7 March 2021 - commandments and freedom

Today's Readings

(Audio)

stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.

What is the Father's house meant to be if not the visible representation of the ordering of our lives toward God? Like well ordered temples we are meant employ structures that keep God's presence as our central concern. If our lives are concentric rings of priorities, the closer to the center we get the more we want the space to be reserved for God alone. We are temples of the Holy Spirit (see First Corinthians 6:19-20) and yet in spite of this dignity we often allow worldly concerns access to courts that are meant for praising God and enjoying his presence. We are meant to be able to enter our inner courts without the baggage of the world, without noisy and distracting desires for something besides God. But we smuggle in the things we truly worship, the idols we adore without identifying, by a pretense of religion. Sacrificial animals were in an important part of the temple system in the time of Jesus. But in the name of providing them, the idol of the love of money was usurping a place that was meant for love of God alone. 

these I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt offerings and their sacrifices

will be accepted on my altar;

for my house shall be called a house of prayer

for all peoples (see Isaiah 56:7)

We come up with justifications for why we can't simply spend time peacefully in the presence of God, why we must instead focus more upon the worries of the world than on him. But this too, this need for control, is idolatry. We are meant to bring our petitions to God like sacrificial animals, ready as offerings, but without the need for control or the need to hold on that an economy of money changing symbolically represents. 

He made a whip out of cords

and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, 

and spilled the coins of the money changers

and overturned their tables, 

and to those who sold doves he said,

“Take these out of here, 

and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

Jesus does not want our soul to be a marketplace. He wants to free us from the attitude which plagued both the prodigal son and his elder brother who were concerned only for what was their own, apart from what the had in common with their father. He wants to do this because when we focus on ourselves at the expense of God and neighbor we are in fact sacrificing our freedom. 

In those days, God delivered all these commandments:

“I, the LORD, am your God, 

who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.

God gave the commandments not to limit the freedom of his people, but to ensure it. He knew that the people had come from a place of slavery and that they still had the tendencies toward slavery that idolatry inherently contained within their hearts. Now that they were free of physical bondage, he wanted to ensure that they did not act in ways that would finally limit their freedom. The only way this could work is if they put him first, above all other concerns. There was a sense in which each of the commandments could be read as blueprints for building a temple to God in their hearts.

You shall not have other gods besides me.

You shall not carve idols for yourselves 

in the shape of anything in the sky above 

or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; 

you shall not bow down before them or worship them.

The Lord wants to purify our hearts just as he did the temple. Only parts of us the don't serve our highest good stand to lose from this purification. We tend to identify with those parts and so fear his purifying action within. But we would do well to embrace what he wants to do in us. The temple may have to be entirely destroyed and rebuilt by his resurrection power. But when it is finally doing what it is meant to do we will understand why he had such zeal to set it right.

Do we find it hard to trust God to come to us, and to let him reorder our loves?

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 

but we proclaim Christ crucified, 

a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 

but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, 

Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The sign he offers us as proof that we should trust him with the temple of our heart is the Cross. Only the Cross can allow us to see beyond the limited perspective of merchants and slaves to see the goodness of the plan the Father has for his house, for our hearts, in which he intends to dwell.

Kutless - Take Me In

Newsboys - I Am Free

6 March 2021 - better than before (o happy fault)

Today's Readings

(Audio)

After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings

and set off to a distant country

where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

The younger son followed the path of the tenants who would not provide their fruit to the landowner. Just as they kept the harvest for themselves, so too did the younger son insist on enjoying his inheritance apart from his father and his family. The tenants finally chose to kill the landowner's son who threatened their autonomy. The younger son in today's parable did not got so far, but by asking for his share of the estate while his father was still alive he really was saying something like that he wished his father were dead. In the younger son we see what happens whenever we try to keep the fruit for ourselves, to act as if the vineyard is ours, and to manage it on our own. We see that none of the estate of our Father will amount to much without him.

When he had freely spent everything,

a severe famine struck that country,

and he found himself in dire need.

When we try to have the good things of this world apart from God we may get along well enough for a time. But eventually events like famine will occur, cracks in our control will appear, and our own finitude will be revealed. Nothing that the Father has made will be enough to keep us secure and happy without the Father himself.

Coming to his senses he thought,

‘How many of my father’s hired workers

have more than enough food to eat,

but here am I, dying from hunger.

When we wish our Father dead, when we try to kill the landowner's son who threatens our control of the vineyard, it is really we ourselves who choose death, because we turn our backs on the source of our life. As sons and daughters, our life is from the Father. As tenants, the vineyard we are given to work is a gift of the landowner. Cut off from the source of life we move inexorably toward death.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing (see John 15:5).

