2 Easter B 2009
(Acts 4: 32-35; Ps 133; 1 John 1: 1-2: 2; John 20:19-31)
Not long ago a Catholic monk began to study the meditation practices of Zen Buddhism. He meditated on his own, he spoke to other people who practiced Zen, he read Christian authors like Thomas Merton who had explored the wisdom of the East. Finally he approached the abbot of a Zen monastery in Japan and asked to stay for a month-long silent retreat.
The Zen abbot did not think this was a good idea, and he kept the Catholic monk at arm’s length for some time. But the monk kept asking, and finally the Zen abbot said, “I will allow you to make a retreat with us on one condition—when you are finished, I will ask you to show me your resurrection.”
“Show me your resurrection!” Have we ever been asked that?
I think that when we think about resurrection we usually talk about Jesus’ resurrection—what was that empty tomb experience at Easter? What was the early Church trying to say in those stories about meeting the risen Jesus? But I think there is a danger that we stand apart from the Easter news when we stay there, in some sort of place where resurrection is an intellectual issue.
I think the real question is not so much “What was Jesus’ resurrection like?”, how it was or even, for some, if it was. The question rather is, “What does it mean?” “Show me your resurrection?” What would we say? What do we say? By the lips of a non-Christian we are being asked something very basic and very orthodox. Jesus is raised, says the early Church, and we are raised with him. So, how’s that working for us? How are we different? What does it mean?
In the Gospel Thomas says, “Unless I see…unless I put my finger in his wounds…I will not believe.”
Thomas in the Gospel will not accept anything second-hand—he wants the real deal. And Thomas gets what he longs for and asks for! We hear his resurrection in his cry, “My Lord and my God.” The searching, passionate heart will find, doubts and all. And the real Christ that we will find still has his wounds. In the wounds of the world, in the wounds of all of us his beloved people, we touch and see God.
“That which we have heard…seen with our eyes…looked at and touched with our hands…the word of life” says John’s letter. I always read this assuming that the writer referred to having actually seen and touched the physical risen Lord. I wonder now—this letter was written decades after the Gospel events. I wonder if “that which we have heard”, seen, and touched were rather the other members of John’s community, the beloved of God who were in Christ as Christ was in God. These burning words are not about a past event so much as they are about a present reality, the risen Christ among them and their love for one another. That was their resurrection. And is this letter also about this church, about us?
“The community of believers were of one heart and mind…everything they owned was held in common.” Their resurrection was visible when that first church was of one heart and soul, when they cared for one another equally, when they spoke of the risen Lord in words but more deeply in their transformed lives together. They were different, and it showed. In a brutal world of power and domination, haves and have-nots, they were hope.
“Show me your resurrection!” I’ll live with that question, and I invite us all to live with it today and in the days to come. So far, I see my resurrection in leaving behind anxiety about our future as a parish and seeing the new life and new choices and new energy in our midst. Salvador’s Baptism at the Great Vigil and the bi-lingual Mass of Easter Sunday are signs of that new life. I’m still working on the rest, but thus far that’s my resurrection this Eastertide. Show me your resurrection!
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Surprise! !Sorpresa!
Easter/Pascua 2009—Bi-lingual Mass/Misa Bi-lingue
Mark’s Resurrection, and as props one hollow white egg and one red “cascaron”, a traditional Mexican colored hollow egg filled with confetti
Easter is a season of wonders. A wonderful thing happened to Mary Magdalene after the Lord was raised and ascended to his Father. To witness to this Good News, she voyaged to Rome and was granted an audience with the Roman Emperor Tiberias.
La Pascua es una fiesta de milagros. Un milagro especial occurio despues de la Resurreccion y Ascension de Jesucristo. Su amiga Maria Magdalena ando a la ciudad de Roma para predicar estas Buenas Nuevas al Imperador Tiberio mismo.
Mary Magdalene told Tiberias that Jesus Christ rose alive from the tomb. The Emperor laughed and said, “A dead man cannot come alive out of a tomb. It is impossible.” Mary Magdalene replied, “It is not impossible, your Majesty. See this egg? Jesus came alive out of the tomb just like a living chicken comes out of the egg.” Tiberias said, “A dead man cannot come out of the tomb, any more than that egg can change color in your hand.”
Maria Magdalena dice a Tiberio que Jesucristo resucito vivo desde el supulcro. El Imperador se rie y contesto, “Un muerto no puede levanto desde un sepulcro. Es imposible.” Mary Magdalena dice, “No es imposible, su Majestad. Mira a este juevo. Jesus se levanto desde el sepulcro como un pollito puede salir vivo desde un juevo.” Tiberias contesto, “Un muerto no puede levantar desde un sepulcro, igual como aquel juevo no puede cambiar su color en tu mano.”
