Getting into him!

Fifth Sunday of Lent.

Martha says to Jesus: “If you had been here my brother would not have died.”

Martha is deep into Jesus.

Being deep into him – sunk into him – she’s grasped his identity.

She knows that Jesus could have – would have – prevented her brother’s death if he’d been there.

Lazarus is dead because Jesus wasn’t there. Jesus was absent.

Now after he’d received word that Lazarus was ill, Jesus delayed in going to Lazarus, deliberately it seems.

Jesus is using the physical event of Lazarus’ death to teach Martha and Mary – and us – about the bigger life and death, about eternal life and eternal death, Heaven and hell!

Here’s the teaching: When death arrives, if Jesus is absent, we remain dead. Full stop! 🛑

We become the weeds that are thrown on the fire rather than the wheat that is gathered into the barn.

Do you get it?

It’s Jesus presence that transforms death and it’s personal presence, it is intimate presence. It is Jesus presence inside us… in our souls.

We need to be into him and he needs to be into us – just like Martha – if we are to live again… rise…

Take a little time to read and re-read, to ponder Jesus teaching and notice how personal it is…

“I am the resurrection and the life.

If anyone believes in me,

even though he dies he will live,

and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

“I am the resurrection” (note the ‘I’) and “whoever lives and believes in me (note ‘lives… in me’) will never die.”

Spiritual experience and Christian spiritual experience are not quite the same!

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On the purely human level people discipline themselves to climb mountains and when they reach the mountain-top the views are magnificent, breathtaking, up there it is delight, enjoyment, peace, it is spiritual experience.

But it is not necessarily Christian spiritual experience, it is human spiritual experience.

Christian spiritual experience is something more, more than the views from the mountain-top and how that touches us.

In the Gospel today it is not the surrounding views that the disciples are caught up in, that’s not what is remembered. In fact there is no mention of it.

No, it is spiritual experience of a different kind that they remember. It is something more, something beyond purely human spiritual experience. It is Heaven thrown open and it is the presence of Jesus Christ that is opening Heaven up.

It is Heaven, grace, God, acting on human effort and taking human spiritual experience to another level altogether.

Getting it all so wrong!

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Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

John 1:29-34 “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”

The primary purpose of the church is to provide access to Jesus Christ.

That Jesus may be born in individual hearts and from individual hearts have his way in human affairs.

After that the purpose of the church is not to be a moral compass 🧭 although many people think it is.

Rather, it is to say to the world as the Gospel says to us today: Look 👀, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

Did you catch that? He seeks to take away the sins of the world.

The world wants to nail you to your sins. Nail me to my sins. Nail everybody. You must be held accountable.

But not Jesus. Jesus doesn’t want this to happen because accountability in eternity is too severe!

So out of love and to save us, Jesus seeks to be nailed for your sins, my sins, our sins.

Do you see it? Accountability doesn’t disappear 🫥

He seeks to take responsibility, to be held accountable on your behalf. What love is this?

“I did not die on the Cross for you to bear the burden of your sins.”

And once he takes responsibility, you’re set free, cleansed, washed clean in the blood of Christ, redeemed.

And when he does this for you he acquires you…

And when this really happens for you… you’ll love ❤️ him to bits!

The mission of the church is not primarily about being a moral compass. It’s about salvation.

It’s about saving us all from God’s Justice.

Human imperceptibility – the sign of God’s greatness

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John expects… anticipates…

For John what is about to unfold – God in Jesus – is decisive.

John’s Jesus clearly carries a threat.

“Brood of vipers, who warned you to fly from the retribution that is coming?”

“Even now the axe is laid to the tree so that any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire.”🔥

“His winnowing fan is in his hand, he will clear his threshing floor…”

So how did this threat unfold in real life back then?

How did this “retribution” as John calls it unfold?

How was the tree cut down and thrown on the fire? Bearing in mind that we’re not really talking about a tree but about real people whom the tree represents – a people to be cut down and thrown on the fire.

How was the wheat separated from the chaff in the lived experience of the people back then? In their history?

I’d say they hardly noticed it happening or that it had happened… and that’s my point!

So, while the language and the images are strong, at times scathing, the threat unfolded in the lives of the people very gently, almost imperceptibly.

In fact it was so gentle that many probably didn’t even realize that it had happened!

This human imperceptibility is one of the signs of God’s greatness.

What happened was that they missed the significance of Jesus… they didn’t connect with him… they didn’t grasp his identity. He went over their heads so to speak.

They just went on doing what they had always been doing.

And in so many places… spaces… hearts and minds… the same pattern will reemerge this coming Christmas.

But God will have been and gone!

Indeed, the kingdom of God is always close at hand.

Finally… empty pews and empty churches – a sign of the death of religion or a people being cut down and thrown on the fire?

Do you really think that God is no longer active?

There’s only one response to that 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Wild super-abundance; the mark of God

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Thirty-first Sunday

Lk 19: 1-10 Zacchaeus

The mark of God is super-abundance.

