Reflecting on John 10: 1-10

Several years ago, while driving near Shepherd’s Field, a shout went out from some of the pilgrims.  “Stop the bus! There is an actual shepherd! And actual sheep!”  And we all jumped off and took photographs of the bemused shepherds, who must find it odd that strangers find their occupation so fascinating.

That’s how out of touch we are with the rural images which Jesus uses so richly.  By spotting an actual shepherd with actual sheep―and just outside of Bethlehem, no less―we city-dwelling, 21^st century urbanites desperate for a connection with Jesus were thrilled to the core.

Who knows how much we are missing when we read the gospels, and Jesus’ beautiful images which were so familiar to his audience, and so unfamiliar to us? And because we miss so much of the shepherd imagery we miss this beautiful piece:  Jesus is not only the Shepherd, but he’s the Gate to the sheepfold too.

That means that Jesus protects us as a devoted shepherd protects his sheep.  Once they are in the sheepfold, he lays down next to the entrance and his body serves as the gate.  If there is danger, his sheep hide behind him.  If marauders do get in the sheepfold, they do it only over the shepherd’s dead body.

We should all experience that kind of love.  We should all know, from the womb, that we are safe.  We should be born into a world anxious to protect and love us.  We should not fear armies gathering at our borders, or bombs, or ferry boats.

The world is a dangerous place.  Hide yourself in Jesus, the Shepherd of your soul.

In what ways do you feel safe in God’s love?

Reflecting on Luke 24: 13-35

The more I learn about Jesus and his times the more I understand why, even on Easter morning, even after hearing stories about an empty tomb, the disciples of Jesus returned to their home in Emmaus with heavy hearts.

We were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel, they told the Stranger who traveled with them.   He didn’t redeem Israel after all.  He didn’t call together an army, he didn’t call down thunder from heaven and make the Romans pay for their unspeakable atrocities.  He didn’t rid Israel of the oppressor. 

What good is a redeemer who doesn’t rid us of the Romans?  Does God not see―does God not care― that they torture and brutalize us, and keep us in desperate poverty?  What good is a redeemer who loves to the end, even loves those who murder him so unjustly?  Who needs a redeemer like that?

We do.

The heavens opened, and angels rolled away the stone.  The tomb was already empty, even though the stone had held it closed until that moment.  Who needs a God like that?

We do.

Our hearts burned within us as the Stranger explained the scriptures to us, but we finally recognized him when he took, and blessed, and broke, and gave the Bread to us.  Who needs a redeemer like that?

We do.

Forever and ever.  Alleluia.

How does your own brokenness help repair the world?

Reflecting on John 20: 19-31

Why is Thomas still hanging around anyway?  He’s heard all the reports.  He knows that Mary of Magdala found the stone rolled away.  He knows the tomb was empty.  And he certainly knows the tale that Jesus appeared to the other disciples that very first evening, when he so unfortunately was not there.

He doesn’t believe it.  He’s not going to be taken for a fool.  Unless he touches the wounds himself―well, maybe he won’t have to go that far, but you know what he means―he will not be taken in by mass hysteria and a conspiracy to believe.

So why is he still here, associating with a community of faith?

Clearly he is more sophisticated than they are, more worldly wise, less susceptible to hope when there clearly is no hope, yet he is still heart-broken.   His beloved friend has been tortured and killed, and when he died he took all of Thomas’ dreams with him to the grave.

And then there is the other thing.  He’s been suppressing a soaring in his heart all week.  Here is his secret:  he so desperately wants it to be true.  And it’s for this reason that he can’t pull himself away from those who already believe.  Take your crazy stories away, he tells them.  Please bring your crazy stories closer.

You might know someone like him.  You might be him.  So stay close to those who believe.  Hold the crazy stories deep in your heart.  And then watch for him to be standing very near you, inviting you to touch his wounds.

How has staying close to those who believe strengthened your belief?

Reflecting on Matthew 28: 1-10

If you attended the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday you heard Matthew’s detailed and fascinating resurrection account.  It’s only here that we learn there was a “great earthquake” when an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and, like swatting a fly, rolled the stone away that had tried to keep Jesus chained in death.

And Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” actually saw this!  This is the only account in the four gospels where eyewitnesses actually saw the stone rolled away!  The big scary Roman guards posted at the tomb were so terrified by that angel that they fell dead asleep.  But not those women!  They stood their ground and watched―not fainting, but full of a faith that only comes from Love.  They loved Jesus.  No angel was keeping them from him. 

And because of their Love they witnessed the greatest event of all history.

