13 February 2021 - thy mercy free

Today's Readings

(Audio)

The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?”

It was not as though the Most High didn't know where Adam was hiding. Rather Adam was being given a chance to come forward and confess. 

You have eaten, then,

from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!

Even the accusation by God was given with the chance to reply, to own up to the sin, and to ask for mercy. But instead of doing that Adam did what we often still do: he made excuses.

The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me 

she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”

It has become unpopular to believe that there is such a thing as sin. We prefer to think about 'mistakes' and 'learning experiences'. Culpable guilt is only something we're willing to accept in extreme, Hitler-level, examples. Because of this we try to explain our own culpable guilt away with excuses. And when we do so we end up impugning God, blaming him and implying that his provisioning and providence fall short. Such was the case with Adam when he blamed Eve, for in blaming the helpmate that God provided he was implicitly blaming God himself. Hence he blamed not just the woman but went on to say "whom you put here". He wasn't blaming Eve as much as God himself. But this attitude is inherent when we refuse to own up to sin. When we try to excuse ourselves, when we say we finally couldn't help it, whom are we implicating in our guilt if not God? 

“Why did you do such a thing?”

The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”

The serpent tries to trick us as well. But when God had first spoken so clearly, believing the serpent was something to which Eve conceded by her own will, not something irresistible to which she would inevitably succumb. It was in fact a knot of disobedience that would not be untied until Mary, the new Eve, would do so with her own obedience to God's word, her fiat to his plan.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

    and between your offspring and hers;

He will strike at your head,

    while you strike at his heel.” 

We should not make excuses, but should bring our faults before the Lord in confession as soon as he prompts us to do so. There may indeed by factors that mitigate our culpability, factors which were unknown to Adam and Eve. Ever since the fall our flesh exerted a downward pull on us. It was no longer properly and perfectly ordered by our spirit, but would only obey, as Adam was told, by the "sweat of your face". 

The more of a foothold sin finds, the more it can become a habit, and from there an addiction. And there is a sense in which addiction really lessen the guilt of one who struggles with it. How do we balance between a straightforward approach to sins we see in our own life and our desire to excuse them with mitigating circumstances, given that sometimes there really are such circumstances? The important distinction is to not blame God or others. Instead, if we see this or that sin as one which is hard to avoid or overcome we confess our own weakness as the reason. It is now perhaps beyond our full and absolute control. But the buck still stops with us. Yet this need not cause us to despair. The weaker and more imperfect we find ourselves to be the more we can do what Adam and Eve, who preferred to think of themselves as still untainted, would not do. We can entrust ourselves to the merciful love of God.

My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,

Jesus doesn't want the consequences of sin to keep us from enjoying his presence. He did not force the crowd to go forth and find bread by the sweat of their brows. Instead, his grace provided. It transformed efforts and abilities that were insufficient to the task to provide nourishment that was more than enough.

They ate and were satisfied.

They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.

Imagine if the crowds had instead spent their time bickering about why they didn't have enough food, blaming each other and ignoring the offer of Jesus to feed them. This is more or less what Adam and Eve did and what we ourselves sometimes still choose to do. But the bread of God's merciful love is always available. We don't have to sweat to earn it. So let us come to receive it, that we too may eat and be satisfied.

Chris Tomlin - Kyrie Eleison

12 February 2021 - unfruitful ideas

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals

that the LORD God had made.

We need to be aware that we have an enemy, that the Devil, is a real being who is set against our flourishing. We do not dwell on this in order to frighten ourselves but in order to be properly prepared when he tempts us. It would be one thing to live in a world where were merely contending with the imperfection of of circumstances and of our flesh. It is another thing to contend with an intellectual being set to bring about our ruin. This means that compelling suggestions are sometimes actually acts of conniving intended to deceive us.

“Did God really tell you not to eat

from any of the trees in the garden?”

