Blessed Belief

This Sunday we hear the story of Thomas, who needed to touch to believe.  I'll leave aside all the caveats about 'doubting Thomas.'  I've been pondering Jesus' words to him, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

It's always sounded harsh to me, judgmental, like Jesus is ranking some disciples above others or warning us to believe no matter what.  But today I see that he doesn't say that those who believe without seeing are better; he says they're blessed.  They're happy (makarios).  They've got onto something good.  And that I can get on board with.

God loves me whether I believe in God or not.  Jesus loves me whether or not I believe in the resurrection, or believe he is my Savior, or any of the other clauses of the catechisms we learn.  No, that's not what's at stake here.

What's at stake is my joy in knowing God in Jesus, in knowing that love that never dies, in accessing the crazy power of resurrection.  If I can believe in that and live my life from that, I'm blessed.  If I demand proof before I let myself live from there, I'm cut off from a source of joy beyond my wildest dreams.

Jesus' whole life and death are a testimony to the power of crazy love.  Nothing about his story makes sense.  If it did, it would just be an interesting story.  It's precisely because it exceeds sense that we look up and notice the world in new ways.  And that is a blessing.

So go ahead and doubt.  Great faith includes great doubt.  And then jump in, past the doubt, to the love.  Be blessed.  Alleluia!

One Body

Today we remember Jesus’ last supper with the disciples, and his prayer that we all be one.  We read Paul’s reminder that as we eat and drink of one bread and cup we are united in Christ.

I am feeling the distance between our Companions today.  I am thrilled that technology enables us to see one another regularly and be together, today I want us all in one room.  I’m grateful that when Ernesto leads his congregation tonight we will be there with him, when Annie and Dario and Diane take their places at the feast we will be there in spirit, that when Lauren prays alone she knows we pray with her.  But I want more.  I want to be in that upper room with them, with our Covenant Group members, with our Coffee Table Communion friends.  I long for that.

So I will remember today, tonight, as I share in food and worship with new friends where I am, that we are all one in the body and blood.  I will be praying for you who read this, that you know you are part of the body of Christ.  And I will be praying that Jesus’ prayer be answered, that we all  become one.  

Jesus also spent some serious time alone beginning on this day.  We live our lives in the tension between being together and alone.  Both are true.  We are alone, unique and separate.  And we are one, part of one creation.  We can escape neither truth.  We are called to live in that both/and mystery.

If you are alone tonight, or with others who do not “discern the body and blood,” know that I am with you in prayer and in spirit.  May you be blessed tonight, and throughout these three days.

Scandalous Love

Holy Week begins.  Usually Mondays are Sabbath days for us at the Companionary, meaning that we don't have scheduled prayer and work times.  We relax and let life flow a bit more.  But during Holy Week we know we need to pray together - we want to pray together.  So we had a late Matins and Eucharist, before moving on with the day.  We read again of Mary's gift to Jesus (John 12:1-8).  The gift, I see, is not only the gift of costly ointment.  It is the gift of herself.  To anoint his feet and dry them with her hair is enormously intimate; something to be done only in extreme private between family members.  Mary lays herself open to scandal here to express her devotion and grief.

As we head into the these great days.  I wonder about the scandal.  Paul refers to the scandal of the cross - literally, a stumbling block (1 Cor. 1:23).  But over the years, what had been a scandalous faith became the routine mark of citizenship in the imperial Church.  Jesus and the cross became respectable.  The scandal was when someone questioned dogma or practice.  Often, those who scandalized others were precisely the ones, like Mary, whose devotion was too big and too flamboyant for an institution to contain.  Monks (male and female), virgins, hermits, "heretics" - most of those we now celebrate expressed their devotion in ways we would not allow in our churches today.

So I wonder: where's the scandalous faith that lives in you?  Where's my scandalous faith?  When the Companions started we might have seemed scandalously risk-taking, but now we're kind of comfortable.  We dress respectably, and when we worship "outside the lines" we do so in the privacy of the Companionary, or alone.  But in my heart the scandal burns.

I want to love Jesus like Mary does.  I don't mean I want to provoke scandal for the sake of scandal.  I want to sit and find, in my soul, what needs expressing - and then to express it.  I don't want to worry about whether it's coloring in the lines or not - I just want to know it's true for me, as deep as I can go.

This week we will go to Trinity Retreat Center.  Most of the action will be organized by others.  I will sit.  I may drum or chant or dance in the rain.  I may cry at inopportune times.  I may laugh too.  I don't know.  But I know there's more in me than some liturgies, however beautiful they may be.  I pray to find and express it this week.  Jesus, I love you.