20 February 2023 - only with prayer

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.

The disciples were unable to drive out the demon because, apparently, they forgot the fundamentals of faith and of prayer. They appeared to forget the necessary centrality of Jesus as the source of their power. Did this happen because of the crowds and especially because of the scribes who were watching them, making them want to show off, or making them feel as though they had something to prove?

O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?

Jesus rebuked not only the disciples, but everyone involved, from allowing themselves to become distracted from the central issues involved and allowing the situation to devolve into arguments. The disciples, more than the others, ought to have known better, but no one was guiltless. The disciples did not demonstrate a faith centered on Jesus. Whatever they tried to do to help the boy, it was evidently not prayer, the one thing that could have helped. The scribes were apparently looking to invalidate the claims of Jesus by the failings of his disciples and could not see through that haze to discover within themselves any compassion for the possessed child.

The father of the child seemed to have briefly entertained the hope that the disciples of Jesus could help, but when they arrived with bravado and bluster but no results he appeared to have given in to frustration and despair. But the father was not entirely without faith. He was able to see that his own faith was not strong enough and that it needed to be more centered on Jesus himself, which was a deficiency he could recognize but not remedy on his own. 

Jesus said to him,

“‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.”

Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!”

There is a lot we can learn from everyone involved, especially from the disciples, as a cautionary tale, and from the father, as representing well our own need to grow in faith. We must learn to avoid giving the central place to anything but Jesus himself. Our ostentation might be ostensibly religious, like the disciples attempts to help, but when the centrality of faith and prayer is lacking religiosity becomes nothing more than a mask of hypocrisy. When we try taking things into our own hands to make Christianity appealing, or worse, to have victory over those with whom we disagree, we lose access the the power source that can only be found in prayer.

When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private,

“Why could we not drive the spirit out?”

He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

Like the father of the possessed boy most of us have experienced asking for divine assistance and being disappointed. But the father's example shows us not to give up too soon, not to shut down because our nascent faith was disappointed. It is possible, even likely, that Jesus himself is using our circumstances to help us grow to a deeper level of faith, one that stems from an ever greater dependence on Jesus himself. The pain our hearts endure as we make them vulnerable and are disappointed is actually a stage of growth toward a hope that does not disappoint.

Like the disciples we sometimes forget our own wisdom is limited and finite and forget to turn to the source of wisdom. But if we remember to turn toward that source we can remain connected to it, for he never ceases to pour it out.

He has poured her forth upon all his works,

upon every living thing according to his bounty;

he has lavished her upon his friends.

Ron Kenoly - Yes Lord, I Believe!

19 February 2023 - the extra mile

Today's Readings

(Audio)

18 February 2023 - therefore God has highly exulted him

Today's Readings

(Audio)

And he was transfigured before them,

and his clothes became dazzling white,

such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.

We sometimes imagine that if we lived in the time of Jesus and beheld his miraculous deeds we would be motivated to follow him more wholeheartedly. Surely if we behalf the Trinitarian revelation of the identity of Jesus a the Son of God that happened in the Transfiguration we would then discover a firm and unshakable resolve to be his disciples?

Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,

"Rabbi, it is good that we are here!

Let us make three tents:

one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

He hardly knew what to say, they were so terrified.

Peter, James, and John were allowed to witness the Transfiguration of Jesus in order that they, by virtue of what the saw, would open themselves to the deeper and still unseen reality of the divinity of Jesus. It was in fact meant to prepare them for the time when the divinity of Jesus would be almost completely obscured during the hour of his Passion. The Transfiguration was in fact only a piece of the puzzle that explained Jesus, one that could not be fully understood without also experiencing the darkness of the his Passion.

As they were coming down from the mountain,

he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,

except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The three apostles were given this consolation in order that the desolation of the cross would not destroy them entirely. But it did not necessarily make what Jesus would go through easy to understand. In fact, if anything, at first it would have been harder to understand. Why would the glorious one allow himself to suffer in that way, and why would his heavenly Father permit it? They likely faced the temptation to dismiss the memories of the Transfiguration as distortions when they saw Jesus crucified, with no cloud of glory, no prophetic witness, and no dazzling brightness. 

