Saturday in the First Week

Deuteronomy 26:16-19; Psalm 119:1-8; Matthew 5:43-48

Well, yesterday I said that God will forgive if I open the door and turn to Her.  But today I’m a bit daunted.  Jesus ups the ante here.  It’s not enough to stop actively harming others or wishing them harm; I’m supposed to love those who persecute me, those who hate me.

Am I supposed to tell my lgbt friends to love the people who will their death?

Am I supposed to tell people of color to love the racists who lynch them with guns or through the legal system?

Am I supposed to tell abused women to love their abusers, or the victims of human trafficking to love their enslavers?

Maybe.  I think Jesus wants me to get there.

But first, Jesus wants me to love those who persecute me and those I care about.  I can’t tell others to do what I won’t.  So: 

Am I willing to love the boys who threw bottles at me when I was a young lesbian?  

Am I willing to love the people who wouldn’t serve us when I went to restaurants with an African-American friend?  

Am I willing to love the bankers who impoverish millions and live in luxury?  

Am I willing to love Congress when they cut funds for the most vulnerable?

I know Jesus is right, along with all the spiritual masters of all the religions.  I know that closing my heart poisons it.  But i don’t know if I’m willing today.

I’d love to be inspiring here, to be a good example, to explain why this is good advice, life-giving advice.  I know it is, but I’m just not sure I’m ready.

How about you?

Friday in the First Week

Ezekiel 18:21-28; Psalm 130; Matthew 5:20-26

I didn’t grow up with a punishing God.  (I didn’t grow up with much of a God at all, though we went to church each week.)  I met this punishing God when I got sober in 1985.  All around me were lesbians and gay men trying to get sober, who couldn’t trust that God loved them and wanted to help them.  They had been told all their lives that God hated them, that God was eager to judge and condemn and punish us.  I was grateful for my lukewarm upbringing; I eventually found a God who loves me.

Ezekiel is quite clear that the hating God is not the true God.  “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?”  True, when we turn away from God and one another, we die; our spirits shrivel, our bodies suffer from excess, our minds close.  But God does not will this so much as announce it.  It’s what happens when we cut ourselves off from the source of life.

God wills forgiveness.  “If the wicked turn away from all their sins that they have committed . . . none of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered against them.”   That simple.  If I turn and stop what I’ve been doing, God will start over with me.  If I forgive, God forgives me.  If I turn and repent, God forgives me.  God is more desperate to forgive than I am sometimes to be forgiven!

That’s not just a good idea.  That’s my experience in life.  If I will turn, God hits the reset button.  I won’t give the whole testimony here, but let’s say I have traveled pretty far down the road of transgression.  When I asked for help, God showed up.  Over and over and over, God shows up when I stop barring the door.

Open the door today.  Let God forget the past.  Turn, and live.

Thursday in the First Week

Esther (Apocrypha) 14:1-6,12-14; Psalm 138; Matthew 7:7-12

I struggle with Jesus’ teaching here.  I so want to believe that if I ask directly and whole-heartedly I will be heard.  I believe in the power of prayer.

But I was trained by many people I respect to ask only that “Thy will be done.”  That prayer also puts me in the presence of God, but in a very different relationship.  Instead of a pleading child, I’m a submissive one.  Somehow, I turn from that to be an adult in the world.  I can go out confidently, knowing that I’m aligning myself with God.  At least that’s the theory.

I think of Jesus in the Garden, who asks that the cup pass him by, but also affirms God’s will if it is different from his.  He prayed until his sweat turned to blood, but an angel appeared to give him strength (Luke 22:39-46).  That’s the whole spectrum of prayer right there, in one moment.  He prays with all he has for what he, himself, wants; and at the same time, he prays to affirm God’s will no matter what.  This is not a submissive strategy, though it is a recognition that he is not in charge.  It is honest, trusting, direct.  

I’d rather learn that my asking, knocking, seeking will bear the fruit I want.  But that’s not how it works.  Jesus tells us in today’s passage that we will receive “good things,” but not necessarily the things we want.  Jesus asked for a reprieve; instead he got resurrection.

The real problem with my prayers is not that they lack fervor, or that they lack humility.  The problem with my prayers is that I have such a small vision of what is good for me, what God has in mind.  I have to seek and knock with all my heart to open myself to what God might do, can do, will do.  My Lenten transformation begins with asking God to do what I cannot do for myself.

Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine!

Wednesday in the First Week

Jonah 3:1-10; Psalm 51:11-18; Luke 11:29-32

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.  Don't turn away and cut me off.  Help me to be who you would have me be.  I will tell others what you've done for me and what you want from us all.  Deliver me, and I will proclaim your love and wondrous power.  Give me words to tell of you.  Open the hearts of my listeners, that they may hear you speak through me.  Turn us all, give us the grace to repent and renew.
I know, God, that I have sometimes run from you.  I have more often simply ignored you speaking through my conscience or the counsel of others.  I know that sometimes I ask you for guidance and then refuse to listen.
I know that sometimes my "discernment" is really stalling, refusing to commit to using the gifts you've given me,  I know all that, but knowledge doesn't go all the way.  I need you to act in me, to create this clean heart that I know you want.
Dear God, I know that I am part of a people rushing to destroy the creation you made and love.  I know that destroying creation calls destruction on me, and on all species and generations.  Please, give me the grace to stop.  Give us the grace to stop.
Jesus, I won't ask you for a sign.  I've seen it, heard it, felt it.  I ask you instead to have mercy on me, on us, miserable sinners.
Give me the joy of your help again, and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.

Tuesday in the First Week

Isaiah 55:6-11; Psalm 34:15-22; Matthew 6:7-15

Today, Jesus teaches us how to pray.  The words are so familiar, but reading them with the whole passage changes them.  I’m struck by the fact that the only clause of the prayer that Jesus elaborates on is the prayer for forgiveness.  He doesn’t move through each clause and expand on it (unless you see his whole life as an exposition of this prayer); he talks about the need to forgive if we would be forgiven.

Perhaps this is because this is the only part of the prayer that makes God’s action so clearly linked to our own.  God’s name is hallowed, and we affirm that.  We desire that God’s kingdom come and Her will be done.  We ask for bread, and for safety from testing and evil.  We ask God simply to act.

Only in this area do we link God’s work with our own decision: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  Why is this?  Jesus seems to say, this is a law of the universe.  This is how it works.  If you forgive, you will be forgiven by God.  So even here we affirm what already is.  Our prayer does not make God act differently, so much as it enlists us in God’s purpose in the world.

I’m always challenged by this part of the prayer.  I want God to forgive me more than I forgive others - more deeply, more generously, more completely.  I want a higher standard than the one I manage to achieve.   But that’s not the law of the universe.  I will only get what I give.

Forgiveness doesn't mean endorsement of actions.  It doesn’t mean forgetting.  It means letting go, releasing my fear, and starting over.

Each time I forgive, I’m stunned by the way the universe opens to me.  I see the person I have forgiven in a different light, with gifts and beauty that I couldn’t see before.  And when I see their gifts and beauty, I am enriched.  I treat them as blessed, and so they treat me that way.  They blossom before my eyes.

Of course, the blossom can wilt.  They may injure me again, or I may need to apply more doses of forgiveness to keep the blossom open.  But I’m learning that forgiveness opens my world.  I cease being a prisoner of resentment and fear, and venture back into the beautiful world.  My loving God does indeed release me.

Where are you withholding forgiveness today?  What would it take for you to let go?  Pray for the willingness to forgive.  Pray for those you cannot, will not forgive today (including yourself).  Pray for all those walking this road with you this Lent, that we may be forgiven.

Monday in the First Week

Leviticus 19:1-2,11-18; Psalm 19:7-14; Matthew 25:31-46
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  It sounds like a cliche or a joke, but I mean it when I say I need a higher standard.  Over my lifetime I have neglected my health, overlooked my emotional needs, abandoned myself and my beliefs, betrayed myself in subtle and overt ways.  I put up with miserable living conditions and poisoned my body with various substances.  And I have too often loved my neighbor in the same way.
As I struggle to love others more fully, I find others who push me to love myself better.  I'm grateful for Elizabeth, who will lean on me to get that checkup or test, who says it's important to have a decent bed or shoes that support me.  I'm grateful for others who help me make good choices in food and exercise, and who help me use my gifts for the good of others.
But how do I extend that care to loving others better?  Where does self-care become self-centeredness?  This is not a matter of balancing my needs against those of others, giving others my excess above my comfortable lifestyle.  That's not loving them as myself.  It has to begin with changing my vision so I can see that they are me, or I am them.  Our fates are intertwined.
The commands from Leviticus are a code of neighborly conduct.  They concern how I am to treat those with whom my life is intertwined - not just those I would choose to have it be, but those who are inescapably part of my world.  The children who need education, the adults who need decent wages, the citizens who need clean water and electricity and decent roads, the people further away who are losing their land to global warming and rising seas - our lives are one fabric.
How will your Lenten transformation change the way you treat your neighbor?  Where can you start today?

