7 March 2012

7 March 2012


"Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day."

Why is it that we can hear this and without pause think only of our interests? He tells us where he is going, calling us to follow him, and yet we think only of our priorities and of the thrones we want for ourselves. No wonder when he asks us if we can drink the chalice he drinks we answer so quickly: "We can."

Had we really listened we would be surprised to hear that we shall indeed drink it. We would have realized that such a thing is well beyond our abilities. We seem to focus on power like thrones exactly to flee from the cross. We hold fast to what we can control and try to bring more under that control. Eventually, we hope, even the cross will be tamed. But it will not. He reminds us with word and example that this isn't what power is about:

"Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many."

When we are surrounded by crowds plotting against us we must turn to him instead of trying in vain to consolidate our own power.

"Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God."

Only this way can we drink his chalice. Then even when the crowds plot against us we will be steadfast. We will have spoken on their behalf even as they tried to bring about our downfall. We will call to the LORD to save us in his kindness and he will answer.

6 March 2012

6 March 2012


Jesus reveals that the true heart of an evangelist is one of service and humility. The scribes and the Pharisees burden people and don't lift a finger to help.  This implicitly contrasts with the attitude we should have.  When we mention to someone that there is a better way to live it should be with the desire to help.  It should in fact be with the desire to live that life for them if we could.  This is in fact the very desire that led Jesus to come to earth.  


"The greatest among you must be your servant."


He himself doesn't call us to this indifferently to our abilities.  He has in fact perfectly lived it already.  If he hadn't we would not be able to do so.  It is his life being manifested in us that allows us to have a servant's heart. This should be our desire as well but we are more like the scribes and Pharisees.

"All their works are performed to be seen."

Jesus helps us to be freed from this.  His greatest work, the work of the cross, was not performed because it made him popular.  The scribes and Pharisees (and we ourselves) love places of honor to which the cross is antithetical.  We shy away from the ignominy of the cross.  But the heart is Jesus is not just to call us to lay our lives down but to first lay his own life down and then give that life to us so that we can follow him.  We are given the awesome responsibility of calling mankind to lay down its life (so that they may gain them for eternal life) and this is the heart with which we ought to do it.  This is the heart which first gives itself that others might live.  This is the heart of Jesus.

"Though your sins be like scarlet,

they may become white as snow;
Though they be crimson red,
they may become white as wool."

We may think that we can't ever be fully mended from the selfishness in which we've lived. Jesus assures us that he is waiting to do just that.  Scarlet and crimson seem like stains impossible to remove but Jesus has the power to make them pure white once more. He is merciful and for that reason he will not leave us to our sinful misery:

"I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes."  

Not to condemn us but to set us free.  Not to bludgeon us with knowledge of our wrongs but to show us that there is more and to call us to it.  "Come now, let us set things right".  He is eager to do it and sets it before us in such a compassionate and parental tone. Hear him when he says "let us" and hear the servant's heart willing to do all he can to enable our renewal.  If we let him we can escape being consumed by the sword and instead find blessing.

"If you are willing, and obey,
you shall eat the good things of the land;"

5 March 2012

5 March 2012


"For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you."


We think the measure with which we measure is what we lose never to have again.  We think we give ourselves away one piece at a time.  We have to see by faith here and not with our minds.  We have to believe that love does not destroy us but instead frees us from existing for ourselves.  From the perspective of our isolation our minds postulate self-giving as suffering.  It isn't  It isn't even just fair recompense.  It is "a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing".


This is why our rebellion makes us so desperate.  We begin by acknowledging that God is not at fault.  This is the necessary beginning of trusting in him.  For how can we trust him to heal us if we blame him for the illness?


"Justice, O Lord, is on your side"


He is always waiting to give us the grace we need.  We must cry out to him:


"[M]ay your compassion quickly come to us, for we are brought very low."   


We know that we "have sinned, been wicked and done evil" but the LORD longs to build us up and establish us anew.


"Then we, your people and the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
through all generations we will declare your praise."

4 March 2011

4 March 2011


"I know now how devoted you are to God,
since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son."

To sacrifice his son would have been bad enough.  It would have been much easier for him to give his own life.  To have to surrender the life of his son must have been heartbreaking.  But it was even more than that.  It was all of the promise and plan that God had for him, at least as he understood it.  That he even had a son was already unlikely enough.  It only happened because the LORD intervened.  

He therefore had every reason to believe that the LORD would fulfill his promise through Isaac to make him a great nation in which all the earth would be blessed.  Faced with the clear voice of the LORD Abraham surrendered not only his own son but also his own understanding.  Letting go of his human understanding "[h]e reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead," as the book of Hebrews tells us, something he would not have arrived at through his human reasoning.

