lectio: luke 1:39-45
December 18, 2009
Not long after being visited by the angel, Mary made a hurried trip to a village in the hill country of Judea. Once there, she entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth, embracing and kissing her. And the moment Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby inside her suddenly moved as if leaping. Elizabeth, for her part, was filled with the Holy Spirit and blurted out loudly:
“God’s hand is on you in a special way! And God’s hand is also on the child you’ll give birth to! I’m so honored to have the mother of my Lord come to see me! The moment your greeting hit my ears, the baby inside me suddenly moved, leaping for joy! You’re blessed for believing that what God spoke to you is going to happen!”
There is a communion among women who are carrying children or have born children that men will never directly experience. Men experience this fellowship obliquely, from the outside rather than inside. We are excluded by gender from the mystery of pregnancy, this profoundly embodied experience of carrying and nurturing life within us and then delivering that life into the world. As I slowly read and reread this small vignette, entering the story as best as I could in my imagination, I experienced several longings that touch on this intimate communion.
I longed first for my own “Elizabeth” to whom I would run in order to share something precious. I know so so many younger people. Most of my life exists among them. Of peers I have a good handful. But what I lack right now is that older, wiser person to whom I would naturally run to share something that I could count on to be understood. But I also longed for something precious to share, something that would produce the same level of joy and excitement in me that these two woman certainly shared.
In a spiritual sense, I guess you could say that I found myself wanting to be pregnant, wanting to have new and tangible life taking root in me, life I could identify and share with at least one other who really “got it,” something I could get excited about.
I also experienced a longing to see with more regularity and greater precision God’s “seed” in others, and not just to see it but also respond to it as enthusiastically as Elizabeth did to Mary — to identify the “fruit of their body.” I still have a strong tendency to leave my thoughts unverbalized. So much goes unsaid that needs to find daylight, so lately I’ve been making regular attempts to tell others what they mean to me and what I see in them that’s good and beautiful and holy. Elizabeth, infused by the Spirit, is an exemplar: “God’s hand is on you in a special way! God’s hand is also on the child you’ll give birth to!” John, too, even while still in utero, is an exemplar, because “he leapt for joy” upon hearing the voice of his Lord’s mother. (The verb used for “leap” is often used of animals frolicking out of sheer exuberance for life.) This tells me he noticed and responded to the presence of God in Mary.
“Lord, let your life come to me in surprising and unexpected ways as it did to both Mary and Elizabeth. Let me share the joy of carrying, nurturing and birthing — even at my own risk — the life you place within me. Give me as well the discernment to notice that same life in others. I want to name it loudly, clearly and with joy after noticing it. Whatever you’ve placed in others that reflects you, no matter how faint, may I learn to see it and bless it. Amen.”
lectio: luke 3:1-6
December 4, 2009
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
”THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,
’MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD,
MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.
’EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED,
AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE BROUGHT LOW;
THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT,
AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;
AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD.’”
Luke 3:1-6
verses 1 and 2 - as one trained in the craft of history, i appreciate the context-setting that luke does here, giving us the international, national and local context of those who wield power; and yet in the midst of all these ‘power people’, the word of God comes to john in the wilderness…not in the palaces and temples of power, but the wilderness. the wilderness has often seemed like a dry wasteland and the absence of God to me. but i testify that it has been in the wilderness seasons of my life - when i was athirst and my soul dried up - that is when God has given me his word, like a sudden rainshower…utterly refreshing and life to one in the wilderness; this also reminds me that it is into the wilderness that God – in the exodus – led the former slaves of Egypt to make of them a covenant people, ready to embody His Way…
verse 3 - stunning: ‘preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins;’ it strikes me today that i often rush through these words, assuming so much, because i have heard sermon-after-sermon about them. but today as i re-read them over and over, what strikes me is that john isn’t preaching a repentance [greek: metanoia/"change you mind"] about your sins, but it says change your mind about “the forgiveness of sins”. these people knew they were sinners; they lived in a culture seeped in the teaching of torah and if that wasn’t enough, the pharisees are there to provoke them. but what john offers is a word about forgiveness…and this strikes me as a good word for myself as well: how often am i trying to convince people about the sin in their lives that they all ready know about? i need to begin speaking much more of forgiveness, and practicing it. the significance of forgiveness can be lost on me sometimes, but if preaching forgiveness gets john in trouble with the temple authorities, then it should probably get me in trouble as well; and it reminds me of the situation of the apostle paul: if we are not being accused by the pharisees and temple authorities of our day of having too much grace (like paul was in romans 6) then we probably are not really practicing the radical way of forgiveness and grace; but, like paul, in taking the radical way of Jesus, we will likely need to explain ourselves, because it is not cheap grace nor easy forgiveness, but it is scandalous!
verses 4-6 - again, reflecting what had happened in verse 2, a voice proclaiming - crying out - in the wilderness; the echo of the word of God spoken in dry, lonely places is heard round the world. there will be no obstacle to God coming to redeem and deliver His people…chills run up my spine as i read: “and all flesh will see the salvation of God.” even so, come Lord Jesus.
++Lord Jesus, help us to embrace the way of forgiveness. Help us change our minds concerning the forgiveness of sins, and see that we cannot do it, it is only in You that we may find the deep grace of a delivering God. Let us see Your salvation, O God Most High! Amen.++
lectio: john 18:33-38
November 20, 2009
Therefore Pilate entered again into the Praetorium, and summoned Jesus and said to Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in Him.
john 18:33-38
verse 34 - as He does so many times, Jesus answers a question with a question…such the provocateur.
verse 35 - the pointed question finally appears: ‘what have you done?’…i think Jesus’ answer to this is quite revealing…
verse 36 - Jesus seems to tackle both questions at once here (”are you the King of the Jews?’ and ‘what have you done?’); what has Jesus done? He has brought a kingdom not made with human hands to the earth. this Kingdom of Heaven is truly beyond and other, and yet tangible and real…like we are: it is in the world, but not of the world. thus the first question is answered as well, only kings bring kingdoms, the Reign of the Servant King has come…Jesus is indeed revealed as the King.
verse 38 - veritas…quo est veritas? ah, pilate’s (in)famous question to Jesus. now, in the Greek, ‘truth’ is ‘alétheia’…and as i grope for some understanding of truth, i’m not sure aristotle helps with his definition: ‘to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.’ i was hanging with dave nixon in cincinnati awhile ago, and he explained his understanding and delved into the linguistic thought-world behind ‘alétheia’; you see the ‘a-‘ at the beginning in the Greek is a negative prefix, which we would see evident in English words like ‘il-legal’, ‘im-moral’ or ‘il-legible’; which when tied to the Greek ‘léth’ (which means to conceal or deceive or obscure) you get literally: ‘to not obscure’ or ‘to make evident’; thus the thought behind the word is something like ‘make self-evident’; and this word ‘alétheia’ is known to occur in the classical Greek literature of the Iliad and the Odyssey in connection with verbs of ’saying’, and is tied to its opposite: to tell a lie or to deceive. in this Greek literature, we might come to conclude, for Homer the writer who is ‘telling’ an epic adventure: Truth has to do with the reliability of what is said by one person to another. i like that. it takes “Truth” out of the conceptual, ethereal world and puts it in the utmost practical of life-settings: how we speak to one another.
++Lord Jesus, thank you for your Truth. Holy Spirit, thank you that you guide us into truth. O Father, we love Your Truth! Amen.++