On the Eucharistic Life

In the Middle East, the sharing of a meal is deeply significant act that creates and maintains communal life. As Dr. Power reminds us from time to time, in that culture, sharing a meal with someone makes them family, and this act carries all of the blessings and responsibilities of that kind of relationship. It is in that culture that the Passover meal became the Eucharist.

One of the oldest Eucharistic blessings includes this prayer: “As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and after it had been brought together became one, so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory, and the power, through Jesus Christ, forever” (Didache 9:4).

In the Eucharist, we rehearse the redemptive act whereby God created a people for himself. We join in that action to receive the blessings and accept the responsibilities of being that people. Taking the bread and wine is a deeply political act, proclaiming for everyone, “Who I am is not determined by my culture or job or the dictates of society. I am in Christ, and my identity is determined by His words and the life of the Community, which is his Body.”

The Eucharistic celebration is a renewal of Jesus’ commitment to us, collectively, as his Body, the people he has redeemed for himself. It is a renewal of our commitment to him and one another in being that. We are the scattered grain that has become the one loaf of bread, offered to God at the altar to be the Body of Christ. “We behold what we are; may we become what we see.”

To what extent do we really take responsibility for our brothers and sisters with whom we celebrate the Eucharist? What does it look like when we really commit to a deep, familial sharing with people who may have no more in common with us than the decision to attend a particular parish? What can be done to create that kind of “community culture” when we often attend churches full of people who have no such concept?

I don't have many answers yet, just more questions. But I'm working on it. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Jesus, church history, eucharist, early church, discipleship

On the Parable of the Sower

Jesus seemed to have a confidence in his preaching that I probably shouldn’t emulate: “if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, it’s because you’re predetermined to be unspiritual.” Riiight. I’ll try it one day and let you know how well it goes over.

Jesus has a lot of work to do in teaching us to see our world and ourselves as God does, and he uses stories to get the point across. He often presented to people very commonplace dilemmas, but with unexpected twists. He leads us to ask, “who am I in this story?”

When his disciples asked about the stories, Jesus told them that they reveal “the secret of the Kingdom of God,” what the rule of Yahweh looks like when ordinary men and women enter into it. Jesus identified himself by word and deed as the Jewish messiah, so was developing quite a following of folks who expected the immanent reign of God. We have to understand, however, that in this culture, entering the reign of God was something one did with a big knife: Isaiah called Messiah a mighty warrior, and there was plenty of war to be made. Israel was under foreign domination, and the Pharisees were always struggling to maintain the integrity of Jewishness in a sea of Gentile idolatry.

But Jesus doesn’t tell them of battle and destruction at this moment. He tells them about a farmer, haphazardly throwing away seed. Not meticulously planting each one, apparently even plowing. He just throws it out everywhere and waits to see what happens. The kingdom is coming, but not through the immediate vindication of Israel, but by the transformation of lives. The poor hear good news, broken hearts are bound and prisoners are released from darkness. A Roman centurion’s servant is healed, a little girl is raised from the dead, and demons vacate the oppressed spirit of Mary Magdalene.

This is what grows up all around us when the Word finds good ground. As we journey deeper into the Lenten season, deeply aware of our own mortality and fragility, we ask, how do we receive the word? Do we live our lives in a listening way, putting down roots when the Word comes down to us? Do we lose ourselves in the addictions of media and materialism, allowing the Evil One to steal away what we’ve been given? Does our desire for comfort choke our growth into vulnerability before the Lord and obedience to his call?

Dust we are, and to dust we will return. We come before the Lord of the universe with ashes on our foreheads, dirty hands that cradle too many regrets to name, and fearful hearts that harbor deep brokenness. But that’s alright. He, in Himself, is enough for us. We come to his table to receive the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation, trusting that he will impart his wholeness to us. Nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else will heal us. We wait, together, in the stillness, in the dark, for his word of compassion and healing. This altar is set up in the darkest parts of us, where shame, guilt, and our continual inability to “get it together” remain the core values of who we are. Lord Jesus, meet us here.

His word will heal us and set us free. This will not be a matter of immediate, whiz-bang “name it and claim it” prosperity gospel rubbish, but a process that will flow out of his commitment to us, and ours to him. We have re-order our lives so to be “good ground” to receive the love that he throws around like great bags of seed.

