Reflecting on John 3: 14-21

Many years ago, Father Raymond Brown, the world’s authority on the Gospel of John, gave a seminar in Denver. The hotel room was packed with adoring students―clergy, members of religious communities, theologians and scripture students all gave rapt attention to every fascinating insight he gave us into this most soaring and symbolic gospel.

At noon we all happily went into the ballroom for lunch, and he, a health nut, went out to swim a few laps in the hotel pool. Later in the afternoon, as he was teaching the section we heard in today’s Gospel, he told us this story:

You know, while you all were sitting and eating at noon today, I was swimming laps in the pool. I took off my crucifix and put it on the chair, and when I was done swimming I was putting it back on when a young man approached me. He said, “I see you wear a cross. Are you sure you know Jesus as your personal savior?” I said, “Thank you for asking me. I try every day to know him more and more.”

The audience went up in a roar! Can you imagine the nerve, the naiveté, the ignorance of that young man, approaching the great scholar and asking him if he knows Jesus! But Raymond Brown was confused by our response. “Why is that so strange? Just because a person studies scripture doesn’t mean that they necessarily know Jesus. I was grateful that he cared enough to ask.”

The next time you see someone holding up John 3:16 at a football game, don’t judge. They are willing to risk looking foolish on the chance that they might help us know Jesus better.

Have you ever risked looking foolish so that someone might know Jesus?

Reflecting on John 2: 13-25

Follow the money. That’s usually the quickest way to get to the bottom of any great sin. Scratch the surface of nearly every war, every oppressive political system, and every “custom” in a culture that puts some on the inside and the rest on the outside, and you guessed it.  No matter the official rationale, the real reason is always money.

But is money the root of the evil Jesus tries to expel when he acts out so shockingly in the Temple?  Maybe. Some commentaries say that the high priest received a percentage of the profits from the sale of the cattle used in the sacrificial offerings for the Passover celebrations. Jesus’ disruption of that lucrative commerce may well have been the reason why those authorities eventually set out to kill him.

Other commentaries note that this buying and selling was taking place in the outermost section of the Temple where the Gentiles were allowed to pray. Imagine the stench, the cacophony, the squealing of the tens of thousands of animals bought and sold in that space just before Passover. And this is the space assigned to the non-Jews who came to the Temple to pray.

Ugh. Might it be this very rudeness, this lack of openness to people of all backgrounds, which Jesus finds so repulsive?

My favorite explanation is this: Jesus is making a statement about the terrible slaughter of innocent animals in order to appease God’s wrath.  I don’t want your sacrifices, said God through the prophet Hosea. I want you to love me (6:6).

I want you to love me, says Jesus to us. That has always been the sole reason for Lent.

How is your Lenten fast drawing you closer in love with Jesus?

Reflecting on Mark 9: 2-10

In that moment of blinding light, they saw Jesus as he truly was. Transfigured. Dazzling. And chatting with Elijah and Moses themselves. The apostles didn’t want to leave the mountain. They didn’t want to set their faces to Jerusalem, and the cross whose vertical beam was already pounded in and waiting on Calvary.

They had been with him, of course, when he cured the demoniacs, and the leper. He had come to them on the water during that terrifying midnight storm. He had even fed five thousand with a few loaves and fish. They were enveloped in the mystery and wonder of it all.

But now they saw him as he truly was, full of light, and full of grace. They had a glimpse into the kingdom.

Do you ever sense the kingdom when you observe people?  I love to watch them as they come forward in the Communion procession. As Thomas Merton observed, they have no idea that they are shining like the sun. There is something about the point of vulnerability in people that, like the crack in a vase, lets the light in.

Here comes the awkward teenage boy, pulling up his pants and pushing back his hair. Behind him is his poised and beautiful sister, presenting the face of confidence and composure that she practiced so hard in front of the mirror before Mass. They have no idea how brightly they glow.

Here is the parish leader, the one who organizes and motivates and serves. And there is the newcomer, unsure, too often unwelcomed, hungry and hope-filled. How brilliant is their light.

And of course the light doesn’t diminish outside the church walls. There is the clerk at the grocery store, bravely fighting her arthritis and carpel tunnel syndrome. There is your kind, agnostic neighbor, shoveling the walk of the elderly man down the street.

And you can’t see it, but the radiation coming out of you is almost blinding.

This week, be blessed by observing the light that comes from the people in your life.

