¹Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ²Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? ³I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. ⁴Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

 ⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. ⁷So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

 ⁸” ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ “

***

Repentance. 

My view of repentance was dramatically altered several years ago when I read The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright. I used to think of repentance in purely moral terms and cutting bad behaviors out of my life. Repentance was a fresh commitment to NOT drink, smoke or chew or go out with girls who do. You’ll have to read NT Wright for yourself if you want the fuller explanation (and it would be WELL worth the time and effort, I promise) but the short version is that repentance has more to do with changing allegiances and cutting ties from anything anti-Christ - and the original context was very political and military - and putting all your eggs in the “Christ is King” basket. So repentance has to do with our loyalty and where we pledge our allegiance as much or more than it has to do with changing a morally questionable behavior…. although that comes as part of the package… its just not where Christ and his original audience would put the emphasis. And here’s why. If we change our allegiance and where we trust then all the rest comes with it. If we simply change a behavior our heart can still be far from Christ. 

So that brings into focus what Christ is saying here in this passage and how it hangs together. Christ is saying to the people standing there that if they don’t give up their agenda and alter their allegiance to him they will literally die when God comes in judgement… and God did exactly that shortly after Christ’s departure as Christ had foretold on several occasions (but that is a much longer, theological discussion for another time). 

Last week I began asking myself: What would my life look like today if I were to live in complete loyalty to Christ and align with his agenda? And of course there is no one right answer to that but a lifetime of turning to him and shifting all my loyalty, pledging all my allegiance to him alone as areas of my life are uncovered and new idols to turn from are discovered. Repentance is the work of a lifetime not a simple event.

What allegiances need to be broken in your life so you are more free for loyalty to Christ?

+++ Lord, help me become a great repent-er! I know there are areas you want me to turn from so I can more fully be yours. Will you show them to me and help me know how to cut ties with them so I can follow you more fully, more faithfully in the days and years ahead. I am yours, all yours. Amen. +++

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” - Hebrews 11:1

 When I was in 4th grade (Miss Logan’s class! Go locomotives!!), I volunteered to be one of several students to be ‘blind-for-a-day’. We were blind-folded as soon as we got to school and paired with a classmate with sight, who would be our guide. This experience left quite a lasting mark on me. I vividly remember having to ask my guide for everything and about everything, and through our interaction, I learned that I could trust my guide. I learned it through asking and then living the questions I was asking, like:   

• where is my pencil (like I could actually write anything?!)
• where exactly were we in the hallways? (and where was the restroom?)
• what was for lunch? (I trusted them to help me sit down in a seat at lunch time and that the seat was there…and that it was my lunch in front of me.)

…but probably my most vivid memory is of my other senses coming alive in Miss Howell’s music class as I experienced music without eyes and only with my auditory and feeling senses…I could feel the music!  It made me realize that something that I could not see even with my eyes open had substance and verve and delved deeper inside me than merely my ear-drums.  And while I was utterly dependent for almost everything from my guide to live this one day in a disoriented fashion without sight, I discovered something: there was substance to things I could not see, like music and fresh air and even closed air inside the building felt different than outside at recess; I could live by faith (trust) only as I allowed myself to risk trusting my guide and then actually step into the experience that hobbled some of my senses but activated others.

“…for we walk by faith, not by sight…”
2 Corinthains 5:7

The eternity in that teachable moment in my life has had a formational effect that echoes in my journey of faith.  As I have reflected on it since that time, quite possibly because of that profound experience, I am comfortable with mystery and living out questions that I may not fully answer completely. I love this quote from Henri Nouwen:

“…we need to live the questions of our lives, both alone and in community, as we seek our mission in the world…frequently, we are restlessly looking for answers, going from door to door, from book to book, or from church to church, without having really listened carefully and attentively to the questions within…Without a question, an answer is experienced as manipulation or control. Without a struggle, the help offered is considered interference. And without the desire to learn, direction is easily felt as oppression.”

Pat answers are seen for what they are: unreal and unloving.  Instead, as we interact with people who are truly struggling, I find this piece of advice from the prophet Jeremiah– as translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message at Jeremiah 23:25 – to be essential: “Instead of claiming to know what God says, ask questions of one another, such as ‘How do we understand God in this?’ But don’t go around pretending to know it all…”

Having studied and practiced spiritual direction for a few years, I have come to realize not only how important being non-manipulative is, but also how important the questions are – and following those questions by living in them, toward them in a centered-set kind-of-way; this means I need to trust Jesus.  I think we  need to trust God in our endeavours to live the questions.  The advice the poet Rainer Rilke once wrote to a younger poet seems to ring true for us today:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

The Temptation of Jesus

 ¹Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

 ³The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

 ⁴Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’ ”

 ⁵The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”

 ⁸Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”

 ⁹The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. ¹⁰For it is written:
   ” ‘He will command his angels concerning you
      to guard you carefully;
 ¹¹they will lift you up in their hands,
      so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’^”

 ¹²Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’

 ¹³When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

The season of Lent, at its core, is very much about seeking God.