But as much as Abraham loved his son and as much as he had invested in him it is still nothing in comparison to how the Father loves Jesus.

"This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."

There is no love greater than the love between the Father and the Son.  In the Father sending Jesus, and in Jesus accepting the call, we have an unfathomable gift, much greater than Abraham's surrender of Isaac.  All that the Father is he gives to the Son in love. How then can he give him for  creatures like ourselves?

It is therefore easy to conclude as Paul did:

"If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?"

Let us believe even when we say "I am greatly afflicted."  Let us trust that the LORD will see us through to the sacrifice of thanksgiving.  This sacrifice he himself has already provided.  It is Jesus in the Eucharist.  In it we begin to see a glimpse of Jesus as the disciples saw on Mt. Tabor when he was clothed in "dazzling white".  We see why Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets, give witness to him.  He is the beloved of the Father.  In him all the promises of God to Abraham and to the world find their yes.

3 March 2012

3 March 2012


"But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,"

If we want to be children of our Father in heaven it isn't so much that there is a checklist of things we need to do.  What he actually asks us is that we may let his love manifest itself in us.  That means his life is within us which is what it means to be family.  Unconditional love is God's DNA:

"for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,

and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust."

But this means that it is impossible.  There is no way weak, mortal, limited beings such as us can live that.  It the slightest provocation we are ready to withhold love.  In fact, if we are honest, we don't even love people when they most deserve it.  How much less, then, can we live up to this:

"So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect."

But when we remember his goal for us, that we "are to be a people peculiarly his own", we realize that of course he will make it possible.  He wants to raise us on high in praise and renown and glory.  It isn't that he wants little obedient machines.  He actually wants great things for us and for that reason calls us to such a high standard.  In doing so he calls us to rely on him more and more.  

"Oh, that I might be firm in the ways of keeping your statutes!"

Only in crying out to him can we find the strength to live as we are called.  It simply isn't within us.  He wants us to be a people "sacred" to him, not simply obedient, or even special or privileged.  He wants us to be set apart for himself.  Love can settle for no less.

2 March 2012

2 March 2012


"Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? 
says the Lord GOD. 
Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way
that he may live?"

Though our sins separate us from God, this is not what he desires.  He does not delight in it.  He looks on with sadness and longing, desiring that we repent.  But do we see him this way?  Because sin separates us from him he can't ignore it.  He has to tell us about it.  He has to tell us to move past it, to turn from it, to repent.  Yet the words we hear are twisted from the words he speaks.  We hear of condemnation.  We hear of never measuring up.  He wants us to know that this isn't how he sees it.  When we repent he rejoices! No matter what is in our past, all we have to do is turn to the LORD.  Then we shall surely live and not die just as he promises.  It is the true promise that the snake tried to twist in the garden.  We saw what following him has done.  We've exhausted our own resources.  We've failed the experiment of being our own gods.  Let us turn toward the living God to preserve our lives and live.

His standard is high:

"I tell you, 

unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven."

It isn't something abstract or artificial.  For us to be truly united with he who is love it is necessary for our hearts to be given completely to love.  Sin excludes, it rejects, separates, and binds.  Even as it separates us from a brother it also puts the LORD, whose face can be seen in our brother's, at a distance.  The LORD does not delight in sin or in these consequences.  He longs to set us free.  

His mercy is sure:

"more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
Let Israel wait for the LORD.
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption;"

He has already paid the price.  This is why he tells us to settle with our accuser on the way.  Our debt has been paid and if insist on trying to pay it from our own resources we will never have enough.

"If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,

LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered. "

1 March 2012

1 March 2012


"Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you."

What can this mean?  We've asked for so many things.  So many times we've been disappointed.  Our wants have gone unmet.  It is because when he calls us to ask he means to keep asking.  He tells us to keep seeking and to keep knocking.  He tells us not to let up.  This is just what Queen Esther does:

"She lay prostrate upon the ground, together with her handmaids,

from morning until evening, and said:"

She realized that she was alone and had no one to help her but the LORD.  This is so important.  Even surrounded by her trusted handmaids she knew that only the LORD could save her and her people.  Because of that she took wholehearted recourse to the LORD.  She trusted in her "heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him."  Eventually, because she persisted, she gave the LORD the opportunity to shape her desires to what they should be.  She came to desire the salvation, gladness, and wholeness of the LORD even beyond the needs of her circumstances.

In Queen Esther the LORD has made great his "name and your promise."  He desires the same sincerity from us so that he can "turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness."  He wants to build up strength within us as he makes our hearts more like his.  He longs to save us from everything which keeps us from him.  

Then we, together with Queen Esther can sing his praises "the presence of the angels".