Long time no...write

I have been way. Not that I have gotten a lot of "Where ARE you?"'s from people.

All I can say is that between final revisions of my new book (Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, Upper Room, November), and a couple of other writing assignments and the post-Easter blues, and vacation, and being a pastor... it's about all I can do to update my Facebook page (Thomas Ray Steagald) everyday or two.

Join me there, and I will try to do better with blogging.

Good Friday

Each day in Holy Week I am offering these meditations on the Gospel lesson assigned for that day. They will appear in my forthcoming Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, to be published in November by Upper Room Books.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42


Friday has dawned but it is still night, the darkness and the shadows growing all the deeper as the sun makes its way toward noon. After their final supper together, Jesus and eleven of his disciples had gone to dark Gethsemane where the moon and the last of the stars was extinguished by the betrayal of the other disciple. Judas had left the table, took himself freshly washed feet to meet a contingent of Roman soldiers and Temple guards. Their torches brought garish light to the garden; wild, misshapen shadows marched to where Judas said Jesus would be. There was Sacrament on Judas’ breath when he kissed Jesus —a kiss of identification, and death.

A fevered skirmish between the sleepy disciples and the High Priest’s posse, was quickly quelled by Jesus, the peacemaker, who also mended the wounded ear of Malchus. Then, Jesus had surrendered himself while the disciples fled.

Alone, except for his arrestors, Jesus was taken to Annas, the father-in-law of the High Priest Caiaphas. Peter had followed at a distance, found himself also being interrogated. As Jesus was questioned by Annas he was scrutinized by the maid. “Are you not one of them?” Others questioned him, too, three times asked Peter if he were not one of the disciples, but each time Peter said, “I am not.” The cock crowed after the third denial, but not to greet the day.

Inside, Jesus’ interrogation turned nasty when, upon answering one Annas’ questions, he was struck in the face by one of the policemen. “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong,” Jesus said. “But if I have spoken the truth, why do you strike me?” Perhaps, then as now, he was struck precisely because he does speak the truth. Jesus was bound and carted-off to Caiaphas.

After a brief visit to the High Priest himself Jesus was taken to Pilate, the Roman governor. Pilate seems pitiable, almost: an inquisitor defending himself to the Judge. It is Pilate who is on trial, not Jesus. But when Pilate found no reason to charge, must lest hold Jesus, the will of the crowd rendered Pilate powerless yet again: he could not protect Jesus. The crowd demanded Barabas’ release, and it was granted. They demanded Jesus’ death, and Pilate recused himself, acceded to their wishes. Jesus was flogged, mocked, condemned to death.

About noon, while lambs were being slaughtered at the Temple for the Passover meal, Jesus was stripped, nailed to a cross and put on hideous display for anyone passing by to see. Defying the crowds at last Pilate commissioned a sign to be hung on the cross: “The King of the Jews.” It was written in three languages, so that no one missed it. But what did Pilate mean? “This is what we do to trouble makers?” Or did he maybe believe it himself?

Soon it was over, finished. Jesus died in only three hours, but continued his earthly work even to the end. With almost his last breath he did what he always did: reordered lives and relationships: “She is now your mother,” he said of Mary to the disciple he loved. And to Mary he said in turn, “He is now your son.” That was Jesus ministry from the very start—giving his followers to each other in new ways.
It is to this precise moment that everything prior has led. And we would turn away from it, partly because we know the story so well And partly because we really haven’t the first clue as to what it all means. How does this death, this death bring life?

Many have tried to put words around it, bring sense to it or purpose out of it. Better, perhaps, to fall silent. Or turn to the Psalms. Jesus used a few of his last breaths to quote the beginning of Psalm 22, as a way to interpret his own experience of that moment—though only Matthew and Mark have the stomach to remember that he did.

Maybe we turn to another Psalm, not to interpret Jesus’ death so much as a to understand the nature of our own lives.

Lord, let me know my end,
and what is the measure of my days;
Let me know how fleeting my life is!
You have made my days a few handbreadths,
And my lifetime is as nothing in thy sight.

Surely everyone stands as a mere breath .
Surely everybody goes about like a shadow.
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
They heap up, and do not know who will gather.
And now, O Lord, what do I wait for?
My hope is in you…

Hear my prayer, O Lord,
And give ear to my cry.
Do not hold your peace at my tears. Psalm 39:4-6, 12a)

Prompt

How do you react to this statement: “A faith unequal to death is a faith also unequal to life”? Do you see our culture as “death-denying”? How might “knowing our end” and “dying well” be a kind of prophetic testimony to our culture?

Maundy Thursday

Each day in Holy Week I am offering these meditations on the Gospel lesson assigned for that day. They will appear in my forthcoming Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, to be published in November by Upper Room Books.


The Footwashing

Exodus 12:1-4 (5-10) 11-14
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
I Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-7, 31b-35


Love is a light, but reveals shadows.

God gave all things into Jesus hands, even the feet of the disciples. The story before is breathtaking: Jesus, Word of God and Voice of Creation, silently kneeling, all but naked, before his feckless disciples. "Having loved them," the Evangelist says, "he loved them till the end,” and who can even begin to imagine the logic of either clause? But in love he touches them—not just their minds or hearts but also their dusty and increasingly antsy feet, bestows this touch as one last act of love and compassion, of utter devotion and loyalty to them. And he does so in full awareness that their loyalty will fade like mist.

