Tuesday in Holy Week

Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 71:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 12:20-36

We just had this Gospel reading a week ago, on Sunday Lent V.  Lazarus has been raised, and the authorities are plotting.  Mary has anointed Jesus for death.  Now more people are coming to see him, even as his time is ending.  The range of emotions must have been staggering.  Some are feeling wonder and hope as they hear of Jesus for the first time.  Others are turning from him, disappointed that he is not acting like the Messiah they expected.  Some are likely trying to talk him out of going forward.  Others are clamoring to spend time with him while they can.  Some may have drifted away out of fear of associating with him.

And some are quietly staying and caring for him and for one another.  Some are cooking meals and making sure the rooms are clean and fires are lit.  Some are sitting with him and listening as he struggles with his future.  Some are singing psalms to him, with him, for him, to ease his mind.  

Some of them - some of us - may have all these feelings, even as we cook and clean and prepare and pray.  We may spend this week longing for a change in the story - in Jesus’ story, and in our own.  We may be angry.  We may withdraw into our intellects, understanding why this death “had to be.”  Or we may just love, just hurt, just be glad for a few moments together.

Spend some time today letting yourself feel this week deeply.  Tell Jesus what you feel, whatever it is.  Tell him what you want him to know before he departs.  If you aren't sure of the words, take a look at Psalm 71.  Is there a verse there that feels right?  If not, write one.

I have been sustained by you ever since I was born; from my mother’s womb you have been my strength; my praise shall be always of you.  (71:6)  Amen.

Monday in Holy Week

Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 36:5-11; Hebrews 9:11-15; John 12:1-11

Today’s Gospel is so poignant, so powerful.  I wanted to show you - show you how Mary of Bethany loved Jesus, without pride or shame; show you how our passion is holy.  I wanted to show you that Jesus’ decision to wash the feet of the disciples follows from Mary being willing to anoint his feet.  I want to suggest that the extravagance of love that Jesus shows is met by Mary’s extravagance, in a way that the male disciples cannot yet understand or imagine.

But when I went to Google Images, nothing felt right.  Icons were too formal to convey the passion of this moment.  More “realistic” portrayals often showed only Mary and Jesus, as though Mary did this in private or with only Martha looking.  But it matters that the other disciples see it.  It matters that others see our passion for Jesus and for one another.

And the ones that were realistic, and showed the whole scene?  Well, some of them come close.  Those almost embarrassed me - showing me how far I still have to go to be comfortable with my passion.  

So here I am, stuck between my passion and the Passion.  Heart bursting with love and dread, unsure how to show either.  Unable - unwilling - to stop what’s coming, wanting only to love in whatever way each moment presents itself.  Bereft of words.

Who can I anoint in your place, Jesus?  How can I show you my love this week?  Will I make the time, take the time, to sit at your feet and honor what you are about to do?  Please, let me sail past the shoals of busyness and distraction and glide into your harbor of love.  

Buy some essential oil of myrrh and frankincense.  Open it.  Dab it lightly into your hands.  Touch someone you love - forehead, hands, feet.  We cannot touch Christ except through one another now.  Glide into the harbor of love.

Palm Sunday

John 12:12-16; Psalm 118:1-2,19-29;Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11 (Note: I am not reading the passion gospel, but the Liturgy of the Palms.  The passion will be with us soon enough.)

We have a scandal in our midst.  Our faith is centered on one who is blessed, and the blessed one is crucified.  What are we to make of that?  

We can call it irony, but it’s not ironic.  We can call it tragedy, but it’s much more than that.  We can call it paradox, which is a nice version of contradiction.  But all of those evaluations of this moment rest on a mistake.  There’s no irony here, no tragedy, not even really a paradox.  There’s simply blessing.

When we hear the word “blessed” in the Bible, we are actually using one word for two distinct concepts.  In the Beatitudes, we hear that the poor, the humble, the sorrowful are blessed.  That’s a good word.  In Greek it is makarios.  It means to be happy, joyous.  It’s good to hear Jesus tell us that things will not always be as they are, that we can turn around and rejoice, that we will be blessed.

But that’s not the kind of blessing that Jesus gets.  When the crowds cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the word Luke uses is eulogemenos, one receiving a blessing.  The Greek in turn is translating the Hebrew barakh, which means to kneel, to receive a blessing.

Blessing, in this sense, does not make the blessed one happy.  It makes them holy.  It marks them off, it consecrates them.  To be blessed is to be a sacrifice.

Jesus was blessed, not as one who gets to have a quiet life with a wonderful family, but as bread and wine are blessed.  Jesus was marked as God’s own, as a sign of God’s power, but not for his own enjoyment.  

He really meant it. He did not come to do his own will, but that of God.  He was blessed.

Being blessed means walking into the chaos of the world.  It means being a sign of God in the midst of a world that defies the power and love of God.  

Being blessed in this sense is not a privilege of those of us who go into places of pain to serve others.  Being blessed in this sense begins with those who are there, in the center of the pain.  They are the signs of God, walking in the pitiful procession that leads to the cross.  We, who the world considers more blessed than they, are in fact the spectators on the journey into Jerusalem.  It is the poor, the homeless, the victims of rape and violence, the addicts, who walk in that procession. 

We’ve each been blessed.  We were blessed at our baptism, marked as Christ’s own.  We were dedicated to God’s service, like the vessels we will eat and drink from in a minute.  We were given to be poured out, like the wheat and the wine.  We were blessed.  We are blessed.

Being blessed means walking with Jesus into the places he walked into.  This week we will remember him in the temple, in the prison, and in the tomb.  But remembering him in those places is not enough.  

     Today there are others who defy the Temple, the centers of religious power that turn toward serving themselves rather than God.  We need to walk with them as they call us back to true worship and service.  

There are people, faces of Christ, in prison and serving those in prison.  We need to walk with them, and sit with them, in the black holes of despair and anger.  