Reflecting on I Peter 3: 18-22

It only comes up in the Sunday readings once every three years, but it’s so intriguing that it catches our ear every time: in the Spirit he went to preach to the spirits in prison (I Peter 3:19).

If that sounds familiar, it’s because we pray it every time we say the Apostle’s Creed: He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell.

You read that right. The Church took this portion of Peter’s letter so seriously that it found its way into the creed. Christ actually visited all the just who had lived before the time of Christ and released the spirits in prison.

In fact, a beautiful, ancient hymn sung on Holy Saturday recounts that Christ visited Adam and Eve:

He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds, and Eve, captive with him.  He says, “I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead.”

How does time and space work with God?  Had all who died before Christ’s resurrection waited out those thousands of years in “real time”?  Or is there perhaps a “wrinkle in time”― a mere blink that separates this life (and death) from eternity?

Be at peace.  The God of heaven and earth (and under the earth) will not stop searching for us.

Is it hard to imagine that hell might be empty?

Reflecting on Mark 14: 1-15:47

As I stand with the 1.4 billion Christians who will hear Mark’s Passion today I remember again why I love Jesus so much.  I love him because he healed, and forgave, and brought forth the kingdom of God.  But most of all I love Jesus  because there is no suffering that I will ever have that he hasn’t already suffered,  no betrayal or terror or agonizing death that he hasn’t also experienced.  I love him for that.

I have friends who have been lied to by their family members, cheated out of pensions by their employers, betrayed by their spouses.   Just after Jesus agonized in the Garden about the suffering that would soon overtake him, his beloved friend Judas brought a crowd carrying swords and torches into Gethsemane and said, “The one I kiss is the one.  Arrest him.” Jesus has redeemed this.

I’ve read of mothers who have watched their children die painfully.  I’ve seen my sweet husband stand, weeping, in front of the Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica,  crying with Mary as she held her crucified Son in her arms.  Jesus has redeemed this.

Last week my brave friend Margie dealt with the unending pain of her chronic illness. My gentle friend Karen stood grieving at the grave of her father.  My gracious friends Eileen and Mike suffered through the terrors of Mike’s surgery to remove a brain tumor.  My brave friends Mary Ellen and Dorothy and Eric  faced another day with a terminal illness.  Jesus knows their pain, their fear, their suffering.  By his cross he has redeemed all of our terrors, our agonies, our sleepless, anxious nights.  He doesn’t know of them. He knows them.

Oh, Jesus.  We love you for that.

What particular part of Jesus’ Passion can you most understand?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 12:20-33

I’ve been thinking a lot about wheat lately.  I asked my friend Bob, a farmer and horticulturist, to talk to me about the mysteries of seeds and harvests.  In a conversation packed with fascinating insights connecting farming and faith he said, “The farmer knows what to expect in the future, because he (or she) has seen what God has done in the past.”

My friend Kathy offered this beautiful reflection on seeds, based on her years of teaching.  She said, “I’ve seen so many resurrections happen with my students through the years, and they’re never visible all at once.  The child who comes into your class in the fall is silently transformed through the months of the school year into the more confident and accomplished child who leaves your class in the spring.  Resurrections are silent things, sacred events begun in the dark earth and not visible to us until the green shoot rises out of the earth.”

Ah, beautiful.  No wonder Jesus used a farming image to explain what his death was about to accomplish.  When the Greeks coming for Passover—the premier agrarian festival!—asked to see him, Jesus took that opportunity to speak about the eternal life that was about to come from his death.

Unless a grain of wheat shall fall upon the ground and die it remains but a single grain with no life.

Like the husk of grain, we cling to this life because it’s all we know.  But there is a secret seed inside us, a soul that has been plotting resurrection quietly throughout our lives.  Jesus knew it, and promised it, even as the Cross beckoned.

What things have had to die in order for you to live more fully?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 3: 14-21

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

A little background on this strange passage might help.  Way back in the time of the Israelite sojourn in the desert, the Hebrews suffered all the trials of desert life.  They were hungry and thirsty, and the daily manna was so monotonous that they cried out to God, saying We detest this miserable food! God then added to their misery by “sending” snakes to bite them!  Yikes.

They repented of their rebelliousness and asked God to forgive them and take the snakes away.  And here’s what’s fascinating: God’s cure for the “snake-bit Hebrews” was for Moses to mount a bronze serpent on a pole and have them gaze on it.  And those who had been bitten were cured (Numbers 21:4-9).  Wow.