It is important to realize that even for those who do not turn their backs on God entirely, there is still usually a degree to which we try to keep and use the good things he has made apart from him, to keep spheres of independence in our own lives as though to serve as backup plans for when God lets us down. Even these things, good in themselves, such as friends, family, entertainment, and learning, and legitimate physical pleasures, when disconnected from their source will lose their ability to nourish us. Though meant to give life they will instead bring death. For example, if such things hinder our ability to respond to God, if we insist on them even though we know he is calling us, we will not even experience the joy that such things might give at other times. They may still provide some pleasure, but with an undercurrent of uncertainty and a lack of peace.

Most important is to realize how merciful is our God. We often fail to recognize just how much our Father loves us. We have learned a inherited from Adam a habitual mistrust of him that only grace can overcome. We have a disposition that pulls us toward choosing lesser things because the higher things seem intimidating or not as rewarding as "a life of dissipation". When we realize the degree to which we have snubbed God by our choices we might fear that our relationship could never be the same again. But no, more than just the same, it can be better. We can truly realize his love for us and come to trust him.

While he was still a long way off,

his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.

He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.

Our act of contrition is important. We must concretely acknowledge the problem lest we give in to the same temptation again. But in this confession it is not as though we are appeasing in angry God. He is rather waiting, barely able to contain himself, till we are finished, so that he can give us absolution and restore us to his family.

But his father ordered his servants,

‘Quickly, bring the finest robe and put it on him;

put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.

Then let us celebrate with a feast,

because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;

he was lost, and has been found.’

Sometimes we do continue to act in the right way, but with the same sort of mistrust in our Father that the younger son demonstrated. When we live like the older son, obeying out of obligation, we may not go hungry or experience death. But we are missing out on the fullness of life that we are meant to have, which has always been available to us had we only realized how much the Father loved us.

‘My son, you are here with me always;

everything I have is yours.

The elder son was continuing to live in his father's house like a worker or a slave. He did not fully understand what it meant to be the son of so generous and loving a father. It is very much like when we see a new convert filled with the zeal of conversion and the joy of the Holy Spirit. We think to ourselves, 'Where is my joy? Where is my zeal?' It has always been there for us. In Christ everything was already given and is already ours. The greatest feast imaginable is always available to us in the Eucharist. We simply need to recognize if, though we were close to him by way of bodily observance,  our hearts have been far from the Father. When we draw near to him we can realize that the party is not just for the younger son. We too must celebrate and rejoice together with all the dead who have come to life again, and with all the lost who have been found.

Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,

    as in the days of old;

As in the days when you came from the land of Egypt,

    show us wonderful signs.

Audrey Assad - O Happy Fault

Jon Foreman - Your Love Is Strong

5 March 2021 - fruit in due season

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“Your brothers, you know, are tending our flocks at Shechem.

Get ready; I will send you to them.”

The father sent his beloved son to the son's brothers. He did this out of love for all of them. He wanted Joseph to be a blessing to his brothers. 

They noticed him from a distance,

and before he came up to them, they plotted to kill him.

They said to one another: “Here comes that master dreamer!

Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here;

we could say that a wild beast devoured him.

The brothers, for their part, could not receive the coming of Joseph as anything other than a threat to themselves. They were more concerned about what they could get for themselves than about family. Joseph would have been a blessing to them, but they instead gave in to jealousy. They did not want to receive, but instead felt the need to take for themselves. 

Finally, he sent his son to them,

thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’

The father in the parable did not send his son because doing so would provide an excuse to put the tenants to death. The father loved the son too much to use him as a mere excuse for escalation. And yet, did he not realize what would happen? Was there not sufficient precedent to realize it probably wouldn't end well for his son either? Although there certainly was, the father ignored it. We might say he was blinded by a love that persisted even when the tenants refused to recognize it. Why else would he go so far?

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,

‘This is the heir.

Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’

The tenants felt threatened that the coming of the son meant that they would lose control over the vineyard, over their livelihood, their ability to control and provide for themselves without help of others. But the tenants were never meant to use the vineyard for themselves alone. They had perverted its purpose by not providing its fruit in due season. They hoarded the harvest, and this precisely because they couldn't entrust that harvest to the landowner. It was a similar level of the felt need for self-protection that marked the tenants as that which marked the brothers of Joseph. It caused the same failure to receive what would have in fact been great blessings. The coming of the son would have put the vineyard back in order, bringing joy to those who worked in it, and to those who received its fruit. The coming of Joseph to his brothers too could have been a great blessing.

Rather than being received as a blessing, Jesus was sold for a price of silver, just as was Joseph. Rather than being allowed to turn creation back to its intended purpose as an offering to God, bearing fruit in due season, he was killed by those to whom he came, even though he was the Son and we were merely tenants. We were stewards that had forgotten we were stewards and instead tried to wrest the throne for ourselves.