First Sunday in Lent

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

Today we hear Mark’s quick summary of Jesus’ initiation and the beginning of his ministry.  I love the brevity and clarity of this version.  We see that baptism, testing, and mission are part of one whole.

Jesus was driven (not led, as in Matthew and Luke) to the desert.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit is a dove, sometimes She’s a kick in the pants.  

Mark doesn’t tell us what happened there.  No question and answer period, no Scripture quoting contest.  It reminds me that we can never really anticipate the shape our tests and temptations might take.  I might have answers for some, but find myself tripped up by one I didn’t expect.  During Elijah’s forty days, and Moses’ forty days, they were tempted by despair.  That’s a big one for many of us, I suspect, as big as power or glory or even food.  I can be tempted to doubt that God is with me.

I like to think that Jesus sweated and doubted and complained like the rest of us would.  In Mark’s version he does not know he’s special.  We don’t hear about virgin births or announcements by magi.  This guy shows up out of nowhere, and he finds himself swept up into God’s story.  But being swept up means not being in control.  That’s what he had to face in the desert.  The good news he brought was not that he was divine and special; the good news was that God is with us, active and powerful and wildly in love with us.  But bringing that message cost him.  The baptism and the desert together got him ready for what was coming.

And so, as he stuck it out, the angels took care of him.  As they do for us, when we face into our vulnerability and need of God.  As they will for you.  

But this gift is not for you to lounge around with.  It’s food for the mission with which you are entrusted.  We all have a message, a mission.  it may be to your neighbors, or to those at work, or your faith community.  It may be to your family.  But you have it.  Find it, and tell it today.

(Still in Princeton, preaching and leading a forum.  More prayers, please!)

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 86:1-11; Luke 5:27-32

Yesterday we heard Matthew’s version: today we are reminded again that Jesus calls those who know they need help.  But that’s not a license to avoid transformation.  It’s a starting place, not a home.  We are called to repentance, to metanoia, to turning.

But what is this repentance?  What will it involve?  I want to know.  Is there a checklist somewhere?

Sort of.  We heard it two days ago.  Pick up my cross.  Give up my life to save my life.  It sounds just vague and extreme enough to be romantic.  But Isaiah is more specific.  

Take a real sabbath - no shopping, no cleaning, no watching violence for entertainment, no business deals.

Stop blaming and gossiping.

Share your food and shelter, and work for decent medical care.

Very specific.  Not very romantic.  That’s the daily cross.  That’s turning.  

And what do I get?  Ah, we heard that too two days ago.  I get life.  I get guidance, and refreshment, and renewal.  I get my own needs taken care of, in ways I can’t anticipate.  I get to be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.  I get eternal life, here and now.

This is the fast that feeds me, the cross that lifts me.  This is the death that leads to eternal life.  

God, give me the courage to follow you today.  Help me be specific and clear.

For a beautiful chant of Isaiah 58:11, go to ITunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sounds-eternal-meditative/id259267387

(Today we are leading a quiet day at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, NJ.  Please pray for us and for the participants, that we hear the message of life.)

Friday after Ash Wednesday

Friday

Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 51:1-10; Matthew 9:10-17

The transformation we are called to during Lent - and every day - is not simply to practices of piety or worship.  Isaiah reminds us that transformation means changing our hearts, and changing how we treat the most vulnerable among us.  Fasting or worship that does not lead us to economic justice, to radical welcome and equality, is just posturing.  God calls us to fast from oppressing and exploiting others, from neglecting one another, from violence of all sorts.

In a past life I was an angry political activist and student of politics.  When I found Jesus I was so absorbed in my own relationship that I walked away from politics beyond reading the paper.  I found my way to helpful ministries, collecting food for food pantries and the like, but I never integrated my commitment to justice with my life as a “professional religious person.”

