Sunday, January 31st, 2010
Luke 4: 21-30
21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ 23He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ 24And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
One of my favorite words of all time is “gracious” and one of my favorite images of Jesus is one of a gracious man and a gracious God. In this Gospel, everyone was ‘amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth’. One would wonder what kinds of words the people were used to hearing. Condemnation? Judgment? Words that belittled them? Words that evoked fear, anxiety and guilt? Because they weren’t used to thinking of God as a gracious and loving God, Jesus’ gracious words shocked them and made them uncomfortable. And uncomfortable people become defensive and vindictive. How sad, to be uncomfortable with gracious love.
There are two aspects to this gospel I want to look at. The first is the human inclination to be suspicious of and uncomfortable with the idea of a gracious God and with the fact that God can sometimes choose certain people whom we would never choose to be his ‘Christophers’ (Christ-bearers). The Jews in this reading had known Jesus from birth and were feeling threatened by rumors of Jesus’ miracles in other towns so they went on the attack by reminding Jesus of his low social status. Jesus knew what was in their minds and what they were whispering to each other. They were thinking that if he was so great and was performing miracles elsewhere, why didn’t he cure his own poverty and social standing. Remember, Jews believed that wealth indicated God’s favor.
Jesus then reminded them of how the prophets Elijah and Elisha, at two different times in Jewish history, were only able to perform miracles for foreigners, even though there were Israelites who were also suffering. This was a pointed statement about the people’s lack of openness to receive God’s grace and favor. Even if Jesus did perform some miracles for them, he knew they wouldn’t be changed by the miracles. They were too hung up on their own perceptions, too busy feeling threatened and too proud – or scared - to accept the profound simplicity of grace and love. We, too, need to constantly revisit our faith to see if we are too proud or too scared to accept that our God is a gracious and loving God.
The second aspect of this Gospel has to do with graciousness as well - our own graciousness. If we accept that each one of us has been anointed and sent, then no matter what our life situation is at the moment, we all need to ponder the power of graciousness and the call to be a gracious people like Jesus was gracious and like Mary was Full of Grace. We need to ask what it means to be Full of Grace and what it means to speak gracious words and to act in a gracious manner.
To me, a gracious woman is someone who is deeply aware of other people, but not because she is so lacking in self esteem or self confidence that she is always scrambling to please others in order to make them think well of her or so she won’t be blamed if something goes wrong. To me, a truly gracious woman is a woman who knows so well her own value and how much she is loved that she is able to stop thinking of her own needs and agendas and is able to completely appreciate the people she encounters. She does not require recognition from others to tell her how valuable she is so she is able to fully value others. She is a listener. She builds others up. She makes others the center of her attention.
Again, I want to emphasize that graciousness is not just a kind of outward action, though it encompasses that. It is action built on an inner conviction of being loved, on believing in one’s priesthood, and on knowing one has been called, anointed and sent. I’m writing for women so I used the words ‘woman’ and ‘she/her’ but the very same definition applies to a man. All of us at some point in our lives have run into someone, man or woman, who is truly gracious. They make an impression. They leave us wanting to be in their presence more. Somehow, they exude a peace and a sureness we would love to have in our lives.
I will never forget a young woman (student) who occasionally served as a Eucharistic minister at the student Mass when we were chaplains in Victoria. I was always struck by her stance as she stood up on the altar. Her whole being quietly proclaimed, “I belong in this place,” but the way she stood, the way she held her hands and the way she followed the proceedings were completely unself-conscious. The only way I could describe it at the time was graciousness. She did not seem to be in any way nervous about her role or concerned about people looking at her but what really came across was that she had a subconscious understanding of the authority of grace and a desire to share the body and blood of Christ with her brothers and sisters. I never told her what I saw because I didn’t want to make her self conscious and perhaps lose that natural inner grace. The grace I saw always reminded me of Jesus.
Jesus was a gracious man and Mary was a gracious woman. Both Jesus and Mary knew who they were and who they were called to be. They were convinced of the Father’s love for them and convinced that the Father’s love was for all. They were far less anxious about their own needs than about the needs of those around them. This made them extremely attractive people. It made them fulfilling people to be around.
In the gospel, the Jews were demanding miracles and, as I mentioned before, Jesus knew that miracles would not make a difference to them. Why? Because they could not even respond to his graciousness – they certainly weren’t going to respond to miracles. Being connected to a gracious God means being in relationship with him not just his power and it is this gracious relationship that changes us, not miracles.
