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Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textThe Old Testament reading and the Psalm for today bring to my attention the structure of our worship life based on rules and guidelines. The language is authoritarian. "You shall celebrate at their proper time" is repeated with "you shall" details in the book of Leviticus. The Psalmist also reminds us of statues, ordinances, and decrees in the way we "Sing with joy to God our help" in the time and manner ordered by God.||But the gospel message says something else. Jesus is credited with wisdom and knowledge of the Old Testament rules and structure for living, but he challenges those who follow them strictly. Jesus wants us to follow God through faith, not rules. The Lord who led us forth from the land of Egypt made it clear to the people then and now what was expected of us. We are to call on God for help with joy. But it is easy for us to get caught up in the structure and rules of religious life when we need help.|Jesus reminds us that God's mighty deeds are not done because we uphold the rules, but because of our faith. And while He did not withdraw from the people in his native place to punish them for rejecting him, He moved on because they did not have faith that his teachings and miracles were of God.|My personal reflection on this is that faith in Jesus offers us far more hope in our times of need than do rules and laws. That does not mean that our structured faith traditions are not important. But Jesus asked us to practice them in faith, not through habit. Jesus calls us to make our faith relevant in each time and place. I guess that is why I am so thankful for the ministry of my friend John Ylvisaker. He is the author of "I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry" and about 1,000 other songs he has written for contemporary sacred assembly. This week he presented "Amigos de Cristo - We're Friends of the Lord," a Latin American music mass at my church in Omaha, NE. We invited all the churches in the area interested in outreach to our growing Hispanic population to participate. The mass incorporated traditional church musicians with a wide variety of instruments, as well as a Mariachi band. And we even sang "Alleluia" with joy to God our help to the traditional Mexican tune "La Bamba!" It was a true festival of the Lord!.|writer of this reflection. Go To Th
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textWe must admit that are all in alignment with Job's lament at several times in our lives. Job's despair mirrors the human condition. We often don't accomplish anything no matter how hard we work. But even worse, it seems to us at times that even God has set us up for failure and frustration. Bitterness of the spirit overcomes us when we feel our life's work brings us nothing but weariness. Like Job, we curse the day we were born or the one before us. |Job wasn't the only one who often sank into despair. The author of Psalm 88 felt overwhelmed by wretchedness also. Again, this passage speaks to the human condition. The dark nights of the soul come to all of us when we let our troubles get the better of us. At those times, we often feel that God does not hear us, nor does God sustain us with strength and courage. We feel abandoned by God or worse yet, condemned by God and a victim of God's wrath. |As much as God loves us, God doesn't respond to all this despair and these supplications in the way we would like. God doesn't lighten our load or give us a big reward, no matter how hard to try to impress upon God our good intentions. Instead, God sends Jesus to admonish us for our human tendencies to place our strivings to accomplish much in the light of our own needs for greatness. Let's be honest, most of us think at some time or another during the day, "who is the greatest?" in some context or another, but probably not in the context of the Kingdom of heaven. We are most likely thinking about the kingdom of this earth. Jesus knows this.|So, in Matthew, Jesus tells us that what we should strive for is to demonstrate more humility in the ways we live our lives and what we strive to do. Our sufferings, even if they are for good purposes, do not give us any privileges in the Kingdom of heaven. Instead of seeking strength to achieve our goals for greatness, we need to ask for the strength to suffer with Christ. Jesus tells us here that we need to go back to our humble beginnings as a child and get a fresh perspective on our lives. We need repentance, we are told, not deliverance, when we get frustrated. |That is very difficult to do for most of us, including me. I think that the Jesuits have it right when they go off on silent retreats for a whole week each year. They say they listen to God when they do this. I really admire the fact that they humble themselves to figuratively and literally "shut up and listen!" I think it must work somewhat like when parents send little kids who have tantrums to sit in a corner and think about it for a while. They usually come out with a fresh perspective. I know it works well for the Jesuits. I am reflecting on the lessons today that I should seriously try this, even though my lifestyle does not give me the time to take an entire week off to silently listen to God. I am told, however, that it can help to take even an hour a day to quietly reflect on humility. It will be challenge enough for most of us, and that certainly includes me, to start with ten minutes!