When the emperor said this, Mary showed them the egg again,
Cuando el Imperador dice esto, Maria les mostro el juevo otra vez. The egg had changed from white to red/El juevo se cambio su color desde blanco a rojo. And that is why/Por eso we color Easter eggs/les coloramos juevos por la Pascua.
Easter is about surprise and is about joy. Easter is about God changing death into life, and God changing us and our world from death and despair to hope and new life. Wherever we have felt lost and alone and without hope, Easter comes to change us and our world from hopelessness to hope, from death to life. And we are still surprised!
La Pascua significa sorpresa y gozo. La Pascua es las Buenas Nuevas que el Dios puede cambiar su hijo Jesus desde la muerte hasta la vida, y el puede cambiar nosotros mismos desde la muerte sin esperanza hasta esperanza y vida nueva y eterno. A veces sentimos como perdidos, llenos de tristeza y sin esperanza. La Pascua tiene el poder para cambiarnos desde oscuridad y muerte hasta la vida y esperanza. Y siempre es una sorpresa!
Let yourself be surprised by God, by Easter joy! You may not expect it, because just like the Emperor Tiberias you think an egg is just an egg! What is inside an egg?
Deja el Dios darnos una sorpresa este Pascua, una sopresa del gozo! La Pascua es siempre una sorpresa, como el milagro del juevo delante del Imperador Tiberio! ?Que es adentro un juevo?
Watch! Mira!
POP!
Mark’s Resurrection, and as props one hollow white egg and one red “cascaron”, a traditional Mexican colored hollow egg filled with confetti
Easter is a season of wonders. A wonderful thing happened to Mary Magdalene after the Lord was raised and ascended to his Father. To witness to this Good News, she voyaged to Rome and was granted an audience with the Roman Emperor Tiberias.
La Pascua es una fiesta de milagros. Un milagro especial occurio despues de la Resurreccion y Ascension de Jesucristo. Su amiga Maria Magdalena ando a la ciudad de Roma para predicar estas Buenas Nuevas al Imperador Tiberio mismo.
Mary Magdalene told Tiberias that Jesus Christ rose alive from the tomb. The Emperor laughed and said, “A dead man cannot come alive out of a tomb. It is impossible.” Mary Magdalene replied, “It is not impossible, your Majesty. See this egg? Jesus came alive out of the tomb just like a living chicken comes out of the egg.” Tiberias said, “A dead man cannot come out of the tomb, any more than that egg can change color in your hand.”
Maria Magdalena dice a Tiberio que Jesucristo resucito vivo desde el supulcro. El Imperador se rie y contesto, “Un muerto no puede levanto desde un sepulcro. Es imposible.” Mary Magdalena dice, “No es imposible, su Majestad. Mira a este juevo. Jesus se levanto desde el sepulcro como un pollito puede salir vivo desde un juevo.” Tiberias contesto, “Un muerto no puede levantar desde un sepulcro, igual como aquel juevo no puede cambiar su color en tu mano.”
When the emperor said this, Mary showed them the egg again,
Cuando el Imperador dice esto, Maria les mostro el juevo otra vez. The egg had changed from white to red/El juevo se cambio su color desde blanco a rojo. And that is why/Por eso we color Easter eggs/les coloramos juevos por la Pascua.
Easter is about surprise and is about joy. Easter is about God changing death into life, and God changing us and our world from death and despair to hope and new life. Wherever we have felt lost and alone and without hope, Easter comes to change us and our world from hopelessness to hope, from death to life. And we are still surprised!
La Pascua significa sorpresa y gozo. La Pascua es las Buenas Nuevas que el Dios puede cambiar su hijo Jesus desde la muerte hasta la vida, y el puede cambiar nosotros mismos desde la muerte sin esperanza hasta esperanza y vida nueva y eterno. A veces sentimos como perdidos, llenos de tristeza y sin esperanza. La Pascua tiene el poder para cambiarnos desde oscuridad y muerte hasta la vida y esperanza. Y siempre es una sorpresa!
Let yourself be surprised by God, by Easter joy! You may not expect it, because just like the Emperor Tiberias you think an egg is just an egg! What is inside an egg?
Deja el Dios darnos una sorpresa este Pascua, una sopresa del gozo! La Pascua es siempre una sorpresa, como el milagro del juevo delante del Imperador Tiberio! ?Que es adentro un juevo?
Watch! Mira!
POP!
Alarmed
Easter 2009
(Mark’s empty tomb)
Expecting death, but finding life.
I opened the letter from a former life—my old Roman Catholic seminary in Chicago. The letter’s purpose was-can you guess?---asking for donations. Times are also tough for seminaries these days. I almost tossed the letter unopened into recycling, but I ripped it opened to see if there just might be something new.
One of my first New Testament profs is the Dean: Donald Senior—a great scholar and a good man. His line on the second page was worth the whole letter. Easter, says Don, is about “expecting death, but finding life.”
