The triduum and the whole universe

The biggest liturgy (order for worship) of the year started Thursday and continues until we celebrate Jesus' Resurrection. In these multiple services we remember: Jesus gave us communion that we could take him into us and be sustained by him in the world; Jesus cleansed us from sin and urges us to likewise wash other's feet; Jesus died for us; Jesus went to hell for us; and Jesus defeated death and conquered the grave when he rose from the dead on the third day.

But, in our personalized version of Christianity we often forget that the 'us' Jesus died for is not just me or my friends or even all the people in the world.

John 3:16 NASB notes "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

God loved the world (the Greek refers to much larger than our planet) and put people in a place where everything was subject to the consequences of human decision. God gave his only begotton Son so that by believing in Him: We won't perish; We'll live forever; We'll be a family of God's children; We're heirs of God who share his suffering and glory; and the universe is waiting for us.

Romans 8:19-21 continues "The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that hte creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

A couple of big questions as we await Jesus' resurrection:
What do you do to remember you live for more than yourself?
How does your life give hope to the world, even the universe?

The whole world - sins and all

Psalm 51:1-18(19-20); Psalm 69:1-23
Jeremiah 12:1-16; Philippians 3:1-14; John 12:9-19

John 12:19 "Look the world has gone after him"

Christians tend to fall into one of two extremes relating to the world. It is either hostile to God, like the sins of the flesh, all awaiting destruction. Or the other extreme of everything is so good that we're to seek comfort and prosperity often forgetting the clear direction of scripture of how difficult it is for those who have to receive the gospel.

We're to live a challenge somewhere inbetween where we are expecting a difficult journey and that all of the difficult journey is to be offered up to God. We're to live expecting a new creation with the old creation passing away yet somehow enduring. So how do we do it?

How do we be part of the 'whole world' that praises God even when people fall short of praising God? How do we be the people who leaders would point at and feel like all humanity has gone after Jesus? What do you do to avoid the traps and pitfalls of our materialist societal sin? How do you live expectant of something new and yet treasuring what God has given us now? How do you restore feeling and understanding where these two heretical extremes have left us numb to the power of the good news of Jesus Christ?

Palm Sunday: Jesus Cleanses the Temple

El Greco: Christ Cleansing the Temple

Psalm 24, 29; Psalm 103
Zechariah 9:9-12, 13:1, 7-9; 1 Timothy 6:12-16; Matthew 21:12-17
Church of the Apostles Palm Sunday Sermon
While the attention of the crowd is on Jesus, while people are looking to him for victory, while folks expected him to overthrow rulers... Jesus shows his concern for right worship and by seeking to make the temple into a place of prayer for ALL PEOPLE.

And I'm left thinking... Holy Week is consistantly the most important week of my devotional life... it is so full of memories of deep encounters with the Lord that I've set up patterns and ways I expect to experience God... are these things Jesus would clean out?

For your thought and comment:
Where might you expect (or if after the fact did you find) God met you in a new way this week?
What Holy Week practice would you deeply miss if it were removed this year?

Thursday/Friday 5th Week of Lent

Relationships over things

(Sorry I had too much on my plate this week and a number of things slid in favor of maintaining intimacy with God).

Questions for reflection:
How did you learn to pray?
What is your earliest memory of prayer?

For me, I learned from the Book of Common Prayer. I would pour over the book looking for the prayer that addressed the situation I wanted to pray for because I believed prayers would only be effective if they had been made by someone holier than me. While I recommend praying words to God that are your own, this season with the prayer book served me well.

I learned to praise God first and now realize that in doing so I was usually recalling a testimony of what God had done in the past so that he would do something similar again.

I learned to ask for things that others had tested as part of God's heart and so by experience learned about praying within the will of God.

I learned to close prayer giving glory to God and expecting God to do God's will and not mine.

