On April 3, we commemorate Richard of Chichester, bishop, who died 1253.
You may remember the prayer attributed to him, basis for a song in the rock opera Godspell:
Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly,
Day by day.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Commandment to Love
A priest I knew once said some parishioners told him that their five year old little girl came home after church one Sunday and complained—“All the priest does is say the same thing over and over. Blah blah blah love, blah blah blah love.”
Well Maundy Thursday is the reason that preachers have sermons that harp on a single theme of love—the new commandment of Christ to the disciples, to love others as he has loved them.
To be servants to each other, to wash each others’ feet. To love not as masters but as slaves.
To love as Christ has loved us.
The immensity of Christ’s love for us makes us wonder whether we can even try to attain to such a thing—to make Christ’s model our own way of loving.
For Christ’s love was all verb.
While we want love to be poems, flowers and cards of sympathy, or the whispering of sweet nothings, Christ had no hearts and flowers and sentiment.
Christ’s love was rooted in his body.
His love was making mud on a blind man’s eyes;
Telling a woman at a well about her life;
Weeping with Mary and Martha;
commanding in a shout for Lazarus to live.
His love was dirty and defiled by disease, distemper, death. His love was measured in the number of dusty, dirty feet gently put under water. His love was eating and drinking with people we wouldn’t want to bring home to dinner.
His love is leaving our safe places behind.
I believe that our loving must be startled out of our reverie, away from our safe places and made clear to the world. Because, when we pay attention to all the ways the world is crying out for the acts of love shone to us in Christ, we begin to want to love our world as Christ loved it.
Coming out of complacency that nothing can be done, or that the world needs so much more love than we can give, we begin to see that unless we start where we are, the world will die without love.
Our nooks and crannies are our stating places, just like Jesus’s world of lepers and the lame and women coming to wells was his world. Jesus did not heal all people in his world but he made it possible that everywhere his followers went, love would be spread in a geometric progression. Each person loving in the small corners they inhabit, multiplied, become all the world receiving the love of Christ.
The arithmetic of Christ’s love is bigger than any one of us. It starts with small steps, with awareness of how to love in the minute I find myself, the place I find myself, with the people with whom I find myself.
The spread of divine love is not safe, it is risky. It is stepping into someone’s grief and loss, or away from the computer in face to face encounter. It can be as mundane as a beer with a young adult, or as exotic as a mission trip to a place that may give us malaria.
This kind of loving is always personal, as Christ was personal.
This kind of loving is imbued with divine power, as Christ was imbued with divine power.
This kind of loving is not a choice. Jesus did not say, maybe you will love if you want to be my follower, but you must love as I have loved you.
This kind of loving is the mark of Christians. By this they will know you are my disciples.
As we ponder the commandment to love as Christ has loved us, we know that we would not be given this work to do without God’s power behind it. We know we can love, because Christ loved us. We know we can start today because we are loved today. We know we can take our love to dark and lonely places because we have been loved in our own dark and lonely places. We know that all the people we are asked to love are merely our own selves, who have already been loved.
This knowledge of the love of Christ is what propels us to love the world. Christ so loved us that we can do no other than love in his holy name.
Living the love that Christ asked us to live.
Doing the loving that Christ lived.
We know we are living love like a verb when our lives are not just talk. When we are not just blah, blah, blah love, but doing love, love, love, love.
Well Maundy Thursday is the reason that preachers have sermons that harp on a single theme of love—the new commandment of Christ to the disciples, to love others as he has loved them.
To be servants to each other, to wash each others’ feet. To love not as masters but as slaves.
To love as Christ has loved us.
The immensity of Christ’s love for us makes us wonder whether we can even try to attain to such a thing—to make Christ’s model our own way of loving.
For Christ’s love was all verb.
While we want love to be poems, flowers and cards of sympathy, or the whispering of sweet nothings, Christ had no hearts and flowers and sentiment.
Christ’s love was rooted in his body.
His love was making mud on a blind man’s eyes;
Telling a woman at a well about her life;
Weeping with Mary and Martha;
commanding in a shout for Lazarus to live.
His love was dirty and defiled by disease, distemper, death. His love was measured in the number of dusty, dirty feet gently put under water. His love was eating and drinking with people we wouldn’t want to bring home to dinner.
His love is leaving our safe places behind.
I believe that our loving must be startled out of our reverie, away from our safe places and made clear to the world. Because, when we pay attention to all the ways the world is crying out for the acts of love shone to us in Christ, we begin to want to love our world as Christ loved it.
