17 March 2022 - are we rooted in mercy?

Today's Readings

(Audio)

There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen

and dined sumptuously each day.

Do our chosen pleasures insulate us from the needs of those around us? Do our selfish pursuits prevent us from seeing those in need even when they are on our very doorstep?

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.

We may worry that in response to the problem of poverty that we can never do enough. But the rich man wasn't condemned for an effort that was partial but ineffective. He was condemned because even his leftover scraps could have been helpful but his awareness was too closed in on itself to even offer these. He was blinded to the needs of others, needs that he was positioned to address, by his selfish pursuits. He would have had to all but step over Lazarus to come or go and yet he acted as though he did not exist.

God takes pity on the poor, the neglected, and the suffering. He sent his angels to carry Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham to enjoy such consolations as to more than make up for the bad things he received during his life. But to those who refuse to heed the word of God commanding that we show mercy, spoken first by Moses and the prophets, and later by Jesus risen from the dead, he himself will not show mercy. We are here and now being given the opportunity to respond to the call. We won't necessarily solve the problem of poverty for all time. But we can at least begin to notice the poor lying on our doorsteps. They may not have anything with which to pay us back now, but we can imagine them as our advocates at the bosom of Abraham when we come to face our own judgment. The simple questions we can ask are, what is our surplus? and, who is near us who stands in need? When we consistently address these questions we can avoid the risk described by Jeremiah of becoming men and women who trust in human beings, seek our strength in flesh, but turn away from the Lord.

Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,

who seeks his strength in flesh,

whose heart turns away from the LORD.

Even while we remain alive the way of the flesh is not a truly fulfilling way to live. The more we allow ourselves to become isolated from the needs of others by our selfishness the more we become like barren bushes in the desert. Our pleasures may continue, but without a change of season we cease to experience them as pleasures but instead only experience a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. The afterlife for such individuals is the concrete and definitive manifestation of this inner reality.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,

whose hope is the LORD.

He is like a tree planted beside the waters

that stretches out its roots to the stream

If we are rooted in trust in the Lord we will be able to give to others in a way that not only does not diminish us but in fact makes us grow. When we are rooted in ourselves we rightly experience barrenness, that we have no fruit to offer to others. But when the Lord is our strength he himself make us bear fruit with no distress even in the year of drought. It seems like an easy choice considered in the abstract, but our hearts are good at rationalizing selfishness. We must turn to him who alone probes the mind and tests the heart to help to keep us on the right path, to keep our ears open to the word of God, and our eyes open to those nearby who are in need.

That yields its fruit in due season,

and whose leaves never fade.

Whatever he does, prospers.

Maranatha! Singers - I Will Delight

16 March 2022 - consolation prize?

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,

and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests

and the scribes,

and they will condemn him to death,

and hand him over to the Gentiles

to be mocked and scourged and crucified,

and he will be raised on the third day.

When Jesus told them the plan it was admittedly a lot to take in. This wasn't quite the conquering and victorious Messiah they thought they had been promised. There were echoes of Isaiah's suffering servant to be sure, but much less of the Son of David who would rule over the house of David forever. Rome was the pressing problem and it seemed that Jesus was planning to be defeated specifically by the Romans, enduring their dreaded sentence of crucifixion. He would be raised on the third day. But what did that mean? They had no context. If he was going to conquer why not just conquer? Yet, to their credit, they did not abandon him just because they did not understand him, or because his plan wasn't the plan they would have made or that they would prefer.

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

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

As the cross began to cast its shadow over Jesus and his disciples the disciples were tempted to see what they could still get from Jesus for themselves, to see what they could salvage from the plan of a great, possibly anointed individual, who nevertheless seemed to them giving in to easily, to be throwing the game. 

“Command that these two sons of mine sit,

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

The plan of the mother of the sons of Zebedee seemed prudent from a human point of view. Just in case something problematic did happen to Jesus then the sons of Zebedee would at least be situated to keep things running in his absence. All that they had experienced so far would not be for naught. But they still misunderstood the sort of Kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate.

Jesus said in reply,

“You do not know what you are asking.

Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”

They said to him, “We can.”

To truly share in the Kingdom as leaders would require more than appointment to the office because it was not an earthly kingdom. The chalice they would need to drink was not whatever they imagined it to be, but rather the one about which Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, the cross itself. There was no path to victory that did not pass through death. No one would reign in the true and fully legitimate spiritual sense without first sharing in the cross of Jesus.

