John 5:1-9
In the Jerusalem Temple was a healing pool called Bethzada, a double pool with five porticoes whose ruins remain today. Invalids waited for the water to stir so they could rush down and compete to be first in for a healing; the rest would remain ill. The story makes me wonder if the blind, lame, and paralyzed found their way to some home at night, or whether they just congregated at the pool 24/7. I can picture a small garrulous community there, telling jokes, passing gossip and complaining about all and everything.
One first-century Sabbath, when Jesus visited the Temple for a festival, he spotted a certain invalid in the crowd and healed him. Why pick him out of all the others? I don't know, but he asked the sick man, "Do you want to made well?" The question brings to mind Jesus' question to blind Bartimaeus [Mk 10:46-52 (cf. Mt 30:22, Lk 18: 35-43)]: "What do you want me to do for you?"
"Do you want it?" We could ask ourselves this--or perhaps hear the Lord asking us--about things we pine for but hope will just happen to us. Do we want to stand on our own? And do we want the aftermath of getting what we're focusing on? Did the sick man really want to give up the leisurely days lying by the pool, chatting up his fellow invalids, no doubt getting free food from the Temple who provide charity for the poor?
The man's answer doesn't make him a good candidate for healing. He whines in helplessness: Oh, he has no one to put him in the pool; oh, other people crowd ahead of him. Jesus' curt response: "Get up, take your mat, and walk." From my experience as a pastoral counselor, I can imagine a smidgen of impatience in Jesus' healing words. Stand on your own two feet! Carry your own mat!
To his credit, the man did get up immediately. To his discredit, when Sabbath enforcers interrogated him, he informed on Jesus as the one who healed him.
The story is complicated and bears more study: especially that Jesus, who had gotten away in the crowd, found the man later and warned him not to sin again (Jn 5:14-15). It was after that the man turned him in. So rather than an amazement of glory and faith after this sign, we find poltroonery (sp?). Which begs the question: what will we do after we get what we want?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
A Sign from God
John 4: 46-54 "Now this was the second sign that Jesus did...."
A sign from God--and the official and his whole family believed.
A sign that took place because a royal official went seeking his son's healing; and he persisted after meeting resistance, and continued to push through to receiving a great grace.
When Jesus said, "You won't believe unless you see signs," the official said: "Sir (Kyrie, Lord), come down before my little boy dies." (Never mind about your signs, Sir, a life is at stake!) The father himself had a part in bringing about the healing: persistent prayer, a form of belief.
The official had a further part: he believed the word, episteusen (the word for faith is pistis). I.e., he believed before he saw the sign. He acted on Jesus' command to "go home, your son will live." Acting in faith, another form of belief.
And the next part is, the man then recognized the sign. Beyond his understandable rejoicing, this father compared the time of Jesus' words to the time of his little boy's healing. He recognized the connection and saw his miracle beyond the happy outcome--that perhaps would have happened anyway if he had stayed home--but a sign of the Messianic age.
Every step of the way, the official acted in faith (even seeking out Jesus in the first place). What sign will the Lord give today if we persist in prayer, confident and observant.
A sign from God--and the official and his whole family believed.
A sign that took place because a royal official went seeking his son's healing; and he persisted after meeting resistance, and continued to push through to receiving a great grace.
When Jesus said, "You won't believe unless you see signs," the official said: "Sir (Kyrie, Lord), come down before my little boy dies." (Never mind about your signs, Sir, a life is at stake!) The father himself had a part in bringing about the healing: persistent prayer, a form of belief.
The official had a further part: he believed the word, episteusen (the word for faith is pistis). I.e., he believed before he saw the sign. He acted on Jesus' command to "go home, your son will live." Acting in faith, another form of belief.
And the next part is, the man then recognized the sign. Beyond his understandable rejoicing, this father compared the time of Jesus' words to the time of his little boy's healing. He recognized the connection and saw his miracle beyond the happy outcome--that perhaps would have happened anyway if he had stayed home--but a sign of the Messianic age.
Every step of the way, the official acted in faith (even seeking out Jesus in the first place). What sign will the Lord give today if we persist in prayer, confident and observant.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
A Certain Rainbow
Genesis 9: "Be fruitful and multiply"
In my old age it occurred to me: why do people have kids? Why do we bring lives into this world of suffering and evil and death? Even for a dog, I thought: As I held Daisy's little gray corpse in my arms, I cried to the vet, "It doesn't seem worth it!"
But as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, "there lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Some Love at the center of creation wants to extend Himself--and being created in Her image (v. 6), we did multiply fruitfully. We brought into being beings to love, and to suffer for, even to die for. We multiplied love.
The post-diluvian passage where God commanded Noah to re-populate the earth ends with God setting a rainbow in the sky: No more world-wide flood, it says, a covenant with "all flesh." In reading it today I remembered the perfect rainbow I saw in my back yard not long after my husband/soulmate Denny died. I sat down to marvel at the supernal arch stretching across the land and sky for miles, and understood it certain reminder of God's covenant with me, my human race, and all living creatures, including the birds, the bugs, and the dogs. There is a presence brooding over this bent bent world. Kingdom of priests, we are translated by our baptism into this life of many colors.
God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And 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.
In my old age it occurred to me: why do people have kids? Why do we bring lives into this world of suffering and evil and death? Even for a dog, I thought: As I held Daisy's little gray corpse in my arms, I cried to the vet, "It doesn't seem worth it!"
