the wrinkles were ironed out, where the bumps would be removed and the way made level.

I want to say that transformation is inherent in spiritual formation. That is, transformation is about how we are formed, how God is shaping us.

If transformation is a spiritual act, though, it happens first of all within us. Our being is transformed first, not our doing. Transformation does not first of all clean up what we do and how we act in the world. The initial shift is within our being, in the shape of our inner life. Then transformation moves into our actions.

I think of it as a sure maxim in the spiritual life: Being precedes doing. Then doing proceeds from our being. Life is always lived from the inside out.

In the passage today Jesus talks about truth setting free. That freedom represents transformation, a change in structure, framework, orientation and life-paradigm.

To misunderstand freedom is to relegate it only to the outer realm of life (personally, socially or nationally), and when freedom is only about the outer world of action and productivity, it is borne of the ego self and leads to destructive, self-serving behavior. This is not the truth that sets free.

On the other hand, freedom that is experienced in the heart, freedom of soul and spirit, is the kind of freedom that can inspire acts of courage and strength.

Inner freedom appropriates peace when all signs of peace have dissipated.

Inner freedom has the capacity to love even when surrounded by hate.

Inner freedom does not live caged in the small prisons of expectation and obligation, the “shoulds,” “musts,” and “oughts” of life.

When Jesus said that the truth sets free, this inner freedom is what he had in mind. This is the real transformation that he came to bring.

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 12, 2011

2011-04-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

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 always do what pleases him.” Even as he spoke, many put their faith in him.

Jesus, in John’s Gospel, was known in several ways, each of which gave some hint at his identity. The ongoing question was, “Who are you?” and Jesus self-described in a number of ways.

For instance, at various times in the Gospel of John, Jesus described himself as “the lifted up one.” From his life experience, Jesus found a parallel to the serpent Moses lifted up in the Hebrew Scriptures, which became for Moses and the Israelites a sign of healing and God’s provision.

When I think of someone or something being lifted up in contemporary thought, the phrase calls to mind being elevated and exalted. To be recognized or applauded is to be lifted up. Christians are enjoined to lift up praise to God. When we are successful or when we achieve something that seems significant, we are lifted up.

So it isn’t a stretch to understand Jesus’ lifted up language as a reference to his resurrection, the life into which he enters out of the tomb. He also may have had in mind his ascension, his rising to take his place with the Father after the resurrection (as noted early in The Acts of the Apostles).

Those images of Jesus as the lifted up one make sense to us. It is just as likely, though, that Jesus intended his lifting up to refer to being lifted up onto the cross, the physical and spiritual elevation of his life that would take place in the act of crucifixion. He literally would be lifted up on that hill. That image may not be quite as comfortable.

Christians do a lot of theologizing to take the bite out of the crucifixion, to make it all about happy endings, to drain the dreaded cross of its pain, anguish and abandonment for him. I notice that Christians are reticent to embrace the cross. The thinking seems to be that since Jesus suffered, I don’t have to.

I contend, though, that if we want to join Jesus in the life he lived and the life he has for each of us, we must find our own lifting up not only in our successes and “glories,” but also in our crosses and weaknesses.

I know, I know. It doesn’t make sense. I cannot wrap it up in a tidy package and tie a bow around it. Somehow, though, we are invited to the same lifting up that Jesus lived into, a lifting up that includes both our deepest anguish and most bitter frustration, and our triumph and victory. Both are included in the lifting up to which we are called as God-followers.

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent -- April 11, 2011

2011-04-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

John 8:1 – 11

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

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, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Jesus radically redefined sin. He understood sin as an inner stance, as an infection of heart in which the human person lived a life that was closed down to God, others and the world.

That was a major departure from the understanding that most religious people had of sin. The man or woman on the street in Jesus’ time would have understood sin in terms of a list of moral obligations, codes that would confirm or deny a person’s holiness. Sin was demonstrated in morality, in one’s actions.

Thus, you could tell whether or not one was a sinner by their outward life. In that framework, certain persons were classified as sinners simply by virtue of their occupation or role in life.

And if some were “sinners” by virtue of their role in life, others were not considered sinners for the same reason. Some roles excluded you, while others included you. The religious leadership of the Temple, including priests, scribes, and experts in the Hebrew Law were holy simply by virtue of their profession.

When Jesus called these men – who brought a known “sinner” into their midst – to throw a stone if they were not sinners, he implicitly invited each of them to acknowledge their own inner state.

Perhaps he was suggesting that these men had participated in actions that would be considered sinful. More likely, though, he was shifting their sin to an inward state. He invited them to consider their humanity, the human condition they shared in common with every other human. In essence, he may have invited them to confess that they were humans after all, not some religious professionals beyond sin. They may have thought of themselves as the elite, the uber-menschen of their time.

I find that many earnest Christians lament their sinfulness. Maybe that’s as it should be. I do know that somewhere in Christian proclamation and instruction we have communicated the idea that real Christians don’t sin, or if we do sin, at least we’re sinning less and less.

Along with this idea, we believe that progress in the spiritual life means that we’re “improving” in the area of life where we are weak. For instance, if anger is one of my problems, God should obliterate my anger. If I’m impatient, God should simply take away my impatience.

In some ways, this stance becomes a denial of my humanity and my capacity for self-deception.

My relationship with God – with myself and others, as well – changed significantly over time when I began to let go of the self-judgment and self-condemnation of my own sin. I had an exceptionally wise spiritual guide who helped me to see that my desire to be “without sin” was actually a desire to be God. I wasn’t satisfied being human. I had to be perfect. I wanted God’s job. The long trek for me was the journey of embracing my humanity, and that meant honestly acknowledging my sin.

But in that process, I also learned that God’s love, mercy and compassion are boundless. I came to an experiential understanding that there was not a sin in my arsenal bigger than God.

It may be that Jesus’ invitation to the Pharisees and teachers of the Law was basically an invitation for these men to drop their surface judgments and old notions of sin, and instead acknowledge their humanity.

And further, it may be that when Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you,” he intended not only the woman, but also these men who were her accusers.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent -- April 10, 2011

2011-04-10T01:22:00.000-07:00

John 11:1 – 45

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

“But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when people walk at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

Jesus wept.

Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.

This is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the final Sunday before Palm Sunday. On Palm Sunday we remember Jesus entering Jerusalem the last week of his life as he moves step by step toward arrest, trial, crucifixion, and then resurrection. So we are headed toward the end of Jesus’ earthly life.

The reading today is preparing us for Jesus’ movement toward Jerusalem and the cross. We are given a foretaste of death and resurrection as Jesus’ friend Lazarus died. Jesus took his death as an opportunity to speak to the human fear of death. He did not merely prepare his followers for his own death; rather, he dealt with death in a way that cast it into the light.

Stones rolled away. Tombs opened. Darkness was brought into light. Those bound were set free.

There are several directions that would be appropriate for exploration today. In fact, you might want to read the entire text and mine some of the riches found in it.

I want to call your attention to this narrative as a spiritual story in which Jesus acted at a far deeper level than the other characters in the story.

First, the passage is a “sickness story” (vv. 3, 4) and sickness stories in the Gospels frequently led to some kind of healing or wholeness.

Then Jesus made it a “sleep story.” Everybody in the story seemed to think this was a “death story” . . . everyone except Jesus (vv. 11 – 16). With one brief exception, Jesus refused to talk about Lazarus’ death, not because he was in denial over the situation of his beloved friend, but because “sleep” is a word that carries a distinct spiritual connotation.

“Sleep” is contrasted with “wakefulness,” and “sleep” is a common metaphor for spiritual stupor. To wake up, on the other hand – notice the idea of “awakening” which has significant meaning within religious language – suggests a movement out of stupor and toward life.

When a person is sick they need health and wholeness.

When a person is asleep, they need to wake up and shake their stupor.

In symbolic language, Jesus addressed not just the situation of Lazarus, but the predicament each of us finds ourselves in. We are spiritually sick, lacking spiritual health. And we are spiritually asleep, needing to wake up. These are common Gospel themes, made more explicit in this account.

If you read this text slowly and with a listening heart, you’ll hear God-invitations scattered throughout it; that is, at any number of points in the reading, God may be speaking your name and issuing to you some invitation toward wholeness, wakefulness or risen life.

I’m praying that you hear the God-invitation and step into it as best you can.

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 9, 2011

2011-04-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

John 7:40 – 53

On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

Others said, “He is the Messiah.”

Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

Then they all went home.

This passage is characterized by discourse related to the various perceptions people had about Jesus. “Who is he?” was the basic question, and people had all sorts of responses. Those various responses were based on the words he spoke, where he was born, and what place he considered his hometown.

The various responses were also filtered through the expectations of those making the responses . . . their expectations of a prophet, for example . . . or what they conceived the Messiah should look like . . . or how they read and understood the Law.

Think about these two ways of judging who Jesus was. The first is based on outer criteria, those things that were characteristic of Jesus that the person could not alter. The outer criteria, that is the words of Jesus, his birthplace, his hometown, and other factors in his life are what they are. A person encountering Jesus could not change them. Certainly, a person could be mistaken about some of this outer information – for example, believing that he was born in Galilee and not Bethlehem – but the outer facts of Jesus could not be changed.

The second way of judging the person of Jesus was based on what I would call inner criteria, that is, the inner lens in every human person through which information from the outer world is filtered. This inner lens is made up of my prejudices and biases, the way I think the world is ordered, and the frameworks or expectations I carry with me and apply to events in the outer world.

In this passage, for instance, this second way of judging who Jesus was is not rooted in the actual facts of his life and mission, but rather in the way I – or any person – expected him to be in the world, what I believe Messiah should look like, what I believe the Law says, the way I expect the world to be patterned.

As you can see, most of our inner filters are thoroughly I-centered.

Within the United States government, I’m hearing a lot of political discourse that is frankly obscene, Democrats and Republicans who act and talk as if their personal principles are more important than human life. As a group, politicians often seem to be so disconnected from the lives of the people they represent that they easily filter decisions through their personal lens and then damn the consequences.

You might hear a political figure say, “I will not budge on this principle!” even when their principle causes great harm or suffering to those impacted by it. It is a real danger when even our “leaders” live such small, I-centered lives that they cannot see the larger frameworks that would invite their constituents into well-being.

These small, I-centered filters keep us separated from other persons and from larger Truth.

A major part of spiritual transformation is the transformation of this inner filter, the slow altering of this “I-centeredness.”

By the end of the Gospel reading, those engaged in the discourse about Jesus’ identity all go home. One translation says, “Then each went to his/her own home.” That’s pretty much the way it goes. As a spiritual symbol in the text, it speaks a word to the way these persons were divided from each other, and even alienated from each other.

The picture given by the end of the reading is that each is now alone, within the walls of his or her home, quoting their own Scriptures, believing their own set of beliefs, and isolated from others and from any Truth that might invite them to more expansive living.

In many ways it paints a pathetic picture of divided life, but also an altogether accurate picture of how many of us live.

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 8, 2011

2011-04-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

John 7:1 – 2, 10, 25 – 30

After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near . . . (7:1 - 2)

. . . However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. . . . (7:10)

. . . At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”

Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”

At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. (7:25 - 30)

These verses are shaped around one of the Jewish festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles. Already in John’s accounting of salvation history, Jesus had been at odds with the religious establishment. In the Gospel of John, friction with institutional religion came early. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the conflict does not escalate until much later in the Gospel accounts.

To be honest, the text for today chops up the unit, picking and choosing parts of the story, but obviously leaving out important elements in the story. Taken from three different parts of John 7, the text seems to be after a particular point. The daily readings sometimes are like that.

There are a couple of themes that stand out to me as I think about the whole unit. One theme is the way Jesus moves through this time in his life. Continually the text says that Jesus’ time had not yet come. You have the distinct impression through this text – and in fact, throughout his entire life – that Jesus knew exactly what time it was in his life. At every moment he lived with a depth of self-awareness that enabled him to know who he was, where he was, and what time it was in his life.

This idea of the “time” in Jesus’ life runs through the chapter.

In verse 10, John reported that Jesus moved about secretly, not publicly. That theme is stated in some other ways throughout John 7 (in parts of the unit omitted from the Church’s daily lectionary reading).

In fact, Jesus’ brothers noticed his movements out of the public eye (7:3 – 4), especially how he was hesitant to attend the Feast of Tabernacles. They chided him for his secrecy:

“You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”

I am fascinated by their statement that, “No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret.” It sounds like conventional wisdom, the kind of thinking that people accept without question, then perpetuate whether it is true or not. It suggests that the most important parts of life are lived in the public domain, in the spotlight, in front of other people.

Jesus, though, lived in another rhythm. Much of his life was lived in quiet. While he regularly interacted with solitary persons as well as crowds, he also retreated for prayer in solitude and silence. I would argue that those times of silence and solitude, time he spent with his Father, were the times when he came to a deep understanding of his identity and life-mission. Those times connected him with God and gave him the gravity of being to live fully into the person God created him to be.

I think the brothers had it completely wrong. Any public figure who embodies Spirit, lives with wisdom, and leads others absolutely has to withdraw from the public from time to time. Life without that element of hiddenness becomes flat.

The inner well-springs from which we offer ourselves publicly are replenished only when we reconnect with the Source.

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 7, 2011

2011-04-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

John 5:31 – 47

“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.

“You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

“I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

“I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

“But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

We’ve spent a few days in John 5. A couple of days ago, we began the chapter (vv. 1 – 6) with Jesus and the man who had waited for healing by the pool of mercy (Bethesda). He lay there day after day for 38 years, awaiting the moment of wholeness.

For the religious leaders, the healing was not as important as the fact that it happened on the Sabbath. Mat-carrying was prohibited by Jewish law on the Sabbath.

So Jesus faced accusations as a Sabbath-breaker. This passage represented part of Jesus’ lengthy, intricate defense.

Jesus declared that the religious leaders of his time accepted glory from one another, but did not seek the glory of God (v. 44). He depicted them as persons who were vigilant about what others thought of them, but who would not be mindful of who they were with God.

It is a common malady, that very often we are watching out for the opinions and thoughts of others. In fact, many of us organize and order life around the expectations of others, whether at work, home, church, or in the neighborhood. We give our lives so totally to the perception of others that there comes a time when we no longer have our own life.

“Accepting glory” from others seems to be an especially tenuous place to be. It keeps one busy comparing oneself to others, and keeps one in competition with others.

Many of us can only know how we are doing when we measure our lives up against others. And when we make a lifetime of that kind of stance, it becomes an exhausting exercise in futility. Our identity cannot come from the evaluations of others.

Jesus knew, on the other hand, that our identity is in God. God is the source of who we are. Glory can only be given to God.

After all, we can never be enough to others. We are already enough for God.

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 6, 2011

2011-04-06T01:52:00.000-07:00

John 5:17 – 30

In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

“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. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

In the meditation on John 9 (last Sunday’s reading), I wrote about spiritual seeing and spiritual blindness. A growing, deepening spirituality impacts our perception of God, self, others and the created world.

When I talk about seeing in those four realms, I try intentionally to list God first. To me, that seems to be the first and most crucial seeing that spirituality alters. The rest of our seeing flows out of that most central act of vision.

Once again, this passage hinges on seeing. This time, Jesus saw what God was doing, then mirrored the God-action in his own experience. He only did “what he sees the Father doing.” In fact, in the first few verses of the text, Jesus expressed the essence of his mission as doing what the Father does.

God works . . . and Jesus works.

God does . . . and Jesus does.

God loves . . . and Jesus loves.

Sometimes folks say things like, “I want to invite God to be with me today,” or “I want God to help me with this decision or that decision.” It’s a good sentiment, but I think it inverts the God-intended order of life. In short, we ask God to bless what we do and where we go. We seek God’s blessing on our plans. In a sense, we determine our course, then hope and pray God comes along.

Jesus lived in a different rhythm. His first movement was to notice where God was at work already. He did not ask for God’s blessing on his life-plans. He first paused to see where God was at work, to notice what God was doing in the world.

From that noticing, Jesus then joined in what the Father was doing. He did only what God did.

I hear in the passage an invitation to a deeper seeing, to noticing what God is doing in the world. This requires discernment on our part. The work of discernment distinguishes the action of God from everything else that goes on in the world.

Before we can do what God does, before we can join God in the world, we have to be able to see what God is doing, to lay aside our human inclinations enough to see with non-attached eyes.

Personally, I find silence, solitude, and regular times for prayer and reflection to be essential for my seeing. No, I don’t always see well what God is doing in the world, and sometimes when I do see, I refuse to join in. This is a growing edge for me . . . probably for most of us.

As Jesus suggested, God doesn’t seem to have an interest in blessing our life-plans. God seems to be much more interested that we join in the healing, loving, and redeeming work that God has initiated already in the world.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 5, 2011

2011-04-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

John 5:1 – 16

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

Like many of the Jesus-stories in recent daily readings, this text offers several possibilities for exploration.

It makes no sense that this man laid beside a pool of healing water day by day. Day after day healing water bubbled up offering him wholeness and mercy, yet for 38 years he did not receive it for himself. It is the first clue that the story is about more than the healing of the body.

More than healing for his body, this man needed healing for his spirit.

When Jesus cautioned him after the healing about returning to his previous ways (“stop sinning”) or he would find himself in a more paralyzing state (“something worse may happen to you”) than before, there is a clear reference to the man’s spirit or attitude.

To be physically healed is one thing that few of us would reject. I’ve never met anyone who wanted to remain in a physical infirmity, or who wanted to return to a previous physical infirmity after an experience of physical healing. We welcome the physical healing and then move on.