My chalice you will indeed drink

The sons of Zebedee bit off more than they could chew at that moment, but it was not entirely to the bad. Their mixed motives were still enough to keep them on track with Jesus, to keep them near him and listening to his direction, so that they themselves could witness the way taken by the Master, and come to understand that they too must pass that way. If our flesh fully understood what was involved in a commitment to Jesus we would probably never get our response off the ground. But it is mercifully revealed gradually as we are renewed within and able to recognize the greater though perhaps more distant good as better than the immediate preoccupations of the flesh. Jesus leads us along by motivations that begin as less than perfect, purifying us as we go. But Lent is a reminder for us that our destiny too must include the way of the cross.

When the ten heard this,

they became indignant at the two brothers.

The spiritual life isn't a competition, except insofar as it is a competition to see who can be the most humble and to dedicate herself the most to service of others. Yet we insist on comparing ourselves to our brothers and sisters and trying to claw for the blessings we imagine to be ours. The shift needs to begin from what we can do for ourselves to what we can do for the Church and the world. This may not mean abandoning our dreams of sitting at the right and left of Jesus entirely. But it will mean reimagining them to be like his own dream, "the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many".

Remember that I stood before you

to speak in their behalf,

to turn away your wrath from them.

Jeremiah was a prelude and a foreshadowing of Jesus himself, with a heart that was for his people even when by rights he might have put himself first, who spoke on their behalf even when they tried to take his life. As he was a prelude, let us be echoes, not insisting on ourselves as first, not lording it over the competition, but, accepting the chalice, and using whatever we have been given for those around us.

Newsboys - Lead Me To The Cross

15 March 2022 - do you even lift others' burdens?

Today's Readings

(Audio)

They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry

and lay them on people’s shoulders,

but they will not lift a finger to move them.

Teachers such as those mentioned here worked to create dependance in the people who heard them on the teachers themselves rather than on the word of God that they claimed to illuminate. Their exaggeration of the traditional clothing and their excessive love for titles and honorifics were manifestations of this fact. 

We can imagine such teachers claimed to have a teaching that was better than others had, better than was commonly known, because they themselves were so wise. Probably their was additional complexity that was purely of their own making so that they themselves would seem indispensable. Yet for those saddled with these burdens they did nothing to help. Their teaching was ongoing but it did nothing to empower actual change in the lives of their listeners.

Are their still such teachers who claim to have unique and privileged insights into the word of God? Are their teachers who assure us that we can finally have a breakthrough if we join their special program or subscribe to their YouTube channel? Undoubtedly. We must be careful to seek teachers who are not primarily interested in self-promotion, whose teaching is meant to clarify the Gospel and the Tradition rather than anything clever that they themselves devised. There are many such good teachers, who really are working more to help us carry the burden of Christ than they are trying to saddle us with more additional work and then leaving us to it. These are teachers who participate in the teaching office of the one true Rabbi and Master. And for them we should be grateful.

As for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi.’

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

To the degree that any of us are involved in teaching we should desire that others grow to become as self-sufficient as possible, to depend as directly on the Gospel itself, on the Holy Spirit himself, as can be. We must realize that we finally have nothing to contribute beyond pointing back to these core realities and that when we mistake this point we only muddy the waters. This self-sufficiency, or better, God-sufficiency, was precisely the goal of John for his readers, which is why he told them, "you have no need that anyone should teach you" (see First John 2:27). How humble a thing for a teacher to say! Let us learn from his example. 

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.

In Isaiah we hear a prophet who genuinely desired that his people would cast off the yoke of sin and be purified to bear the yoke of God. He himself was speaking so that his words could empower his listeners to practice the simple message that they had heard preached, to cast away the wrong burdens that had preoccupied them, and to carry the burden of the Lord himself, represented by concern for the widow and the orphan's plea. 

If you are willing, and obey,

you shall eat the good things of the land;

John Michael Talbot - God Alone Is Enough

14 March 2022 - solidarity

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

What are the unmerciful attitudes to which we are tempted? Are we preoccupied with what others are doing wrong? Are we looking around us for people deserving of judgment and condemnation? If we notice that we do sometimes have these judgmental thoughts, why do we have them? What's in it for us? Have we become like the steward who was forgiven a large debt that immediately turned on those who owed him much smaller sums of money? The steward seemed to immediately forget the great mercy he himself received and set about with a new desperation to shore up his own resources so that he could be independent and never need to depend on mercy again. Are we too forgetful of the mercy we ourselves have received? We must often be thus forgetful or else we could not feel smug and superior enough to judge and condemn others. If we realized that we all stand in need of mercy and that any absence of behavior worthy of judgment and condemnation is not something that comes finally from ourselves, but from God at work in us, we would realize that we have no grounds to think ourselves better than anyone else. Daniel, who was doubtlessly not as personally implicated in the sins about which he pleaded to the Lord as others in Israel, nevertheless fully took the part of his people.

