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Dave
Who are we
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Fourth Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031213.cfm
John 5:15-16
The man told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews began to persecute him.
Jesus was disgusted with this short-sightedness. Elsewhere, with crushing logic he says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath!”
It was true that when Jesus healed the broken man, he also broke the law. In his defense Jesus said that his “Father is always at his work to this very day … I can do only what I see my Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Jesus lays claim to correctly discerning the work of God rather than defending his own intelligence.
This inversion is rare in human beings.
In 2012 Wendell Berry won the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Award. When he accepted the award, he presented a lecture at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a far piece from his home in Port Royal, Kentucky. (See below for links to text and video)
In the lecture, Berry reminds us that we are not as smart as we think we are, and we forget this at our peril:
The problem that ought to concern us is the fairly recent dismantling of our old understanding and acceptance of human limits. For a long time we knew that we were not, and could never be, “as gods.” We knew, or retained the capacity to learn, that our intelligence could get us into trouble that it could not get us out of. We were intelligent enough to know that our intelligence, like our world, is limited.
We seem to have known and feared the possibility of irreparable damage. But beginning in science and engineering, and continuing, by imitation, into other disciplines, we have progressed to the belief that humans are intelligent enough, or soon will be, to transcend all limits and to forestall or correct all bad results of the misuse of intelligence.
Martin Luther and Bill Hybels have both told us they are “too busy not to pray.” So are we all. The Sabbath was indeed made for us, and when we ignore it we falter and fail. This exception Jesus made might prove that rule, but the exception also proves that God’s love trumps our often misled and misleading human wisdom.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. You are mindful of my lowly state. You have done great things and shown mercy after mercy for generation upon generation. In You I rest.
Wendell Berry’ speech video: http://events.tvworldwide.com/Events/NEH2012JeffersonLecture.aspx?VID=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.flv&Cap=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.xml
Wendell Berry’s speech text: http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Eyes rising
Monday, March 11, 2013
Fourth Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031113.cfm
Isaiah 65:17-20
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,
The things of the past shall not be remembered
Nor brought to mind.
No longer shall the sound of weeping
Be heard there, nor the sound of crying,
No longer shall there be in it
An infant who lives but a few days,
Or any old man who does not round out his lifetime.
“Come down, Jesus, before my child dies.”
Jesus says to me with authority, “You may go. Your child will live.” And she does. She lives, and she plays and she forever sings her song. With each step and every word he speaks Jesus brings the Kingdom of God to our world. Isaiah’s words are indeed fulfilled.
What price glory? Walter Brueggemann writes, “The texture of this future is expressed in the staggering inversions of a life that contains not only new gifts but also harsh judgments against those who resist the vision or seek to have a piece of it on their own terms. The future held for us by the Bible is not a blissful blur.”
Jesus speaks most tenderly and most effectively to the poor, the weak, the old and the dying. Their self-control has relentlessly been removed from them, and perhaps because of this, they are most open to Jesus’ love.
Jesus invites us all to become part of this whole organism of life, the “body of Christ” which consists of members in every state of health and dis-ease. When one lives, we all live. When one dies, we all die.
As the great Iranian poet Rumi wrote in the thirteenth century, “What have I ever lost by dying?” In The Bible Makes Sense, Walter Brueggeman’s poetic prose captures my imagination: “Our life is not for self-indulgence, nor for desperate coping, nor for frantic, empty surviving. It is life lived after the manner of this very God who empties himself to obedience in the life of Jesus.
“The Godness of God does not consist in power and sovereignty but in his obedient suffering for the sake of the world. And our vocation consists in that emptying activity after the manner of God, in which we experience for ourselves God’s strange poverty among us that heals.”
Come down Jesus, before my child dies. Not there, not then, but here and now, our eyes rise up to meet yours. Death is swallowed up in your gaze, Jesus. It is no more.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1164
God is a verb
Sunday March 10, 2013
Fourth Sunday of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031013-fourth-sunday-of-lent.cfm
2 Corinthians 5:17-19
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. He has given us this message of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them.
God is friendly with the world, and in the Christ-mystery God once again brings himself together with the world. This is the best understanding of the word “reconcile.”
Here is the meaning of the Christ: God does not “count their trespasses against them” any longer. God consists of love: the word “God” is more a verb than a noun, because God IS relationship. God IS relationship with himself (the Trinity) and with us. In our salvation, we enter the flow of love, the circle of God, the new energy of rebirth. Paul exults in this rich new life. God has blessed us, Every One.
What joy to pass this along, wherever you are, whoever you are with. The “message of reconciliation” is not words to believe as much as it is energy to experience.
Theologians usually settle on either belief in words or experience as an entry point for our salvation. But I think Paul rightly interpreted Jesus’ words and actions to mean that God has done the deed. We are free. We can proclaim this truth and manifest it in our lives, as did Jesus.
We are, however, in for a surprise. Jesus calls this life “carrying our cross.” He walked a downwardly mobile path, which God made straight. Now follow me, he says. Proclaim God’s forgiveness even as the world around you crushes the message back onto your lips. How strange, that it is really only in this kind of suffering that we finally lose our egos and find God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of me. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble” (Matthew 5:11-12).