But I have met plenty of people – and I find myself here very often – who beg for a healing of spirit, but then return to a previous, more comfortable and manageable state after that spiritual breakthrough. The future can seem very frightening. Its unknowableness intimidates us and makes us feel small in its presence. We’d rather have some control, some ability to manipulate our own destiny.

It is a very real regression that tempts all of us. Before you are tempted to judge this man – who in the scriptures is portrayed in a pathetic light – consider how you have returned to something that you thought behind you.

And if you have never been tempted to return to a previous state after some wondrous God-movement in your life, you may not have ever consciously received a truly whole-making God act in the first place.

Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent -- April 4, 2011

2011-04-04T01:26:00.000-07:00

John 4:43 – 54

After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that prophets have no honor in their own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and his whole household believed.

This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

At some point in spiritual development there comes a time when “faith” really does become faith.

What most of us call faith is not faith at all, but a desire for assurance and certainty. We want to nail things down. We want to know that something is true. We want all of our questions about God turned to certainties. Then we mistakenly call that “faith.”

In contemporary religious expression, those who are most sure of what they believe – and sometimes most dogmatically insistent on it – are thought to have the most faith. That is not so. They may have the most assurance or the most confidence, but they don’t have the most biblical faith.

Authentic faith traffics in what is unseen and unknown. Faith is not trust in what we know, but trust in what we don’t know.

I always think it is a good idea to be a bit leery of those who know too much, those who seem certain of the way things are, those who have all the riddles and puzzles figured out, those for whom life and devotion is no longer a mystery, those who have all the charts and diagrams that can answer every possible question.

In fact, some folks have no more questions; they only have answers. I’d distrust them.

The Gospel story tells of a man, an “outsider” – that is its own story! – who believes Jesus can heal his son, but believes that it can only happen in a certain way, that is, if Jesus is physically present to effect the healing, so that it can be witnessed as a legitimate healing. As Jesus says, this is someone who wants to “see signs and wonders,” not necessarily “believe that they can happen.”

It takes little faith to “see signs and wonders.” One does have to have open eyes, but signs and wonders don’t necessarily lead to – or spring from – biblical faith.

I said at the outset that at some point in spiritual development what we call “faith” becomes faith. At least, that’s the design.

I suppose for some persons of strong religious conviction, though, that degree of faith never comes.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent -- April 3, 2011

2011-04-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

John 9:1 – 41

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was.

Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”

But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

“How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.

He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

“Where is this man?” they asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”

Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.

Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”

The man replied, “He is a prophet.”

They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”

“We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God and tell the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

There is so much in this text, we can’t possibly exhaust it in this short space. Once again, today would be a good time to read the text slowly and notice the words or images that speak to you. Listen with your heart as you read.

For my meditation today I will choose a single focus from all the possibilities in the text.

Spirituality is about light and seeing. Quite often I say that the spiritual life invites us to new and deeper ways of seeing and attending to God, self, others and the created world. These are the four realms to which we are given and to which we must attend.

In the Gospels, the word “blindness” not only represents physical blindness (literally “not seeing”). It also suggests spiritual blindness. Once you realize this is part of the spiritual vocabulary of Jesus and the Gospel writers, you’ll notice the language of “seeing” and “not seeing” everywhere. And you will notice that themes of spiritual seeing and spiritual blindness thread throughout the Scriptures.

The story in John 9 is an exquisitely crafted story that tells how this man with no physical sight came to see. He was from the underside, thus, his voice was not trusted by those invested with religious authority. Yet by the end of the story he was the one with the authority, because he demonstrated a depth of spiritual vision the religious people didn’t possess.

[There is another theme here about where authority comes from. The religious leaders had outer authority by virtue of their position, their “ordination,” so to speak. But they had no inner authority that comes by virtue of experience and a deeply lived life. This man, however, had no authority from the world, but had the deep, deep authority of one experiencing and attending to God.]

In the same way spirituality is about seeing, the story makes clear that sin is about blindness.

A person cannot be blamed for blindness. We are all blind, and in many ways. It is the human condition to be blind. The movement into prayer and meditation is the slow journey from blindness into sight.

The sin is to say, in our blindness, that we see.

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent -- April 2, 2011

2011-04-02T01:20:00.000-07:00

Luke 18:9 – 14

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

There are several doors through which a person might step into this short parable. It is rich and textured, worth spending some time with today.

When Jesus wanted to say something about the kingdom of God, he generally spoke in parables. He told stories, throwing them alongside (literally para bole, “to throw alongside”) the reality of this God-framework for life that he called “the kingdom of God.”

The kingdom of God is not accessible by discourse or by prosaic description. Parables or stories illumine it, shed light on it, and slowly unveil it.

Because the kingdom of God is an orientation for life that is so counter to our ordinary ideas about life, parables often shocked those who heard them. They tended to turn the world upside-down, presenting a view of reality that upset the conventional notions of God, religion, social status, and how the world was ordered.

One clue to this “upside-down” nature of parables comes in Luke’s preamble to this story: “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable,” (v. 9). It is an immediate tip-off that those confident of their own goodness and those who felt themselves superior to others would be addressed. These are persons who would have considered themselves “insiders.” In some way, the parable that followed would turn over their notions of how the world is ordered . . . who is inside and who is outside.

The introductory sentence leads to questions like:

Who are those not confident of their own goodness? And what is their relationship to God? They are the apparent “outsiders” (socially and religiously), but are they really?

Who are the ones being looked down upon? There is the probability that they are looked down upon because they are considered “outsiders.” Are they really outsiders?

By the end of the short parable, all expectations have been upset. Those who thought themselves insiders may be outside. And Jesus declared the “outsiders” to be inside.

Is one lesson, then, that there is little benefit in “confidence” about one’s goodness or righteousness?

In truth, we really have very little to be “confident” about. Who among us can say who the insiders and the outsiders are? The kingdom of God may be shaped in very different ways than we have imagined.

In fact, in the kingdom of God, there may be no such thing as “insiders” and “outsiders.”

Friday of the Third Week of Lent -- April 1, 2011

2011-04-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Mark 12:28 – 34

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

“Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Back in the days when I preached three sermons a week and thus looked for any "hook" possible for a sermon topic and title, I preached a sermon on this passage and titled it, “How Far to the Kingdom of God?” I don’t remember that it was a particularly good sermon; however, I still love the title.

But I digress . . .

The teacher asked Jesus for the single greatest commandment. Jesus gave him one. Then gave him another. He wasn’t intending to rank them #1 and #2. In some way, Jesus said, these two disparate commandments were one and the same.

Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The two are tied together as one.

It’s tempting to make two things out of this. Some of us, perhaps the introverts, are drawn toward love of God, to contemplation and prayer and a deeper devotional life that goes into the prayer closet and closes the door.

Others of us, maybe the more extroverted, are drawn toward people (“neighbor”), finding energy in both giving and receiving from others.

Somehow Jesus pulls together both the inward stance (love of God) and the outward movement (love of neighbor as self). The heart that loves God is the same heart that loves neighbor as self.

Several decades ago, I read something about love that has stuck with me. I think it was in a C. S. Lewis book. It said something like this:

We begin thinking that love is love, that there is one meaning to love. Usually it is a feeling, a romantic tingle.

Then at some point, if we hang around the Church long enough, we’ll hear that there are several different kinds of love, and that the Greek language had different words for each (eros = the human love of desire; phileo = sisterly/brotherly love; agape’ = the self-giving, sacrificial love with which God loves humans).

I remember the days in college when I first heard about the Greek terms for love. Our English word “love” seemed so paltry when the richly textured love-language of the Greeks was placed next to it. I spent a great many years aspiring to the so-called “highest” form of love, agape’, and parsed my life and actions according to this breakdown.

But Lewis said there comes a time, after years of living and a long gathering of spiritual wisdom, when we come again to see that there really is only one love . . . the love with which we live with God and with others and with the created world. They all have the same source, and ultimately they are all expressions of Love. Period.

When I read this passage today, I’m reminded of that. Again.

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent -- March 31, 2011

2011-03-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

Luke 11:14 – 23

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, “By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons.” Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.

“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

Jesus came to make people whole. That which was torn apart within persons was brought to wholeness by Christ. He offered salvation as healing for the soul. He offered healing for bodies that were broken. In all, he gave himself to bring unity to bodies, minds and spirits that were broken into pieces.

Further, his desire was that people experience their oneness with God, just as he and God were one. In the classical language of spirituality, this is known as “union” or “the unitive way.” This bringing together seems to be consistent with the nature of God as revealed in Jesus.

Read today’s Gospel reading. I notice in it the language of division, separating and scattering. “Dividing” as noted in this text is characteristic of the demonic realm. In fact, the Gospel-writer subtly underscores this separating. Though the word “devil” (Greek, diabolos) is not used in the passage, that word means to split or divide, literally “to throw apart.” It seems clear that the “dividing” in today’s reading is underscored by the “splitting” or “throwing apart” of the diabolos.

I’m continually surprised at how much of our world is characterized by a splitting or a dividing. It seems that our human tendency is to separate rather than bring together. We too easily seem to gravitate toward “sides” or teams. Our very practice of labeling others makes a practice of distinguishing who they are by how they are different from us. We perpetuate division by the way we name others.

But Jesus embodied oneness. He was one within himself, a whole person, fully developed spiritually, mentally, emotionally and psychologically. He was one with God and one with people.

So those who preferred diabolos resisted him. Those who desired wholeness were attracted to him.

By the end of the reading, he is the one who gathers to himself, and the message implied in his final statement is an invitation that we join him in the gathering, in drawing together what has been scattered, bringing to oneness what has been divided.

Gathering, then, is a distinctly God-like action, and identifies us with the Gatherer.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent -- March 30, 2011

2011-03-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Matthew 5:17 – 19

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Spiritual development, of necessity, begins with laws, rules and obligations. None of us can handle the full weight of Truth from the beginning. It is too much, too heavy, too TRUE! We have to be moved along gently, piece by piece, step by step, into the really large realities of life.

Of course, we almost never see that while we’re in the midst of the movement. We tend to think, at whatever stage of the journey we find ourselves, that we are ready for the whole enchilada . . . or, that we already have the whole enchilada. It’s just another of the many ways we live in illusion and self-referenced falsity.

We don’t know everything there is to know and we haven’t experienced everything there is to experience.

I say to folks quite often, “We can’t know what we don’t know,” though I find that most people find it hard to confess that there are things they don’t yet know. But I always follow up that statement with this line: “But we can know that we don’t know.” This is the confession that I am still in progress, not yet complete. There are things I don’t know and haven’t experienced. They may or may not be in my future, but at this moment, I am not yet who I will be.

In truth, this is simply a confession of our humanity. We are human, not God. We are always in process. We begin with rules and regulations, what Jesus and Paul called “the Law” and then incrementally, organically, step-by-step move into a life of freedom that is characterized by an unbreakable connection with the One who is the Center of it all.

Don’t be too quick to dismiss “the Law and the Prophets.”

But if you’ve gone a lifetime and never moved beyond them, you still have some distance to travel.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent -- March 29, 2011

2011-03-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

Matthew 18:21 – 35

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.

“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

“The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive a brother or sister from your heart.”

The text is about forgiveness and hinges on the initial question Peter asks Jesus: “How many times am I to forgive someone who sins against me?” I sense that Peter’s question arises from his own desire to know the bare forgiveness-minimum God expects of him.

I can identify with his question. If the answer is “three times,” I wouldn’t want to be caught expending energy on forgiving “four times!” Tell me the minimum requirements. I want to follow the rules, but I’m also not itching to go too far beyond the bare minimum.

Jesus shows utter disregard for counting the number of times we forgive another person. He is more concerned that forgiveness is the fabric that knits together relationship, both the Divine-human relationship and the human-to-human relationship.

Since we are the “humans” in both sets of relationships, our need for forgiveness will be constant. We cannot boundary our need for forgiveness to any capped number. In any human relationship, forgiveness had best be infinite, because our capacity to live from a self-referenced center is infinite.

Mercy had best be boundless, because we are constantly wounding and being wounded.

Pardon needs to be endless, because there will always be someone in our life-world who offends us, just as there will be people we offend.

Besides, forgiveness is never once and for all. For the deepest hurts I’ve known, each day I forgive as best I can for that day. Tomorrow I’ll forgive those persons again as best I can. Many of the people I’m forgiving today, I’ve been bringing to prayer daily for a long time.

And I hope that they – and others – are forgiving me in the same way.

Jesus, mercy me.

Monday of the Third Week of Lent -- March 28, 2011

2011-03-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

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.

We all carry within us assumptions about the way life should be. Those assumptions first began shaping us when we were infants, then children. Our grandparents and parents had their own assumptions, and they passed them on to us.

Further, our social groups and the schools we attended had patterns of behavior that were assumed as normal and expected.

The country in which we were raised assumed certain norms, and we fell into those norms, for the most part, without question.

Jesus, in the Gospels, undercut some of the most basic assumptions the “religious” people of his time carried . . . assumptions about how life is ordered, about what is important, and about who God is.

Could I say it this way? Jesus is trying to give us a different set of assumptions. What we have carried to the present from infancy and childhood may have been fine and appropriate for a particular season of our lives, but to continue living in those same patterns keeps us from growing up spiritually. In that sense, I believe most of us have a spirituality that is stunted, that has not matured commensurate to our chronological age.

I think Jesus intended to offer us a new way of being in the world for God.

Let me use this Gospel passage as an example. Most religious people of Jesus’ time had clear-cut ideas about who was “inside” and who was “outside” God’s favor. Jesus reversed those assumptions, continually eating with outsiders, speaking God’s blessing upon sinners and outcasts, and loving those looked down upon by the most pious people of his day.

He mentioned the prophet Elijah, revered in Jewish religion, who followed God’s leading to a non-Jewish widow during a period of famine.

And he referred to Naaman, a Syrian king who suffered from leprosy and was healed by the prophet Elisha despite Naaman’s bull-headed resistance to Elisha’s directives. The healing of this outsider could be attributed only to God’s grace, because Naaman resisted the healing at every turn.

[The story of Elisha’s encounter with Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1 – 15 is the Old Testament passage for today. It would be worth your time to spend some time with it today.]

The people who heard Jesus speak these words were indignant that he used the examples of two foreigners who were recipients of God’s grace. They did nothing to earn God’s generosity, and in some ways, resisted it; nevertheless, God poured goodness and healing upon them.

These people who heard Jesus were so offended by his words, they wanted to kill him immediately.

In most all of us there is a self-serving, self-interested impulse that wants to believe that we are insiders and others are outsiders. We call it family loyalty or patriotism . . . or on another level, racism or bigotry.

There is something neat and orderly about knowing who is “in” and who is “out.” I still shake my head over the words of a lady who professed to be a Christian, saying, “If everybody else is going to be in heaven, I don’t think I want to go.” I guess it only feels right to be “in” if there are others who are “out.”

But that’s just one more assumed pattern Jesus sought to reshape.

The Third Sunday of Lent -- March 27, 2011

2011-03-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

John 4:5 – 42

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you — I am he.”

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.

They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

This story is so textured I’ll only mention one aspect of it here. It would be worthwhile to spend some time with the entire narrative today.

Samaritan religion and Jewish religion were similar, but different enough for the two peoples to spend much time at odds with each other. There was cultural and social animosity between the two races, and that animosity carried over into their respective religious expressions.

From their interaction, the Samaritan woman intuited that Jesus possessed a special wisdom, that he saw into hearts and lives as only a person deeply connected to God could do. So she said, “I can tell you’re a prophet,” (v. 19).

Perhaps she also intuited that as a “prophet” connected to God, he could make an unbiased evaluation between Jewish worship and Samaritan worship. Ordinarily, a Samaritan woman wouldn’t have gotten a fair hearing with a Jewish prophet; nevertheless, she asked him to make a choice: Jews or Samaritans? One or the other?

Jesus, however, would have nothing to do with this false dichotomy, this either/or choice presented to him. God is not the exclusive domain of either (or any!) religious tradition. There is no single group that holds the exclusive rights to God. No group can claim to have God’s voice in a box.

The answer to the woman’s question was not Jews or Samaritans, but rather those who are connected to Spirit, who live the truth and authenticity of Spirit.

In a sense, Jesus makes it clear that he stands outside the prevailing religious culture of his day. He seems very uninterested in identifying with traditions or what we might call “denominations”. He implies that God really isn’t interested in the petty competitions among religious traditions. (There is an important word here for contemporary expressions of Western Christianity.)

On the other hand, God is interested that people live connected to Spirit, that worship, prayer, service, and life flow out from this connection to Spirit.

The Spirit-connection is not localized in any single worship place or among a particular group. The Spirit-connection Jesus talks about is available to all (vv. 23 – 24).

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 26, 2011

2011-03-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

Luke 15:1 – 3, 11 – 31

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

This parable is among several Jesus-stories that subvert the notion that life is fair. In fact, fairness is taken away as a category for life. Instead, mercy is shown to be the foundation for life with God and with one another.

I’ve often heard people lament what they perceive to be a lack of fairness. I’ve heard persons cry out for things to be fair when they felt overwhelmed by life.

Sometimes, but much more rarely, I have heard someone cry out for mercy.

Jesus – and therefore, God – doesn’t seem to be nearly as concerned with fairness as with mercy, forgiveness, compassion and restoration.

We as humans tend to think we need fairness, that somehow fairness should be woven into the fabric of things. It’s part of a system we’ve imagined, but can never exist in reality.

What we need – much more fundamentally – is mercy. It often happens that the one who receives mercy and embraces it, becomes an agent of that mercy in the world. Such agents of mercy act as healing, Jesus-like presences in our world. They provide balm for the wounds of the world in quiet, sometimes unseen, but energetic ways.

