Tags
attention, awareness, compassion, grief, Jesus, John the Baptist, loss, Matthew, needs, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
Sometimes I feel so sorry for Jesus. In today’s gospel (MT 14:13-21) there are three distinct moments when Jesus could have used a kind word but no one noticed. The first line is the saddest:
1. “When Jesus learned of the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” Of course he did!! This was his relative and dear friend who had baptized him and recognized who he was immediately. With him gone, Jesus would certainly have been bereft.
2. Even then, the crowds followed him. (I’m hoping they just weren’t informed about John because had they known they would have given him some space to grieve.) They were waiting from him when his boat pulled in to the shore and in his great sense of compassion, he tended to their needs – putting his own feelings aside. He cured them.
3. I’m wondering why the disciples couldn’t see his sadness. They seemed to just be concerned to have him disperse the crowds so they, themselves, wouldn’t have to figure out what to do next. I love the challenge he offered them when he said, “There’s no need for them to go away. Give them some food yourselves.” Of course they had no idea how to do that, but once again compassion reigned and Jesus taught a great lesson.
All of this in the midst of his grief! What lessons might we learn from this reading? Once again, I would say “Awareness, awareness, awareness!” Look beyond what is in front of you to what is inside the person before you. See always with an eye of compassion in the generous manner of Jesus.
There has been a lot of bad news lately – some global, some personal involving people that I love. My typical response to all of it (as maybe for many of us) is to try to make things better. I am lately finding it difficult to trust my ability to do anything and so am shifting to what some people would call “letting God be God.” What that involves sometimes looks like passivity, and it does involve surrender to what is, but it seems more sensible than being against anything which involves resistance and pushing when there is a wall in the way.
In his small book, Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace, John Philip Newell writes each morning and evening of the week a prayer for the life of the world. Brief as they are, they are compelling in their depth and intensity, calling out to God with vision and yearning, always capturing quickly and quietly a trust of the God that will never disappoint. Here is what he offers on this – and every – Saturday morning.
Yesterday I had one of those mornings when waking early turned into an amazing blessing of silence and recognition. I chose to leave my computer packed away and just sat looking out a giant window in New Hampshire at the mid-point of my journey to Wisdom School. (See Saturday’s post). Fortified with the coffee and an invitation to quiet from by ever-hospitable friend, Bill, I spent an hour reflecting on the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) as it appeared to me on the calendar, in nature and in my own self as a cell in that universal body of love. Here’s what I scribbled in pencil at one point so that I would recall the experience – a great beginning to this “wisdom week.”
I almost disregarded the first reading from today’s lectionary (ACTS 9:1-20) – not because it held nothing worthy of comment but because it seemed so familiar. I know the story of Paul’s conversion and know that it appears in the liturgical calendar more than once a year. I decided, however, to read it again for a possible point of inspiration and, of course, I was not disappointed.
Sometimes I think we can get carried away doing penance during Lent. I must admit that for many years I refused to talk about the need for repentance because I thought life held enough challenge and people I knew needed nothing more to feed their poor self-esteem. I have now come, I hope, to a healthier place where admission of imperfection lives in concert with a willingness to reform. This is the message that stands out to me in the lectionary readings for today, clarifying God’s desire for us and urging us on from the very first words.
Jesus is out and about again this morning preaching in parables – this time Mark’s version of the sower and the seed (MK 4:1-20). I wonder if it was a whole crowd of blank looks staring back at him and then later the questions from “the Twelve” that frustrated him enough to have him ask, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?”
I just read my post from yesterday to refresh my memory of what I said or didn’t say about Epiphany. As it happens, I think that post turned out to be a bit of an example of the meaning of the word. As celebrated in Christianity, the Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles represented by the Magi: a moment of great revelation. In a modern dictionary definition it is seen as “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”