Miracles are wonderful things and I love it when the Lord displays his power. Miracles are like precious reminders of his presence and love. But they are not what fill you up or heal you inside. The only thing that will fill you and heal you is looking in his eyes, seeing boundless grace and love (Grace Without Borders?) and completely accepting that it’s meant for you, as you are where you stand. That’s what grace is. A truly gracious person does not require another person to shape up or change radically in order to become worthy of the gracious person’s attention, approval and love. Grace is unconditional. Grace is the display of love’s beauty.
It seems very appropriate to end with Paul’s blessing from 2 Corinthians 13:14.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.
Amen!
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Real Truth About You
January 24th, 2010
Luke 4: 14-21 (last part of Sunday's Gospel)
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
It’s sometimes easy to just skim over the Gospel readings because they are so familiar. Like this one. You might have read it over and perhaps had a few fleeting thoughts about how much courage it took for Jesus to read this scripture in the synagogue and then tell those listening that he was the one who was the fulfillment of it. Perhaps you briefly pondered on how dangerous it was for him to make such a statement because he was openly inviting judgment. He was making himself vulnerable to the people, people who had known him all his life, and he was giving them the opportunity to either condemn him for being incredibly arrogant or accept him completely as one who is telling the truth.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but each time you have read this scripture you, too, have been called to make a judgment as to whether Jesus was arrogantly deluded or if he was revealing the Truth. You either rejected what he was saying or you accepted it. Most likely, right now you are saying, “Of course I accepted it.” Good. Now, I want you to go back to the above scripture and read verses 18 and 19 again (in italics) only this time I want you to imagine that instead of Jesus reading the scroll, you are. Every time the word “me” occurs, it means you personally.
Do you accept that or do you reject it? If you see yourself in that scene and you are the one claiming an anointing, would you feel you are being arrogant and delusional – or would you be stating the truth? The truth was that Jesus definitely had been anointed by God to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives etc. If, for the sake of appearing humble, he had proclaimed anything less than what he did or if he had said anything that would indicate that he didn’t feel should assume that this was a role meant for him he would have been practicing false humility. Christ’s claim to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s scripture passage was true humility: full acceptance of who he truly was and full acceptance of what he had been anointed to do. No more, no less. He was doing what his Father required of him: walking humbly with his God. (Micah 6:8)
There is an inclination in all of us to gloss over our relationship to certain aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry just because he was the Son of God. We think that everything he did and said was a lot easier for him than it would be for us just because he was God incarnate. We feel he was filled with all these graces and gifts that we don’t have access to so we can’t hope to truly emulate his mission and ministry.
Scripture says differently. In John 14:12 Jesus said, “I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.” The Mass, too, acknowledges that we have access to all the same graces Jesus had access to: “Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven. Then as we receive from this altar the sacred body and blood of your Son, may we be filled with every grace and blessing.” Or how about: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
We also know scripture says that Jesus experienced all the temptations that we do. He would definitely have been faced with the temptation to question his own importance, his relationship to the Father and what he felt the Father was calling him to be and do. He would have been tempted to practice false humility. “Who do I think I am? I’m nothing special. I’m just a carpenter from a poor village. My mother thinks I’m special but all mothers think their sons are special. But I keep having these inner yearnings toward people around me. I feel such love for everyone I meet and I ache to be able to lift up their hearts and give them hope and to me every one of them is so amazingly precious. But I can’t just claim the authority to go around trying to touch people’s hearts or tell them about how wonderful the Father is. I’m just plain old Jesus from Nazareth and they know it. They would think I’m trying to be someone I’m not.”
Jesus had to deal with this temptation. He had probably heard and read that scripture from Isaiah many times and perhaps each time he heard it, a huge desire stirred within him, each time a little stronger than the time before. Eventually he had to pay attention, go to the Father and ask, “Does this mean me?” He had to decide if he was going to believe it and accept it and if he did decide to believe it, what then?
Through baptism and confirmation, you, too, have been anointed. The Holy Spirit has been sent to stir and move you just as he came to Jesus to stir and move him. Ignoring or downplaying this aspect of your spiritual life might feel to you like you are being humble. There is a huge temptation in the spiritual life to pay more attention to one’s sinfulness than to the freedom and calling we have received through Christ’s sacrifice. There is a mistaken sense that if we pay a lot of attention to how bad we are, the Lord will be pleased because we aren’t being proud and arrogant about ourselves.
False humility.
It is absolutely true that we are broken people, that we make mistakes, sometimes awful ones, and that we often have need of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation but if we ignore the stirring of God’s Spirit within us and are too afraid to acknowledge that each one of us is beloved of the Father, that we have been called to the Royal Priesthood, that we have been clothed in Christ and that we are filled with the same dignity and authority of Christ, then we are being tempted to define our worth through false humility. We all need to continually ponder upon three questions:
1. Who am I?
2. What was I anointed to do and be?
3.Do I really accept and believe this? (Am I prepared to practice true humility?)