The lesson in all of this is that we need to have a fundamental belief that God desires what is best for us so that we don't receive his blessings as a threat to our autonomy. When we believe he knows what makes for our flourishing we won't try to horde the fruit of the gifts he has given us.

Therefore, I say to you,

the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you

and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

In what ways are we rejecting the stone that is intended to be the cornerstone, the one who will make the whole structure make sense and with whom alone it can grow as a temple sacred to the Lord (see Ephesians 2:21)? If we look at our hearts for the places where we have fruit but we are afraid to share it, if we look for places where we are jealous of the fruit of others, we may find places in our own hearts where we do not yet trust God as he wants us to trust him. To the extent that we do not our minds are still darkened. Yet he came to give us light. Let us ask him for this light today.

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us (see First John 4:16).

David Crowder Band - How He Loves

4 March 2021 - lying at our door

Today's Readings

(Audio)

And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps

that fell from the rich man’s table.

Who are the people who are lying at our door? The rich man here was not condemned for his riches. He was not asked to sell all he had. He was condemned because he neglected that which was easily within his sphere of influence and his power to address. He walked right by a problem that he could have solved out of surplus resources. He could have kept on wearing purple garments and fine linen and dining sumptuously each day. If he had only been more careful with the surplus from his table Lazarus could also have been fed.

Abraham replied, ‘My child,

remember that you received what was good during your lifetime

while Lazarus likewise received what was bad;

The trouble with receiving good things in this life is not the things themselves, but rather the way they blind us to the needs of those around us. The rich man should have been capable of sympathy with Lazarus, but it was as though he didn't even see him. This is part of the point of Lent. We are meant to wake ourselves from this blindness and this complacency. We are meant to stop drugging ourselves with comfort at least enough to gain empathy for the needs of others.

Maybe we're afraid to look at Lazarus, afraid that if we begin with him we will be overwhelmed by the problem of which he is merely a symptom. Yet this was not the attitude of Jesus, who had compassion on the crowds even if not immediately on the whole world. Jesus was able to do this because he knew that the Cross would ultimately set things right for all the poor and neglected in the world. The compassion he showed to the crowds would finally have value, even though the poor would always been with us, because that compassion participated in the Cross and therefore drew its recipients on toward the resurrection. We too can love without being overwhelmed, knowing that what we can do, in our own limited spheres, will be taken up into something greater, something that makes it meaningful in a lasting way.

but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.

We have another option which tempts us, however, and against which we must be on guard. We can and do ignore even those things that are close at hand and in our power. But these are opportunities to experience Jesus himself, present in the poor. We need to use them to learn to love him as he desires to be loved, in deed and in truth, and not just in affection and thought.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20)

It may seem like the comforts we seek will actually give us peace but they really only provide distraction. Seeking our strength in flesh ends up with us feeling like we are a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season. Paradoxically, when we learn to seek our reward in God by following his ways we experience a peace and joy that this world cannot give (see John 14:27).

He is like a tree planted beside the waters

    that stretches out its roots to the stream:

It fears not the heat when it comes,

    its leaves stay green;

Casting Crowns - If We Are the Body

Jars of Clay - They'll Know We Are Christians

3 March 2021 - reward programs

Today Readings

(Audio)

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons

and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.

The mother of the sons of Zebedee had one strategy for approaching the suffering and death that the passion of Jesus would entail, but Jesus recommended another. Faced with the threat of imminent danger to her sons she desired to make sure that they would be compensated. If things were going to be as dire as Jesus had said she asked that they be maximally rewarded.

“Command that these two sons of mine sit,

one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”

The response of Jesus showed them it was nothing so simple as compensation for their efforts. It was not something they could earn, nor even which Jesus himself could give. It was not a transaction which replaced something bad with something good. The reward required entering into the mystery of suffering together with Jesus himself. It would only be comprehensible in this context.

“My chalice you will indeed drink,

but to sit at my right and at my left,

this is not mine to give

but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

The reward of the Cross was not going to be authority that as the Gentiles or great ones understood it. It was not going to be something which in which the sons of Zebedee could take pride, nor something of which the other ten would become indignant if they had realized what it entailed. The reward of the Cross was that the partakers therein would be perfected in love, made in the most profound way servants of those around them.

But it shall not be so among you.

Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.

The thrones nearest to Jesus are reserved for those who give of themselves as he did. For to sit on these thrones is to partake of the divine nature, which is itself an eternal outpouring of love in which the Father begets the Son, and in which their mutual love breathes forth the Spirit. The passion of Christ is our entry point into a love that can offer itself completely, with nothing held back.

When we embrace the Cross of Christ we need not fear when our adversaries plot against us as the adversaries of Jeremiah plotted against him. We may well face a precarious and pit filled path ahead of us. We likely won't be recognized for much of the instruction or counsel or messages we try to offer. But even more than Jeremiah the Cross shows us how we can embrace hardship with the trust of sons and daughters, of friends to whom God has made known his very heart.