There are people on their way to death, victims of state violence and victims of private exploitation to the point of death.  We need to walk with them, to protest their treatment, to lift the cross from their shoulders.

And there are people carrying less obvious, yet excruciating burdens, among us and within us.  We need to walk with them too.

We need to do this because we have been blessed.  

We need not fear this blessing.  This blessing is good news.  For God goes before us and with us, leading us into places we might rather avoid.  God carries us into the darkest corners of the world, and the darkest corners of our hearts.  But God goes with us, and gives us what we need to walk this road.  We can even celebrate, as God carries us to joy and wonder beyond our wildest dreams.  But we only get there by being blessed.

May you be blessed every day of your life and beyond.

Saturday in the Fifth Week

Ezekiel 37:21-28; Psalm 85:1-7; John 11:45-53

Here we have an object lesson in what happens when we try to save our lives.  

Caiaphas, I believe, is not eager to kill.  He is not bloodthirsty.  He is afraid, and he’s trying to shepherd his people.  He knows that a popular movement is likely to bring down Roman wrath, and he wants to avoid that.  He’s trying to minimize the damage caused by Jesus.  He can see the disaster awaiting them, as surely as Jesus sees crucifixion coming.  But, unlike Jesus, he thinks he can hold it off by going along.  He no longer believes in God’s direct care for the people, or in miracles.  He thinks it’s up to him to save the people.

He’s wrong.  Or, he’s right about the Romans, but wrong about God.

In another 40 years another uprising will indeed lead to Roman destruction.  The Temple will be destroyed, Jerusalem will be in ruins, thousands will die.  A new diaspora will begin, and it will take another 1900 years for Israel to be a political entity.  Caiaphas is right about what happens when you anger the imperial powers.

But Caiaphas is wrong about God.  He can’t know that out of the ruins God will make a new form of Judaism, centered not on the Temple but on the Torah.  Modern Judaism grows out of the Pharisees and manages to keep the covenant under centuries of exile and oppression.  Caiaphas, a priest of the Temple, would never look to the Pharisees for resurrection.  Caiaphas thinks it’s up to him.

This belief leads him to betray his own commitments and values, bit by bit.  He wants to hang on to what he knows so much that he becomes willing to kill for it.  

This is what it means to lose our lives when we try to save them.  We may keep breathing, but we slowly cease to be the people God made us to be.  We become idolators, gradually at first and then more fully.  We confuse the temple with the God we meet there.  We confuse our nation with God.

Usually this is so subtle we don’t see it.  When faced with a tight church budget, we cut outreach and community service to keep our buildings going.  When family budgets are hit, we “can’t afford” to pledge to church or charity.  We give up community service to “relax” in front of the TV.  We swallow our ideas, our thoughts, our feelings to “survive” a horrible boss or difficult spouse.  And one day, we’re alone - in our big crumbling church, in our house with the curtains drawn, in our cars and offices and bedrooms.  And we might wonder, “why isn’t God helping us?”

God is not a tool for our purposes.  God is not an assistant.  And God is never done creating and renewing.  If I find myself increasingly alone or boxed into tight spots, I find it helps to ask if perhaps I’ve misread the will of God.  Maybe, just maybe, God has a better plan for me than hanging on to what I have now.  But I have to be willing to let go to find out.

As we enter Holy Week and witness the power of letting go, take some time to see where you are trying to save your life as you know it.  Ask about the cost.  Then ask God to show you the path of life.  It will likely look like death.  Go anyway.

Friday in the Fifth Week

2 Kings 4:18-21, 32-37; Psalm 17:1-8; John 11:1-7, 18-44

Why did Jesus weep?  Why did John make a point of his being “greatly disturbed”?  When John so often portrays Jesus as knowing everything, it’s not much of a leap to hear him as above such strong emotion.  But here, as elsewhere, John tells us again that Jesus can indeed have a troubled heart, even as he’s confident of his part in the dream of God.

Usually, people refer to Jesus' great love for Lazarus as the reason for the tears.  The other prominent reason is his feeling for Mary and Martha, for their pain.  These are both good reasons to weep.  But there might be another.

The raising of Lazarus is the final nail in Jesus’ coffin, so to speak.  From here on out, he is too dangerous to the Judean leadership for them to let him live.  So even as Jesus brings healing and new life to Lazarus, he knows he will take his place in the tomb.  

He doesn’t want to die.  He is human as well as divine.  His soul is troubled, he is greatly disturbed.  But he is clear - he cannot turn from this.  He is the resurrection and the life, not merely a healer or a holy man.  He can only bring resurrection where death reigns, and so he must become dead, become death, to triumph over death.  He’s willing, but he doesn’t want it.

He loves Lazarus.  He loves Mary and Martha.  He loves his life.  But he isn’t raising Lazarus because he loves him, or Mary, or Martha.  He’s doing it for the same reason he healed the paralytic by the pool, or the blind man: to glorify God, to show what God is up to through him.  He loves God, and God in himself, in a way that can only be called divine.

As he approaches Jerusalem for the last time, this love will sustain him through the passion and through the gates of hell.  I can only be awed by this kind of love in a human being.

Have you ever known a love so strong that it could revive something that seemed dead?  Have you ever been revived by that kind of love?  When have you breathed life into another’s heart?

Thursday in the Fifth Week

Genesis 17:1-8; Psalm 105:4-11; John 8:51-59

A few years ago I started to think about how I wanted to live, what I wanted for myself and for others.  What do I stand for, what do I hope to make manifest in the world?  The best I could say was that I stand for the possibility of communities of people encountering God in freedom, curiosity, gratitude, and joy.  So often it seems that we approach God without curiosity or freedom, but rather from a position of presumed judgment - as though life is a test and we have to know all the answers or go to hell.