Call it mercy if you like, but it’s an outrageous and wild super-abundance.

God is not mean and the person truly touched by God is not mean because to be touched by God is to be touched by wild super-abundance.

So when Zacchaeus is touched by God he cannot help but respond super-abundantly… if he’s cheated anybody he commits to paying him back four times the amount. Four times!

This wild super-abundance is the sign of God’s presence, the guarantee that where God was once absent from Zacchaeus’ life, he is most definitely now present.

Is there any sign of this wild super-abundance in our lives?

Pray without losing heart!

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Twenty-ninth Sunday

Lk 18: 1-8 The unscrupulous judge and the importunate widow

Whatever we receive from God is received in prayer 🙏

This is is also true of Mary the Mother of God, whatever Mary receives from God she receives through prayer.*

It is impossible to receive from God in any other way.

The more prayer, the more we receive which in turn nourishes the heart’s desire to pray and prevents us “losing heart”

Not losing heart seems critical… because if we lose heart we’re likely to give up prayer and this leads to the death of faith; “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”

We can conclude that prayer is the life of faith and the absence of prayer is the death of faith.

*Whatever Mary seeks and receives from God will always be for us, for humanity.

Perverting the holy – an ever present danger ⚠️

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Thirtieth Sunday

Luke 18:9-14 The tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified

We are privy to the pharisees inner world and so we’re able to see him as God sees him.

He’s using other people, people whom he views as beneath him, to make himself feel good but – and this is what makes it so much worse – he’s doing it by using the holy, by using the Ten Commandments, by using God.

So the ego remains unconverted and in fact the ego is converting (perverting) the holy to suit itself.

From the very beginning this perversion of the holy has been an ever present danger ⚠️ within Christianity – and too often a very real one.

And in the sight of God what he’s doing amounts to abusing the holy, abusing the Commandments and abusing God.

God lives as the ego dies!

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Did you notice that the Pharisee said his prayer to himself… it never reached God!

He believes he’s a step above the tax collector.

It happens!

So when you pray, or when you’re here and take a glance sideways, do you ever think you’re a step above somebody else?

Well if you do… then you can be sure that you’re praying to yourself, and not to God – in a relationship with your own ego but not with God!

God lives as the ego dies!

The ten lepers and glorious human need – the beginning of conversion

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There’s so, so much going on in this piece, apart from simple gratitude.

Jews and Samaritans were enemies and each justified despising and hating the other for political and religious reasons.

So all around there’s dislike, hatred, and division.

There’s another ingredient too – both Jew and Samaritan considered leprosy to be God’s punishment for sin so the lepers were rejected for religious reasons – and obviously on health grounds.

But leprosy introduced an additional fear factor.

So there’s so much in the air as Jesus walks along the border; dislike, hatred, division and fear, indeed terror, the terror of countracting leprosy.

Even the geography is noteworthy, Jesus is walking along the border between the two feuding tribes, Jews on one side, Samaritans on the other, and lepers approach him. This is coming to a head!

He tells the ten to show themselves to the priests. They’re not healed immediately but only as they’re going away. There’s an element of trust as they turn to go find the priests… but is it hope or faith or a bit of both that motivates the ten to keep going? It’s likely they’d try almost anything to be healed so they may be some way from faith at this stage. But something is stirring even if it’s only human need. Glorious human need… the beginning of conversion.

In sending the ten to the priests Jesus is putting it up to the priests; who am I? Take a look – the lepers are healed. Decide about me.

And at least one of the ten newly healed lepers is a Samaritan… ouch 😓… so the leper colony contains both Jew and Samaritan. Isn’t it remarkable that leprosy could unite Jews and Samaritans but in health they were divided and justified that divide by using God?

Jesus is having none of it!

Finding himself cured, the Samaritan leper returns and throws himself at the feet of Jesus. This is an act of adoration due only to God. It’s worship. It’s more than gratitude. Jesus says, “stand up… your faith has saved you!” This is an absolute insult to the Jews!

But what about the other nine? They heard nothing about being saved. Were they healed but not saved?

Yes, it seems just one of the ten healed lepers reached faith.

There’s more Christianity in the dog!

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Twenty-sixth Sunday

Luke: 16:19-31 The rich man and Lazarus

Look at the dog – I’m loving 🥰 that dog.

He’s everything a Christian should be.

He rambles up to Lazarus, he has time, he’s not in a rush, he doesn’t pass him by, he doesn’t ignore him, he rambles over to him and licks his sores, he spends time with Lazarus.

A dogs lick is friendly… he likes you… not to mention the age-old belief that a dogs lick is healing ❤️‍🩹

In human terms it’s the equivalent of sitting down at the gate with Lazarus and putting your arm around him.

And even if the roles were somehow reversed, if the rich man was the one sitting at the gate, the dog wouldn’t pass him either… it’d make no difference to the dog whether it was Lazarus or the rich man… he wouldn’t discriminate between rich and poor.

There’s so much Christianity in the dog!

If we could all be more like the dog perhaps 🤔 we’d create Heaven on earth!