Look in the dirt...

In the gospel reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent, John 12:20-26,

Jesus plants the image of the (dead) seed coming to life and bearing fruit, as a metaphor for his own crucifixion and being “lifted up” on our behalf. The Greeks ask to see Jesus. We might paraphrase Jesus’ oblique response this way: “If you want to see me, first look down into the dirt; then look up to the cross.”

From Sundays and Seasons

So many times Jesus tells us to look around us.  He and God are here in the dirt of the earth, the muck of the world.  And from this, good can come for all.

What better time to look down at the dirt than spring?  To see the signs of new growth.  From death to life.  From the cross to resurrection.  From despair to hope.  From empty to full.

May this time of Lenten reflection show you the hope and love of God for you and all people.

Lenten Litany: Isaiah 58

After the water

In the news lately we have heard of the devastation in Texas from climate change:  unusual extreme temperatures.  Cold.  Water freezing.  Pipes bursting and flooding.  A power system not prepared for this event, both in the long and short term.

But... after the cold and freezing came caring.  After the ice... a community helped in recovery.  People caring.

And so to, after the water of baptism, Jesus showed us that our baptism requires us to care. To strive for justice and peace.  

Immediately after Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan. Mark does not give us much detail, but even the outline is significant. Baptism does not make Jesus’ life easier. Baptism does not fix things for Jesus. Just the opposite, baptism complicates life, for Jesus and for us. Baptism compels God’s people to strive for justice and peace in all the earth. There are plenty of philosophies which argue for similar action, but none are backed up by the Holy Spirit forcing the action. What are some choices your baptismal calling led you to? What are some faithful decisions your congregation made counter to conventional wisdom?

 -from the worship resource Sundays and Seasons

Blessing the Dust for Ash Wednesday

As we work together with him, we urge you also
not to accept the grace of God in vain.
—2 Corinthians 6.1

A poem by Jan Richardson:

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

Read it all here.

Mountain Top and Creation Spirituality

This Sunday's reading was the Transfiguration of Jesus.  In the Coffee Hour discussion after worship, the discussion turned to "mountain top experiences".  Some thoughts that emerged:

• this is a feeling not a place
• nature brings us closer to God: that's where the "thinness" between us and God happens
• some of us live only in the valley

Today's Meditation from Richard Rohr (you can subscribe) touched on this as well.  He writes:

Nature itself was the first Bible. Before there was the written Bible, there was the Bible in things that are made. This creation starts with being very good (Genesis 1:31). We come to God through things as they are; spirituality is about sinking back into the Source of everything. We’re already there, but we have too little practice seeing ourselves there. God, in Christ, is in all, and through all, and with all (see 1 Corinthians 15:28; Colossians 3:11). We call this the Universal Christ or another name for every thing—in its fullness.

A spirituality of the Universal Christ is at the same time a creation spirituality. It allows you to start seeing your own soul imaged and given back to you in the soul of everything else. All of creation has soul! The Latin word for soul is anima, which became animal in English. This earth is participating in the mystery of redemption, liberation, and salvation. The whole creation is groaning in one great act of giving birth (see Romans 8:22). The whole thing is being reborn, re-covenanted, and realigned. Instead of seeing natural things as merely objects to be used, we must allow nature to enchant us.

This week [the meditations] will be featuring authors of color, people who, like Jesus, see God in everything. Howard Thurman (1900–1981), the Black mystic, theologian, and spiritual guide for Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, shares his early experiences of God: 

The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away whatever may block our awareness of that which is God in us. . . 

It will be in order to suggest certain simple aids to this end. One of these is the practice of silence, or quiet. As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in my rowboat, fishing along the river, when there was no sound save the lapping of the waves against the boat. There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for what I did not know—yet I always knew. There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me. My response to the sense of Presence always had the quality of personal communion. There was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God. [1] 

As G. K. Chesterton observed, “A religion is not the church [one] goes to, but the cosmos [one] lives in.” [2] Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing “contemplation.”

[1] Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit (Harper and Row: 1963), 96.  

[2] G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (John Lane Company: 1919), 215.