God, of course, said no such thing. But the devil is always quick to insinuate that God's commands are not based on love, but are rather holding out on his creatures some goods which he doesn't want to share. We need to believe in the goodness of God's commands, that they come from a place of love, and are designed to help us live our best lives. If we don't believe this a subtle shift from trust to doubt which is hard to detect at first may begin.

‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’

Did God say that? Earlier, we read "From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die" (see Genesis 2:17). Was Eve already conceding ground to the serpent without realizing it? And what was Adam doing while all this was happening? We later read that he was close enough for Eve to hand him the fruit to eat. But why did he shrink from his duty to guard the garden? Why did his wife have to face the tempter on her own? Perhaps the simple act of Adam reminding Eve what the command of God actually said would have been enough to break the serpent's spell. Was he afraid? Was he also succumbing to the same lie? Either way, he offered no resistance.

But the serpent said to the woman:

“You certainly will not die!

No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it

your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods

who know what is good and what is evil.”

When we know that we have an enemy set against us it is easier to be on guard against outright lies. When we think that there is nothing actively and cleverly trying to destroy souls we have a sort of naive ignorance that makes all clever lies all too easy to accept. It could have been enough for Adam and Eve to see that this serpent spoke in contradiction to the God who created all things. From there they could have correctly categorized all else he said. Yet, they chose to entertain his questions. Why was there a tree that was forbidden? Why was a serpent who would speak lies even present? They did have countless reasons to trust God. But this really was an occasion where they needed to intentionally choose that trust.

So she took some of its fruit and ate it;

and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her,

and he ate it.

Their eyes were opened, but the eyes of their minds were darkened, henceforth contaminated with the mistrust that marked their act, a mistrust that would be the default mode of their offspring. They now knew evil by experience and not merely by intellect, and now more understand good, as by their act they were deprived of their supreme good. This was not the way God intended it. Yet it was certainly known to him in advance. The fall was permitted because he would use it to bring about something greater, something so good that it could be one day known as a "happy fault" and a "most necessary sin".

By refusing to listen to God Adam and Eve became spiritually deaf. By refusing to speak out against the lies of the enemy their ability to speak the truth with impeded. Jesus, as the new Adam, always listened to the Father, and always spoke in conformity with his will. Therefore he was able to open the ears and mouth of the man in today's Gospel. And therefore he can do so for us as well.

then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,

“Ephphatha!” (that is, “Be opened!”)

And immediately the man’s ears were opened,

his speech impediment was removed,

Songs In His Presence - Prayer of Augustine

11 February 2021 - dogged determination

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.

She came and fell at his feet.

This woman sensed in Jesus one who could help. Even though Jesus "wanted no one to know about it" when he entered in a house in Tyre he would not be hidden to the eyes of faith of this woman in need.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,

and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.

We who would give birth to virtue, to good works, to creative endeavors, who would wish to give the world some new daughter to inspire hope and bring the fruits of love, do we not also see our efforts hampered and hindered by the enemy? Perhaps it is literally our children that need healing. Perhaps it is some evangelical endeavor that isn't bearing the fruit we'd hoped. Whatever it is, let us bring it to Jesus.

He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.

For it is not right to take the food of the children

and throw it to the dogs.”

When we don't immediately get a breakthrough from Jesus we might be tempted to despair. But he himself is the one that commends us to persist in prayer without losing heart (see Luke 18:1-8). Jesus does desire to give us the healing we need. But in doing so he wants to draw from us a response of faith.

She replied and said to him,

“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

The woman was drawn to admit that she had no claim to deserve the request she made. She might have given up when she didn't immediately receive what she asked. But she persisted, not on the basis of who she was or what she deserved, but on the basis of who Jesus was. His generosity, she implied, was so great that it couldn't help but overflow from the table of the children to the dogs under the table. He was the sower who scattered so much seed that there was no limit to where fruit might spring up. Like her, we can plead our case on the basis of the mercy and generosity of God. Jesus came that we might have life and have it in abundance (see John 10:10). We can trust in that and make it the basis of a stalwart peaceful persistence until we too receive the breakthrough we need.