The desert fathers understood this very well, and understood Jesus’ example of going into the wilderness to do battle by prayer and fasting- following Jesus in example and heart.

What can I learn from Jesus here?

1)    Jesus set the example for us not to do this in our own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Following the Spirit’s leading is our best course of action.

2)    Books could be written on Jesus’ answer to the temptations, however, today I will just suggest that though Jesus was the Son of God, He did not serve Himself. By denying the temptations, we see over and over that He denied Himself to ultimately serve others, to serve us.

3)    Jesus’ answers “Man does not live by bread alone…Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only…Do not put your Lord to the test…” guide us in our seeking. He gave simple yet profound answers to the distractions that come when we seek.

Jesus also taught us to seek, ask, and knock. God, Our Father, wants to be found!

Matthew 6:1-6

- Matthew 6:1-6, The Message

“When you’re trying to be good”

“When you do something for somebody else”

It seems clear, on first read, that Jesus’ starting point for this reminder is that he assumes that we are trying to live our faith, to wrestle with the implications of grace and of our engagement in the mission of God.  But there’s a subtle element at play here:  ”acting compassionate”, not “being compassionate”.  ”Playing to the crowds”, rather than being content with our task.

“Just do it - quietly and unobtrusively”.  Do it, but do it without fanfare - whatever the “it” of “trying to do good” is.

I’m writing this in a coffeeshop after visiting a nonprofit organization that I volunteer time with.  I’m helping them use social networks to spread the word about the agencies they’re partnering with to help eradicate global poverty.  I’m proud of their work, and I’m happy to be able to help.  In fact, because I’m heading to a concert tonight, I’m wearing their logo t-shirt and hoping that other concertgoers notice the logo and I can share the story.  I’m not quiet or unobtrusive, at least in my t-shirt choice.

And so I wonder, isn’t it good to tell people what we’re doing to help the less fortunate in our world?  To give our friends opportunities to reach out beyond themselves?

If Jesus is consistent in His message - and I hope that He is - this is the same thing he’s saying when he says that murder is sin as much as being angry is.  The attitude of my inner life matters as much as my actions; the meaning matters.

How I do what I do matters as much as what I do.  And so, my life must be a constant purging of inappropriate behaviors and motivations, an ongoing challenge to center myself in my identity in Christ rather than my identity that I construct from my activities.

So, I must be in constant prayer, with a heart open to pruning and reshaping and corrective action.  I must pray, simply and honestly, so that I may grow to be simple and honest.

The focus of my prayer must move from me (and my words) to my God, so that the focus of my life may move from me (and my actions) to my God.

“Just be there, as simply and as honestly as you can manage.”  In my prayer, and in my actions.

• Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress and anxiety, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.
• Fundamentalism, in and of itself, is benign and can be personally beneficial, but the anger and prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.
• Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain - altering your values and the way you perceive reality.

Interesting, eh?  But here is the kicker: while these brain scientists/neurotheologians have focused most of their studies on those who pray and/or meditate for several hours every day (like monks and nuns), their research is now turning to more prayer-challenged people (like me!).  In fact, Neuroscientist Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin, claims that most anyone can sculpt their brain with some experience and training and something they call neuroplasticity (brain/cortical organization, especially for the sensory systems, is often described in terms of mapping, thus, with training and experience we can re-map our brain…quick question: in faith community circles, is this what we call spiritual formation?).  “You can sculpt your brain just as you’d sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym,” he says. “Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly.” 

In one recent-but-unpublished study many people - who were regular people and not monks and nuns - were very successful in cultivating a spiritual mind-set.  According to Dr. Davidson, there were detectable changes in the subjects’ brains within two weeks. Two weeks!  Another similar study, where employees at a high-tech firm meditated a few minutes a day over a few weeks, produced more dramatic results.  “Just two months’ practice among rank amateurs led to a systematic change in both the brain as well as the immune system in more positive directions,” Davidson claims that the subjects developed more antibodies to a flu virus than did their colleagues who did not meditate.

So, I have been reflecting on all this and asking myself: 

• what are the implications for spiritual formation in terms of neurotheology, prayer and neuroplasticity? 
• Can spiritual formation and spiritual exercises like centering prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer ‘form’ a well-worn pathway to connect with God?  

Then he started explaining, “This passage of scripture has just been fulfilled — while you were listening!”

Those present were giving their opinions of him and were surprised by the gracious words he spoke. They also said, “But this is Joseph’s son, right?”