Coming out of complacency that nothing can be done, or that the world needs so much more love than we can give, we begin to see that unless we start where we are, the world will die without love.
Our nooks and crannies are our stating places, just like Jesus’s world of lepers and the lame and women coming to wells was his world. Jesus did not heal all people in his world but he made it possible that everywhere his followers went, love would be spread in a geometric progression. Each person loving in the small corners they inhabit, multiplied, become all the world receiving the love of Christ.
The arithmetic of Christ’s love is bigger than any one of us. It starts with small steps, with awareness of how to love in the minute I find myself, the place I find myself, with the people with whom I find myself.
The spread of divine love is not safe, it is risky. It is stepping into someone’s grief and loss, or away from the computer in face to face encounter. It can be as mundane as a beer with a young adult, or as exotic as a mission trip to a place that may give us malaria.
This kind of loving is always personal, as Christ was personal.
This kind of loving is imbued with divine power, as Christ was imbued with divine power.
This kind of loving is not a choice. Jesus did not say, maybe you will love if you want to be my follower, but you must love as I have loved you.
This kind of loving is the mark of Christians. By this they will know you are my disciples.
As we ponder the commandment to love as Christ has loved us, we know that we would not be given this work to do without God’s power behind it. We know we can love, because Christ loved us. We know we can start today because we are loved today. We know we can take our love to dark and lonely places because we have been loved in our own dark and lonely places. We know that all the people we are asked to love are merely our own selves, who have already been loved.
This knowledge of the love of Christ is what propels us to love the world. Christ so loved us that we can do no other than love in his holy name.
Living the love that Christ asked us to live.
Doing the loving that Christ lived.
We know we are living love like a verb when our lives are not just talk. When we are not just blah, blah, blah love, but doing love, love, love, love.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Passion
A few words meditating on the passion—
The passion—central defining action of Jesus of Nazareth—his trial as an innocent man. His trial for our own humanness, where his divinity waits to show the glory of God. Was his suffering because of us? Are we the Jews who put him on trial? Are we Pilate who wash our hands of his death?
The terrible suffering and death of Jesus was the culmination of all his acts of love for us. He time and again has risked his life by healing on the Sabbath, questioning the leaders of the Jews in their temples, and raising Lazarus from the dead in a way that incites them against him. He is taken like a thief. He is treated like a criminal. Is this for all our thieving ways? For our criminal behavior toward each other?
Jesus’ death is for us. Jesus’ death is more than the snuffing of one life. His death stands for the death of sinfulness and the power of death over us. His death snuffs out death, not life. His death is our own death if we let it be. The death of mean-spiritness, the death of jealousy and greed. The death of working so much we don’t have time to love. The death of trying to control all our world out of anxiety.
Jesus did not die without purpose.Jesus did not suffer without first loving all the world and calling each of us to him in love. Love conquers jealousy and greed, and anxiety, if we accept this gift from Jesus.
The terribleness of this death that Jesus died carries the weight of the world with it so that love may have the last say.
The passion—central defining action of Jesus of Nazareth—his trial as an innocent man. His trial for our own humanness, where his divinity waits to show the glory of God. Was his suffering because of us? Are we the Jews who put him on trial? Are we Pilate who wash our hands of his death?
The terrible suffering and death of Jesus was the culmination of all his acts of love for us. He time and again has risked his life by healing on the Sabbath, questioning the leaders of the Jews in their temples, and raising Lazarus from the dead in a way that incites them against him. He is taken like a thief. He is treated like a criminal. Is this for all our thieving ways? For our criminal behavior toward each other?
Jesus’ death is for us. Jesus’ death is more than the snuffing of one life. His death stands for the death of sinfulness and the power of death over us. His death snuffs out death, not life. His death is our own death if we let it be. The death of mean-spiritness, the death of jealousy and greed. The death of working so much we don’t have time to love. The death of trying to control all our world out of anxiety.
Jesus did not die without purpose.Jesus did not suffer without first loving all the world and calling each of us to him in love. Love conquers jealousy and greed, and anxiety, if we accept this gift from Jesus.
The terribleness of this death that Jesus died carries the weight of the world with it so that love may have the last say.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Nearing Holy Week
Closing in on Passion Sunday and Holy Week, the last week of this season of Lent, we pause for a moment and remember what we have been through.