On this day, Easter Sunday 2014, I offer you this invitation:  Fall in love with him.  Soften your heart.  Enter the tomb and see that it is empty.  Enter into a life in Christ and see that is full to overflowing with grace and love for you.  I promise.

The guards could have been eyewitnesses too.  Instead, they helped start the rumor that Jesus’ disciples stole the body so that there would be an explanation for that empty tomb when people came to see for themselves.

The world is like that these days.  There are lots of explanations for that empty tomb.  Except for this: the earliest Christians gladly accepted martyrdom because they had seen, and utterly believed, that their BELOVED was waiting for them just on the other side of the grave.

What might be keeping you from falling in Love?

Reflecting on Matthew 26: 14-27:66

Five weeks ago we heard a familiar and eerie story.  Jesus, having just been baptized, goes into the desert to keep his rendezvous, set from the beginning of time, with the Enemy. Famished from fasting, he is accosted by the Liar, who says, Look, you’re God, right?  I know you’re hungry, and there’s nothing to eat out here.  Just turn these stones into bread.

Jesus repulses the Liar with scripture, but he persists.  If you really want to show these people that you’re God, you should throw yourself off this cliff and let the angels catch you.  That’s the way a real God would do it.

Again Jesus rebuffs him, and the Enemy finally shows his hand.  Okay, you’re God and I’m not.  But I’ve got all the kingdoms of the world in my pocket. Give up this charade of being a human being, bow down and worship me, and I’ll give you everything.

At this, Jesus commands the Liar to leave, and so he must.   Matthew’s gospel tells us that angels then come to minister to Jesus.  Watch for those angels.  They’ll be back to roll the stone away on Easter morning, and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against them.

Satan failed so miserably because he couldn’t believe that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, would empty himself, taking the form of a slave.  Satan must have been astonished on Good Friday, when Jesus became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Two thousand years later, we’re still astonished.  And at his Name, 2.18 billion Christians bend their knees today, and their tongues confess:  Jesus Christ is Lord.

Are you still astonished at this wondrous love?

Reflecting On John 11:1-45

Ten years ago this week I went into Rose Hospital for exploratory surgery on a ten centimeter ovarian cyst.  I don’t think it’s going to turn out to be anything, said my wonderfully reassuring surgeon.  We’ll probably be done in an hour.

When I woke up, three hours had passed.  That’s when I knew for sure that the same disease which killed my mother in 1985 now had me in its grip.

But not for long. There was no metastasis.  I was one of those rare women to whom the symptoms of ovarian cancer did not whisper at all.  They shouted loud enough for my husband and my friend Angeline Hubert to say, “Something is very wrong with you.”

Like Lazarus, I was dead in the tomb.  Had my loved ones not pushed me to find the reason for my deep fatigue, the disease would surely have progressed to a stage beyond the scope of surgery.  Kathy, come out! Jesus our Healer commanded me.  And the nearly dead woman came out.  I am the longest-living survivor of ovarian cancer at the Rose Rocky Mountain Cancer Center.

Lord, if you had been here my mother would never have died.  How I prayed that my wonderful mom would be cured so many years before, but it was through her death that I recognized the disease when it came upon me nearly twenty years later.  We don’t know, in our lifetimes, the way God will use our suffering in the future, or is using it now.

Our task, while we live, is to unbind each other until the day the Risen One removes our death clothes once and for all.

How are you helping unbind people of their suffering?

Reflecting on John 9: 1-41

The thing is, we know this guy.  We’ve known him since he was a child.  As far as anyone can remember, he was always blind― blind from birth, his parents said.  Obviously, he’s a sinner.  His parents, too.  You don’t have a terrible affliction like blindness without a long history of sin in the family.

Moses insists we open wide our arms to the needy, so we’ve been giving him alms all these years.  That’s what makes what happened today so infuriating.   The sinner Jesus has been in Jerusalem with his disciples since the Feast of Tabernacles.  He’s caused his usual uproar, saying outrageous things about himself, even giving some people the impression he is replacing our feasts of water and light with himself.

None of us has forgotten what he did last Passover, when he drove the money changers out of the Temple and hinted that he was going to destroy the Temple and replace it with himself!  He even consorts with Samaritan women!  You might have heard about that little travesty, and how she went running back to tell all the Samaritans about him.  He’s obviously a sorcerer, just like they are.

And then there was the business with that woman caught in the very act of adultery.  That was his chance to prove that he was a true child of Moses, but no.  She walked away without a word of judgment from him.  We’d already collected the stones.