Supplement Series for the Journal of Religion & Society
No full textReligion, Health, and Healing: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry235-261
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textThe lessons today ask us to remember the martyrs Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions. Paul, who was also martyred, reminds us that even though we may often be chained in sharing or living out the Gospel, the word of God is not chained. Though we may often suffer for our work in the faith, our suffering is not in vain. For this reason, we can give thanks to those who have suffered and died for their faith and we can also give thanks for our own suffering for the faith.|As I reflect on these lessons, I think that a very big part of what it means to share the Gospel is not just about bringing the word of God to those who haven't heard it. That is important, but encouraging those who already know of God's work in the world to persevere in their faith and to stay focused on truth is also important and often a lot harder to do. Sometimes it is just easier to start a new mission congregation in a developing country than it is to keep a 100 year old congregation together in America's heartland. Sometimes those older congregations can lose sight of what is really important and begin arguing with each other over little things. These disputes are a kind of unfaithfulness. And being in the midst of it and trying to focus on what is really important can feel like being held in chains. It can bring suffering.|So what is important? Jesus tells us that it is love. The Psalmist tells us that it is truth, humility, kindness, and constancy in keeping the commandments. Paul says it is remaining upright and acceptable to God. That can make martyrs of us all if we take it seriously. There isn't one day that goes by where we are not challenged to deny the power of the Gospel. There isn't one day where we don't back off in some way from the full glory of living out our faith by demonstrating less than what God expects from us in truth, humility, kindness, constancy, and love.|So Paul's words to us today are to encourage us to stay the course, to persevere. We remember his struggles and those of all the martyrs who remained faithful, even to death. Will we follow them to the extent that we will be imprisoned and die for our faith? Probably not. We're not all called to be martyrs. But that doesn't mean we can't hear the words of Jesus and apply all of our understanding and strength to loving the Lord, our neighbors, and ourselves at the levels God expects from us. And like Paul and Timothy, we are all called to more fully demonstrate truth, humility, kindness, constancy and love to those around us, especially in our own congregations, where we work, and in our neighborhoods and our families. So today I pray that all of us will see the challenges of our faith in our day to day lives right where we are and persevere where the going gets rough
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textAll of the lessons for today remind us that there is something quite different from the natural body and the spiritual realms of our being. But because we are so firmly locked into our natural bodies, we often let that realm of our experience dominate our realities. And despite the problems associated with our natural bodies, we like to hold on to them and would even like to have them back in the same form again when we are resurrected. We are really quite fond of our earthly selves. Paul tries to help us to get past that hang up and to think of our futures in terms of the spiritual. He tells us that we are not going to be resurrected in our earthly forms, but something a lot better. I am old enough to be pretty glad about that. My body has all sorts of aches and pains. Focusing more on the spiritual is getting a lot more appealing for me now that it is quite clear that my natural body is pretty fallible.||But just because I would rather be resurrected in a spiritual form that is not subject to the corruption, dishonor, and weakness of the natural body that I now inhabit doesn't mean that I am able to operate above the limits of the flesh in this world. I still cling to the frail flesh despite the fact that the psalmist says we have already been rescued from this weakness. If we reflect on the fact that we have already been rescued, we should feel the spiritual presence of God so much a part of us in this world that we won't fear the death of the natural body or any of the weaknesses that go with it. Reading the Psalms, especially the verses for today, can help keep us focused on our priorities here. Rather than thinking about our weaknesses, we should stay focused on walking in the spiritual presence of God. That is where we find life.|Jesus reinforces this central vocation for God's people to center ourselves in the spiritual. "Now hear this," he says. We can enjoy the presence of God and the knowledge and the mysteries of the Kingdom of God here and now in our earthly bodies if we will embrace the word of God. Jesus tells us that we need to be like the rich soil that God's word feel upon and took root, producing good fruit. We are to be careful that we do not get choked out by anxieties and pleasures of the flesh that distract us from the task of producing good fruit in the Kingdom of God. Nor should we let the word of God fall on rocky ground and not take roots. That seems straightforward enough, but it doesn't seem to help us with our fear of death; our own and those of our loved ones. We won't really hear Jesus until we get rid of our fear of death. We have to transcend the natural in favor of the spiritual in order to have eternal life.