So they kept the matter to themselves,

questioning what rising from the dead meant.

On its own the experience of the Transfiguration was insufficient to keep the Peter's faith from crumbling. But it was like a seed waiting to be watered by the resurrection, or like a coal waiting to be enkindled by the news that Jesus lived. Jesus was indeed glorious, but not with a kind of glory easily imagined by human ways of thinking, not a kind that eschewed suffering and death. It was rather a glory that was demonstrated even more definitively precisely by his willing obedience even unto death. 

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (see Philippians 2:8-9).

The glory that they beheld during the Transfiguration was a glory Jesus possessed most perfectly on the cross. But the apostles would need to become witnesses of the resurrection before they could put all the pieces together. From the resurrection onward their faith in Jesus took on a new solidity that no worldly circumstance could hinder. They finally came to understand the meaning of Jesus when he said, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world" (see John 16:33).

This faith in the risen Christ is one in which we share. It is functions like a map and compass showing us the way to our true destiny, to the glory that awaits us, and which gives us confidence even when that glory is entirely hidden from our present view. Faith teaches us to keep sailing, even through the storms of life, even when the shore of our destination remains unseen, because of the promised reward. And that reward is no mere possession or subjective experience, but is rather God himself, the fullness of the vision of glory of which the transfiguration was only the vaguest hint.

Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;

his greatness is unsearchable.

Matt Maher - Shine Like The Son

17 February 2023 - language barrier

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city

and a tower with its top in the sky,

and so make a name for ourselves;

otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth."

Because of sin people often come to care too much about things that are not really so very important. They set about building all sorts of towers designed to reach all the way up to heaven. But of course they never even get a fraction of the way there, in spite of all of the effort entailed. It is sad because, for committed sinners, such endeavors feel necessary for survival, as though without them we would "be scattered all over the earth". When feel the need to prove the value of our own existence by making a name for ourselves rather than receiving our value from God we are embarking on a project that can only end in frustration, one which it is merciful for God to bring to an end sooner rather than later.

Then the LORD said: "If now, while they are one people,

all speaking the same language,

they have started to do this,

nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do.

This great project that united so many planners and workers was really an exercise in futility. And the Lord did not want to allow the people to be lost in futility, doing whatever the presumed to do. Being one people and speaking one language would seem to be a good thing. But when that unity allowed the uninterrupted pursuit of what could never satisfy it was not actually a positive. 

Let us then go down and there confuse their language,

so that one will not understand what another says.

It was not the original intention of the Lord to divide. Rather it was the inevitable result of ignoring the Lord himself who could be the only true fulcrum for true human unity. Human ambition could not provide the raw materials because seeking a name for oneself would inevitably mean something slightly different from everyone involved. It was all but built into reality that such an project as Babel would have the result of confusion and division. We see this in politics in our own day when we witness that even very good and well meaning politicians have difficulty uniting their disparate constituents.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing (see Genesis 12:2).

We need rather to wait for the Lord to make our name great than to try to do so ourselves. Only his idea of greatness can be the true basis of unity. And his idea of greatness, as we see in today's Gospel, is something quite different from our own.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake

and that of the Gospel will save it.

Rather than a tower to unite heaven and earth we find instead a cross. We do not build up by our strength, so much as give ourselves away by love. It is by coming to care about the name of the Son of Man above all else that we may hope to find our own names where they truly belong, in the lamb's book of life. The cross was able to bridge the divide between man and God in a way that no human effort ever could. It was precisely for this reason that the cross can now become a true basis of unity.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (see Ephesians 2:19).

As a sign of the unity established by the cross we can come to see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as the anti-Babel, reuniting all people in the same speech, establishing humanity as the chorus of right praise to God which we were always meant to be.

Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? (see Acts 2:7-8).

Matt Maher - All The People Said Amen

16 February 2023 - rainbow bright

Today's Readings

(Audio)

By the flood God brought emphasis to his original intention for creation. What he said to Noah was not that different from what he said to Adam:

Be fertile, then, and multiply;

abound on earth and subdue it.