The Powers and the Death of John

Text: Mark 6:13-29.

Mark’s narrative gets strange here. He tells us the big thing God’s anointed is doing next, but then he remembers there’s a background story to share with us, and a pretty disturbing one at that.

John the Baptizer died for a very stupid reason. Herod had been afraid of him, and rightfully so. John had come on the scene preaching repentance with quite a following, while Herod was a minor ruler serving an oppressive power but had lofty pretensions to being called the King of the Jews. He feared John as a man of God, so he knew that silencing this popular prophet would bring God’s wrath, as well as kill the last of his credibility with his people. Even when John attacked his “family values,” that fox kept a respectful distance.

But then Herod had a birthday party, and probably quite drunk and not a little lusty, asked his niece to dance for his assembled guests. She must have been quite a diva, because afterwards he blustered a promise to reward her with whatever she wished, up to the half of his kingdom. Still feeling the humiliation of the Baptizer’s rebuke, her mother Herodias knew just the thing: John’s head. So Herod’s moral weakness and pride picked up where his resolve had failed. He had John executed.

John was the greatest and last prophet of Israel, Jesus said. He announced the arrival of Israel’s Messiah, and began the work of ushering them into the Reign of Yahweh, warning that “the powers that be” were coming to an end and that people who responded to Yahweh and those who kept serving the powers would be separated like wheat and chaff, and once the chaff started burning, wasn’t nothing gonna put the fire. The forces of greed, lust, domination and oppression, were about to be dethroned.

And yet.

We see Herod and his family and friends, people controlled by the “principalities and powers,” wallowing in their own excess and dispatching John on a drunken whim.

There is no Hollywood ending to wrap it all up very neatly. Perhaps John recovers while in hiding, and makes Herod pay, or Jesus and the crew show up and break down his palace to rubble. But that doesn’t happen.

His disciples took the body and laid it in a tomb. How melancholy.

What is God’s response to this? Let’s recall what reminded Mark to tell the story.

“They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.”

Jesus disarms the powers not by fighting puppets like Herod, but by undermining them. The principalities and powers, and those that serve them, can control with lies. They cannot make free by the truth. They can hurt. They cannot heal. They can inspire hatred or lust, but love is beyond them. Jesus and his disciples, however, could do these things.

So how will we live under the rule of Yahweh when we’re surrounded by fear and the domination of “the powers that be”? We will listen for and speak to one another the prophetic words that there is nothing in life, death, heaven, hell, sickness, poverty, or any fear that can separate us from the love of God that has been demonstrated to us in Jesus Christ. Nothing at all. We will approach the altar of God as free people and receive Jesus again into ourselves, and trust in his love and dedication to us, the promise that our life is in Christ.

Then we will go. We will carry the peace of God with us and give it away to others by our words and the tender works of our hands. The Kingdom is coming, and nothing will stop it. It is here among us now. Amen.

Discipline of Community

Provocative reading.

3. Fellowship can only be on the surface because we are all way too busy to invest real time in each other. In addition, we have no clue how to have real relationships because we have been through so many bad ones, and biblical principles for confrontation, reconciliation and restoration are rarely followed (because we don't want to offend anyone).

4. People have become immune to church initiatives geared toward making them feel welcomed into and part of the church. Sadly though, these are mostly "programs" to promote a "healthy, growing church" and focus more on the church's interests than on the interests of the people to whom they would minister.

From Why churches are REALLY dead..., Diana Baldwin

Points 3 and 4 of Ms. Baldwin's essay resonate deeply with my own experience in churches, and help me to articulate just why it is that I am so desperate to discover a communal Christian discipleship we can rightly call "apostolic" instead of the comfortable, consumer-driven church culture that pervades North American Christendom.

We put together attractive programs in our churches and water down the call to discipleship as much as we can in order to make it easily digestible. We hope people will reorder their lives just enough to make the "Sunday event" a regular, positive experience. "We got them in." This is the important part, you say. That's evangelism. Is it? One of my buddies would be quick to quote Augustine to me: "It's the walls that make a Christian, then?"