Into your hands I commend my spirit;

    you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.

Brian Doerksen - At the Cross

2 March 2021 - rewarder of those who seek him

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you,

but do not follow their example.

Bad example does not invalidate the truth of moral principles or the claim on our obedience that legitimate authority has over us. This point may chafe us, but it is important to remember because those in authority over us will never be perfect. We are blessed in our age to have many shepherds over us who really are trying to follow the Lord's own heart. But even they occasionally fall short. If we want to find an excuse in their actions to dismiss something they tell us, legitimate in itself, we will be able to find that excuse.

All their works are performed to be seen.

They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.

Being under the authority of others is only possible if we ourselves learn to act in humility. And it is impossible to grow and to learn without such relationships. In our pride we tend to feel the need to be seen to be correct ourselves, to be validated by the world over and against those who expect to be recognized as virtuous without actually practicing virtue. We need to learn that we are not in a competition with others. If they act immorally and still widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels, as if they themselves practicing what they preached, we can nevertheless benefit from our relationships with them if we recognize that the true reward of virtue is not "places of honor at banquets, setas of honor in synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and the salutation 'Rabbi.'" Yet the truth that these earthly rewards given for possessing the appearance of virtue are not worthwhile is something that it takes time to learn.

As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’

You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers.

Call no one on earth your father;

you have but one Father in heaven.

Do not be called ‘Master’;

you have but one master, the Christ.

We are called to seek the reward of right behavior not in the validation we receive of others, but in God. When set our minds in this way we experience Jesus himself sharing our yoke, no longer heavy and hard to carry, but easy and light (see Matthew 11:28-30). Humility gives us the power to help others with their burdens as well, since we can give even to those who cannot repay us, knowing that God himself will reward us.

The greatest among you must be your servant.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled;

but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

The Lord wants us to focus on the things he desires, love of God and love of neighbor. He desires to free us from our need for validation. He wants us to be able to love even the hypocrites, which is fortunate, since we ourselves are often hypocrites. Let us lay down our pretenses that we may be the servants we are called to be.

Come now, let us set things right,

    says the LORD:

Though your sins be like scarlet,

    they may become white as snow;

Though they be crimson red,

    they may become white as wool.'

WLP Choir - Make Us True Servants

1 March 2021 - agents of mercy

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Stop judging and you will not be judged.

Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

If we wish to receive mercy we must be willing to become channels of mercy. Unfortunately, we tend to mistakenly believe that judging and condemning are necessary, that we will not be safe if we don't judge and condemn evil wherever we find it. It is true that God has not called us to ignore the negative things which we do inevitably encounter in the world. Such willful ignorance would be the precise conditions that would allow things like systemic racism to persist in our midst. Instead, God is calling us to be active agents of his reconciliation. He says to us that it isn't enough to just see the bad and criticize it. We must work to restore and rehabilitate anyone who is deserving of judgment and condemnation. After all, this is already God's own attitude toward us. 

An important aspect of this attitude of active reconciliation is that we can't simply hide behind condemnations to protect ourselves from entering into dialog with others. Why do we feel it so necessary to hide from them? Is it not because we fear to see that they finally aren't so different from ourselves, that both we and they stand in need of the same mercy from God? What business do we have condemning them?

Give and gifts will be given to you;

a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,

will be poured into your lap.

What should we do when we are struggling, when we are in need, or going through difficult times? We should give. In the mystery of the economy of the Kingdom of God we only truly find ourselves when we give ourselves away. We discover peace and happiness more and more to the degree that we get ourselves off of our minds and learn to act from the higher motivation of love.

For the measure with which you measure

will in return be measured out to you.

In order to stop judging, stop condemning, to start forgiving and giving, we must learn to stop seeking rewards from people. When we are wronged we look for retribution, even something as simple as someone admitting they were wrong. When we give a gift we feel slighted if our gift is not recognized. But God calls us to seek our reward in him first and to let him deal with others. When we learn to leave others in the hands of God he is able to do things in their hearts that our desire to be right and rewarded often block. It may be said that society still has a role of judgment for the preservation of good order. But from an individual standpoint we shouldn't seek our own consolation in that, but rather in God himself.

By accepting God's call to be merciful we dispose ourselves to receive mercy. By recognizing and desiring mercy for others we learn to see them through God's eyes. When finally we begin to see them as not fundamentally different from ourselves we begin to know the depths of our own need. We are freed from illusions of self-sufficiency and are able to receive more and more the mercy God longs to give us.

But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!

Yet we rebelled against you

and paid no heed to your command, O LORD, our God,

to live by the law you gave us through your servants the prophets.

Vineyard Music - Help Us Our God