Saturday in the Fifth Week

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

This Gospel is so powerful, and so subtle.  Forgive me if I ruminate at length.

Caiaphas explains that it’s better for one to die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed (Jn. 11:50).  That can sound cynical, and probably was; it’s certainly easier to say about someone else than about oneself.  But John tells us that in fact Caiaphas was “prophesying,” that is, he was speaking an inspired word.  He was not “predicting,” but speaking God’s truth.  Nonetheless, he failed to grasp the full import of what he said.

Jesus came to save.  He saw that Israel, the people of the covenant, who were bound to God through the Torah, had fallen away from that relationship.  They were at a crucial point in their history: occupied by Rome, with a history of resistance, they were tempted to go along with Rome and settle for “peaceful” domination. It seemed that their only choices were to go along with the domination system or to violently resist it.  Either path seemed to mean the end of Israel as a faithful nation.

Jesus came to save, but that salvation meant letting go of what they - and we - think of as survival.  It meant dying to old identities and ways of being in order to be free and faithful.  Jesus talked about this path, but most couldn’t hear what he said.  Finally he showed us.  He failed his way to the cross.  He let go.

Caiaphas thinks that killing Jesus will save the nation by appeasing the Romans.  He’s wrong about that.  Killing Jesus doesn’t save anyone.  But Jesus choosing to die; that is saving grace.  Jesus showing us the path to new life, new possibility, new identity - that’s salvation.

It’s not a salvation we usually choose.

We can settle for survival.  It seems like common sense.  But there are no breakthroughs without breakdowns, and every breakdown is a little death.  Every time I let go, every time I break down, it leads to new and deeper life.  And yet I resist the next time.  I hang on until the pain is so great, the unworkability or un-sustainability of my situation is so clear, that I can’t go on.  I let something die in order for something greater to live.

Is there a part of you that you are selling out in order to keep things in place?

This is the week to notice it and let it go.

Friday in the Fifth Week

Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 18:1-7; John 10:31-42

“Even though you do not believe me, believe the works” (Jn. 10:38).  

Talk is cheap, people say.  But really, talk is all we have.  Works do not speak for themselves; we give them meaning, and we value them according to that meaning.  

Some works, however, are clearer than others.  Bombing civilians, robbing the poor, refusing health care or food or education; those send a clear message.  Serving others, feeding and visiting and freeing, those send another message.  

What works do you believe?  And who do you believe Jesus to be?  What is it, who is it, that you believe?

As Holy Week draws near, the lines of conflict and division become clearer.  People show themselves for who they are, in all their dimensions.  Their works show who they are, as ours reveal us.

Our works, like those of Jesus, show who we are.  They may be open to interpretation, but that interpretation is not infinite, and we are at least partly responsible for the interpretation others give.

Who will you show yourself to be today?

Thursday in the Fifth Week

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

I am having a lot of trouble with the Gospel readings this week.  Each day we have a first reading about what God is doing for the Israelites.  Then the Gospel readings portray Jesus vilifying his Judean audience, telling them they have lost the inheritance and have become children of the devil.  This poison has infected the Church from early days, but it is not the only way to read the “new covenant” of Jesus.  We can’t let it be.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul spends a lot of time trying to explain how he sees the relation between the Jews and the new Christian movement.  He talks about “grafting” the Gentiles into the Jewish branch, about remaking Israel.  That can be challenging enough to read, especially after centuries of anti-Semitism have shaped our reading.  But it’s a far cry from calling “the Jews” liars or children of the devil.  It doesn’t sound like Jesus to me.

John wrote his Gospel in a time when his branch of the new church was being expelled from synagogues.  He wasn’t content to claim to be grafted onto the branch; he seems to have wanted to burn the old branch and take its place.  For centuries, many Christians have followed him.  The poison has not only killed Jews; it has destroyed the souls of many who would follow Jesus.

How then do we understand the relationship between the earlier covenants and that of Jesus?  How can Christians celebrate what we find in following Jesus without accusing or patronizing Jews?  

One place to start is to study the evolution of Judaism.  Just as Christianity evolved, Judaism today is not the religion of the high priests and the Temple.  Reading the Christian Scriptures is not a sufficient guide for understanding, nor is historical material alone.  Reading alone is insufficient.  Go to a Jewish friend and ask to go to synagogue with them.  If you don’t have an observant Jewish friend, call the synagogue and go with a friend.  Ask the rabbi what you might read to understand contemporary Judaism.

And pray. Pray for mutual understanding, mutual deepening of our relationships to the One who remains faithful no matter what we do to one another.  Pray for reconciliation.  Pray for forgiveness and cleansing.  The failures of the high priests and Pharisees have been more than matched by the sins of Christian leaders and followers over the centuries.  Pray for us all.

