As I begin drafting this week, it’s Thursday, July 28, and thanks to some opportunities I’ve seized outside of this blog, I’m out of time to put together the type of post I have before. Right now, God seems to be using life to teach me not to cling too tightly to my plans.
Now I’m far from opposed to making plans. I want to encourage everyone to make them. Outcomes aside, the planning process itself is a great teacher, not just about what we’re planning, but about ourselves. So even when plans don’t work out the way we hoped, they aren’t wasted. Sometimes, they do work out the way we hope they will, but the path we take to get to the intended destination isn’t the one we thought we’d follow. Along these lines, I’m not going to skip posting this week, but I am going to try out yet another new approach in what I post. I don’t think this will be the usual approach from here on out, but it may be an option I consider from time to time.
My new approach is to share the reflections that others publish on the readings from the previous weekend. First, I want to start with Dr. Susan McGurgan’s reflection about the gospel reading that inspired my post last week. The passage was Lk 10:38-42. Dr. McGurgan’s bio under Preacher includes a wealth of credentials. You can watch a video of her preaching on this passage as well as read the text of her reflection by following this link.
Second, I want to share with you a reflection from Boston College School Associate Professor of Old Testament Jamie L Waters. Here, she reflects on the Old Testament reading from July 24, Gn. 18: 20-32. I hope you can access this reflection. As a digital subscriber, I’m not limited in the number of times I’m able to follow the link. It’s my recollection that AmericaMedia allows a certain number of free views before it asks readers to sign up for a digital subscription. However, if any of you lets me know you can’t access this article, I won’t link to this source again.
Third, I want to share with you again the prayer I wrote for my June 2 post. I’m linking to it here because this past week’s gospel reading, Lk. 11:1-13, included the Lord’s Prayer. I thought about just copying and pasting the prayer here, but then I thought referring you to the original context for it would be helpful.
And finally, I’d like to share with you Brenna Davis’s reflection on the Lord’s Prayer because who needs just my take on it — especially for the second time around? Not me. I wanted to hear someone else’s perspective. As with Dr. McGurgan’s reflection, you can watch a video of Ms. Davis presenting hers under the Video link, and you can read the text of it under the Text link. Her bio is under the Preacher link on the same page as her text and video.
For this week’s post, I’ve been sitting with Luke Chapter 10:38-42. In this passage, Martha “welcomes” Jesus into the home she shares with her brother and sister, Lazarus and Mary (Luke 10:38). When I imagine the scene, Mary invites in right behind Jesus the apostles, along with the women who have been “provid[ing] for [the men] out of their resources” (Luke 8:3). Joanna, Susanna, Mary from Magdala, and others join Martha in making what she had planned for the evening meal go further. Then they set about helping her bring all that food to the table. As they do so, Martha tells her guests she wishes she had richer fare and more of it, especially as she sees the most prominent villagers standing at her threshold in the wake of the initial visitors. The visiting women don’t respond with any reassuring words. Still, she doesn’t take the hint. She wonders out loud whom she should seat where. Finally, one of the women shushes poor, hospitable Martha. “We listen to the teacher while we do the chores,” she whispers, patting Martha on the arm. “We’ll have time to catch up when we recline to eat.”
Martha’s gaze finds the teacher’s in the opposite corner of the large room. Then it finds her sister sitting at his feet, like a guest, while the visiting women help with the serving. Her hands clench around a bowl as she makes eye contact with the teacher again.
At first, he looks as if he’s spotting her again after losing her in a crowd. But where one moment she reads joy, she soon finds pity. He doesn’t look down, even though he seems to continue speaking to her sister.
“Tell her to help me,” Martha interrupts the teacher. “Don’t the Scriptures teach us that we should welcome guests?”
“They do, but they also teach us to love the Lord ‘with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds, and with all our strength (Mark 12:30). Your sister is doing that, and you could be doing so just as well while you prepare a meal for us. Mary ‘has chosen the better part’ but not because of her posture or because of what she’s not doing (Luke 10:42). If she sat here and were worried about the things you are, she wouldn’t be choosing any differently than you.” Concern yourself with what concerns the Father. Do your best, and then trust Him to provide as you as you strive to serve as He does.”