Today’s reading reminds me that there are other blocks to curiosity.

Jesus makes one of those typical Johannine obscure remarks - “Whoever keeps my word will never see death.”  Now, it’s not obvious to me what he means - but it’s sure intriguing!

His opponents aren’t intrigued.  Instead, they dismiss his words as nonsense.  They read them one way, in terms of the life they know, and it does sound absurd.  So they are outraged.  It escalates from there, when Jesus says “I am” before Abraham.

How different this encounter would be if they were curious!  What it Jesus opened with a cryptic remark and they responded, “What do you mean?”  “Tell me more.”  “Can you show me?”  When Jesus continues to his “I am,” they might ask again.

One of the tragedies of public discourse over the last thirty years is the decline of curiosity.  This is most notable to me in politics, but long before it we were in religious camps or gender camps or racial camps or income or educational camps.  Now it’s the way we conduct elections and the business of governing, so it’s more visible.  And the cost is getting higher every day.  We know what we think, and we’re confused by people who come at things from another angle, but rather than get curious we vilify.  They must hate the country they’ve spent their life serving; or hate a group within it; or be so callous as to be inhuman; or be paid off by someone; or be deluded or ignorant.  

What if we got curious?  

Curiosity makes us vulnerable.  We encounter ideas and people that make our own ground less certain.  When our picture of the world gets more complicated, we can feel like we’re losing our balance.  Just like Jesus’ opponents did.

But this story tells us of the cost of not being curious.  Jesus’ opponents miss a great opportunity to learn more about what life means, what the promise means, who Jesus is, what God is like.  Not being curious can cost some people their lives, as we wash our hands of them or lock them up.  It can cost us our lives, as we miss the chance for fullness and connection.

Where on your Lenten journey might curiosity open a door?  Where are you missing out by not asking questions?

Pray that we all might pause, ask, listen.

Wednesday in the Fifth Week

Daniel 3:14-20, 24-28; Prayer of Azariah, 29-34; John 8:31-42

Note: Today is the feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to Mary.  I REALLY love her, but I want to stay in Lent.  Readings for the feast are Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 40:5-11; Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38.)

(And another note: Elizabeth and I will be leading a retreat on Mary’s story December 18-20 at Holy Cross Monastery.  Come spend some time with her, and with us.)

Mary’s astonishing faith and courage not only led her to give birth to Jesus, they became a model for him as he grew.  He has learned that the truth is more important than comfort.  He faced questions and insults about his birth all his life, and standing up to the village taunts gave him a strong center.  Now he’s in Jerusalem, and he’s being downright insulting to those who think they know what’s what.  He tells them they are slaves.  In parts of the passage we don’t read, he calls them children of the devil.  Again, John is on a rant.  But he’s onto something too.

When Jesus says, “the truth shall make you free,” his interlocutors respond that they have never been slaves to anyone.  As they say this, Roman soldiers surround the Temple and occupy the land.  The leadership has become so used to this state of affairs that they no longer notice.  Some of them may well see the Romans as protectors.  Later, as they plot to kill Jesus, part of the reason is fear of what the Romans will do if the Jesus movement gets out of hand.  They may not be slaves in an individual, legal, sense, but neither are they free.  And they don’t even notice.

I think this is what enslavement to sin often looks like.  I relate to this as someone who’s been addicted to a variety of substances, who’s had to get help to become free.  I’ve learned that my mind is bound as much as my body.  I have told myself lies - that I could quit anytime, that it’s just this once, that I’ll stop tomorrow - so that I wouldn’t notice that today, right now, I’m powerless.  And it’s not just substances that can catch us in this way.  Harmful relationships, enabling other people’s addictions, going along for fear of rejection, overworking to the exclusion of other parts of life, tolerating abuse or violence directed at ourselves or others - all these are forms of slavery.  Avoiding that awareness keeps us “occupied,” colonized.  We kill the parts of ourselves that might speak the truth because we are afraid of following through on what the truth counsels.

Can you, as we move toward Holy Week, face what enslaves you?  Can you use that word?  What happens when you say, “I don’t just like to shop; I need to shop to feel loved or . .  .”?  What happens when you read this?  What part of you wants to say, “We have never been slaves to anyone”?  What part of you wants to stop reading?

We cannot let God transform what we will not confront.  The truth does make us free, in the same way that dying leads to resurrection.  Can you drink from this cup?

Tuesday in the Fifth Week

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102:15-22; John 8:21-30

Jesus, I want to follow you, I think you’re on to something, but I just don’t understand.  I don’t know what you mean when you say.  “Where I am going, you cannot come.”  “You are from below, I am from above.”  “You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am (he).”  “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am (he).”  “And the one who sent me is with me.”  As you were saying these things, John reports that many believed in you; but I just don’t know what to think, much less believe.

Am I condemned because I don’t understand you?  I want to follow you, but not because your words here make any kind of sense to me.  I know there are teachers and writings to explain what you say, but I somehow think that what you want me to get is not in books or explanations.

Would you really do this to me, Jesus?  Would you be deliberately obscure, and then condemn me because I don’t get it?  Or is this your followers at work, trying to limit the club by taking your simple message and making it hard to get?  I know that John and the others are trying to define what it means to follow you, and John puts all the eggs in the basket of “belief,” but his agenda is not necessarily yours.

I don’t believe you mean to keep me out this way.  I think joining your camp is hard enough when things are clear and spelled out: pray, give alms, love one another, serve.  You're pretty clear about these.  Let go.  Relax and trust God.  These are hard but direct.  But this talking over my head - that feels wrong.

I know many people today will tell me that this speech in John is mystical talk, accessible only to those in the know.  They will indeed disqualify me from the club of true believers.  I will be one of your foolish followers, following simply because I want the love I see in you.