No. It's not the walls. It's a changed life. We aren't going to offer the evidence of Christ in our midst by creating glitzy worship "experiences" or clever programs designed to offer the gospel as a "yes/no" proposition as convincingly as possible.

People are not out there so we can convert them to an institution. Our institutions, our ways of doing things, exist to faciliate and challenge our life together as the Body of Christ, God's New Community. We're only going to draw people to Jesus if we lift him up in our lives by loving people in the hard ways.

So what would it look like if I were to really re-order my life so that I could learn the Way? I would use language as a tool for sharing, rather than trying to make people think I'm clever. I'd be friends with people who don't seem to "get me" all the time. I'd invite people over and cook for them more. I really think I would give up the addiction of having my own way all the time. I would talk more with people that I know will challenge me. I'd stop being too afraid to challenge them. You can do that when you love and know you're loved, after all, this idea of saying hard things.

These are just some of the things I've been thinking about, and some of it I've been living into.

On Spiritual Disciplines

I've been reading Dallas Willard and Richard Foster in preparation for a three week teaching series on "Spiritual Disciplines." I chose to teach on the topic because I've sensed for quite some time that I need to learn about this stuff.

Willard's got a pretty tough proposition he sets forth in his Spirit of the Disciplines: we don't live like Jesus (the way he called us to live) because we don't order our lives like he did. We assume that a "spiritual" life is one divorced from the "real" world around us. To the contrary, the spiritual life is one lived in the real world according to principles of God's Kingdom instead of those of the world around us.

Kingdom living means choosing deliberate solitude, intentional community, time for prayer, meditation, and fasting. It means living a life of premeditated submission to the people around us and serving them, washing feet like the Master. It's a different way -- a redemptive way -- of living life in the world, not a way of stepping out of it.

My biggest thought right now is that "gee, I've got a lot to change if I'm going to recieve the Kingdom." But I don't think that a big, unsustainable life change is the point. It's the smaller, sustainable changes that will create a place in our lives for the Master. The purpose (says Foster) is to live in continual communion and obedience with the Lord, free to love and live in joy. The Disciplines are a matter of how we get there from here.

So I'm going to do it, bit by bit. I can take twenty minutes out of the day to pray for people who matter to me. I can take thirty minutes a few times a week to sit in silence, to let empty places form without seeking to fill them with noise. I can meditate on scripture, and invite Jesus into those places. It's those little things, that way of arranging my life -- not being morally perfect -- that will bring about a life lived under the Reign of God.

Lenten Meditation

Meditation for the Saturday after Ash Wednesday
John 17:20-26, NIV

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. While the stark reality spoken at the imposition of the ashes echoes in our minds, our Master prays that we would receive his glory. Who does Jesus think he’s fooling? He of anyone should know how our best intentions too often disintegrate in the fires of our jealously, faithlessness, and obdurate wandering after false gods: Wednesday’s ashes are the remains of Palm Sunday’s jubilation. But Jesus knows that the glory of God is greater than our failures. In biblical usage, the word “glory” denotes the visible presence of Yahweh in the midst of his people. This is why John speaks so often of Jesus “glorifying” the Father by his signs: in them, Jesus revealed the true character of Yahweh.

Jesus says that he has glorified the Father, and given that glory to his disciples and those who would follow. That glory will bring unity, and through it, the world will see the Father’s love. How can we walk in this truth? Jesus glorified the Father by healing and embracing the broken and outcast. He spoke love and truth into shame and disorder. He emptied himself of pride and took the place of a servant, washing the feet of his friends as well as his betrayer. He died bearing our sin and disorder, looking to God to make it right.

If unity is a matter of glorifying the Father and the Son through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we will not achieve it by fighting to preserve or save our religious institutions. It will be a gift that comes from glorifying our Master. So let’s grab a basin and towel and get to work.

Technorati Tags: Lent, Ash Wednesday, discipleship

Civil War Adventures

It's been a pretty quiet few days. "Kmart" came to visit me the week after Christmas, but alas we both ended up getting some kind of nasty flu varient. So we put off our sight-seeing until the last bit of the weekend. We went to Corsicana and saw a towel soiled with the blood of Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah, that'll give you nightmares.

