Cooperation

Tags

bad, division, Ezekiel, good, heart, new heart, new spirit, passivity, prophet, reconciliation, responsibility, sins, spiritual path, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unity, violence

I’ve always been partial to Ezekiel’s verse in chapter 36 that has God saying, “I will take from you your stony hearts and give you natural hearts…” It’s something I hold onto when I’m feeling ungenerous or grumpy – or worse. This morning however, in the earlier text from Ezekiel, chapter 18: 21-28, I read a serious message about bad and good behavior and the consequences of turning in one direction or the other. In case we miss it in the first reading, the verse before the gospel says this: Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the Lord, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. (18:31) The lesson for today, then, is that we have a responsibility to work toward restoring ourselves to God’s image rather than letting God do all the work.

There is more to this story, however, that resolves the apparent contradiction in the above comments. Why did Ezekiel change his mind from chapter 18 to chapter 36? The story goes that Ezekiel became a prophet in Babylon during the exile, and “his first task was to prepare his fellow countrymen in Babylon for the final destruction of Jerusalem, which they believed to be inviolable. Accordingly, the first part of his book consists of reproaches for Israel’s past and present sins and the confident prediction of yet a further devastation of the land of promise and a more general exile. In 587 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, Ezekiel was vindicated before his unbelieving compatriots.” (New American Bible commentary, p. 972)

The good news of Ezekiel’s prophecy which I quoted at the beginning of this reflection is that God never does abandon the human race, but there are questions that arise, I think, from a comparison of the Israelites’ situation to the state of our fractured nation today. Have we been shaken enough by the division and violence that continues to occur in our country and the world to wake up? Will we take the responsibility to change our own hearts and cooperate with God in moving toward unity and care for one another before we devolve into a people who will lose any semblance of humanity? I know those questions sound alarmist and dire but the story of the Israelites this morning calls me to look deeply into my own spirit and ask myself about my behavior. Am I so sure that I am “above the fray” by saying my life is on a spiritual path? Do I avoid difficult conversations because I think I have the right answers and don’t trust people on “the other side” to be rational about differences? Is praying for movement toward peace and reconciliation enough to do if I am unwilling to leave my prayer space to reach out to anyone I see as unsafe or uncomfortable? The blindness of the Israelites and the severity of Ezekiel’s message this morning have touched me as never before and shaken my passivity as one who believes that God will always save us. I still know that truth but now ask myself how long I am willing to watch what we are doing to each other before I give God some active help in the effort of our reconciliation. A sobering question for this first Friday of Lent…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving Toward…

Tags

Advent, awake, awareness, Christmas, darkness, heart, Isaiah, joy, path, preparation, prophet, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today begins the season of Advent for Christians. The word itself is composed of the verb to come and the preposition meaning to. The prophet Isaiah speaks in the first reading for liturgy of his vision of all nations streaming toward the mountain of the Lord (IS 2:1-5) to be instructed in God’s ways and to learn to walk on God’s paths, beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, never again to train for war. In all that follows, we are urged to wake up in order to be ready to join in that day when God’s kingdom will appear. St. Paul tells us that we know what time it is; we know the need to wake up and “throw off the works of darkness,” conducting ourselves “properly as in the day.” (ROM 13:11-14) Matthew isn’t so sure about our awareness. He says that we don’t know the day that the Lord will come. “Therefore”, he says, “stay awake!”(MT 24:37-44)

To us, Advent is the time of waiting – of coming toward Christmas. We know when it’s coming; we’ve been told for awhile now how many shopping days remain before it arrives and millions of people have been very busy over the past few days feverishly preparing by spending billions, yes billions, of dollars to be ready for the big event. I apologize if I seem jaded about it all, but it becomes clearer and clearer to me as I age that the best gifts for Christmas are those of the heart, not the pocketbook. While it is true that the giving of material gifts to our loved ones can be a precious moment of exchange and meaning, it seems necessary as well to find a balance in our preparation. It is, after all, the Christ event, the Incarnation, that is the reason for all our preparation.