Author’s note: With my physical limitations, I can’t do much to help with chores, so I often find the passage from Luke Chapter 10 reassuring. To be honest, I’ve used the passage to pat myself on the back in the past. However, when I imagined the scene as I drafted this post, I gained a different perspective.
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
“I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”
To him Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke 9: 61-62
I don’t like Jesus’ response. Doesn’t he care whether the family knows where the man disappeared to? Doesn’t he care that the family might be left without support? If God’s nature is to share Godself completely, and if Jesus gives a human nature to that God without diminishing the Divine nature in any way, (and I believe both statements are true) I believe he cares deeply about these concerns. So how do I reconcile this belief with that response?
I took that question to prayer. I told God I’d heard about abusive people and groups that cut individuals off from their families. How long could it really take the man to say farewell to his family and then catch up to the other followers? Was the man’s really so unreasonable?
An answer came to me: maybe there’s more to this scene than the literal meaning of the dialogue indicates. This possibility let me to more questions: How many times have I needed to do something important, especially something that will mean changes are ahead, and I’ve come up with some more ordinary task — like deleting emails—that I need to do before doing the more important thing? Maybe Jesus knows the man’s request isn’t really about saying farewell to the family and then setting out to do the work the man is being called to. Maybe Jesus knows the man is hesitant about following through on the commitment he just made. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want concerns and doubts of family members to cause the man to turn back, though I wouldn’t blame these family members if they were to question this man’s decision to follow an unknown preacher from an unimportant town who criticizes civil and religious authorities. I can’t call questions and doubts bad things when a person is about to make a life-changing choice. But I’m prone to analysis paralysis. Maybe Jesus didn’t want the man to fall prey to the very same paralysis and have time to lose the confidence and conviction that in the moment made him say, “I will follow you, Lord.”
“And if he finds [a lost sheep], amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.”
Matthew 18: 13
On one hand, I don’t want to think of God as someone who gives only one opportunity. After all, I’ve read and heard that the Good Shepherd leaves the gathered flock of ninety-nine to find one lost sheep (See Matt. 18: 10-14). On the other hand, I can see that, while life offers many opportunities, no single opportunity arrives in exactly the same circumstances as the previous one. The same test taken or the same job applied for at different times can mean different results, depending on how a person has prepared, how focused the person is when the big day comes, and who else is involved, to name just a few variables. The would-be follower in Luke might be able to return to his family and catch up to the other followers later, but what lessons will he miss while he’s delayed that he’ll have to learn in a different way in the future? What contributions will he be delayed in making? Will the good resulting from the lessons he might learn or the contributions he might make outweigh any good he might do by returning home or any harm that might result from him not returning home?
What if there’s harm to himself or others he needs to avoid by leaving his past in the past? All this is possible. I also know there may be people reading this post and saying the passage I began with is about not hesitating to answer God’s call, about making nothing else more important than following God. For anyone saying this, I hear you, but I’m not good at not hesitating, so I wasn’t about to put that message out there without qualifying it. I don’t want to be like, “Do as I say, and not as I do.”
Besides, I believe a lot of following God is about looking at the relationships and things in our lives in different ways, not always about leaving those relationships or things behind — unless those relationships or things are taking over our lives and/or harming the ability of each of us to become the unique and undistorted reflections of God we’re meant to become.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
For me, last week’s theme was the wonder of a world that reflects a God who is relationship, the wonder of a world in which the grandest features reflect God, and yet God” delight[s] [in] human beings]” (Prov. 8:31).
For me, there is an element of distance involved in wonder. Wonder is amazing, like a view of a mountain range or a canyon When I picture a God of wonder, I picture a God who “delight[s] in human beings” but doesn’t feel accessible. I picture a God who watches from above and smiles but is, nonetheless, watching from above.
But this week’s readings don’t speak to me about a God who is content to watch me from above. He doesn’t even stop at sharing my human nature and walking beside me. He feeds me, and not just by inviting me over to dinner like another friend might. He becomes one with me by feeding me with himself — and not just with his spirit — but with everything that made him a living, touchable human being — his body and blood, in addition to his Divine Life. Everything. He holds nothing back from me. In fact, he wants me not only to share in his Holy Spirit and his humanity, but in other gifts of nature — offered in what the senses perceive as bread and wine. He provides for me in so many ways in the hope that the blessings of these gifts will spread from me outward.