The LORD God then built up into a woman

the rib that he had taken from the man.

Eve was meant to be the mother of all the living. There ought never have been a daughter afflicted by an unclean spirit. But, by their choices, that first family turned away from God's gift of life and introduced death and sin into the world. Humanity had no merit to ask for better, yet God himself was too good, too merciful, too generous to leave us in that state. He brought forth from Jesus, who was the new Adam, a new Eve, the Church to able, at last to give true life, true freedom from the works of the enemy. Those who, like the Syrophoenician woman, come to Jesus in faith, receive the new life that pours from his side on the cross. We become the new Eve, and as we do, we begin to bear fruit for the kingdom, fruit the the enemy can no longer keep bound.

Matt Maher - Come to the Water

10 February 2021 - their food in due season

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Do you not realize that everything

that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,

since it enters not the heart but the stomach

and passes out into the latrine?

Even the fruit the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a problem because of the fruit itself. It was rather what the choice of eating that fruit without God's approval represented, the inherent self-will and disobedience to the Divine will contained in that choice, that was reason that action brought death.

You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden

except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

From that tree you shall not eat;

the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.

In trying to follow God we find it easier to fixate on externals, on the form of our religion, but sometimes neglect the true power which those externals were meant to express (see Second Timothy 3:5). We begin obeying negative precepts, by not eating this or that, but forget that we are doing so to obey a loving God who has our best interests at heart. From there it is a short move to doubting God's intentions and choosing our own will over and against his own.

If we make the mistake come to see our obedience to God in terms of externals only doubts quickly follow. Yes, he asks us to not eat certain foods. But perhaps it is only because he intends to give them to us later. Perhaps the tree of knowledge of good and evil would have been given to Adam and Eve at a later point when they had grown more. Certainly some of the Church Fathers suggesteded this. Perhaps it was prohibited for them to reach out and take it but so that it could later be given as a gift. Even the food regulations of the Mosaic law could be seen in this way. They were given because to aid the growth of Israel and help it to retain its unique identity as the people of God.

(Thus he declared all foods clean.)

But in Christ the people of God grew out of the adolescent phase and no longer needed to be under a guardian (see Galatians 3:25). They could now receive with thanksgiving those things which had formerly been considered unclean (see First Timothy 4:4).

We have seen that it is appropriate to receive some food at one time and not other, and that different circumstances call for a different response of obedience to God. Does this mean that morality itself changes? Of course not. For love of God and love of neighbor underlie any right expression of obedience. That is why it is always first and foremost a matter of the heart.

But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.

From within the man, from his heart,

come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,

adultery, greed, malice, deceit,

licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.

The sins Jesus listed always and everywhere defile. When we let these thoughts take shape in words and actions we do become defiled. And there are certain intrinsically immoral actions which are always objectively expressions of such evils. Yet if we fall in to the trap of looking only at the externals, objective though they are, we tend to lose the inner logic of goodness. We become unable to sympathize with others who are being defiled by evil, even unable to sympathize with ourselves when we fall. If we are not careful it will not be long before we can no longer take God's commands seriously and reach out for the fruit ourselves.

Jesus, by making everything about the heart, taught us how we could remain faithful and undefiled. He knew that our hearts themselves had become predisposed to prefer bad to good, darkness to light, but he himself had come to give us new hearts.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 32:26).

Our first parents decided not to trust God and we've had a hard time trusting him ever since. But if we receive the new heart that Jesus wants to give us we can have our freedom to trust restored. We can come to see past the externals to the providential care of a Father who loves his children.

Vineyard Worship - Hungry (Falling On My Knees)

9 February 2021 - i can only image

Today's Readings

(Audio)

This people honors me with their lips,

    but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

    teaching as doctrines human precepts.

We honor God with our lips, and this as we should, but are our hearts far from him? This may require some introspection on our part to discern accurately. The Pharisees had certainly convinced themselves that their supplemental rules and traditions were meant to be a more extreme way to prove their hearts were close to God. 

