14 November 2024 - Kingdom among us

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come,

Jesus said in reply,

“The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,

It was apparent that the Pharisees were expecting some visible manifestation of the Kingdom, something concrete and empirical which would indicate that what Jesus said had come to pass. But this was not quite right. The Kingdom was not going to manifest in the way that an earthly empire might arise and spread. It was not going to be evident primarily by external political structures. Because the Pharisees were expecting something the observation of which would make obvious Jesus had to clear up their misconception about what the Kingdom was before he would more vaguely the question of when.

and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’

For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”

The Kingdom of God was principally wherever Jesus reigned in the hearts of women and men. These were the people in whom the seed found good soil, the leaven raising up the communities and societies of which they were a part, and the mustard seed that started off small and hidden before becoming a tree capable of transforming the world around it. The Kingdom was not, therefore, something that could be imposed from without. One could not point to a law or a political program and say, 'That is the Kingdom'. The religious milieu of Judaism at the time of Jesus tended to emphasize external ritual and legalistic conformity while treating the inner life as secondary. The Kingdom, by contrast, focused on the internal, requiring faith to perceive, and only secondarily sought to create external forms and structures and methods of enforcement. It tried to change people before it tried to change laws, as we saw with Paul and Philemon in today's first reading. It was obviously also the case that the Church would be instrumental in the legal abolition of slavery. But this was all predicated on transformation of the hearts of those who pursued that noble goal. Of course pursuing the external and the internal was not an either/or choice. But conversion of heart was the emphasis of the Kingdom because only that would lead to lasting and sustainable change.

There will be those who will say to you,

‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’

The desire to see some visible manifestation of the Son of Man or his Kingdom contained the risk that one would expose oneself to deception. We are supposed to desire the coming of the Kingdom. But the desire for visible concrete results is not guaranteed. For now we should focus on the expansion of the reign of Jesus in our hearts and those of others rather than on any climactic transformations of the world. Those changes are worth desiring, and they will come. But the desire to be in control of those changes tends to be unhelpful and destructive because it is typically driven by pride or vanity. 

For just as lightning flashes

and lights up the sky from one side to the other,

so will the Son of Man be in his day.

Jesus assured his followers that the final manifestation of his coming wouldn't be subtle or hidden or indeed possible to miss. Therefore those claiming it already happened were frauds and charlatans. This was how Jesus obliquely addressed the question of when the Kingdom would come in fullness. It was as though he said it would be sufficiently obvious that recognizing it was not something on which they needed to waste time. Instead they should focus on the fact that for anyone who allowed Jesus to rule in her heart, the Kingdom was already present. This was not merely a nice idea to tide them over through a long dark history before the second coming. It was a reality which was evident in all of the lives it changed, all of the saints that bore witness to its transformative power.

Newsboys - Secret Kingdom

13 November 2024 - what he has done for us

Today's Readings

(Audio)

They stood at a distance from him and raised their voice, saying,

“Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!”

We all necessarily begin life in a condition which makes us unable to draw close to Jesus on our own. It is not because "of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy" that the "bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit" heal us from our the spiritual leprosy that otherwise disfigures our souls. Jesus himself does this for us. Then he commands, "Go show yourselves to the priests", that we may be integrated into the worshipping community.

As they were going they were cleansed.

And one of them, realizing he had been healed,

returned, glorifying God in a loud voice;

and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him.

Many are healed in the waters of baptismal rebirth. But fewer truly realize that they have been healed. Many follow the instructions to be joined to as members of the Church. But few pause to reflect on how great is the debt of gratitude that they owe to Jesus himself.

Only the healing power of Jesus can transform those who "were once foolish, disobedient, deluded, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful ourselves and hating one another" to become heirs in in hope of eternal life. But there is a risk that those who are thus transformed don't fully realized from what and for whom they were saved. This may result in a lukewarm commitment to Jesus and a merely perfunctory attempt to live as his disciples. The antidote is a heart that treasures what Jesus has done for us, and a thankfulness that stirs us to devotion.

If our Church was full only of the sort of spiritual lepers who would return to Jesus with thanksgiving she would become a more powerful witness in our world. So let us give thanks ourselves and encourage one another to do the same. Thankfulness is more than a duty. It helps our entire lives take on color, warmth, and purpose.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Don Moen - Give Thanks

12 November 2024 - unprofitable servants

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“Who among you would say to your servant

who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,

‘Come here immediately and take your place at table’?