Every once in a while, a spiritual hymn or song comes along that just seems to hit everyone right in the heart. It instantly becomes everyone’s favorite song for a time and whenever the hymn is announced you can feel the entire congregation perk up. One hymn like that came along several years ago and to me it was very significant that this song seemed to touch everyone in a very deep place. It was, “Here I Am, Lord”.
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord,
If you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
Even if you got heartily sick of this song because it was sung so often, go back to the words. Contemplate the message and the meaning and try to accept that God really is calling you in the night, longing for you to recognize his voice. Pray for the grace to be able to accept that it is definitely you he is calling and that you, truthfully and in all humility, are allowed to say,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me. He has sent me...”
Luke 4: 14-21 (last part of Sunday's Gospel)
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
It’s sometimes easy to just skim over the Gospel readings because they are so familiar. Like this one. You might have read it over and perhaps had a few fleeting thoughts about how much courage it took for Jesus to read this scripture in the synagogue and then tell those listening that he was the one who was the fulfillment of it. Perhaps you briefly pondered on how dangerous it was for him to make such a statement because he was openly inviting judgment. He was making himself vulnerable to the people, people who had known him all his life, and he was giving them the opportunity to either condemn him for being incredibly arrogant or accept him completely as one who is telling the truth.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but each time you have read this scripture you, too, have been called to make a judgment as to whether Jesus was arrogantly deluded or if he was revealing the Truth. You either rejected what he was saying or you accepted it. Most likely, right now you are saying, “Of course I accepted it.” Good. Now, I want you to go back to the above scripture and read verses 18 and 19 again (in italics) only this time I want you to imagine that instead of Jesus reading the scroll, you are. Every time the word “me” occurs, it means you personally.
Do you accept that or do you reject it? If you see yourself in that scene and you are the one claiming an anointing, would you feel you are being arrogant and delusional – or would you be stating the truth? The truth was that Jesus definitely had been anointed by God to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives etc. If, for the sake of appearing humble, he had proclaimed anything less than what he did or if he had said anything that would indicate that he didn’t feel should assume that this was a role meant for him he would have been practicing false humility. Christ’s claim to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s scripture passage was true humility: full acceptance of who he truly was and full acceptance of what he had been anointed to do. No more, no less. He was doing what his Father required of him: walking humbly with his God. (Micah 6:8)
There is an inclination in all of us to gloss over our relationship to certain aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry just because he was the Son of God. We think that everything he did and said was a lot easier for him than it would be for us just because he was God incarnate. We feel he was filled with all these graces and gifts that we don’t have access to so we can’t hope to truly emulate his mission and ministry.
Scripture says differently. In John 14:12 Jesus said, “I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself; he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.” The Mass, too, acknowledges that we have access to all the same graces Jesus had access to: “Almighty God, we pray that your angel may take this sacrifice to your altar in heaven. Then as we receive from this altar the sacred body and blood of your Son, may we be filled with every grace and blessing.” Or how about: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
We also know scripture says that Jesus experienced all the temptations that we do. He would definitely have been faced with the temptation to question his own importance, his relationship to the Father and what he felt the Father was calling him to be and do. He would have been tempted to practice false humility. “Who do I think I am? I’m nothing special. I’m just a carpenter from a poor village. My mother thinks I’m special but all mothers think their sons are special. But I keep having these inner yearnings toward people around me. I feel such love for everyone I meet and I ache to be able to lift up their hearts and give them hope and to me every one of them is so amazingly precious. But I can’t just claim the authority to go around trying to touch people’s hearts or tell them about how wonderful the Father is. I’m just plain old Jesus from Nazareth and they know it. They would think I’m trying to be someone I’m not.”
Jesus had to deal with this temptation. He had probably heard and read that scripture from Isaiah many times and perhaps each time he heard it, a huge desire stirred within him, each time a little stronger than the time before. Eventually he had to pay attention, go to the Father and ask, “Does this mean me?” He had to decide if he was going to believe it and accept it and if he did decide to believe it, what then?
Through baptism and confirmation, you, too, have been anointed. The Holy Spirit has been sent to stir and move you just as he came to Jesus to stir and move him. Ignoring or downplaying this aspect of your spiritual life might feel to you like you are being humble. There is a huge temptation in the spiritual life to pay more attention to one’s sinfulness than to the freedom and calling we have received through Christ’s sacrifice. There is a mistaken sense that if we pay a lot of attention to how bad we are, the Lord will be pleased because we aren’t being proud and arrogant about ourselves.
