Third Sunday of Lent

Sunday of Lent
February 26, 2005

"In those days... the people grumbled against Moses... (and) quarreled there, testing the Lord saying, "Is the Lord in our midst or not?" (Exodus 17: 3-7) A woman of Samaria came to draw water..." (John 4:5-42)

The Israelites complain to Moses about being thirsty in the desert and the Most High gives them water gushing from a rock in spite of their quarreling and lack of trust. This has been often repeated in the history of the family of God down to the present day. It can be metaphor for us who desire the life of the spirit but waste an awful a lot of time and energy grumbling, and quarreling among ourselves about who and where God is.

Jesus, at Jacob's well, leads a Samaritan woman, in a gradually unfolding recognition that he is the promised one of Israel. His conversation with her about living water breaks all the rules of his day about speaking with women and foreigners. She misunderstands what Jesus means by "living water", taking his words literally to mean running water which she would not have to keep carrying from the well. The conversation turns to her personal life which Jesus interprets to her and she recognizes him as a prophet. Jesus patiently leads her and the disciples by degrees to understand that he is the promised Messiah: "I am he, the one who is speaking with you."

I was thinking about my own lifelong journey parallel to the disciples and the Samaritan woman. We seem to begin like children, understanding things on a very literal level and move gradually over the course of our lives to understand that as Jesus said, "God is spirit, and those who worship him, must worship in spirit and truth." For many, if not all, of us this is a process of moving from the literal to the spiritual realities of our faith which will only be complete in the eternal and direct vision of God.

I had a conversation with a close friend this past week about Jesus, He focused on how different from us, and perfect, Christ must have been because of his divinity. I think about him as a brother, human and limited, emptied of divinity and perfection, divine nevertheless. I realized how differently we experience this "son of God", and how such different experiences can be equally satisfying. The spirit seems to lead each of us in unique ways, like the Samaritan woman and the disciples, toward faith and acceptance of the truth about him and his relationship to the Father. Truth is broader and deeper than any single expression of it. Like the Samaritan woman, we are all aliens, and a bit dense. We only gradually realize that there are no formulas or practices which can lead us to living water of the spirit. That comes only with prayer, experience and listening to the Spirit of God with the ear of the heart.

Second Sunday of Lent

Second Sunday of LentFebruary 20, 2005
The Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from the land of your kin folk... to a land that I will show you (Genesis 12:1-4) Jesus... led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. (Matthew 17:1-9)
Abram is beckoned by Yahweh to leave his home land on the long journey away from the familiar and comfortable. His willingness to do so was the beginning of hope for a new relationship with God for all of us. Three of Jesus' closest disciples recall a stunning experience on a mountaintop where the relationship between Christ and his heavenly Father is momentarily revealed. The disciples want to camp out and extend this miraculous moment, but are soon brought back to the "real world". Thomas Merton (Seasons of Celebration) reflects that Lent is a time "... to rejoice in God's love... casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy. Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await God's mercy, or approach God trustfully in prayer." Most of us would dearly love to go straight to the direct and eternal vision of God, bypassing all the pain and inner conflict associated with our present life. We face the same kind of choices made both by Abraham and Jesus' beloved disciples to follow God's lead wherever it might take us. If we are lucky, we may experience moments like them where we also see divine reality clearly. Very few seem to be privileged to stay on that "mountaintop". For now, for most of us,,there is no staying there. Not even for the disciples, patriarchs, saints and holy ones. All of us it seems must face our terror of going into the dark places. Our traditional practice of "giving up" something during Lent only has meaning if it brings us closer to the courage to embrace what we cannot see or understand. We, like Abraham and the disciples, have the opportunity to go into similar strange and often frightening places. The Spirit's' promise is that we will never be alone in the dark. The Most High speaks to us also, from behind the cloud of divine presence, even when we are in a valley of darkness. Before long we will all be transformed as Christ was in the presence of his Father. The kingdom of heaven is near at hand.