Now I have another chance.  I know that my best efforts come through words rather than hands-on work, but that means I have to struggle to educate myself and to share what I learn.  My spiritual formation this spring includes attending the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meetings in March.  My blog that week will likely be about what I find there.  But long before, and long after, I need to study and listen and write about what I learn.  Please pray for me to listen to Isaiah.  I will pray that all of us, all who are reading and discussing these passages during Lent, will find new ways to integrate faith and action.

And be reassured: Jesus came to call the sinners.  When you fall down or fall short, know that you belong at the table along with those you have failed.  Come to the table - and bring someone else along!

Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Luke 9:18-25

Choose life.  But how?

American culture is full of advertisements that encourage us to choose life - through bigger cars, bigger meals, bigger houses.  Choose "the good life," and don't forget the beer.  The message is twisted to serve something less than life, but the ads speak to our deep desire for fullness, meaning, connection.  We desire life.  But what is that life?

The passage from Deuteronomy assures us that life means prosperity.  If we turn from God, we will find ourselves without what we need to flourish and thrive.  The choice seems clear.

Jesus, however, muddies the waters.  The King of Paradox, he tells us that the path to life leads through death, that we must lose our lives to save them.  What does it mean, then, to choose life?

As we begin our Lenten journey, we set out on a road whose signs are radically different not only from contemporary culture, but from our basic animal instincts.  The animal in me knows warmth, and comfort, and company are good, and loss, danger, and pain are bad.  Jesus asks us to choose the hard road anyway, not to escape our animal selves but to carry them to a place they would never choose.  We don't know where we're going, or what the road looks like, but Jesus says it doesn't look like we expect life to look.  We are going to have to work to spy out life on this journey, right up to the tomb.  This will take faith - faith that Jesus is not a crazy man, faith that God loves us in leading Her people through hard and scary places, faith that the promise is real.

Choose life.  Choose the hard road that leads somewhere amazing.   Pick up your cross, whatever it is today, because it's the only way to get down the road.

Lenten Challenge!!!

Do you think you're a Companion of Mary the Apostle?

Some of you have supported us for these first two years in many ways, and have participated in groups and events. But being a Companion may seem nebulous or far away, like something only Elizabeth and Shane do.  
Some people, though, are beginning to think they're Companions too. They've been living by the covenant on our website, or a covenant they wrote that shares those values, and they identify with the charism statement (the spirit of the Companions). They aren't going to move in with us, but we're pretty sure they're Companions.
So we wonder, are there others out there?

We want to hear from you about what difference it makes in your life that the Companions are here. This may mean reading the page, or sharing the reflections. It may mean you've come to a retreat or quiet day, or had us to your church. It may mean that you feel connected in some way you haven't named before. Or it may be a longing for more connection. Whatever it is, we want to hear.

Maybe you don't have an answer today. Keep asking each day in Lent, and see what happens by Easter. 
We are so grateful for your engagement and response. We want to deepen that in any way we can. 
Blessings on your Lenten journey!

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2,12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Today we begin our journey to the Cross, the tomb, and resurrection.  Today is solemn and challenging.  Today millions of Christians will have their foreheads marked with ashes, a sign of mortality and humility.  Many Episcopal churches are now offering “ashes to go” at train and bus stations, in front of their churches, at shopping centers.
So this reading from Matthew has always struck me as not only misplaced, but even a bit bizarre for today.
“When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by God who is in secret” (Mt 6:17).
Maybe it doesn’t even apply.  Most people who get ashes will likely not fast.  They will either go to church in the morning and from there go on to a busy work day, in which they need energy, or they will come to church in the evening after that busy day.  But even in the monastery where we live, in which some will be fasting, the day will begin with ashes on the forehead.
How can we hear Matthew in a way that does not make a mockery of our practice? Or, how can we practice our faith in a way that would not make Jesus despair?
“Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12).
The ashes are not the question.
The question is, what does this day mean to you?  As you go to work, where will your heart be?  If you take the day off for prayer, how will you spend it?
Lent is solemn and challenging.  It is not time off from the rest of the world, but a time to renew our lives in the midst of the world.  It is time to return with all your heart.
We manifest our faith not by the mark on our foreheads, but by the quality of our lives.
What will your life show today?

Sermon at the Monastery, Transfiguration Sunday 2015

Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine!

I’m a glory junkie.  There’s no getting around it.

I love the word.  I love the images of glory.  I love to feel the light on my face when my eyes close in prayer.  I love being near God’s glory, and I love giving glory to God.  I love glory.