Friday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 25, 2011

2011-03-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Matthew 21:33 – 46

“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 will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

Jesus told a parable that was both troublesome and difficult to understand. It was a parable of rejection and opposition, full of violence and retribution. The parable ends up in some places that are difficult to comprehend.

At the end of the parable, Matthew tells us that when the religious leaders heard Jesus’ words, they knew he was talking about them (v. 45).

Jesus and these leaders were constantly at odds. They pushed for a religious expression that was orthodox and characterized by an outward piety. They were earnest about their religion.

The way we sometimes parody them as obtuse buffoons is really a misconception. They were serious about their faith and wanted others to be serious about faith also. They may have harbored a mean spirit from time to time, but no more so than you do or I do.

I want to give them this: When they heard Jesus’ words, they knew he was talking about them. That’s a commendable stance.

I find that I’m not always able to find myself in the words of Jesus. I often find others, thinking of all the other people who need to hear the words of Jesus. But I can easily miss finding my life in Jesus’ words.

Blessed is the person who allows the words of Jesus into their innermost being, who finds themselves in the parables and healings and challenges of Jesus. When we submit ourselves to those words, both in their refreshment and their difficulty, there is the possibility of a steady transformation taking place within us.

Of course, there are other options, too. The religious leaders found themselves in Jesus’ words, and rather than stepping into the path of transformation, thought it best to silence his words.

That option, in various forms, is available to us, as well.

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 24, 2011

2011-03-24T00:39:00.000-07:00

Luke 16:19 – 31

“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.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Like many Jesus-stories, this one is multi-layered. All sorts of questions arise from within it. I will comment on one aspect of the story.

It seems important that the rich man lived within an enclosure. He was cut off from the outside world. We might imagine that the only break in the enclosure was a gate. When open, the gate would allow access, including both movements inward and outward. When closed, it not only kept those outside from getting in, but kept the rich man from going out.

Also, you can understand that the enclosure in which the rich man lived serves as a symbol for the self that lives isolated from the world. This self inside the gates is totally closed in on itself, concerned only for its own well-being and comfort, willing to deny the reality that waits just outside the door in order to keep up the illusion that what’s going on inside the enclosure is all that really matters.

Many folks miss the distinction between the inner reflection/introspection necessary to live life with wholeness and the narcissistic self-inflation that keeps the self at the center of its own false reality.

While we all live, at least to some extent, within the constricted grounds of our own self-centeredness, the presence of the gate in the story represents a real God-given grace, for it suggests the possibility of movement outward toward those in need who wait outside the gate. The grace of the gate also allows those who are outside – in the world – to enter the life-world of the one who in other ways is trapped inside herself or himself.

God doesn’t create barriers, doesn’t make life smaller, doesn’t close us in.

We are invited to acknowledge our limitations, to honestly confess the enclosures in which we live. And we are also invited out of the narrowness of our enclosures, out the gates, toward those who live outside our walls.

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 23, 2011

2011-03-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

Matthew 20:17 – 28

Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

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. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“We can,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”

When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Given a choice, we typically won’t select suffering, either for ourselves or for those we love. We go to great lengths to avoid great pain and suffering.

It’s not just our desire to avoid suffering that is notable. As this passage demonstrates, there is within us a desire for glory and importance, a drive to achieve some kind of recognition.

Contemporary Christianity has bought into the notion that if you cast your lot with God, you’ll be “successful” in all the ways the world envisions success. It’s what James and John – and their mother – believed: Life with Jesus equals opportunity and success.

In modern life, the language of triumphal Christianity surrounds us. We’re looking for a way for God to make our lives better . . . easier . . . pain-free. The basic question for most people who profess Christianity – and maybe any other religious tradition as well – is, “What’s in it for me?”

“What will it do for me?” If we asked that question of Jesus, and he responded to us as he responded to James, John and their mother, it would go something like this: “It will lead you to rejection and death (drinking the cup that I drink). You will be betrayed and abandoned. You’ll be convicted falsely. You will die alone, and even at the moment of your deepest pain, your cry for God will rattle empty through the heavens.”

The Christian spiritual life is not a formula for success. It is a path to transformation through redemptive suffering.

Like Jesus’ disciples, we may not consciously choose this path. There is a strong likelihood, though, that at some point it life, this path will choose us.

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 22, 2011

2011-03-22T01:42:00.000-07:00

Matthew 23:1 – 12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them ‘Rabbi.’

“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

A movement toward spiritual maturity is a movement toward congruence, in which the soul of a person aligns with her/his outer actions.

Jesus used the example of the religious leaders of his time, whose lives were not congruent. Jesus said, “Everything they do is done for people to see.” In other words, their words said one thing, their actions said another thing, and beneath all of that was a hidden motivation: To be seen, and thus esteemed, by others.

You can say with a high degree of certainty that when the self is the center of one’s motivation, that life is not congruent. The self skews and distorts, defends and manipulates for its own purposes.

On the one hand, none of us are immune from this self-centered, skewed living. We tend to roast the religious leaders of Jesus’ day for their hypocrisy. Somehow, we are under the illusion that they were bad people and that had we lived in Jesus’ time, we would be different. We believe that our commitment and faith is far superior to theirs.

Sorry, but not so. An honest spirituality affirms that we have much more in common with these hypocrites than we are dis-similar. We live with at least one foot in pharisaical pretense, willing to manipulate public opinion for our own benefit.

On the other hand, we are invited to a spirituality of congruence. Just as we confess our feet of clay and our identification with hypocrisy, so we can affirm that we desire to live a fully congruent life in which our inner motivation is transformed.

Very truly, we have our feet in both worlds. We confess the hypocrisy that lives within us. And we affirm that our soul longs for congruence, for expression in the outer world that matches the God-shape within us.

Monday of the Second Week of Lent -- March 21, 2011

2011-03-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

Luke 6:36 – 38

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Christian spirituality rejects the notion that you have to “look out for number one.” Self-serving egocentricity may have its place in business, social life and the political world, but it won’t serve you well in the spiritual life.

Jesus described a circular cycle which makes little sense rationally, but which makes wonderful sense spiritually.

In Jesus’ way of ordering life, the act of opening one’s hands to others – in mercy, non-judgment, non-condemnation, forgiveness, and giving – means that those same open hands can be filled by God. What one extends to others comes back.

There is a marvelous interaction, a continuous loop in the life of the Spirit. It is a kind of reciprocity that doesn’t end.

Really, it is a glorious working-out of the endless self-giving of God. It is characteristic of God to give God’s self away, to sow God-seeds in the world, on every kind of soil. And in the giving, God is never depleted.

Beatrice Bruteau maintains that this never-ending self-giving among the three persons of the Trinity is continuous and sends into the world a holy energy for love, peace and healing. When we give, resist judging, or forgive, we merely join an ordering of the universe that has been set in motion already among Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God invites us on the spiritual journey to spend our lives, to give our lives away. We are not hoarders. We are not storing up life for some future time. We spend ourselves on others and on the world, just as God is spent on the world.

Almost miraculously, we find that as we spend life, life returns to us. And so we spend again, and life returns again. We repeat the cycle over and over again. Before long, the spending and the returning are not sequential, but simultaneous. The spending and returning are wrapped up in the same acts, in the same expressions, in the same works of ministry.

It is a circular cycle, a never-ending spiritual loop.

The Second Sunday of Lent -- March 20, 2011

2011-03-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

Matthew 17:1 – 9

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

This text is rich, symbolic, and multi-layered. I’m not going to unpack all of it, but will offer three observations for reflection.

First, Jesus took Peter, James and John up a “high mountain by themselves.” A “high mountain” represents what I would call a pinnacle experience. The three followers had no idea what was in store for them. They simply followed Jesus. They were, however, following Jesus with their feet, taking the actual steps that would put them in a place to experience something significant.

[There is always a difference between following Jesus with our words or with our assent, and following Jesus with our feet. The former is relatively easy and can take place in seclusion and safety. The latter is risky and may take us some places we had not intended to go!]

We never know when the ordinary act of following Jesus will lead to a pinnacle experience.

Second, such moments of glory cannot be bottled or reproduced. They are gifts of God, glimpses behind the veil. We cannot manage them, manipulate them, or cause them to happen again. We simply receive them, live them fully, give thanks for them, and then move on.

Denise Levertov’s poem, “Only Once,” touches on the singular nature of these pinnacle experiences.

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every initiation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect now to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

Third, Peter, James and John are told they won’t be able to talk about the experience. How frustrating is that? But Jesus knows that when we begin to talk about such profound experiences, a couple of things happen. One is that we subconsciously think the experience gives us a leg up on other persons. To tell someone else what we have experienced of God is one way of saying, “I’ll bet this hasn’t happened to you!” Jesus isn’t interested in these holy encounters feeding our egos. They are not given to us for ego-gratification. They are given us for humility, to see ourselves against the light of God.

The more significant thing that happens when we talk about the experience is that we cheapen the experience. In an authentic God-encounter, there is no vocabulary sufficient to describe what we’ve seen. Words fail us. I hear from people whose life with God is expanding and growing, that they often are reduced to utter silence because they have no words to describe their experience of God. We come to silence, not because we are rude, but because we don’t have the words to adequately describe the encounter.

So Jesus said, “Don’t speak about it. Don’t try to describe it. The way that you live into it from this day onward will speak loudly enough.”

Saturday of the First Week of Lent -- March 19, 2011

2011-03-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

Matthew 5:43 – 48

“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, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Most of us would feel out of place in a world not divided into friends and enemies. It seems to be a natural separation, and woven into the fabric of so much of our emotional, social, political and corporate life. Something about the human condition wants to create enemies in the outer world.

Listen to politicians talk about political parties and philosophies other than their own. Listen to national leaders talk about other nations. Listen to corporate executives talk about other companies in their field.

We seem wired to create enemies out of those who disagree with us, believe differently than we, or do life in another way.

Actually, dividing the world into friends/neighbors and enemies represents a very low level of emotional, psychological, relational and spiritual development. The fact that very intelligent people divide the world so artificially shows how pervasive and insidious enemy-talk truly is.

[Intermission: I know that the Bible has its share of enemy-talk. The Psalms, which I love, are packed with anger and vengeance aimed at enemies. The Bible does not run from the human condition, but honestly names it. We, on the other hand, tend to think that everything mentioned in the Bible, even human flaws and frailties, are to be emulated.]

Jesus encouraged his followers to eliminate the categories that kept us separated from one another. God sends rain on the just and the unjust. In other words, God shows no partiality, no favoritism. God only sees people, sees the human heart. God does not measure out divine love depending on where a person lives, or what political philosophy one adheres to, or who is “on my side.”

In short, the word “enemy” does not exist in God’s dictionary.

When the word “enemy” begins to disappear from our lived vocabulary as well, we take a step toward becoming whole (“perfect”) as God is whole (“perfect”).

Friday of the First Week of Lent -- March 18, 2011

2011-03-18T00:38:00.000-07:00

Matthew 5:20 – 26

"For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift.

“Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

In the faith tradition in which I was raised, it was all about professing faith in Christ. So much was invested in that single moment, that one-time act of saying “yes” to Jesus, that very little emphasis was given to the ongoing process of conversion. We assumed that once you gave your life to Jesus, God would swoop in and take care of all the rest.

We mistakenly called this initial act of turning “conversion.” In reality, it was only the beginning of “conversion,” but by using that word to describe it, we implied and assumed that the beginning was also the end. Sure, we encouraged people to attend Sunday School, to learn more, to serve more. But the entire mindset assumed that the really important work had been done already. Once a person made that initial decision for God, you could almost cruise on autopilot.

Many persons came to this point of decision, as I did, with a need for purpose and meaning in life. In coming to Christ and the Church, I found a degree of moral certainty. In the early stages of faith development I found an external code of behavior that gave some meaning and structure to my life. It was clearly laid out in terms of what I could do, and more significantly, what I could not do.

Thus, this passage in the Sermon on the Mount was a huge leap for me. Jesus seemed to say that while actions were important, the motivation or attitude beneath the actions was even more important.

Further, changing outer behavior significantly and permanently was not a one-time event, nor was it a matter of gritting teeth and deciding to change as an act of will.

The inner landscape can only be changed by a work of God’s Spirit, and that change significantly alters our behavior in the world.

Those who seriously undertake a life with Christ eventually realize that the initial moment of turning to God does not undo all the patterns of thinking and acting that have hardened within us over many years. Conversion happens over time, as God softens the hardpan within us. We open ourselves to the action of ongoing conversion through prayer, meditation, reflection and contemplation.

We find, then, that our actions are converted as our inner life is converted. It is the way we live life from the inside out.

Thursday of the First Week of Lent -- March 17, 2011

2011-03-17T01:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew 7:7 – 12

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.

“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? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Prayer is asking, seeking and knocking, but it is not blank-check asking, seeking and knocking.

The selfish asking that we sometimes call “prayer” may be a form of prayer, but it may also be a way of keeping ourselves at the center of life, filling out a cosmic wish-list that keeps us from truly engaging God. As best I can tell, God has no interest in granting our wishes to be the center of the universe, the ways that we try to order the world around our own egos. To lay those wishes before God may be the beginning of prayer, but they are not the end of prayer.

Rather in prayer we give back to God what God has given us already. God has created us and shaped us so that we actually desire to live in harmony with God, others, and the created world. In other words, we were created for union, for healing, for wholeness. So when we pray for those things, both in ourselves and in our world, we are joining in what God is bringing to pass already. These are the prayers God answers.

So the analogy Jesus used went something like this: If feeding your child a stone hinders her/him from fully developing into the person they are to be – or worse, if feeding them a stone killed her/him – you wouldn’t dare serve them a stone on a platter. You’d want bread for them.

And even if they asked for a stone to eat, as a loving and generous parent, you wouldn’t put a stone on their plate. Your answer to them would be, “No,” and you’d wait until they were hungry enough to ask for bread.

Our prayer is like that. We ask for stones, we beg for stones . . . and God is silent, or God says, “No.” If we’re really convinced that stones are best for us, that we cannot live without stones, we may ask for stones for a very long time. We can bombard heaven for long years, even decades, asking for that which stunts us or may be our doom.

All the while, God patiently waits. One day we will be hungry enough to ask for bread. It’s what God has been waiting for. On that day, God does not give us stones. God gives us bread.

Our prayer is becoming, shifting, growing. On the day we begin to ask for bread rather than stones, we are entering the larger terrain of life-with-God for which we were created.

Wednesday of the First Week of Lent -- March 16, 2011

2011-03-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Luke 11:29 – 32

As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom; and now one greater than Solomon is here. The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now one greater than Jonah is here.

Why would people who claim to live life by “faith” look for signs? We seem to hunger for things that confirm our belief systems and the lives that we’ve already determined to live. We want some sign that gives us assurance for our relationship with God.

One thing is sure: You can draw a crowd through signs and charisma.

Crowds grew around Jesus, drawn by his charisma, his healing and his extraordinary challenges to the religious and government establishment. Yet the only sign Jesus would give was the “sign of Jonah.”

Far from a wondrous sign that evoked awe, the “sign of Jonah” was a sign of darkness. It suggested being imprisoned in the darkness of a whale, literally being thrown into a pit. It was not a sign of triumphalism. “Overcoming” and “victory” are not in the sign-of-Jonah-lexicon.

The way to life, wholeness and abundance is through darkness, giving up control and falling into whale’s bellies. It is not the way of upward mobility, but downward mobility.

If you track Jesus’ life, he knew well the story of Jonah and its sign of darkness. Jesus’ experience mirrored Jonah’s experience.

We should notice that this is what the spiritual life gets us into. Our destiny in this life is not egocentric triumphalism, but often darkness and confusion. The “sign of Jonah”, though, is what ultimately shapes us in life-changing transformation.

The First Tuesday of Lent -- March 15, 2011

2011-03-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

Matthew 6:7 - 15

And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

It is strange irony that when we read and pray this text on prayer, in which Jesus says, “Don’t babble on like the pagans,” we babble the prayer like pagans.

We “recite” the Lord’s Prayer mindlessly, without considering the weight of our words, without pondering the substantial prayer that rests beneath the words. It becomes, as the word suggests, a recitation.

I’ve heard people defend this practice. They claim that Jesus taught us to pray this way, with these very words; therefore, the prayer’s importance lies in simply getting the words out.

I don’t believe that.

Praying the Lord’s Prayer mindlessly, unconsciously, is the very thing Jesus resists. Just because the words happen to be those he taught us does not mean we can mumble through them without some degree of attentiveness and mindfulness. It is possible to babble like the pagans, even when praying the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, it happens quite frequently!

You might try praying the prayer today one line at a time. Try this: Pray a line. Then stop, and pray that same line another way. Put the words of that line into your own words. Paraphrase it in three or four different ways. Allow God’s Spirit to help you tease out the meaning in the line. Be creative, bold, adventurous. After you’ve exhausted that line, move to the next. Work through the entire prayer that way line by line.

Many years ago I did this with the Lord’s Prayer. Over time I developed my own “Lord’s Prayer,” praying the spirit of the Lord’s Prayer in my own words. I’ve carried it now for 14 years or so. I whisper it often. It really takes no longer than the actual prayer in Matthew 6. But it represents the unique way I pray these words of Jesus.

Try it today.

The First Monday of Lent -- March 14, 2011

2011-03-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

Matthew 25:31 - 46

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

I’ve hated this passage for most of my adult life. Well, maybe not “hated,” but I want to run every time I hear it coming down the tracks, mostly because I know I’m going to get run over. The message I’ve heard in it is, “Actions matter. Deeds count.” And if, like me, you feel you haven’t done enough . . . well, let’s just say the prospects don’t look good.