That’s just what happens in Mark’s Gospel. The women, much braver than the men, show up after the Sabbath to do the horribly real but loving thing—finish preparing the body of Jesus for the long slow sleep in the tomb, awaiting the resurrection of the just on the last day. They come expecting death. They can handle death. Instead, they find life. And they run because, as the Gospel bluntly says, “they were afraid.”
Maybe we think we’d know better if we were there that first Easter morning. But I doubt it. Resurrection and new life happens. And we’re still afraid.
We are afraid because of the price that love paid to free us. We live in an age which is commitment-phobic—we keep every possible option open, we look carefully for the escape clause, we search for the “reset” button. But the story of Easter is the story of God’s complete commitment to us through the blood of the Beloved. A done deal, once for all, and nothing is held back. From all time he pours himself out in death for us. And he suffers still in his beloved people, he is still crucified in us, said one early church thinker, and he is crucified as we speak in the poor of the earth and in the poor places of our own lives. We are never abandoned, we are never alone, we are never without hope. He is bonded to us by blood and passion and choice. If we are freaked out by commitment, we’d probably run from that empty tomb! The empty tomb speaks without words of God’s complete commitment to us.
And we would run because it is not just the crucified Jesus who is changed from death to life. Jesus is changed, and we are too.
Is there anything that feels old and dead in our lives? Is there anything that imprisons us, chains us from becoming who we are meant to be? We are meant to be the free children of a free God. We are meant to be love itself, life itself, joy and tears and delight all at once. We were made to be God’s strength and God’s power and God’s healing and God’s peace. And we can be all that this Easter! We are all in arrested development, but the power of the risen Christ sets us free to be who we are meant to be. The point is not to go to Mass this Easter to search for some peace. The point is to BE the Mass of Easter, to be celebration and Alleluia and bread blessed and broken and shared so that we all may have life!
We are here tonight, called together by the One who passed from death to life. We are together and we have been changed. If we want to run in fear from this church, then maybe you’ve heard the message of the empty tomb and you know what it might mean! But try sticking around, stick around while water is poured and the Spirit comes down and new life comes to Salvador in his Baptism and we all know once again who we are—beloved of a loving God, people of a Christ wholly committed to us, nothing held back. We are changed now and always into the people we are meant to be.
(Mark’s empty tomb)
Expecting death, but finding life.
I opened the letter from a former life—my old Roman Catholic seminary in Chicago. The letter’s purpose was-can you guess?---asking for donations. Times are also tough for seminaries these days. I almost tossed the letter unopened into recycling, but I ripped it opened to see if there just might be something new.
One of my first New Testament profs is the Dean: Donald Senior—a great scholar and a good man. His line on the second page was worth the whole letter. Easter, says Don, is about “expecting death, but finding life.”
That’s just what happens in Mark’s Gospel. The women, much braver than the men, show up after the Sabbath to do the horribly real but loving thing—finish preparing the body of Jesus for the long slow sleep in the tomb, awaiting the resurrection of the just on the last day. They come expecting death. They can handle death. Instead, they find life. And they run because, as the Gospel bluntly says, “they were afraid.”
Maybe we think we’d know better if we were there that first Easter morning. But I doubt it. Resurrection and new life happens. And we’re still afraid.
We are afraid because of the price that love paid to free us. We live in an age which is commitment-phobic—we keep every possible option open, we look carefully for the escape clause, we search for the “reset” button. But the story of Easter is the story of God’s complete commitment to us through the blood of the Beloved. A done deal, once for all, and nothing is held back. From all time he pours himself out in death for us. And he suffers still in his beloved people, he is still crucified in us, said one early church thinker, and he is crucified as we speak in the poor of the earth and in the poor places of our own lives. We are never abandoned, we are never alone, we are never without hope. He is bonded to us by blood and passion and choice. If we are freaked out by commitment, we’d probably run from that empty tomb! The empty tomb speaks without words of God’s complete commitment to us.
And we would run because it is not just the crucified Jesus who is changed from death to life. Jesus is changed, and we are too.
Is there anything that feels old and dead in our lives? Is there anything that imprisons us, chains us from becoming who we are meant to be? We are meant to be the free children of a free God. We are meant to be love itself, life itself, joy and tears and delight all at once. We were made to be God’s strength and God’s power and God’s healing and God’s peace. And we can be all that this Easter! We are all in arrested development, but the power of the risen Christ sets us free to be who we are meant to be. The point is not to go to Mass this Easter to search for some peace. The point is to BE the Mass of Easter, to be celebration and Alleluia and bread blessed and broken and shared so that we all may have life!