We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;

we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.

In Daniel we begin to see what a true heart of mercy looks like. It is not simply standing aloof and untouched, offering handouts to beggars from some imagined spiritual abundance. It is rather taking the part of precisely those people who deserve punishment and condemnation as one of them, of acknowledging our own lack and dependance and pleading to God for the abundance and grace of which he himself is the only source.

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

In the way that Daniel took the part of his people, a people who were by no means often friendly or welcoming to him, we see an echo of the way Moses stood in the breach for his people (see Psalm 106:23) and a prelude of the way that Jesus himself, though sinless, would walk in perfect solidarity with sinners. Jesus himself was the only one who did not need redemption or mercy and he was himself without any sin deserving of judgment. Yet, in spite of this, he chose not to judge or condemn, but rather to show mercy and forgive. He did not content himself with some elevated indifference but was moved by his solidarity with sinners to go so far as to die on the cross for us. We can't be merciful in quite the same way, because we do not begin with a clean slate. But for that reason we are all the more obliged to forgive and show mercy, to reciprocate the mercy we ourselves have first received.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

We should be ready in advance to forgive offenses against us. Rather than calculating the appropriate amount of remorse or penance that we demand before offering forgiveness to others, or the correct level of conversion that would make others worthy of it, let us forgive as we ourselves we first forgiven, before anything is earned our deserved. An attitude of ready and habitual forgiveness can help protect us from getting too caught up in the path of judgment and condemnation.

Give and gifts will be given to you;

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

will be poured into your lap.

We are afraid to give because we know that on our own our resources are insufficient. We already owe all that we have and all that we are be the mere fact of our creation. Further, we all have at one time or another mismanaged the gifts we ourselves have received and stand in an unpayable debt. These facts may tempt us to become even more closed fisted and self-protective. But they are meant to be lessons in how we ourselves are now supposed to live. We are called to be merciful in a way that is only possible and only makes sense if we remember that we first received and in which we now stand.

For the measure with which you measure

will in return be measured out to you.

Mercy is the only thing that can save the world. Solidarity is the only point of leverage where change is possible.

But when he knows that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for all human sins, the world's and each person's, only then will the goal of our unity be achieved. For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth.  

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

Vineyard - Help Us Our God

 

13 March 2022 - how shall I know

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“O Lord GOD,” he asked,

“how am I to know that I shall possess it?”

For Abram it was difficult, humanly speaking to understand how an old a childless couple such as he and Sarah would be able to receive the promises of the Lord for land and descendants. And yet the question he asked must have been more like that of Mary, when she asked, "But how can this happen?" (see Luke 1:34), than that of Zechariah when he asked, "How shall I know this?" (see Luke 1:18), for it seems to have been consistent with the act of faith he had just made, rather than backsliding into merely human thinking and doubt. That it issued from faith was demonstrated by how the Lord honored his question and acted to strengthen his incipient faith.

As the sun was about to set, a trance fell upon Abram,

and a deep, terrifying darkness enveloped him.

When the sun had set and it was dark,

there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch,

which passed between those pieces.

It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram

Abram would need to rely on his trust in God more than he could ever have predicted in order to receive the promised inheritance. After all, his trust would be further tested by the call to offer his only son, the very fulfillment of the promise, back to God. Additionally, he was told that attainment of the promised land would only follow a four hundred year exodus in the land of Egypt. To truly hope in the promise he needed a way to hope beyond the narrow confines of his limited human lifespan. He was given a revelation from God in order that he might stand firm in the promise, to believe "that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back" (see Hebrews 11:19).

While he was praying his face changed in appearance

and his clothing became dazzling white.

And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah,

who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus

that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.