Paul reminds the Christian community of Corinth:
“[O]n the night [Jesus] was handed over [he] took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said. ‘This is my body that is for you… In the same way also [he took] the cup… saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood [Italics mine]
1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
The New Oxford American Dictionary on my Kindle defines a covenant, in the theological sense, as, “an agreement that brings about a relationship of commitment between God and his people.” (Loc. 188613-188614).
“A relationship of commitment” — like a marriage — one in which the groom offers all of himself — even to the point of offering his body and shedding his blood.
This groom is the Trinitarian God, one of our pastors reminded us this weekend. This is the God of relationship that I wrote about last week. And yes, this God is the God of wonder. But this same God is also the God of the utmost intimacy.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The New Oxford American Dictionary, Kindle edition, Oxford UP, 2008.
This is a post about “The Coming of the Spirit.” That’s the title the Bible I use gives to the first story presented in Acts Chapter 2. It’s a story I’ve heard many times, and most reflections I’ve heard or read about it focus on the effect of this event on the apostles. The affect the Spirit had on the apostles didn’t grab my attention this time, though. What I zeroed in on were the sensory details used to describe the Spirit. Acts says “And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them” (2:2-3). The “driving wind” and the “tongues of fire” got me thinking about the many effects wind and fire have on us here on Earth and how some of those effects can remind us of what God does.
“And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.”
Acts Chapter 2:2
I’ll start with wind. It can generate energy and can send some of our balloons, kites, and ships whichever way it blows. Along with water, it can reshape the natural landscapes in which we live. It can rip apart and topple structures we build, especially if we don’t or can’t use the sturdiest materials and designs. Wind outlasts all temporary construction. But it’s gentlest form is breath.
We start fires to generate warmth and coziness. They melt what we can’t bend without them. They weld things together. We will also use fire (or more commonly the heat it generates) to purify water and instruments, to protect ourselves from disease-causing microbes. It changes how even compounds and elements react. Its heat can change the nature of matter. It turns ice to water, and water to gas. It can both solidify and consume the work of human hands. Sometimes we want it to consume the work of those hands so we can get rid of what we don’t want. This article from Science says that, sometimes, fires clear away “dead litter on the forest floor.” The article continues:
[Wildfires allow] important nutrients to return to the soil, enabling a new healthy beginning for plants and animals. . . .
But fires are only good if they serve their specific purpose. If they burn too long or the ground stays dry too long, ecosystems can’t recover.
The above quotation illustrates that the analogy between the Holy Spirit and wind and fire is far from perfect. I don’t believe in a Holy Fire that burns “too long,” drying out creation so that it can’t recover. I don’t believe the Holy Spirit destroys us. On the contrary, the Spirit I believe in is all about giving life, and helping us “have it more abundantly” — (John 10:10). In its ability to refresh, I would characterize the Holy Spirit as being like water as much as fire. And God created wind, fire, and water with certain characteristics and ways of interacting with each other.
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.
John 10:10
It is we who put ourselves in the path of the elements because they offers many gifts that help us establish and continue our communities. But proximity to these powerful gifts is also also one of the ways we’re vulnerable. And we contribute to the danger of their power because we who sometimes overuse, misuse and abuse what is good, including natural gifts.
In doing so, we can contribute to the destruction of ourselves and each other. Or we can use the gifts of that Spirit to allow ourselves to be reshaped for the better when nature’s power and/or human choices remind us of the frailty earthly life.
Works cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Much of the Gospels concern themselves with the ways God became one with us through Jesus. But the stories about the ascension set the stage for something very much related but different: our ability to become one with God because Jesus returned to the Father and promised his followers they would receive the Holy Spirit. In Acts, He tells them the Spirit will allow them to be his “witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth (1:8).
Think about what being a witness in court means. A witness sees and shares what she sees. In this way, she receives and gives. The Spirit allows her to do this, to experience Christ and to allow others to experience Him through her. This witness is necessary because with only one person, there is no kingdom. I would define a kingdom as a gathering of people under one, anointed leader. God’s kingdom shares this nature with kingdoms bound by time and space. And yet, God’s kingdom is different. It doesn’t belong exclusively to one generation or one place. It doesn’t belong only to the pre-resurrection Jesus or to that first generation of followers, or to Israel. This difference isn’t something the disciples understand yet in Acts 1:6.