The disciples and the promises they made in the gathering dark—to stay with Jesus, even fight and die with him if it came to that—will disappear into the shadows of Gethsemane, evaporate at the first glint of Roman steel in Temple torchlight. On freshlywashed feet they will abandon him. With his Body and Blood still on their tongue they will betray him. His most vocal supporter will deny him, if with a terrible, truthful word: "I do not know the man." Never did, really.

Will he? Ever? Any of them? Any of us? Ever? Someday?

Jesus the Lord, loves and serves his friends in this almost-too-much-to-take-in way. And then Jesus gives them this almost-too-much-to-give-out commandment, a new commandment and mandate (and thus, maundus, Latin for command, and Maundy Thursday)—that they love one another just as he has loved them. Not only the way he has just loved them, but in all the ways Jesus had loved and them and did, from the beginning to the end. One could spend life, a ministry, an academic career trying to plumb the content and ethical implications of Jesus’ last command.
God gave all things into Jesus hands, even the feet of the disciples. And he left this word: “I have given you an example: If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Primitive Baptists and the Brethren practice footwashing as a Sacrament. We might wish the rest of us would. The practice meets the requirements, after all: it was instituted by Jesus, and it does convey grace.

Still, the grace footwashing conveys can be overwhelming—too much grace, if there is such a thing. Light can blind eyes accustomed to the shadows.

And so it comes as no surprise when footwashing services are poorly attended, when even the most faithful say, with their words or absence, “You shall never touch my feet.”

It is no surprise when even the faithful keep their distance, keep their feet, their hands, their hearts and minds mostly to themselves, hide in the shadows of resistance. Putting ourselves in Jesus’ hands changes things, changes us. Easier to be who we are, even if it is in the dark.

“If I do not wash your feet, you have not part in me,” Jesus says, and we know at once that distance is not an option in discipleship. We have to come close, have to let him have his way with us, have to let him bathe us, and not only our feet.

Prompt

How is the love of Jesus, and of the church, uncomfortable for you? Do you wish for such intimacy, with Jesus and others, as Jesus desires? How would that look day-to-day?

Wednesday in Holy Week

Each day in Holy Week I am offering these meditations on the Gospel lesson assigned for that day. They will appear in my forthcoming Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, to be published in November by Upper Room Books.

Scandalous Devotion

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 70
Hebrews 12:1-3
John 13:21-32 (12:1-11)


Lazarus had been dead, but was alive and eating dinner once again in Bethany where his sisters were giving a party in honor of Jesus. Martha served, as she always seems to do. And Mary was at Jesus’ feet—again—where she always seemed to be. This time, though, she was not his student but his embalmer.

Jesus was alive, still, of course, but not for much longer, if only he and maybe Mary seemed to know or sense it. Or perhaps it was with her gift that night the way it sometimes is with ours: we give what we give and we think it means one thing, but when the gift is received it signifies something else again. It is hard to know, sometimes, about things.

It is hard to know about people, too, and Judas, not least. He was the treasurer, John says, and also a thief. Maybe it was all just as simple as that: that Judas cared only about money, was as cold and heartless as we have been catechized. But here and there are hints, whispers, that maybe there was another side to him.

The Last Supper, for instance: the disciples wondered if, in honor of the feast, Jesus has told him to go and give something to poor. Which is to say, maybe even the disciples knew of his sympathy for the less-fortunate, knew that Jesus would trust him with such a task, that this was not the first time Judas had done such a thing or made such provision.

There is also this moment in Bethany, when with Lazarus eating and Martha serving, Mary embarrassed herself for love of the man who had raised her brother from the dead. Judas was scandalized, of course. But is that a sign of his hypocrisy, or of devotion?

No one spoke when Mary took her place at his feet, in company. But no self- or tradition-respecting woman would do such a thing. In front of her sister, maybe. Maybe. But in full view of the neighbors? Never.

Taking her hair down in public? No one speaks again, though the air is getting thick. A woman took her hair down only in private, and then only as a sign of deep intimacy—a sign that she “found her man.” Which is to say, for Mary to anoint Jesus’ feet in this way was as scandalous an act as Jesus’ washing his disciples feet a couple of nights later—and perhaps she gave him the idea.

The perfume? Pure nard. Expensive. Used for embalming. In a costly jar which Mary broke as regretlessly as she offered the rest of her scandalous devotion, her heart full to breaking with love and thanks and, also, I suspect, fear—the sense, if not the knowledge exactly, of what was coming.

And Judas could no longer hold his tongue. “This perfume should have been sold,” he said, “and the proceeds given to the poor.” The Evangelist cries foul, of course, and maybe Judas’ statement is simply disingenuous. But what if he had overheard, and taken to heart, the word of Jesus to the rich young man? What if Judas considered those words to be the Rabbi’s plain command: that if you have a treasure, you sell it and give it to the poor (Luke 18:22). That is the way to be perfect, Jesus had said.

And so Judas may indeed have seen Mary’s act not only as waste, but also as disobedient disrespect of their honored guest’s teaching.

More patiently than he might have, he told Judas to hold his peace, to be still. “There is a time for devotion,” he said, just as there is a time for sacrifice. There is a time for scandalous devotion, even, which is a different kind of selfless gift.

If anything, Jesus’ heart was fuller than Mary’s. His heart, too, would soon be broken for love of his friends, as Mary had broken the alabaster jar for love of him, his grace pouring out onto those he loved. The sweet aroma of his sacrifice still fills the world.

A broken jar; a broken heart; a broken body—each in their own ways scandalous acts of unaccountable love and devotion.