The woman at the well is told by Jesus that she is one of the kingdom. A man born blind can now see, while the leaders of the Jews are still blind. Lazarus, who has been grieved four days in the tomb, is called forth and lives.
Jesus gives us a love that is personal, one on one. A love that know no boundaries of country, of sin, or death. Jesus brings a love that has power over death and the things that kill us, and brings us living water to slake our thirst for true relationship.
In this last week of Lent, look around you. Where is Jesus calling you to love as he has loved you? Where in your life has the love of Christ manifest itself in personal, one on one relationship that gives life?
The woman at the well is told by Jesus that she is one of the kingdom. A man born blind can now see, while the leaders of the Jews are still blind. Lazarus, who has been grieved four days in the tomb, is called forth and lives.
Jesus gives us a love that is personal, one on one. A love that know no boundaries of country, of sin, or death. Jesus brings a love that has power over death and the things that kill us, and brings us living water to slake our thirst for true relationship.
In this last week of Lent, look around you. Where is Jesus calling you to love as he has loved you? Where in your life has the love of Christ manifest itself in personal, one on one relationship that gives life?
Monday, March 3, 2008
The Man Born Blind Teaches us About Faith
from yesterday’s gospel
There is a study of people born blind who gain their sight for the first time. When people gain sight they never had before, it is terrifying. Their world was built on a darkness that had become comfortable; all of a sudden their whole way of perceiving the world has changed.
When you have known nothing else but blindness, you don’t know what it is like to have sight.
The man born blind may have been unsettled by Jesus healing him, but we are not told that in this story. He may have been scared of this new world, but we don’t know. He could have cursed Jesus for changing his whole way of life. Here he was sitting with what he knew, his blindness. It may not have been the most comfortable world, but he was used to it.
His response to the encounter with Jesus is to not worry about who Jesus is, only to focus on the fact that he is now able to see and that Jesus is the man who healed him. He did not analyze how it happened; he did not try to argue with the Pharisees; he didn’t gripe that his life was no longer comfortable, he only told the truth about his encounter.
This story of the man born blind says to me that our faith is not based on what parts of the Nicene Creed we utterly believe, but how we encounter Jesus. Our faith is not about our understanding about what happens to the bread and wine in Eucharist, but how Jesus comes to us whenever we approach the altar. Our faith is not about how healthy we think we are in our relationships and everyday dealings in the world, but about how open we are to the healing power of Jesus in our lives.
Our faith is built on our openness for Jesus to enter and give sight to those blind spots, to shake up our comfortable life, to put light where there was darkness and cause us to see ourselves and our world with the eyes of Jesus.
Whenever Jesus heals, Jesus gives us access to the divine in ourselves. Jesus heals to give us part of his own divinity, to pour out the love of God. When we are filled with God’s love, it’s easier to see. It’s easier to put away the darkness and look honestly at our lives and how we can love those around us.
There is a study of people born blind who gain their sight for the first time. When people gain sight they never had before, it is terrifying. Their world was built on a darkness that had become comfortable; all of a sudden their whole way of perceiving the world has changed.
When you have known nothing else but blindness, you don’t know what it is like to have sight.
The man born blind may have been unsettled by Jesus healing him, but we are not told that in this story. He may have been scared of this new world, but we don’t know. He could have cursed Jesus for changing his whole way of life. Here he was sitting with what he knew, his blindness. It may not have been the most comfortable world, but he was used to it.
His response to the encounter with Jesus is to not worry about who Jesus is, only to focus on the fact that he is now able to see and that Jesus is the man who healed him. He did not analyze how it happened; he did not try to argue with the Pharisees; he didn’t gripe that his life was no longer comfortable, he only told the truth about his encounter.
This story of the man born blind says to me that our faith is not based on what parts of the Nicene Creed we utterly believe, but how we encounter Jesus. Our faith is not about our understanding about what happens to the bread and wine in Eucharist, but how Jesus comes to us whenever we approach the altar. Our faith is not about how healthy we think we are in our relationships and everyday dealings in the world, but about how open we are to the healing power of Jesus in our lives.
Our faith is built on our openness for Jesus to enter and give sight to those blind spots, to shake up our comfortable life, to put light where there was darkness and cause us to see ourselves and our world with the eyes of Jesus.
Whenever Jesus heals, Jesus gives us access to the divine in ourselves. Jesus heals to give us part of his own divinity, to pour out the love of God. When we are filled with God’s love, it’s easier to see. It’s easier to put away the darkness and look honestly at our lives and how we can love those around us.
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