And that’s enough for me today.  I love you.  If there’s more I need, please show me and grace me with it.  If love is enough, comfort me and let me put my mind at ease.  Bless me, Jesus.  Amen.

Monday in the Fifth Week

Susanna 1-9,15-29, 34-62; Psalm 23; John 8:1-11

As we approach the Gospel story of the woman taken in adultery (let’s call her Rachel), it’s important to read the Susanna story.  This is in the Apocrypha in Protestant Bibles; it’s Daniel 13 in Roman Catholic ones.  Susanna is beautiful, and righteous.  Two men desire her, and plan to rape her (yes, it’s rape if you threaten or coerce).  When she refuses to consent, they accuse her of sleeping with another man.  She is condemned to death, and would have died but for Daniel’s intervention.  

According to the Torah, when two people commit adultery both are to be put to death (Lev 20; Deut 22).  But so often teaching gets in the way of patriarchy or other power structures.  So Susanna is condemned without evidence, and without even the proof that another man exists.

Now, when Rachel is brought to Jesus, she was “caught in the act” - but where is the man?  If the Pharisees wanted a real trial, where’s the man?  It’s entirely possible that this woman is as innocent as Susanna.

All around the world, every day, people are imprisoned falsely.  Some are the victims of mistaken identity; others are sacrificed to people’s desire to see someone punished, even if it’s not the right person; and some are just considered “inconvenient” to someone in power.  

We are all vulnerable to the temptation to use other people in schemes of our own.  It can be little things, like getting them to do what we want; it can be bigger things, like telling “white lies”; it can be any number of situations where we think “the ends justify the means.”  But they don’t.  The means are how we show who we are and what we believe.  We are shaped by our actions, by the little ones as well as the big.  

Jesus doesn’t ask if Rachel really sinned.  Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t.  Certainly, being human, she sins in some way.  But her sin doesn’t matter here.  What matters is the massive sin, the cynical use of another, by those who would trap Jesus.  But he doesn’t even condemn them.  He just refuses to let them set the context.  

I have been a stone thrower.  Every day I gossip or judge.  I throw stones.  And I sometimes find out later that I knew no more of the story than the crowd knew of Rachel’s story.  In forgetting my sinfulness, I put myself in a position to sin more!  (I know some of you don’t want to hear about sin; sorry, I sin.)

If you are a stone thrower too, put it down.  For your own sake.

If you have been the victim of stone throwers, please forgive them.  For your own sake.

Jesus does not condemn us.  Jesus wills our freedom.  

Today, I choose freedom.

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

There’s a part of our Christian tradition that is really uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus suffered like we do.  We don’t want him to have been angry, or afraid, or passionate about anything or anyone except God.  But today we hear from two very different sources that Jesus was indeed human and suffered as we do.  Jesus’ “perfection” is not about being without temptation, but about becoming complete and whole.  He became perfect through suffering, through listening to God throughout the suffering and not escaping his fate.  Even in John’s Gospel, where Jesus so often sounds superhuman, he is reported to be disturbed in his soul.  But his completion comes when he doesn’t evade the realities of human life.  He doesn’t ask to be exempt from our fate.  He stands firm.  

It is Jesus’ desire to glorify God that gives him the strength to endure.  He knows that glorifying God doesn’t mean only the good parts - the baptism, the voice, the mountaintop moments.  Glorifying God means doing the things we don’t want to do but know we must, knowing that it is Christ in us who is at work.

Jesus continues to turn our values upside down.  People come to see him, to honor him, and he tells them that he - and they - have to let go of their lives.  Serving Jesus means following, and that means going where he is going.  It doesn’t mean putting on a brave face, or being so out of touch with our feelings that we lose our humanity.  It means going anyway, even though we’re afraid, because we believe the promise.

The promise is not that we won’t be touched by life, or by death.  The promise is bigger than that.  The promise is that we will know God in our hearts and our lives; we will know that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  

I know this promise is true.  I know I’ve only begun the dying that leads to fullness of life, eternal life; but I’ve done enough to know the promise is true.  Through surrender to life as it is, through endurance, through trust, I’m enabled to take actions that I never would have before, and to experience joys that I can only reach by those actions.

The days are surely coming, says our God, when you will know this promise too.

Saturday in the Fourth Week

Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 7:6-11; John 7:37-52

Back in the schoolyard . . . You have to feel for Nicodemus.

The priests and Pharisees are the ruling clique.  You can hear how threatened they are by this new kid in town.  He sounds way cooler than they are, talking about living water and healing people.  Some people are starting to turn from them to him.  Their position is threatened.

They try to silence him.  They point to his hillbilly background.  He’s just a rube, some carpenter’s son from the north.  They, on the other hand, have background, education, money, position: who does he think he is?  Who does the crowd think he is?  (Who do you think he is?)

Nicodemus is one of them, but his mind is still open.  Tentatively, he speaks.  He doesn’t say the guy is innocent - he just reminds them of what their supposed commitment is.  And he gets the news: they are not who he thought they were.  They are willing to ignore their own law in order to stop Jesus.  They are unable to answer him with integrity.  Instead they shame him and threaten him with expulsion from the group: “What are you, some kind of Galilean geek?  Don’t be an idiot.”

When I was in college I belonged to a political club.  The ideological boundaries were pretty narrow.  We were part of a larger body, and beyond our local club there were people who thought differently.  One time we had a statewide election.  “My” side basically stole it, and the other side called foul and demanded a new election.  I knew they were right, and I told my club that in the event of a new election I would have to vote for the opposition.  By the time I got home that weekend, I had been stripped of all my offices and expelled from the group.  Best thing that could have happened to me.  The truth set me free.

We’ve all been there.  Some of us were the cool kids regulating other people’s entry into our clique.  I bet most of us were either outside of those cliques, or we were on the edge.  We knew they had something, those kids, but sometimes we could also see the price they paid for membership - the conformity, the loss of compassion for those outside the clique, the fear masquerading as arrogance.  From outside it becomes pretty clear that the outsiders are more free than the insiders.  We may have felt like losers, but they lost their souls.