The disciples too needed to be strengthened in their faith for a hope that transcended the apparent limitations of human life. Even more so than Abraham with Isaac, they needed a hope that was not limited by the advance of merely human years of age, a hope that even death could not completely destroy. The apparent failure of Jesus as Messiah that the cross represented would seem to have been an even greater setback than the exile in Egypt, his death a more complete end to their hope than was the call for Abraham to offer his only son. And yet, as for Abraham, none of the human limitations that seemed to define what was possible were definitive for God.  The disciples were were helped to hold on to their hope by a vision even greater than the one given to Abraham. This was fitting because the vision to Abraham announced the beginning of the promise. The one given to Peter, John, and James, pointed to the fulfillment, to which Moses (the law) and Elijah (the prophets) all testified.

But he did not know what he was saying.

It took Peter some time to fully integrate the vision he had received into his understanding of the identity of Jesus. He did not come away from the vision with perfect and invincible faith. Indeed he would not long after fall asleep again on another mountain, and from there go on to betray his Lord three times before the cock crowed. Yet Jesus was not surprised by the failure of Peter. Before it happened he told him, "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers" (see Luke 22:32). What might Jesus have been the content of the prayer of Jesus on Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration? Perhaps this prayer mentioned by Jesus was part of it. Certainly the Transfiguration represented a seed of enduring hope planted in the hearts of the three chosen disciples, a seed to which they could cling, and on which they could fall back even when they experienced their own limitations and failures.

Then from the cloud came a voice that said,

“This is my chosen Son; listen to him.”

We too are called to follow Jesus on his exodus, taking up our own crosses so that the power of his resurrection can also be manifest in us. We have great examples of others who have done so, such as Paul, inviting us to imitate the way in which they first imitated Christ, comforted by the way Christ himself was always faithful to them. We too will experience moments of darkness when things look back from a merely human point of view. Jesus does not desire that we face the darkness alone. He wants us to turn to prayer so that he can strengthen our own faith just as he did his first disciples. We are not to face the cross alone on our own strength, but rather, by relying on the grace given us in advance. We must learn to be thankful and to treasure such mountaintop experiences, while not insisting that we dwell only on the mountain. They are meant to make us strong and faithful for our own exodus. Such experiences can help us remember the high destiny of our hope and calling when we would otherwise be tempted to forget.

But our citizenship is in heaven,

and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He will change our lowly body

to conform with his glorified body

by the power that enables him also

to bring all things into subjection to himself.

If we stand fast in this faith and this hope we will be able to resist the temptation to let our minds be occupied with earthly things. We will be sufficiently rooted so as to be able to live our lives as friends rather than enemies of the cross of Christ. In faith we too can ask, "Lord, how shall I know this?" It is like the prayer, "I believe, help my unbelief" (see Mark 9:24). When asked sincerely, from faith rather than doubt, the Lord has demonstrated that he delights to answer us.

Of you my heart speaks; you my glance seeks.

Vineyard Music - Shine Jesus Shine

Songs In His Presence - Our Hearts Will Rise

12 March 2022 - love them all and lot God sort it out

Today's Readings

(Audio)

You have heard that it was said,

You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

Chesterton made the point that the "Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people". He was prescient in seeing that a lack of love for our enemies would gradually narrow the definition of whom we would consider to be neighbors until it was all but empty. Why? Because neighbors, brothers, and sisters also do wrongs to us, real or perceived. If we are only willing to love those who are doing all good and no evil to us, well, we won't even be able to love ourselves for very long. 

But I say to you, love your enemies,

and pray for those who persecute you,

We are called to a love that is more than a reciprocal response that is earned from us by love we first receive. True love is something that need not and cannot be earned, untethered from what we can get from it, a willing of the good of the other for the sake of the other. This is actually hard for our fallen minds to grasp because we have a hard to imagining anything beyond a mere quid pro quo, a mercenary or market based love rooted in a principle of equivalent exchange. We are secretly deeply afraid that anything else would leave us vulnerable and finally empty.

that you may be children of your heavenly Father,

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

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

Honestly it would probably be reckless to recommend this love to those who haven't first experienced the love of our heavenly Father, who loved us while we were yet sinners, and of Jesus, who came to die for us to reconcile us to the Father when we were still utterly preoccupied with self and under the dominion of sin. But from the love of the Triune God we have experienced that selfless love has infinite creative potential that mere reciprocity can never attain. We have in fact by made new creations by the power of this love. And now our own love can share in that power on a human scale. We can love even those whom it is dangerous and ill-advised for us to love, our enemies and those who persecute us, but only by the gift of the love that we ourselves have first received. Only rooted in God can we love selflessly and yet not come up empty, to give freely, and yet always have enough.