But as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, "there lives the dearest freshness deep down things." Some Love at the center of creation wants to extend Himself--and being created in Her image (v. 6), we did multiply fruitfully. We brought into being beings to love, and to suffer for, even to die for. We multiplied love.
The post-diluvian passage where God commanded Noah to re-populate the earth ends with God setting a rainbow in the sky: No more world-wide flood, it says, a covenant with "all flesh." In reading it today I remembered the perfect rainbow I saw in my back yard not long after my husband/soulmate Denny died. I sat down to marvel at the supernal arch stretching across the land and sky for miles, and understood it certain reminder of God's covenant with me, my human race, and all living creatures, including the birds, the bugs, and the dogs. There is a presence brooding over this bent bent world. Kingdom of priests, we are translated by our baptism into this life of many colors.
God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And 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.
Friday, January 11, 2008
What is Truth?
“I think it right...to arouse you by way of reminder....”
2 Peter 1:12-21 I Advent Tuesday (year 2)
Peter writes in the Spirit to readers “established in the present truth,” presenting his thoughts as “a lamp” to sustain us “until day dawns.” That is, we already have the truth and we await the full revealing. And what is that truth? That the Gospel is true!
We are not talking about myths or allegories, Peter assures us: “I was there!”
How would life look today viewed by the lamp that the Gospel is true?
Well, nowadays we fear anyone who says they’ve gotten ahold of truth. Such assertions may get you stereotyped and disrespected. (According to legend, Peter was crucified upside down.)
An old Bible teacher of mine helped me understand the Christian creed as confessional (“I believe”) not a dogmatic (“This is how it is”) statement. But this perspective does not mean “It’s true for me” and whatever you believe is “true for you.” On the contrary, cultures teem with false gods and false religions.
Not to say that other religions don't have truth. Pope John XXIII acknowledged that in some encyclical back in the 60s. And I do think persons are called to God through expression in diverse religions. So how are we to judge what is truth?
Contrary to popular belief, there is something tangible about religious faith: the results. As William James writes, in his pioneering work Varieties of Religious Experience, "Judge by the fruits, not the roots."
I'm pretty sure Jesus said something like that too. (Mt 7:16-19)
2 Peter 1:12-21 I Advent Tuesday (year 2)
Peter writes in the Spirit to readers “established in the present truth,” presenting his thoughts as “a lamp” to sustain us “until day dawns.” That is, we already have the truth and we await the full revealing. And what is that truth? That the Gospel is true!
We are not talking about myths or allegories, Peter assures us: “I was there!”
How would life look today viewed by the lamp that the Gospel is true?
Well, nowadays we fear anyone who says they’ve gotten ahold of truth. Such assertions may get you stereotyped and disrespected. (According to legend, Peter was crucified upside down.)
An old Bible teacher of mine helped me understand the Christian creed as confessional (“I believe”) not a dogmatic (“This is how it is”) statement. But this perspective does not mean “It’s true for me” and whatever you believe is “true for you.” On the contrary, cultures teem with false gods and false religions.
Not to say that other religions don't have truth. Pope John XXIII acknowledged that in some encyclical back in the 60s. And I do think persons are called to God through expression in diverse religions. So how are we to judge what is truth?
Contrary to popular belief, there is something tangible about religious faith: the results. As William James writes, in his pioneering work Varieties of Religious Experience, "Judge by the fruits, not the roots."
I'm pretty sure Jesus said something like that too. (Mt 7:16-19)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Dissolved
2 Peter 3:11-18 II Advent Thursday (year 2)
“Since all these things are to be dissolved.”
The theologian Hans Kung writes of God’s “Absolute Future”-- the future beyond time that is in God’s hands only. We can't be certain what that future will be like. The certainty we do have is that, as Paul writes, “the world in its present form is passing away (I Cor 7:30-32).” The universe as we know it is finite.
Finitude is something we can’t think about too long. We can’t comprehend it. To function we require a certain amount of denial. Even some of our churches consider it bad form to bring up the fact that this life itself is the “City of Destruction” John Bunyan wrote about in "Pilgrim's Progress."
But Advent is the right time to contemplate our finitude, and to drink deeply from the promises of Parousia. If the form of your life is passing away, if you are sick, if you have lost someone, if you are hurting, if the world is going to hell in a go-cart: these are not signs of God’s abandonment. No, these ills and pains are signs reminders that he is coming back for us.
“Since all these things are to be dissolved.”
The theologian Hans Kung writes of God’s “Absolute Future”-- the future beyond time that is in God’s hands only. We can't be certain what that future will be like. The certainty we do have is that, as Paul writes, “the world in its present form is passing away (I Cor 7:30-32).” The universe as we know it is finite.
Finitude is something we can’t think about too long. We can’t comprehend it. To function we require a certain amount of denial. Even some of our churches consider it bad form to bring up the fact that this life itself is the “City of Destruction” John Bunyan wrote about in "Pilgrim's Progress."
But Advent is the right time to contemplate our finitude, and to drink deeply from the promises of Parousia. If the form of your life is passing away, if you are sick, if you have lost someone, if you are hurting, if the world is going to hell in a go-cart: these are not signs of God’s abandonment. No, these ills and pains are signs reminders that he is coming back for us.
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