Today as I reflect on the readings and the world in which we now live, the questions that arise for me are the following. What do I hope we are “coming to” personally and corporately in our home, our country, our Church and our world? What am I doing to move toward the reign of God that Jesus came to reveal? Am I awake to what is really happening? Am I awake to what I am really contributing – or not? How best can I prepare for Christmas, internally and externally? Am I honestly ready for my daily prayer to be, “Come, Lord Jesus!” so that I will recognize and truly celebrate the gifts of Christmas when it dawns?

May our preparation be serious and joyful in the knowledge of what is possible for us – inside and out.

 

 

 

 

 

Who Knows Best?

Tags

Elisha, humility, Israel, Kings, Naaman, ordinary miracles, prophet, River Jordan, servants, speak truth to power, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s first reading (2 KGS 5:1-15) could be staged as a somewhat comedic morality play. It’s the story of Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram who has leprosy. The events go like this. A little girl captured from Israel, the servant of Naaman’s wife, tells her mistress that the prophet Elisha in Israel could cure Naaman. The wife speaks to the king who says to Naaman, “Go to the King of Israel.” The King of Israel is incensed by Naaman’s request (thinking that Naaman is asking him for a cure which is obviously not in his skill set) and says, “Is the king of Aram trying to provoke me?!” Elisha overhears this event and goes to Naaman telling him to wash seven times in the River Jordan. Now Naaman gets angry like the king, looking for something more spectacular for the cure and saying they have better rivers where he lives if that’s all it takes. His servant asks the core question of the story when he says, “If the prophet had asked you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?” Naaman recognizes the truth in the question and humbly goes to the Jordan where he is healed. Happily, he acknowledges the cure and the power of the God of Israel.

I like this story and say to myself, “Let’s hear it for the servants!” The servant girl to Naaman’s wife is moved by compassion and trust in the power of her God to heal through the prophet Elisha. The servant of Naaman is willing to “speak truth to power” as a reality check for Naaman and his behavior. I see the moral of the story that can be a lesson for us as two-fold. 1) Keep humility close in order to avoid bursts of hubris in any situation where you feel challenged. 2) Be awake to the ordinary miracles in your everyday life. Sometimes solutions are simpler than they appear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hometown Boy

Tags

A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry, Jesus, Joseph, Jr., justice, Luke, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Nazareth, prophet, speaking the truth, upstart Spring

In today’s gospel, Luke lets us know that telling the truth is sometimes dangerous. (LK 4:16-30). Jesus comes to Nazareth, where he grew up, and all is well – even amazing – as he stands up in the synagogue and reads (eloquently, it seems) from the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming that the message he read was being fulfilled as he spoke. The local folks wonder how he became so erudite – or so wise – since his father was Joseph (the inference being: a local guy, simple like themselves.) All was fine until Jesus started talking about past failures of Israel to be attentive to the prophets, such that God’s favor fell on foreigners instead. He had predicted their reaction by saying, “A prophet is never accepted in his own native place,” and was proven true as they ran him out of town and were ready to kill him in their fury – but it was not his time and he escaped.

There have been many people in our lifetime who have been vilified for speaking the truth, calling attention to societal conditions that are unjust or immoral. It’s easy to point to famous examples like Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, however, I’m thinking of local people of conscience who work tirelessly for justice and are often ignored or disparaged for upsetting the status quo. It seems now that there is so much that needs fixing in our world that we can no longer turn a blind eye but must all be willing to speak up for change. And I believe there is hope in this era of mass communication where we have access to so many resources and so many spiritual people calling for transformation. I’m reminded of the epilogue from A Sleep of Prisoners, a play by Christopher Fry, that speaks of this urgency today and I write it as a spoken message to be read aloud because I think it is in the speaking that the urgency can best be felt.

The human heart can go to the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now. The frozen misery of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move. The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the upstart Spring. Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up, to face us everywhere, never to leave us until we take the longest stride of soul [men] ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. What are you making for? It takes so many thousand years to wake. But will you wake for pity’s sake?