They ask Jesus, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replies that “It is not for [them] to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority (Acts 1:7). All the violence and suffering in the world can make this response as frustrating for us as it must have been for the apostles.
Fortunately, Jesus teaches us through the Lord’s Prayer that we should ask for the kingdom to come and for help in bringing it about by being effective witnesses and imitators of his life.
I read an article a while back that suggested putting The Lord’s Prayer in your own words can enrich your prayer life. Since I read that article, some ideas of how I might do this with the Lord’s Prayer have come to me now and then. When the Acts reading made me think of the prayer, I thought I’d share some of those ideas here. Please know that as I do so, it isn’t my intention to change the meaning of the prayer. But it is my intention to share what those traditional words mean to me.
Our nurturing Creator, Protector, Provider, and Sanctuary of total and endless sharing, help us make your presence felt and acknowledged in the world by making our actions match our just and loving words. Let us see through Your eyes, and transform our desires to make them align consistent with Yours so that Your creation will reflect you more and more. Give us what we need physically and spiritually today to do your work, and help us trust that tomorrow you’ll do the same. Forgive us for the ways our choices distort how each of us is uniquely gifted to reflect You so the we can forgive others when their limitations and choices hurt us. Help us to share with others what You give to us, and help us to trust you and to love like You when we don’t feel like it. Help us see through any lies about You, ourselves, and others, and when we don’t see through them, help us not to lose hope. Help us heal from the experiences these lies create. Help us to believe and live as if everything is possible with You.
We open ourselves to Your bringing these words to fruition in our lives.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). This is the clarification Jesus offers after he gives his followers “a new commandment.” He says people will recognize his disciples if they “love one another” as he has loved them (35). In Matthew 5:44, he tells them they shouldn’t stop at loving the members of their own group. They should go so far as to “love [their] enemies” [italics mine].
He models the version of the commandment that we get in Matthew when, from the cross, he asks his heavenly father to forgive those who have tortured, tormented, and abandoned him.
In what other ways does Jesus show love in the Gospels?
He loves the total person.
He tends not only to physical and spiritual needs, but also to intellectual, mental and emotional ones as well. He knows that even though I’m categorizing these needs separately, they’re never really separate. He teaches crowds using stories they can relate to. He doesn’t forget to feed the people will come to him before he sends them home. He meets emotional needs, not only by teaching people to hope for and to work for a just society (Google the Beatitudes), but also in another way.
He erases perceived dividing lines.
Jesus calls God his father and teaches us to do the same. (Actually, I’ve read that the word he uses translates to a more familiar name, one closer to Dad than to Father.) He excludes no one, and instead makes a point of including outcasts who approach him. Scripture tells us that he shared the experiences of both the just and the unjust. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death. He associated with tax collectors and people with traditions and practices different from the ones in which he had been brought up. I’d say there wasn’t anyone he wouldn’t connect with, though not everybody wanted to befriend him.
“As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”
John 13: 34
Marginalized people are not invisible to Jesus. The Bible tells us that in his time on earth, in a very patriarchal culture, he spoke to and touched women, even women with tainted reputations, and at least one woman who had been hemorrhaging for years. It’s my understanding that a woman with such a condition was considered unclean and would have been expected to keep distant from Jesus.
The Scriptures tell us about many more times when Jesus healed people whose health conditions isolated them and obscured their dignity in the eyes of the society in which they lived. As a person with a disability and mental health conditions, I think of these healings as helping to integrate people into their communities, as helping people contribute to their communities. Though it’s absolutely okay to want healing, no one should be sent the message that they have to be healed of what makes them different before they can be whole and be equal to everyone else. Helping someone heal is by far not the only way to help a person contribute to and integrate into a community.
He asks and answers questions.
When I think of Jesus interacting with a person, I think of him asking questions to lead that person to insight. I think of his conversations with Peter and his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. I also think of the times he used people’s questions as teaching opportunities. Some of the people with questions were Jewish and Roman authorities, but not all of questioners are identified in the Bible as holding official leadership positions. I think of the unnamed man who asked Jesus what else he needed to do to inherit eternal life.