Nicodemus knows that Jesus speaks the truth that sets us free.  He’s trying to find his way in territory that is getting harder to negotiate.  One day soon he will have to choose where his allegiance lies.  And he will choose to love Jesus.

Where are you tempted to silence your faith to fit in?  What does it cost you?

Is there someone else who needs your support to stand up to the bullies, of whatever kind?  Reach out to them, and pray for all the children and adults who face bullying every day.

Friday in the Fourth Week

Wisdom 2:1a, 12-24; Psalm 34:15-22; John 7:1-2,10,25-30

Things are heating up between Jesus, his opponents, and the growing crowd who think he might be the One.  He’s been healing, but he keeps breaking Sabbath to do it.  He is especially offensive when he speaks of his relationship with God.  Who does he think he is?

Our first reading gives us an answer.  We see there that the righteous person “professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself [sic] a child of the Lord.”  The righteous one is offensive because “he avoids our ways as unclean” and “boasts that God is his father.”  

This reading does not refer to the Messiah, but to the “righteous man.”  Any righteous man (or woman!).  I’m not making this up: “For God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own nature” (v. 23).  God created us in God’s image.  We can all rightly “boast” that God is our mother/father.  In fact, we must.  To deny it is to deny God’s desire.

We have many reasons for trying to deny this, but I think the core is the fear of others’ envy.  “Who does s/he think s/he is?”  Those voices that tell us not to stand out, not to shine too brightly, not to admit that we have gifts.  Those voices from junior high or middle school that taught us (especially girls) not to show that we were smart or talented or really interested in school.  

One author wrote that envy is the crushing sin, because it actively wills the diminishment of another person.  I don’t have to actively will your diminishment when I want more than my share or ignore your needs (though that may be a side effect).  But when I envy, I’m saying: Be less.  Be less so that I don’t have to be more.

“Through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it” (Wis 2:24).  Envy kills.

As you choose life this Lent, gird yourself to actively resist envy.  Are you envious of anyone?  What is it they have that you wish for yourself?  You may be surprised to find that you’ve had it all along - talent, love, enough.  Envy blinds us to our own greatness and sufficiency. 

And if someone’s envious of you, notice it and resist it.  You do not have to sacrifice your inheritance to be accepted.  You are made in God’s image, made to shine.

Jesus will pay, and the unrighteous will think they’ve won.  

They’re wrong.

Choose life.

Thursday in the Fourth Week

Micah 7:7-9; Psalm 27:1,10-18; John 9:1-13(14-27)28-38

(Note: today is St. Joseph’s day.  I love him, but I really want to stay in Lent.  If you want to reflect on him, the readings are: 2 Samuel 7:4,8-16; Psalm 89:1-29; Romans 4:13-18; Luke 2:41-52.)

To my mind, this Gospel is one of the most powerful stories in the Scriptures.  Forgive me, this may be long!  

I’m painfully aware of the dangers of the tropes of blindness and of darkness/light, but they are still powerful metaphors for me.  

So here’s this man.  I’ve always thought of him as Fred.  He’s an ordinary guy, except that he was born blind.  That has shaped his whole life, limiting him to begging for his income.  

Jesus learned his lesson from Ralph, the guy by the pool.  You might remember that he asked Ralph if he wanted to be healed, and Ralph didn’t answer.  So now, Jesus doesn’t even ask Fred.  Because, as important as this change is to Fred, the healing is not about Fred.  The healing is to show God’s glory, to bring healing into the world.  The disciples’ belief that blindness is a result of sin just makes it more important for Jesus to show that Fred’s vision is not the issue.  Fred’s growing insight, growing faith and awareness, is the issue.

When I read this story, I’m struck that at one time or another I’ve been all the characters in it.  I’ve been the Pharisees, so certain of my ideological line that I can’t acknowledge any gaps.  I've been Fred’s parents, afraid of the judgments of others and so ducking important questions.  I’ve been the disciples, even when I didn’t believe that sin caused disabilities.  I have shied away from “difference” as though the person were tainted or contagious.  Sometimes my judgments about addictions have resembled theirs.

And I’ve been Fred.  Fred doesn’t go from unawareness to full confession in one step.  In the beginning, he’s just minding his own business.  But when Jesus touched him he did what he was told, and he washed.  He comes back changed, but he can’t say how exactly it happened.  (As a friend of mine who belongs to Overeaters Anonymous says, he has no idea how it works, but it does, so he works it.)  

Then people start pressing on Fred to have an opinion about what’s happened to him.  Fred is finally willing to go so far as to say that Jesus is a prophet, a man of God.  When others keep pushing, Fred gets mad.  He stands by his own experience and insists that Jesus must be from God even when he doesn’t follow the rules.  His conviction deepens.

Finally, Fred meets Jesus again.  He trusts Jesus now, more than he trusts the authorities who judged him but never welcomed him into community.  When Jesus says that he is the “Son of Man,” Fred is ready.  He believes, and he worships.

Fred’s journey is gradual.  In the process he has to move past all those who would tell him how God works and what God demands from him.  All he has is his own experience of healing, but that is gradually refined and shaped into conviction.  Fred makes the journey from “blindness” to “insight.”  He “sees the light.”

I’m grateful today that God lets us get on board at our own pace and in our own way.  I came to Jesus gradually, and I am sure there’s a lot more to see and know in the future.  Whenever I say “I see,” I close myself off from further growth.  

Today I celebrate my blindness - my past blindness, and my current partial vision.  I relish what God has done for me, what I’ve been willing to claim, and I also trust that there’s more to come.