We are here tonight, called together by the One who passed from death to life. We are together and we have been changed. If we want to run in fear from this church, then maybe you’ve heard the message of the empty tomb and you know what it might mean! But try sticking around, stick around while water is poured and the Spirit comes down and new life comes to Salvador in his Baptism and we all know once again who we are—beloved of a loving God, people of a Christ wholly committed to us, nothing held back. We are changed now and always into the people we are meant to be.
God's Eyes
5 Lent B 2009
(Jeremiah 31: 31-34; Ps 51: 1-13; Hebrews 5: 5-10; John 12: 20-33)
Do we see with the eyes of God?
It is told that, early in the church’s history, a fierce persecution broke out and some officials saw an opportunity to get rich. Rumor had it that the Christians had accumulated a lot of money as donations. Back then deacons, in addition to everything else they now do, took care of the church’s finances. So soldiers went out and captured a well-known deacon named Lawrence. Dragging him before the officials, he was asked, “Do you know where we can find the treasures of the Church?” “Of course!” replied Lawrence. Lawrence led them down many side streets and finally down into a catacomb. The officials blinked as they and Lawrence emerged into an underground room lit by candles. The room was filled with the poor, with the sick, with the abandoned elderly. “What is all this?” the officials roared. Lawrence smiled. Sweeping his arm across the room, he said, “Here are the treasures of the Church.”
Lawrence had a mad sense of humor. He also had a touch of divine vision. He saw with the eyes of God.
We do not see ourselves as God sees us. Our best gift from God this Lent is our humanity, in all our strange and vulnerable glory.
I have had many conversations lately about how vulnerable people feel, how our sense of self-sufficiency has been taken from us. But people have spoken to me about the gift that lies hidden there. People within and without the church are speaking of community, of how we are meant to be bonded, that the gift of this time may be to start over with ancient wisdom and new ways to forge bonds, to rely upon one another and care for one another. As hard and anxious as these times are, we are invited not to flee into ourselves, but look to the gift that we may find in our shared connection.
For us, strength to do this lies in how God connected with us.
The New Testament today speaks of the strange wisdom of God and how God forged this everlasting connection. Jesus cried and mourned in his humanity during his life, says Hebrews. The strange wisdom of God did not remove us from the fragility of our humanity. Instead God entered it fully and shared our journey, becoming as vulnerable and as limited as any of us. I believe that many Christians are either afraid or offended by the core truth of the Gospel, which is the humanity of God. But that astounding, offensive news is our hope. And this is not an old ho-hum dogma. God made flesh is always a new and electrifying hope, because no matter how we change, no matter where we are, in our ever-changing human reality God takes flesh in Jesus. And it is there—in the human vulnerability we share, like the vulnerability we share now—that our deliverance, our liberation is found.
Jesus in John’s Gospel speaks of glory. But that glory will be the cross, fame will be lifted up on rough wood, losing will be gaining. One life, vulnerable and left alone, is the one gift given to us all for all time, stronger than fear or death.
Jeremiah says that God can make a new covenant, and makes a new covenant with each of us today. We can leave today’s worship knowing that God will write a new deal on our hearts, we can take Communion feeling the new life of Jesus human and Jesus divine within us, we can welcome that new deal and that new life within us no matter who we are, where we are, alone or together. Dare to take, dare to accept, dare to believe that God’s eyes see clearly and God’s heart is wise and God is making new life among us and within us, in our glorious, broken, beloved humanity, today and wherever our journey will take us.
(Jeremiah 31: 31-34; Ps 51: 1-13; Hebrews 5: 5-10; John 12: 20-33)
Do we see with the eyes of God?
It is told that, early in the church’s history, a fierce persecution broke out and some officials saw an opportunity to get rich. Rumor had it that the Christians had accumulated a lot of money as donations. Back then deacons, in addition to everything else they now do, took care of the church’s finances. So soldiers went out and captured a well-known deacon named Lawrence. Dragging him before the officials, he was asked, “Do you know where we can find the treasures of the Church?” “Of course!” replied Lawrence. Lawrence led them down many side streets and finally down into a catacomb. The officials blinked as they and Lawrence emerged into an underground room lit by candles. The room was filled with the poor, with the sick, with the abandoned elderly. “What is all this?” the officials roared. Lawrence smiled. Sweeping his arm across the room, he said, “Here are the treasures of the Church.”
Lawrence had a mad sense of humor. He also had a touch of divine vision. He saw with the eyes of God.
We do not see ourselves as God sees us. Our best gift from God this Lent is our humanity, in all our strange and vulnerable glory.
I have had many conversations lately about how vulnerable people feel, how our sense of self-sufficiency has been taken from us. But people have spoken to me about the gift that lies hidden there. People within and without the church are speaking of community, of how we are meant to be bonded, that the gift of this time may be to start over with ancient wisdom and new ways to forge bonds, to rely upon one another and care for one another. As hard and anxious as these times are, we are invited not to flee into ourselves, but look to the gift that we may find in our shared connection.