False humility.
It is absolutely true that we are broken people, that we make mistakes, sometimes awful ones, and that we often have need of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation but if we ignore the stirring of God’s Spirit within us and are too afraid to acknowledge that each one of us is beloved of the Father, that we have been called to the Royal Priesthood, that we have been clothed in Christ and that we are filled with the same dignity and authority of Christ, then we are being tempted to define our worth through false humility. We all need to continually ponder upon three questions:
1. Who am I?
2. What was I anointed to do and be?
3.Do I really accept and believe this? (Am I prepared to practice true humility?)
Every once in a while, a spiritual hymn or song comes along that just seems to hit everyone right in the heart. It instantly becomes everyone’s favorite song for a time and whenever the hymn is announced you can feel the entire congregation perk up. One hymn like that came along several years ago and to me it was very significant that this song seemed to touch everyone in a very deep place. It was, “Here I Am, Lord”.
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord,
If you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
Even if you got heartily sick of this song because it was sung so often, go back to the words. Contemplate the message and the meaning and try to accept that God really is calling you in the night, longing for you to recognize his voice. Pray for the grace to be able to accept that it is definitely you he is calling and that you, truthfully and in all humility, are allowed to say,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me. He has sent me...”
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Plan
John 2: 1-12
2On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ 4And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ 5His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ 6Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So, they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days.
For many years this gospel story was a bit jarring to me. I found it so hard to reconcile how I had been taught to understand Jesus’ role as the Son of God walking tightly with God’s plan of salvation with how he is portrayed in this story. He indicates that his hour had not yet come to reveal himself but then, when his mother ignores his protest, expects him to act and doesn’t even discuss the issue with him, he disregards his stated time line and performs a beautifully loving miracle. The whole story, in my mind, just didn’t fit with the idea of a God who has a schedule with every second planned and orchestrated from A to Z. Jesus, of all people, should have been much more aware of the importance of staying with the program.
There were so many times when I’ve been in a situation where I was trying to discern God’s plan for my life. I’d experience intense frustration because if I knew what his will was I would absolutely do it but he wasn’t giving me any clues at all. It felt like I was out there hanging in the wind and sometimes I felt that I must be spiritually dense - otherwise I would have known what he wanted me to do.
We do feel a kind of security believing that God has a detailed moment by moment plan for our lives but we wonder about and agonize over how much power we have to derail his plans by making a wrong choice. When Jesus said, “Oh, what the heck. I might as well change their water into wine and make my mother happy,” did he knock God’s plan and schedule completely out of whack? When we are faced with a few different options for our lives and we have tried to make sure each option is moral, just and true to our faith etc. but we’re not getting any leads as to which path we should travel, can we really make a choice that totally screws up The Plan? This is a key question that everyone struggles with. We really don’t want to make a wrong decision. Everybody probably has this mental image of God sitting in heaven slapping his forehead and going, “Oh shoot! She guessed wrong. BZZZZZZ! Game over!”
Perhaps God doesn’t have an A to Z plan. Maybe he just has destination points and there are many ways we can arrive at those destinations without in any way upsetting The Plan. We need to stop and ask ourselves what God wants for each of us. He wants us to experience forgiveness and he wants us to have life and have it abundantly (John 10). He wants us to love him and be loved by him and to share that love with everyone we encounter. He wants us to be willing to change, grow, take risks and learn who we really are. I think the reason he doesn’t immediately show us The Plan every time we try to discern a direction is because we humans are too prone to rigidity. We can get so carried away with plans and directions that we forget about living in the moment and responding to him in the fullness of each moment. When we become rigid, we become scared of taking risks. And when we really think about it, walking with the Lord of the Universe is a huge risk. We might find ourselves on an unfamiliar and maybe uncharted course. We might be challenged to grow. We might be faced with things we’d rather not face. We might feel lost. Or we might actually have an Adventure.
Last year my husband and I got a GPS (Global Positioning System). What an awesome tool it is. You just enter in an address and a voice tells you exactly what direction to head, which roads to take, what turns are coming up and then when it’s time to turn it tells you. Usually we have no problem following the verbal directions but occasionally we get confused such as when there is more than one exit or there’s a lot of traffic or we were mentally drifting and the turn came before we expected it and we make a completely wrong turn. Before we had GPS this would have been a very tense situation because we would be on a wrong road heading in the wrong direction with no idea how to get back to where we should be. But our GPS just says, “Recalculating.” And then it immediately guides us along a route that gets us back to where we should be.