He took breaks.
Jesus knew he needed to let God love him so that he could love others. He knew he needed times of withdrawing from crowds and of leaning on Abba. He prayed in deserts and gardens. He slept on a fishing boat in the middle of a storm, and he prayed when his closest friends were sleeping.
Jesus’ ways of loving looked different at different times in his earthly life. The question for us is, what do the ways he loves look like at different moments in our lives? Each of us will have different answers at different times. If two of us were to compare our answers, we would likely find similarities without having exactly the same answers.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
When I heard the above statement this weekend, it stood out to me what the sentence doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “My sheep hear my words.” It doesn’t say “My sheep hear my teachings,” and it doesn’t say, “My sheep hear my instructions.” It says, “My sheep hear my voice. [Italics mine]”
A voice isn’t an idea. It isn’t a string of ideas forming a message. Like the many human inventions that it surpasses, it’s a carrier for the message. It can be small and brittle like a glass bottle. It can be warm and gentle as a May breeze, as harsh and loud as the ship’s whistle or as gravelly as the air in a worn parking lot on a gusty March day.
Words can say one thing while the voice that delivers them says the opposite. One voice can be similar to another, but no voice is exactly the same. (At least I think this last statement is true. I’m far from a voice scientist. I’m only writing from my experience.) To communicate with another living creature using one’s voice can be a powerful and intimate experience — intimate, I think, because the process that voices use to communicate is only partly a conscious one. A familiar quality of a certain voice can touch us in ways we can’t quite put into words.
. . . I know them, and they follow me.
John 10:27
That’s why I find it so fitting that John 10:27 says “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” God reaches us in ways that go beyond any means — words being one — that we use to create order around us. God speaks with the voice of the Spirit and gives us the ears of the Spirit to hear that voice. That’s what I thought when I found the picture I’m including with this post. To me, the picture looks like a flame in the shape of an ear. This image reminds me that the ears of the spirit are sensitive to the vibrations of Divine Love and that the heart of the Spirit responds to this Love by sharing it.
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
When I heard the first reading this week feelings of dread, guilt, anger, and anxiety came over me. I heard the story from Acts as a conflict between completely holy good guys — the apostles — and the totally blind and fearful bad guys — the men at the top of the Jewish religious hierarchy in Jerusalem at the time. The writer in me is bothered by stories involving flat, purely good or purely bad people.
I’m bothered by stories that are simplistic in this way because I have a hard time imagining myself and people I know on either side of the line that seems so clearly drawn between good and evil. I know I’m far from perfect. Actually, the apostles mentioned in the gospel reading were imperfect, too. Too bad the passage from Acts doesn’t record them acknowledging their weaknesses and outs to the people and how Jesus responded to these. I like to think that even though the passage doesn’t include such confessions, they were included in the apostles’ preaching. I like to think the Holy Spirit used their openness and humility as some of the qualities that allowed the message they were sent to convey to spread. After all, we read about the weaknesses, imperfections, and frailties that I just mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. I think we know about them because the apostles knew the frailties of their humanity and the humanity of their followers were an important part of their mission.
This realization helped me consider the first reading in a different light. It also got me thinking about what other qualities and approaches help the Good News sound more like good news to me than it often does. I thought it might be a good idea to present these approaches as a series of positive suggestions, so here they are:
Do speak from your own experience.
That’s what the apostles were doing. Unfortunately, sometimes their experiences can feel distant from our own. Creeds and verses by themselves can feel so empty to someone who’s at a different point on the spiritual journey. Acknowledge all this. Consider sharing experiences of God that you’ve had. These may not feel so distant to you or to the person you’re conversing with. If you have trouble thinking of your own experiences to share, or if you’re not comfortable sharing, maybe now isn’t yet the time for sharing. Maybe it’s a time for prayer and reflection. Maybe you’re in the garden or behind the locked doors, and that’s okay. These places are stops on the spiritual journey.
Do meet the other person where they are.