Jesus replied to them, “The next line you’ll give me is , ‘Doctor, heal your own self!’ or ‘Do here in your hometown, too, everything we heard you did in Capernaum!’ ” Then he said, “This is the way it is: prophets never get a hearing among those who ‘know them best.’ The truth is, there were lots of widows in Israel during the prophet Elijah’s lifetime, when there was a severe three and a half year drought and widespread famine. But God didn’t send Elijah to any of them; he was sent only to a widow of Sarepta in the region of Sidon — a non-Jew. And there were lots of lepers in Israel during the prophet Elisha’s lifetime. But none of them were healed except Naaman from Syria — a non-Jew.”

When the crowd heard this they erupted in anger, took action, and drove Jesus outside the city, leading him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, intending to throw him over the edge. But he made his way between them and left.

____________

We have no health insurance — yes, we’re involuntarily one of that large crowd — and own one car that’s shared between 3 adults since our son totaled his own car a few weeks back. Make that, we “owned one car.”

Yesterday Jody drove to her annual check-up at a public health clinic not far from where we live. While she was inside waiting to be seen, a young man (age 30) was gunned down just outside the clinic while driving a car (which was not his). As he was dying, he lost control of the vehicle and it plowed into ours, knocking it off the street and onto the sidewalk against a tree. This was the first homicide in Cincinnati for 2010.

When I arrived at the scene in a borrowed car the clinic was still in lock-down mode (with Jody inside) and our car and the area around it were taped off as a crime scene, so it was several several hours in bone-chilling weather before it was released to be towed away.

Losing two cars in quick succession is for us a major loss because, quite frankly, we don’t have money for another. On the one hand something valuable to us was stripped away — and it feels like a number of things have been stripped away of late — yet on the other hand a much greater stripping occurred in the murder of a young man. Most things can eventually be replaced. Not so with people.

____________

Whenever I come to this dramatic passage from Luke 4, I’m always challenged by the huge loss that takes place. The people in the synagogue have just heard a stunning pronouncement from Jesus, yet their previous experience and knowledge of him (”Isn’t this Joe’s boy?!”) prevents them from receiving the one person they most need to receive. Furthermore their secret challenge for Jesus to produce something off the hook (”Do here in your hometown what we heard you did in Capernaum!”) prevents them from receiving what he actually might like to give them.

And because of their narrow understanding of Jesus, they flip very quickly from wonder to bewilderment to anger, driving him from the synagogue out to a spot where they can murder him for his “unorthodoxy.”

When I read this I’m reminded that I don’t have the luxury of framing the story as their actual loss. (This isn’t a story about good guys and villains.) The sobering truth is that this is just as much a story about my potential loss. God reminds me that I must be open to seeing Jesus in a different way. God reminds me that my lack of openness will only lead to questioning, skepticism and anger. I’m reminded that God is always pushing, pressing into whatever openness and receptivity of heart are present, and if that means going around me and into some strange places (like to a widow outside Israel or a leper outside Israel), well, God is God.

The Jesus I want to hold onto would give us health insurance, would protect the one car we own, wouldn’t strip anything away, wouldn’t allow people to be gunned down on a street. In short, the Jesus I want to hold onto would do everything according to my desires. If this is the Jesus I want, then of course this is the Jesus I get, but it’s not much, and because Jesus will not suffer being caged, I’ll end up bewildered or angry like his hometown crowd, missing the larger work of God in my life and in the world. God is at work this day. There is redemption waiting for the family of the slain man, for those who shot him, for our family as well. This is for all of us “the year of God’s favor.”

¹⁴And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through all the surrounding district.

 ¹⁵And He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all.

 ¹⁶And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read.

 ¹⁷And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
    ¹⁸“THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
         BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.
         HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES,
         AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
         TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED,
    ¹⁹TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”

 ²⁰And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him.

 ²¹And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Luke 4:14-21

At first reading, the phrase “…in the power of the Spirit,” jumped out at me.  What does that mean and what does that even look like? 

Reading this passage several more times, I begin to feel the significance in what Jesus found to read from Isaiah.  I’ve often thought that the passage Jesus reads from Isaiah, well, it just doesn’t get any simpler than that concerning our mission.  If Jesus – as a good rabbi – says to me “follow me” and then wants me to do what He does, this becomes my mission in a nutshell.  Proclaim good news to the poor, release and set free the oppressed, proclaim the favour of God.  The significance of this mission is that the Reign of God is being entered, not just by the followers who do what Jesus does, but to the marginalized: the poor, the oppressed, the blind.  God’s favour is becoming present and revealed to them.  Yet to be honest, while I believe this for others, I sometimes have trouble remembering to believe this for myself.  I sometimes don’t believe now is the favorable year of the Lord for me.  My debts cancelled?  My family returned?  My oppressors overthrown?  And I also struggle that if I can’t bring myself to believe it, how can I proclaim it to others?  Of course, therein lies my own struggle of a season with a famine of faith and a feast of doubt. 