Jesus called his Apostles to remember that their role was primarily that of servant. There would always be the temptation to allow service done in the vineyard of the Lord to create within oneself a sense of entitlement. If it did, the disciples could not follow the example of Jesus, washing the feet of others, and living as servant leaders. They were to guard against the tendency by remembering that they were "unprofitable servants". They were not somehow putting God in their debt by obeying his commands. The better they did, the more perfectly they completed the task assigned to them, the closer they would approximate their due of justice to God. But they could never fully close the gap between what they could do in service and what was deserved by a God of infinite majesty. 

Would the delicate egos of the Apostles be ready to receive such a message? Wouldn't it be better to allow them to pamper themselves somewhat, to build up their egos with encouragement? Not if such encouragement was likely to go off the rails and result in an increasing inability to act as servants in the future. Jesus himself demonstrated a more excellent way by reminding them in word and deed that he himself came not to be served but to serve (see Matthew 20:28).

Would he not rather say to him,

‘Prepare something for me to eat.

Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink.

You may eat and drink when I am finished’?

Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?

God delights when his children learn to serve in a way that is less and less dependent on temporal rewards. One reason this is so because it frees them to become increasingly effective and dynamic as servants. Although they do not generate any benefit that accrues to God, nevertheless God does delight to see them living in a way that is increasingly defined by gift of self, since this begins to approximate the heart of God himself. There is spiritual delight to be found in such self-forgetfulness. But paradoxically, the more we try to insist on such delight before getting on with our own meager attempts at service the less we will find it. The more we learn to be grateful to be of service at all, and the more we pursue such service in a spirit of gratitude, the more joy we will probably find.

Make Us True Servants

11 November 2024 - mulberry much

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,

but woe to the one through whom they occur.

Jesus told his disciples that sin would be difficult to avoid in this life. He understood that they  would constantly need to forgive and be forgiven, to rebuke and to amend when rebuked oneself. But it was a separate and more severe category to cause sin in others by scandal oneself. This was something someone charged with spreading the Gospel could easily slip into if they imitated the example of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Jesus hoped to inoculate his followers against this possibility by teaching them to take sin seriously. But it was not the definitive or final word about anyone, unlike the Pharisees for whom it was simply a category to be avoided. Rather it was a condition in which everyone would at times find themselves. Having brothers and sisters of faith who cared about them meant, not that they would have people who would ignore the issues or soften the demands of holiness, but that they would be surrounded by people who would rebuke them because of their love for them. Rebuke was not to be done out of pride or some sense of superiority, but rather from the sense that one would desire the same sort of help and insight oneself if one had hit a stumbling block that was preventing forward progress. We can learn from the approach of the Little Flower to her duty to guide the novices in her community:

Rather than make one single reproach, I would prefer to receive a thousand, yet I feel it is necessary that the task should cause me pain, for if I spoke only through natural impulse, then the soul in fault would not understand its defects and would simply think: "This Sister is displeased, and her displeasure falls on me although I am full of the best intentions."

- Saint Therese of Lisieux

Jesus did not foresee sin in the community to a problem that would be easily corrected early on and then not a problem. If that had been the case it might have only been necessary to forgive a brother once or a few times. Seven times would then seem to be the example of someone not making an effort. At a certain point a line would be drawn and people might stop feeling obliged to forgive. But Jesus foresaw that there would be brothers who would struggle, and yet who would keep coming back again and again seeking forgiveness. One who had given up wouldn't keep returning in this way.

And the Apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith."

The Lord replied, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed,

you would say to this mulberry tree,

'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

The Apostles seemed to realize that the way of living to which Jesus was calling them wasn't going to be easy. Forgiveness was going to chaff against their fleshly tendencies to pride and entitlement. But Jesus assured them that even a small amount of faith would allow them to conquer unforgiveness. Even something as great as a mulberry tree, deeply rooted in their fallen nature, could be uprooted by a command of faith. This sort of transplant was more actually more miraculous than anything merely horticultural.

Faith was the basis which made good growth and spiritual progress possible. Only faith could heal all of the things against which Paul cautioned Titus. Only faith in practice to give rise to goodness, temperance, justice, holiness, and self-control.