I think I’ve run from it in fear because like much of the Scripture I’ve heard the message through “either/or” ears. In my mind, I’ve imagined that there were two choices and only two choices: Sheep or goats. Good or bad. Obedient or disobedient. You’re in or you’re out. You’re one or the other.

The story might read that way at a surface level, but I think it’s probably a dishonest reading of the teaching. Because who among us is either all in, 100%, or all out, 0%? I know there are folks – I heard one the other day – who say, “If you’re not in 100%, it doesn’t matter what you are . . . a 95% commitment is just the same as 20%. God wants all or nothing.”

If that’s the standard, though, none of us make it. That’s right. None of us. Zero. Nada. You can quote me your Scriptures on that . . . but I have a few in my pocket as well and I can give them back to you. None of us make it by our righteousness. No, not one.

It’s a much more honest spirituality that confesses to both our sheep-ness and our goat-ness. I am both a sheep and a goat. And you are, too.

Each of us are, in varying degrees, odd mixtures of noble helping and stubborn refusal to get involved.

We lift others up. We also cut others down who get in our way.

Within us lives a combination of deep love for neighbor alongside a rampant self-centeredness.

We feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but we also turn our back on those in prison and refuse to help those who “don’t deserve our help.”

We extend ourselves toward others to the point of breaking, but we have a default “looking out for #1” mentality.

Each of us has inside our hearts both sheep and goats. We are not one or the other. We are both.

Prayer and contemplation infuse within me the grace to accept these different parts of myself as my real life. This is the real me, the only me I can truly offer to God . . . both my sheep and my goats.

The First Sunday of Lent -- March 13, 2011

2011-03-13T05:12:00.000-07:00

Matthew 4:1 - 11

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘People do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. "All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

This temptation sequence is the account on which the season of Lent is built. The 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness undergoing temptings and testings are mirrored in our Lenten journeys as we spend these 40 days giving directed attention to our connection with God.

Specifically, the time of testing in the wilderness for Jesus had to do with his core personhood, with who he was in his innermost being. The context of the scene is everything: It immediately followed Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptizer. In that baptism, God spoke into Jesus: “This is my son whom I love. In him I am well pleased.”

In short, God spoke into Jesus the Divine love which was not conditioned on anything Jesus had done to this point. Jesus’ ministry was just beginning, so he hadn’t yet done anything to earn or deserve God’s love. God simply loved him generously and extravagantly. His identity was Holy Love.

Then, in the temptation sequence, Jesus would hear another voice, a voice that would try to sway him away from his authentic personhood. That voice invited Jesus to good things. The temptations were not lures to blatant evil, but they also were not the things for which Jesus had come. They were not consistent with his innermost life with God. They were lures to trade in his identity for a new identity, one that might include fame and adulation, and one in which he would be squarely at the center of life. Jesus refused.

I believe that the most insidious temptations for any of us are not those invitations to blatant evil or huge moral compromise. The most damaging voices we hear are those which tempt us away from our personhood, away from who we were created to be, away from our core identity. Those temptations come for most of us, not in grandiose, wilderness-kinds of ways, but subtly and daily.

Lent is a time to notice those other voices which call to us, to learn how they snag us, and to reaffirm our commitment to the Voice that calls us “Beloved.”

Saturday after Ash Wednesday -- March 12, 2011

2011-03-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

Luke 5:27 – 32

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

In my seminary class on the Hebrew language, I had to write a paper that analyzed one Hebrew word that occurred prominently in the Old Testament. I wrote a lengthy paper on the Hebrew word kadosh, which is usually translated “holy.”

I learned that in the Hebrew scriptures, to be holy generally meant to be separate from or different from. That is the sense in which God is holy: God is separate and different, not only from humans, but from the other “gods.”

Likewise, the Hebrew people in the Old Testament prized their separation and uniqueness from their neighbors, from the other nations.

As I learned about the background of Hebrew kadosh, it was not much of a leap for me to transfer that theology to Christian faith and practice, and to interpret much of what Jesus did and Paul taught as that same kind of holiness.

In fact, I spent a lot of time in the church trying to create an exclusive club of “holiness” – though I never would have dared call it that – that was pure and beyond reproach, separate from the evil influences of the world. I thought that’s what God was and what God wanted from us. And I think I was supported by a centuries of Christian theology.

In retrospect, for me it was about creating a country club for the spiritually elite, separate from the world and unstained by the world.

You can’t read Jesus, though, and deny that he was about inclusion, not exclusion. He didn’t look for ways to push people away, but for ways to draw people in. He most often stood against those who wanted to make religious belief and practice a litmus test for orthodoxy.

He stood with cheating tax collectors . . . with adultresses caught in the act . . . with the faltering belief of mothers and fathers who had dying children . . . with those beaten beside the road and the renegade foreigners (Samaritans) who cared for them . . . with children in the far country and children who never left home.

It is still the human tendency to separate and exclude. And it is still the Jesus-tendency to draw in and include.

Friday after Ash Wednesday -- March 11, 2011

2011-03-11T07:04:00.000-08:00

Matthew 9:14 – 15

Then John’s disciples came and asked him, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?”
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast."

A couple of decades ago I read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and got interested in a more intentional spiritual practice. As I look back on that time, I can give thanks for the impetus to move more deliberately into practices that could nourish my soul, but I see how skewed my motives and understandings were. I won’t go into all of those misunderstandings here.

There was one step that may not seem like a big deal. It reflected the religious tradition in which I was raised; however, it set me up for huge disappointment, shame and guilt. In short, it was the assumption that I could commit something in my life to God one time and that one time would do forever. Like I said, that understanding reflected something of the tradition in which I had come to faith.

There were several ways that understanding played out in my life. Related to spiritual disciplines, I believed that once I made a commitment to engage in a particular spiritual practice, that commitment was for life. So in short, for almost a decade I accumulated various types of prayer, disciplines and practices in an effort to be “holy.” The underlying assumption, of course, was that the more I did for the God, the holier I would be.

Every time I was exposed to a new spiritual practice, I’d say to myself, “Yeah, I want to do that, too!” And then I held onto it, as if forever.

While on retreat, after a decade of that kind of accumulation, I made a list of all the spiritual practices in my arsenal. I listed almost 40 things! But as a part of the exercise, I also asked myself how regularly I was actually practicing each of them, how faithful I was to the practice. I uncovered huge pockets of shame and guilt . . . I had a huge storehouse of practices, but only practiced two or three of them faithfully. I realized that I felt overwhelmed, besides feeling shame (“I’m bad because I can’t do all these things”) and guilt (“God must think it’s a sin that I can’t do all these things”). In some of the most difficult inner work I’ve ever done, I spent the rest of that retreat paring down my list, eliminating spiritual practices that were no longer appropriate for me at that time of my life.

At that moment, I began to be aware that there is a season for everything. All the practices on my list were good. They weren’t God, but they were intended to help me be more attentive to God. Since my life ebbed and flowed, through various seasons of my soul, I determined to think of practices that were appropriate to that particular season of my life.

It’s good to have a lot of tools in your tool-belt, but you can only use one or two at the time. What practices are appropriate to this season of my life? Which ones will help me attend to God most fully right now? And which ones will support my desire to love others with the love of Christ?

I'm not making life-long commitments that I probably cannot keep. I'm biting off a piece of my life, the right now, the bit I can chew.

I’m encouraging folks this Lent to consider a Lenten practice or a spiritual discipline that will carry them through this season. Then when Easter comes, evaluate the practice. You can continue it. Or you could lay it aside and take up something else.

There is no merit or reward for carrying around a grab-bag of spiritual practices you don’t actually practice. It’s a recipe for disaster (read: guilt, shame, being overwhelmed). Do what you feel God draws you to do, and do it for a season.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday -- March 10, 2011

2011-03-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

Luke 9:22 - 25

And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?

In the lexicon of despised words used in spiritual contexts, "deny" ranks up there with "discipline," "surrender," and "detachment." I suspect that people respond to these words out of a difficult history with them, as a part of a religious tradition that was harsh, demanding and full of prohibitions. In truth, a great many people in the Christian tradition gauge their religious expression more by what they oppose or deny than by what they allow and encourage. As a group, we've been driven more by guilt and shame than by our love and hungers.

"Deny" is one of those words we often label as "negative" and "harsh" because of the way it has been used to beat us up. There is, however, a legitimate place for "denial" in any life. If we think of denial in terms of fasting, there are things that we need to say "no" to for our own well-being and growth. A life that is so wide open, saying "yes" to everything, takes in both the helpful and the harmful without any discrimination. Fasting is a core spiritual and life practice.

We need to learn to say appropriate "no's" in order to be balanced and whole. I think our forebears got that part right. They hammered the "deny yourself" part of the Luke 9 passage into us. But they neglected the "take up" part.

For every "laying down," there is a corresponding "taking up." We say, "no," to one thing in order to say, "yes," to something else.

In Ephesians 4, the Apostle Paul used the image of clothing, writing about taking off the old self and putting on the new self. It is a striking image of putting down one thing in order to create space to take on something else.

When Jesus said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me," he highlighted saying no (deny self), and saying yes (take up cross) in order to make a journey with him (follow me).

I notice how heavy and burdensome life is when I don't learn to say "no," when I don't regularly engage in disciplines that deny my self-centeredness. I find it nearly impossible to follow well when I am so heavily weighed down. What I am invited to lay down seems so heavy. What I am invited to take up seems light (a yoke that is easy and light).

For my Lenten discipline this year, I'm noticing what I might say "no" to; but, I'm also asking God to show me how to say "yes" to something good. If I'm going to put one possibly-harmful thing down, I want to pick up something else that God might use to my healing and the healing of the world.

Ash Wednesday -- March 9, 2011

2011-03-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

Matthew 6:1 - 6; 16 - 18

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

The Church is called into Lent through this passage from the Sermon on the Mount. So on Ash Wednesday, a day in which many of us think about spiritual practices that will carry us to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, Jesus says a word about doing "acts of righteousness," or as another translation says, "practicing our piety."

The passage is not an injunction against "acts of righteousness" or "practicing piety;" however, we are warned about the inner stance which underlies the "righteous" actions. Jesus' words suggest that it is possible to do very good things for very skewed reasons.

Who would argue that fasting, prayer or giving alms are bad things? They are not. But we can engage in very spiritual activities for our own sakes, with ourselves at the center . . . concerned that others see us, that someone else applauds us, that by our actions we are thought of as humble, or saintly, or wise, or mature. We have all sorts of ways to manipulate "public opinion."

We each have our own highly developed patterns for getting what we think we need from others. Over the years they become ingrained within us. Our personal patterns are so intricate that they seem "second nature" to us, as if they were a part of us. In fact, usually we can't imagine doing without them. Because they are so intricately woven within us, we are mostly blind to them.

These patterns of control and manipulation are within all of us . . . in every human person. In fact, this passage begins Lent so that we'll come to full grips with our humanity, with our frailty. The passage reminds us that we are human, not God. And as humans, we need this journey that Jesus makes to Palm Sunday, the cross and the tomb.

On Ash Wednesday we gather for worship to receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads, written in ash upon us. The words of the minister are, "Human, from dust you have come and from dust you shall return" (Gen. 3:19). The ashes remind us that we are here a short time, that our nature is clay, that we are earthly humans.

We are put on the earth "a little space," as William Blake wrote, that we may "learn to bear the beams of love."

Today is the day to remember that I am human, not God. I remember that my life is short. I remember that God invites my very human life to be joined to His.

Resurrection Sunday – April 4, 2010

2010-04-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

John 20:1 – 9

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

In the two verses before this passage begins, we’re given an important piece of information about the burial place of Jesus. John 19:41 – 42 says this:

At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

This was a virgin tomb, so to speak. It had never been occupied.

In these few verses, the narration moves quickly from pointing out that “no one had ever been laid” there (19:41), to “they laid Jesus there” (19:42), to “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb” (20:2).

What these followers of Jesus found on that morning was not the body they anticipated finding, but clothing lying in the tomb.

On this Resurrection Sunday, I wonder if there are some deeper meanings for us in these words. John usually does intend some underlying meanings, so we might explore a couple of them.

First, is it possible that all tombs are in some way “virgin tombs”? Might the Gospel lead us to believe that burial places are not permanent abodes?

I’ve already been to more funerals than most people will attend in a lifetime, and I can tell you that everything about a funeral is made to affirm death’s permanence. The quality of the burial equipment (caskets and grave liners), the rites and rituals we follow at the time of death, and the shape of the funeral itself all point to death’s permanence. We’re trying to say to the loved ones of the deceased that death is for real and for good.

If Jesus’ burial is a paradigm for us, though, he used the garden tomb for a period of time, but then was no longer there. It held him for a few hours, but could not hold him permanently.

So the Apostle Paul later wrote about death as the enemy, but then issued this challenge: “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55). Jesus’ “death” was a very hollow victory for death. Jesus’ life extracted the “sting” from death.

I’m also wondering what the “clothes” in this passage represent. Is there a symbol or image behind this account that reports on Jesus’ grave-clothes being left behind in the tomb? His person is not there, but his clothes are there.

Think of what clothes represent for you. What do they represent in our society? More than anything else, clothes mark us and give us a name, an image. They suggest how we see ourselves, and how we want to be seen by others. Surely you will admit that the easiest way to manipulate the opinions of strangers about you is to carefully choose your clothing. It’s the reason so many of us get so uptight about what we wear and how we look. Our image is at stake, and our clothing communicates what we want others to think about us.

Jesus isn’t found in the tomb, but his clothes are. He didn’t choose these clothes; others chose the clothing for him. The clothing with which he entered the tomb said about him: “Dead!” But that estimation of him was wrong.

Clothing never tells the whole story about us. It creates an illusion, a false front. That’s why it may hold across the board that tombs don’t hold people (the soul is luminous and eternal!), but they do hold clothes.

And it may be that when we finally exit the tombs and dead-end spaces in which we live, we’ll have to symbolically leave our own clothing behind.

The term in spiritual life for this “leaving behind” is freedom. What better word could we carry through this Resurrection Sunday than freedom? It’s what I hope for you today as you follow Christ out of the virgin tomb, and as you leave your grave-clothes behind with his.

Holy Saturday – April 3, 2010

2010-04-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

Luke 23:50 – 56

Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea, and he himself was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin.
The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.

Holy Saturday rests silently, darkly between Good Friday and Easter. Nestled between the crucifixion of Christ and his resurrection, it is a somber day that remembers the hours Jesus spent in the tomb.

Frankly, it is a day that puts off many Christians. Modern persons are not comfortable talking about nor dealing with death, even the death of Jesus. We talk in broad, general terms about Jesus’ death for us, careful to keep his death at an abstract level. The Church has traditionally given us all sorts of things to think about the death of Jesus. We’re up to our necks in theories and concepts that tell us what it means, as if we all needed to be convinced in our heads that this is important.

Further, these theories are weighted heavily toward describing what we get because of Jesus’ death on the cross. We’ve made the crucifixion of the Son of God/Son of Humanity a utilitarian gesture in which it’s all about what we get in the deal.

“Jesus died for me.”

“Jesus’ death means my sins are forgiven.”

“Jesus’ sacrifice was for me.”

I’m not suggesting that those things are not true, nor that they are not utterly important. But by so completely personalizing the death of Jesus, we lose touch with the actual death. We gloss over the agony he felt from the betrayal of friends and the utter desolation and abandonment of the cross. We treat Saturday’s tomb as a mere prelude to Sunday’s resurrection.

On Saturday, Jesus was dead. Dead dead. He was dead enough that the Roman soldiers agreed that Jesus was ready to be buried and released him for burial.

He was dead enough that a good man, Joseph of Arimathea, received permission to take his body for burial in a tomb.

He was dead enough that women followers of Jesus saw his body in the tomb and began making preparations to wrap his body with spices and perfumes.

He was not in a temporary holding pattern. That day after the crucifixion, everything was uncertain. His disciples and his friends were not predicting a happy outcome. They were not making merry in anticipation of resurrection. They were devastated by Jesus’ death, just as you are devastated when someone close to you dies.

I’m convinced that most of us cannot fully participate in the resurrection of Easter morning because we have not fully entered into the death of crucifixion. We have not witnessed Jesus in the tomb.

For myself, I have to discover deliberate ways to join in the spirit of the day. I find that Holy Saturday is a day for quietness, a day to be still. Sometimes I’ll fast a couple of meals, or perhaps the entire day, just to remember Jesus’ death. I try not to get preoccupied with what it means for me. I simply intend to join other lovers of Jesus in grieving this One who gave his life completely, and who at least for this day, has been taken from our midst. And I fix my intention to join Jesus on this day when his finished life lay still in a garden tomb.

Good Friday – April 2, 2010

2010-04-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

John 19:17 – 30

Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, "Do not write 'The King of the Jews,' but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews."
Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written."
When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
"Let's not tear it," they said to one another. "Let's decide by lot who will get it."
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,
"They divided my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment."
So this is what the soldiers did.
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, "Woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” from the cross, he was not announcing his death as much as he was making a statement about his life-purpose.

At other times in his ministry he claimed that his purpose was to complete the work God sent him to do. In John 4:34, for instance, when the disciples offered him food to eat, he said, “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me and to finish God’s work.”

The word “finish” suggests bringing something to completion. It means to come full circle or to make whole what to that point has been incomplete.