This conjunction of suffering and satisfaction is not masochism; it is instead a paradox not meant to be resolved. Holding it in tension within my body and my mind brings me helplessly into the place where Paul’s cry, “In my weakness I am strong” rings out right and true. This is the new creation. This is real freedom.
We bless you, Lord, at all times. Your praise shall ever be in our mouths. Let our souls glory in you, Lord; let us be lowly and be glad. We taste and see your goodness, oh God, and receive the radiance of your face on our faces, free from all fear and all distress, never again flushed with shame. (Psalm 34)
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1162
On loving your neighbor
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030913.cfm
(The following Scripture is not from today’s lectionary readings, but a continuation of yesterday’s:)
Mark 12:31
Jesus continued speaking of the greatest law, this time quoting Leviticus 19, “And the second command is another way of saying the first: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
It is one thing when Jesus tells us to love God. It’s quite another to equate that with loving your neighbor, as he clearly does here. Then and now, this new dimension of loving God brings a clear spiritual mandate to our commitment to each other’s well-being.
Referring back to Bernard of Clairvaux’ comments about love (see yesterday’s devotion: http://christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1160), try this:
Substitute the word “others” for God. Then the four stages of love become:
1. LOVE of myself for my own sake
2. LOVE of others for my own sake
3. LOVE of others for their sake
4. LOVE for myself for the sake of others
So now where do I find myself on Bernard’s continuum of growth in love?
Looking at it this way, I become very aware of my constantly mixed motives. I love others as they love me; that is, for my own sake. Loving others for their sake starts with this acknowledgement, and the humility of knowing myself both false and true. Every self-sacrifice is tinged with self-satisfaction. But when I accept this “imperfection,” I can more confidently give what I have to give.
Jesus says it simply, “Love your neighbor AS yourself.” I can’t love another with any more love than I have for myself. Perhaps stages three and four are intended to be simultaneous.
In this dimension of loving God as others, I spend a lot of time in stages one and two.
God help me.
There is nothing like confession, Lord, to open my heart to your love. Only then do I stand a chance of truly loving others for their sake. And even more, of loving myself freely and humbly, without fear. As I accept my shadowy mixed motives, let me simply open my eyes and body and heart to the light. Your light, Lord. All your love.
http://christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1161
On loving God
Friday, March 8, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030813.cfm
Mark 12:30
Jesus called this the first of two greatest laws, quoting Deuteronomy 6: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
In the first sentence of a letter Bernard of Clairvaux wrote to his cardinal in 1126, published ever since as On Loving God, St. Bernard says, “The reason for loving God is God Himself, and the measure of love due to Him is immeasurable love.”
The very freedom I have to love and be loved rests on God’s gift of himself to me. God is love and He has given himself to me, and it is only because of this that I can love. To the extent I have not known God’s love, I can’t really love myself, let alone love God. But on the other hand, I have known God, and so I know God’s love, and I do love myself, and I do love God.
Bernard says there are four ways we can love:
1. LOVE of myself for my own sake
2. LOVE of God for my own sake
3. LOVE of God for God’s sake
4. LOVE of my self for God’s sake
Over time I learn to love myself because God loves me. Even more, I love God because God loves me. That is to say, I often find myself in the first and second “stages” of Bernard’s process. These are wonderful experiences for me.
But there are also rare times when I discover myself in the third stage, loving God for God’s sake. In those illuminated moments, joy fills my heart. Then I am not aware of myself in any way other than the true self God is, in me. This is not a moment of piety or religion, but it’s a moment full of God. And then, as my self-awareness returns all too quickly, I settle back into loving God for my own sake.
It is helpful for me to distinguish these loves from one another, but they flow into one another and overlap one another.
Regarding Bernard’s fourth and final stage, Bernard himself says it must depend on liberation from the body, when “in wondrous wise he will forget himself and as if delivered from self, he will grow wholly God’s … freed from the infirmities of the flesh.”
Perhaps mystics experience this long before their final deathbed relaxation, when every muscle gives up control to God. Just as God is love, so they become. My feet seem a bit more caught in the peanut butter, though, and I don’t think I’ve known this place.
Oh, that we would listen to you Lord, you would satisfy us with the finest wheat, and with honey from the rock. Open our ears to hear and our mouths, not to speak, but to taste the honey you are pouring down.
http://christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1160
Genius Jesus
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030713.cfm
Jeremiah 7:23
Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.
Luke 11:20, 23
Jesus said, “If it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you … Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
Jesus is the full expression of God’s spirit “materializing,” becoming physical. We say Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine.
God tells us to walk in his commands because he made us and knows how we work. He wrote the instruction book, and it’s reasonable that we would want to know what he says about us. Jesus wanted to know, that’s for sure. He “only did what his father was doing.”
Because of this, the fully human Jesus did things very very well. He did not make mistakes. He did not follow any path that became a dead end. He was, as Dallas Willard says, “the smartest person who ever lived.”