|As I reflect on this problem of our natural human condition, I am struck by how few of us really have been able to weed out the anxieties and the pleasures of the natural world that target our natural beings. Knowledge of the mysteries of the spiritual realm has been given to us in the Gospels and the ancient promises in Psalms and the parables but it is often difficult for us to understand. While all we need to do is embrace the Word of God and bear fruit, it is not that easy to do. It does indeed take perseverance. Today I pray that we as God's people will help each other persevere with generous and good hearts. Amen
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textO, to be like one of the disciples, to whom Jesus explained everything in private as the Gospel lesson in Mark tells us. What did he tell them about the Kingdom of God that he did not tell the crowds of ordinary people to whom he spoke through parables? Did he make God's message clearer to them? I don't know the answer to that. But what can be much clearer than the image of a tiny mustard seed growing to become a large plant or a kernel of corn growing to a plant that yields a thousand fold in the harvest? Even a child can understand these images of the Kingdom of God as a reality that expands miraculously as our faith grows.||But can we simply live by faith? While the idea is not complicated, the practice seems to be for most of us. We lose our confidence and our faith dims. We struggle with suffering and we draw back, seeking more certainty, more details, and more reassurance. But the Old Testament lesson and the Psalm tell us that during times of affliction, we should be even more confident that God's will and the Kingdom of God are our refuge. Even while suffering, we need to endure and continue to do the will of God to keep our lives on track. Trusting in the Lord and doing the will of God will make our steps more sure and give us more confidence in God's promises.|As I reflect on these messages, I make the connections between these lessons and the sermon I heard at my church on the first Sunday after Epiphany this year. Our pastor reminded us that we would experience times in the midst of life's distresses where we would lose our confidence in ourselves and our faith. Those distresses could shake our beings and threaten our sense of our very identities. When than happens, our pastor said, we should draw on our baptism experience and the promises God made to love us and care for us as a member of the body of Christ. Drawing closer in is how we can experience the Kingdom of God and live by faith in confidence and without fear. That enlightenment also means that we should readily and without judgment welcome others into the Kingdom through our church communities. We were reminded that if we would love each other and reassured each other of God's love, we would see the Kingdom of God grow miraculously. Today I pray that church communities everywhere could confidently love all who seek the Kingdom of God. Thy Kingdom Come. Amen
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full text|It is Lent again. And we are working on our repentance; fasting during Lent is a common activity. It helps keep us focused on our desire to access God's goodness and cleansing from our sins. But as I reflect on the lessons for today, I am reminded that fasting can get in the way of our honest desire to know God's ways. God doesn't want the outward behaviors that evidence our self-control and piety. God wants what is in our hearts: the good, the bad, and the broken. Repentance without spiritual humility is just our own self-centered self-therapy that we trot out for God's approval. It isn't evidence of an honest desire to know the Lord and it doesn't liberate us from the pain of our own shame. |Isaiah really kicks our butts today. He tells us that engaging in trivial fasts that discomfort ourselves a bit while we continue to engage in the selfish pursuits that discomfort others a lot isn't penance for anything. Giving up a bit of food while we at the same time deprive others of their sustenance is not fasting. Sharing what we have with the hungry is the kind of fast that God finds acceptable. What that means to me is that giving up chocolate for Lent, while it will be a huge discomfort, is not going to bring me any closer to God from God's perspective. It will only give me the feeling that I can gain more self-control over myself and maybe lose a few pounds for the sake of vanity. It is just about me tinkering with my own pain/gain games. |Instead, I think the lessons are saying something else to me today. Cutting everything I eat in half and giving one half to the food pantry at my church will be spiritually cleansing. Clearing out my closet and giving half of what is in there to a women's half-way house will liberate me. I'm going to stop at inviting a homeless person to live in my basement, but I can definitely find some extra blankets around the house to drop off at a homeless shelter. |As I reflect further on the lessons for today, I am pretty sure that seeking repentance should not be about seeking assurance of release from the bondage of sin and wickedness. That release is a given in the goodness of God. Rather repentance should be about seeking healing of the wounds we inflict on our own spirits and those of others from the ways in which we live apart from God. Our sacrifice should be a humble heart that acknowledges and trusts the great compassion of God to reach out and heal us through Jesus. Jesus comes to us in our pain, in our shame, where we can't impress him with what we think are our strengths and our goodness. Jesus reaches out to us and calls us to follow him. Our healing occurs when we follow. Today I pray that Lent is for all of us a greater experience of the liberation of our sins through following Jesus