But what of Judas? There is the disquieting comfort in the story from a couple of nights later, at another supper, just Jesus and his closest followers. When he says, “One of you will betray me,” none of them seem to know who he means, at least not at first. They do not immediately think of Judas but rather ask in turn, “Lord, am I the one?”

It is easy to blame Judas, of course. And maybe he was just as cold and heartless as we have been taught to believe. What is harder is to ask whether we, each of us, might be the one. Hard to make that confession.

Prompt

Have you ever demonstrated “scandalous devotion”? Have you ever prayed, “Lord, am I the one?” How have such experiences changed your spiritual journey?

Tuesday in Holy Week

Each day in Holy Week I am offering these meditations on the Gospel lesson assigned for that day. They will appear in my forthcoming Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, to be published in November by Upper Room Books.

Oblivion

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 71:1-14
I Corinthians 1:18-31
John 12:20-36

There were essentially “three crowds” casting their shadows around Jesus during Holy Week. The first crowd were the users, those who just wanted something from Jesus, whether a personal miracle or political transformation—consider theirs the shadow of selfishness. These hailed him outside the city on Palm Sunday, wanted him to seize power and, when he achieved it, spread the wealth. Even some of Jesus’ own disciples were in this crowd at one time or the other: James and John had said, "Lord, grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at the left, when you come into your kingdom."

It could be that the Greeks in today’s gospel reading, Gentile God-fearers, perhaps, were themselves seeking audience for that very same reason: to ask something of Jesus, some sign or service. Whatever it was they were asking, Philip’s reporting of it told Jesus that the time had come.

Just as the arrival of the Gentile Magi signals that the one born King of the Jews was also Savior of the world, these Greeks’ request reveals that the one to be crucified as a threat to peace is actually its Prince.

A second crowd around Jesus comprised the abusers. Theirs is the shadow of malevolence. They hated Jesus and his message, wanted him gone and good riddance. Some of them—and perhaps Judas is to be accounted here—may have been believers at the first, following Jesus and welcoming his teaching. By Holy Week, though, they have rejected him, whether for his peaceful, turn-the-other cheek kind of gospel they considered too docile in the face of Roman occupation, or for his uncompromising God-first platform that seemed too radical a message for the current climate and a danger to the political détente. In either case, as the cheers of the Palm Sunday crowd faded, these malevolent voices amped-up and won the day.

The third and by far largest of the crowds were those who were…unaware. Dwelling in the shadow of oblivion they did not attend the parade on Sunday. They were not at the Temple for the “cleansing” or the debates. They were just too busy with life, with children, with work, with stuff, with whatever it was they were busy with to take much notice at all of anything going on.

A friend concluded his Holy Week sermon by citing the last line of O Sacred Head Now Wounded: “O let me never, never outlive my love for Thee." He confessed that the phrase had haunted him his "conscious spiritual life," wondering what the hymn-writer might have meant, exactly, by that phrase. Was he thinking about death, praying that God would not let him live so long as to grow cold in his religious affections? Or was he acknowledging his place in that third shadow, in that third crowd where most of us find ourselves—so busy with life and its stuff that we are in danger of "outliving" our love to Jesus?

Prompt

In which crowd do you find yourself? In what way does that shadow darken your spiritual path?

Monday in Holy Week

Each day in Holy Week I am offering these meditations on the Gospel lesson assigned for that day. They will appear in my forthcoming Shadows, Darkness and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus, to be published in November by Upper Room Books.

Spring Cleaning

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 36:5-11
Hebrews 9:11-15
John 2:13-22 (John 12:1-11)

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the navel of the universe, said some, while others said it was just as turned-in on itself, a little hole full of filth and intrigue, graft and grime.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who murders the prophets—and the one hailed as the prophet from Nazareth will be only the latest.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who knows not the things that make for peace. Who does not realize the time of her visitation when Jesus comes to her, humbly and riding on a donkey or two.

When Jesus arrived in the Holy City, full as it was of unholy alliances, to Matthew’s memory it was the first time, and also the last, that Jesus had or would visit the Jerusalem. Luke recounts two visits: when Jesus was circumcised, and when he amazed the teachers at age twelve. John’s recollection, however, is that, like most observant Jews, Jesus had been a more or less regular visitor to the city and also to the Temple. Jesus had taught there, healed there, too, and more than once. He was familiar with the place and its particulars.

In Jesus’ time, the Temple represented both God’s bountiful provision and the also the Romans’ stifling occupation. The archetypal symbol of Jewish freedom, the Temple had gradually become emblematic of the parasitic complicity between the Romans and the Temple authorities. The Romans demanded tribute—protection money. Taxes collected at the Temple were a chief source of the revenue.

The complicity was compounded with idolatry: the money intended for YHWH, King of the Universe, blessed be He, wound-up in the coffers of Tiberius, self-proclaimed god of all the world. Meanwhile, the religious leaders, concerned above all else to protect the Temple itself, acceded as the increasingly oppressive purpose of the Temple was monetized.

Money changing was perfectly legal, of course—and a real service, it could always be argued, for those who traveled long distances to worship. But profit had had overtaken prayer as the Temple’s primary enterprise. Business had subsumed the sacred. And on that Monday, Jesus tore up the place. He cleaned, as it were, God’s House.

His actions that day recall other reformers in Jewish history, Kings Hezekiah and Josiah, especially. During each of their reigns the Temple had become cluttered with stuff—booths, people, furniture and behaviors that did not belong in God’s sanctuary. These “things” were signs of syncretism and idolatry. And though God had commanded that the faithful “have no other gods” before God nor make room for any “graven image” to stand in God’s place, gradually the people had cluttered the Temple with unholy things.

