Fifth Sunday in Lent

Psalm 145  •  Exodus 3:16 – 4:12  •  Romans 12:1-12  •  John 8:46-59

As I write this, I am returning from a global conference on marine conservation in California, where I spoke on three panels about my work in Virginia. Many colleagues who have PhDs and are leaders in the field of marine conservation were also on these panels. It did not take me long to start fretting that my contributions were trifling and pedestrian compared to the innovative and dazzling work of my august and ambitious peers. I felt like an imposter, on verge of full exposure and expulsion from the club. 

Moses also struggled with imposter syndrome. In the Exodus reading for today, he desperately tries to convince God that he is unworthy of his call, consumed by anxiety of public speaking and being perceived as a fraud. 

God will have none of it. God tells Moses to get over himself and his insecurities—as if to say:  “Moses, this is NOT about you!” God does not call Moses to succeed as a leader or public speaker, but rather, calls Moses to bear faithful witness to God’s will. In fact, Moses never actually made it to the Promised Land; his unwavering faithfulness along the epic journey is what made him the great prophet of the Hebrew Bible. 

Mother Teresa said, “We are not called to be successful, but faithful.” How do we heed this call in a society that obsessively worships the false gods of career achievements and success? Father Gregory Boyle, S.J., said, “If you surrender your need for results and outcomes, success becomes God’s business.” How true! 

However, we can only surrender if we truly believe that God adores and delights in our true selves and that any—and all—gifts we have to offer are enough, without exception. The call to faithfulness then is the call to freedom and authenticity where none are imposters and all belong to the club called God’s Kingdom on Earth.  

  

— Gwynn Crichton

Fourth Saturday in Lent

Psalm 108   •   Exodus 2:23 – 3:15   •   1 Corinthians 13:1-13   •  Mark 9:14-29

In today’s Gospel, the father of a boy who was possessed by a demon asked Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus told him, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” The father responded by saying, “I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!” Jesus then commanded the impure spirit to come out of the boy. When his disciples asked, “Why couldn't we drive it out?” Jesus answered, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

But there is no indication in Mark’s story that Jesus prayed at all, and it seems likely that if Mark had intended the point of the story to be that you have to pray before an unclean spirit will listen to you, he would have included that detail. Instead, the only prayer is from the boy’s father—“Help me overcome my unbelief!” He did NOT pray, “Dear God, heal my son.” He prayed for faith—for help in believing in Jesus.

I struggle with this story, for two reasons. First, knowing what we know about medicine and psychology, it is hard to believe that this is an accurate description of Jesus actually casting out a physical demon. Second, it presents faith as almost like bribery, as a quid pro quo—if you believe in Jesus, you get a free “heal your kid” card. 

            

Perhaps the miracle stories in the Bible were supposed to inspire faith; for me, they were obstacles to faith. (Bishop John Robinson’s book But That I Can’t Believe resonated with me.) If being a Christian meant having to disregard the laws of physics, it didn’t work for me. And I used to think that those “unbeliefs” meant that I couldn’t be a good Christian.

Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, believed that “One of the great sins of the Christian church is the discouragement of doubting. There’s a limit to doubting. If you become really good at doubting, you begin to doubt your own doubts.”

            

I hope Peck is right; I am really good at doubting. But I think I’ve hit the limit. I stopped fighting in my mind over the miracle stories, and I found that, in words quoted by Bishop John Spong in his latest book, “The older I get the more deeply I believe, but the less beliefs I have.” I still don’t believe that Jesus suspended the laws of physics, but I have decided that I don’t need to believe in the literal truth of the miracle stories to believe in the divinity of Jesus.

            

Fewer beliefs, more believing.

  — Lloyd Snook

Fourth Friday in Lent

Psalm 107:33-43 •  Exodus 2:1-22  •  1 Corinthians 12:27 – 13:3  •  Mark9:2-13

I keep an icon of the Transfiguration pinned to the wall over my desk. Occasionally when I am reading or writing something, it will catch my eye. On the best days, it offers a brief moment of grace, a time when I’m stopped in the midst of my work and called to remember God’s presence in the more mundane parts of my life. This is how I tend to think of the Transfiguration—as a break in the relentless action of Mark’s gospel in which the power of God comes to visibility, a moment in which we are granted a vision of the hidden glory of Christ. I can see something of the beauty of God peeking through the world, and am moved by it; I imagine Christ’s body burning white, and long for him.