So on the cross, when Jesus said, “It is finished,” he referred to the purpose for which he had come, the purpose for which God had sent him. In other words, everything he was supposed to do, he did. All that he was to become, he became. He was the most fully human person ever to have lived. He became the blueprint for what it means to be a human being.

It occurred to me several years ago that my life had a purpose and a mission. I was created and given life in order to “complete” or “finish” something. I began to wonder about that life-purpose, the original intention God had in giving me life and sustaining my life. “Why am I here?” “What does it mean for me to finish my life-work as Jesus finished his?”

Months of extended reflection and introspection brought me to some conclusions about my own life. I came to understand the journey toward my own life-purpose, so that if I stayed on an intentional path, I could come to the end of my life, as Jesus did, and say, “It is finished. I’ve fulfilled the purpose for which I was created. I’ve become who I was supposed to become and done what I was supposed to do.”

I believe that is the most any of us can hope for: To live out the fullness of God’s original intention for us. At his death, Jesus testified that he had done so. At my death, I want to be able to say the same thing.

Maundy Thursday – April 1, 2010

2010-03-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

John 13:1 – 15

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"
Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
"No," said Peter, "you shall never wash my feet."
Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me."
"Then, Lord," Simon Peter replied, "not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!"
Jesus answered, "Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you." For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."

All of Jesus’ actions, both on this night and through the last days of his life, were framed by these words: “Jesus knew that he had come from God and was returning to God.”

In other words, Jesus knew who he was. He knew his identity. He knew that he had emerged from the heart of God and was returning to the heart of God. He knew his origins and his destiny, the Source of his being and the Goal of his being.

He didn’t have to worry about what people thought of him. He didn’t wring his hands over how others estimated him. He was free to do what he needed to do because he was free to be fully the person God sent him to be.

In the immediate context of this passage, he was free to take off his outer clothing, wrap a towel around his waist, and stoop to wash the dusty feet of his disciples. It was an unheard-of act for a rabbi or teacher to stoop in that way, yet Jesus was free from social expectations and relationship norms. He was not bound by what others thought he should do. As he said in another place, he only acted and said what he first heard the Father do and say, so he was free of the obligations others placed upon him.

If we looked honestly at our days, most of us would be quite surprised by how much of our existence is driven by obligation and demand. We live in the continual expectations that others have of us and of our roles. We live out of so many roles that comes with oughts and shoulds that we can easily lose sight of “where we have come from” and “where we are going.” We can lose touch with our core, our basic identity.

The many hats we wear are not bad, but we live oblivious to their pull upon us. They fail to see how hard they drive us, how the role becomes larger than the soul-truth that our lives carry.

Jesus lives fully into his God-given identity, so he is able to enter fully into Holy Week without backing down. He washes feet, he is publicly humiliated, he is lashed with a whip, he is crucified. But he is also free to enter into these situations because he knows who he is with God. That isn’t up for debate with him. So he acts with courage and with inner freedom.

Wednesday of Holy Week – March 31, 2010

2010-03-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Matthew 26:14 – 25

Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
On the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?"
He replied, "Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, 'The Teacher says: My appointed time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.' " So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them and prepared the Passover.
When evening came, Jesus was reclining at the table with the Twelve. And while they were eating, he said, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me."
They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, "Surely not I, Lord?"
Jesus replied, "The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."
Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, "Surely not I, Rabbi?"
Jesus answered, "You have said so."

The Gospel writers knew what those sitting around the table did not know. In hindsight, the writers knew that Judas betrayed Jesus, that he sold him to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver.

Because of this after-the-fact knowing, these writers were free to editorialize about Judas and his role of traitor. They looked back with a different set of eyes. They attributed motives to him. They began to see all the actions of Judas in light of his act of betrayal.

All those centuries ago they succumbed to the temptation to demonize Judas. We tend to do the same thing in our day.

Many years ago I heard that the Great Passion Play at Oberammergau in Germany had trouble casting the role of Judas in their once-a-decade production. Many persons wanted to play Jesus or one of the other disciples, but no one wanted to audition for the role of Judas. Who wants to be Judas? After all, who consciously wants to betray Christ?

Yet the text mysteriously says that the betrayer would be “the one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me.” Wouldn’t that have included all the disciples present? Didn’t they all partake of the meal? I suppose this could explain why the story suggests that the disciples were so confused about the identity of the betrayer. The way we read it, Judas is the obvious choice. But to those who actually sat around the table with Jesus, it could have been any of them, because they all dipped their hand in the cup. So they said to Jesus, one after another, “Surely not I, Lord?”

Further, if we were to look at the inner landscape of each person sharing that meal, we’d probably find that they each had some small recognition of their own capacity to turn on Jesus in order to save their own skin.

The reality is that we all betray. Judas may have stood front and center, but we are let off the hook no more than the first disciples. The impulse to look after ourselves is just as strong in us as it was in those early followers of Jesus.

You and I have the capacity to betray. Perhaps recognizing ourselves as possible traitors would make receiving Holy Communion a different act. We take the bread and dip it into the cup just as Judas did. Communion, then, is about the company of betrayers gathered for a meal by the One who yet looks through our twisted hearts and our shame.

My friend wrote a song that imagines what would have happened had Judas come back to Jesus instead of running to hang himself. The song is called, “Judas Come Home.” The line Jesus sings to Judas that I remember most poignantly says simply, “I freely love failures and traitors.”

Tuesday of Holy Week – March 30, 2010

2010-03-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

John 13:21 – 38

After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, "Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me."
His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, "Ask him which one he means."
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, "Lord, who is it?"
Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.
So Jesus told him, "What you are about to do, do quickly." But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Festival, or to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.
When he was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
"My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Simon Peter asked him, "Lord, where are you going?"
Jesus replied, "Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later."
Peter asked, "Lord, why can't I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you."
Then Jesus answered, "Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!"

The passage begins with a disciple about to betray Jesus. The passage ends foretelling that the disciple who is “the Rock” will disown Jesus. Betrayal and disowning are two parts of Holy Week that are difficult for us to face.

It’s hard to admit that we are capable of these kinds of things. Peter’s statement speaks for how we feel on the surface: “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.” Yet underneath the surface other things reside. The spirit to disown and betray do not necessarily live inside us. We may not naturally be disowners and betrayers.

Rather, a spirit of self-interest and self-centeredness lives at the core of most all of us. This spirit of self-interest leads us to do things that are useful and good for ourselves, as we define “useful and good.” This spirit leads us toward actions that lend themselves to our self-preservation, looking out for our own welfare. We have learned through life that no one else is going to look after us as well as we look after ourselves. Thus, most of us are very practiced at guarding our own lives.

We may not mean to betray or disown another person, but when we live in a self-preservation mode, that’s what our actions look like. We may lay aside any relationship or responsibility if we feel that our self-interest is threatened.

Judas had his eye on his own well-being. The money he was paid for the betrayal made it easier to sell himself, but mostly he was disappointed that Jesus did not fit his image of who and what a Messiah should look like.

Peter under-estimated his own needs for safety and security. He pledged devotion to Jesus when he felt secure, but when threatened by those who did not share his devotion to Jesus, he withdrew his pledge to stay true to Jesus.

The spiritual journey gives us ways to begin recognizing our self-preservations tactics, to notice the intricate inner workings that keep us orbiting around ourselves. Further, if we stay at it long enough, God gives us the tools for dismantling that self-centered orbit so that over time, our lives are adjusted to orbit more around God than around ourselves.

The ultimate goal is not to eliminate the betrayal and disowning, but rather to stop orbiting around ourselves so that we can orbit around God. In doing so, we will be less prone to betrayal and disowning, and more prone to live the new command Jesus gave in the passage:

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Monday of Holy Week – March 29, 2010

2010-03-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

John 12:1 – 11

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages." He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
"Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "[It was intended] that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."
Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.

As a young man in the ministry, I must have been convinced that I was going to save the world, and that I would do so single-handedly. I worked tirelessly, spending myself and doing for others in both official and unofficial capacities.

I noticed early on, though, that when someone showed me kindness or gave a gift of appreciation to me, I didn’t receive it well. I would say things like, “I don’t really deserve this,” or “It wasn’t really me,” or “If you knew what really went on behind the scenes, you wouldn’t be expressing this appreciation.”

The truth was that I had an unbelievably hard time accepting gifts from others. I always found a way to diminish someone else’s expression of grace toward me.

An older couple who had served churches in vocational ministry for many years finally pulled me aside. It was the wife who first said to me, “Jerry, you need to learn how to receive a gift. Just say, ‘Thank you.’ That’s all you need to do.”

Later her husband would share with me the same counsel.

It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn. My old ways were hard-wired inside me. I still wanted to diminish the affirmations of others toward me. Or I shifted the credit when someone complimented me or gave me a gift. My old ways were hard to unravel.

Many of us find it difficult to receive gifts or affirmations. We make gift-giving about deserving and we don’t feel that we measure up. My mentor and his wife reminded me that when I tried to explain away someone’s gift to me, I diminished the gift. By challenging their gift to me, I implicitly said to them, “You misread the situation. Your judgment must be faulty, because I haven’t done anything to deserve the praise or the gift that you offer to me.”

Remarkably, gifts stand out for us precisely because there is no sense of deserving or merit or worthiness about them. A true gift is given without strings, totally on its own merit.

Today, on this Monday of Holy Week, we continue to move with Jesus toward the cross. On his way to the cross, a woman named “Mary” broke a costly bottle of perfume and anointed Jesus with it. The act was ridiculously extravagant, over-the-top. We would expect a rebuke from Jesus; instead, we get a blessing from him. The woman was not reprimanded; to the contrary, she was lifted up as a model of someone who helped Jesus prepare for death. She gave Jesus a huge gift in these last days of his life. She cared for him tenderly.

The best part is that Jesus received the gift. He took it into himself. He didn’t use false humility to push her or her gift away. He allowed it into himself. It helped prepare him for his death and burial. It prepared this woman to see herself as valued and deeply loved.

Be mindful of the gifts you receive this week. Be aware of your inner resistance to receiving what others offer to you. You receive not because you deserve to receive. This is not a worthiness contest. You are given whatever you have because God is gracious.

Palm Sunday – March 28, 2010

2010-03-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Luke 19:28 – 40

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' say, 'The Lord needs it.' "
Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
They replied, "The Lord needs it."
They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"
"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

In Mark 14:12 – 16 Jesus prepared to eat the Passover with his disciples. When they inquired about a place in which to eat the meal, Jesus instructed them to go into the city and follow a man carrying a jar of water. When the man entered a house, they were to find the owner of the house and simply say, “The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” After the owner showed them a large upper room, they were to prepare the feast.

The method was very cryptic and typical of Jesus.

Today’s text from Luke’s Gospel is equally cryptic, not in terms of finding a room in which to share the Passover, but about finding an animal for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem.

There are all sorts of unresolved questions in the text.

Would the owner of the colt be okay with Jesus using it?

How would the two disciples know if it had ever been ridden or not?

Would an “anyone” who asked about the behavior of the disciples really know who “the Lord” was who needed it?

It would be easy to get lost in these unresolved questions. In fact, many times our efforts at personal or group Bible study get stuck in the bogs of such issues. For some of us, our need-to-know is so hyper-developed that we can’t get beyond the questions and details. Yet in texts like these, we are given few answers.

What we are given is an image of Jesus who has a depth of spiritual attentiveness that others do not have. It is a part of who he is as the Son of Humanity (my language for the traditional “Son of Man” of the Bible), the human person of fully developed consciousness. Jesus is able to see what others cannot see because his filters for seeing are God’s filters. His own rational filters, emotional filters, and psychological filters have been so purified and are so translucent that he sees life, others, and the world as God sees.

One result of this spiritual attentiveness that resides in Jesus is that he knows things other people do not know. He knows beneath and around. His depth of knowing goes beyond those around him. It’s not that others could not know and see as he does if they wanted, but most of us aren’t willing to engage the difficult work of spiritual transformation that would allow us to see and know in different ways. What Jesus knows may be accessible to others, but they do not stretch their know-ers enough to engage them.

This spiritual intuition that resided in Jesus is also available to God’s people as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It may sound like some crazy religious practice, but in truth, God’s Spirit makes accessible to every one of us what is available in Jesus.

Contemplative guide Thomas Merton wrote: “In Christ, everything that is divine and supernatural becomes accessible on the human level to every person . . .” (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 150).

I believe Merton got it right.

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 27, 2010

2010-03-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

John 11:45 – 56

Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 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. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.
Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, "What do you think? Isn't he coming to the Festival at all?"

This passage follows the raising of Lazarus from death. The dialogue and deliberations you read here are brought about by Jesus stretching his hand of life into the tomb, a precursor to his death and resurrection.

The first half of John’s Gospel is given to the breadth of Jesus’ ministry. The second half of his Gospel is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life. Tomorrow is Palm Sunday and next week is Holy Week, so it is appropriate that the daily text for today leads us into these days leading up to crucifixion and resurrection.

Much has been made of the high priest Caiaphas’ “prophecy” regarding Jesus. It may be more helpful to think about John’s motive for including this bit of information in his Gospel. He devotes an entire paragraph to editorializing about the comments of Caiaphas.

John, known as the “mystical Gospel,” knows that Jesus is about one-ing (see Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1 – 26) people to God, to himself, and to one another. That God desires this intentional connection with us is assumed in John’s Gospel. “Divine union” or “transforming union” might be the names we would give this one-ing in modern language.

So when John hears the words of Caiaphas that it is expedient for one person to die for the people rather than the whole nation perish, he uses it as an opportunity to extend the gospel even wider. He writes, “not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.”

For John, then, Jesus death is not merely about sacrifice and the benefits that you and I receive from the offering of his life.

Jesus’ death brings us into union with God, drawing us together from all the ways we have been scattered from Divine Love.

Jesus’ death puts together all the ways we have been scattered within ourselves, bringing us into union with our deepest, most authentic selves.

Jesus’ death gathers us from the far corners from which we are scattered from one another, bringing us together as a common humanity with common yearnings for the One God.

We cannot achieve this kind of one-ing on our own. We are invited into it by the One who walks toward the Cross.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 26, 2010

2010-03-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

John 10:31 – 42

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." Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed and many people came to him. They said, "Though John never performed a sign, all that John said about this man was true." And in that place many believed in Jesus.

The persons who wanted to stone Jesus appraised him as “a mere man.”

We may find those words hard to fathom, knowing from hindsight what we do about Jesus. But we make similar appraisals about persons every day. We misjudge. We label. We categorize using all sorts of criteria and prejudice.

Those standing with stones in their hands, threatened by Jesus, considered him a “mere man.” We pigeon-hole those we see on street corners, in grocery stores, and sitting on park benches in all sorts of ways. Most all of our characterizations over-generalize and fail to notice the person underneath the outer circumstance. Our labels and categories provide easy ways to objectify people so that we don’t have to deal with them as human.

A growing, evolving spiritual life gives us a new framework with which to see, a new lens so to speak, with which to see God, ourselves, others, and the world. The Apostle Paul knew this reality when he wrote:

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. (2 Cor. 5:16)

In the biblical framework, there is no such thing as a “mere man” or a “mere woman.” A growing capacity to see, to attend, and to notice allows us to see what is most real about a person. We begin to see their brokenness, as well as their gift.

It is easy to regard others from a “worldly point of view.” It takes no effort. We simply accept our society’s appraisal of persons and adopt that appraisal as our own. We don’t have to question whether culture has it right or not. We simply accept that some people are cheats and some people are lazy and some others are better than everyone else.

The spiritual life invites us to move out of those easy categories to the more difficult work of authentic relationship, living honestly with those around us.

The Apostle confesses how easy it is to consider persons from a “worldly point of view,” and further confesses that at one time he viewed Jesus that way. In a sense, seeing with different eyes involves a transformation of spiritual sight, seeing with the eyes of the heart rather than the eyes of the head and reason.

I can guarantee this: Today no one you see will be a “mere men or mere women.” Each person you see will be extraordinary in some way, just as Jesus was no “mere man.” The challenge will be for you and me to live at such a pace so as to see persons as more than ordinary.

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 25, 2010

2010-03-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

John 8:51 – 59

“Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death."
At this they exclaimed, "Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that whoever obeys your word will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?"
Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and obey his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
"You are not yet fifty years old," they said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!"
"Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”

Jesus used the words “I am” to refer to himself. The words are especially prominent in John’s Gospel. Jesus is the fulfillment of the “I AM” of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the burning bush in Exodus 3, Moses stood before God and inquired about the identity of the One sending him. The God-voice from the bush said, “I AM that I AM.”

God revealed God’s Self as pure Being, complete Essence. I AM. We may want more information. We may want something more descriptive, something more characteristic of divinity. We yearn for more adjectives, or for labels and categories in which to place God. God, however, resists those labels and that categorization. God is.

Jesus adopted this same sense of who he was. He resisted categories and labels. He was the I AM, Being and Essence.

We haven’t learned from him very well. Modern life is caught up in doing and producing. We are enamored with those who accomplish much, and we wear our busyness as a merit badge.

At its core, the spiritual journey invites us to rediscover who we are, the “I am” at our core. It is a long journey and often very difficult, because who we are is hidden within us, covered by all the things we do and masks we wear. Our “I am” center, though, holds the God-created purpose into which we are invited to live.

As Jesus lived completely and fully his own “I AM,” so we are invited to live fully our “I am.” And we are never more like Jesus than when we live out of our own “I am.”

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 24, 2010

2010-03-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

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 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 God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father."
"We are not illegitimate children," they protested. "The only Father we have is God himself."
Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me."

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.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in pre-war Nazi Germany, coined the phrase “cheap grace” for a Christian faith that wanted to receive God’s goodness without radical reordering life as Christ advocated.