This "subdue it" was now necessary, not because man was meant to dominate creation, but because the wildness and futility introduced by sin meant that it would not easily yield to the purposes of man. This external world was a reflection of the inner world of man which would similarly need to be tamed in order to bear good fruit. On its own it would tend toward chaos and disintegration. 

If anyone sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed;

For in the image of God

has man been made.

Humans were always meant to live lives based on their dignity as creatures made in the image of God. But they had made clear their readiness to forget this dignity, and so God had to become more explicit, both about declaring laws, and about establishing consequences for breaking them. The good of virtue could no longer be expected to function as sufficient reward in and of itself.

Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat;

I give them all to you as I did the green plants.

Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.

The green plants were good, but now yielded nutrition only with difficulty. There was need to supplement them with createures of the ground, the air, and the sea. But as there was a natural reason for this so too was there a supernatural one. Every animal they killed for food had to be drained of its blood, because the blood represented the life of the animal, and the life of the animal belonged to God. This was a reminder that all life was from him and in his hands. It served as a warning against shedding the blood of one's fellow man, because God would demand an accounting for that which was not the proper prerogative of man. This idea that the life belonged to God provided a sacrificial overtone even for meals that were not specifically sacrifices, that what was God's in all things ought to be rendered back to him, be it the life of animals or the life of man. 

I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign

of the covenant between me and the earth.

God established a peace with his creation that would persist in spite of sin and infidelity. Yet we know too that God would not allow sin and infidelity to persist. The bow was therefore also an implicit promise of mercy. Humans would not forever have to continue to live in their degraded status. There was hope that the full goodness of the original creation would one day by restored. And indeed we as Christians hold even more firmly to this hope, a hope in the time when the bow will again be seen, revealed in the fullness of its meaning.

And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald (see Revelation 4:3).

The idea that the life of man was meant to belong to God and to be rendered faithfully back to him was an idea that human creatures seldom approximated and never completely attained. It would only become a reality in the fidelity and obedience of Jesus himself.

He began to teach them

that the Son of Man must suffer greatly

and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,

and be killed, and rise after three days.

The idea of offering God our entire lives seems like an invitation to defeat and destitution, as Peter seemed to infer. It seemed like a concession to the worst aspects of the world, from which no good could come. But this was to think as human beings do. And this, without the Holy Spirit, was all even Peter could manage. But the Spirit has been given to us in virtue of the death and resurrection of Jesus. His resurrection serves for us as a promise, like a rainbow, that no matter how much our offering seems to entail our destruction, God will not abandon us, and, on the far side, life will thrive and be renewed.

When the LORD has rebuilt Zion

and appeared in his glory;

When he has regarded the prayer of the destitute,

and not despised their prayer.

Phillips, Craig, and Dean - Revelation Song

15 February 2023 - extending an olive branch

Today's Readings

(Audio)

At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark,

and he sent out a raven,

to see if the waters had lessened on the earth.

The raven, being an unclean bird, was probably a lower steaks way to investigate the condition of the earth outside of the ark. But unfortunately, its unclean status made the results unreliable. It did not return to the ark but this was not because the world was ready for habitation.

But for the present we need to explain the reason why the bird [the raven] did not come back. Perhaps, with the waters subsiding, the bird, being unclean, happened upon corpses of men and beasts and, finding nourishment to its liking, stayed there!

- Saint John Chrysostom¹

The raven was therefore was a type of those who "although they have been cleansed by the waters of baptism, nevertheless neglect putting off the very black dress of their old selves by living more faultlessly" according to Saint Bede².

The dove, by contrast, was a clean animal, could not feast on carrion refuse, and could not find rest until the waters subsided more and vegetation began to grow. The dove was faithful to return to the ark after its first pass revealed that the world had not yet sufficiently healed. Nor did it abandon Noah immediately once it discovered things growing once more, but rather returned with a final sign that the earth was again ready for human inhabitants, an olive branch, a sign of peace at least restored between God and his creation. Only after bringing these tidings of freedom did the dove fly freely and not return.

Never again will I doom the earth because of man

since the desires of man’s heart are evil from the start;

nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done.

