Lenten Journey: A Future and a Hope

John 8:1-11

For Reflection...

Now they stand face to face, the Woman and the Judge.  He has established the terms:  "'Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her'" (v. 7).  What will he do now?

We've heard the story before.  Even if we haven't, we don't expect the Jesus we've come to know to pick up a stone.  But he could.

He is in a position to condemn.  He is right with God himself, without sin.  The law provides for this particular circumstance.  He has said that he has come not to abolish but to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17).

Here's the fulfillment:  "'Neither do I condemn you.  Go, [and] from now on do not sin any more'" (v. 11).  Not a stoning but instead a release and an invitation.

What can it mean?  Adulterers merit stoning.  But Jesus does not see an adulterer; he sees a woman with a face and a name, a history -- and a future.  He knows that she can be more, is already more, than her sin.  His hope for her transcends the limits of the law.

In Romans 7, Paul explains,

...if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin....I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.  For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. (vv 7b, 9-11)

In Jesus, we do not bypass the good law (Romans 7:7), but, rather, we move through the death that comes to us in the law into new life (cf. Isaiah 43:19ff).  In spite of our guilt, we are given a future and a new hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

For Entering In...

- As you become aware of being in the presence of God, notice -- does God feel close or far?  Do you feel connected or disconnected to God?  To your own heart?  Don't judge, just allow yourself to be wherever you are today.

- Reflect on these questions:

• What laws do you feel bound to live under?  Secular laws?  Religious laws?  Which of those laws to you feel you have upheld?  Which have you violated?

• When have you expected -- or felt you deserved -- condemnation for some wrong you have done?  What happened?  Did you receive what you expected?  Or did you receive unexpected mercy?  Either way, how did that feel?

• Have you been in a position to judge someone else?  What would it mean for your hope to transcend the limits of the just law?  Do you feel that would be fair or unfair?  Why?

• How has the law been death to you?  Where have you experienced some form of spiritual death in relation to the dictates of law and your success or failure in meeting them?

• What is it that you want Jesus to hope for in you?  What is the future that he sees for you?  Can you imagine a future more filled with abundance and life than you've dared to dream of?

- Spend several minutes allowing your body and mind to be at rest.  If thoughts come, let them go by.  What if the only thing that mattered was your being, not your thinking or feeling or doing?

Lenten Journey: Fifth Sunday - Mercy

Scripture Readings for the Day

Isaiah 43:16-21

Psalm 126

Philippians 3:8-14

John 8:1-11

For Reflection...

We're down to our final week of Lent.  We stand with the woman caught in adultery before the judgment seat.  In a week we will watch from the crowd as Jesus before Pilate stands in our place.

Our judge is not Pilate nor any of the world's Pilates, but Jesus.  With the woman caught in adultery, we appear before him knowing that we have sinned in ways we cannot deny.  We deserve judgment.  Do we believe we can receive mercy instead?

Can we, with the Lord, forget the past and see that the God is doing something new in us (Isaiah 43:18-19)?  Can we, with Paul, forget our worldly pretensions, leave them behind as rubbish, and strain toward what lies ahead (Philippians 3)?  Are we ready to make this final turn toward Jerusalem?

For Entering In...

- As you become present to God, notice how you are feeling about God, about yourself.  We will have times when we feel close and connected, times when God feels far or our own hearts feel inaccessible.  Welcome whatever comes today.

- Reflect on these questions:

• During this final week of Lent, reflect again on your experience of fasting, if you have chosen to fast.  Is this a practice that you might continue into the future?  How might fasting be supporting your intention to draw closer to God?  If you have not fasted thus far, consider picking a day and fasting from something on just that day.  What do you notice about your experience?

• Have you been giving alms, money or other aid, as a Lenten practice?  Spend some time this week noticing who around you is in need.  In your prayer time, ask God what God might be calling you to do in service.  No one of us can do everything.  To what are you called?  To give some money?  To offer a listening ear?  Or something else?

• When, where, and how have you been praying?  Where do you feel you stand in relationship to God today?  Where does God stand in relationship to you?

• Have you been using a prayer word to keep you connected to God as you go about your daily activities?  That word is only a reminder that God is ever present, loving you, calling you to awareness of that love.

• How has your Lenten journey been so far?  From where have you come?  Where are you going?  Where is God calling you?  Where do you wish to be?

- Spend several minutes allowing your body and mind to be at rest.  If thoughts come, let them go by.  What if the only thing that mattered was your being, not your thinking or feeling or doing?

Lenten Journey: God's Will for Me

For Reflection...