For us, strength to do this lies in how God connected with us.
The New Testament today speaks of the strange wisdom of God and how God forged this everlasting connection. Jesus cried and mourned in his humanity during his life, says Hebrews. The strange wisdom of God did not remove us from the fragility of our humanity. Instead God entered it fully and shared our journey, becoming as vulnerable and as limited as any of us. I believe that many Christians are either afraid or offended by the core truth of the Gospel, which is the humanity of God. But that astounding, offensive news is our hope. And this is not an old ho-hum dogma. God made flesh is always a new and electrifying hope, because no matter how we change, no matter where we are, in our ever-changing human reality God takes flesh in Jesus. And it is there—in the human vulnerability we share, like the vulnerability we share now—that our deliverance, our liberation is found.
Jesus in John’s Gospel speaks of glory. But that glory will be the cross, fame will be lifted up on rough wood, losing will be gaining. One life, vulnerable and left alone, is the one gift given to us all for all time, stronger than fear or death.
Jeremiah says that God can make a new covenant, and makes a new covenant with each of us today. We can leave today’s worship knowing that God will write a new deal on our hearts, we can take Communion feeling the new life of Jesus human and Jesus divine within us, we can welcome that new deal and that new life within us no matter who we are, where we are, alone or together. Dare to take, dare to accept, dare to believe that God’s eyes see clearly and God’s heart is wise and God is making new life among us and within us, in our glorious, broken, beloved humanity, today and wherever our journey will take us.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
wild heart
4 Lent B 2009
(Num 21: 4-9; Ps 107: 1-3, 17-22; Eph 2: 1-10; John 3: 14-21)
Creating is costly for God.
Rabbis long ago told the story that, in the beginning, there was only God, and God was everywhere. In fact God filled all things, and there was no room for anything else. So God voluntarily withdrew and made an open place. In that open space the world came to be.
Creating is costly for God. Healing is even more costly.
Today the Hebrew Scripture tells a bizarre story of how God cures snakebite. The people of God are on their desert journey, and as usual they “grumble” and complain about not enough water and the dull food that God provided. God is stung by their complaints and sends poisonous snakes to sting them back. The people cry out and Moses prays. And God prescribes the strangest cure for snakebite—make a bronze serpent and hold it up, and anyone who looks on the snake will be healed.
The last thing in the world I want to see after a snake-bite is a snake! We could dismiss this story as a tribal tale that remembers sacred snake-images. A number of cultures, including Druid beliefs, associated snakes with healing power. But there is much more in this story than old symbols.
Every day people undergo surgery. We accept the strange notion that in order to heal a body, it is often necessary to wound it, to cut it. And those who seek psychotherapy learn that healing involves exploring their pain, re-visiting those actions and events that gave birth to their symptoms. Only by entering again into their pain do they have hope of healing.
Deep and true healing does not mean fleeing from pain, but rather entering into pain and pain’s source. In the desert the people are wounded by their alienation from God and from one another as they continue to walk towards freedom and encounter their lack of faith and trust. So facing an image of their deep pain in order to be saved from suffering may not be so strange. But what of God in all of this? Where is the God who paid a cost to bring creation itself into being?
The God who sent snakes and then proscribed a healing serpent image is not some cold punishing deity. This God who paid a cost at creation itself loves the people who journey in the wilderness—he hears their cries and set them free, feeds them and carries them. They were made and known and loved in the divine heart who made room for them. This relationship is passionate and committed, it’s a blood-bond, a covenant. Even if God is involved in their suffering, God suffers with them, God feels the pain they feel. That bronze serpent is not some clever symbol made for a people who respond to magic images. It is an ikon meant to express beyond words the God who suffers with his people’s pain. The bronze serpent expresses the wild, strange, wounded heart of the God who takes to heart the pain of his beloved people.
Jesus in John’s Gospel calls himself the bronze serpent. He is lifted on the cross as Moses’ healing serpent was lifted up. God’s wild, wounded, suffering heart is more than a bronze symbol. God made flesh is lifted and wounded and is one with his suffering people. God will be our healing and our hope for ever.
In whatever wilderness in which we walk, in whichever desert, in whatever desolate place that we God’s beloved people find ourselves today, look up. Long ago a strange image was lifted high in front of desperate people in the wilderness, and they were made well. Today look upon the heart of God, lifted up before us on the cross. Look up and know healing, hope, and new life.
(Num 21: 4-9; Ps 107: 1-3, 17-22; Eph 2: 1-10; John 3: 14-21)
Creating is costly for God.
Rabbis long ago told the story that, in the beginning, there was only God, and God was everywhere. In fact God filled all things, and there was no room for anything else. So God voluntarily withdrew and made an open place. In that open space the world came to be.