Eventually I learned to pray words straight from my heart, but in some ways because I'd sought so earnestly for prayers, the prayer book words were also prayers from my heart. So, the prayer book with the community that worshiped guided by it led me into relationship with God.

Recognizing Prayer as Essential

Psalm 119:145-176; Psalm 128, 129, 130; Jeremiah 25:30-38; Romans 10: 14-21; John 10:1-18

The challenge today is to think about our perceptions of our prayer life. If we, as most Christians do, believe that prayer is important and effective, not to mention modeled by Jesus, then we should take it more seriously than we often do. Most of us, probably, pray at least once a day, sometimes perfunctorily, sometimes for a long stretch.

However, speaking only from personal experience, I find prayer hard. I find it hard to concentrate, to stay on point, to stay focused. There are so many horrendous issues in the world, in our country, in my friends' lives, in my own life, that they are overwhelming. I can't pray for all of them, so often I don't pray for any. But I do, I really do, believe that prayer is important. That it is our lifeline to our Maker and Savior. So this question is for me, too: Why is it so hard?

How do your rate prayer on your priority list?

How do you move it higher?

Deep Words of Deep Trust

Psalm 51:1-18(19-20); Psalm 69:1-23
Jeremiah 12:1-16; Philippians 3:1-14; John 12:9-19
Psalm 23

Today's mediation from Henri Nouwen reflects on Psalm 23 and states "The deeper these words enter into the center of by being, the more I become part of God's people and the better I understand what it means to be in the world without being of it."

For me, Psalm 23 is one of a number of passages that helps me enter more deeply into being part of God's people. One of them is Jeremiah 12:5 where God challenges Jeremiah and his strength with words of powerful promise. (Here is a book that expands the mediation if you're interested).

What words help you experience deeper trust of God?

Source of Our Joy

Psalm 118; Psalm 145
Jeremiah 23:16-32; 1 Corinthians 9:19-27; Mark 8:31-9:1

Psalm 118 proclaims 'this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.'

When I led preschool chapel we sang this line every Wednesday and sometimes when we encountered eachother in the halls or on the playground. We developed a culture where seeing eachother called rejoicing to mind. So, whether we were down, up, tired, happy to be with friends, playing, missing Mommy and Daddy, fussy, tantrumy, bouncing off the walls... the songs we sang each week helped us have a way to return to joy in the Lord.

Nouwen writes: "The surprise is not that, unexpectedly, things turn out better than expected. No, the real surprise is that God's light is more real than all the darkness, that God's truth is more powerful than all human lies, that God's love is stronger than death."

An exercise like what I did with preschoolers risks a fake joy, putting on a face when things feel terrible. Yet, it points us to the truth of our rejoicing because Jesus overcame the world and its troubles. It required meeting a child where they were, letting it be okay to be however they were feeling. Then once they were sure it was okay to be where they were, smiling until they were naturally smiling before we could sing of joy and praise to God that was real in the face of troubles.

Questions for reflection and comment:
What is a place or time in your life you are so thankful for that you return to it to praise God again and again?
What is something today real joy in the Lord has shown up?

Prayer Has Power

"To pray for one another is, first of all, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, that we belong to each other as children of the same God." I've always found it interesting that when Jesus taught us to pray, he always used the plural. "Our Father who art in Heaven....Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, just as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."

Although God made us unique, we have the same basic physical and spiritual needs and the same struggle against sin. We are all members of the human race with one common Creator.

Prayer certainly has power. But, Nouwen does not offer yet another testimony on how God delivered things that we have long asked of him in prayer. This is not to diminish these requests, for they have their rightful place in our prayer life. Nouwen's focus, though, is on the power of prayer to reveal to us that the Father loves us equally as sons and daughters. We enter into and experience a spiritual truth. "To pray, that is, to listen to the voice of the One who calls us "beloved," is to learn that that voice excludes no one."

To conclude his passage, Nouwen stresses that intimacy with God and solidarity with all people are inseparable. As John writes in one of his letters:

"If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (1 John 4: 20-21)."