We know that all of us are called to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.  That is God's will for all of us.  But how might I discern what fruit I am called to bear?  What is God's will for me?

In 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, Paul says, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone."  We're all called to bear fruit, all called according to the same Spirit, but not all gifted or called to serve or to act in the same way.

There are common fruits, "fruits of the Spirit":  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).  These offer us a framework, a rubric against which to measure our own pursuits.  If we are using our gifts, and our actions and service are yielding these fruits of the Spirit, we are surely in accord with God's will.

Still, that leaves us a wide playing field.  There are many paths that may lead to love, joy, peace, and the rest.  Which one am I called to take?

As we have pursued this Lenten journey of prayer, opening ourselves to be drawn ever more deeply into the heart of God, we may find that we are growing in awareness of our own hearts, where God dwells.  As good as it is in and of itself for us to be in relationship with God -- it is, after all, what we are made for -- there is a public dimension to that relationship.  Remember Isaiah 49:6?  We are called to be a light to the nations.

Our light -- which is another way of talking about the fruit we produce -- is meant not to illuminate our minds only, but to be a beacon to the world, leading others into the healing, reconciling, saving Kingdom of God.

As we deepen our walk with God, we are ever being transformed into Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), who is the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15).  It is that transformation, the cultivation of the soil from which we grow, that creates the conditions that allow us to be fruitful.

For Entering In...

- Spend a few moments in silence becoming present to yourself and to God.

- Reflect on these questions:

• There is no gift that God gives that is wasted; all of our gifts are needed (see 1 Corinthians 12:14-25). Think about what you do, what you've done, what you love to do.  What are the gifts that you have been given?  What are you good at?  What about you do others affirm?

• Back when we were looking at sin, we asked this question:  "If it is true that all of creation is broken by sin, what do you see as the most egregious manifestations of that brokenness?  In what circumstances does your heart most cry out for God to act in healing and saving ways?"  If you haven't yet answered this question, answer it now.

• Theologian Frederick Buechner said, "The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."  Spend some time reflecting on your gifts together with the broken places your heart most yearns to see healed.  What might God be saying to you about your personal call?

• God's will for me is not only about the broad contours of my vocation.  It can be about how I am living my life day to day.  As you listen to God in the stillness, is there something about your daily life, where you are and what you are doing today, that is called to your attention?  What do you know?  What do you wonder about what God might be saying to you?

- We are growing to see our time apart, our quiet time with God, not as a discreet time of prayer, but as a reminder that all our life is prayer.  Rather than ending your prayer time, can you move out of your quiet reflection carrying with you into the rest of your day the knowledge that you are deeply connected to God in your soul in all that you do?

Lenten Journey: Messiah

For Reflection...

Jesus was a faithful Jew, but Christian history has often downplayed, even denigrated, the Jewishness of Jesus.  On the other hand, some people are adamant in saying that Jesus was nothing more than a faithful Jew, a prophet or maybe a wise teacher.  The latter group may claim that Jesus never meant to found a new religion apart from Judaism, that he expected Judaism to carry on as it had before he came on the scene, while the former suggests that Jesus himself disavowed his Jewishness,.

If we adhere to the view of a non-Jewish Jesus, we find that we have to throw out the Old Testament.  With the latter perspective, the New Testament has to go.

There is a middle way.  This view understands Jesus as the very Jewish Messiah who embodied and brought to completion all that Israel was meant to accomplish through its election.

Remember, God made creation, and humans in particular, to be in relationship with God, even as God knew that things would go terribly wrong.  God's plan to make things right always culminated in Jesus, who, as John the Evangelist avows, was with God "in the beginning" (see John 1:1 and Genesis 1:1).  Humans are made in this image, the image of the Word who would be made flesh (John 1:14) in the fullness of time (Galatians 4:4).

Humans' election as stewards of creation prepares the way for the election of the remnant of the nation of Israel -- which itself is reduced to a remnant after the Babylonians conquer the land and exile the people; only a small remainder of Jews would return to the Promised Land under the rule of Cyrus the Persian, and these few would need to carry the responsibility of being the "light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6).  Out of this remnant comes the final remnant, the one man, Jesus of Nazareth.

Both Matthew (1:1ff) and Luke (3:23ff) offer us a genealogy of Jesus, planting him firmly within Jewish history.  The title he bears in throughout the New Testament, Christ, is a Greek translation of a Hebrew word, anglicized as Messiah, which means anointed one.