Other days, my eyes are cast down, continuing down the icon to gaze at the prone figures of the disciples at Jesus’ feet. Their faces are twisted with fear.  Even the usually garrulous Peter is reduced to stammering on Mount Tabor: “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified” (Mk 9.6). And I know this feeling too. Lent begins and ends with this fear: on Ash Wednesday we are confronted by our own death; on Good Friday, we are shown something far worse, a different sort of icon in which this once-bright body is twisted by the violence we inflict upon one another every day.  God dwells with us, we hear on the Mount of the Transfiguration—but this is a terrible thought for us who have only begun to be made holy. (Moses knew this; so did Elijah.) Our eyes are too weak for this sight. We cannot bear to look at it, and so we throw ourselves down with the apostles. And it is right that we meet them here, bowed in the dust in humility and penance—for it is precisely by kneeling that we are healed of our sin, strengthened to contemplate this uncreated light, and fit to rest in it eternally.

— Joe Lenow

Fourth Thursday in Lent

Psalm 73   •   Exodus 1:6-22   •   1 Corinthians 12:12-26   •   Mark 8:27 – 9:1

Jesus said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
 

Dear Lord, my Jesus, let me hear Your meaning. What is it to deny myself? What is it to take up my Cross and follow? I will put the ear of my heart to Your Lips. I will wait and listen. . . .

Life and Death are at war within me. I live on the brink of despair. You know this. Your Cross is Life; it is not sadness and limitation. Your Cross is victory over death. Your Cross is Life. And yet, I choose death. I choose to spin a fabricated self, a web of futile concerns and anxieties. I do not trust your Cross. I fear its implications.  I run from its freedom!  I save myself. . . .

The self that You, dear Lord, have asked me to deny . . . does it even exist, based as it is on a lie?  What lie?  The lie of a self that believes it can exist apart from God. But I cannot breathe one breath without You. This You have told me. . . .

Make in me a readiness for change. Make me supple in Your Hands, dear Lord. Cover me in Holy Ash. Hide me from myself. I have grown weary living by my own lights (which is no life at all!). Light, now, the innermost flame no sin has ever touched. Press upon a melted heart Your Holy Pattern. . . .

Now, in these days leading up to Your Crucifixion, help me lay bare to You my soul. By Your Grace let me see clearly my own sin and shortcomings. But let me look upon my own wretchedness as a mother looks upon her newborn child. And bless me that I may take on the suffering of those around me, identifying with their pain, transforming all suffering in the depths of my being where You ceaselessly utter me, my Name. . . .

Dear Lord Christ, bless us, that we may see Our Selves through Your Eyes.   “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani”

— A St. Paul’s Parishioner

Fourth Wednesday in Lent

Psalm 119:121-144   •   Genesis 50:15-26   •   1 Corinthians 12:1-11   •   Mark 8:11-26

Psalm 119: 121-144: Above this psalm is written in my Bible “The Glories of God’s Law.” Here the psalmist is not intellectualizing about the meaning of Torah but declaring in very passionate terms his love for the law, “with open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments.” “My flesh trembles for fear of you.” “My eyes fail from watching for your salvation.” But I particularly love the last line when the psalmist asks “give me understanding that I may live,” suggesting that in addition to love and commitment, we also need to “understand.”

Imagining overhearing or participating in the psalm is both exhausting and exhilarating. It’s like a battle cry for a group of scholars who then go into their separate rooms and pore over texts, but also for the rest of us who struggle every day to live according to God’s word.

Mark 8:14-28: One’s dominant impression of Jesus in Mark’s gospel is that this Jesus is a man with a mission who has no time for foolish questions. Look and see what I am doing! Don’t you get it? I don’t know the significance of the 12 and 7 baskets left over about feeding the multitudes, presumably it does have significance, but like the disciples, I don’t get it. Then we read about the interesting cure of the blind man. First Jesus takes him by the hand out of the village. He puts saliva on his eyes and lays his hands on him. When Jesus asks him can you see anything, the man looks up and says, “I can see people but they look like trees, walking.” That doesn’t seem to be good enough; Jesus tries again and the man looks “intently” and sees everything clearly. At the end Jesus sends him away but tells him not to go into the village. Why in this very fast paced story does Mark pause to give us this interesting detail? Do the stories connect? The relationship between the blind man and Jesus is marked by none of the frustration Jesus shows with his disciples even though it takes the blind man some time to see as he is supposed to see. Clearly he doesn’t want people to look like trees, so Jesus heals him a second time. Jesus is like a doctor wanting to get it right before he sends him on his way.  

— Peggy Galloway