It is reassuring, especially for those for whom intimacy is a great challenge, that despite our own wounds and willfulness, God spells out the answer very simply: We must strive to love others and deepen our intimacy with them, if we would truly love God and deepen our relationships with Him. The concept of this Scripture severs nicely as a barometer, of sorts; to measure the extent of our intimacy with God by the extent of our intimacy with others.

The Path to Glory

Psalm 95, 102; Psalm 107:1-32
Jeremiah 23:1-8; Romans 8:28-39; John 6:52-59

Questions for comment:
What is one unlikely place from which you've experienced blessing?
When have you experienced love you wanted to share?

^{Romans 8:37-39} No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Origen: As long as we rely on God’s love, we suffer no feeling of pain. For his love, by which he loved us and drew us to him, makes us not feel the pain and crucifixion of the body. In all these things we are more than conquerors. The bride in the Song of Songs says something similar: “I am wounded with love.” In the same way our soul, once it has received Christ’s wound of love, will not feel the wounds of the flesh, even if it gives the body over to the sword.

Bray, Gerald: Romans (Revised). Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1998 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture NT 6), S. 233

Unfortunately people wound eachother deeply. Yet, today's devotional from Nouwen and the reading from Romans say something more profound than just get over it rather they challenge us to be transformed by wounds of love. God takes the unlikely and wounds of love and turns them for glory.

Seeking a Spiritual Atmosphere

Psalm 69:1-23(24-30)31-38; Psalm 73
Jeremiah 22:13-23; Romans 8:12-27; John 6:41-51

I don't think much about trash collection other than to put my trash out on the appointed day and to be thankful that it is taken away. Yet, this week I'm encountering articles about how volunteers in Libya are pulling together to pick up trash and how Jina Moore in Sierra Leone notes "sanitation trucks collected trash from city trash bins -- possibly the most dramatic sign Freetown could boast of a regularly functioning government."

When I read Nouwen's reflection about 'seeking a spiritual atmosphere' I found myself reacting against what he wasn't explicitly saying, namely the all too common Christian habit of avoiding all who aren't Christian as if they pollute our atmosphere. It would be silly to put my roommates on the curb to be picked up rather than just the trash we produce. It is even silly to think that it is only them creating trash and not me as well.

So, while I agree it is important to live in a spiritual atmosphere and talk with people who help heighten our sense of expectation for God to show up. I also know it is important to have an effective trash collection system that is sophisticated enough to take out the trash and not the people. It is critical to expect God to show up in our times with people who haven't received the gospel message. And, in our age of recycling, to figure out what is trash and what is a truth filled good idea to be recycled that comes from the other because I'm living in a spiritual atmosphere.

Questions for comment:
What is one idea that you believe because someone who isn't Christian helped you think it?
What is something you think Christians often misidentify as trash?

The Joy of God's Presence

Psalm 101, 109:1-4 (5-19) 20-30; Psalm 119:121-144; Jeremiah 18:1-11; Romans 8:1-11; John 6:16-27

In yesterday's post, Sherri wrote of the need to "practice the presence of God" not just daily, but on a moment by moment basis, like breathing. For the most part, that practice requires a shift in mindset, not an increase in time. Mostly. It is true that we can pray and worship and rest in God's presence while we are doing chores, or driving, or making dinner, or digging ditches. However, it is much harder to talk to God, much less listen to him, while we are on a conference call, editing a manuscript, helping children with homework, meeting a client, or comforting a screaming baby (though this latter situation is the one in which I find myself praying the simplest of prayers, "Help!")

It is useful to have a moment-by-moment prayer life; one that can be practiced throughout the day, but it is also necessary to spend longer stretches of time with God. In order to find, and live out, the Joy of the Lord, we have to spend time allowing Him to speak with us, through prayer, and the scripture, and other people. This does take time.