For a bishop as God's steward must be blameless, not arrogant,

not irritable, not a drunkard, not aggressive,

not greedy for sordid gain, but hospitable, a lover of goodness,

temperate, just, holy, and self-controlled

DC Talk - What If I Stumble?

10 November 2024 - small but mitey

Today's Readings

(Audio)

They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext

recite lengthy prayers. 

They will receive a very severe condemnation.

Jesus warned against the dangers of using religiosity and a pretense of piety as a mask designed to win praise from others and to conceal a lack of love of neighbor. God himself had a heart for the poor and the marginalized. He would not allow himself to be used as an excuse for people to ignore their needs much less as an excuse for them to actually "devour the houses of widows".

He sat down opposite the treasury

and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. 

Many rich people put in large sums.

A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. 

Although it was commendable in theory for the rich to put in large sums it seemed that they were only actually doing what came easily. They had the surplus available and it wasn't going to have much impact on their lifestyle. Gifts such as this did not require and therefore did not represent any kind of genuine conversion. They could in fact serve as pretense designed to conceal a lack of genuine contrition, just as the lengthy prayers of the scribes did for them. The offerings in themselves were not necessarily a bad thing. But a merely external act could not replace the need for one to die to self. As Paul reminded the church in Corinth: "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (see First Corinthians 13:3).

The widow who gave the last of what she had was not going to impress anyone with the external act itself. In fact, many might chastise her for apparent foolishness or futility. It would seem that her two coins were insignificant for the service of God in the temple and imprudent for the widow herself to do without. It is hard for us to see her gift in anything other light than this cold and calculating perspective. But she saw things differently, through the logic of love, and with eyes of faith. She knew about the limited value anything in this world had in itself. She recognized that a gift only took on value when it was given with love. And she saw that nothing given out of love for God was ever wasted. Any apparently reckless gift given by a human was still less extravagant than the love with which God himself loved humanity. The evidence of this was that no human gift would ever match the perfect completeness found in the offering of Jesus Christ on the cross.

But now once for all he has appeared at the end of the ages

to take away sin by his sacrifice. 

The cross was like the widow's mite in that both she and Jesus gave, from their poverty, all that they had, their entire livelihood. Both offerings appeared initially to be fruitless and futile. But we know from the offering of Jesus that the true result was the resurrection. We can be sure that an offering like that of the widow would also in some way lead to new life, whether here or in the world to come.

She answered, "As the LORD, your God, lives,

I have nothing baked; there is only a handful of flour in my jar

and a little oil in my jug.

The widow Elijah encountered at Zarephath was invited to make offering that would at first seem as imprudent as that of the widow Jesus praised in today's Gospel reading. They were both being invited, seemingly, to give the last of what they had. But the story of the widow to whom Elijah came highlights the fact that the invitation to give was not an invitation to give up. She was not asked to proceed in such a way that she in her son would starve. Rather she was asked to move beyond such natural calculations to a trust in supernatural abundance and providence.

For the LORD, the God of Israel, says,

'The jar of flour shall not go empty,

nor the jug of oil run dry,

until the day when the LORD sends rain upon the earth.

As an outsider appraising them, offerings of the best of what we have to God, offerings by which we genuinely invest, not only resources, but even ourselves, always seem foolish. But when we live in relationship with the God to whom we make such gifts we are able to see things differently. It is not despair that motivates us to give what is apparently too much. It is trust. It is love for the one who first gave all of himself for us.

Passion Featuring Kristian Stanfill - Heart Abandoned

9 November 2024 - house hunter

Today's Readings

(Audio)

He made a whip out of cords

and drove them all out of the temple area

They asked for a sign to see how Jesus would explain entering the temple and acting as though he owned the place. Who, exactly, did he think he was? They did have their reasons for not wanting foreign currency, often with images of foreign kings and emperors, to taint the inner parts of the temple. Who was he to object?

Jesus did act as though he understood the purpose of the temple better than they did. He said that they were making the temple a marketplace and implied this was not what God truly intended. What was meant to serve the end of honoring God had seeming become an ecosystem that now existed for its own sake, in which people were focused more on monetary exchange than worship. Jesus said this was wrong and that he knew it to be wrong because it was his Father's house. He implied that he, as the only Son of the Father ,knew what was fitting for this house. This was consistent, coming as it did from the one who also said of himself, "something greater than the temple is here" (see Matthew 12:6). 

