Meditation on this Sunday's Narrative Lectionary

The Narrative Lectionary readings for Sunday, February 16, 2013:

Luke 10:25-42

Optional reading:  Psalm 15 or 15:1  

Many of us are probably familiar with both stories that are presented in today's Narrative Lectionary:  the parable of the Good Samaritan who stops to help the brutalized traveler after religious authorities have refused to help and the story of the two sisters, Mary and Martha, one of whom sits with Jesus and the other who bustles around the house doing chores and resenting the fact that no one helps.

Yes, we've read them separately many times, but how different to read them together!

I read the story of the Good Samaritan in many ways, but the one I come back to most regularly sees it as a lesson about the importance of our actions matching our mouths.  Which of the characters in the story of the beaten and robbed traveler shows love to the neighbor?  The one who stopped to help.  At first read, it's a story that seems clearly to instruct us to show love by our actions, not by yakking about how much we love the world.

But then comes the story of Mary and Martha.  It's hard not to sympathize with Martha, the sister who understands the importance of getting the daily chores done--and there's a guest, who must be fed!  She hustles and bustles and grows increasingly resentful of all these people who ARE NOT HELPING.

Based on our reading of the Good Samaritan, we might expect Jesus to tell Mary to help her sister.  But instead, Jesus gives us an opposite instruction:  it is good to sit with Jesus.

Should we see the pairing of these stories as instruction about which work is important and which is not?  Are we being instructed on the true nature of hospitality?

Most of us will never be faced with such extreme choices, but we like to think that we would behave appropriately.  But as we think about our daily lives, we see how often we take the safe path.

The safe path takes us away from the bleeding stranger.  The safe path has us doing our household chores instead of paying close attention to God.  Jesus came to show us that we should leave the safe path.

The life of Jesus also warns us that by leaving the safe path, we may end up broken and bleeding ourselves.  But Jesus shows us that redemption can come from this kind of suffering. 

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, February 17, 2013:



First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Second Reading: Romans 10:8b-13

Gospel: Luke 4:1-13


This week's text is the classic tale of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. Jesus goes to the desert to find out "what it meant to be Jesus" (in the words of Frederick Beuchner). Jesus goes to the desert, that scorched, barren land. We begin our journey with Ash Wednesday, with scorched ashes from last season's palms that we used on Palm Sunday. Richard Pervo points out that it is a journey that starts in ash and ends in flames (think Pentecost). Along the way of our spiritual path, we will face similar temptations to the ones that Jesus faced.

The first temptation is the most basic: turn the stones into bread. Watch out for the needs of your physical body. Certainly the scriptures don't suggest that we should ignore our physical needs; indeed, we can't. But many of us go way beyond providing for our daily bread. We stockpile our resources. We save for a rainy day. We save for retirement. We end up with more money than we need, while our neighbors, both here and in other countries, starve so that we might satisfy our mad lust for security.

If we save our money, are we really trusting in God? If we ask God for our daily bread, but in fact we have a month's supply of bread in the freezer, and money to buy bread saved up for when we've consumed all the bread in the house, are we really trusting God?

At one point in my life, I would have scoffed at the idea that it was immoral to save money while our neighbors to the south starved. Now, I'm not so sure. UCC minister Lillian Daniel says, "The churches around the world might remind us of our wealth in light of their lack. They might point out that it is a luxury to have so much that we keep money in the bank--not just individuals, but congregations too."

Have I stopped saving money? No. I'm not that spiritually developed yet. But I do know of people who have a deeper trust that God will provide than I do--and they don't go hungry or lack for anything. It's something to think about, as so many of us don't even do basic tithing. At the very least, we should clear out our closets, and stop buying so much stuff that basically replaces our stuff that we already have, stuff that hasn't even worn out yet.

Satan then tempts Jesus with fame. All Jesus has to do is to worship Satan. We still live in a culture that worships the famous, that can't seem to get enough of the famous. We live in a time where people aren't even famous because they're talented or good-hearted or striving for justice.  I'm not sure why we're all so obsessed with the Kardashians and their ilk. 
Meanwhile, people who are doing truly miraculous good in the world go without acclaim. Luckily, this work provides rewards on multiple levels. If we've become Christians because we think it's a route to fame, we're in the wrong arena. Based on the people who are famous, I suspect most of us already know this. We don't seem to have very many people who are famous because of their breathtaking charity or their ability to bring light to a darkening world.