We are likewise guilty, of course. The churches we attend, the temple of our hearts, the architecture of our souls–spaces are carved, built or emptied, to provide a proper venue, a meeting place, for us to experience God: a space for God alone to fill. Gradually, though, we begin to fill in the emptiness with stuff. The stuff may or may not have religious or historic value, sacramental or sacred worth. In any case such “things” come between us and God, are “before God,” shielding us from the terrible and wonderful intimacy that engenders true epiphanies.

Church “work” is one of those buffers. Behind the wall of her kitchen in Bethany Martha is busy doing making dinner for Jesus. Her work for him keeps her safely away from him. Similarly, there is a danger that for those who are busiest for God, many times their busyness is "before" God—not just in terms of priority but also proximity. Our works can be an effective shield against religious experiences, places to hide, self-styled protection against the terror and wonder of real prayer and worship.

On that long-ago Monday, Jesus’ actions in the Temple were directed against the priests and the “work” of the Temple, the religious professionals and their helpers, who like contemporary preachers and their people may do their religious work as a kind of self-care. Imagining, perhaps vainly, that we are serving God, we may find that, in truth, we are in seeking only protection, whether to from our creditors or our Creator.

Prompt

What stands “before” God in your spiritual life, not so much as idol, though it could be, but perhaps as a wall, a buffer, a shield against genuine religious experience?

Lent--The Awkward Season

A new book published by Upper Room has a most intriguing title: The Awkward Season.

The book concerns Lent, the period of fasting and prayer that many Christians and congregations observe this time of year. Think of it as a form of spiritual spring cleaning—getting rid of some of the old stuff to make more room for God.

That said, Lent is an awkward season, even for those who observe it. Trying to explain it to those who don’t observe Lent proves just how awkward.

Lent begins on a Wednesday and ends on a Thursday. Its 40 days are spread over parts of seven weeks, but you don’t count Sundays.

Sundays are always reminders of the resurrection (since it was early on “the first day of the week” that the women discovered the tomb was empty). That is the reason we say, the Fourth Sunday in Lent as opposed to the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Awkward.

That is also the reason that, for example, if you have given-up chocolate for Lent, you can eat a Hershey bar on Sunday. Since our Lord is not dead but alive and with us, and since Jesus himself said that his disciples cannot fast when the Bridegroom is with them, we don’t, you know, fast on Sundays. (From personal experience, though, I must tell you that going against the vow on Sunday makes things harder on Monday.)

So Sunday’s are not a part of Lent. Still, we preachers drape our sanctuaries in purple and offer somber sermons. Every Sunday in Lent we pray long prayers full of deep confession and contrition, invite our people to lament and bewail their manifold sins and wickedness. Except on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, when, as we do on the Third Sunday of Advent, we take a little break from our gloom and fasting (assuming we have started to fast), to rejoice in our (costly) redemption. Oh, and this time it was Girl Scout Sunday, too! Really awkward.

But then we are back at the lamentation stuff for a couple of more weeks until, on the last little Easter before Big Easter, we wave palm branches at the first of the service only to shift gears and read the entire crucifixion narrative before leaving the service in silence. Awkward.

The weather doesn’t help, either. Outside there are buds and blossoms, green on the trees, but inside, in our sacred places, we try to keep our attentions onto a barren cross, dead wood, lashed, a reminder not of new life but an old death. Awkward.

There is yet one more awkwardness—most of the rest of the year, preachers expend considerable energy telling their people not to think so much about themselves. In Lent, though, we encourage people to think about themselves—their own sins and shortcomings and no one else’s. That we are mostly unable to do the former means we are mostly ineffective at the latter. That makes Lent very awkward indeed.

Old Hymns...

When I was a child, growing up in the Radnor Baptist Church in Nashville, TN, I learned to sing my faith before saying it. One of the hymns of discipleship featured this lyric:

"Let others see Jesus in you; let others see Jesus in you./
"Keep telling the Story, be faithful and true:
"let others see Jesus in you."

We do not practice our piety in order to be seen by them, but there is no way faithful disciples escape notice.

Still, I am thinking that if I were to rewrite that old hymn--and I cannot do such a thing, as I am not much of a lyricist or poet--I would want it to say something like this: Let me see Jesus in others.

Let me see Jesus in others--the kid who cuts me off in traffic, the condescending preacher or priest, the woman who works against my ministry, the family member who dismisses my life and calling. Let me see Jesus in them just the same.

Perhaps I will give up "expectation" for Lent, meaning I will not expect any of these or anyone else any reaction that I deem appropriate. I will not expect any particular courtesy, or respect, or standing. I will not expect anyone to defer to my age, my education, my "wisdom" (would that I HAD some to which people might defer). I will not expect anything of others--only of myself: that others may see Jesus in me: his compassion, his mercy, his long-suffering and patience, his self-sacrifice.

May God grant me to fulfill this Lenten vow, and even beyond Lent.

Icons, St. Bernard, and Wounded Healers

At one corner of my desk, downstairs in my study, I keep a most-prized possession—this three-paneled icon written in burgundy and gold: an “authentic copy,” the certificate reads: in other words, a “genuine imitation” of a Byzantine altar piece. In the middle panel is the Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord, cheek to holy cheek with the Christ-child and both of them looking peaceful, serene, and perhaps because in either side panel the archangels Michael and Gabriel stand guard, Michael with a sword and Gabriel with… something I cannot quite make it out. It does not look like a weapon, but I would not care to test him and find out otherwise.