Willard has observed that we don’t see Jesus that way. In this article (http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=67) and in The Divine Conspiracy he points out that we rarely apply the categories of intelligence to Jesus:
“In our western culture, and among Christians as well, Jesus Christ is automatically disassociated from brilliance or intellectual capacity. Not one in a thousand will spontaneously think of him in conjunction with words such as ‘well-informed,’ ‘brilliant,’ or ‘smart.’ “
If I expect Jesus to “show me how” to prosper, then I need to change my way of thinking about him. There is NOTHING more important than discovering his way of doing things. Willard continues,
”Can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed? Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what Christians take him to be in other respects, and not be the best informed and most intelligent person of all: the smartest person who ever lived, bringing us the best information on the most important subjects?”
Jesus touches me with what he calls “the finger of God.” That tiny touch, that brush with the ruach of God, infuses every instant of my life with intelligence and direction. Not mine. God’s. Inside my skin, yes, but this is God.
You bless your children well, Lord, and make us wise beyond our years. We must not appropriate this wisdom for ourselves, or take credit for your work within us. Instead, we praise you and adore you and bless your holy name. We invite your habitation.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1159
Syllabus of Jesus
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030613.cfm
Matthew 5:17
Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
This should not sound like bad news, but somehow sometimes, it does. Even more than the Pharisees, Jesus is asking the impossible.
Dallas Willard disagrees. In a 2002 interview with Andy Park, he says, “All of Jesus’ teaching is about the kingdom of god, entering the kingdom of God through faith in him. His teaching is about the process of being transformed so that the kinds of behavior he taught – and indeed, even the old law – are a natural expression of who we have become.”
This transformation is not a direct result of education or experience, although both are very valuable. Willard says, “The only thing that transforms us spiritually is the action of following Christ. You seek to follow, you fail, and you learn.”
My mistakes, sincerely made, do not get me into trouble. They get me into exactly the spot where God wants me. “In my weakness I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
In the kingdom of God which Jesus brings, Willard says, “You are accepted by the grace of God in Jesus. And that lays the foundation for as much true doctrine as you can manage and as much manifestation of the Spirit as you can stand.”
When I gaze into your eyes, Jesus, you invite me and you show me how. The way to follow you is one step at a time, while I never look away from your eyes. When you are leading me, my focus is to be on you and not the path. You will make my path straight.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1158
Life together
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030513.cfm
Matthew 18:33-35
Speaking to his disciples, Jesus finishes a parable about the kingdom of Heaven. “Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you? Then in anger his master handed (you) over to the tormentors until (you) should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
The tormentors wait just inside my skin. Forgiveness might be elusive, but the poison of bitterness seems to be on call 24-7. When my first inclination is to protect myself, as it often is, I don’t forgive. I strike back.
Jesus’ new standard of non-violence doesn’t allow me to keep this familiar habit, even internally. But Jesus also shows me how. God’s forgiveness for ME is unconditional. He is even patient with my unforgiveness, but I must accept it! That is only possible when I abandon myself to him and stop trying to do this impossible thing of protecting myself.
In his email devotion yesterday, Henri Nouwen wrote precisely of the solution to this problem: “When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily thrown into despair, but when we can live our broken love as a partial reflection of God’s perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another our limitations and enjoy together the love we have to offer.”
That is the best we can do. Nouwen calls this “the spiritual life.” It might start with rosaries or memorizing Scripture, but it ends with learning how to be with one another.
This, too, sounds like Lesson #1 in loving.
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. I can feel its mighty power, and its grace. I can hear the brush of angels’ wings, I see glory on each face. Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. Oh, Lord, let us sing to you and to each other, be loved and be loving.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1157
Just can’t hide that hometown pride
Monday, March 4, 2013
Third Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030413.cfm
Luke 4:24-28
Jesus said to his townspeople in the synagogue at Nazareth, “No prophet is accepted in his home town … There were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” And the people were filled with fury.
Capernaum is about 20 miles from Nazareth. In the three years of his ministry Jesus did many miracles in Capernaum and very few in Nazareth. Once Jesus invited them into his ecumenical world view, the natives of Nazareth just weren’t interested.
The rejection of Jesus by the Pharisees and other leaders was preceded by this local groundswell of disapproval. The locals couldn’t believe their ears when they heard Jesus comparing them unfavorably with pagans, with their enemies. Jesus is knocking down the walls, but they aren’t ready.
There is certainly strength in numbers, and stupidity too. It is difficult to get above family loyalty, tribal loyalty, national loyalty even when evidence is overwhelming that the loyalty has become misplaced.
I am grateful that Jesus is patient with us, more patient than he seems to be in this story from the beginning of his ministry. I don’t pretend to be any smarter than the folks in Nazareth. I know how locked into one point of view I can become, and sometimes it’s even worse when I’m challenged. EITHER I’m right, OR the other person’s right.
Instead, how about looking for the 10% on which we agree, and resting in that for a bit to see if there might be more? BOTH you AND me can learn to love each other then. Proximity is half the battle.
EITHER-OR? Or BOTH-AND? Lesson one in learning how to love.
God, in your love for me you don’t always approve what I do, but you always accept me as me. You make us, you bless us, and you turn us loose with each other. That’s very scary, and very inspiring. You really do believe in us, Lord. Wow!
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1156
davesandel 