Next thing you know we’ll be hearing stories of him raising people from the dead.

In the meantime, now this blind man pretends to see, and says that this Jesus cured him.  And on the Sabbath!  Sinners don’t cure people.  Everyone knows that.

Jesus, the Messiah?  No way.  We just don’t see it.

What behaviors in your life do you refuse to see?

Reflecting on John 4: 5-42

Give me a drink.  Seriously, Jesus.  I’m asking.

I’m thirsty, and I know that’s the very thing you want to hear.  My emptiness is the password that unlocks your grace, and oh how I need it.

I suppose that, like your great Samaritan disciple, I’ve had five husbands too.  Hers were the five religions practiced by the slaves the Assyrians brought in to populate Samaria seven hundred years earlier.  The inhabitants of Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hammath, and Sepharvaim knew nothing about Jacob or Moses, or the great prophets Amos and Hosea.

Well, to be honest, even Amos and Hosea couldn’t pierce the deafness of the inhabitants of Samaria all those years ago.  They had the very well that their ancestor Jacob dug, and they gave lip service to the laws of Moses, but still they burned their children alive on altars dedicated to the Canaanite gods.  So there were definitely wide open spaces in their hearts for the allure of the gods of the foreigners who came in with the Assyrians.

I left myself wide open for five husbands too, and they enslaved me.  Their names are Comfort, and Food, and Safety, and People who Look Like Me, and, my most powerful master, The Positive Regard of Everyone I Meet.

I’ve drunk deeply from those wells, but they only made me thirsty again.  Comfort and Food and Safety left me listless and useless.  And the truth is, the faces of your poor look nothing like me, and those who care for them care only about YOUR positive regard.  Give me a sip from the well from which THEY drink and are so satisfied.

Fill my cup, Lord.  I’m finally lifting it up.

What “husbands” have left you unsatisfied?

Reflecting on Matt. 17: 1-9

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “daddy hunger”, the term for whole generations of young men and women who grew up without their fathers in the home.  Prisons are full of them―men who had no father to love them and so seek that “daddy love” from participation in gangs, and women who buy guns for felons and take enormous risks for dangerous men who give them the attention they crave.

I know hundreds of fabulous fathers, but incarcerated people often know the detached, violent, or demeaning father whose unloving presence serves as the backdrop for their lives.  Dad can’t say “Good job, I’m proud of you” because he never heard it from his dad, who in turn never heard it from his.  Scratch the surface of the life of a chronically depressed male of any age, and often (but certainly not always) you’ll find his emotionally unavailable father at the center of his wounds.

But not Jesus.  From the moment of his baptism at the Jordan to this transfiguring moment of identity revelation on Mount Tabor, the Father tells Jesus who he is:  My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Wouldn’t this world be a different place if children, boys in particular, heard this from their fathers on a regular basis?  Yes, this is my beloved son.  He makes me proud every day.

That’s the piece of heaven we learn about first in the gospels:  Jesus is the beloved Son of a heavenly Father who claims him, and names him, and is well pleased with him.  It’s that deep knowledge of being eternally loved that strengthens Jesus to go back down Tabor and face Jerusalem and his destiny.

In what ways do you witness “daddy hunger” in the world?

Reflecting on Gen. 2:7-9; 3:1-7

What is it about a lie that is so much more comfortable than the truth?  I think any lie that corroborates our own secret desires―which eventually kill us, by the way―will always find a welcome home with us.

The Enemy starts with a lie by suggesting to Eve that God has forbidden her all the trees in the garden.  Oh no, she says, just the one in the middle. 

Seriously? (says the Prince of Liars), I can’t believe that.  I’m outraged for you.  Why SHOULDN’T you have it all?

And you know what?  There is some part of us that thinks that we should.  Just give me a reason, any reason, why I should get to consume far more than my share of the world’s resources and I’ll breathe a huge sigh of relief.  No opposing viewpoints will find such an attentive ear.

Or suggest, as the serpent did, that I should be suspicious of others, that I’m being purposely left out of things, or that my experience is more exquisitely painful than all the rest of humanity, and I’ll lovingly nurture that lie for the rest of my life.

That Original Lie, that we are being secretly excluded by a conniving God―insert parent, or teacher, or coworkers, or friends―is our Original Wound.  And we willfully break that wound open, over and over again.

A million years later the Tempter tried the same lies on Jesus.  But the new Adam rejected Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises.  And at the end of these forty days we will gather at the Easter Font, renew our baptismal promises, and reject the Liar once again.

What lies do you resolve to reject this Lent?