I look at that icon on my desk every day, and when I do I remember that somewhere, in one of the many Greek Orthodox churches around the world, hanging above that church’s Altar is the real thing, from which my genuine imitation is authentically copied. I know, too, that at that church, whenever it is time for worship, the icon is reverently unfolded, unshuttered, if you please, as if to open a window between earth and heaven—to let the prayers of those worshipers out, to let heaven itself look in and keep vigil over those faithful prayers.

An icon is just a picture, really, but with a purpose. You have seen Sunday School classes where, on the wall, there is a picture of Jesus, or a cross. Maybe you have been to churches, or hospitals, where in each room is hung a crucifix. The picture or cross hangs there to mark the room as holy space, and to call you back to the moment should your mind wander. The picture itself, somehow, reminds you of why you are there.

Indeed, believers have long believed that by pondering pictures of Jesus we are drawn closer to him somehow, and he to us. By filling our mind more and more with images of Christ, we find ourselves more and more filled up with Christ’s presence and purpose and, I think, his peace.

Thank God for all the various pictures of our Lord—on the wall, on the desk; thank God for the Bible, too, which gives us so many pictures, so many stories, to help us focus our thinking, to aid our understanding, to quicken our prayers.

Today’s gospel lesson is such a story, such a picture. Considering what we see here, praying what we find, may give voice to many of our most urgent confessions and hopes, may help us pray our best prayers.

You remember, don’t you? One day Jesus is standing by the lake of Genessaret—the Sea of Galilee—and a crowd gathers around him, the folks at the back pushing to get closer so they can hear and the folk at the front crowding Jesus so that he is about to fall in the lake. He sees two boats, there in the shallows, empty, because the fishermen had left the boats, were already washing their nets…ding, ding, ding—washing their nets: they have already given-up, have quit fishing, have called it a day.

Jesus gets into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and he asks Simon to put out a little way from shore. Jesus sat down in the boat, partly because that is what you do, usually, when you are on a boat. But sitting is also a rabbi’s customary posture for teaching. Jesus teaches, from the boat—what, we don’t know, but soon, he is finished. He turns to Simon and says, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

“Master,” Peter says, and note that well: “Master.” Not rabbi, nor teacher. Not Lord, not yet. Just Master. A master is someone you obey, and so Simon obeys, but not without objection: “Master, we fished all night and we caught nothing… “
Of course they caught nothing! They never catch anything! In spite of the fact that at least four of Jesus’ disciples are professional fishermen, there is not a single instance in all the gospels, nary a one, when they ever catch even a single fish—unless Jesus is there, in the boat, on the shore, directing them, helping them.

“Master, we fished all night and we caught nothing, yet if you say so I will let down the nets.“ He obeys and now there are so many fish in the nets he cannot haul them in, so many fish in the nets that he has to call his friends, has to call the other boat—so many fish that the nets are breaking and both boats are sinking…

Simon falls at Jesus’ knees and pleads with him, “Go away from me, Lord”—not Master this time, but Lord—“for I am a sinful man.” Jesus does go away—but not without Simon and the others, too: “Do not be afraid: from now on you will be catching people,” Jesus said, and when the boats had gotten back to shore, Simon and James and John left everything—their boats, their nets, all those fish, too, I guess, and how long had they been hoping for such a catch as that…but they left it there, lying there on the sand, with the rest of their stuff, and off they go. For if a Master is one you must obey, the Lord is one you have follow. He is the Big One you can’t let get away.

Maybe you know what it feels like to be give-out and still empty. Just washing your nets with what little strength you have left. You have worked so hard and have so little to show for it. And who would not hope and pray that after the long night of our futility and failure, if we are just obedient, obedient enough in little things, Jesus will reward us in abundance, so much abundance that we will need help getting it all in the bank.

Yes, we know we are sinners, but we do not want to be afraid anymore. We know we are weak, but we want him to be strong. Strong, for us, when we have no strength left. If he is the Lord of all things, will he not steer us past the superficialities of this word to deeper things, tell us where to drop our nets, and give us far more abundantly than we know how to ask or receive? Who would not pray that God is able and ready to lavish on us all we might want or need: victory, prosperity, health, answers, glory?

A Theology of Glory—that is what frames this picture from Luke and that is what many of us pray for most, for ourselves and our friends: glory, prosperity, healing, victory in Jesus. That is why churches like ours put an empty cross on the wall: to show that Jesus has overcome death and the grave. And that is what we pray for ourselves, that we will also overcome…

But what about when we are overcome? When there is no prosperity, or glory, or victory?

Have any of you ever heard of St. Bernard? Not the dog… St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who died 850 years ago, now, thereabouts. I have been thinking of him this week. Bernard was a monk, a person of deep prayer and faith, and when others came to him, asking him to teach them how to pray, he would sometimes tell them to get in their mind a picture of Jesus’ wounds—the nail prints in his hands and his side. He believed that meditating on the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet could give believers a deep picture of Jesus’ love and mercy, that if one pondered the wound in Jesus side, the very heart of Jesus would become visible, his Sacred Heart, the very love of God.

Take any of that how you will, but the phrase is fetching, at least, to me: “meditating on the wounds of Jesus.” This week I have been doing that—but I have been thinking not so much of Jesus’ physical body, but of his Body, the Church. I have been meditating on the wounds I have seen just this week in Christ’s church.