And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,

what is unusual about that?

Whom do we greet? Whose needs to we notice? Is it only those who provide some emotional or material benefit to us such that we feel the need to reciprocate to ensure that such benefits continue to flow? Or do we look more broadly, with eyes inspired by the Father's love, with the searching gaze of the Good Shepherd himself, with the discernment of the Holy Spirit, in order to see not only those who can be a benefit to us, but those as well whom we are uniquely positioned to bless? It is easier to love those who love us, which is why even the pagans haven't entirely neglected to do it. But we are called to more. Only by answering the call can the transformation God intends for the world become a reality.

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

We are meant to be a people defined by love, recognizable by the love we show to others. In this sense we will be seen as a people "peculiarly his own". It is only such a people that he will raise high in praise and renown and glory above all other nations, precisely as a light to them and as a beacon of hope.

and you will be a people sacred to the LORD, your God,

as he promised.

David Crowder Band - How He Loves

11 March 2022 - be angry, but do not sin

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I tell you,

unless your righteousness surpasses that

of the scribes and Pharisees,

you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.

The Pharisees were more concerned about the appearance of righteousness than the substance. They were fastidious in keeping the ceremonial law but their hearts remained more or less untouched. They still experienced forces like pride and greed as primary motivations and merely covered over these with external obedience. They exploited what they perceived to be loopholes in the law to do what they wanted to do anyway. They hoped to hide the true depravity of their hearts with all the varied minutia of their religious rituals. This was in fact tragic. The law was meant to be a powerful force of transformation. But when approached merely from a superficial point of view, concerned with the details, but not with the underlying principles, it did nothing to liberate them from domination by sin. Worse, it made them believe themselves to be righteous, to believe that they had no further work that needed to be done.

The law was good and remains good when a person has faith. Christians, no less than Pharisees, face the temptation to focus on externals while neglecting the need for inner transformation. We too look for loopholes, for the least amount we can do to still get a passing grade. We too allow ourselves to cherish and entertain impure motives while showing ourselves to the world as a picture of devotion and purity.

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,

You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother

will be liable to judgment,

and whoever says to his brother, Raqa,

will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,

and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

The initial stirrings of an emotion like anger are in fact beyond our control, and they are therefore not blameworthy. But how we respond to those initial stirrings is in fact a ball in our court. It is not enough to avoid violence toward one who has angered us. We convince ourselves that we don't have a serious problem with sin by thinking things like, 'At least I never killed anyone.' But we are nevertheless willing to cherish and meditate on negative thoughts about others. We even give voice to those thoughts in gossip and slander. By the things that we do choose to actively will we shape habits that make us more likely to be angry the next time. Those habits in turn will give more force to that anger and make it harder to restrain our acting on it.

The first step of responding to the initial stirrings of an impulse to an unjust anger is to control the way we speak about it. Rather than a story of judgment against the other we can tell ourselves the best story we can imagine to justify them, remembering that they are God's beloved son or daughter. In addition to speech we can take positive action in response to a perceived wrong. We can pray for our persecutors, just as Jesus commanded. We can actively initiate reconciliation and work toward the restoration of relationships even if part of us is convinced that the fault is not our own and that it is therefore not our problem.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,

and there recall that your brother

has anything against you,

leave your gift there at the altar,

go first and be reconciled with your brother,

and then come and offer your gift.

Hearts that cherish grudges, that entertain judgments about others, or that gossip about others and slander them, even if perhaps smiling at them when they are present, are still hearts in need of conversion. In heaven we will not be sitting and stewing over past wrongs done to us. And this will be true more because of what happens in us than in others. In order to be prepared to enjoy the life of the blessed we must learn to allow God's grace to work an inner transformation in us here and now, to give us more fully the new hearts he has promised.

Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.

Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,

and the judge will hand you over to the guard,

and you will be thrown into prison.

Amen, I say to you,

you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

It may be that we have not only fooled others with our external ritual piety but even ourselves. We may not realize the degree to which we allow ourselves to cherish and cling to motives that are not fit for citizens of the Kingdom or the way we have allowed such motives to dominate our thinking and infect our speech. If so, we will always feel like a house divided even if our external actions still appear to conform to the commandments. But the Lord is not asking us to receive new hearts because it is hard or because he is mad at us. It is rather that it is so much better to have such hearts, so much more free, and he wants that blessing for us.

Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked?

says the Lord GOD.

Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way

that he may live?

Don Moen - Jesus, We Enthrone You