In Israel anointing was for the king, the high priest, and the prophets.  The king is the head of the nation and its figurehead, standing in for and representing the whole.  The high priest is a stand-in too, offering up the sacrifice to God for me and for the nation as a whole.  The prophet faces the other direction speaking to the people, to us, on God's behalf, almost always by acting out that message (see, for example, Jeremiah 18 and Hosea 1).  In Jesus, the anointed one, Messiah, Christ, we get all three.

At last, God's purpose is to be accomplished.  One man will stand as the representative for all of humanity, offering up the sacrifice, enacting God's message of reconciling love.

This One accepts his Messianic office by passing through the waters of baptism and thereby identifying entirely with humankind's universal and personal, individual enslavement to sin. Then he is driven into the desert, exactly where we are, where we've been waiting for him.

For Entering In...

- Enter your quiet space.  Take a deep breath or two and spend a few moments becoming present to yourself.  Notice how it feels to be in your body to be in this place at this time.

- Invite God to be present with you.

- Reflect on these questions:

• What have you thought about Jesus?  How have you understood him in relationship to what you believe or don't believe about God?  What, if anything, does your view of Jesus have to do with your experience of church?  Of the world?  Of your own life?

• Do you think of yourself as a Christian?  What does that mean to you?

• In the ancient world most people lived under the rule of some sort of monarchy.  What might it mean for us, for you, today, to consider Jesus as a king?

• Based on what you know about Jesus' ministry, make a list of some of the signs that he enacted -- e.g., healing the blind (John 9), multiplying the loaves and fishes (Mark 6), turning water to wine (John 2), raising the dead (Mark 5).  Choose one or two and reflect:  What does this action reveal to you about who God is and what God has to say to you?

• As we journey through Lent, we will eventually arrive at Good Friday, the passion of Jesus, and the cross.  We will look at Jesus as both the high priest and the object of sacrifice.  For today, consider this:  What might you be called to offer back to God from what you've been given?  How would that sacrifice look?  Is it something you need to surrender altogether, or something for which you need to offer up a sacrifice of thanksgiving (Psalm 50:23)?  

- When you have answered these questions in your thoughts or in writing, pause and again become present to yourself and to God.  What do you notice?

Lenten Journey: Plan A

For Reflection...

All too often I feel like our Christian theology sets up the Jesus story as God's "Plan B."  That version of the story goes something like this:  God created everything, including people.  God gave people free will.  God wanted us to be in right relationship with Him, but we abused our free will and destroyed that relationship.  Uh, oh!  God's plan was ruined!  God needed to start all over with a new idea, a "Plan B."  Plan B, then, is Jesus on the cross, often understood as the sacrifice to placate a justly angry God.

The problem with this story is evident from the first page.  How could an all-knowing God not have seen sin coming?  Surely, surely we must assume that in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, God knew how the story of humans and our free will to be -- or not be -- in relationship with God would unfold.

In this version of the story, Jesus is Plan A.

The key to unraveling Plan A is to see the underlying pattern of election in God's Master Plan.  In the Plan A version, God recognized that we humans generally would fail in our God-given mission to steward creation.  So God's plan included calling a little group of humans, a remnant of the whole bunch of us, to carry on with the Plan.  That remnant is called the nation of Israel.  God calls Abram, whom he renames Abraham (Genesis 12), and from his seed and stock, God raises up a nation who will do what all of humanity was meant to do -- stand in the gap between God and the rest of creation.

Notice, God's plan was not for Israel just to be God's chosen people, but for Israel to be God's chosen so that they could intercede between God and the rest of humanity and the rest of creation (see, importantly, Isaiah 49:6).  Israel's election is for a purpose, to fulfill God's original role for all of humanity.  But just like the rest of humanity, Israel itself decides to go its own way (see, for example, the indictments contained in every prophetic book in the Old Testament).  Once again God's purpose goes unfulfilled.

Or so it seems.  God has a final move.

Out of the remnant Israel, God will raise up one faithful Israelite, that is, one human, a new Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), to do what humans were meant to do all along -- to bridge the gap, to intercede between God and humans.  This One, the final remnant of all of humanity, will be anointed like a king to stand at the head of the nation and of the human race.  He will be a king who functions like a priest; by definition, a priest stands in the space between Man and the gods and offers some sacrifice from the earth back to heaven, thus restoring any discord in the relationship between them.

Thus do we come to Jesus.

For Entering In...

- Spend a few moments in the quiet becoming present to yourself.  Notice how it feels to be in your body to be here, now.

- Invite God to be present with you.  Notice what it feels like to be in God's presence.