So today I’ll use the phrase “cheap truth” for the way these words of Jesus have been watered down without the radical reorientation of life that Jesus believed would set a person free.

This verse has been used and misused and badly abused for a long time. It gets co-opted by anyone who thinks he/she represents an underappreciated political position or the correct theology or the single way to do a given task. People are quick to associate their way with the “truth,” substantiating their position with the Jesus-claim that their way of doing things – as the truth – will set you free!

It’s really a false argument and a distortion of what Jesus said.

Neither does it mean what I’ve heard preached often, that a simple recognition of the truth, even the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Truth – the Way, the Truth, and the Life – is enough to make us free. There may be an initial step into freedom that accompanies this acknowledgement, but it doesn’t get us very far in.

Jesus invites us to a reorientation of life. He asks us to lay aside the ways we order life around ourselves, around what benefits us and our tribe, and around what puts me ahead of others. This is difficult work, because most of us don’t know any other way to live life.

As long as we live this way, orbiting around ourselves or around our own ego, we have no steady point of reference. So we look to others to gauge how we are doing. And when others become our reference point, we begin to wear masks, because we want the others to think we’re doing better than we really are. In fact, we want to convince ourselves that we’re doing better than we really are. We spend a lot of time invested in what others think of us, always manipulating opinions so that we show up as more or better.

When we live this way, there is no freedom. We live in a prison of our own making. We live imprisoned to the expectations of others and to our own expectations. There is no truth that could set us free in this life of illusion.

The “truth” to which Jesus invites us is the ordering of life around God, who is the Center and Source of all life. In Jesus’ scheme of things, God is the reference point. And while none of us can measure up to God, God’s own Self is mercy and grace. You don’t have to measure up! That’s the good news of the Gospel! There is no need to try to be more or better. God’s mercy and compassion are extended to you just as you are!

When life is centered on God, then, there is no need to please others or meet their expectations. Rather, there is freedom.

The freedom Jesus promised from this “truthful” living is not freedom predicated on outward circumstances, but rather is an inside job. It is the inner freedom to be the person God created you to be without fear and without having to measure up to some external standard. It is living the truth of your own God-created purpose, living fully the life you were meant to live.

Living true brings that kind of freedom!

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 23, 2010

2010-03-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

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 always do what pleases him." Even as he spoke, many put their faith in him.

Jesus says to those pressing him, “You are of this world; I am not of this world.”

The tone may sound harsh, especially given the context of the passage; however, I assert that he implies no condemnation to being “of this world.” We are each “of this world.” Our humanity plants us in “this world.”

Being “of this world” simply means that we are shaped by the structures of the “world,” that the society in which we live exerts tremendous influence on us, that our culture provides us a framework with which we do life. In a sense, you might think of this framework as a lens through which we see the world and life.

Those of the first century had a world-structure in which they lived, just as those of us who live today have a framework or paradigm with which we live. We are each “of this world.”

How could we not be “of this world?” We are born to women and men who are “of this world,” raised in families that are “of this world,” and guided through childhood by persons who are “of this world.”

It is not wrong or bad to be “of this world.” It is, however, quite dangerous to be “of this world” and to not recognize that we are “of this world.”

In fact, it can be the particular stumbling block of good, religious persons to be “of this world” while thinking they are “not of this world.” For this reason, spiritual growth necessarily entails an awakening, an enlightenment, or an illumination, so that we are able to see with honesty the structures and frameworks that shape our lives.

The danger we tempt is in thinking we are free of the world’s structures or paradigms when actually they are so deeply rooted in us that we can no longer recognize them. The spiritual life, then, invites us to notice our own inscape (inner landscape) and to take the difficult inward look at our makeup.

Jesus could say that he was “not of this world” not merely because he was God or because he was the Messiah – frankly, those seem to be flippant and quite trivial answers to why Jesus was “not of this world” – but because the paradigms, structures, and frameworks out of which he lived came from God, not from the world.

While we don’t know much about his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, I assume that he had issues related to life-structures and frameworks in his early years. He was born a human to humans, in a real world, in real time. Somehow, though, in his relationship with the Father, he divested himself of the world’s structures and adopted the paradigm and world-view of God. He was “of this world” but “not of this world.”

This, too, is our spiritual journey. We are “of this world,” but we are invited to take up a new paradigm – the Gospel language for this new paradigm is “the kingdom of God” – that is shaped more by God than it is by the world. This is our life-task, our life-mission. As we live more and more into this life-mission, “not of this world,” our lives are transformed. And in a larger way, our world is transformed.

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 22, 2010

2010-03-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

John 8:12-20

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
The Pharisees challenged him, "Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid."
Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me."
Then they asked him, "Where is your father?"
"You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also." He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

The vocabulary of “light” and “darkness” can get confusing on the spiritual journey. On a surface level, we read Jesus’ pronouncements about the light he gives, the light that brings a person out of the darkness forever. This light illumines the lives of women and men in order to bring us out of spiritual darkness.

At this first level of understanding, spiritual darkness is equated with life that is opposed to God, set against the movement of God. This darkness is a force for destruction and evil that stands against the well-being, healing, and goodness God brings into the world.

This initial light, then, becomes a new way of seeing in the world, a fresh way of orienting one’s life. These words of Jesus ring true: Once we experience the light of God, we can never again see life in the same way we did previously. Our seeing is forever changed. Even if we try to renounce “the Light,” we can never again be completely satisfied with the darkness, destruction, and chaos. In a sense, our sight has been forever changed.

Spiritual writers in the Christian contemplative tradition – John of the Cross in the 17th century and Thomas Merton in the 20th century – speak of another kind of darkness, this time not as a spiritual force for evil that opposes God in the world. This darkness, John of the Cross writes, is more like “obscurity” (oscura in Spanish), in which the spiritual journey leads us more and more into that which we do not know and cannot see.

God is then “obscured” from our view by the many images, metaphors, emotions, and concepts that we once confused with God. Faith in God truly becomes faith because we cannot make our own way or reason things for ourselves.

For many persons engaged in a spiritual journey, this darkness is a natural outgrowth of the God-life. There comes a time when we seem to be in darkness, when all the concepts and images we have carried for God suddenly begin to slip away. We begin to experience that God is beyond all of them, that God cannot be reduced to what my mind thinks about God or what my lips can say about God.

This is the darkness or obscurity John, Merton, and others write about. In fact, these spiritual guides say that the “darkness” is not really darkness at all, but rather that humans tend to be blinded by the Light as we draw nearer and nearer to God as God truly is.

Our experience of this obscurity is counter-intuitive. When in the darkness, we may feel as if we’ve lost everything we’ve known of God, all of God we had previously experienced. Actually, God is moving us to a deeper love, a deeper faith, a heart-to-heart relationship that is not predicated on what we see and what we think.

This obscurity may not feel good, but it is a significant marker for many in the spiritual life. When we hit this spot in the road, the hope is that we don’t run from it or try to move backwards to some previous state of life, but rather allow God to use the obscurity to shape us and draw us to a more authentic love, both for God and for the world.

During Lent it is appropriate to consider our own dark path, especially as we walk with Jesus toward the cross and crucifixion.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent – March 21, 2010

2010-03-20T19:37:00.000-07:00

John 8:1 – 11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
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, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Each of us have our unique ways of making people in our life-world pay for their sins. We may give them the cold shoulder. We may deal with them out of our learned passive-aggressive tendencies. We may broadcast their failings not-too-subtly to others. We may withhold the fruit of our friendship.

The teachers of the Law and Pharisees in John 8 made this adulterous woman stand in their midst. They simply stood her up and looked at her with the glare of condemnation. They were glad to make a show of her and what she had done. Perhaps it was their way of dealing with the missteps of people: make them pay by public humiliation!

My hunch, however, is that they weren’t all that concerned with her actions and her morality. Rather, she was a pawn, an instrument, a tool with which they were trying to trap Jesus. They didn’t seem concerned about the woman. They were concerned for the disruption caused by Jesus.

Most of us use people to our own ends without realizing we are doing so. We make objects, tools, or instruments out of other people, using them for our purposes, manipulating them in ways that help us get to our desired end.

For the Pharisees, this meant using this woman as an object to pin down Jesus. For us it may mean using a loved one or a friend or a stranger to help us get what we want.

Our basic problem is an inherent self-centeredness in which we spin the universe around ourselves. We see others in light of what they can give us or what we can get from them. We use persons to further our purpose. In fact, we can propose a “stoning” if it helps us to get closer to our desired end.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus never, ever objectifies a person. He doesn’t deal with people on the basis of labels or categories. He doesn’t reduce people to how they help him accomplish his mission. In fact, his radical teaching is that he only is helped toward his mission by “the Father.” How differently he lived!

Here, late in Lent, we may be challenged to see people differently. This may be a time to make a commitment to see people as persons, not as objects or as tools. It’s more difficult than you might think. Try it for 24 hours, though, and see how you do.

Each person you see today will be broken, needy, and poor in some way. Their inner state is not a cause for you to use them, but to extend compassion, mercy, and love to them.

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 20, 2010

2010-03-19T19:21:00.003-07:00

John 7:40-53

On hearing his words, some of the people said, "Surely this man is the Prophet."
Others said, "He is the Messiah."
Still others asked, "How can the Messiah come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David's descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?" Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, "Why didn't you bring him in?"
"No one ever spoke the way this man does," the guards replied.
"You mean he has deceived you also?" the Pharisees retorted. "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them."
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, "Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?"
They replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."
Then they all went home.

I spent many years engaging in debate about Jesus. It was a fairly satisfying way to think about Jesus and to express what I believed about Jesus.

Plus, there was a lot of me in the debate, a lot of satisfaction that I could best someone else in a mental exercise and that I could articulate a position better or more persuasively than another person.

Looking back, it was a lot more satisfying to defend my intellect or to persuade others of my devotion than it was to point persons to Jesus. My manner of speaking on behalf of Jesus was counter to the very spirit of Jesus.

If you think about it, engaging in dialogue most always keeps us at least one step removed from engagement. As long as we keep issues and convictions at the level of belief and articulation, then we don’t have to be seriously engaged with them at a heart and life level.

In local congregations, it is common now for Sunday School classes and Bible study groups to want teachers who will facilitate group discussion. Everyone wants to speak, to have a voice, to give their opinion. So in classes we spend our time pooling our opinions, making sure that everyone says what they want to say, then we leave unchanged after an hour, satisfied that we’ve had the opportunity to speak our piece.

The Gospels don’t have any predisposition to everyone speaking their opinions and taking part in dialogue about God. Sharing opinions about God doesn’t open a person more deeply to God. There is no inherent merit in it.

Discussing theories about holy things doesn’t weave transformation into the fabric of our lives.

Being right about religious theories doesn’t guarantee that we’ll live lives of holiness that will change the world.

At the end of the day, John reports that the persons who debated and discussed and opinionated about Jesus simply “all went home.” Nothing changed. Nothing was different with them. They just went home.

But at least they had the opportunity to speak their piece!

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 19, 2010

2010-03-18T20:39:00.001-07:00

Matthew 1:16 – 24

Jacob was the father of Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah.
Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.
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.

God is continually at work to bring about oneness. Our tradition says to us that union is the goal of the Christian spiritual life. We are being transformed over time, brought into union with God, others, ourselves, and the world. This is the action of God’s grace and mercy within us and in the world.

It is clear in Scripture – and I suspect that your personal experience bears this out – that this work of oneness and union is God’s work. We don’t have the tools to accomplish it. In fact, the brokenness and inability of humans to produce this oneness for themselves is a part of the human condition.

We don’t know what we most need in life to be fully human and most intimately connected to God. Further, even if we did know what we need for ourselves and for life with God, we would be powerless to produce it.

So God must accomplish this work. It is beyond human doing, beyond our capacity. We, as persons, are invited to participate in it. The invitation is open-ended. We may choose to participate, we may resist, or we may refuse.

In a word, we are invited to consent to the action of God within us. We are invited to consent to the reordering of our life-world. We are invited to consent by opening ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit. We are invited to consent to God, allowing the Spirit to take the initiative. We are invited to consent to God, content to be a conduit through which God’s grace and mercy flow.

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary consents to what God is going to do in her and through her. She says, “Let it be to me according to your word.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, it is Joseph who consents, waking from the dream and doing what God has laid out before him.

Consent is a good word, a word of opening, allowing, and participating. It is a necessary word for those who desire more intimate awareness of God.

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 18, 2010

2010-03-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

John 5:31 – 47

"If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true.
"You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.
"I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
"I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?
"But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"

In the Gospels Jesus knows the inner landscape of people. In fact, Jesus knows the inscape of persons better than they know themselves. He knows the purposes, loves, and motivations that lie at the heart of a person. “I know,” he says, “that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.”

He knows humans, that we are divided and that our lives are spent in many different pursuits.

He knows that we are distracted, that we easily turn aside from that which is most central in life in order to chase the mundane.

He knows that we are bored, that we live disconnected from a deep sense of meaning and purpose.

He also knows that humans “accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from God.” We are addicted to attention, hungry for someone to notice us, yearning for praise recognition. We love to be loved.

An attention-addiction can easily drive life out of control, so that we become persons who continually seek praise from others. We can then wear masks or create personas which will gain the attention for which we hunger. It is easy to see how we begin to live life with other people in mind, trying to manipulate our behavior in order to get recognition from someone else. Our lives, then, become externally driven rather than led on by the gentle nudging of God’s Spirit.

In spirituality, the name for this life of pleasing others and attention seeking is the “false self.” The false self is an illusory self, the mask that we wear in order to manipulate what we need from others. It is an ego-self that lives with the I-self at the center. It seeks its own profit, its own gain.

On the other hand, the true self – that is, the self God created us to be – orbits around God. God is the center. The life that orbits around God seeks the glory of God.

That Jesus knows you is not meant to intimidate, but rather to put you at ease. That Jesus you knows your purposes, your motives, and your deepest loves actually frees you for a more thorough connection with God. God knows everything about you, about your illusory self, about your failed attempts to live faithfully, and still reaches toward you.

God knows that not to condemn you, but in order to draw you more deeply into God’s heart.

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 17, 2010

2010-03-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

John 5:17 – 30

In his defense Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working." For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus gave them this answer: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
"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. Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
"Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me."

I’ve heard this passage used as an alternative to WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do?”). “What Would Jesus Do?” is hypothetical. There are no firm answers about what Jesus would do in any given contemporary situation, only hints and guesses. Frankly, it can be used to justify any number of responses.

Further, it assumes that the one asking the question has fully taken upon himself or herself the spirit of Jesus, that his/her life is as completely connected to the Father as Jesus’ life was.

Using this passage as a guide seems to be a movement in the right direction. Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing. Some propose, then, that such a standard become the model for our lives. We should see what the Father did and does, then do it.

This proposal has some merit to it, of course, but it does make one huge assumption. Before we ever get to the doing what the Father is doing, we have to see what the Father is doing. I suspect for most of us that seeing would be the huge glitch in the plan.

The spiritual life invites us to a more thorough attentiveness. The spiritual life is a journey in which we notice more and more. We find ourselves seeing God more clearly, and also seeing ourselves, others, and the world with more honesty and depth of compassion.

From my experience companioning persons on an intentional spiritual path, this attentiveness is the most challenging part of the journey. People really do love God. People want to do what is right and good, what makes a difference in the world. But our seeing is so eaten up with the mundane, irrelevant matters that are at the heart of what most of us do from day to day that we can no longer see very well.

The image that I use often is that God is constantly at work, pouring out Godself upon the world like the mighty Niagara Falls . . . millions of tons of water every second cascading over the falls. And we stand at the bottom of the falls, catching a couple of drops in our little glass pop bottles. We miss so much of what God does in us and around us at every moment.

Our challenge spiritually is to see, to wake up to what is already present. We are challenged to find ways to catch more of what God is doing, to catch more of the Niagara-grace that is falling around us at every second.

It’s very difficult, perhaps impossible, to do the things we see God doing if we are not able to see what God is doing. Prayer, spiritual reflection, Sabbath-keeping, and regular examen are contemplative practices that lend themselves to seeing God at work, and then doing what we see.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 16, 2010

2010-03-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

John 5:1 – 16

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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."
Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat."
But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.' "
So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?"
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

The challenges of being healthy of body, mind, emotion, and soul sometimes outweigh the difficulties inherent in sickness and disability.

Spiritual health does not happen by osmosis. It is not a matter of joining the right church or being a regular attender in worship or having parents who live with a growing faith. Spiritual health, like physical or mental health, happens with intentionality. We make decisions about how we intend to live life, about the kind of persons we want to be.

While often – at least in the spiritual life – the transforming work belongs to God and not to us, at the very least we have to act on the desire to be more and more connected to God. We have to be open to whatever work God does within us. We don’t stumble upon it accidentally.

So Jesus encounters this man who had been in ill-health for 38 years. “Do you want to get well?” Jesus asked. He asked the question of the man’s physical health. He also may have been asking about the man’s spiritual well-being or his emotional health.

Well-being begins with desire, with a growing awareness of the hunger that resides in the inner caverns of my life. At its most basic, this yearning is the stretching of our soul towards God. This inner hunger is a sign of my human emptiness and my need for God. Before I can be “well” I have to “want to” be well.

For many of us, the point of healing in the story is not in the actual physical healing, but in healing our “want to.” Healing, while it comes from God, also invites us to diligence and sacrifice. We are invited to lay aside the ways we have seen ourselves and the lies we have believed about ourselves in order to come into a new way of relating to God, self, others, and the world.