Preparing for Death

Preparing for Death

Over the past several years following my diagnosis with an incurable and degenerative disease, realizing that I will not live forever and probably die sooner than I would have imagined, I offer the following thoughts and experiences.

Death Is for the Living.

Although in one sense death is the "great divide", in another sense it is also part of being alive. To avoid thinking about our death is to avoid experiencing life to the fullest. What most of us fear, I think is not so much death itself but the pain and suffering, physical, emotional and spiritual which comes before it. All of us, I suppose, in one way hope that we will die suddenly and painlessly. On the other hand we also worry that if death comes this way we would have no chance to say our goodbyes, make amends, or otherwise get our affairs in order so we can continue to control things from the grave.

I imagine that my death, by the time I am actually there, will be a welcome and peaceful release. Although at this moment I am very much alive and glad of it, thoughts of my death are both comforting and daunting. I especially don't like the thought of leaving everyone and everything I love "behind". But, if my idea of time and eternity turns out to be correct, I will not be losing anything. From the perspective of the other side of the divide, we will all "arrive" in eternity and the full experience of God's presence simultaneously.

Keeping death "daily before our eyes".

St. Benedict recommended for his monks to make meditation on their death a daily occurrence. I must have retained this beautiful thought from the time of my religious conversion in early adulthood and few years of monastic life. I have always thought about how and when my death would come and how I would handle it if I had any sign that it was imminent. Having done this, on and off, throughout my life, i.e. mentally preparing myself for the "big one", has enabled me to cope with my own present physical decline. It was a surprise, but not for long, as I reminded myself that difficult things do not happen only to me. They are universal experiences to which I and everyone else are subjected.

I am not recommending a morbid obsession with all the bad things that could happen. I am suggesting a realistic appraisal of how life goes, while at the same time appreciating the gifts available in every moment. Part of the process of preparing for one's own death is a mental task. Another part is the willingness to experience whatever comes along without dreading it ahead of time. This is a spiritual skill which comes with time, desire, intention and prayer. Be careful what you pray for. It won't always be fun but it will always carry with it an opportunity to keep growing up, i.e. to be realistic and idealistic at the same time.

One way to follow this wisdom is to think of dying as many deaths, beginning with birth. Birth is a kind of death, to the perfect security of our mother's womb. It begins a whole life of "dying" to the illusions about the security and predictability of life. It continues every time we are faced with the opportunity to let go of the old and welcome the new. When we resist this process we preserve the illusion that our life here and now is permanent. When we welcome these changes, painful as they often are, we take another step in the direction of the final death, the entrance into the ultimate reality of eternity. A close friend of mine with a debilitating and incurable cancer wrote to me about this recently, "Still, I would go in a heartbeat w/out fear, not hating earth, but loving heaven more."

No matter how much we try to keep this fact in mind, we seem to be surprised every time another event challenges it. The Buddha was supposed to have recommended to a woman in an inconsolable grief that she go around the village collecting three mustard seeds from every house in which there had been no deaths. She came back empty-handed and grateful for the experience. She had discovered that she was not alone, that loss and death are universal experiences.

Death, Alone and Together

In one sense we must all face our own death alone. No one can do it for us. This may be one of the most frightening aspects of thinking about and experiencing our death. On the other hand, we also know that no one ever really does anything alone or isolated from the human community. Living and dying are corporate experiences. The way each of us face our own death with courage, calm and acceptance profoundly affects how the rest of us will be able to do it also.

The best "preparation" for death is a life lived with and for the body of Christ, within the oneness of all creation. This is not something that we can begin only when we think we are getting closer to death, when we are aging or seriously ill, or otherwise exposed to danger. If we wait until then, chances are it will be too late although in another sense it is never too late to get with the program.