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textHebrews Chapter 4:12-16 is alive with metaphors that reflect cultural attitudes and beliefs regarding human frailty and deep spiritual longings in times of need. How we recognize the difference between our human condition and the spiritual force that overcomes that condition is the product of cultural processes. As a cultural anthropologist, it is interesting to consider how my cultural ways of knowing help or get in the way of my ability to understand what the Bible says to me.||For example, when I read that "the word of God is living and active," I assume that it means God's word has the power to motivate people to act on what they read or hear through the Bible. But when I read further in verse 12, I find that the word of God is so alive and so active that it pierces to the division of the soul and spirit to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. I am not sure I know what is the division of the soul and the spirit and how that is related to the thoughts and intentions of my heart. From the perspective of my culture, I think the soul, the spirit, and the heart are all psycho-socio-religio concepts that represent the innermost dimension of the individual in a society where individuals are encouraged to keep their inner act together.|Most of us are willing to let the word of God engage us in self-reflection to discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, but not to the extent that it would pierce the division of the soul and spirit, something that would make most of us very vulnerable. We are reminded, however, that the exposure of our inner frailties is not to make us more vulnerable. It is to make us more confident. The passage in Hebrew encourages us to not be afraid. If we confess our weaknesses before God, we receive mercy and grace to address our needs. This is difficult to accept for those of us whose culture defines the human condition in terms of a self-centered and autonomous individual soul and spirit. Through our cultural emphasis on this autonomy, most of us turn away from encounters with God's word that challenge our self-control. We need to be reminded that the word of God is living and active enough to "pierce the division of the soul and spirit" to the extent that we loose this self-centered control.|In this new year, as I examine the thoughts and intentions of my heart and confess the weaknesses I find there, I look to our high priest Jesus, who sympathizes with me, for direction. In Mark, Chapter 2:17, Jesus challenges me to move away from my comfort center to identify the equivalent of sitting down with the tax collectors and sinners in my life to help bring healing to the world. I pray that I may receive mercy and find grace to discover ways to sit down and work with persons recently elected to meet the needs of the poor, the sick, and the excluded. And, I pray, that if I open the division of the soul and spirit, I can draw even nearer to the throne of grace. These are cultural metaphors, I think, for recognizing that without spiritual support, I personally feel pretty frail up against the needs of our society. What the readings for today are telling all of us is that we need to feel more confident. We can meet those needs
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full text|I increasingly think of Christmas Eve as Covenant Night. It is the night in which we retell the story of the covenant the Lord made with the people Israel to our children in hopes that they will remember it and tell it to their children just as our parents told it to us. On this night, we remember the covenant the Lord made with David and the people Israel to dwell with them in houses where they would be safe and not disturbed. That might seem difficult to trust for people who were just victims of the terrible tornado frenzy that passed through the lower American Midwest this month. They were certainly not safe in their homes and their lives have been greatly disturbed by the horrific winds. It was even difficult for me last Christmas when my house caught on fire on December 11th and nearly burned to the ground. But the covenant God made with his people was not just material homes. It was something much bigger than that. I was about God's love for us. I was fortunate to have good insurance. A talented team of crafts persons rebuilt my house. Others will not be so fortunate, but the message of this night is that there is still good reason to trust in the kindness of God. We can help keep that trust alive by sharing God's love with those who are having difficulty trusting in God because of difficulties in their lives. We can keep the covenant alive by reaffirming our trust and sharing God's compassion for others.