Nowen says: "I can understand Jesus' words: "How hard is it for the rich to enter the kingdom of God." Money and success are not the problem; the problem is the absence of free, open time when God can be encountered in the present and life can be lifted up in its simple beauty and goodness."

I think he is right, up to a point. We have to make space for God in our lives. This is especially hard for those of us (not me) who are more extroverted and like a lot of things going on at once. We have a tendency to fill up any empty space, and life today makes that easy. There is always a computer to look at, a phone call to make, a tv show to watch. For introverts, space is a bit easier to come by, internally. Nevertheless, we are all under the "busy" pressure, especially in this area, and we all need to deliberately create the time and space for God.


How do you create space for God in your life?

What makes you joyful?

Like a Breath of Fresh Air

Psalm 97, 99, [100]; Psalm 94, [95]; Jeremiah 17.19-27; Romans 7:13-25; John 6:16-27

A man who prayerfully goes about his life is constantly ready to receive the breath of God, and to let his life be renewed and expanded. The man who never prays, on the contrary, is like the child with asthma; because he is short of breath, the whole world shrivels up before him. --Henri Nouwen

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? --Romans 7.24

The shift for me into going about my life prayerfully was when I realized that I needed rescue every minute of the day, and that God cares about my well-being.

So, for instance, I don't just pray for self-control once a day; if I'm tempted to eat something I shouldn't-- a piece of candy, say, or a jar of Nutella-- I pray for self-control right then (most of the time).

I don't just pray for patience as I'm gazing upon the sweet sleeping faces of my children; when I'm late for swimming lessons and then the little boys who normally move like greased lightning go into molasses mode, I need to pray for patience right then, too.

So once I really internalized that God isn't setting me up to fail, that he offers "present help in trouble," I began praying for everything. Wisdom. Courage. Healing for the suffering people around me. Suddenly, a prayerful life didn't look like what I had thought-- the solemn, stately movements of an Extremely Holy Person; it was life. Just life, full and really unbelievably joyous.

And it really was like breathing deeply for the first time-- or like a long dormant plant bursting into bloom.

Where has God breathed into your life?
Where do you wish pray He would?

Dark Night of the Soul

Psalm89:1-18; Psalm 89:19-52
Jeremiah 16:10-21; Romans 7:1-12; John 6:1-15

At times God seems absent. The Protestant assumption (at least as I've encountered it) is that the person to whom God seems absent is being judged. Since at least St. John of the Cross (in the 16th century) another theology has developed that looks at a time in which God seems absent as a time of soul refining and a chance to seek God for his own merits and not just how we feel.

Mother Teressa is the most recent and longest example of someone who walked in holiness and who felt as if God was absent for nearly 50 years. Therese of Lisieux also experienced a long dark night. I give these names to you in the hope they will help you make sense of your experience if you are feeling God's absence. There is a huge grace for the one feeling like God is absent in being able to pray expecting God's refining more than the more protestant view of judgment.

But I'm hesitant to hold onto the theology of a dark night of the soul or an absent God lest belief in needing a feeling of separation becomes self fulfilling by my expectant creation rather than God's sovereign action. I learned of this theology in the years I've processed 72 hours when I was on retreat and felt God to be absent. Those hours of felt separation from God were so gut wrenching that my meditations of what hell is like begin there. These hours give me particular compassion and persistence when people come on retreats and feel as if everyone except them are receiving a touch by God.

Questions for reflection and comment:
A yes/no question, do you think feeling absence from God is necessary for Christian growth?
Why do you believe a period of God feeling distant is (or is not) necessary for growth in love of God for God's own merits?
What stories do you have of feeling as if God is absent and how people interpreted the feeling?

Compassion and Inclusion

Psalm 66, 67; Psalm 19, 46
Jeremiah 14:9,17-22; Galatians 4:21-5:1; Mark 8:11-21

I spent much of the last two days at the Accessibility Summit at McLean Bible Church. It, the people I met, and Nouwen's reflection about Compassion for Helen leave me thinking about how much poorer we are because of the pace we (or at least I) live life.