Most people assume that they can resist the temptation to worship Satan--and yet, even if we haven't sold our souls directly, many of us have plenty of other gods that come before God. Think about the life priorities of most people. It's hard to pray daily or give away 10% of our money. Many of us take on more debt, even though it means we'll be less free to follow God wherever God might lead us.

The last temptation is the temptation to control God. Satan tells Jesus to jump and to command the angels to catch him. Most of us aren't standing on ledges when we give in to this temptation. But how often do we pray in an attempt to control God? Maybe we pray for specific results to a problem. Maybe we pray for things we want, even if it's something that seems good, like an end to world hunger. Most of us aren't very patient with God's time scale. We wish God would just hurry up and show us the Divine Plan.

Let's face it, we want to be in control of our lives.  It's why we hoard our money and possessions, it's why we overeat or undereat or exercise too much or call our children several times a day. It's a natural, human response--and yet, it's one we should resist. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we're sinful creatures. Ash Wednesday reminds us that left to our own devices, we'll make a huge mess of everything.

The beauty of the cyclical nature of liturgical life is that it is full of chances to turn around. Even if you recognize that you've given in to these temptations or the many other temptations the world offers, it's not too late. God calls us to return. God gives us any number of welcome home parties. God waits patiently, like the father of the prodigal son. And God knows that we will stray again. Like keeping to a sensible eating plan, this spiritual path requires more vigilance than we can sustain all the time. And yet, the struggle to wage this spiritual warfare will yield results eventually.

Welcome to Lent, the season of ash and penitence. Repent, return, retool your lives. It is time again to commit to resurrection, to submit to the purifying flames of Pentecost. Turn away from the ashes and towards the light.

Renewing Wedding Vows in Church Services: A Valentine's Day Meditation

Here's one of those strange feast days, a feast day that's more popular in the general culture than it is in the church culture that pays attention to saints and their days.  For those of you in search of a meditation with photos, you might enjoy this post from last year.

Those of us in religious circles might spend some time thinking about this feast day and the ways we celebrate it, both within our religious cultures and in popular culture.  I've often thought that marriage at its best is sacramental:  it demonstrates to me in a way that few other things can how deeply God loves me.  If my spouse's love for me is but a pale shadow of the way God loves me, then I am rich in love indeed.

I use the word marriage cautiously.  I don't mean it the way that some Christians do.  I mean simply a love relationship between adults that is covenantal and permanent in nature.

Our church offers couples a chance to renew their wedding vows during the Sunday service before Valentine's Day each year.  I've written about my queasiness about renewal of wedding vows in this post.

This year was different.  Perhaps it was because I was closer to the front, where I could see the expressions on the faces.  I could see that the couples were profoundly moved by repeating their vows.  I was moved too.

I still worry about how this service might make people feel excluded.  I worry that as with baptism, we don't support people in their covenantal relationships in all the ways that we could.

To me, this feast day is essentially a manufactured holiday, yet another one, designed to make us feel like we must spend gobs and gobs of money to demonstrate our love.

Every day, ideally, should be Valentine's Day, a day in which we try to remind our loved ones how much we care--and not by buying flowers, dinners out, candy, and jewelry.  We show that we love by our actions:  our care, our putting our own needs in the backseat, our concern, our gentle touch, our loving remarks.

And sustained by the love that sustains in our homes, we can go out to be a light that shines evidence of God's love to the dark corners of the world.

On this Valentine's Day, let us go out into the world, living sacraments, to be Valentines to one another, to show a weary world the wonders of God's love.

Decomposing Stars: To Dust We Shall Return

Today is Ash Wednesday, the Christian high holy day that reminds us of our essential nature. We are dust--cosmic dust, if you want to dress up the idea, but dust nonetheless. And all too soon, we return to the dust of the cosmos. We don't really have much time, but most of us manage to suppress that knowledge. How would we live our lives differently, if we, like Jesus, always kept central in our mind, that we only have a few years to do our essential work? In cosmic time or geological time, we're here for a blip.