"What sign can you show us for doing this?"

Jesus answered and said to them,

"Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."

Jesus was the Son of the Father. The earthly temple was merely a symbol foreshadowing the way that God's presence would dwell among men in his person. But this didn't make Jesus indifferent to the earthly temple, as though it didn't matter after all now that he had arrived. Instead, he still used it as a prophetic sign to symbolize the mission he had come to accomplish. He had come to eliminate everything that could be a barrier to the presence of God dwelling in human hearts. He would zealously oppose any false claimants to the throne of the human heart that was meant for God alone. He would pursue this goal so zealously that he would even allow all of the hostility and opposition against it to fall on his own head. He would bear the cost of making a new way to worship in Spirit and truth available for the human race. In himself he would end all that was corrupt or even partial and incomplete in the old sacrificial economy of the physical temple. In himself he would reveal the new and definitive temple and sacrifice. He would offer to humanity a new covenant sealed at the cost of his own Precious Blood.

But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.

The fact that the zeal of Jesus accomplished what he intended in his paschal mystery does not necessarily mean we are now free to just sit back and relax, as though he was potentially dangerous then but now safely defanged and declawed. If anything, now that the symbol has given way to the reality we should have an even greater level of holy fear. This was what Paul spoke of to the church at Corinth:

Do you not know that you are the temple of God,

and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

If anyone destroys God's temple,

God will destroy that person;

for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.

If Jesus cleansed a temple that was only a symbol of what was to come with such violent vigor, to what lengths will he go to ensure that our hearts are cleansed? We know that "our God is a consuming fire" (see Hebrews 12:29). Just as Jesus knew the purpose for which the temple was made and acted to ensure it could function in accord with that purpose so too will he do for us, who are meant to live "to the praise of his glory" (see Ephesians 1:12). He does this, not because he delights in violence or punishment, but to ensure as much as possible the blessings that he longs to bestow.

Every month they shall bear fresh fruit,

for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary.

Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.

Bob Fitts - The River Is Here

8 November 2024 - dear prudence

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Prepare a full account of your stewardship

Will we be ready when the Lord asks us for an account of all of the gifts, blessings, and talents, with which he has entrusted us? Or do we use those things in such a way that others might rightly report us for squandering the property of the master? A real problem arises when we forget that we are meant to be stewards, when we treat the goods of this world as if they are our own and use them as though we will have them forever. When we use the goods of this world according to our whims and without reference to God we do a disservice to others who have the right to expect from more from us. Hence their complaint about the steward in the parable is in keeping with the demands of justice.

I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.

We can perhaps respect the desire of the servant to avoid the punishment of manual labor. But what if he was not ashamed to beg? Would the master have then shown mercy? We know that in another parable the man with the unpayable debt found mercy when he asked, though he squandered that mercy. This steward, however, was hamstrung by his pride, made unable to try to work out a solution with the master directly. But maybe this is more relatable than when realize. Perhaps our own attempts at conciliation with the master are half-hearted because we are ashamed to fully reveal to him the corruption in our hearts. If so, this sort of pride isn't doing us any favors. It stems from and leads to a transactional relationship with the master rather than the one he desires with us which is based on mercy and on love.

And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.

The steward cheated the master and it was not for this that he was commended. Rather it was the prudence inherent in the actions of using what he was not going to be able to keep in order to receive that which he could even after the end of his stewardship. We must not follow suit of the steward by cheating others out of that which we rightfully owe. But we should use the things of this world, which we cannot keep, in ways that will avail for us when our stewardship is at an end. We ought to be willing to let of the things of this world in order to win the favor that will avail for us for eternity. Even if we use the things of this world for people in this world who ultimately do not express their thanks in the way that the master's debtors would for the steward, nevertheless God himself will be pleased by our priorities being correctly expressed and will help to bring us safely home.

For the children of this world

are more prudent in dealing with their own generation

than the children of light.

The children of this world seem very capable of letting go of one thing that they can't keep for another that will last longer. But we seem less capable by comparison. What we have on offer is that which will last forever, treasure in heaven, and eternal dwelling places. What we must trade for that is only what we can't keep anyway, what lasts only for a moment or a breath in the grand scheme. May we learn to prudently use the opportunities we have been given here on earth for the sake of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken and which will never be destroyed.

Matt Maher - Come To The Water