You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”

He went on to say,

“How well you have set aside the commandment of God

in order to uphold your tradition!

Much of the way we live out our faith is neither from the Scriptures nor the Apostolic Tradition but rather from our own human tradition. We have come to insist on a variety of practices and a way of self-presentation that are meant to be pious and devout. So too in politics we have ways of participating that may have started off noble, even designed to avoid objective evil, but which have devolved into merely tribal. 

An example will help us to see how we can get carried away with merely human traditions. If someone experiences the power of God through a renewal movement this is certainly a good thing. Trying to share that experience and that movement with others is also good. But insisting that it is the only way, and passing judgment on those who don't choose that particular path, assuming we have a spirituality that is somehow superior, is wrong. Parallel examples of a more traditional sort could also be easily identified.

Human traditions must be judged on their fruit. Are they actually bringing hearts closer to God? Are they actually freeing us to love one another? Or have they become distractions from the weightier matters of justice and mercy (see Matthew 23:23)? Have they become excuses that prevent us from being challenged to love others in ways that may have a cost for us?

Yet you say,

‘If someone says to father or mother,

“Any support you might have had from me is qorban”’

(meaning, dedicated to God),

you allow him to do nothing more for his father or mother.

We were made in the image and likeness of God. But our traditions, if we are not careful, try to remake God in our image and likeness. They provide an entry point for us at first because they contain something that is connatural to us and our temperament. Then, if we are not careful, we insist on that for everyone, and judge anyone who will not take the same path. This is a tendency against which we must be on guard. Without grace we will tend to shift the priority to our preferences rather than God's will. When this happens, good things are changed from entry points to occasions of judging others and excuses to remain unchanged ourselves.

The image of God within us was obscured by sin. But the renewal of the image that Jesus made possible is a gift he gave us in baptism. Yet, having received it, we still need to live it, to let it bear fruit.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (see Romans 12:2)

put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (see Ephesians 4:22-23)

On our own we tend to fall back toward the chaos before creation. But God who makes all things new can renew us as well. Let us live so as to depend on it.

You have made him little less than the angels,

    and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him rule over the works of your hands,

    putting all things under his feet.

Hillsong Worship - All Things New

Steven Curtis Chapman - All Things New (a different one)

8 February 2021 - chaos control

Today's Readings

(Audio)

After making the crossing to the other side of the sea,

Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret

and tied up there.

Jesus came to his disciples in the middle of their voyage as they made that crossing into Gennesaret, when they were having trouble because the wind was against them. He came to them, walking on the water, and spoke to them, saying "It is I", using the divine name to reveal himself to them. When he got into the boat with his disciples the wind ceased.

We see in Jesus the word that was spoken over the world when it "was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept the waters." He himself was the "God said" that transformed the chaos of the tohu va bohu, as the Hebrew called it, into something well ordered, something which God himself called "good".

They scurried about the surrounding country

and began to bring in the sick on mats

to wherever they heard he was.

There was a sense in which Jesus, disembarking from this boat, emerging from the chaos of the sea, was like the land of a new creation emerging from the waters. All around him the world had slipped to varying degrees back into the condition of tohu va bohu, but wherever he came this devolution was reversed and the order of creation was reestablished. Creation was restored from something that pulled away from and distracted from God and transformed into something which could be the place of acceptable worship, as it was always meant to be. The new creation that emerged was therefore inherently sacramental, for through it the mind could now be elevated to God. Through it the great "I am" revealed himself to us.

they laid the sick in the marketplaces

and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;

and as many as touched it were healed.

The tassel represented a visible reminder to keep God's commandments. It was therefore the case that, perhaps without fully understanding, the people knew that it was the fidelity of Jesus to his Father's will in which they themselves could hope for healing. They implicitly recognized that they had no claim of merit on their own. But they trusted in Jesus to allow his merit to speak for them.