We are here on this earth for a very short time. Rather than get morose about this subject, we can use this as a prompt to ask ourselves what's important in our lives. Are we living daily lives that are in sync with those values? How can we make adjustments to ensure that we are not wasting our brief time here?

The time for this kind of reflection seems common across religious traditions.  On Yom Kippur, rabbi Rachel Barenblat wrote this reflection which reminds us of what this high holy day should be about: "On Yom Kippur we try as hard as we can to make teshuvah, to correct our course and shift our alignment so that our actions, our emotions, our thoughts, and our spirits are aligned with holiness. We try to repair our relationships with ourselves, with each other, with God. We try to relinquish the emotional and spiritual calluses which protect us in ordinary life, and to go deep into awareness of our mortality and deep into connection with something beyond ourselves."

In the past year, I went to a Hindu houseblessing where I spoke to the priest.  He smears ashes on his forehead every day. It reminds him that we're only here for a short time. It reminds him to keep events in perspective. So few things are worth getting upset over.

Yesterday, at the gym of all places, I spoke to a friend about our changing attitudes towards Ash Wednesday, a high holy day which we both hated when we were children.  Now, we see how relevant it is.  I mentioned the Hindu priest, and she said that she thought daily application of ash was a bit extreme.  I thought that having this kind of reminder more than just once a year could be a good thing.

I say that we were at the gym, and you may have pictured a place of beautiful bodies.  But our gym is part of a hospital where the bulk of the work that they do is cardiac rehab.  We work out and are surrounded by examples of all the ways our flesh can fail us.  All the ways our flesh will fail us.


We are ash, after all, and to ash we will return.

Here's a quote from Henri Nouwen to start your day. It's from A Cry for Mercy: "Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failings and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says 'I am too sinful to deserve God's mercy.' It is the guilt that leads to introspection instead of directing our eyes to God. It is the guilt that has become an idol and therefore a form of pride. Lent is the time to break down this idol and to direct our attention to our loving Lord. The question is: 'Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God's mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?' The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God's mercy."



Here is a prayer for Ash Wednesday: "Oh God, keep us mindful of all the behaviors that move us away from you. Help us to remember that we are here for such a short time, that all to soon we shall return to our dusty destinies. Keep us focused on the Kingdom work that you need us to do."

Mardi Gras: A Good Day to Think About Your Lenten Discipline

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the day that begins Lent. Will you have a Lenten discipline?

I hadn't really given it much thought until I saw a place on our worship slip that asked if we would have a Lenten discipline and if we wanted supportive e-mails.  I thought, hey, that's a good idea!

Last year I tried to give up worrying, with mixed success.  Some years I've tried to add some enrichment along the lines of nourishing reading or weekly art projects--again, with mixed success.

On Sunday, I sat quietly with the idea of a Lenten discipline to see what might rise to the surface.  Work on your memoir--that's what I heard.
So, my Lenten discipline will be to work on my memoir 3-4 days a week. I thought about pledging every day, but my travel schedule between now and Easter will defeat a daily discipline. But 3-4 times a week is both a challenge and accessible.

When I first thought of it, I thought, that can't be my Lenten discipline. I'm enjoying working on my memoir too much. I think of a Lenten discipline as something grim like giving up a pleasure like chocolate or wine or meat or sugar.

But many of us are good at self-denial. What if we gave ourselves permission to add a pleasure to our lives?  Not just any wanton pleasure, but pleasure followed by gratitude for the pleasure, happiness for the pleasures that we're able to afford.

What if, instead of waiting until we're done with our chores to do what brings us pleasure, what if we devoted ourselves to the pleasurable part of our life first?  The scrubbing and the washing can wait--go ahead and dive into that novel you've been waiting to have time to read!

I do think that a Lenten discipline should be something that strengthens and enriches our spiritual lives.  For more possibilities, you can click on the Launch Into Lent label on the right sidebar and get a host of essays that will give you more options than you can possibly adopt in one 6 week period.  Choose one and devote yourself fully.