GPS makes the journey much more enjoyable for us. We aren’t afraid of becoming lost. We are no longer afraid of those wrong turns and missed exits. We relax. We see more. We can make a spontaneous decision to take an interesting road because we know the GPS will always get us back on track.
In the spiritual life, we also have GPS. God’s Positioning System. If you make an unexpected turn, God says, “Recalculating. Enjoy the detour. Learn something. There’s some good stuff on this road too. Go ahead and change the water to wine. It’s a merciful and loving thing to do and you’ll learn more about your gifts and the powers I have anointed you with. Good call. I love you!” Our response to our Spiritual GPS is to trust that God actually has the power to get you to where you need to go and that he will do it in his own good time. Knowing we have a Spiritual GPS allows us the freedom to focus on what the Lord is really asking of us. Micah 6:8 puts it very well:
He has showed you, O people, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Jesus had a destination. The cross. But everyday Jesus made choices as to what road he would walk down, what group he would teach, what wedding he would attend, what town he would stay in for a few days and with whom. Those little details weren’t the important parts of Jesus ministry. The important and dynamic life changing parts were how he acted with justice with each person he met, how deeply he loved mercy and poured it out on all the people he encountered and how he was so humble that he walked moment by moment with his Father, not demanding a preview of the whole detailed plan but watching and listening in each moment to what his Father was asking of him, fully trusting that the Father would lead him to where he needed to be when he needed to be there and would provide the power and grace necessary for each moment.
"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)
It would seem that after he spoke to his mother at the wedding in Cana, what Jesus saw the Father doing was turning water into wedding wine, an act that was not only an act of love and mercy but also one that became symbolic of so many aspects of his saving act and the Father’s love. He started to say no. He started to say it wasn’t in “The Plan”. He could have kept rigidly to the schedule, as he understood it.
But apparently, in the Father’s eyes, Love trumps Plan.
2On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ 4And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ 5His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ 6Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So, they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days.
For many years this gospel story was a bit jarring to me. I found it so hard to reconcile how I had been taught to understand Jesus’ role as the Son of God walking tightly with God’s plan of salvation with how he is portrayed in this story. He indicates that his hour had not yet come to reveal himself but then, when his mother ignores his protest, expects him to act and doesn’t even discuss the issue with him, he disregards his stated time line and performs a beautifully loving miracle. The whole story, in my mind, just didn’t fit with the idea of a God who has a schedule with every second planned and orchestrated from A to Z. Jesus, of all people, should have been much more aware of the importance of staying with the program.
There were so many times when I’ve been in a situation where I was trying to discern God’s plan for my life. I’d experience intense frustration because if I knew what his will was I would absolutely do it but he wasn’t giving me any clues at all. It felt like I was out there hanging in the wind and sometimes I felt that I must be spiritually dense - otherwise I would have known what he wanted me to do.
We do feel a kind of security believing that God has a detailed moment by moment plan for our lives but we wonder about and agonize over how much power we have to derail his plans by making a wrong choice. When Jesus said, “Oh, what the heck. I might as well change their water into wine and make my mother happy,” did he knock God’s plan and schedule completely out of whack? When we are faced with a few different options for our lives and we have tried to make sure each option is moral, just and true to our faith etc. but we’re not getting any leads as to which path we should travel, can we really make a choice that totally screws up The Plan? This is a key question that everyone struggles with. We really don’t want to make a wrong decision. Everybody probably has this mental image of God sitting in heaven slapping his forehead and going, “Oh shoot! She guessed wrong. BZZZZZZ! Game over!”
Perhaps God doesn’t have an A to Z plan. Maybe he just has destination points and there are many ways we can arrive at those destinations without in any way upsetting The Plan. We need to stop and ask ourselves what God wants for each of us. He wants us to experience forgiveness and he wants us to have life and have it abundantly (John 10). He wants us to love him and be loved by him and to share that love with everyone we encounter. He wants us to be willing to change, grow, take risks and learn who we really are. I think the reason he doesn’t immediately show us The Plan every time we try to discern a direction is because we humans are too prone to rigidity. We can get so carried away with plans and directions that we forget about living in the moment and responding to him in the fullness of each moment. When we become rigid, we become scared of taking risks. And when we really think about it, walking with the Lord of the Universe is a huge risk. We might find ourselves on an unfamiliar and maybe uncharted course. We might be challenged to grow. We might be faced with things we’d rather not face. We might feel lost. Or we might actually have an Adventure.