Creating is costly for God. Healing is even more costly.
Today the Hebrew Scripture tells a bizarre story of how God cures snakebite. The people of God are on their desert journey, and as usual they “grumble” and complain about not enough water and the dull food that God provided. God is stung by their complaints and sends poisonous snakes to sting them back. The people cry out and Moses prays. And God prescribes the strangest cure for snakebite—make a bronze serpent and hold it up, and anyone who looks on the snake will be healed.
The last thing in the world I want to see after a snake-bite is a snake! We could dismiss this story as a tribal tale that remembers sacred snake-images. A number of cultures, including Druid beliefs, associated snakes with healing power. But there is much more in this story than old symbols.
Every day people undergo surgery. We accept the strange notion that in order to heal a body, it is often necessary to wound it, to cut it. And those who seek psychotherapy learn that healing involves exploring their pain, re-visiting those actions and events that gave birth to their symptoms. Only by entering again into their pain do they have hope of healing.
Deep and true healing does not mean fleeing from pain, but rather entering into pain and pain’s source. In the desert the people are wounded by their alienation from God and from one another as they continue to walk towards freedom and encounter their lack of faith and trust. So facing an image of their deep pain in order to be saved from suffering may not be so strange. But what of God in all of this? Where is the God who paid a cost to bring creation itself into being?
The God who sent snakes and then proscribed a healing serpent image is not some cold punishing deity. This God who paid a cost at creation itself loves the people who journey in the wilderness—he hears their cries and set them free, feeds them and carries them. They were made and known and loved in the divine heart who made room for them. This relationship is passionate and committed, it’s a blood-bond, a covenant. Even if God is involved in their suffering, God suffers with them, God feels the pain they feel. That bronze serpent is not some clever symbol made for a people who respond to magic images. It is an ikon meant to express beyond words the God who suffers with his people’s pain. The bronze serpent expresses the wild, strange, wounded heart of the God who takes to heart the pain of his beloved people.
Jesus in John’s Gospel calls himself the bronze serpent. He is lifted on the cross as Moses’ healing serpent was lifted up. God’s wild, wounded, suffering heart is more than a bronze symbol. God made flesh is lifted and wounded and is one with his suffering people. God will be our healing and our hope for ever.
In whatever wilderness in which we walk, in whichever desert, in whatever desolate place that we God’s beloved people find ourselves today, look up. Long ago a strange image was lifted high in front of desperate people in the wilderness, and they were made well. Today look upon the heart of God, lifted up before us on the cross. Look up and know healing, hope, and new life.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Not alone
2 Lent B 2009
(Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Ps 22: 22-30; Rom 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38)
Years ago a young man entered a strict monastery not far from here. He was devout and filled with ideals, and he loved the life he found—the simple diet, the silence, the manual work, the hours of prayer in the church and the private meditation in his cell. He loved it, even after the first glow wore off and he realized he had just done everything that he was going to be doing for the rest of his life. Then three years went by and things just kept getting harder. Each day felt like an uphill climb. He just wanted a change, any change. His life seemed to stretch ahead of him like a bleak desert landscape, featureless and dry. Finally he went to the Abbot and said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I think of that monk as I hear these readings. We’ve settled into our Lenten walk, and today we hear some straight stuff from Jesus as to what his own walk will be. Not exactly joy and delight—suffering, rejection, and death, and only then resurrection. Peter himself takes him on and, for his pains, gets called “Satan.”
Maybe Peter was scared at the dark, “emo” kind of things his teacher and friend was saying. Maybe in the tense politics of 1st century Palestine Peter knew that all that talk was dangerous. As usual, the Bible doesn’t give us Peter’s inner monologue. Instead, it leaves us with our own.
I had this text before me one night back in the early ‘80’s in the Philippines. The student community and I had decided to stay in the village where we were subject to paramilitary attacks and ambushes. During the silent meditation period late one afternoon, I was reading that part about “those who want to save their life will lose it” when a burst of automatic rifle fire went off a couple of hundred yards away. We sheltered frightened villagers that night, and I waited with the farmers holding their pathetic cultivating knives in the shadow of the chapel while the guerillas crept close enough to silence the crickets in the bushes. To this day, I do not know why they did not fire.
Several weeks later, like the monk with the abbot, I went to my superior and said “I can’t do this.”
Is this bad news, or good news? None of us can shoulder our personal cross alone. No one really “handles” their lives. No one can face their own burdens, their own vulnerabilities, their own challenges alone. We do not have to. We are not meant to. The Gospel is not about our being strong. The Gospel is about God being strong in us.
“I can’t do this anymore,” said the younger monk to the abbot. The abbot grinned, for he had been there before. So has everyone who has tried to follow a Gospel path, to follow Jesus amidst the stresses and challenges of their own lives and that of a world indifferent to the Gospel’s strange power. “Good,” replied the abbot. “Stop trying. Just keep showing up for stuff.” After thirteen years, the monk is still there.