I am thinking of the woman who has been married to her husband for three decades, and both of them Christians, active in church, anyway. She confided to me this week that she does not talk to her husband anymore because she is afraid he will get mad, and when he is mad she fears for her life. She is deathly afraid of her Christian husband.

I am thinking about a congregation I know where on Thursday of this week 28 people met secretly, and they tried to recruit others, in an effort to oust the pastor. They are losing power—the church is no longer looks or sounds like it used to, and they are terrified. So they are lying, gossiping, doing all sorts of evil—for “the good of the church,” they say, but how can evil ever serve the good?

I am thinking of good friends, here and other places, whose loved ones are sick, or sick again, dying—and there may be no victory, no healing, at least not the kind they have hoped and prayed for anyway—at the Last, yes, we believe, but for now it is grief and anger and questions and helplessness.

I am considering the wounds to Christ’s Body, the Church, and many more than this, of course—hypocrisy, judgmentalism, partisanship, apathy—and maybe you too have been wounded by some wound in the Body of Christ, and how are we to pray in such situations?

Maybe Bernard would tell us to look again at Jesus’ heart…broken and ever-breaking for love of his stained and struggling Bride. Maybe he would tell us to come to this Table in the confession that we too are broken, all of us, but in the knowledge that here, He, too, is broken, for us. In the cup is his blood, his heart, the depth of his love.

He is wounded with our transgressions; and we too are wounded, by our own sins and the sins of others; but perhaps as we give our wounds to him, here we find that by stripes we are healed: he gives his wounds also to us, and here, we find healing.

In his novel, The Blood of the Lamb, Peter deVries tells of a man, a single father, who loses his 12-year old daughter to leukemia. After her death he says this:

“How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a trefful of rotten fruit. (I am) inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is not Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook into (my) heart."

But then the man’s bitterness gives way to something else, and the book ends this way…

“Time heals nothing, which should make us the better able to minister (to each other)> Blessed are they that comfort, for they too have mourned...the throb of compassion rather than the breath of consolation: the recognition of how long, how long is the mourners' bench on which we sit, arms linked in undeluded friendship, all of us brief links, ourselves, in the eternal pity."

Strength. Abundance. Victory. Those are pictures to ponder and pray, but not the only ones worth our attentions and hopes.

The Church, and we ourselves, broken but joined in compassion. Mercy. Comfort. Friendship—all of us both wounded, and healers; just like Christ our Lord, who invites to his Table all who love him…

Jeremiah Writ Small

It is Sunday afternoon, a few minutes past 12. I have just returned from the church where I went to confirm to my own mind, yet once again, that we did the right thing in canceling worship on account of the snow and ice that have turned our parking lot into a "slip-n-slide."

We did, but it is a strange thing, is it not, that phrase: "canceling worship." And of course we did not do that, could not, at least not in any ultimate sense. The worship of God that commenced at the dawn of creation, when "the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy," has continued, unbroken, ever since. And even today, in places here and there and everywhere, the Song continues, the praise and prayer.

It is a comforting thought--that when we are unable to do our little part, others fill in the gap. And truly there are times when, for a Sunday or a season or even a lifetime, we "pray for others," those who for one reason or the other cannot or do not.

I am reminded of that moment, each Sunday, when we do the Creed, Apostles' or Nicene. People sometimes ask me why we do that every Sunday, and why always at the end. I always say something like this: whether you liked the hymns or not, whether the sermon spoke to you or not, whether the choir moved you or you were able to pray with heart as well as voice, this is what we believe. This is who we are. We go out together with these affirmations on our lips, these same faith-statements by which people have ordered their lives and faced their deaths for lo, these many centuries.

People sometimes ask me, too, why I use the hymnal every time. "Surely, you know these words!" they say. Well, yes, I do...most of the time. But familiarity can breed, if not contempt, then distraction in the moment and there have been a few occasions when I have flubbed the words and led the congregation astray. A parable, that: preachers must be good stewards of the words they have been given so that their folk are not confused along the way. Accordingly, when I lead the Creeds, I always use a hymnal, to be sure I keep us together. When I am in the pew as a worshiper I never use the hymnal, sure that if I flub-up, there is someone behind me or beside me who can, by their good memory and faithfulness, rein me back in. Together, our profession of faith continues unimpeded.

Praise, too. Today, we have had to rely on others to continue the song. And they have. Next week we will pick-it-up again, God willing. We canceled our little piece of God's worship today, but Worship never ceases.

And still it was odd. Being at LSUMC on a day and at a time when we normally are there. I was reminded of Lamentations 1:1-- where Jeremiah looks over Jerusalem after its destruction by the Babylonians and the deportment of the Jews, many of them to Babylon. He writes, "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!"

For him, of course, the lament was greater, unsure as he was as to when the people would return, when there would be songs and celebration, whether he would be there to see and hear it. For us, and for me, the odd sadness of a quiet sanctuary is tempered by the hope and knowledge that we will gather again in just a matter of days.

My prayer is that next Sunday we ring our beautiful rafters with song. That we make glad the place of our worship, rejoice to be together once again and give the Morning Stars a run for their money.

JAMs

I have been thinking…which is always a problematic affair…but I may be on to something here. When I went to the Y last week to do my walking, I saw a sign-up for men’s Church League basketball. I felt my heart do a between-the-legs dribble.