This new way of relating is often very painful, as it stretches us to the bounds of what we thought was possible, as it pushes us to the edges of ourselves, as it invites us to explore more deeply who we are in God, and as we see more clearly the truth that resides at the core of us.

Today the prayer is that God would heal our “want to,” and that having our “want to” healed, we would step more deeply into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wholeness.

Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 15, 2010

2010-03-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

John 4:43 – 54

After the two days he left for Galilee. (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that prophets have no honor in their own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
"Unless you people see signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."
The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
"Go," Jesus replied, "your son will live."
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him."
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and his whole household believed.
This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

The official with the sick son “took Jesus at his word.” What does it mean to “take Jesus at his word”?

Many contemporary expressions of Christianity reduce faith to a system of assertions and propositions we are to believe intellectually. They suggest that we agree with certain statements about God and Jesus. If we agree with those statements, and even agree publicly with those statements, we believe.

Some suggest that such belief in and of itself is the extent of Christian faith. Much of the Christian community reduces life with God to that assent. It is a terrible watering down of the Gospel to reduce it to a simple mental agreement to the words Jesus spoke.

“Do you believe in Jesus?”

“Yes, I agree with what he said.”

That kind of agreement makes little difference in our lives and little impact on the world.

To take Jesus at his word is to adjust one’s life, so that one’s reality is shaped by the words and life of Jesus. It is not merely hearing and agreeing with Jesus, but means that a person is intentionally allowing Jesus to shape their framework of life. One is willing to put down one’s own structure for thinking and living, taking up for herself or himself Jesus’ structure instead.

So the official who approached Jesus on behalf of his son adjusted his approach to life as a result of his encounter with Jesus. Taking Jesus at his word meant giving his life without reserve to what Jesus said to him.

This work of adjusting our life’s framework is the core of Christian spirituality. We are giving up our frameworks, the ways that we ordinarily see and approach life in order to increasingly adopt a framework characterized by the life of Jesus.

“Taking Jesus at his word” is not a throw-away statement, but represents the center of the spiritual life. You and I are invited to adjust our lives God-ward, so that our real-lives are increasingly congruent to the life of Christ. We take Jesus at his word not by agreement, but by intentionally giving ourselves to his transformation.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent – March 14, 2010

2010-03-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

Luke 15:1 – 3; 11 – 32

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
“'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’"

This passage repeats today, eight days after being the daily passage for Saturday of the Second Week of Lent. The passage is lengthy and complex, however, and allows for multiple interpretations.

Previously, I dealt with the younger son in the story. I said that his journey is one paradigm for the spiritual life. He was hungry for something deeper and more meaningful in life, so he gathered resources from his home, including his inheritance, his experiences, and all his background as a son and brother. Then he went away searching, spending his resources on those things that he felt might bring him the depth of life for which he was seeking.

In his seeking two things happened: First, he could not find a life that satisfied him, and second, he spent his resources down to zero. In the previous meditation, I suggested that this was the point at which he was ready to experience life. He “came to himself,” which is another way of saying that when all the exterior resources ran dry, he found within himself a connection to what was real and most meaningful in life, and only then was he ready to return home.

So I suggest that the spiritual life is necessarily about leaving and spending, until we see what does not satisfy and begin to recognize what does satisfy. That is the younger son’s story.

The elder brother has another story. He has never asked for anything. He has never explored. He has never left the familiar. He has never been to the edge of his existence.

He stayed “on the farm” and “in the field.” He never left. He never sought. He never followed his hungers.

I assume that, as a human being, he had a yearning for meaning and purpose and the deepest things in life; however, he never acted upon them. He stayed where it was safe. For him, there was never a leaving and never a spending. There was only the day-in, day-out rut of trying to find life in that which could not give life.

Maybe you know from experience the modern proverb that says insanity is doing the same thing over and over, while expecting to get a different result. If this is true, the elder brother was insane.

In the vocabulary of the spiritual life, the most abundant life is found in spending ourselves – resources, experiences, “inheritances” – not in accumulating and hoarding them.

You might think of it this way: Spirituality is about subtraction, letting go, and surrender. We may think addition is preferable, adding more experiences, knowledge, and morality to our lives and thereby accumulating a stockpile of goodness. Spiritual wisdom says, however, that we are most ready to receive authentic and abundant life when we are spent down to zero, when we have lost all that we trusted in.

Only at the end of all we have trusted do we find God. Not only do we find God, but we also find our own resilient soul fearlessly clinging to God for life.

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent – March 13, 2010

2010-03-12T21:33:00.000-08:00

Mark 8:1 – 10

During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance."
His disciples answered, "But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?"
"How many loaves do you have?" Jesus asked.
"Seven," they replied.
He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. About four thousand were present. And having sent them away, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

Think about this Jesus-story a little differently today. Let’s explore it for meanings that lie beneath the surface of the narrative.

As a Gospel story, it speaks of persons who are hungry and apparently have nothing to eat. As a Gospel story of spiritual truth, it speaks of a deeper hunger. Physical hunger is often a symbol for spiritual yearning, so as a spiritual story, we are being offered a different kind of food by Jesus.

It is the human condition to be hungry, to be thirsty, to be unfulfilled. We may attribute that yearning to our human brokenness, but there is another reason for our hunger as well. In essence, we were created by God for God. Within us there is a God-shaped vacuum that can only be filled with God. An inner hunger within us seeks to fill that void.

We are all hungry in this way. We are hungry for “more.” We are hungry for meaning. We are hungry for God.

We may not even realize that we are hungry people, but in reality, this hunger drives us. We try to fill this void in any number of ways, with people, experiences, and all kinds of good things. But even the best of created things cannot fill this hunger and thirst.

The various Gospel stories of hungry crowds fed by Jesus differ in some details. In Mark’s story, the people are hungry and have nothing to eat. They are out of touch with spiritual resources that meet their spiritual yearning. Of course, they do have spiritual food to eat, they have some spiritual loaves and fish to eat, but either they don’t think that will be enough to fill them, or they are completely unaware that those resources exist.

This is a fairly typical predicament for humans. We are spiritually hungry. And we have access to spiritual resources, but we don’t recognize them or we don’t think they will fill us.

We miss the food Jesus offers because we haven’t developed eyes for the spiritual. We live so completely enmeshed in the physical, sensory level of existence that we tend to be oblivious to the spiritual dimension of reality. And all along, there is spiritual bread that can feed us and sustain us.

Jesus meets physical hunger. He also breaks spiritual bread and feeds the souls of persons like you and me until we are satisfied.

Friday of the Third Week of Lent – March 12, 2010

2010-03-11T21:41:00.000-08:00

Mark 12:28 – 34

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

The foundation of life with God is the experience of God’s oneness and the experience of God’s love. These are non-negotiables, the realities we must get in order to get all the rest. Thomas Merton said that the most basic commandment in Christian spirituality is not to love, but to trust in faith that you are loved.

Christian spirituality has long insisted that the end of the spiritual life is oneness. "Union" is the word used most often in spiritual formation. We are invited into a deeper union with God, others, and the world.

For many Christians it sounds like heresy, that we could be brought into union with God. Jesus insisted, though, that God’s essential nature is Oneness. And Jesus prayed that his followers would experience oneness as he was one with God the Father (Jn. 17:11, 22).

It is not enough, though, to understand God’s Oneness conceptually. We are invited to move into God’s Oneness, to experience it at ever-deeper levels of our souls.

God’s Oneness means that there are no divisions. It suggests that tensions and extremes that seem to be at odds are actually held in creative unity by God’s mystery. God’s unity means that all things cohere.

That humans are invited into God’s Oneness is an expression of the image of God within us. As persons created by and for God, we are literally made for this union. And at deep places within our souls we already experience this unity, even if we are unaware of it.

Further, God’s presence in our world is characterized by love. Because of God’s prior love, we are created to love God completely and to love others with a God-like love.

In fact, our oneness with God is most complete when we live lives of love, when we are given to the generous and gratuitous expenditure of love.

The person who steps toward this oneness with God, living a life of generous love, moves more deeply into the “kingdom of God.” The “kingdom” is “not far” from such a person. They have a working facility with this kingdom’s domain, the realm of love. They have access to the wealth of wisdom that is found by deep connection with God and by extravagant love.

To this oneness and to this gratuitous love we are invited, especially during the holy season of Lent.

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent – March 11, 2010

2010-03-10T23:10:00.000-08:00

Luke 11:14 – 23

Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke, and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, "By Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons." Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven.
Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: "Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall. If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? I say this because you claim that I drive out demons by Beelzebul. Now if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
"When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.
"Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

If we can separate ourselves for a moment from the content of this text, interesting as it may be, I think we’ll find a word from Jesus about the nature of spiritual teaching and the power of spiritual wisdom.

Authentic spirituality separates us from lies and illusions. It is the nature of the spiritual life to expose the false self, that is, the illusory ego-self that orders life around itself. This false self exists in human persons, in institutions, in social groups, and in larger national entities.

Sometimes for a social group, this falsity is manifested in faulty thinking about the nature of reality, the way things are in the world. The group misreads or misperceives of what is true in the world. They miss something of the basic way the world operates. Their framework for life is skewed, somehow off-kilter.

Spiritual teaching, that is, teaching which comes from a deeper inner core, exposes and confronts these misperceptions. Spiritual teaching imparts wisdom. It is not simply “sound teaching” or “good doctrine.” Wisdom is not gleaned from reading books or listening to good talks. Wisdom comes from the grit of life. It comes from living deeply connected to God through all the distractions and disturbances of daily life. Wisdom sees life deeply, down to the core; therefore, true wisdom is able to call falsity’s bluff!

Those who have attributed Jesus’ healings to demonic forces of evil have skewed reality to huge proportions! Their perception is not even close to what is real and true. So Jesus speaks against the falsehood and attempts to shift their view of reality.

This is not merely an ancient story. In fact, we live within cultural systems where huge illusions are in place, where lies and falsehoods about reality are so ingrained in the nature of everyday life that we don’t even question them. We make assumptions about life based on the skewed views of truth that we’ve been fed by the cultural systems. We don’t easily lose those misperceptions.

Most always, in order to see differently we need someone rooted in God to expose the falsity in which we are immersed. We need a wise one willing to speak their life-wisdom to come into our world and help shift our paradigms. Occasionally we’ll listen to those “prophets,” and more often we “kill” them or carry them off as “crazy.”

In the story, when Jesus shifted understandings of reality, he said, “The kingdom of God has come upon you.” That is, a new way of ordering life, a new way of perceiving what is true and good, a new way of loving in the world is in your midst.

Lent is a season for discovering new ways of ordering life in God and for hearing the truth that really does free us for abundant living.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent – March 10, 2010

2010-03-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

Matthew 5:17 – 19

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Many contemporaries of Jesus would have heard these words and then fought for a more rigid code by which to live. It is popular to have a code of ethics that orders life, to distill life down to some key rules to keep and regulations to follow.

I am among the many who want someone to tell me what the rules are and what is expected of me, so then I can work toward doing all the right things that will bring happiness and fulfillment. In my mentality, if you can show me what the expectations are, I can work to meet or exceed them. I can be a very accomplished rules-keeper!

But rules-keeping is not to be confused with living a full and authentic life. In fact, in my efforts to do right by the regulations, I may in fact miss what is deepest and most real about life.

Jesus fulfilled the Law and the writings of the Prophets. He did so, though, not by keeping the prescriptions of the Hebrew Scriptures or by being a slave to moral codes. He “fulfilled” the Law by completing the essence of it, by getting underneath the prescriptions about behavior to the state of the heart.

In his relationship to the Father, to others, and to the created world, Jesus fulfilled what it meant to be fully human. If the essence of the Law was to draw persons to God and to God’s life, then Jesus fully lived into the Law and its essence.

Further, his worth did not come from keeping the Law. God bestowed worth and value upon him, and then out of that core Jesus filled out the intention of the Law.

Neither did Jesus pick apart the Law and say that it was unimportant. He did not “abolish” it. He would never say that connection to God did not matter. Rather he received his identity from the Father – an act of grace – and then lived fully into that identity. In living fully into his identity connected intimately to God, he fulfilled the Law’s intention.

In many ways, God invites us to a much larger life than the life we tend to live. God invites us to explore the depths of our personhood, to become fully the people we were created to be. That means filling in all the unlived edges and coming completely into the design of God for our lives.

A rigid concern for religious legalities will not get you to connection with God. It may make you more “moral” by some standards, but it will not necessarily connect you to God. Neither abolishing the Law, nor keeping it in practice – but not in heart – will earn you a connection with God.

You are declared worthy already by God, apart from how you keep or do not keep the rules. Your life is a statement of grace. Only when we live in this grace-state do we have the inner freedom to “keep the Law” and not “abolish the Law,” to live into the essence of the Law as God-connection. Jesus shows the way to life fully connected to God.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent – March 9, 2010

2010-03-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

Matthew 18:21 – 35

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.
"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.
"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive a brother or sister from your heart."

Often in the Gospels people ask Jesus a question out of a particular personal motivation, only to find that Jesus doesn’t answer their question. Rather, he raises new questions, or redirects their question to that which is relevant to the kingdom of God.

Peter asked a question about forgiveness. “How many times should I forgive another? Seven times?” It was a generous question. Most of us don’t get past three. But there was an unspoken part of Peter’s question: “How many times should I forgive someone else before I take matters into my own hands?” Peter’s background in Jewish law restrained him from excessive retaliation, limiting vengeance to “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Without such limits, violence escalates and even small matters are punished excessively. Peter simply wanted to know the cut-off point, the line beyond which he could take matters into his own hands.

Jesus’ answer was aimed at Peter’s desire to retaliate, his desire to know how much patience he was required to have with another. By playing off Peter’s use of “seven times,” Jesus extended forgiveness infinitely. In other words, there is no point at which you are to run out of forgiveness and begin retaliating. Forgiveness is boundless.

Then Jesus told a story about the economy of the kingdom of heaven. The story was about mercy received, mercy given, and mercy hoarded.

What does it mean to live life in a state of mercy, that is, where we receive mercy and give mercy in a never-ending flow? In the story, the man received a generous mercy, but then refused to extend mercy to another. The end of the story shocks our sensibilities a bit, as it sounds like mercy can be withdrawn if it is not shared.

Think of it this way: Mercy is not extended to us simply for our own, beautiful selves. Mercy is to be extended to all, through all. But when the flow of mercy stops in the life of someone who hoards mercy or who is only interested in accumulating mercy for their own personal well-being, mercy dries up. It no longer carries transformative power. It becomes a private possession, not a world-transforming grace.

God has no interest in anyone collecting forgiveness and mercy, hoarding it for themselves. With God there is abundance, always a free flow so that what is given away is always replenished.

As humans, we may never be more like God than when we live in this free-exchange of mercy and forgiveness, and when we do so without measuring, giving generously and gratuitously.

There is a certain humility in living within this divine rhythm, where we recognize our need for mercy and thus receive it with open hands, then, in our humility, we also extend mercy to others for the transformation of the world, refusing to judge others, but doling out generous helpings of healing mercy to those living under heavy weights.

Both receiving and giving away mercy are divine disciplines for the Lenten season.

Monday of the Third Week of Lent – March 8, 2010

2010-03-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

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.

The passage actually begins ahead of these verses. The people of Jesus’ hometown are amazed at the gracious words of Jesus when he reads from the prophet Isaiah. He connects his life and ministry to Isaiah’s long-awaited Messiah. It is likely that, knowing his lineage as Joseph’s son (v. 22, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”), these hometown folks wanted the benefits that come from having greatness nearby. In other words, their kind words about Jesus were self-centered.

In fact, their self-interest rises to the surface as Jesus speaks in the passage above. They have thought of Jesus as a private hero, one who came to bring personal blessings to the hometown folks. Their focus was upon themselves.

Now they hear Jesus speak into their narrowness with two stories from the Hebrew Scriptures that speak to God using non-Jews to bring a kingdom that impacts the entire world, not just Israel. A foreign widow and a foreign military official experienced God’s generosity. The widow was fed. The military official was healed. But the crowd could not celebrate these expressions of God’s grace. At the recounting of these stories, the hometown crowd turned furious.

The narrow nationalism that celebrated Israel’s place with God neglected to imagine that the Chosen People had a mission beyond their borders. In fact, Israel was chosen by God to bring God’s life to all people. Though their focus was upon themselves, God was about something much larger than provincialism.

The tendency in much religious practice is to make life tighter, narrower, and less spacious. We too easily ask, “What’s in this for me?”

“What blessings and benefits will come to me?”

Often churches couch prayer as the way to get things from God. We describe worship in consumer terms, thinking about we’ll get out of it. We talk about the benefits of membership in our church. We promise the personal benefits of being on mission or involved in serving.

Once we get inside a system or institution, it’s easy to lose sight of the wider concerns for which we were created. Rather than growing wider in mission, our vision narrows and grows self-interested. The kingdom of God is re-scaled to the kingdom of us. We lose the capacity to celebrate with hungry foreigners who are fed or leprous foreigners who are healed.

The kingdom God brings, on the other hand, is expansive and inclusive. It welcomes the outsider and extends generosity to those on the underside of life. This kind of expansiveness and inclusivity challenges us through the season of Lent.

The Third Sunday of Lent – March 7, 2010

2010-03-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Luke 13:1 – 9

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."
Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'
“'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'"

The story and parable have an odd and convoluted sense about them, especially for those of us disconnected by centuries from the events alluded to in the narrative.

First, notice that Jesus addresses a general group of people, “some present at that time.” The audience is not disciples, scribes and Pharisees, or the Sadducees, but a more general, more ambiguous assembly.