First Sunday of Lent

First Sunday of Lent
February 13, 2005

"... the moment you eat of it you will become like gods... then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked..." (Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7). "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted.. " (Matthew 4:1-11)

Genesis/Torah tells the story of the "fall" of our original human ancestors. After being enticed away from their Creator by promises of autonomous power over their world, they suddenly realized contrary to what they had been promised, that they were naked. Jesus undergoes a similar trial of enticement, dueling with Satan, and this time the result is much different, finally undoing the damage created by our human rebellion against the Most High.

Maybe we Christians and Jews have grossly underestimated the concept of sin by making it synonymous with breaking rules. The original word means "to miss the mark". Something, whatever we call it, seems to propel us in the direction of living thoughtlessly, unaware of the damage we do to others and ourselves, unable in spite of our best efforts to be the kind of people we want to be. Hitting the mark is living immersed in the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth, goodness, and harmony with our fellow human beings and nature. Just as the poetic description of Eden would have it. All of us succumb to some version of the enticement to which our original human ancestors succumbed. We have inherited their difficulty with distinguishing right from wrong, good from evil. Whatever our personal version of this "sin" might be, it seems always to contain choices made for our own benefit instead of what the creator intended: a life reflecting God's goodness, truth and beauty.

The story of the temptation of Christ reveals that even he was attracted by the possibility of going off on his own instead of fulfilling his divine calling. He was, after all, as human as the rest of us, "like us in all things but sin". The Most High understands how easily we are turned away from our divine calling, our acknowledgment of dependence on the Spirit, the moral imperative to cooperate with God in renewing the face of the earth. Jesus' decision makes it possible for all of us to stay the course, even with our regressions into the lonely way of selfishness, aggression and despair.

These weeks before our celebration of the resurrection of Christ could be a wonderful opportunity to explore our own temptations to go it alone, to choose self over others, power over powerlessness, wealth over poverty, thoughtlessness over awareness, life over death. We could spend some time thinking about how we allow ourselves to be deceived, and lured away from our return to God, and the precious gift of divine life available simply for the asking.

Fifth Sunday Ordinary

Fifth Sunday Ordinary
February 6, 2005

"If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness... (Isaiah 58: 7-10) You are the salt of the earth... the light of the world... your light must shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father." (Matthew 5:13-16)

These Sundays before Lent have traditionally anticipated reform of life. Some of us remember when they had names like "Septuagesima", "Quadragesima", etc., and were considered somewhat penitential in character. The readings today certainly focus on allowing the "light" of our good deeds to be known by all. Contrast this with another saying of Jesus which we will hear in the early days of Lent that we should do our good deeds in secret in order to avoid becoming too proud of them. So, which is it? When and where do we let our light shine?

The purpose of good deeds, according to Jesus, is to glorify our heavenly Father rather than draw attention to ourselves. We know from many places in the Gospels and St. Paul that good deeds do not earn us anything, most especially entrance into the kingdom of God. We already possess that by divine mercy and love. So, what "good" are good deeds? Perhaps that they demonstrate to all that the Spirit of God is alive and well, moving within and among us. This is a difficult concept for most of us, especially those who our serious about our religious life and commitment. Our pride wants to make it our own doing, often in competition about who is highest and best. Competition may work well to produce wealth and power, but it does not take us in the direction of closeness to God or the kingdom of heaven. We can however be justifiably proud of the good works which result from the gift of generosity and compassion.

I often lie in the "gloom" of night, awake with my thoughts going in many directions. I have learned to use these times for meditation, contemplation and prayer. At first the darkness and inactivity were daunting, until I learned to actually focus on the darkness as a place where I could meet God. The "gloom" has been transformed into divine light. I relate this hoping that it is a way of making sure this light is not hidden. Especially because it is not "mine".

At the Easter vigil we will come into church led by the Easter candle, singing "light of Christ", a potent symbol of divine light overcoming darkness. That candle is easily extinguished, but not so the divine light which it represents. Our contribution individually and collectively to keeping it lit is our willingness to follow the promptings of the Spirit, allowing spiritual generosity to flow through us. That is a light that cannot be extinguished or diminished by any power on earth.