Peace was restored, but it was still an external peace, a temporary patient awareness of the evil condition of the heart of man. It was a peace that recognized that even drastic external remedies could not resolve the condition of the human heart, and a decision to bear with them in spite of those limitations. It was a marvelous example of the mercy of God. There was as yet not terrain within the heart of man to which the Spirit could descend to make a dwelling place.  For the Spirit to find his place in the hearts of women and men would require a different sort of flood, that of baptism, which was finally able to address the heart itself, to drowned the old sinful self, while giving life to a new self, which was in fact a new creation (see Second Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 6:15), and full of good fruits which were the gifts of the Spirit himself.

a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (see First Peter 3:20-21).

Baptism is also known as the sacrament of enlightenment, the place where those who were spiritually blind receive new vision. But like the blind man healed by Jesus in today's Gospel we do not tend to immediately receive the fullness of this restoration. It is rather a process by which Jesus gradually takes us from what is at first of necessity only a vague knowledge of the faith and the spiritual path to one in which the edges are sharper, the colors are more rich, to a world in which we can at last walk without stumbling.

Then he laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly;

his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly.

¹ Genesis 1-11: OLD TESTAM (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture) (p. 145). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. 

² ibid.

Jars Of Clay - Flood

14 February 2023 - flood insurance

Today's Readings

(Audio)

When the LORD saw how great was man's wickedness on earth,

and how no desire that his heart conceived

was ever anything but evil,

It didn't take long after the introduction of evil, after a few limited a specific incidents, that evil became the comprehensive way of life for almost everyone in that world. There was something about sin that did not allow it to remain isolated in those incidents. There was, we might infer, a certain leaven to it that allowed for worldly growth and success. And no doubt it felt like this was a competitive advantage which one ought not or perhaps indeed could not do without. What happened to those without it? They often wound up like Abel.

he regretted that he had made man on the earth,

and his heart was grieved.

God wanted his creatures to be like Abel, capable of offering the best of their firstlings or firstfruits to him. By putting him first in this way they could go a long way toward ameliorating the damage done by sin. But this seemed especially counterintuitive when success went to those who did just the opposite, who kept the best for themselves and ignored the God who made them. Sin had become so systemically entrenched in the world that God saw no choice but to act drastically to bring things back in line with his original intention. He would wipe out sin, and with it sinners who clung to it, and build back from the righteousness he found in Noah.

But Noah found favor with the LORD.

The flood may have slowed the advance of sin, my have averted the utter degradation of the world for a while, but even a drastic act like the flood remained only an external remedy. Even Noah and his familiar were not entirely exempt from the contaminating effects of sin, and it was not long after Noah demonstrated his fidelity to God strikingly by means of the ark that sin was reintroduced and began to take root in the world again.

Go into the ark, you and all your household,

for you alone in this age have I found to be truly just.

It wasn't so much that the flood strategy could not have worked as that, for it to have worked, Noah and have family would have had to have been entirely righteous, entirely free of the infection of sin which spreads so easily and freely. Thus, this early recreation of the world from the chaos of the waters was a prelude to a second recreation in which Jesus himself would be the new Noah. In his baptism and cross sin would be definitively drowned and destroyed while he himself became the ark that would preserve what was truly good in his followers unto salvation. We see a hint of this in the dove that descended upon Jesus after his baptism. Jesus himself was the new world, the new habitable ground, a place that was at last fit for life.

They concluded among themselves that

it was because they had no bread.

Sometimes we allow ourselves to be confused because we don't want to confront uncomfortable truths. We need to guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, but we don't want to confront the fact that the same defects in their character and conscience are within us as well. We thus desire, like the disciples, to bring the conversation back to mere externals.

When he became aware of this he said to them,

"Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?

Do you not yet understand or comprehend?

Are your hearts hardened?

Jesus addressed the unwillingness of the disciples to engage his meaning not by a deeper explanation so much as an insistence on his own superabundant goodness. They did not need to compromise with sin, to leaven themselves as the Pharisees did, in order to succeed and grow, because Jesus would always be enough for them. And more, for there were and would always be baskets leftover, enough to feed the world.

The LORD is enthroned above the flood;

the LORD is enthroned as king forever.

BarlowGirl - Enough

Hillsong Worship - To Be Like You