I'll be teaching at the end of February on "Understanding Christian Fundamentalism." I'm really excited about it, because exploring that stuff is of course one of my best hobbies. I intend to focus on helping folks make sense of words like "charismatic," "evangelical," and "fundamentalist" so they'll not only be able to "get" people of those persuasions (even if it's just a little bit) but also be a little less prone to use those words entirely interchangably, which is the habit of a number of folks around these parts.

See, it's all about what irritates me. :0)

The Epiphany

Epiphany. John 6:30-33, 48-51, NIV

Jesus’ disciples were people on the fringes. They felt adrift in their society, deeply feeling their powerlessness in a culture characterized by foreign oppression, political unrest, and a crushing fear of what the future held. Jesus gathered people together and promised them that through his own ministry, God’s saving power was breaking into their world here and now, and that it was bigger than all the institutional evils they could name, as well as their own pain and doubt.

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany, the realization that the light Jesus brings into our lives will eradicate the darkness and fear. God has moved his salvation into our dark world with the force of a blazing star. But we understand, as did the first disciples, that this work is not accomplished all at once. There remains uncertainty and crippling fear. So as they did, we ask Him, “Show us a sign. We believe you, but we need something to hold onto, something more than just words.”

“I am the bread of Life,” He says, “come down from heaven.” The love I show you, the sacrifice I make for you, will be your sign. It will be the foundation of your life, so much that you will commemorate it with the most ordinary of observances, the eating of bread and wine.

In impoverished first century Palestine, bread and wine were the basic elements of a meal. Had the incarnation occurred in Africa, he might have given us rice and water. Here, he might have told us to remember him with coffee and donuts. The point is that the ordinary things have become reminders of His love for us and His promise to heal us and set us free.

So as we acknowledge and lift up to Him our hurts and our fears, let’s give thanks for the ordinary things that are reminders of Him, those graces that empower us to keep waiting for His salvation. God’s redemptive and healing movement in our lives will take many forms: an embrace, an encouraging note, a garden, a good meal – any number of things. What is He placing into your life to empower and heal you? We thank Him for those things, and ask Him to give us more of Himself.

Our sign is in the ordinary things. Hear the words He spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “I am God now and forever. No one can snatch you from me or stand in my way” (43:13).

Advent: The God who comes in time

3 Advent. John 5:1-9, The Message

People told the story in that ancient time and place, that occasionally a messenger of God would come and stir up the waters of the pool. The first sick person to touch the water would be made well. The rest would remain, waiting for it to be stirred again. The sick, the infirm and the desperate gathered to await the movement of God.

The man Jesus encountered had specific expectations of the work of God. When Jesus asked a silly question, as he was wont to do, the man replied, “I cannot be healed because I am too weak to step into the path of God.” But Jesus demonstrated that God’s path takes him directly to the hurting and broken. No dipping in a pool. No magic words or special ceremonies. Jesus showed up and exploded his expectations and ours, telling him simply, “get up.”

It is Advent, a season to remember that God shows up at just the right time, in very unexpected ways. God came to us in the form of a gurgling, drooling baby. Can you imagine the incarnate deity spitting up on your shoulder? He comes to us in bread and wine. He comes to us in the Christian Community he called together.

We believe this. This is a God we can trust. So we open ourselves up to him in the silence, and await his presence. We will discover, just as the folks at the Pool of Bethesda did, that he is already with us. He will come and heal us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

He may guide us into the consummation, when we will be raised up to be with him. He may strengthen our bodies, sometimes very quickly, and sometimes through a long rehabilitation. He will give us the grace to forgive others, and teach us to entrust ourselves to the Body of Christ. These are the signs and wonders we await.

The one who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion.

Advent Hope

You know I've been unfaithful
Lovers in lines
While you're turning over tables
With the rage of a jealous kind
I chose the gallows to the aisle
Thought that love would never find
Hanging ropes will never keep you
And your love of a jealous kind

- "Jealous Kind," from who we are instead, Jars of Clay

When we distance ourselves from the Lover of our souls, strangling ourselves in that familiar noose of self-recriminations and unanswerable questions, Jesus yet pursues us. We might be tempted to give up on ourselves -- and do just that -- a dozen times in a day, but he never does.

Who are the lovers to whom we turn for comfort? Success? The respect of others? Money? Sex? Power? It's all about money, sex and power, you know. Or is it?