I wonder what happened to Fred after this.  Does he go on the road with Jesus?  Does he stay and become a missionary to his former companions?  Does he suffer for his confession of faith?  We don’t hear.  

Our world is full of Freds, anonymous people touched by God.  

Where are you on this journey of faith today? Where is your next step?

Wednesday in the Fourth Week

Isaiah 49:8-15; Psalm 145:8-19; John 5:19-29

If you think Lenten transformation is about fear, spend some time with these readings.  It seems that Lent is about promises, reconciliation, hope, faith.  It’s about turning back to God, not with fear but with anticipation.

I admit that John doesn’t make it easy to hear that.  He talks about Jesus judging and the resurrection of condemnation, and centuries of vengeful preachers have made that their message.  But tucked in here is a promise.  “Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.  The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.”  In fact, the Son can do “only what he sees the Father doing.”  Behind the patriarchal language we can hear Isaiah’s message: God can no more forget you than a woman can forget her nursing child.  Prisoners freed!  Travelers fed!  Roads built!  Heaven and earth singing!  Paralyzed people healed!  This is what God does.

Like Jesus’ accusers, we can look in another direction.  We can look with fear of judgment, and we can watch one another for signs of failure or treachery.  We can check to make sure everyone is obeying the laws.  And when Jesus comes, the judgment comes: you get what you ask for.  You wanted condemnation, rules followed, judgments carried out?  That’s how you will be treated.  You wanted release, forgiveness, jubilee, even at the cost of some confusion and mistakes?  That’s how you will be treated.

We can read these passages just as we live our lives.  When I focus on the logic of the words, I get lost: the Father doesn’t judge, but Jesus does; but Jesus only does what the Father does; but . . . .  I’m like the people who miss the healing for the carrying of the mat.  But when I focus on the love, on the promise, on the hope, I can hear that Jesus is the face of God, the action of God.  And I can hear that God loves me like a mother loves her child.  I hear that “The LORD is loving to everyone” (Ps. 145:9).  When I do that, I notice the signs of hope and healing.

What will you notice today?  Where will you focus?

A lot of people think God is love.  What if they’re right?

Tuesday in the Fourth Week

Ezekiel 47:1-9,12; Psalm 46:1-8; John 5:1-18

First, today, I’d like you to read the beautiful Ezekiel passage.  Soak in the water of life.  Feel your bones (likely cold if you live in the Northern Hemisphere) relax, feel your skin drink in the moisture.  Feel the Spirit breathe on the water, and know that God is flowing through this water, through you.  Just take it in.  This water flows from God, is God.  It’s for you.

How did that feel?  Could you take it in?  Could you really relax into the promise?

Jesus asks the man by the pool if he wants to be made well.  It has always struck me that we never get an answer.  The man has spent thirty-eight years by this pool, and he’s never made it.  By now, he’s not expecting to get in.  He can’t even seem to hope enough to say he wants it anymore.  He’s resigned.  And when Jesus does heal his body, his mind is still numb.  He’s still a victim.  When he’s challenged about carrying his mat he doesn’t stand up to his critics - he doesn’t say, “A miracle has happened, and you’re worrying about my mat?”  No, he blames Jesus for healing him and “making” him carry the mat.  And later he turns on Jesus.  His body is healed, but his mind is still lying by that pool.

I won’t ask if you’ve ever laid by the pool, by the river of life, and been unable to get in.  I’ll ask you how often, how recently.  We all have those times.  Some of us have been traumatized so early and so often that we’ve lived our lives - thirty-eight years or more - waiting for someone to pick us up, no longer believing that anyone will, no longer believing we can.  Sometimes, even when we start to heal, it can take a long time to see it and claim it.

Fortunately for us, Jesus doesn’t always depend on our answer.  Jesus doesn’t heal us only when we ask, and doesn’t take it back if we don’t give him credit.  Jesus heals because that’s what God does.  God heals because God heals.

Still, it matters whether we get on board.  This man’s body was healed, but we don’t hear any joy from him.  We don’t hear that his life will be different.  If we want all that God is offering, we have to participate.  We have to notice, we have to claim our desire to be healed, we have to move out of resignation into the space of hope - which is the space of desire, the space where we notice what we lack while we envision fulfillment.  We have to endure the waiting, and watch for the signs.  If we do that, we are on the lookout for miracles.

The water is already flowing around you, if you can let yourself feel it.  Claim your desire, find your joy.  Stand up, take up your mat and walk.

Monday in the Fourth Week

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 30:1-6,11-13; John 4:43-54

"The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way" (Jn 4:50).
As I read the beautiful words of Isaiah today, I think of this man.  Do I believe the word that is spoken to me?  Do I believe that the words of Isaiah are spoken to me?  Or are they history, or poetry, to be enjoyed but not acted upon?
After a week spent with people describing the horrors facing women around the world, and the valiant activism that seeks to change them, I believe that I need to believe.  I need to let Isaiah's promise sink into my bones until the promise of peace and plenty is as real as the wars and the famines in the news.  And then I need to start on my way.
I don't think belief is a matter of simple knowing, accepting an idea.  Belief is relying on the word, on the one speaking.  Leaning on it.  Starting on our way based on the premise that what has been promised will come about.
As I listened to the women and men who are working to change the world, I heard their belief.  They believe it is possible for men and women to live as equals, to honor and respect one another.  They believe it is possible for us to live in peace.  They have started on their way, building from where they are, changing their villages and towns and cities.
Our Lenten transformation is not just about our selves, our internal states.  We are incarnate, embodied, social beings.  Our transformation must be communal, recreating our world.  It takes courage and love, and the willingness to lose the life we thought we wanted for the life we are promised.
Where can you start on your way today?
A new heaven and a new earth are waiting for us.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3,17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

if you read the NRSV a translation of Ephesians, it can sound pretty distant.  Here is the Common English Bible version: 

At one time you were like a dead person because of the things you did wrong and your offenses against God.  You used to act like most people in our world do.  You followed the rule of a destructive spiritual power.   This is the spirit of disobedience to God's will that is now at work in persons whose lives are characterized by disobedience.  At one time you were like those persons.  All of you used to do whatever felt good and whatever you thought you wanted so that you were children headed for punishment just like everyone else.  However, God is rich in mercy.  (God) brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong.  God did this because of the great love that God has for us.  You are saved by God's grace!  And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Jesus Christ.  God did this to show future generations the greatness of God's grace by the goodness that God has shown us in Christ Jesus.  You are saved by God's grace because of your faith.  This salvation is God's gift.  It's not something you possessed.  It's not something you did that you can be proud of.  Instead, we see God's accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things.  God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.