So the Transfiguration has always been a special feast for me, my favorite after Easter.  I don’t just imagine the light shining from Jesus, I feel it.  My heart fills, my breath gets a little short, my spirits lift.  All that glory.

But glory is not something you can capture.  Part of the power of epiphanies is their fleeting quality.  You glimpse God in another person or in creation or in your prayer, but then you blink and it’s gone.  And it’s supposed to be that way, I think.

When I visited Israel I went to the Mount of Transfiguration.  I was so excited, so full of anticipation.  But when we arrived I found a huge church had been erected there.  It was a nice enough church, big enough for the hordes of tourists to file through and pray.  Outside were gardens, some with covered areas like arbors to afford a little shade.  It was a beautiful shrine.  But I couldn’t find the transfigured Jesus there.  It was as though I had read a really good book and then I went to see the movie.  The movie didn’t tell the story the way I saw it in my mind, and its solidity blocked my own version.  I found it hard to find the Transfiguration there at the shrine.

Peter is only the first in a long line.

All around me on that mountain were people taking photographs, trying to build a shrine on line. 

When very special moments occur in our lives, they can be bigger than we can take in.  So we try to get them to a size we can live with.  

A wedding video, a scrapbook, or just a rock from a river.

They’re great, but they aren’t the same as the event.

In fact Peter’s desire to capture the moment, to bring it to a size he can comprehend, runs the risk of missing it altogether.  God breaks in to stop him, because God has a bigger plan for Peter than building a shrine.

God has bigger plans for us too.

The scary part of the Tranfiguration for me comes when I remember that Jesus became what we are that we might become what he is.  Jesus is God incarnate, showing me my divinity.  

The Transfiguration is about God’s glory in me, in all of us, as much as it is about Jesus.

It’s easy to be awed by the glory.  It’s easy to “work for Jesus.”  We can build human shrines as well as shrines of stone.  But what if we are meant to be transformed, to shine?

I believe many people in and out of our churches want to experience the divine, the transcendent, the holy.  And I believe we long for healing and transformation, for a new heaven and earth.  But we also fear it.  Transformation is a big word for change.  Conversion, a churchy word for change.  And change is scary, even when it’s enticing.  

So we live between the hunger for the glory, and the fear of what it might do to us.

Jesus’ transfiguration is not just a moment of power and might.  He is profoundly vulnerable in his exposure.  I don’t know what it was like for him, but he’s shining like a beacon.  I don’t believe he was just cool and calm.  He will not be so vulnerable again until he is glorified on the cross.

Transformation is like that.  We’re deeply vulnerable at those times.

The most perilous times in the life of a lobster come when it has to shed its shell.  It leaves the shell, and for a while it is soft and easy prey until the new, larger shell hardens.  If the lobster could choose, it might choose not to leave its old shell at all.

But it can’t choose that.  If the lobster doesn’t leave its shell, it will die.  It would be too big for its shell, and the pressure would kill it.  

The lobster doesn’t, as far as we know, deliberate about this.  It just leaves the old shell and takes its chances.

But we get to choose.  We can hold off growth forever, if we choose.  We can die in our old shells, stuck as our 5-year-old self or our teenage self or our bitter, resentful self.  And we can build shrines to some ideal vision of Jesus.

Or we can listen to God, pick up our cross, and join Jesus in the journey of transformation.  

Just before the Transfiguration, Jesus told the crowd that any who want to follow him will have to take up their cross and lose their life.  After it, he tells the three not to tell anyone about what they’ve seen.  We can’t really tell the story of the glory without these two pages.

The biggest danger for Jesus is that people will make him so different from themselves, so holy, that they exempt him from humanity.  He came to show us our condition, both the glory and the misery.  He did not come to be special.  He came to undergo everything we undergo, to show us what we do to God when we crucify one another.  He could not be exempt.

Shrines get in the way of Jesus’ message.  Whether they are buildings, or liturgies, or theological treatises, or denominations, shrines isolate and contain what cannot be contained.  They substitute devotion for picking up our own cross.

We’re not meant to hang on to the glory.  We’re meant to journey with Jesus.  That journey will take us to glory, but the route leads back down the mountain and up a hill.

What is the transformation calling you this Lent?  

What is the shrine you’ve been tempted to build instead?

What do you have to do to let go of it and follow Jesus?

May God give you the strength and courage to follow Jesus into glory.