- Theology is the study of God.  Every one of us, when we consider God at all, is engaged in doing theology.  Our theology, whether we're atheists or theists, Buddhists or Christians, monotheists or pantheists, matters.  It defines how we think about God, ourselves, and the world.  With that in mind, reflect on these questions:

• How have you come to your personal theology, your understanding of who God is and what God has done and/or is doing in the world?

• Are you acquainted with the stories of Israel in the Old Testament?  If not, consider reading through one or more books, beginning with Genesis (skipping over the genealogies, if you prefer) and Exodus and the books of 1 and 2 Samuel.  These will give you a flavor for some of the more engaging pre-historical and historical narratives.  Choose a translation of the Bible that resonates for you.*

• The Bible is often called the story of the history of salvation.  Having taken some time to reflect on temptation and our personal and collective sin, what are your thoughts about our need for salvation?  How have you come to understand the problem of sin for you personally or for the world?  Or do you see it as a problem?

- It has been a week since we began this Lenten journey together.  As you consider the time you have spent in prayer, reflection, and writing:

• Have you been able to set aside some daily quiet time for yourself?  If so, how has that been for you?  If not, why not?

• Is there anything new you have learned about yourself?  About God?

*If you would like more suggestions about where to start in reading from the Bible, e-mail me:  chris@livingthetruthinlove.org.

Water into Wine

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When 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 and 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.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. - John 2:1-11

When the mother of Jesus tells the servants at the wedding feast,  "Do whatever he tells you," I wonder what she expected Jesus would do.  I wonder what she hoped he would do.

We can understand this story literally, as a party with a problem.  It seems like there's always a problem at a wedding.  There are so many details that can go awry.  At my wedding the air conditioner in the reception hall was on the fritz and it was 100 degrees.  At my sister's wedding, the pillars on the wedding cake slid, making the otherwise beautiful confection look a bit like the leaning tower of Pisa.  This ancient wedding in Cana would have gone on for several days, during which time the wine would have kept flowing to entertain the guests.  No wine?  Problem.

We can understand the story like that -- Jesus saved the party! -- but I don't think we're meant to.  I cannot imagine that the mother of Jesus, under any circumstances, was coming to her son to say, "Since you are the incarnate Son of God, please perform your first miracle by turning water into wine."

The problem, as John hints, is not one of ancient hospitality, but of prophetic expectation and fulfillment.

The Christian church, since the earliest days has seen the Messiah (Christ) as the bridegroom and the church as his bride (cf. especially Revelations 19:5 and 21:2).  Jesus himself uses the metaphor in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1-13).  Wedding feasts are one of those biblical motifs that should cause us to prick up our ears and wonder:  Is something more going on here?

Another hint is those big jars which Jesus orders to be filled with water.  They're not just jars.  They are, John tells us, "for the Jewish rites of purification."  They were filled with water to be used for ritual washing, washing prescribed  by God's law, which made someone who was ritually unclean, clean again.  That's the sort of water Jesus is turning into wine.

Finally, there is this clue that something more than a failed party is at stake:  "My hour has not yet come," says Jesus, at first.  What does his "hour" portend?  Here we need to look backward, from later in John's gospel.  In John 17:1, Jesus declares, before his arrest, "‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you..'"

Although Jesus' hour has not yet come, his prophetic action at Cana points ahead toward the Son's glorification of the Father, the saving act of Jesus death and resurrection that fulfills the law (cf. Matthew 5:17).  His turning the water of purification into wine for the wedding feast is a prophetic sign of fulfillment.  We no longer need the ritual purification (and sacrifice) prescribed by the law.  The fulfillment anticipated by the law has come.  It's time for the wedding.

The mother of Jesus in John is not the personal "Mary" of Luke, but, perhaps, the symbol of all of Israel and its fervent expectation of salvation from exile with the coming of God as king.  See this excerpt from Isaiah 62 which is paired with today's gospel:

² The nations shall see your vindication,   and all the kings your glory;and you shall be called by a new name   that the mouth of the Lord will give. ³ You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,   and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. ⁴ You shall no more be termed Forsaken,   and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,   and your land Married;for the Lord delights in you,   and your land shall be married. ⁵ For as a young man marries a young woman,   so shall your builder marry you,and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,   so shall your God rejoice over you.

Israel is the bride whose restoration and redemption are likened to being joined to the bridegroom in a great wedding feast.

When the mother of Jesus calls upon her son to act and tells the stewards to "Do whatever he tells you," is she not anticipating this restoration that is symbolized by the wedding feast?  She is pointing to Jesus -- which is what prophets do, point to what God is doing or about to do.

"Do whatever he tells you."  It doesn't matter what it might be.  Whatever it is, he will cause the wine to flow.  Then we can join in the feast.