Does that help?  It helps me.  I was in fact like a dead person.  I was angry at the God I was raised with, and I turned to a destructive spiritual power - anger aimed at myself and at others, drugs, alcohol.  I did what I thought I wanted, and it made me miserable.  And somehow God reached out through all that and brought me to life.  I followed, but I the initiative was God's and the strength was God's.  It still is.

Sometimes the choices we make are less drastic, less obviously destructive than my earlier ones.  Sometimes it's a matter of little deaths - holding onto anger or despair; gossiping; escaping into shopping for that next item that will give my life meaning.  Death may sound extreme for these, but you can check for yourself: how do I feel when I make those choices?  I feel a little less alive, a little more empty.

Today my choices are not just about my own life or death, but about the fates of others and of our planet.  Will I recycle and compost, or will I throw out trash and leave it to others to live with?  Will I investigate where my clothes are made or my food grown, to insure I'm not benefiting from the slavery of others (estimated now at 35 million people worldwide)?  Will I pray today, or watch TV?  Will I exercise?

In all my choices, God precedes me and offers me the strength to choose life.  God never forces me, but She opens doors and beckons me in.  And when I go through those narrow gates, I'm amazed at how spacious the other side is.

God so loves this world that She will give herself to call us to Her.  She's done it before, and She will keep doing it until we see and turn.

May you see and choose the path of life today, following the signs of God's love.  Together we can hold each other up until we enter the wide spaces of mercy.

Saturday in the Third Week

Hosea 6:1-6; Psalm 51:15-20; Luke 18:9-14

I like to think that when I "do the right things" I do them out of love.  I like to think that I give out of gratitude for what I've received and trust that God will provide.  But I'm not sure that's the whole story.  Having studied and read a bit, I know that the "right" posture is one of gratitude and trust.  So I try for that, and I ignore the little voices beneath those that say, "I'm a good girl, doing this.  I'm a role model, an inspiration for others.  And how can I advocate for things I don't do myself?  I have to do this."

The truth is that it's all there, all the time.  I do earnestly desire to serve and love God.  And I earnestly desire to be loved, to earn God's love.  And I earnestly desire to look good.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The real key to this parable, though, is not whether our hearts are cleansed from self-centered thoughts.  The real key is how we see and treat those around us.

Last Saturday we read the parable of the prodigal son.  Now Luke calls us older brothers back again.  The besetting sin of good girls and boys is self-righteous judgment.  If I tithe and fast and pray, and then look down on others, I've wasted my time and God's.  If I follow all the commandments and then judge others who don't, I gain nothing.  "If I give away everything that I have and hand over my own body to feel good about what I've done but I don't have love, I receive no benefit whatever" (1 Cor. 13:3).

In fact, I may be better off failing now and then.  There's such danger in perfection, in thinking that I can be justified by my own efforts.  "I pulled myself out of poverty, why don't they?"  Why can't they get off drugs, or give more to the church, or vote differently?  Well, because they're different somehow.  They have challenges you didn't, or lack resources that came to you.  But I tell you, if you judge them and reject them, you're wasting the life you've been given.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.  

Today I will remember that I am the prodigal, the tax collector, the woman caught in adultery.  I am the lukewarm one who does just enough.  I am the lowest - I am the one who judges others.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Friday in the Third Week

Hosea 14:1-9; Psalm 81:8-14; Mark 12:28-34

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.  And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Last week I spoke via Skype to a college class in New Mexico.  They are studying gay and lesbian literature, and they read a piece I wrote 20 years ago about equal citizenship.  They were very curious about how I had gone from writing on queer politics to being a nun.  Most of them had never met or heard a Christian who didn't think homosexuality is an abomination, who read the Bible reverently but not literally.  I talked about love and wholeness as the thread between the earlier work and where I am now.  I told them about falling in love with Jesus and letting that shape the rest of my life.  I never thought of it as obeying a commandment; I just followed my heart.

There are days now when I'm less fervent.  My mind can wander during prayer times.  Sometimes Compline is reduced to saying the Nunc Dimittis and "good night, God."  But I still love God in that deep, persistent way.  I hope, I think, the students saw that.

I'm writing this blog because as part of loving God better, calling me back.  I'm also writing it to love you, dear reader.  I'm not the best at "corporal acts of mercy" (look it up!), but I so want you to have access to that love that transforms us.  I will tell you of God's love for you until I fall asleep or you turn away.  I hope this feeds you; I hope it stirs you to feed others, to rejoice in God's crazy love for you.

I've struggled for years with a feeling of being selfish, self-centered, deficient.  Thinking about these two commandments reminds me that we're all built differently, with diverse hearts and minds and souls.  The way we love is diverse too.  But the love binds us.

Who are you called to love today?  How will you do that?  How will you love God?

May you love today, with all your being.

Thursday in the Third Week

Jeremiah 7:23-28; Psalm 95:6-11; Luke 11:14-23

There’s not a lot of comfort in today’s readings.  We hear about people who did not, would not listen - to the prophets, to Jesus.  They will plot to kill Jeremiah rather than listen; they will eventually kill Jesus rather than turn.  And we have to ask, are we those people?