|We know that the covenant is more than just about our homes and our safety from enemies. In Psalm 89, we read that the covenant God made with David also confirmed the posterity of the people Israel for all generations through David. On this night, we can sing of the Lord's promised faithfulness and kindness forever. Despite what is happening in our lives, we too can proclaim the goodness of the Lord's covenant with us. On this night, we celebrate how this ancient covenant is reaffirmed through God's deep abiding love for us in the birth of Jesus. The prophets kept this message of the holy covenant alive, and our ancestors remembered it. We can be grateful that they told and retold it through the ages in all sorts of difficult circumstances and troubled times. And it is with hope that we retell it to our children to keep it alive.|Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist and a Jewish priest knew this covenant of God's mercy well. He too told it to his son and Luke retold it again for us. It keeps getting more special in its meaning for the people of God. On this night, the night of Jesus's birth, the covenant took on even more compassion and tenderness. The ancient covenant becomes more than protection from our enemies and freedom to worship without fear. There are too many people around the world who still do not have that. What we celebrate tonight is a new covenant that gives us knowledge of salvation and forgiveness of our sins. We can all have that. No enemy, no illness, no pestilence, and no storm can take that away from us. We can sing the praises of a God who gives us a new covenant that shines light on us in the darkness of our sin and guides us in the way of peace. This knowledge of salvation is indeed a very great light. I pray that it shines into each of our souls tonight and always and gives us the strength and compassion to share hope and tenderness with those who walk in darkness for a wide variety of reasons. That is how we keep Christmas alive
Daily Reflections (Meditations) on the Scriptures from the Roman Catholic Lectionary.
No full textWe are at the beginning of a new year, a time to think about the importance of our basic foundational values and beliefs as they guide our actions going forward. It is helpful at this time to read that God's "works were accomplished at the foundation of the world." That inspires me to reflect enthusiastically on the Psalm for today as I think about what I might attempt to do in 2019. The Psalmist encourages us to not forget the works of the Lord! Let's put our hope in God! Let's aim to keep his commandments and keep our hearts steadfast in faith!|Now, what does that have to do with our usual resolutions to lose weight, get more exercise, eat less sugar, watch less television, and get to bed earlier? Studies show that those resolutions are doomed for failure. Is the same true of our desires to get closer to God? I certainly hope not! I think the key difference here is that when we are united in faith with those who listen to the Good News, we can have a great deal more confidence in our best intentions. All those superficial new year's resolutions are not based on any foundational values and beliefs or a sense of shared community. They have very little to do with the faith values we learned from our parents and wish to pass down to our children. Instead, they are usually shallow and unreflective. They don't get at any sort of transformative experiences like the one that Jesus talks about in Mark today. Jesus says, "pick up your bed and walk" to a lame man. That message unifies us in our faith because it is about the Good News for all of us, that our sins are forgiven, something we should have learned from our ancestors and something we should share with our children. |I learned to think about that story in this way when I heard Reverend Cecil Williams at Glide United Methodist Church in the tenderloin district of San Francisco preach on that passage one Sunday when I was in college. He said the story is not about our individual infirmities, it is about our attitudes. It isn't about what caused them, either. It doesn't matter. What matters is our attitude toward God in accepting that our sins are forgiven. We all must think about what blocks us from remembering the deeds of God in sending Jesus to free us from our sins. Because we are sinners, we are all cripples at some levels in our lives. Jesus liberates us from our spiritual handicaps and moves us forward in partnership with the Good News! The miracles are not just that Jesus healed individuals, but that he heals us all in the forgiveness of sins!|At the beginning of a new year, we have a fresh opportunity to align our desires with a steadfast faith and hope in God by reflecting on our basic foundational values and beliefs. How can our assurance that our sins are forgiven draw on the strength of the Lord, in which we put our hope, instead of our weak human resolutions? We might not lose weight or walk more, but we certainly just may have a transformative experience if we remove the barriers of our sins that keep us from receiving and accepting the healing experiences that lead to steadfast faithfulness and stronger spirits! That is how we will have more abundant lives in the new year
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