Notice I’ve referred to “the person” and “conversing.” Whenever possible, talk to a person, not to a group. Sometimes even when you need to talk to a group, it can be helpful to think of the exchange in terms of talking to a group of individual people rather than to a group whose members are indistinguishable from each other. Talk to people, not at people, and take steps to learn about the needs and experiences of your audience. Get to know your audience. This involves learning and listening, sometimes for a long time, before speaking. Tip #1 can help create an environment where people feel safe sharing their experiences, questions, struggles, and doubts, and creating this environment is how we listen and learn. Once we learn about the questions and needs of our audience or of the person we are conversing with, we need to acknowledge those questions and needs and try to respond to them as concretely as possible. I think concrete responses are what gives the Gospel the most credibility. In the Gospel reading from John listed above, Jesus uses concrete verbs in response to Peter’s declarations of love, and I’ve never seen the verbs in this exchange translated as “teach.” They’re caretaking verbs.
Furthermore, we’re told that prior to taking Peter aside, Jesus reveals who he is by sharing a meal with his friends. Keep that in mind.
When we don’t know how to respond to a particular question or struggle, I think it’s important that we don’t respond with theology or a verse. There are times for sharing these inheritances, but I don’t think these are helpful when a person is hurting or has questions — unless the person is in a similar place spiritually to the one you’re in. Respond in ways that resonate with the person. Remember that the reading from Revelation says all of creation praises the Lord, so look for ways to respond with what already appeals to the person and what he or she can already take in with his or her senses and experience. And keep the conversation going in two directions, if the other person stays willing to continue it. What seems helpful in the beginning of a conversation may not turn out to be. Stay open to listening and changing directions throughout the conversation.
Do acknowledge what the other person offers.
Look for qualities and contributions you admire. Share what you appreciate about the person and what he or she has taught you. Acknowledge what you didn’t know before you met him or her, and thank the person for giving you additional perspective. To me, doing this is the foundation of good communication and a healthy relationship.
I don’t recommend rushing to tell the person that his or her admirable qualities or achievements come from God. Pushing for this acknowledgment can make it seem like you think the person doesn’t have value on his or her own or that you don’t think they have free will. Someone who has, at best, a complicated relationship with faith may shut down if he or she feels you are implying this. Gratitude to God may arise naturally in the person at a different point in the spiritual journey.
Do wait for an invitation and offer one.
Various Scriptures tell us to knock, to seek and to ask. We’re told to ask God for what we want and need, even though we’re also told that God already knows what we need. Why should we not give others the same space to ask us about our spirituality. Remember that God respects the other person’s free will and doesn’t force a relationship with the Divine on the other person. Why should God’s children be any less courteous?
Pushiness and anger get attention, but they risk making the Good News not sound or feel like Good News. Is expressing anger sometimes necessary to convey the need for change? Perhaps. Jesus did turn over tables in the temple court. But that isn’t how we see him interacting with people most of the time. Often, instead of allowing its message to affect change, pushiness can garble a message. Anger that is expressed unproductively can do even more to get in the way of a message. It can be a catalyst, but it’s not a solution. I find it hard to believe that militancy can achieve long-term, positive goals.
Are there places we are invited to go by virtue of living under a representative government? Absolutely. We can be clear about what what’s important to us. But we still need to respond to these invitations with respect, humility, and courtesy.
And we need to connect with others in invitational ways. Receiving an invitation is so much less anxiety- and anger-inducing them being scolded, threatened, punished, pushed, or forced. I don’t think anxiety and anger are likely to generate the responses we want long-term.
Do open yourself to challenging conversations within your spiritual community.
In the first reading, the apostles are brought before religious authorities because of the message they have been sharing. Jesus was brought before both religious and civil authorities because of what he said and did. Nobody is perfect, and chances are, nobody involved is pure evil.
Do assume that opposition isn’t personal and is well-intentioned.
Is there opposition that is personal and isn’t well-intentioned? Sure there is. But chances are, the person has his or her perspective because of a lifetime’s worth of experiences, experiences which may be different from yours. (Remember the forgiveness we are told Jesus gave from the cross to people who caused his agony, people weren’t even asking for it. I’ll be the first to say that that’s a hard forgiveness to give. I’m not good at it God, please keep trying to help me.) Experiences alter how we see and what we see. As a result, we sometimes go about our goals in imperfect ways, totally wrong ways, in destructive ways, or in counterproductive ways. It can happen to you, and it can happen to people you disagree with. That’s why we need to work on answers that respond to individual questions and meet individual needs.
