What’s In Your Eye?

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Jesus, judging others, love one another, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It’s hard to miss the meaning of the reading from Matthew (7:1-5) when Jesus is heard talking about judgment. His image of having a wooden beam in one’s eye and not noticing it is outlandish hyperbole by anyone’s reckoning. But it does capture our attention, which is the obvious purpose of Jesus, I suspect. The question at hand might rather be whether or not I notice the specks in my own eye. That seems to me the more difficult test. I can easily rub my eye and (perhaps) get rid of a speck—or grab some eye wash and blot it out. It may be too easy to find such a remedy. I still don’t want to think of a wooden beam…so how do I stop judging?

Whatever it takes to wake up the vagaries of your mind is the essential question here. What might you suggest to help others accept people without judging them? Do you judge yourself? If so, might that be a first step in changing your judgements of others? Instead of judging yourself or anyone else, why not try to just love without judging? You know: “Love the sinner, not the sin.” Then pray for the possibility to forgive—yourself and everyone else. It will be difficult but certainly worth the effort.

Word Placement

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love one another, Matthew, reconciliation, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I have always loved words and sometimes complex sentences cause us to pause to figure out which of the parts of speech is the subject, which is the object of the verb, etc. (Does that take you back to your youth as it does me?)

Here’s the example from today’s lectionary that gave me pause. From Matthew’s gospel (5:20-26) we read: “Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother…”

It doesn’t say: “if you have anything against your brother…” In other words, your brother is the subject of the clause, not you. But then the emphasis shifts and you become the subject (the “do-er”), the one who has to initiate the reconciliation. It calls for a deeper self-reflection because it doesn’t seem fair. Rather the gospel writer seems to be blaming me for what my brother has against me…making me dig deeper to examine why my brother has a quarrel with me and placing the responsibility for reconciliation on me…not always pleasant, right?

To avoid that kind of distress, we might do better to live always by the adage, “Love one another as I have loved you,” where the subject is clearly understood as you, the person spoken to, and the meaning is clear in the direct address.

While We Wait

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Christmas, Jesus, love one another, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wait, waiting, what are we waiting for

Several years ago I created a retreat day called “While We Wait” for parish directors of religious education. I wanted to focus participants on attitudes and activities that moved them forward in their preparation for Christmas. I was happy with the process of the day and repeated it in a similar form in different situations in ensuing years. I was especially partial to the alliterative title of the retreat. (Old teachers of language never die; they just morph into something else!) Aside from the double alliteration, I was partial to the title because it suggested a process, a way to get to Christmas that was deep and meaningful.

Yesterday I received a text from the CSJ Leadership Team, part of their monthly missive, For the Life of the World that keeps us focused on our mission. I found the message from Sister Sally Harper, one of our five Congregational Leadership Team members, very helpful and wanted to share the question about waiting that Sally raised and expanded upon in several ways. Instead of my reflection on how we wait, Sally asked the basic and underlying question that seems so fundamental but maybe sometimes is just taken for granted. She wanted to know: What are we waiting for?

Of course we know that we are waiting for the celebration, as Sally says, of God “up close and personal” in the person of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, the “Word Made Flesh” but that, as she notes, happened more than 2,000 years ago, so she repeats her question: What are we waiting for? It’s a question that each of us can and perhaps should answer for ourselves so I would suggest that before you read on, you take some time to answer the question in your own way…When you’re ready, Sally says:

Jesus calls us to incarnate God’s love in our daily lives just like he did: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (Sally leaves the work of how to do that to each of us.)

Thanks to Sally for this reminder of how simple, yet not always easy, it is to “wait” for the coming of Jesus.

If Only…

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greatest commandment, love one another, love the Lord, love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s gospel reading from the lectionary is one of the most familiar to many of us. Some may not know where to find it in the Scriptures but most can usually recite a reasonable facsimile when pressed to speak about the greatest commandment. As often as we hear it, we should heed it and it seems to me there is no better time than now to take it to heart. If only we would all write it on a bulletin board or pin it on the door leading to the exit of our house or – better yet – make sure it is written on and in our hearts and keep it there until it becomes an automatic practice — for our lives and the life of the world.

Having been asked: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answered, You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. (MT 22)

If only we would learn that short paragraph, teach it to our children and observe it ourselves, what a different world ours would be. It remains, however, like a ship passing across our field of vision until we jump off and dive into the depths of its meaning.

Are we willing to dive deeper today?

Forgive

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forgive, forgiveness, love one another, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It’s hard to miss the message in today’s lectionary readings. There are examples in each one, building to the most instructive: the story of the servant who successfully begged the king to forgive him a huge debt and then turned around and refused to forgive someone who owed him a much smaller amount. (MT 18:21-35) There are so many familiar lines in that passage, calling us to compassion and forgiveness for one another. Can you imagine Jesus suggesting that we forgive “seventy times seven times?” (aka as many times as we fall short.) Think about it though.

