Month: April 2021

He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. – Psalm 23:2b-3

I believe it is safe to say that the 23rd Psalm is the most beloved and well-known psalm in the world. I’ve known many people have it memorized. It is the most requested psalm at funeral services. There is a multitude of stained-glass windows, congregation names, and hymns inspired by this simple six-versed poem. It transcends denomination and religious tradition. It speaks to the depth of our human condition and to the deep longing for God to nurture and provide for us. The psalm gives us hope as we journey through the darkest valleys of life. These sacred words promise us that we will dwell in the house of the Lord our life long.

Although we may have read these words a hundred times before, they still speak to us. Like the re-reading of all scripture, the Spirit awakens us to new insights, the Spirit speaks to us through the timelessness of God’s Word. This time, for me, it was the repeated phrase, “He leads”. Twice the psalmist reminds both writer and reader that we are not the ones in charge here. It is God who leads and apart from the Lord, we can do nothing. (John 15:5)

It brings to mind the third step of the twelve steps, “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” Only by surrendering our will and our lives to God’s care can we be freed from our ego-driven addiction to controlling the outcome of our lives and the actions of others. Far too often, we place God in the role of consultant. We make God just one of the many voices that we seek advice from when faced with seemingly impossible obstacles in the decisions about how to be or what to do. We find ourselves caught up in the minute details of “how” and the “what if” questions that we have built for ourselves in our imaginations, when in reality, the place of God’s dwelling, the answers to those questions have already been figured out. The Lord is leading. As a friend once advised, “we need to get out of our own way.” If only we’d get out of the way, and stop fighting the losing battle against God’s will, God will do what God is going to do, what God has promised. God will lead us through the darkest valleys and along the stillest waters to the place where God has prepared a eucharistic table for us.

When moved by the Spirit to trust the Lord with our problems, our struggles, our difficulties, and our doubts, we can trust that our surrender leads to resting in the goodness, mercy, and love that God has freely given to us through Jesus. There may always be challenges. We may always wrestle with our demons. Yet over and over again the scriptures call us to rest in the one who is our good shepherd. He is the shepherd who dwells with his sheep and lays down his life for them. He is the shepherd who has promised to be with us all of our days. He is the Christ, the Lord Jesus, and our cup overflows.

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. – 1 John 3:2

When our first daughter was born, we received this advice, “Don’t blink.” As the weeks and months went by, we watched our little girl observe the world, curious about everything new happening around her. We couldn’t wait for her to crawl. Months later, we watched her learn to walk. We encouraged her to talk, something that we may regret, as even now she is filled with elementary school sass. Now she reads, and not only for school but for herself. She helps with her sisters, especially her youngest one. She proclaims daily what she would like to be when she grows up. Her heart and mind are filled with play, curiosity, possibility, and wonder. And I feel like we blink too often.

St. John writes that we are called children of God. He writes that God’s love for us is so great that this love transforms us into who we really are, children. Yet, we grow up too fast. We blink. We forget too easily what it was like to be lost in imagination and play. We leave behind a world that was once filled with infinite possibilities. We cease being curious. We lose sight of the one who loves us and what that loves makes us. In our so-called growing up, taking on adult responsibilities, we define ourselves by the things that we do and dry ourselves of the waters of baptism that first claimed us and ultimately define us. We are children of God, marked by Christ’s cross forever.

And as children, we are free-range and can wander and wonder. We can make mistakes and be imperfect. We can learn. We can grieve small things. We can cry when we feel wronged or perceive injustice in our world. We can celebrate and dance for no reason at all. We can take naps. We can play and imagine a different world. We can be curious. And as children, we can have a trusting faith that no matter what happens we will fall into the hands of the loving and merciful God.

When we fall into those hands, when we rest in God’s loving arms, we are awakened and through the eyes of children see, once again, Jesus through whom, with whom, and in whom, we are made siblings, one body in the risen Lord.

Beloved, you are God’s children.

We declare to you, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at, and touched with our hand, concerning the word of life. – 1 John 1:1

One of the most well-known dialogues of Socrates from Plato’s Republic is the Allegory of the Cave. It goes something like this. A group of men are chained to a cave wall in such a way that all they can see are shadows of the world above them projected by a fire. One day a man breaks free of the cave and climbs out seeing for the first time the world as it is, the warmth of the fire, the brightness of sun, the earth in its diversity. After a time, he returns to the cave and begins to share the story of his experiences, what he heard, saw, and touched. Socrates asks the question, “If he were to return and they were not to believe him, ridicule him, and possibly kill him, was it worth it to go up?”

The apostles and the first hearers of the Resurrection were faced with the same question. Having experienced the crucified and risen Christ, can they go back to the world that they knew before? Having weighed the risk of their message, would they instead choose to be chained in the darkness? This is a recurring theme throughout the New Testament from the rich man who goes away sad and the disciples who turned away after Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” to the early Christians who debated keeping the practices of the Mosaic law. From these writings, the questions are passed to us. Will we live what we have experienced? Will we tell what we have seen and heard having been transformed by the resurrection of Christ?

Sometimes, I wonder if it is all too easy to hide in the church, to use the rituals and memorized prayers to prevent us from encountering Jesus who calls us into a real fellowship with him and the people that he loves. The rituals and prayers are meant to facilitate the meeting, not to shield us from him. Hiding behind the locked doors of the church, we are exposed only to the incomplete shadows and receive only incomplete joy that God intends for us to be gifted with in its fullness in the crucified and risen Lord.

The one who suffered and was risen, Jesus, the Christ, comes to us. He calls us by name, breaks through doors, meets us where we are, frees us from the chains that we fashion for ourselves, and raises us to the new and complete life that he has won for us. Not only for us does he come, but for the whole world. We no longer have to be confined by shadows, but life abundantly in the light of the world that he reveals. The God who forgives us. The God who loves us. The God who calls us to walk in the light and see the world as it was intended to be from the beginning. The crucified and risen Lord is our light. To cling to him is to see his risen radiance and be set free forever.  

For I have handed on to you as of first importance what I, in turn, have received; that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. – 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

I received my first bible around the time I was in Kindergarten, a collection of short bible stories with artwork opposite of the written text. I can still see many of those pictures when I think about them. Ever since then I have had a deep love for the sacred scriptures. A copy of the bible has always accompanied me wherever I’ve been led. I received my first study bible, which I still have, when I was preparing to be confirmed in the Church, gifted one, which I took with me to Basic Training, and purchased a new bible when I began attending a Lutheran church. It is the one book in my house that is opened every day for study, reading, or prayer. The words of the scriptures have been a faithful, and sometimes mysterious and challenging, friend.

I don’t fully understand them. I have more questions and fewer answers when I read. I miss things in the readings. I question what and why God reacts the way God does. What is deeply intriguing, can be outright frustrating! And yet, I still love them, and want to learn more, and be challenged, and proclaim the whole point, that Jesus has died, Jesus was buried, and Jesus was raised. 

We have been given this beautiful library of God’s faithfulness, generational questioning, and witnesses of love, hope, and faith in a challenging world so that we receive what was handed on before us. Like family histories told around supper tables and at the foot of a grandparent’s recliner, these stories, poems, and theological discourses bear witness to the ways that God shows up, cares for us, and triumphs over the seemingly impossible challenges that we are faced as a human family. 

Christ is risen to us today! Christ is risen to us when we read the bible. Christ is risen to us when we hear the public reading of God’s word in the liturgy, the preaching, and the Eucharistic meal we partake. The words have been given to you of first importance that what you have received may be handed on to others, in accordance with the scriptures.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!