One day he will appear. He will shine through the fog of our secrets like a blazing star, and we will really know for the first time just how deeply loved we are. We will see ourselves as he sees us, and we will drop our idols of guilt and the images of what we wish we were, and slip out of the noose. We will fall to our knees and raise our hands in gratitude.

Because we will understand. We will finally understand that his faithfulness and compassion more than compensate for all of our inadequacies, real or imagined. This will happen. And it could happen at any moment between now and the next breath.

This is the Advent Hope.

Christ have mercy.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, Advent, jars of clay, spirituality

Advent: Welcoming the Inbreaking of the Kingdom

I think I did a fair enough job delivering Wednesday's homily. This whole sermon thing is a little daunting, and I've been thinking about a point Dr. Power made the other day about how priests are given the gift and responsibility of speaking God's hope and promise into the lives of people who, like me and everybody else in the world, face the challenges of stress, overwork, individualism, materialism, depression, addiction, all kinds of life dominating brokenness, on and on into the night.

It is by no means useful for me to try to think up pretty and academically impressive things to say. But that's what I like best! Rats.

This weekend will be the second young adult bible "exploration" or whatever. We need a decent name for this: I don't want to be trendy, but as one of our kind parishioners pointed out the other day, "Bible Study" carries connotations of lectures and bottled answers. He's right, especially in the Bible Belt culture. "Bible Exploration." Does anybody have an opinion on that? Soon I'll be putting together content for a young adult ministry webpage on the church's site. This will be a challenge; I know what I want to convey, but I'm not sure of the best way to do so.
The Good News of Jesus Christ is not that we can be "saved" from hell or to heaven by giving intellectual assent to a set of doctrinal propositions. That's what is usually meant by the idea of "accepting Jesus" as one's Lord and Savior. Believing in Jesus is not the same as believing something about Jesus, which is what lots of folks consider conversion to be. Well, they're just plain wrong.

Essentially, the Gospel calls us to an alternative lifestyle of repentance: continual turning from materialism to generosity, from individualism to community, and from cynicism to gratitude and hope. We turn from ourselves and our own way of doing things (what Paul calls "the flesh" or "sinful nature") and turn to God and a new way of life (what he calls the life of the Spirit). When men and women take seriously the proclamation that God is drawing all the outsiders near and that the reign of God is breaking into the world through the changing lives of Jesus' disciples, that news will radically alter their attitudes and ways of living and relating to others. People who respond to that news will form missional communities and through their lives in the world translate into different cultures God's message of repentance and hope. Those communities will take shape in different ways appropriate to their own times and places, and consist of a group of people who are serious about changing their attitudes and way of living to bring it in line with the inbreaking Kingdom of God.

It is Advent, after all.

Who's Dirty?

The Wednesday of the Second Week in Advent. Matthew 15:1-20

This conflict is not only about ceremonial cleanliness, but about two visions of being Israel: that of Jesus, and that of the Pharisees. The question of clean and unclean was one of who was fit to stand in the presence of God with God’s people. There are insiders and there are outsiders; us and them. This was particularly important since these Jewish folk lived in a Palestine absolutely infested with Gentiles. Walking down the street could make an otherwise perfectly religious, Godly Jew unclean without even realizing it. This is why elaborate hand-washing exercises developed, not for hygienic, but religious reasons. In skipping over them, Jesus and His disciples once again disregarded the painful lesson Israel learned through the Exile: the Jews could only be God’s people and carry his favor insofar as they maintained separation from the other people on the earth.

Jesus insisted on a very different understanding. Israel would not be different from the other nations because of ceremony and what they would or wouldn’t eat or touch, but by the way they responded to God. They would live pure, holy, loving lives, and take care of the people around them. They would in this way live under the reign of God, even though God’s presence seemed distant.

The rules were meant to protect and empower the peoples’ relationship with God, but instead they kept them from it. The temple system in Jesus’ day was burdensome to the poor, and those who wanted to turn to God were hindered by the sacrificial requirements. This is why John the Baptizer and his baptism of repentance was so popular, and why Jesus smashed the tables of the sellers in the temple—they were an equivalent of our loan sharks. Jesus uses an odd custom as an example of this: some people use those rules to weasel out of what God considers their clear responsibility to love.