Is there anyone you love enough to forgive every time that person fails to measure up? Isn’t that what it takes to sustain a relationship? Is there any one of us who hasn’t been hurt or disappointed at least once that we can remember by a person we have loved? If we do forgive, doesn’t that strengthen the relationship? If we don’t, the transgression usually seems to hang onto us and deepen until the relationship is ruptured and it becomes impossible to remedy.

Nobody would say it’s easy to forgive serious injury but most of us, at least, would agree that forgiveness is the best way to heal. Jesus suggests that way today, saying: “Love one another as I have loved you.” With him as the model, who of us can resist a love like that?

God = Love

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God is love, heart, love one another, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, sacred heart of Jesus, symbol, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. We all know that hearts appear everywhere when Valentine’s Day comes around. Images of real hearts, however, are more complex and sometimes not so pretty, depending on the presence of blood and the vessels that appear in the picture. We see blood as “messy” or “gory” and we forget sometimes how essential blood is to our life and how we can only live if our heart continues to beat.

On this feast we celebrate the heart as a symbol of what the heart does, of course, not how it is constructed. Presently, in some spiritual circles, there is a description of the heart as “the organ of spiritual perception,” essential to our growth in love. Although the writer of the First Letter of John did not use that denotation, he did understand deeply the significance of the definition. Here is some of the evidence from today’s lectionary:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God…In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his Son into the world so that we might have life through him…Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another…God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in them. (1 JN 4: 7-16)

Take a moment of quiet and listen for your heartbeat. If you can’t hear or feel it, find the pressure point in your neck and just sense the love that is keeping you alive. Thank God for the life that is love, for the Love that is God. Remain in that knowledge, that grace, with each beat of your heart.

All About Love

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God, God is love, John, love, love one another, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday and today I have been without internet access but the messages from the daily lectionary have been very clear. My suggestion to all who are looking for inspiration this week is to look deeply into the first letter of John, especially chapter 4 which has enough power to last throughout the remainder of the Christmas season. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Let us love one another because love is of God. Everyone who loves is begotten of God and knows God.
2. If God so loved us we also must love one another. If we love one another, God remains in us and God’s love is brought to perfection in us.
3. God is love and whoever remains in love remains in God and God remains in them. In this is love brought to perfection among us.

I know that you have likely heard and/or read these lines often before. What I suggest is sitting with them until they are stitched into your consciousness, popping up each time someone crosses your path, and you may find a new word in some one of the phrases as I did this morning. I have always heard #3 as God’s love is brought to perfection IN us but today I read it as AMONG us. A new effect of our willingness to love!
I rest my case.

Short Stories

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feed my lambs, feed my sheep, Gospel, Jesus, John, legacy, life, love one another, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

One of the phrases I remember hearing rather often from my father when one or another family member would be explaining something in a long or roundabout way is “Short stories” (Which sounded like “Shot stories” in his Boston accent). It was a familiar way to tell us to get to the point and was generally rather effective.

One would wish the opposite of that directive after reading the conclusion of today’s gospel. It says: “There are also many things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think that the whole world would contain the book that would be written.” (JN 21:25) How I wish that the gospel writers had given us more of Jesus! I say that and then think of how much more I could do with what is written in those very pages. And I could, if I wished, fill a whole building with the commentaries that have been written over the centuries.

What really is the point? My short answer today is my desire to understand more deeply what Jesus was talking about and witnessing to his legacy to us. Next I think that in trying so hard to “get to the bottom” of his meanings I could easily be buried in the mountains of commentary that exists. Then I realize that I could spend a lifetime ruminating on a very few sentences. Take these for example:

1. Love one another as I have loved you.
2. Feed my lambs; feed my sheep.
3. I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.

Short stories, indeed…

It’s All About Love

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footsteps, Holy Thursday, Jesus, John, love, love one another, suffering, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, triduum

Today we move to the most sacred of ritual days in the Christian calendar. We call it the Triduum – Latin for three days: Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday in Protestant denominations), Good Friday and Holy Saturday – all leading up to the the great celebration of Easter, feast of Christ’s Resurrection. All of it portrays the events leading from the trial to the death and burial of Jesus so why do we call Friday “Good” when his suffering was so intense?

After reading the lectionary texts for today what remains in me is the refrain from a song based on chapter 13 of John’s gospel and the gospel acclamation from the same text. I think that, taken together, those two examples provide the best answer to the above question.

1. Do you know what I have done to you, you who call me your teacher and your Lord? If I have washed your feet so you must do as I have done for you. (Song of the Lord’s Command by David Haas)
2. I give you a new commandment, says the Lord: love one another as I have loved you. (JN 13:34)

Let us consider the lengths to which Jesus went to show us the depth of his love. How far are we willing to follow in his footsteps?

The Perfect Antidote

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blameless, blessed, John, love one another, psalm 119, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Speaking of antonyms (as I was doing yesterday), I have no choice but to choose love as the theme for today. Psalm 119 announces it when it declares: Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!” (vs.1-2), waking up those who have slept through the first reading from the second letter of John. In a clarion call that John sees as only a reminder of what God’s law proclaims, he says: “I ask you, not as if I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another.” 

Grateful to have that reminder that speeds us 180 degrees away from the circle of toxicity, I rest my case!