Last year my husband and I got a GPS (Global Positioning System). What an awesome tool it is. You just enter in an address and a voice tells you exactly what direction to head, which roads to take, what turns are coming up and then when it’s time to turn it tells you. Usually we have no problem following the verbal directions but occasionally we get confused such as when there is more than one exit or there’s a lot of traffic or we were mentally drifting and the turn came before we expected it and we make a completely wrong turn. Before we had GPS this would have been a very tense situation because we would be on a wrong road heading in the wrong direction with no idea how to get back to where we should be. But our GPS just says, “Recalculating.” And then it immediately guides us along a route that gets us back to where we should be.
GPS makes the journey much more enjoyable for us. We aren’t afraid of becoming lost. We are no longer afraid of those wrong turns and missed exits. We relax. We see more. We can make a spontaneous decision to take an interesting road because we know the GPS will always get us back on track.
In the spiritual life, we also have GPS. God’s Positioning System. If you make an unexpected turn, God says, “Recalculating. Enjoy the detour. Learn something. There’s some good stuff on this road too. Go ahead and change the water to wine. It’s a merciful and loving thing to do and you’ll learn more about your gifts and the powers I have anointed you with. Good call. I love you!” Our response to our Spiritual GPS is to trust that God actually has the power to get you to where you need to go and that he will do it in his own good time. Knowing we have a Spiritual GPS allows us the freedom to focus on what the Lord is really asking of us. Micah 6:8 puts it very well:
He has showed you, O people, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Jesus had a destination. The cross. But everyday Jesus made choices as to what road he would walk down, what group he would teach, what wedding he would attend, what town he would stay in for a few days and with whom. Those little details weren’t the important parts of Jesus ministry. The important and dynamic life changing parts were how he acted with justice with each person he met, how deeply he loved mercy and poured it out on all the people he encountered and how he was so humble that he walked moment by moment with his Father, not demanding a preview of the whole detailed plan but watching and listening in each moment to what his Father was asking of him, fully trusting that the Father would lead him to where he needed to be when he needed to be there and would provide the power and grace necessary for each moment.
"I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)
It would seem that after he spoke to his mother at the wedding in Cana, what Jesus saw the Father doing was turning water into wedding wine, an act that was not only an act of love and mercy but also one that became symbolic of so many aspects of his saving act and the Father’s love. He started to say no. He started to say it wasn’t in “The Plan”. He could have kept rigidly to the schedule, as he understood it.
But apparently, in the Father’s eyes, Love trumps Plan.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Please Show Your I.D.
January 10th, 2010
Excerpt from the Gospel, Luke 3: 21-22
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Excerpt from the second reading, Titus 3: 4-7
But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Here’s a good question to start the New Year:
Who are you?
Can you answer this question without referring to any other person in your life or to any of your life circumstances? Can you say who you are without alluding to your spouse, your children, your job, your role(s) in the church or community or any of your gifts, skills, achievements or failures?
Tough question, huh? Yet, it is the single most important question in the spiritual life and the one question most people have huge difficulty answering. We learn to measure and identify ourselves according to the expectations of the world, our families, the church community, our employers and our peers. We learn to judge ourselves according to how well we live up to or fail to live up to all these subtle but strong expectations and most people spend their lives grappling constantly with the expectations of others, resenting them, fearing them and feeling trapped or condemned by them. Every woman I speak with is struggling with who she really is, whether she knows that’s the essential question or not. Every woman yearns for the answer.
You will have noticed that the two excerpts I chose from the readings this week have to do with baptism – Jesus’ and ours. In order to begin to grasp the answer to the question of who you really are, it is important to understand that your baptism and Jesus’ baptism are deeply connected. No … 'connected' is the wrong word. It’s more like your baptism is completely enfolded in the power of Christ’s baptism the way a baby is enfolded in the womb of the mother. All the power inherent in your baptism is drawn from the heaven and earth-shaking instant when Jesus went down into the waters and then burst forth out of them, anointed to begin the working out of all he was called to. In this moment, he heard something the rest of us long and ache to hear. He heard the Father speak his Name: “You are ‘My Son, the Beloved’.”
The Father wasn’t just saying something nice and caring to Jesus nor was he particularly concerned that others hear the Naming and understand it. This was something crucial between Jesus and His Father; it was the foundational basis of EVERYTHING Jesus said and did from that moment on. After his baptism, Jesus went into the desert where there were no people, no family, no jobs, no vocations and no roles to play – in other words, none of the things we all normally depend on to define us – and when Satan turned up to tempt Jesus, Satan got nowhere because Jesus knew who he was. He was God’s Beloved. He didn’t need anything else to build up his inner sense of himself; he didn’t need the approval, acceptance or admiration of other people and he especially did not need Satan’s offerings of power and status. In knowing he was the Father’s Beloved, he had everything he needed. He lacked nothing and he knew it.
