A Daily Lent

Is God Absent? Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 3, 2020 During the current moment’s COVID-19-induced alteration of rhythms and life-practices, with the onset of fear and uncertainty, I’m hearing people talk about God’s apparent absence. “ Where is God now? ” “ How could God allow this pandemic? ” “ Why doesn’t God do something? ” All are legitimate questions, probably ones that have crossed all our minds at some point, a quick, fleeting thought. Perhaps those expressions are healthy in a time like this. I know they certainly don’t shake God. In fact, I’m confident they say more about us than they say about God. You’ve heard people say, perhaps, “God showed up in this situation or in that event!” We have our own notions of how God is present, sometimes measured by some external results that come from the event, or sometimes by our own goose-bumpy feelings about the situation. Not to completely discredit any of that, but God is bigger than all those feelings or ta...

God in the Desert Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 30, 2020 Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic seems to be all that is on anyone’s mind at the moment. We are experiencing a sobering moment in time. Where is God in this moment? Where is God in any desert experience? It is one thing to affirm in normal times that God is present always and everywhere. In these edge experiences that press hard on us, though, we may find that our usual felt experience of God is missing. We don’t have the same sense of God as we ordinarily do. Often we find that what Cummings calls, “the purifying action of the desert experience” centers around our notions of God. In other words, the expectations and beliefs we have built up around God – who God is, how God is, where God is, and so on – in ordinary days gets tested, even purified, and the desert experience presses hard on those assumptions. In fact, a shift in our image of God may very well be what comes from a desert experience such as th...

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent Daily Reading : John 8:51 – 59 Focus Passage : “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. (Jn. 8:56 – 59) “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” (Ex. 3:14). God was revealed as pure Being, complete Essence. I A...

Monday of the Third Week of Lent Daily Reading : Luke 4:24 – 30 Focus Passage : "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. (Lk. 4:24 – 28) The passage actually begins ahead of these verses. The people of Jesus’ hometown were amazed at the gracious words of Jesus when he read from the prophet Isaiah. He connected his life and ministry to the long-awaited Messiah of Isaiah’s prophecy. Knowing his lineage as Joseph’s son (v. 22, “ Isn’t this Joseph’s s...

Thursday of the First Week of Lent Daily Reading : Matthew 7:7 – 12 Focus Passage : “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. (Matt. 7:7 – 8) Jesus did not prescribe a formula for success in prayer – as if there were such a thing! He described the tensions we hold in prayer. He invited us to hold the tensions between asking and receiving, seeking and finding, knocking and entering. Each pole has its place in our prayer, in our relating to God. You might think of it this way: There is a time to ask of God, as well as a time to open oneself to receive what God gives. There is a time to seek relentlessly, and a time to celebrate that which has been found. There is a time to knock on many different doors, and a time to see which doors are open already, then walk through them. In all, the three phrases remind us t...

Saturday after Ash Wednesday Daily Reading : Luke 5:27 – 32 Focus Passage : 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. (Lk. 5:27 – 28) Jesus was invitational. He did not influence by coercion. He didn’t force followers. Rather, he extended invitations. He invited persons to follow him, to take on his way of seeing the world and his way of living in the world. He invited those he met to full personhood, becoming completely who God created them to be, even as he embodied what it meant to be fully human and fully God. The human response to his invitation varies person-by-person. This tax collector, on the underside of social acceptability, got up, left everything, and followed Jesus. For all of us, there is some kind of “leaving” involved as we follow Jesus. There is a movement from one way of being to a new stance of being with G...

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent John 5:17 – 23 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. I am su...

Matthew 26:14 - 25 One of the Twelve went to the chief priests. His name was Judas Iscariot. He asked, "What will you give me if I hand Jesus over to you?" So they counted out 30 silver coins for him. From then on, Judas watched for the right time to hand Jesus over to them. It was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The disciples came to Jesus. They asked, "Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover meal?" He replied, "Go into the city to a certain man. Tell him, 'The Teacher says, "My time is near. I am going to celebrate the Passover at your house with my disciples." ' " So the disciples did what Jesus had told them to do. They prepared the Passover meal. When evening came, Jesus was at the table with the Twelve. While they were eating, he said, "What I'm about to tell you is true. One of you will hand me over to my enemies." The disciples became very sad. One after the other, the...

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