Monthly Archives: November 2024

Today’s world has many advantages over that of years ago. Take waiting, for example. Before huge cineplexes in every neighborhood, we used to have to buy tickets in advance, or wait in long lines for seats to movie openings. Remember Star Wars, anyone? Or, in more recent memory, the long waits for groceries during the empty-shelf COVID years?

On the other hand, it’s good to muster the discipline for some delayed gratification in life. Painful as it was, waiting for the bus or for a favorite TV show to return after the long summer break formed a certain character in us. I call on that character all the time when I’m waiting for a medication to work, maybe, or waiting for test results from the doctor.

I’ll bet you have daily challenges with that essential character trait, too. Are you waiting for those painful pounds to come off, for news from a loved one who is deployed, hospitalized, or just missing from your life? That kind of waiting is agonizing.

Or maybe your long wait is to overcome a resentment that’s had you in its grasp for decades. More likely, your wait is for healing for a child who is in the grip of depression, or an addiction, or has problems at school. That’s the most agonizing wait of all.

I have an idea. How about if every reader of this column around the country prayed for someone reading these words right now this Advent? Talk about waiting. We won’t know until we see Jesus who we were praying for and who was praying for us. Ready? I can’t wait.

How would you like your unknown prayer partner to pray for you?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Reflecting on John 18: 33b-37

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. This is Jesus’ defense before Pilate, the man who will decide between his life, or death. And what does Pilate say in response? Truth. What is truth?

We don’t hear that chilling and cynical question because it’s the verse just outside the boundaries of today’s gospel. We’ll have to wait ‘til Good Friday to hear it, but it should give us pause when we do. In fact, that sentence is the oldest extant piece of the New Testament ever discovered. Can you imagine being a biblical archaeologist digging the dry Egyptian dirt, and finding THAT sentence, and, after analysis, learning that you had unearthed the oldest piece of the New Testament ever found?

It might be the oldest question in the hearts of the earliest Christians, or our hearts, too. Can Jesus be trusted? So many religious (and secular) ideas are competing for our hearts. Can we trust this crucified Messiah? The first-century followers of Jesus, especially his disciples who, out of terror of the Romans, abandoned Jesus to face Pilate alone, had to have asked this question themselves.

Yes, they’d been with him when he healed the man born blind, the hemorrhaging woman, the woman bent double, and so many more. They even watched him raise Jairus’ little twelve-year-old daughter from what appeared to be death. And now he was standing before Pilate, testifying to the Truth, and everyone on the side of Truth would listen to him until the end of the world. And yes, the martyrs, too.

We live in a day when the sophisticated agnostics among us believe that all truth is relative. Pilate would have been very comfortable with them.

What is your Truth?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Reflecting on Mark 13: 24-32

I am a fearful person. I’ve been too careful, too cautious. The world was certainly ending soon, and I wanted it to hurt as little as possible. Growing up, there were just enough prophets of doom around to keep me in a perpetual state of alarm. Some of their dire predictions have come true over time, but many have not. I confess that I chose fear over faith in every case.

It’s been three spins around the sun since we heard Mark’s terrifying apocalyptic account of the end times, but this time, I’m noticing something there all along, waiting for me to grab hold and reach safety.

It’s this: right after Mark portrays the terrible tribulations—stars falling from the sky, neither the sun nor moon giving any light—Jesus says, “Learn a lesson from the fig tree.” What is the lesson that all fruit-bearing trees have for us?

Check it out, they say. Come in closer. See the leaves that fell last winter? They were stamped down into the earth by rain and snow. The tiny insects came and decomposed the leaves. Some of that was released into the atmosphere, and other parts remained and nourished the soil. See those tiny buds? Uh-huh. Apples. Peaches. Figs. Just you wait.

Just you wait, friends. Take a lesson from the fig tree. The Divine Plan is never that we should be paralyzed by fear. I get that now. It’s embedded in the DNA of trees. God intends to give us “a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:11).

Oh, and here’s some other good news. The joy-filled Gospel of Luke is right around the corner.

How has a fearful heart stopped you from embracing a life of faith?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Reflecting on Mark 12: 38-33

This gospel reading is one of the thorniest in the whole lectionary, mainly because it can have several interpretations. One of them is that Jesus is NOT praising the widow for her immense sacrifice in giving all she has to the Temple treasury.

This might be the equivalent of a poor, unhoused person coming into Church, hearing a compelling homily about sacrificial giving, and coming forward to put his or her last penny into the collection basket.

Who wouldn’t want to shout to the ushers, “Give back every penny that unfortunate person just dropped in the basket! How will she eat today? Where will he sleep tonight? How dare we take from the poorest of the poor? They are the very ones for whom collection plates are meant.”

Is there any one of us who wouldn’t react that way to this imagined scenario? But not so the scribes. Sitting in their places of honor, they observe this dangerous gift on the part of the poor widow and do nothing to stop her.

Why is this donation dangerous? The word “widow” means one who is silent or unable to speak. That was the status of the widow. She has no voice and no one to speak for her.

This is why Jesus’ remark is not praise, but a LAMENT that this injustice is happening in front of the scribes, who certainly know the mandate—repeated FOUR TIMES in the Hebrew scriptures–to care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien in the land.

Care for the widow was the very reason for the Temple treasury. Jesus isn’t praising the widow. He’s lamenting that this travesty is happening right before them.

What do you think of this interpretation of today’s gospel?

Kathy McGovern ©2024

Reflecting on Mark 12: 28b-34

What a reference letter! The unnamed scribe in today’s gospel hears Jesus say, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” He’s extraordinary, of course. Unlike his peers, this anonymous man has been listening with his whole heart, and soul, and mind. He’s not there to trip Jesus up, but to learn from him.

He affirms Jesus’ pairing of Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 (which he probably prayed that very morning, since it was required of every Hebrew male) with Leviticus 19:8 (about loving one’s neighbor as oneself). So, says Jesus, the greatest commandment has two parts, the first about loving God, the second about loving neighbor. The anonymous scribe, deeply touched, says, “Yes. That’s what I’ve figured out, too.”

It turns out that the kingdom of God isn’t very far at all. It’s right here, at the intersection of love of God and love of neighbor. And we step in and out of it all the time. You can feel your entrance into the kingdom when you participate in things that build community, and that forge peace. For me, that’s any time I get to volunteer for a Guns to Gardens event.

That’s where people bring their unwanted firearms to a designated spot and safely surrender them.

What happens next is stunning. Their unwanted weapons are forged by blacksmiths into garden tools! Their swords are turned into plowshares (Is. 2:4); scripture is fulfilled right there, in their participation in the kingdom.

What moments in your life are immersion in the kingdom? Taking care of grandchildren? Lending your life skills to parish committees? Seeking out an estranged friend? Look there! You are not far from the kingdom of God.

How many of the roles you play in life are solidly in God’s reign?

Kathy McGovern ©2024