For the Pharisees, being faithful to God had everything to do with how things looked: that one did all the right things and appeared religious and pure. This is why they so often criticized Jesus as a "drunk": he spent time with drunks, prostitutes and tax collectors. What does this mean to us? It means that we cannot use rules about what’s religious or irreligious to weasel out of our clear responsibility to love.

Whenever we choose to step away from someone because we don’t understand them, or their lifestyles are extravagantly sinful, or we’re concerned that others will think we’re like them or approve of their behavior and worldviews, we let our hearts wander from God. We can only speak the prophetic word if first we choose to love. Creative love is in itself a prophetic act.

Who are the people in our lives we avoid? Who irritates us? Those are the folks for whom we must ask God to give us a vision. Understanding the inconsistencies and weakness of our own love, we ask for a glimpse of His deep tenderness toward our enemies. Armed with this, we are called to speak good things, to voice God’s blessing into their lives. Through such an empowerment of the Holy Spirit, those good things will come to pass. We needn’t worry, then, about who is clean or not, because we will ourselves will be agents of God’s cleansing.

On Prayer

A Word from ++A.M. Ramsey

The Godward movement has many aspects. It includes the use of mind and imagination which we call meditation, it includes the counting of God's mercies which we call praise and thanksgiving, and self-abasement which we call confession. But try to think of it more simply: it means putting yourself near God, with God, in a time of quietness every day. You put yourself with him just as you are, in the feebleness of your concentration, in your lack of warmth and desire, not trying to manufacture pious thoughts or phrases. You put yourself with God, empty perhaps, but hungry and thirsty for him; and if in sincerity you cannot say that you want God you can perhaps tell him that you want to want him; and if you cannot say even that perhaps you can say that you want to want to want him! Thus you can be very near him in your naked sincerity; and he will do the rest, drawing out from you longings deeper than you knew were there and pouring into you a trust and a love like that of the psalmist-- whose words may soon come to your lips. Forgive me for putting this so clumsily. I am trying to say that you find you are "with God" not by achieving certain devotional exercises in his presence but by daring to be your own self as you reach towards him.

Everything You Know is Incorrect

For the Wednesday Healing Eucharist, the 28th Sunday after Pentecost.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11
John 6:47-51

When great pain comes, we feel things about God that our heads know to be wrong. Despite the counsel of Holy Scripture and the fact of the Incarnation telling us that God really deeply loves us, in times of emotional or physical agony we often conclude that God is somewhere up above and far away, implicitly approving the pain of his people. We don’t usually announce clearly, “God is punishing me,” but we might hear or say something like, “I’m sure God let this happen for a reason,” or “Maybe God is trying to get your attention.” Have we heard this before?

The idea that God might crush our bodies or twist our emotions to wring faithfulness out of us stands in stark contradistinction to the theology of suffering presented to us by the Christ of Calvary, who died alone and afraid, his asphyxiating body torn by whips and covered with the spit of Roman soldiers.

The Crucified God turns our notions of suffering upside down by suffering with us. Because the only truly morally upright human ever to live suffered and died, alone and betrayed by his people, we know that those who suffer and die alone and betrayed do not do so by the will of God. Parents who love do indeed chasten and correct their children, but they do not bring about their destruction.

Jesus the God-Man shows us how God suffers with us and suffers for us. He also shows us how to offer ourselves up to God in the midst of our pain. In Christ, God has reached out to us in our fallenness and broken humanity, and bids us offer our fear and pain to Him as gifts in themselves. When we confess to God that we are angry, that we are hurting, and most important of all, that we are deeply afraid, we are offering back to the Father of Compassion a wonderful gift: reckless, daring trust. Confession to God and other believers of our own destitution demonstrates to Him that we know He and the Community He is continually creating and redeeming will not reject us and cast us into outer darkness.

In so doing, we join with the rhythms of Christ’s redemptive suffering. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his execution, Jesus poured out his fear, pain and confusion to God. To do that very thing is to offer radical trust to God as our gift back to the Giver. It is in this way that the presence of Christ moves into our own suffering, and remakes us as sufferers into the likeness of Jesus Himself.