Keep showing up—to our lives, to our faith, to our God. It’s not a magic formula, it does not make everything feel all right. But everything is somehow different. We let God be God when we let go of trying to get it clear and get it right and instead journey humbly with one another, listening, praying for the grace to love another day, pray another day, trust another day.
Old Abram in the desert had come a long way, and was tired and squinty-eyed from looking at the sun. Sarai was way beyond the stresses and changes of pregnancy and childbearing in the desert. But they were not done. They trusted in the one who spoke. New names, an old promise made new, new life and new strength to live it. When we let God be strong, we set free the strange power of the Gospel. We set free Christ’s power to transform us, transform the world.
(Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16; Ps 22: 22-30; Rom 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38)
Years ago a young man entered a strict monastery not far from here. He was devout and filled with ideals, and he loved the life he found—the simple diet, the silence, the manual work, the hours of prayer in the church and the private meditation in his cell. He loved it, even after the first glow wore off and he realized he had just done everything that he was going to be doing for the rest of his life. Then three years went by and things just kept getting harder. Each day felt like an uphill climb. He just wanted a change, any change. His life seemed to stretch ahead of him like a bleak desert landscape, featureless and dry. Finally he went to the Abbot and said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I think of that monk as I hear these readings. We’ve settled into our Lenten walk, and today we hear some straight stuff from Jesus as to what his own walk will be. Not exactly joy and delight—suffering, rejection, and death, and only then resurrection. Peter himself takes him on and, for his pains, gets called “Satan.”
Maybe Peter was scared at the dark, “emo” kind of things his teacher and friend was saying. Maybe in the tense politics of 1st century Palestine Peter knew that all that talk was dangerous. As usual, the Bible doesn’t give us Peter’s inner monologue. Instead, it leaves us with our own.
I had this text before me one night back in the early ‘80’s in the Philippines. The student community and I had decided to stay in the village where we were subject to paramilitary attacks and ambushes. During the silent meditation period late one afternoon, I was reading that part about “those who want to save their life will lose it” when a burst of automatic rifle fire went off a couple of hundred yards away. We sheltered frightened villagers that night, and I waited with the farmers holding their pathetic cultivating knives in the shadow of the chapel while the guerillas crept close enough to silence the crickets in the bushes. To this day, I do not know why they did not fire.
Several weeks later, like the monk with the abbot, I went to my superior and said “I can’t do this.”
Is this bad news, or good news? None of us can shoulder our personal cross alone. No one really “handles” their lives. No one can face their own burdens, their own vulnerabilities, their own challenges alone. We do not have to. We are not meant to. The Gospel is not about our being strong. The Gospel is about God being strong in us.
“I can’t do this anymore,” said the younger monk to the abbot. The abbot grinned, for he had been there before. So has everyone who has tried to follow a Gospel path, to follow Jesus amidst the stresses and challenges of their own lives and that of a world indifferent to the Gospel’s strange power. “Good,” replied the abbot. “Stop trying. Just keep showing up for stuff.” After thirteen years, the monk is still there.
Keep showing up—to our lives, to our faith, to our God. It’s not a magic formula, it does not make everything feel all right. But everything is somehow different. We let God be God when we let go of trying to get it clear and get it right and instead journey humbly with one another, listening, praying for the grace to love another day, pray another day, trust another day.
Old Abram in the desert had come a long way, and was tired and squinty-eyed from looking at the sun. Sarai was way beyond the stresses and changes of pregnancy and childbearing in the desert. But they were not done. They trusted in the one who spoke. New names, an old promise made new, new life and new strength to live it. When we let God be strong, we set free the strange power of the Gospel. We set free Christ’s power to transform us, transform the world.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Temptation
1 Lent B 2009
Genesis 9: 8-17; Ps 25; 1 Peter 3: 18-22; Mark 1: 9-13
I have had two great temptations.
One happened at my diaconal ordination. Seven of us stood in the impressive sanctuary of St. James Cathedral a great deal of fuss was made over us. A tall and stately bishop pressed his hands on our heads, we were vested in finery, and finally we stood proudly in front of a packed house while people applauded. Then a voice from somewhere said quietly, “Congratulations. You really are this, the lights, the vestments, the attention, the applause. You really are a little better than average.”
This temptation still happens, at least once a week, only without the bishop and the cathedral.
The other temptation happened when I left my old Catholic Order. The first job I had was a pretty good match, but I resigned after a serious disagreement with the boss. My second job I quit because I hated it and I was terrible at it. So that year I was unemployed over Christmas and I had no idea what to do with the rest of my professional life. A voice came to me again—“You’re really no good at much of anything useful, you know. You’re just not worth a lot.”