We’re right in the middle of Lent now, and the struggle with our own hungers and thirsts is in full gear.  Might we take inspiration from Moses, and look straight into the heart of that which has wounded us so badly in our lives?  Can we ask for the grace to gaze on the piercings of our pasts? The jobs we’ve lost, the deaths we’ve grieved, the gifts we’ve squandered, the children who’ve struggled with addictions and loss of faith—Jesus asks us to look on them, and then look on Him, raised up on the cross.  Here, oh Israel, is your true healer.  Gaze on him.  Trust that he can take you the rest of the way, through this Lent and every wilderness ahead.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 2:13-25

The Temple (Rembrandt)

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Ain’t that the truth?  How many times have we understood our lives only after the passing of years?  If only we had had the wisdom and poise we now possess way back when we really needed it, like at that high school dance, or when we were raising our kids, or caring for failing parents.

Today’s Gospel is a good example of this vexing reality.  When Jesus is asked on what authority he takes a whip to the moneychangers and the animals in the Temple, he says Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.

No one understands.  What could Jesus possibly mean?  Everyone knew the Temple had been under reconstruction for 46 years already (and in fact was not completed until 62 AD, only to be destroyed by the Romans eight years later.)  So what could Jesus mean?

Ah.  Perhaps the light dawned as Peter and the Beloved Disciple and Mary Magdalene stood in the empty tomb that Easter morning and counted backwards.  Three days in the tomb.  In three days I shall raise the Temple up. Ah.  Jesus was the new Temple.  And he had to die in order to raise it up.

The Gospel says that after the resurrection Jesus’ disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.

Even the disciples had to “understand backwards”.  That which was hidden in life became astonishingly clear through death. And after that, no threat of martyrdom could keep them from carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

What event in your life can you now understand more clearly than when it happened?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Genesis 22, 1-2,9a, 10-13,15-18

I wonder how many listeners of this terrifying story of the sacrifice of Isaac will say today, “I’d choose hell rather than slay my child in order to ‘do God’s will.’”

And those schizophrenic people who have killed their children because they “heard God’s voice” are now confined in mental institutions.

We search for a loving God here, and, truth be told, a loving Abraham too.  Because if we were Isaac, about to be strapped on the altar of sacrifice because our father was “obedient”, I think we’d say Who wants a father like that?

Of course, the story was written to address the horrific practice of child sacrifice in ancient Canaan, where the murder of male children was common in order to appease the indifferent gods of harvest.  The biblical story says to the minority Hebrews, “See? God never desires the murder of children.”

Second, it was easy for the earliest Christians to see Isaac as a “type” of Jesus himself, carrying the wood of the sacrifice (the Cross) up Mt. Moriah (later identified as Jerusalem).  God tells Abraham that God alone will provide the sacrifice, and we see in this story a prefigure of Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Finally, this ancient story can touch us as we offer back to God what we have cherished and lost in our lives−−our parents, our loves, our health.  God asks, Can you trust me to restore them all to you?  Can you “reason that (I) am able to raise even from the dead” (Heb. 11:17)?

Easter awaits.

What loves have you entrusted to God?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on I Peter 3:18-22

Here’s a question:  When exactly did the gates of heaven open? Was it at the moment of the crucifixion (see Mt. 27: 52-53)? And where exactly did the spirit of Jesus go when his body lay in the “abode of death?”

The second reading today (I Peter 3: 18-22) suggests a tantalizing answer: In (the Spirit) he also went to preach to the spirits in prison, who had once been disobedient while God patiently waited in the days of Noah…

This enigmatic sentence became a scriptural basis for the section in the Apostles’ Creed that states “He descended into hell”.

We used to say that every Sunday, but what does it mean?  I love this portion of an ancient poem by an unknown Christian, speaking about this mystery:

The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.  He has gone to search for our first parents, gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve.  He took them by the hand and raised them up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.

How does time and space work with God?  Had “all who had ever slept since the world began” waited out those thousands of years in “real time”?  Or is there perhaps a “wrinkle in time”, a mere blink that separates this life (and death) from eternity?

Be at peace.  The God of heaven and earth (and under the earth) has gone in search of us.

Is it hard to imagine that hell might be empty?

With thanks to my dear friend Susan Maly, who lent me A Wrinkle in Time and set me on a whole new path of understanding all the things we’ll never understand.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).