Some in the group mention to Jesus an incident in which some Galileans were repenting and offering animal sacrifice in the Temple when Pilate sent troops to murder them. He then mingled their blood with the blood of the sacrificed animals. It is a horrific story, but perhaps the crowd thought that the sins for which the Galileans were repenting were so great that they deserved their fate. Perhaps they thought this was God’s punishment on the Temple worshipers.

This thinking is still predominant today, thinking that says, “God will get you, one way or another, if you do something wrong!” Many believe that God keeps people in line by punishing humans, using any means necessary to keep us in line.

Jesus responded by mentioning a second historical incident, taking their logic a step further. He mentions a time when the tower of Siloam fell and killed seemingly innocent people. But to follow the logic of the crowd, those killed by the collapsing tower had some unresolved “sin” somewhere in their lives.

Jesus’ words are direct. He bluntly says, “No!” to the enquiries. He doesn’t explain his “no,” he simply dismisses the faulty theology that sees God’s punishment behind both moral and natural evil.

Jesus’ intent here, however, is not mainly theological. He is not primarily interested in straightening out the faulty theology of a crowd. His interest is personal and spiritual.

His real rebuke is upon the interest in speculation this crowd engages in. He has no interest in debate, in choosing sides and having a good dialogue about these matters of theology. Jesus is interested in transformation, in engagement and encounter. Speculative thinking doesn’t appeal to him, we can assume, because it does nothing to further the kingdom of God.

So the crowd has been interested in a speculative debate about the lives of others who have died untimely deaths. Suddenly, Jesus turns the conversation to their own lives. Twice he says, “You repent!”

Then he tells a parable that at first glance seems unrelated to the narrative. In fact, it is a parable that challenges the crowd to stop dealing in speculative pursuits that keep them unengaged in the matters that would make a difference in the world. Those interested only in debate and theological discourse are the trees that have not produced fruit. They are so narrow in their love of debate that they are no longer producing anything worthwhile in the world. Their lives are being wasted in meaningless chatter and head-games.

The questions they asked may have been important, but in their narrow-minded pursuit of those questions, they missed other matters that are crucial for life. Life with God is immensely practical, lived in the here-and-now. It is not a matter for speculation and debate.

God does not offer us a body of nice ideas that we are to debate and agree upon. God offers us a life-changing relationship of intimacy that has the capacity to change the world.

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent – March 6, 2010

2010-03-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

Luke 15:1 – 3; 11 – 32

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."
Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.
"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.
"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.' So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'
"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'
"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
"'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’"

This parable illumines itself. We need little prompting to identify with the characters in the story. Luke includes the story as the final part of a trilogy of stories about lost things. One question we might ask is, “Who is lost in this story?” Several threads of lostness are woven into the story.

I’m not so interested in following that track today, though. I’m thinking of the younger son and his desire to leave home, to “spend” what he had away from home until he came to nothing. In a sense, he spent what he had received from his family, from his father. The family resources sustained him for awhile, but they could not sustain him forever. At some point he had to find himself apart from his home. He had to discover the resources that were unique to his own experience and spiritual path.

Many of us don’t discover those deeper, spiritual resources within us until we come to the end of all the other resources we’ve inherited or been given or been taught through all of our years. It’s entirely too easy to rely on what someone else taught us or what we received from some significant person or life experience. We can draw on that resource and allow it to support us for a great long time, but we eventually come to the point where we’ve withdrawn from that person or experience everything it can impart to us.

At some time, we have to wrestle with God and in that struggle come to some sense of what is uniquely ours. We have to come to our own path. In fact, we may feel like we are making up a path as we go, and sometimes we are! In that struggle we begin to learn the unique shape of our own soul. We typically, though, have to come to the end of ourselves before that happens. We come face-to-face with our own emptiness.

When I come to this place – often! – in my life, I sometimes verbalize it to God as, “I’m so tired of myself!” That is, I feel worn out trying to live an illusion or attempting to do life with tools that no longer work. For me, it is a statement of surrender that indicates I’m at the end of me and ready to be, once again, at the beginning of God.

The younger son in the parable, far from being a disreputable role model, actually models the journey to wholeness very well. He takes what the family has given him, spends it, finds that it doesn’t buy happiness, comes to himself, and finally goes back home as a different person.

That’s a pretty good model for wholeness to consider during Lent.

Friday of the Second Week of Lent – March 5, 2010

2010-03-04T19:54:00.000-08:00

Matthew 21:33 – 46

"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 will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."
Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:
" 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?
"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but anyone on whom it falls will be crushed."
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

God has no interest in forcing a kingdom of Love and Transformation on people. The very act of forcing Love and Transformation on another would violate the essence of love and transformation. So God is patient, waiting long for persons to wake up to the reality of this alternative kingdom, sending all sorts of messengers and servants to announce the kingdom and to collect the fruit of the kingdom.

But we humans are fickle. Rarely do we allow that there could be another plan larger than our own. Infrequently do we admit that we are not masters of our own universe. We are a people who take charge, who have grown accustomed to our own way of working in the vineyard, and we will not be supplanted, even by God.

The parable is a testament to human stubbornness, to the human will that is set up for itself and against the larger and greater good for which God works.

It would be easy to get lost in the details of the parable, to be overcome by questions about the words and images. We might do well not to get immersed too deeply in those questions, but rather allow the obstinance and stiff-necked will of the parable’s tenants to remind us of our own resistances.

Within each of us there are pockets of resistance to God, parts of our lives that stand back from allowing ourselves too much intimacy with God. In the faith tradition of my upbringing, if you got too cozy with God, you would end up in Africa as a missionary. For some folks that was a good thing. For me and many others, it was frightening and helped keep us from a deeper intimacy with God.

Perhaps today you would notice ways you resist God. In the language of the parable, notice the “tenant” within you. When you hear certain sermons, you feel your insides tighten. When you read certain passages of Scripture, you quickly move to another. When you sense God might be leading you to a particular course of action, your get anxious.

For our spiritual health and well-being, it’s worth examining those places of resistance within us. If we’ll brave that difficult terrain, we’ll know our own inscape more thoroughly and be more capable of offering all of ourselves to God in love.

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent – March 4, 2010

2010-03-03T19:53:00.000-08:00

Mark 6:7 – 13

Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.
These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."
They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Jesus sent his twelve disciples into the world to carry on his life-work. They went out to do the very things Jesus himself was doing. In essence, they were his feet and hands, his mind and heart, his ears and lips and eyes as they went into the world.

The disciples had no special schooling for this Jesus-work of driving out demons and praying over the sick for healing. They had only their experience with Jesus, their apprenticeship to the One who did these things normally and naturally as a part of who he was.

The passage moves quickly to Jesus “sending out” the Twelve, but if we miss the first phrase, the rest of the narrative gets completely off track. Jesus did not first send out the disciples. He didn’t immediately set them on the road to replicate his ministry in the world.

First of all, he called the Twelve to himself. He drew them to his person. Without first coming toward Jesus, moving toward the One who is the Center of Life, these followers had nothing to give the world. They could give as much as fishermen and tax collectors and political/religious zealots – which was what the disciples were – had in their arsenal to give people; they could not, however, impart a radically new kingdom of love and transformation without first gathering themselves around the One who is the True Pole of the world.

This movement accurately describes our own spiritual journey as well. In order to offer ourselves as a transforming presence in the world, the first movement is always inward, toward the Center, toward the Core. In our zeal to “do something great for God,” we easily may miss this initial movement. We’re all about action, jumping into the world and getting busy, finding the needs and working to fix or advise or construct a solution.

Jesus models for us another way in which the initial movement is not outward toward the problem, but inward toward the Source of our life. At that Source, there is also re-source for us when we move outward. That is, when we have been to the Center, we have something to offer the world which is meaningful and life-giving. The disciples did not offer healing and authority over demons and Spirit-anointed preaching because any of that resided natively in them. They offered what they had received from being with Jesus.

If that sounds difficult to trust in practical terms, it is. For that reason, Jesus insisted that his disciples go out on their journeys without packing any of the usual resources: “No bread, no bag, and no money” so that people who encountered them would not attribute their power and authority to the physical resources they carried.

The primary resources given by Christ to those on the journey are spiritual resources, unseen to the common eye. From our time moving to the Center, to Jesus himself, we are given his very life and Spirit as our resource. As the Gospels demonstrate time after time, this resource is more than enough for wherever the journey takes us.

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent – March 3, 2010

2010-03-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

Matthew 20:17 – 28

Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!"
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. "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?"
"We can," they answered.
Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father."
When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

The passage lays the clear-headed, discerning way that Jesus dealt with life-matters alongside the illusions with which others operated on a daily basis.

Jesus recognized the path that has been laid before him, a difficult path of suffering, betrayal, death, and ultimate life. He also experienced the expectations others had for him, unrealistic as they were.

Jesus never shied away from speaking bluntly about his death. Suffering, betrayal, and death may sound ominous to us, but Jesus models for us a life-posture for moving into the most difficult and anxiety-producing moments of life.

Even as Jesus was stepping authentically, faithfully toward his own death and ultimate life, those around him were obsessed with trivialities. “Who will be seated in the places of power?” was one concern, which then led to the envy and indignation of others that the question was asked in the first place.

An obsessive concern for power and control reveals a self-centered agenda, a life-stance that cannot fully trust “unless I call the shots” or “unless I am in control.” Our culture is all about power and control, manipulating people and managing outcomes. We’ve made an industry out of helping people manipulate others, often blessing it as “good leadership.” Self-help and leadership books are easy enough to find in the bookstores, and it’s relatively easy to get together a good discussion around their principles with others who are on the leadership fast-track.

Then you have another group, equally self-interested, who are indignant that the first group would grapple for power. Indignation at the childish grasping of another is a not-so-subtle form of judgment. It fails to see the other as human. It looks away from the wounds that another carries. It judges the neighbor by my own personal measures of what is appropriate and inappropriate.

Jesus said that the ones who are great actually are the ones who mostly serve and who serve all. He’s not giving us a strategy for climbing the Western success-ladder: “Aspire to serve so you can be great!” He’s speaking, rather, of a life-style, a way of ordering life which truly transforms the world.

It is a way that grows out of a transformed heart and bears fruit by giving that transformation away in the world.

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent – March 2, 2010

2010-03-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

Matthew 23:1 – 12

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
"Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have people call them 'Rabbi.'
"But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

The Pharisees and teachers of the law have a bad Sunday School reputation. We’ve beat up on them for years, cast them as the “bad guys,” as those who were stubborn and opposed to Jesus, as those who stood in the way of God. In truth, their faith expression was much like ours, consisting in prescribed rituals and regulations for life.

Jesus’ main concern with Pharisee-religion was its preoccupation only with the externals of faith, with appearances. Pharisee-religion didn’t touch the heart or transform the deep inner recesses of a person.

The key line in the passage says simply, “Everything they do is done for people to see.” It’s easy to throw stones at the Pharisees, but when faith is distilled to, “Everything they do is done for people to see,” to some degree we are each culpable, too.

Jesus noticed that persons were drawn to a life with God out of self-serving motives. We humans seem much concerned with what others think of us, our appearance and image before other humans. We are not beyond using God to increase our standing with others.

Sometimes in a workshop, class, or conference, I’ll say something about how self-serving most of our faith expressions are. “How many of us would participate in some expression of faith if we thought we wouldn’t get anything out of it?” I’ve stopped being surprised at how many people find that to be a strange question, wondering why I would suggest that self-serving religion was wrong.

The word in contemporary spirituality for this over-the-top concern for image and appearance is the false self. The false self refers to a life of self-centeredness and illusion, given to the image we project into the world and the ways that we defend that image. “Everything they do is done for people to see,” is a statement of the false self, of an orientation to life that is focused on the self’s appearance.

Jesus ends the passage with a word about humility. Humility is not the thinking that “I am worthless” or some way to keep myself in a state of low self-esteem. Rather, humility suggests that I have the appropriate recognition of who I am, both my false self and my truest self, the self that is God-created and God-nourished.

Humility is the acceptance of myself as I am, regardless of what it looks like to others and regardless of what others think about it. Humility values my own God-created worth without needing the validation of other persons. The person who lives this life of humility also has tremendous inner freedom, that is, the inward resolve to live out their God-created essence no matter what the exterior climate is.

Monday of the Second Week of Lent – March 1, 2010

2010-02-28T14:50:00.000-08:00

Luke 6:36 – 38

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Those who glibly call Jesus a “good teacher” are extremely naïve or terribly misinformed. Those who put forth Jesus’ teachings as a way to get ahead in the world haven’t listened deeply to his teachings.

Try taking these words into your workplace, school, politics, or neighborhood group. You won’t get you very far in our culture’s framework. Mercy, non-judgment, forgiveness, generosity, and a refusal to condemn are not recipes for success, corporately or personally. None will help you meet your “life-goals.”

But Jesus has no interest in helping you or me succeed by the world’s standards. He is not interested in how you look at work, how you defend your image, or what it takes for you to get ahead.

He is interested in different kind of kingdom than the ones we busily build, manage, and defend. He is interested in transformation, in the way the inner landscape of our lives is shaped. He is interested in how our lives are surrendered in God’s name for the transformation of the world. Keeping your company mission statement won’t get you there. Getting the life of Jesus woven deeply into you will.

So the tools of this transformation, both personal and global, are simple and understated: mercy, non-judgment, forgiveness, generosity, and a refusal to condemn. They are not so much tools we take on willfully and utilize in life. They are qualities of God’s life that are intended for humans as well. They characterize the kingdom of God, the way God has intended that the world be ordered.

Our lives become increasingly God-like as we receive God’s infusion of mercy, non-judgment, forgiveness, generosity, and a refusal to condemn . . . and as we give it away.

The Second Sunday of Lent – Feb. 28, 2010

2010-02-27T19:21:00.000-08:00

Luke 9:28 – 36

About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." (He did not know what he was saying.)
While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him." When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen.

Eastern Orthodox Christians value this story of Jesus’ transfiguration, noting its central place in the gospel narratives. You could almost make the case that the first half of Jesus’ ministry was spent headed toward this mountain, where he “went up” with Peter, John, and James. When he came down the mountain, he began the deliberate move toward Jerusalem, betrayal, trial, and crucifixion.

I’ve been shaped by an understanding of the story that influences my spirituality. It is an ingredient in much of Orthodox spirituality.

One Orthodox interpretation of the transfiguration says that the real miracle in the story is not that Jesus’ appearance changed and that his clothes became bright. This interpretation insists that the real miracle in this story is that the disciples “became fully awake” and saw Jesus – finally! – as he really was all the time. When the disciples woke up, they didn’t see Jesus as they had seen him previously. They saw Jesus’ glory and humanity and divinity and essence.

In short, the disciples finally glimpsed the inner light that illumined his life 24/7. Previously, though, they had missed it. They had slept through it.

The “sleep” of the disciples, therefore, becomes a metaphor for spiritual drowsiness. It speaks to our inattentiveness, the way we sleep-walk through life, dull and unaware of the things around us and within us that are most real. Disciples, the very inner circle of Jesus, could live and walk and eat with Jesus, giving him their very lives, and not notice after all those months and years what was most real about him.

The story, then, suggests that at least some of the spiritual life is about waking up, about seeing what is real, seeing what is at the heart of life, seeing to the inner essence of things, people, and events.

We are all asleep to some degree. The Gospel invites us to wake up, so that the blind see, the lame walk, the lost are found, and the wounded are healed.

We are invited to a deeper level of spiritual awareness, a God-consciousness that transforms our lives and in the process transforms the world.

Saturday of the First Week of Lent – Feb. 27, 2010

2010-02-26T18:58:00.000-08:00

Matthew 5:43 – 48

"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, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Jesus holds the tension between neighbor and enemy, evil and good, righteous and unrighteous, “your own people” and “pagans.” Most of us see those poles as options, making a choice from each pair. In some religious systems, even God is seen as making a choice, favoring the neighbor, the good, and the righteous.

But it was not so for Jesus. He didn’t arbitrarily divide the world between the haves and the have-nots, the good and the bad, the holy ones and the sinners. Jesus didn’t see persons as “enemies” or as “unrighteous.” He saw persons who were broken and in need of God’s healing. He noticed how people were incomplete and in need of wholeness. He saw lives that were divided and he worked for their union.

Ultimately, God is not just a human person writ large, with super-special capabilities. God acts in ways we cannot fully comprehend. God’s generous love is extended to all people, even the “enemies” and the ones who “persecute” others. God’s extravagant giving extends to the evil and the good, to the righteous and the unrighteous. We may not be able to imagine it so, but this gratuity is a part of the nature of God. It is what makes God God.

This kind of generous love is distinctly characteristic of God. It means that God is perfectly God. “Perfect” (Greek, telios) means complete or whole. It suggests that a person or thing is entirely what it is supposed to be, complete, wholly itself. Thus, Jesus’ last line in v. 48 does not mean that we are supposed to be gods: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” It means that just as God is fully and wholly God, so we are each designed to be fully and wholly the person God created us to be.

My life is only complete and whole as I live into God’s intention for Jerry, not God’s intention for you or for anyone else. When I live fully into my God-intended design, I am “perfect” and in that sense I follow God’s lead.

What does it mean for me to live into my God-intended design? Likely it means that I grow to hold the same tensions that God holds and offer the same love that God offers. It means that I drop the descriptors that label some as righteous and some as unrighteous, some as neighbor and some as enemy, some as evil and some as good. God-like love offers oneself to neighbors and enemies, the evil and the good.

I know that it sounds like an unattainable goal; this, however, is the life for which you were created, the life with God for which you were made. Lent is a wonderful time to live more deeply into God’s intention for you.