See, I used to play basketball. I am the first to admit I was not very good. I was slow, but I couldn’t jump either. Or shoot very well. I had no real knowledge of the game and almost no court awareness—my peripheral vision has always been suspect. I could not run the floor, had poor ball-handling skills and had trouble remembering which way to cut on set plays. I could not run backwards at all and I had no stamina. Maybe I could have made up for most or all of those deficiencies with hard work and enthusiasm, but laziness is my constant companion, has always dulled the edge of my little gung-ho. And still, I was on the school team for a short while—second- string B-team at MBA, a small, all-boys prep school in Nashville.

MBA was the “model” for Dead Poet’s Society (if any of you remember that movie). I attended there for one terrible, horrible, no good very bad year, and like Alexander (if any of you remember that book), there were many days I wanted to mail myself to Australia. Part of my misery was that some sort of athletic endeavor was required for all freshmen, and for me it came down to basketball or cross country. I chose the former, thinking the latter would be even more embarrassing.

I lasted a month, until the afternoon when the first-string varsity was running their offense against the second-string B-team defense (we were supposed to represent, however vaguely, the next opponent, and why in the world they put me on point in the one-three-one zone, I have no idea). A whistle started the play and next thing I know I had been sandwiched by a upperclassman’s screen and my knee cap had come to rest at the back of leg somewhere. A few weeks later I had the first of my seven knee surgeries.

After rehab and a change of schools I began attending a church that had a pretty good church league team. I had kind of gotten the bug, in spite of my failure and injury, and so I played church league ball for several years –even played on the graduate school team while I was in seminary. But after a surgery here and a surgery there I finally had to give it up in hopes of preserving what little orthopedic integrity I had left.

Injuries were not the only reason I put the ball in the rack and threw my sneaks to the back of the closet. With age I grew increasingly tired of fellows playing as if there were scouts for the Knicks in the stands (or the Yankees—you see this kind of behavior in softball, too, guys who seem to imagine they still have a shot at the bigs). They are WAY too wired considering the reality of the situation. A professor friend used to say that academic battles are so intense because there is so little at stake. Little league parents, too, some of them. I personally know of one such parent who had a heart attack and died after arguing, and all the way to the parking lot, a third strike call at his youngest son’s game.

Anyway, the other day at the Y, staring at the announcement for church-league sign-ups, I was thinking, remembering, wishing I could play a little more church league basketball, knowing, though, that there is really no place much, even on the bench, for a fifty-five year old who has had two separate replacements of the same knee. Then it hit me…

What we need is a league just FOR old guys and their prosthetics! We could call it Shelby JAMs (Men with Artificial Joints, JAMs being a backward acronym). Fifty and older, with no illusions that we are going to impress anyone, and least of all ourselves. I can see it now: old guys who don’t look so great in shorts, hobbling up and down the court only fast enough to get our heart rates up and break a sweat. We would take it easy each other, and laugh a lot. We would cheer each other on, even the guys on the other team, and pick each other up when we fall down on the “fast break,” and maybe keep score, you know, but no one really would much care about that part of it. We would just be thankful to be alive and breathing, to be able to still move at all.

It would not have to be a church league, but it could be, because big parts of it—we all are injured; we have no illusions about ourselves or each other; we are not trying to impress each other, just help each other; picking each other up when we fall down; cheering each other on—all of that sounds a lot like what the faith, and church, ought to be, and not just when we are playing ball.

Pray for Haiti

And DO NOT give in to the temptation that seduced Pat Robertson. He is JUST LIKE the disciples in John 9, who stand there looking at the man born blind and begin discussing the causes of his circumstance. I see them nodding, pursing their lips, rubbing their beards as they ponder the existential dimensions of original or actual sin...

Jesus says only that the man's blindness is a chance for him to do the works of light. He kneels, begins making the balm of healing, the good earth and his holy spit, and spreads it on the man's eyes.

If we can blame the victims for what has happened to them we need not be so bothered. A pact with the devil? Hundreds of years ago? Neither these poor unfortunates nor their parents sinned in such a way, or even if they did God is wise enough to see past such foolishness. The question is not why...the imperative is now: let us do the works of light while there is light.

God does not send earthquakes; but God's people send aid, as God sent aid to us in Jesus. In that way God is glorified in even horrible moments such as this.

Pray. Do not blame.

Romans 8:28

I think most people reading and hearing this text are drawn to the first part... that God is working in all things for good, or God works good of all things--however one translates it there is comfort: the notion that nothing is coincidence for those who love God, that there is a plan, that nothing bad is ultimate, etc.

But tonight, in an otherwise unremarkable reading of that text, I heard the last part again: "...and are called according to HIS PURPOSES." Perhaps what struck me had to do with the recent and terribly unfortunate situation on the Hill, which is to say, at the University of Tennessee, Rocky Top, Go Big Orange!

I am a sidewalk alumnus, a devout and faithful follower, a cut-me-and-I-bleed-Orange sort of fan, and FOUR NUMBSKULL BASKETBALL PLAYERS were, on New Year's Day (which is the church calendar is the Holy Name of Jesus) pulled over for speeding. During the traffic stop two handguns were discovered, one with the serial number filed off, and also a baggie of weed in a backpack bearing the name of one of the players.

What WERE they thinking?

Anyway, one of them, a couple of days later, tweeted about the strength he was drawing from his strong faith, that "God will not put you in a situation without providing a way to deal with it." Something like that.

On one of the message boards I follow a guy posted, "God had NOTHING to do with putting you in this situation, dude. This is your doing." Indeed.