For example, A few years ago I'd plan twice as long as I needed to go grocery shopping so that I'd have space and time for divine appointments. Usually when I did this the time turned turned toward some sort of compassionate act toward others. Now, more often than not I go to the grocery store hungry eager to get home and make dinner.

Largely in the name of scheduling time with people for relationship, I'm realizing the sacrifice of relationships. With less time for unscheduled relationships, I wonder how closely the omitted part of the Jeremiah reading applies toward me personally. After the Accessibility Summit, I'm longing for relationships with people dramatically different from me and yet dramatically like me and the opportunity to seek God together.

Questions for comment:
What is one task you do that you could slow down?
How could Church of the Apostles be more welcoming to people 'dramatically different' from us?

Presence In Prayer

“Here we touch the heart of prayer since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction between God’s presence and God’s absence no longer really distinguishes. In prayer God’s presence is never separated from his absence and God’s absence is never separated from his presence.”

Logically, one cannot both be absent and present at the same time. Nouwen’s comment that in prayer this distinction between God’s presence and absence “no longer really distinguishes” raises the question of whether the distinction between his presence and absence is only apparent.

It is true that God is beyond our merely human experiences, as Nouwen states at the outset of this passage. We know from the Creation story in Genesis that God made us. God must have necessarily come before and been beyond human experience in order to create human life. God tells us that he is greater than us in Isaiah:

“Indeed, my plans are not like your plans, and my deeds are not like your deeds, for just as the sky is higher than the earth, 
so my deeds are superior to your deeds 
and my plans superior to your plans.” (Isaiah 55: 8-9)

Yet, we also know that God wants to be and is present and working in our lives:

“For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your forefathers, which he confirmed to them by oath. 
” (Deuteronomy 4:31 NIV)

“For who is God besides the LORD? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.” (2 Samuel 22:32-34 NIV)

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).

Prayer is the path to experiencing God’s presence: “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8). God is faithful and he will make himself available to us. Whatever we ask in the name of his Son, Jesus; Jesus will do in order to bring glory to the Father (ref. John 14:13-14).

I agree with Nouwen that prayer is the key to experiencing God’s presence. However, I will add that the mere act of praying may not bring us into the presence of God. When we pray, our hearts must be disposed to hearing and doing God’s will. I recall times when I prayed and felt nothing and heard nothing. Although I mouthed the words and seemed to pray with good intention, I noticed that I was really afraid to hear what God had to say and was not willing to do his will. When I surrender my reservations and selfish requests, I find I am truly open to his presence. When I truly ask for things in his name and not in my own name, I see the Lord working in my life in awe-inspiring ways.

Prayer Renews: Friday, Third Week of Lent

Psalm 95, 88; Psalm 91, 92
Jeremiah 11:1-8, 14-20; Romans 6:1-11; John 8:33-47

Throughout writings of the Christian Fathers and Nouwen's writings prayer and silence are equated. Responding to yesterday's post folks spoke of most experiencing God when at the very least in solitude.

For example Chrysostom states of Jesus: For what purpose does he go up into the hills on the mountain? To teach us that solitude and seclusion are good, when we are to pray to God. With this in view, you see, we find him continually withdrawing into the wilderness. There he often spends the whole night in prayer. This teaches us earnestly to seek such quietness in our prayers as the time and place may afford. For the wilderness is the mother of silence; it is a calm and a harbor, delivering us from all turmoils.

Yet, tongues or prayer language are often held up in churches like Church of the Apostles as a way to approach God that yields similar peace with added certainty of praying the right things. Maybe I haven't dug deeply enough to find someone who distinguishes the fruits of each so, here I'm digging...

Questions for reflection:
What is the place of tongues/a personal prayer language & silence in your prayer life?
When Paul writes of praying in tongues more than anyone why isn't there a similar boast of being silent more than anyone?