Today is a good day to plot a road map.  What, exactly, will you do?  What benchmarks will you use to measure your success?  What supplies do you need?

Maybe today, instead of indulging in the usual Mardi Gras excess that we see advertised, we could take time to ready ourselves for our Lenten journey. 

What Do You Talk About on Transfiguration Mountain?

For yesterday's sermon, my pastor focused on this part of the Transfiguration story in Luke 9:

³⁰Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. ³¹They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Our pastor focused on that word "departure."  In all my years of Transfiguration Sundays and that text in other settings, I had somehow never realized that the story tells us what Moses, Elijah, and Jesus discuss.

Our pastor told us that the word for "departure" is also "exodus."  And from there, we launched back to the Passover story.  The Israelites find themselves out of Egypt, but like many of us who have found ourselves miserable on vacation because we've brought ourselves along, the Israelites can't stop their habits of whining and complaining.

They're out of Egypt with nothing between them and the Promised Land, nothing but themselves.  They have to learn to trust God and that God will follow through on God's promises.  We need to do that too.

Jesus will come down from one mountain and trudge towards another, the mountain of Golgotha:  God keeping God's promises.

Our pastor reminded us that we are called to live the Good News, to live the story so well that people will want to know what we know.

He said that we could see it as God's wisdom or God's sense of humor that we are the way that God has chosen to tell God's story.   God counts on us to get the message out there into the world.

You might protest that you didn't sign up for such a task.  Like Moses, you might see people that are better suited to declare God's mission and wonder why God doesn't pass over you.

God has infinite capacity for knowing what is best--and God has chosen us.  So, live like the Resurrection Person that God knows you can be!

Adult Baptism

Today I will stand in front of my church with a woman who has decided that it's time to be baptized.  I suppose that makes me a sponsor?  I don't have a long experience with adult baptisms, but I'm happy to be part.

I first met this woman years ago when she left church early, but wanted to make sure that her offering got put into the plate.  I must have been the usher or the greeter; I assured her I'd take care of it.

We had another few encounters that were similar.  She mentioned that her sister was very sick.  I sent her a card, and one Sunday, when she could stay longer, I sent her away with a prayer shawl.

Her sister, however, was very sick, and she died.  I remember sitting with the woman after the service on one Easter morning as she wept, knowing that her sister would not be alive next Easter.  There we were, surrounded by people in their Easter finest, children excited by their Easter candy, and we wept together.  I hugged her, and I said, "Easter reminds us that death will not have the final say.  We don't know how and when, but we know that we will be reunited with those we love."

It seemed to be the right thing to say, and I'm grateful that the words came to me. I don't want to be one of those Christians who says trite, sentimental platitudes in the face of enormous loss.  I can't imagine that hearing about my loved one singing in the angel choir would comfort me.  But I've always hated what so many Christians have done to the idea of angels.  Others might find the idea of angel choirs comforting, and I should be less judgmental.  I'm working on it.

Today, several years after the death of her sister, this woman has decided that the time has come to be baptized, and she wants it to be in our church, even though she's from a different church background.  I'm happy about that, but for different reasons than some Christians might be.

I don't come out of the tradition that sings for joy with every soul saved by way of baptism.  I think that we promise a lot during that sacrament, and most people aren't aware of the covenantal nature of the rite.  I'm uneasy when we, as a church, baptize a baby whose parents don't attend.  The church community promises to help launch that child on a spiritual path.  If you're going to have your baby baptized, and we'll never see you again, how can we do that?

Some people would answer, "But now that baby gets to go to Heaven."

I don't believe that people have to be baptized as their entry pass to Heaven, so that argument doesn't matter to me.  I would respond that there's lots of time between baptism and Heaven, and we would be better served by focusing on that journey. 

But wars have been fought over these theological issues, and I'm not likely to convince those who don't believe as I do.

Besides, there's a baptism to get ready for!  I'm happy that the woman feels the time is now, and our church is the place.  I'm happy that the woman wants to join us in this way.  And I'm touched that she asked me to stand by her side.