I wonder what it was like for Jesus to enter this arena, with the history of the prophets before him.  What is it like to feel compelled to speak to people, knowing they will not hear; to heal people, only to be accused of being in league with demons; to forgive, only to be condemned?

Up to now it’s been lovely.  Jesus has been teaching and healing, and the disciples have been proclaiming the good news.  But now the contest is heating up.  The powers are getting threatened.  Now they start to accuse him, to distort his work.  The battle lines (and a battle is being waged here) are being drawn and made clear.  “Whoever is not with me is against me.”

By showing what he can do, Jesus naturally shows us what we are made of.  Again, it’s not a threat: it’s a statement of truth.  We show what we believe and what matters to us by how we live.  And in Jesus’ saying here, there’s no middle ground.  There’s no “cultural Christianity” here, no “good enough” or “just getting by”; no “how much do I have to do to pass the course?”  There’s with him or against him.  Ouch.

I’m intrigued by the final phrase in this Gospel: “whoever does not gather with me scatters.”  The image of harvest is central to Jesus’ message, but most of the time I can put myself in the place of the seed rather than the harvester.  I can forget that I am called not only to receive the message of healing and transformation, but to spread it and gather others.  And if I don’t - what exactly is it to scatter?  Is it perhaps I, myself, who scatter?  Who is scattered, dispersed, blown away by a good breeze?  

Yes.  When I don’t align with the good news, I am weakened.  The hell I enter is not so much fire and brimstone as fog, perpetual twilight, meaninglessness, isolation.  Bit by bit I wither.  

Gather me, Jesus.  Give me the grace to gather with you.  Give me the strength to stand with you today.  Heal me and bring me to voice, as you did for the one here.   Teach me your song, even to the cross.  Amen.

Wednesday in the Third Week

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95:6-11; John 4:5-26(27-38)39-42

Here we see transformation at work.  Jesus comes to town and transforms not only one woman’s life, but a whole community.

This woman is an outcast.  She gets the worst the community can give, the lowest place.  She alone must come to the well during the hottest part of the day.  And, in God’s upside-down world, that means that she is the one Jesus comes for.

Their conversation is obscure, like so many in John’s Gospel.  The woman doesn’t understand what Jesus is saying, exactly, but she gets that he is promising big things.  But when he tells her plainly, “I am the one coming into the world,” she gets on board.  She goes back to the village and tells her tale, and somehow people who have shunned her listen to her and invite Jesus into their lives.

The point is not that Jesus gathers outcasts and sinners, though that’s important.

The point is not that Jesus crosses boundaries of ethnicity and religion to save people, though that’s important too.

The point is that an encounter with Jesus has the potential to transform individuals, and through them whole communities.  

This woman didn’t just have a “conversion experience.”  She didn’t just “accept Jesus as Savior and Lord.”  She was so transformed that she became someone who must be listened to.  Jesus invited her into community, into the family of disciples, and this changes her so dramatically that others notice.  She became an evangelist.  And by noticing the difference and listening to her a whole village, a whole community, changes.  

This is happening around us, all over the world.  In the U.S., we have the blessed example of the Magdalene Community and Thistle Farms.  Founded in 1997 by Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest on Vanderbilt's campus, Magdalene is a residential program for women who have survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, addiction and life on the streets. Thistle Farms is their social enterprise, producing bath products.  More importantly, they produce changed lives.  Their testimony is their lives.

Have you ever seen someone transform from outcast to leader?  

It may, after all, not be the outcast who changes first.  She became a leader when Jesus reached out to her and welcomed her into the human family.  

Where is someone waiting for you to welcome them, to be the connection that lets them share their gifts and their love?

Maybe, just maybe, your transformation is what is needed for theirs to emerge.

Tuesday in the Third Week

Song of Azariah and the Three Young Men 2-4, 11-20a (in some Bibles, this is Daniel 3:25-27, 34-43; in others it’s in the Apocrypha); Psalm 25:3-10; Matthew 18:21-35

Again with the forgiveness!  You’d think this mattered.

I am blessed to be part of a community of transformational leaders, people bringing about things that wouldn't otherwise be.  One of the founders of the community is Gerry O’Rourke, who in 1983 declared himself a man of forgiveness.  Since then he has practiced and taught forgiveness all over the world in situations of conflict.  I met him in Northern Ireland.

Gerry’s process is simple, though demanding.  He says to be specific about what we are angry about.  Not “she’s a so-and-so,” but “she did x.”  What is the violation?  Then he asks four questions:

Are you willing to forgive the person/group/institution?

Are you wiling to forgive absolutely?

Are you willing to forgive totally?

Are you willing to forgive unconditionally?

Note that the questions don’t ask if you want to do it.  They ask if you’re willing.

Gerry says, "The question is: What is it costing you in your life to say 'No' to forgiveness? You are the only one who can answer this question and to live with the consequences of your answer. Do not be afraid to look at what your resentment may really be costing you." 

That’s the bottom line.  When Peter asks Jesus how often he has to forgive, Jesus’ real answer is: as often as you want to be free.  As often as you want to open the door to a future for yourself and others.  

Forgiveness doesn't mean justifying, excusing, or forgetting. It doesn’t mean inviting more violation.  It means that the past no longer has to run my life.

I don’t have to believe that God willed this violation.  It’s a violation, a pain to me.  The other person is wrong.  But I am the only one who can choose to start my life again.

For many of us, fasting might be easier than forgiving.  Giving alms, certainly easier.  Extra prayer time?  No problem.  But forgiveness shows up over and over in Lent, because we are moving toward the great feast of resurrection.  We can’t be open to transformation without letting go.

Jesus did it.  St. Stephen did it.  Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu did it.

Gerry does it.

Will you do it?  Do you will it?