Beatitude

Love in the Company of the Resurrected

In John 12:1-8 at a dinner just after Lazarus was raised from the dead Mary, Lazarus’ sister, pours aromatic oil on Jesus’ feet and wipes the excess away with her hair. The gesture was as rich as the oil was expensive. The room was filled with the scent of her love and hope.

Another witness to the same events was Judas. Nothing of Mary’s love and appreciation existed in his mind. He was bent on accumulating as much money in the disciples’ mission fund as possible for the sole reason of stealing from it. Further he was just about to betray Jesus to the local authorities who would eventually crucify him.

Notice the contrast of minds: one loving and grateful, the other greedy and malcontent; one scented the room with love and resurrection, the other fouled the room with criminal intent. They had witnessed the same Jesus, yet could scarcely be more opposite.

Do the chain of thoughts you create result in love, hope and resurrection… or something closer to greed and death? We all have quite a bit of latitude concerning where our thoughts go and how they end up. Does Mary inspire you to see things a little differently?

See, Everything Has Become New

Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 that we are made new through Christ. We have been reconciled before God and sparked into a new creation. And so, his reasoning goes, with that new life intact we are the ones to bring God’s reconciliation to others, “God making his appeal through us…” Do you see that all things are new like this? It’s really a pretty elusive task. Sometimes I just don’t have the right frame of mind.

Our imaginations need to be stocked with such a vision. Poets know how to do this. One was Gerard Manley Hopkins who declares in the poem, God’s Grandeur, that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” and that even though we do a pretty good job of messing creation up, “… for all this, nature is never spent; / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; / And though the last lights off the black West went / Oh morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--/ Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

Another is Langston Hughes who wrote in I Dream a World that he did, in fact, dream a world “Where love will bless the earth / And peace its paths adorn...” and “…joy, like a pearl, Attends the needs of all mankind.”

And Antonio Machado wrote in the poem Last Night, as I was Sleeping “…that I had a beehive / here inside my heart. / And the golden bees / were making white combs / and sweet honey / from my old failures.”

So with their help and with Paul’s vision of a new creation we are asked to re-think what is handed to us from day to day. We are asked to see grandeur in tear soaked faces, and the joy of first light. We are asked see the seeds of peace in our last social rift, and just how it is that God re-works—reconciles—our old failures. Do you see it? It’s…. it’s… just… there, it flames “out, like shining from shook foil…”

If You Were a Fig Tree

In Luke 13:1-9 Jesus proclaims an unequivocal “no” to the question “Are disasters inflicted on people as punishment for sin?” Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, fluke accidents, and criminal acts do not come to humanity under God’s orders to punish us.

But Jesus does call us to recognize that life can come to an abrupt end especially if you’re not ready to meet your maker. Recognize that much of our religious practice is designed to help us to notice that life is short and sometimes dangerous, and the best way to reconcile ourselves to that fact is to live in cooperation with God’s ways.

Most of us will say that we are not ready to meet our maker. We haven’t quite put our affairs in order or taken the necessary steps to live faithfully. Passages such as this encourage us to live so that God can strengthen us, nourish us and thus help us to be just, generous, and caring. Here’s the question: If you were that fig tree and given one more year to bear fruit, what would you do? Because in effect, we are, each one, that fig tree.

Notice the gardener, who is the one in the story taking initiative to make fruitfulness possible!

Faith in the Face of Fear

The Psalmist of Psalm 27 acknowledges fear while living a faithful life. He says, “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear…” After a few readings it becomes apparent that this song struggles through some fearsome life-experiences while reaching, perhaps even desperately, for new confidence. Encounters with adversaries, false witnesses, and wars still end with: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” We may not be so very different from this ancient author. We encounter many fears, including war. It seems to me that we are less inclined to persist with faith, seems we need to be more tenacious in our discipline to have faith.

 

The daily watch is key. In your practice of faith, see what this yields: “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”