“Just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives,” says Paul, “so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” When we as God’s new community choose to bear with one another in our fear and desolation, we offer hospitality to Christ as well. It is into that lifestyle that Jesus pours his resurrection life. When this happens, we don’t see his resurrection any longer as a promise of life in the future, after death, but a reversal of the death in our lives now.

Therefore when we also feel in our own hearts the sentence of death and despair even of life, let us rely not on ourselves, but on God who, raises the dead.

As we offer ourselves up to God in the Eucharist, let us be cognizant that it is not just our strength we offer up to him, but our fear and weakness as well. It is into that desolation that he pours out his Spirit when we partake of the bread and wine. This is a God we can trust with our broken hearts. His wholeness will make us whole.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, suffering god, eucharist

Your Kingdom Come

28 Pentecost. Tuesday, November 18, 2003. Matthew 17:14-21

This passage makes me nervous; two possible hermeneutical catastrophes come immediately to mind. If we believed deeply in the authority we have as baptized people to bring about the rule of God’s Kingdom, we might do very well to go about laying hands on the demoniacs in our lives and healing the broken. On the one hand, this could lead to a great crisis of faith were nothing spectacular to happen. On the other, if the lame started walking, the blind regained their sight and demoniacs were restored to their right minds, we’d have an even bigger disaster on our hands. To make matters worse, we have yet another confusing suggestion from Jesus, criticizing the disciples for having a faith too small, but insisting that the smallest bit of faith is indeed sufficient to accomplish the largest tasks.

When the disciples brought this epileptic/demoniac to Jesus, he had just come down the mountain after the event we call the Transfiguration – Jesus appeared to Peter, James and John, bathed in bright light and flanked by Moses and Elijah. This served as supernatural authentication of Jesus’ Messiahship. This was not an office of merely “religious” significance, either: anyone familiar with the Jewish scriptures knew that God’s anointed one would be sent to kick Roman backside and restore the Kingdom to Israel under the direct rule of God. Behold, the Messiah illumined by God’s power and glory. The mighty revolutionary and savior of his people then promptly trotted down the hill into the depths of human misery, to bring to bear the strong and loving rule of Yahweh into the lives of the last, least, and left out, who in this case was a seizing peasant boy.

The presence of a demon behind the boy’s ailment reminds us that the struggle was also a spiritual one: in this confrontation, the Messiah establishes God’s kingdom against Beelzebub, dramatically dethroning in that time and place the forces of darkness and death that gripped someone Yahweh loved very much. It is in light of that reality that Jesus commissioned his disciples to carry out the revolution: preach, heal, cast out demons. They couldn’t cast out this one, however. Jesus counted them with the unbelieving, perverse generation around them, because their faith was too small. He then tells them, even though their faith was small, the smallest faith would be sufficient to accomplish the biggest of tasks.

Oh, okay. Huh? Jesus is not the most clear and sensible of rabbis, is he? He leaves us with another riddle that requires us to think hard and pray fervently if we are to obey in any meaningful way.

Maybe the kind of faith possessed by the disciples was the real issue. Maybe they thought they could heal people for God because he had given them special powers for that purpose. Perhaps they hoped that they could accomplish these things through special formulas or magic words. Sound familiar? I would suggest that any degree of belief in one’s ability to accomplish God’s purposes in this way would always be a faith far too small for the God of Jesus Christ.

Jesus instead calls us to faith in a God so big, that even believing in His God just a little bit through the darkness of our own lives will accomplish the impossible. The nature of that God revealed through Jesus dares us to believe that Jesus is bringing about God’s kingdom in power, in ways we never would have expected. He calls all of his disciples to believe that it is God’s will and desire to establish a world that the meek will inherit, where the hungry will be fed, and the poor will become the richest of all; the lame would dance, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead be raised.

He has not called us to trust our own abilities, but to trust Him, His will and His power. Even now He continues to break into our dark and fallen world to heal us and set us free – every last one of us. He will not do this work because we lay hands on folks. He will heal because he loves and it is his determined desire to impart wholeness to those he loves. He chooses to do so through the touch of the Body of Christ. May we prove ourselves faithful to that mission, and willing to believe in it despite our deeply entrenched darkness and fear.