Do remember that change comes from God and from within.
It’s not our job to change someone. However, we might be able to help someone see the need to change. Often this happens not through words but actions. And I don’t mean adopting a particular prayer posture or displaying a particular image publicly. I mean doing the other things on this list.
Am I saying that only home and church are the places for expressions of faith? Absolutely not. But I don’t think the presence of a posture, or an image, or a Bible has as much of an impact without the other approaches on this list. Also, I think that even if you aren’t adopting a certain posture publicly just to be seen, to someone alienated from organized religion, it can seem like you’re doing what you’re doing only to be seen.
And maybe, in the best sense, you are praying or displaying that image in hopes of starting a conversation. But I have a question? Would you pray the same way if you knew no one could see? If the answer is yes, fine. Just don’t forget the other tips on this list, and be courteous. Pray like the sinner, not like the self-righteous man.
If we want to offer the world and everyone in it God’s love, we need to behave like everyone is created in the image of God and thus has something to offer us.
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 Luke 4:21-30
These readings are about God knowing us and about us needing each other to know God, It’s about how even though we all exist in a web of connections between ourselves and others, it’s still difficult for us to know God so that we can see everything the way God sees it. In one translation of verse 17 in the first chapter of Jeremiah, God tells the prophet:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
Jermiah Chapter 1, Verses 4 and 5
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you / before you were born I dedicated you / a prophet to the nations I appointed you” (Jer. 1: 4-5).
But what does it mean to be a prophet?
My pastor said the word “prophet” comes from the Hebrew word for “spokesperson.” Who is a prophet spokesperson for? God, he said, and he reminded us that God is love.
The second reading describes what that love is like. In the famous words attributed to St. Paul:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth , it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Love never fails.
— 1 Corinthians, Verses 4-8
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth , it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails” (1 Cor. 4-8).
Like Luke Chapter 4, verse 18 that I posted about last week, this is another passage that, at first, feels nothing but encouraging to read. It feels wonderful to think of myself as receiving Divine Love that has the qualities described above.
But I’ve written before about how you, and I, and everyone else, reflects and receives that love so that we can return it, share it, and expand its reach. I wrote last week about how allowing the reach of that love to expand can be uncomfortable for all of us in a lot of different ways. It might mean seeing, and hearing and giving things that I might not be in a hurry to see, or hear, or give because seeing, or hearing, or giving what I haven’t previously means losing some metaphorical blinders, earplugs, and blankets that keep me comfortable and keep me from feeling, not only other people’s pain, but also the reality that others have something to share that I lack.
And I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly enjoy recognizing the idea that I lack anything or that anyone else does either. It’s daunting that I’m called to work with God, humbly and patiently, to participate in addressing both of these situations. What do I give up and what do I accept when I acknowledge that I need both to give and to receive? What do I give and receive when I acknowledge that the love described in Corinthians has the greatest reach when it moves, not just on the proverbial two-way street but on a highway that has more lanes going in both directions than I can imagine?
Why do we need so many love lanes connecting all members of the human family and God? Because, as I’ve written in previous posts, every one of us is created in the image of God (1 Gen. 26). As such, every one of us has gifts that the world needs (1 Cor. 12: 4-11). But in every one of us, the reach of those gifts gets limited — at least in so far as we can see in our lifetimes — by circumstances beyond our control, by our weaknesses, and by by doubt-and fear-fueled resistance to what receiving and sharing God’s love really means for all of us.
The wounds in our natures are why God warns Jeremiah that “the whole land… kings and princes… priests and people “…. will fight against” the message God gives them to share (Jer. 1:19).
From my perspective, as I wrote last week, these wounds are also the reason for the conflict between Jesus and the people he grew up with (See Luke 4: 22-30).
They are the reason that “[a]t present we see indistinctly… and “know partially” (1 Cor. 13:12). The Good News is that the more we choose faith, hope, and love, the better we’ll be able to see, and the more faith and hope we’ll have that when we’re not bound by a our current bodies, we will “know fully, as [we are] fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
Work cited
The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 