You’re better than the rest. You’re nothing. This is the face of temptation, at least for me, and for many of us. Serious temptation is not the urge to do naughty things. Temptation is not the urge to ask “What would Ned Flanders do?” and feel bad when we don’t do it. Serious temptation is the strange attraction to be something other than who we are, to trade the gift of our basic selves for anything else, anything less.
We are the beloved of God. We are bound to the God of heaven and of earth. We are in the image of God, participate in the nature of God, are in the process of becoming God.
The sole purpose of the Bible is to shout that good news in our ears. The Noah-story cries out that the deepest truth is not that of reward and punishment. God so loves us that God swears there will be no more flood to punish, no divine attempt to hit the “reset” button for humanity. God swears this. We live under the rainbow of that promise.
We are the beloved of God. God sets us free. Christ has taken all the basic temptations we face upon himself. His ministry began with his baptism, where he heard that astonishing voice—“You are my Beloved.” Then, Spirit drives him to the desert. Beloved, desert, temptation all live together in one mystery. And there are others with him—wild beasts, and angels. Jesus shows us the way to liberation, and takes us with him, so it is we who heard the voice saying “Beloved”, it is we who are driven into the desert, it is we who pass through temptation, it is we who emerge with Jesus transformed.
But the mystery is, we still need to walk our own path of temptation.
We walk it with complete hope, since strangely enough the victory is already won. But we each walk our path to make the victory our own. We each hear temptation’s voice—“You really are different from everyone else”, or “you really are nothing.” It’s one and the same.
When Spirit drives us into the desert this Lent, know that it is a Spirit-path we walk. Welcome the wild beasts, the earthy wild wondrous truth of our own nature and the wondrous freedom of the wild world. Welcome the angels, who come in many forms, who love disguises, but who will help us when we are most in need.
And hold close the echo of that wondrous voice—“You are my Beloved.” These are the words and this is the Speaker that transforms the desert into the place where we find our home.
Genesis 9: 8-17; Ps 25; 1 Peter 3: 18-22; Mark 1: 9-13
I have had two great temptations.
One happened at my diaconal ordination. Seven of us stood in the impressive sanctuary of St. James Cathedral a great deal of fuss was made over us. A tall and stately bishop pressed his hands on our heads, we were vested in finery, and finally we stood proudly in front of a packed house while people applauded. Then a voice from somewhere said quietly, “Congratulations. You really are this, the lights, the vestments, the attention, the applause. You really are a little better than average.”
This temptation still happens, at least once a week, only without the bishop and the cathedral.
The other temptation happened when I left my old Catholic Order. The first job I had was a pretty good match, but I resigned after a serious disagreement with the boss. My second job I quit because I hated it and I was terrible at it. So that year I was unemployed over Christmas and I had no idea what to do with the rest of my professional life. A voice came to me again—“You’re really no good at much of anything useful, you know. You’re just not worth a lot.”
You’re better than the rest. You’re nothing. This is the face of temptation, at least for me, and for many of us. Serious temptation is not the urge to do naughty things. Temptation is not the urge to ask “What would Ned Flanders do?” and feel bad when we don’t do it. Serious temptation is the strange attraction to be something other than who we are, to trade the gift of our basic selves for anything else, anything less.
We are the beloved of God. We are bound to the God of heaven and of earth. We are in the image of God, participate in the nature of God, are in the process of becoming God.
The sole purpose of the Bible is to shout that good news in our ears. The Noah-story cries out that the deepest truth is not that of reward and punishment. God so loves us that God swears there will be no more flood to punish, no divine attempt to hit the “reset” button for humanity. God swears this. We live under the rainbow of that promise.
We are the beloved of God. God sets us free. Christ has taken all the basic temptations we face upon himself. His ministry began with his baptism, where he heard that astonishing voice—“You are my Beloved.” Then, Spirit drives him to the desert. Beloved, desert, temptation all live together in one mystery. And there are others with him—wild beasts, and angels. Jesus shows us the way to liberation, and takes us with him, so it is we who heard the voice saying “Beloved”, it is we who are driven into the desert, it is we who pass through temptation, it is we who emerge with Jesus transformed.
But the mystery is, we still need to walk our own path of temptation.
We walk it with complete hope, since strangely enough the victory is already won. But we each walk our path to make the victory our own. We each hear temptation’s voice—“You really are different from everyone else”, or “you really are nothing.” It’s one and the same.
When Spirit drives us into the desert this Lent, know that it is a Spirit-path we walk. Welcome the wild beasts, the earthy wild wondrous truth of our own nature and the wondrous freedom of the wild world. Welcome the angels, who come in many forms, who love disguises, but who will help us when we are most in need.
And hold close the echo of that wondrous voice—“You are my Beloved.” These are the words and this is the Speaker that transforms the desert into the place where we find our home.
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