Wednesday in the Fifth Week

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

You can read the story in Daniel, or you can go to YouTube for a song that tells the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z013in4TJvU

The three officials refuse to bow down to an idol.  They are willing to face the consequences.  You might think of them as models of civil disobedience.  But they aren’t trying to prove a point.  They’re just being faithful.

We are all faced with idols.  They are rarely as obvious as the idol in this story.  The powers have gotten sneakier.  Now they don’t say, “This is an idol; bow down!”  Now they say, “That’s just how it is.”  If you want to keep your job, you’ll work when they tell you.  If your kids want to get into a good school, they’d better be on a sports team even if it means missing church.  If you want . . . it seems like that’s the key.  Me and my wants.  Me and my fears.

I’ve had idols in my life, though I didn’t know it.  An idol is something that takes the place of God in my life, that distorts my supreme concern, and so distorts me.  I’ve made an idol of alcohol, of food, of success.  I can make an idol of God, so that I don’t see that I’m really worshipping an image I made rather than the living God.  

Once we begin to see that what we’re worshipping is an idol, we’re halfway home.  The idol wants me to believe that it is non-negotiable and inevitable.  Once I see that it’s not, I’m faced with my fears and wants, and I’m faced with choice.

Facing that can feel like entering the furnace.  Giving up my idols has always been terrifying.  But when I do, I find that angel walking in the furnace with me.  Somehow I survive, even thrive, and my experience gives others some hope that they too might survive.   I can’t get there, though, without staring that idol in the face and refusing to bow down.

What are your idols?  What do you bow down to?  Pray to God to let you see Her face beside you in the fire.

Tuesday in the Fifth Week

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

Poor God.  This God creates us and designs us for relationship, but we keep making it hard.  It’s not the complaining that makes it hard; it’s the stories we tell about who God is that keep us from relating deeply and honestly.

When I see people in spiritual direction, I often learn that they are angry with God.  They’re frustrated or hurt or disappointed about something that they think God should have prevented, or made happen otherwise.  But when i ask them, “Have you told God you’re angry?” they’re horrified.  “No, I couldn’t do that!”  As we talk, it turns out that they have learned the lesson of the first reading: if you complain, God will harm you.  Like a dangerous parent, God’s ego must be protected at all costs.  Only the “saints” can intervene and talk God into mercy or compassion.

We make God in our image; then our God makes us in that image.  We project onto God our fears as well as our dreams.  If our parents raised us not to ask questions or complain, it’s easy to think that God will reject us as well.  But God is not looking to reject us (in spite of what John has Jesus say today).  God is looking for relationship.  Part of that is honest emotion.

Now, there is a kind of complaint that ends relationship.  When I come to you as though I’m entitled, when I treat you as my servant, I’m distorting our relationship as much as if I treat you as my master.  If I go to God and demand that God change the world to suit me, then I’m not asking for relationship.  The two sides are one coin.  

Relationship is about honest struggle.  It includes a willingness to listen, to heed the other, but it also requires honest expression of my needs and fears.  Many of my most powerful encounters with God have involved me yelling or sobbing.  God does not necessarily change the situation, but God does surround and comfort me.  God gives me the strength to look at the source of my hurt, and so to be healed.

May you be healed by the deep love of God today, as you dare the relationship you crave.

Monday in the Fifth Week

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

Elizabeth writes,

Thrown any stones lately?

Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone... 

Today's gospel opens this up. Thrown any? Have I?
A woman is caught in the very act of adultery and brought to Jesus as a test case. Her accusers think it is cut and dried. Guilty? Yes. Witnesses present? Yes. Stone her, Jesus?
Jesus is between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. The ones trying to bring him down are finally going to have their day.

Not quite. Jesus turns it around. 
He does not acquit or condemn the woman. 
They drop their stones and slink away. 

I can't help noticing that the man caught in adultery is nowhere to be found. Nor can I read this passage without letting my outrage at the treatment of women in this world of double standards emerge.

And then it falls away as surely as the stones that dropped.
I don't let go of my desire to get on my soapbox about injustice against women because there is none. I drop my rock because I am not without sin either.

This is tricky. We do need to stand for justice, but my stone does not have "justice" written on it.
My desire to accuse is not pure. I want THEM to pay. Their stones--and mine--have "revenge!" carved in.

But if THEY must pay for injustice, then I must, too. I must pay for my serious transgressions. I must pay for harboring prejudice in my heart and letting it come out in my behavior. I must pay for the lies I have lived or told. I must pay for the ways I have hurt others through my actions. The list goes on and on.

Jesus does not teach us to punish each other--to make each other pay--when we fail, when we sin, when we are hurt. He calls us to respond only after we look in the mirror. Then, if we are honest, condemnation of one another is out of the question.

I do love to collect stones--I have them from most places I have been blessed to visit. Lovely ones, smooth ones, tiny to large I have a ton of stones.

God help me to keep from throwing them.

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

We had so much fun with a video the other day, we tried it again!  Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQlqX70VtfQ

Happy Lent V!