We see the world in varying degrees of tohu va bohu in our own day. But we too can look to the new creation emerging in Jesus. We too can reach for his merit to heal our brokenness when we lack merit of our own. Jesus himself is the light of world, the eternal day of the new creation.

Your sun will never set again,

and your moon will wane no more;

the Lord will be your everlasting light,

and your days of sorrow will end (see Isaiah 60:20).

By abiding in his light we ourselves are transformed from chaos and darkness into new creation (see Second Corinthians 5:17), temples where right praise is offered (see First Corinthians 3:16), living sacrifices to God (see Romans 12:1)

How manifold are your works, O LORD!

In wisdom you have wrought them all—

the earth is full of your creatures;

Bless the LORD, O my soul! Alleluia. 

Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken

7 February 2021 - for this purpose

Today's Readings

(Audio)

For this purpose have I come.

For what purpose? The immediate context is his intention to go to the nearby villages to preach. He seemed to imply that what it was his mission to do elsewhere what he had done in Capernaum. Yet in what way does this really answer the question of the purpose he came, the purpose he chose to become incarnate and walk among us?

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (see First John 3:8).

We can understand that his purpose really was to preach and to drive out demons when we realize that in both contexts there was something happening on the surface, and something deeper being revealed. On the surface his preaching seemed to mostly be of a moral sort, talking about love of God and neighbor. On the surface, his healing power set free those bound by sickness and demonic possession. Yet his original audience could tell there was more to the story than the superficial. In his preaching, they sensed one who "taught them as one having authority" (see Mark 1:22). In his healings it was not simply the superficial ailment that was healed. The outer healing was accompanied by an inner transformation of faith. 

Repent, and believe in the gospel (see Mark 1:15).

The gospel message was not merely a teaching, not merely healing, not merely hope in a Kingdom of this world. The call to conversion which was the content of the message of Jesus was more than a simple call to moral perfection. The word repent was a translation of the greek word metanoia which meant beyond-thought or above-thought. It was not first a call to change our way of acting so much as it was a call to transcend our old ways of thinking. Jesus himself, his very presence, demonstrated that our old ways of thinking were no longer adequate. Hence, though he conveyed many moral truths by his words, his preaching was ultimately more intended as a revelation of who he himself was. Only from that vantage point did his teachings make sense. Only that fact made sense of the authority with which he spoke. That he spoke with power is evident from the fact that the demons could not resist him. His words did have such power that he himself was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (see Luke 4:19).

Jesus said, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (see Luke 4:21) because in his words themselves the invitation to come to faith, the grace to transcend old ways of thinking, was present. It was by way of this invitation that the restoration of the world would be accomplished. And so it was in this sense that he had come for this purpose, that of preaching. Let's not underestimate the significance of this because when the Word who made the universe spoke he was in fact beginning to create it anew, precisely in the hearts of his listeners. Those who accepted the invitation to faith could recognize it.

Yet "this purpose" for which Jesus came can be spelled out more concretely. It was very much a response to the derelict cry of Job and those like him.

Remember that my life is like the wind;

I shall not see happiness again.

The heart of Jesus was love for his people. The purpose for which he came, the words which he came to preach, were to assure his people that they were not forgotten, that they were indeed loved. But his words were not cheap. They effected deliverance even as they were proclaimed. And though those freed from demons would one day still grow old and die, they could do so now with confidence that they were loved and not abandoned. So too does our faith allow us to faith death still confident in God's love for us, especially now that the resurrection has been revealed.

He heals the brokenhearted

and binds up their wounds.

He tells the number of the stars;

he calls each by name.

When we've had this experience of Jesus himself, when his words and his power have revealed his heart to us, we become compelled to speak of it. We want to tell the world, "the love you desire, that seems impossible, is real. It is a person. It is Jesus himself."

If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast,

for an obligation has been imposed on me,

and woe to me if I do not preach it!

Graham Kendrick - For this Purpose