So, what does all this have to do with us and our own baptisms? You might say, “Of course the Father called Jesus his Beloved Son because Jesus was truly his only begotten son, but how does that define me? How does that tell me who I really am?”
Does the following sound familiar?
Father, God of mercy, through these waters of baptism you have filled us with new life as your very own children.
_(Name)_, you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.
Dearly beloved, this child has been reborn in baptism. He (she) is now called the child of God, for so indeed he (she) is.
That’s from the Catholic Rite of Baptism. From the waters of baptism you rose up in Christ, clothed in him – completely enfolded in him. When you were baptized, you rose up dignified and beautiful. When you were baptized God, the father, looked on you and beheld the spitting image of his firstborn son, Jesus. When you were baptized, God the Father looked at you and said, “You are my Daughter, the Beloved.”
Yeah…but that was then. What about now? You’re not an innocent little baby anymore. You’ve muddied your boots quite a bit since you were baptized, right? That little bundle of brand new creation, all washed and lovely, has become a bit moth eaten around the edges with lots of big and little pockmarks of sin and failure and inadequacy. Right? God doesn’t love sin and sometimes you feel like just one big bundle of sin. Right?
My two grandsons, cousins, came to visit this Christmas. Their ages are 2 and 21 months. Lovely kids. Excellent kids, actually, but just like anyone else, adults included, they can be at the mercy of over tiredness, over stimulation, frustration over their own inability to accomplish what they want to accomplish and huge disappointment when their desires don’t quite mesh with parental desires. During the visit, the poor parents were often sleep deprived and worn out while dealing with their toddlers’ occasional short tempers, inappropriate behavior, mistakes in judgment or minor meltdowns but never once did I witness anything in those parents that indicated that they did not love their child completely and unconditionally. In fact, many times I saw a love exchange between parent and child that was sheer joy on both their parts – often within seconds of the child having been acting in a way that was unacceptable to the parent. The child would turn to the parent needing comfort or, forgetting the conflict that had just occurred, would simply offer the parent a wonderful smile or a piece of his half chewed apple or just ask the parent to play along at “Where can James be? Where can Jude be? ...There you are!!” They were never denied the right to participate gleefully in their parents’ love. Ever. Nor did any of those parents define their child by the child’s lapses into inappropriate behavior.
Not once did a parent refuse to engage in a loving exchange with the child even if the child had just been creating havoc in their lives. Both of the boys live their lives full of total confidence that they are beloved children and both of them know that their parents are actually waiting for those moments of loving relationship.
Why would God, our Father, be any different? “If you then, imperfect as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11) The Father is waiting every moment of the day to have you turn to him to see his love and delight and to hear him say, “You are my Beloved Daughter.”
Once you hear that and once you finally believe it so that you laugh with joy because of it, you will be on the path to knowing exactly who you are. You will begin to know that God is your definition. When you see the delight and love in his eyes, it will be the only definition you will need or want. He is where you will find all your value, worth and identity.
Did you know that the word ‘identity’ comes from the same root as ‘identical’? The reason you will never really find your identity in people, things and roles in this world is because nothing in this world can ever completely fit the real you. Everything we normally seek approval from is just a poor fitting shadow of the real thing. Through baptism, you were given the only garment that will ever fit you perfectly; you were clothed in Christ and made identical to Jesus. He is your identity and your Name. He is the reason the Father beholds you and cries out, “I love you SO MUCH.”
It’s good year to find out who you are.
Excerpt from the Gospel, Luke 3: 21-22
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Excerpt from the second reading, Titus 3: 4-7
But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Here’s a good question to start the New Year:
Who are you?
Can you answer this question without referring to any other person in your life or to any of your life circumstances? Can you say who you are without alluding to your spouse, your children, your job, your role(s) in the church or community or any of your gifts, skills, achievements or failures?
Tough question, huh? Yet, it is the single most important question in the spiritual life and the one question most people have huge difficulty answering. We learn to measure and identify ourselves according to the expectations of the world, our families, the church community, our employers and our peers. We learn to judge ourselves according to how well we live up to or fail to live up to all these subtle but strong expectations and most people spend their lives grappling constantly with the expectations of others, resenting them, fearing them and feeling trapped or condemned by them. Every woman I speak with is struggling with who she really is, whether she knows that’s the essential question or not. Every woman yearns for the answer.