It is one thing to believe that those who are engaged in God's purposes find a deeper good even in difficult times. It is quite another to say that difficulties of our own making either interest God or obligate God to work good in and through it.

Should God do so, we can be thankful for such grace. But grace is a gift, not a given.

January 6

January 6: Epiphany of the Lord. He who is born King of the Jews is also Savior of the World. Oh, that he would rend the heavens and come down! Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.

But until Then, the revisions on my new piece for Upper Room Books continue. Today I am trying to help Jesus get Lazarus out of the tomb today... reminding me of the first line of my first real book when I posed this, and to my mind, GREAT question..."Did anyone ask Lazarus that day in Bethany whether he WANTED to be raised from the dead?"

Feast of the Holy Innocents

Almost everyone has heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas, if only by means of the song most of us learned in grammar school (I don’t think K-5/6 is called “grammar school” any more, but that’s okay, because many of them don't teach grammar any more).In any case, the term “Twelve Days” refers to the season of Christmas which stretches between The Nativity of our Lord (December 25, and commonly called Christmas day) and Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, on January 6. The Twelve Days boast another six or seven feasts, or celebrations—most of them related to various saints.

Now, we Protestants (and United Methodists are lumped-in there, though with some qualifiers) do not observe all the festivals and celebrations that our Roman Catholic or Orthodox friends do. While we do observe the temporal cycle, the basic seasons of the Christian year—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost—we do not, as a rule, observe the sanctoral cycle (the “saints’ days”).

We observe the temporal cycle because it helps tell the story of Jesus, the times of his life—from the promise of his coming (Advent) to his birth (Christmas) as both King of the Jews and Savior of the world (Epiphany); to be King and Savior means he will suffer and die (Lent) but God will vindicate Jesus (Easter) and pour out the Holy Spirit on those who receive him (Pentecost).

The sanctoral cycle, though…well, let’s just say there are good reasons to bypass most of those days (though we do observe All Saints on November 1). That said, taking the detour we sometimes miss good stuff, important pieces of our history and lessons the saints and their days might teach.

I have found myself, this year, particularly interested in the feast days that fall immediately after the Nativity.

--December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen (“Good king Wenceslaus looked out…”). St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. He was stoned to death outside Jerusalem for his witness to Christ.

--December 27 is the Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. He is, by tradition, the only one of Jesus’ originals not to have died a violent death.

--December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The church remembers those children (and their weeping mothers) who died at the hand of murderous Herod who would stop at nothing to retain his power. He reminds us of all the “powers” in our own day who sacrifice their nation’s children for their own purposes, while the Innocents themselves remind us of those whose lives are taken on account the world’s idolatries and power-lust.

Notice: in the first “four days” of the Christmas season, the church’s celebrations alternate between light and darkness, life and death: Nativity, Stephen; John, the Holy Innocents. It is almost as if the church is saying, “This Child’s birth is not all sweetness and light; it is a matter of life and death.”

Hard to put a bathrobe or cardboard crown on some of these stories, which is not a bad thing to remember as we begin the new calendar year.

Still, if the sometimes and recurring word is dark and dreadful, the ever-answering and final word is always of light and joy. In spite of all, Joy to the World. JOY to the WORLD. Amen.

Mary is but the first...

of the theotokoi (God-bearers). Jesus said, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother."

Whenever we are faithful in the fallen world, our godless age--which really is a god-filled age, only the gods are not gods--we give birth to Jesus again. Perhaps this year we are every bit as uncomfortable as Mary in her ninth month, but something wondrous is about to happen!

Merry Christmas, and blessings to all.

Sanctity and Self-Righteousness

I wonder if the sign of true sanctity is this: others seeing virtue in us that we do not see in ourselves. Pride and self-delusion, conversely, is seeing in ourselves virtue others cannot.

I have been thinking about that old saw, the one where the fellow asks another, "Are you a Christian?" The asked man answers, "I am not sure. I believe in Jesus, but as to whether I am actually a Christian...you will need to ask my banker, my business partner, my neighbor, my children, my enemy. They can tell you."

I suspect that pride and self-delusion are at the heart of many of the church's ills...we see in ourselves what others cannot. We imagine ourselves to be humble, loving, serving, when that is not others' experience of us. True sanctity would be the opposite. That is, we would see only our failings, not our "successes"; we would counfess only our sins, not our righteousness (at least we believe in Jesus!). It would be left to others to say whether or not we are actually Christians, which is what Jesus said: They will know you are Christians...

Whoops!

Be nice if I included the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF2mikICUAo

Joel Osteen and the Former Archbishop of South Africa

Gotta tell you, this video almost...almost...makes me rethink my opinion of Joel, his megawatt smile, crocodile shoes and unhappy traveler of a wife.

No, it really doesn't.

BUT...this is a GREAT video. Would love to lead a service like this once in my life.

The man at the 2:40 mark of the video (or so) looks for all the world like Desmond Tutu.

Surely not. You think?

I Facebook...Therefore I Am

In this strange new era of connective technology--which is not to be confused with anything approaching the theological category of Incarnation (more like the gnostic ether, in fact)--I have finally gotten in line behind the other 350 million or so who have already crossed the cyberborder into the pleroma of Facebook.

Thomas Ray Steagald is my name in those precincts, but I am at a loss as to how to do much there. Don't know the language or landscape. But immersion is the key--this from a former Baptist--and so I will try to learn as I go.

Follow me there if you wish.

Descarte, forgive us.

Oh, and yes, I twitter too...sounds like too much information... but not often. Yes, Robin, I will try to do better.