“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  What a spectacular thing to say…and how exciting.  As all the eyes were fixed on Him, I can imagine the surge of energy that must have risen from the gathered crowd when Jesus proclaims the fulfillment.  And yet, what an unspectacular event.  Jesus is the humble person of gracious words here.  Humble gracious words…this is what it means to proclaim ‘in the power of the Spirit’…it doesn’t have to be some deep-throated rebel yell (although there is a time and place for that too)…but today I am seeing that this is who He is, incredible power in such deep humility.  My God is a humble God…and He calls me to humility with Him.

++Lord, I believe!  but in my feast of doubt, help my unbelief.  Let me know and experience the power of humility.  Let us know You O Lord, and follow You in Your mission here and now.  Amen.++

 As technology gets more mobile and your 3G or 4G network gets you “connected” from anywhere on the planet, social scientists are pointing toward the fact that other horizons seem to be disappearing.  Nature and green space have dropped off the screen so-to-speak, because in our time-poor culture, we just don’t have time to go to the park or have a garden, because apparently we’d rather miracle-grow our farms in a game on Facebook.  Nature is becoming invisible to the virtual eye, one might say.  We walk down the street texting or e-mailing or chatting on the phone, and un-noticed is the silent creep of the natural world.  Does this call into question the very argument of the erstwhile apostle Paul from Romans 1: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”  Do we no longer take time to notice?

I bring this up, because I think it has an immense bearing on what we call “spiritual formation”.  When we speak of spiritual formation, we are talking about what forms us into the people we are becoming.  Thus, in spiritual formation, we seek to have the Spirit of the Living God forming us unto Christlikeness, just as Jesus foretold us He would in John 16:13.

Yet a recent article in the Washington Post reported that: “According to a recent landmark study of viewing habits, adults spend an average of nearly three hours a day interacting with computer screens. Add TV viewing and you get a screen time of about 8 1/2 hours. “People are spending more time in media and especially screen media than anything else they’re doing in life,” says Bill Moult of Sequent Partners, one of two organizations that provided the study…But you don’t need numbers to know how absorbed we have become by screens and their mesmerizing qualities. In October [2009], two Northwest Airlines pilots who flew their jet 150 miles past their destination told investigators they were distracted by their laptop computers.”

The more time we spend with something the more it “forms” us, that’s basic spiritual formation 101.  The more time with Jesus, the more like Him we become, however we also note that it is not just the content of material going into our brains (input) that forms us - things like scripture reading or memorization - but it is also how we are taking that information in that is just as critical.  In spiritual formation studies, we note that the impact of content can suffer greatly if there is no contact - actually interacting relationally with Jesus directly via prayer and indirectly in community with others and our world. 

Interviewed about what we are losing in the digital/virtual age, Robert Harrison, a professor of Italian literature at Stanford University, observed that the difficulty is that we are losing something profoundly human: the capacity to connect deeply to our environments. He reminds us that landscape designers talk about bestowing on a garden its genius loci, or spirit of the place, that bubbles up into your consciousness if its presence is strong enough and the visitor meditative enough to receive it. Harrison says a garden truly reveals itself only when its own depths and those of the beholder flow together. But in our present age of rushing here-and-there, we languish in the poverty of both time and attention.  Thus in an age of distraction, attention becomes a primary spiritual discipline, along with meditation, which he mentions.

Harrison claims that gardens and green space are keys to bringing us back from the virtual world to re-claim our humanity.  In fact, in the initial chapters of Genesis there is a word-play in the Hebrew with regard to the Earth and the Man formed out of earth.  In Hebrew, earth is ‘adamah and man is ‘ha-adam.  The best translation may be ‘earth’ and ‘earthling’, and the earthling is placed in what?…a garden of delight.  Thus, Professor Harrison goes on to say: “Gardens are the best place to begin this reeducation,” Without it, he fears that the prophecy of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Duino Elegies, will become so. “Earth, isn’t this what you want; invisibly to arise in us? Is it not your dream to be someday invisible? Earth! Invisible!”

Of course it is entirely possible that Paul nailed it in Romans: we, professing to be wise, became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for a virtual image flickering in HD…

• How do you connect best with God?  Nature?  Internet?  Solitude?  Community?
• Have you considered - as an earthling - how you are connected to this earth?  I believe there is something significant that we are made of earth, yet the Spirit of the Living God indwells us…I like how Pierre Teilhard de Chardin turns our perspective on its head: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
• What would you say is the genius loci/spirit of the place in which you inhabit currently? 
• Take time to connect with your local environment…meditate deeply on it and look for the bubbling presence of God to reveal the hidden Christ to you; journal your thoughts on this afterwards.  Is God saying something to you?