You will have noticed that the two excerpts I chose from the readings this week have to do with baptism – Jesus’ and ours. In order to begin to grasp the answer to the question of who you really are, it is important to understand that your baptism and Jesus’ baptism are deeply connected. No … 'connected' is the wrong word. It’s more like your baptism is completely enfolded in the power of Christ’s baptism the way a baby is enfolded in the womb of the mother. All the power inherent in your baptism is drawn from the heaven and earth-shaking instant when Jesus went down into the waters and then burst forth out of them, anointed to begin the working out of all he was called to. In this moment, he heard something the rest of us long and ache to hear. He heard the Father speak his Name: “You are ‘My Son, the Beloved’.”
The Father wasn’t just saying something nice and caring to Jesus nor was he particularly concerned that others hear the Naming and understand it. This was something crucial between Jesus and His Father; it was the foundational basis of EVERYTHING Jesus said and did from that moment on. After his baptism, Jesus went into the desert where there were no people, no family, no jobs, no vocations and no roles to play – in other words, none of the things we all normally depend on to define us – and when Satan turned up to tempt Jesus, Satan got nowhere because Jesus knew who he was. He was God’s Beloved. He didn’t need anything else to build up his inner sense of himself; he didn’t need the approval, acceptance or admiration of other people and he especially did not need Satan’s offerings of power and status. In knowing he was the Father’s Beloved, he had everything he needed. He lacked nothing and he knew it.
So, what does all this have to do with us and our own baptisms? You might say, “Of course the Father called Jesus his Beloved Son because Jesus was truly his only begotten son, but how does that define me? How does that tell me who I really am?”
Does the following sound familiar?
Father, God of mercy, through these waters of baptism you have filled us with new life as your very own children.
_(Name)_, you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.
Dearly beloved, this child has been reborn in baptism. He (she) is now called the child of God, for so indeed he (she) is.
That’s from the Catholic Rite of Baptism. From the waters of baptism you rose up in Christ, clothed in him – completely enfolded in him. When you were baptized, you rose up dignified and beautiful. When you were baptized God, the father, looked on you and beheld the spitting image of his firstborn son, Jesus. When you were baptized, God the Father looked at you and said, “You are my Daughter, the Beloved.”
Yeah…but that was then. What about now? You’re not an innocent little baby anymore. You’ve muddied your boots quite a bit since you were baptized, right? That little bundle of brand new creation, all washed and lovely, has become a bit moth eaten around the edges with lots of big and little pockmarks of sin and failure and inadequacy. Right? God doesn’t love sin and sometimes you feel like just one big bundle of sin. Right?
My two grandsons, cousins, came to visit this Christmas. Their ages are 2 and 21 months. Lovely kids. Excellent kids, actually, but just like anyone else, adults included, they can be at the mercy of over tiredness, over stimulation, frustration over their own inability to accomplish what they want to accomplish and huge disappointment when their desires don’t quite mesh with parental desires. During the visit, the poor parents were often sleep deprived and worn out while dealing with their toddlers’ occasional short tempers, inappropriate behavior, mistakes in judgment or minor meltdowns but never once did I witness anything in those parents that indicated that they did not love their child completely and unconditionally. In fact, many times I saw a love exchange between parent and child that was sheer joy on both their parts – often within seconds of the child having been acting in a way that was unacceptable to the parent. The child would turn to the parent needing comfort or, forgetting the conflict that had just occurred, would simply offer the parent a wonderful smile or a piece of his half chewed apple or just ask the parent to play along at “Where can James be? Where can Jude be? ...There you are!!” They were never denied the right to participate gleefully in their parents’ love. Ever. Nor did any of those parents define their child by the child’s lapses into inappropriate behavior.
Not once did a parent refuse to engage in a loving exchange with the child even if the child had just been creating havoc in their lives. Both of the boys live their lives full of total confidence that they are beloved children and both of them know that their parents are actually waiting for those moments of loving relationship.
Why would God, our Father, be any different? “If you then, imperfect as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:11) The Father is waiting every moment of the day to have you turn to him to see his love and delight and to hear him say, “You are my Beloved Daughter.”
Once you hear that and once you finally believe it so that you laugh with joy because of it, you will be on the path to knowing exactly who you are. You will begin to know that God is your definition. When you see the delight and love in his eyes, it will be the only definition you will need or want. He is where you will find all your value, worth and identity.
Did you know that the word ‘identity’ comes from the same root as ‘identical’? The reason you will never really find your identity in people, things and roles in this world is because nothing in this world can ever completely fit the real you. Everything we normally seek approval from is just a poor fitting shadow of the real thing. Through baptism, you were given the only garment that will ever fit you perfectly; you were clothed in Christ and made identical to Jesus. He is your identity and your Name. He is the reason the Father beholds you and cries out, “I love you SO MUCH.”
It’s good year to find out who you are.
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