Though I look out my office window at a snowstorm, hope begins anew in Tucson as the Rockies take on the White Sox in their first spring training game. Why, it will seem just like Summer this afternoon when the play by play comes on the radio…perhaps I’ll go change in shorts.
On the Mountainside with Jesus: Lent Reflection 5
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Lent, like every tradition and practice of Christianity, is meant to be practiced radically. However we observe it, the purpose of marking out this period in the Church calendar leading up to the defining moment of our faith is to enrich our spiritual lives and allow more of the Lord to inhabit our souls. Mechanically choosing a comfort, convenience, or even a particular vice and surrendering it for the 46 days does nothing unless we associate the giving up with giving in.
Glen Stassen suggests that we read this Beatitude in a corporate sense as blessing those who hunger and thirst for restorative justice. Our cultural individualism pushes us to focus on our own righteousness but Stassen believes that a better reading is offered through compassionate lenses. Are our lives marked by a hunger to see justice in the world? As we draw closer to Jesus and move with Him towards Calvary, we are drawn to practice the same forms of emancipation that he did. We too can do away with the hierarchy of Church Inc. and point people toward the true authority. We can clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, and give of our time to visit the imprisoned. Our hunger and thirst are measured in sacrifice.
Or, we can give up watching TV for 40 days. No more Friends reruns for several weeks. (They all remained self-absorbed if you missed the ending.)
The Influential Real Mary
Scot McKnight turns the page on our discovery of the story of Mary. We have followed the biblical record to the foot of the cross where we find Jesus’ mother suffering the crushing realization of her fears. She is not recorded as having witnessed the resurrected Lord and the next encounter that we have is to see her huddle
d in an upper room with other disciples and Jesus’ brothers. Her faith in the promise of God, made so many years prior, has not been shaken by the events of the weeks prior. Mary has fully committed her life to the Way.
The question proposed in this chapter of The Real Mary is, what influence did Mary exert on the life of Jesus? Much like the divisive controversy of Mary’s perpetual virginity, there is a school of belief that gives Jesus full realization and maturity while he simply played the role of a child and adolescent in human form. The Scriptures lead us to understand kenosis, and the simpler explanation for Jesus’ development points to Mary and Joseph and the influence that they had on the boy’s life.
We must always be conservative when filling in our understanding of the ‘missing parts’ of the Lord’s life. It is safe to conclude that Mary and Joseph had at least the normal input into the boy’s life. This input would have been colored by the facts that His parents knew about but nonetheless, he grows and develops, affected by His parents just as the majority of the people on this planet have.
This same knowledge, combined with Mary’s eyewitness memories of the Lord’s early years, point to her later influence on the life of the nascent Church. Surely she was consulted by the Apostles as they sought to fill in their own knowledge of the Savior and the fullness of His life. So, it is here gathered with the others in Jerusalem that we say goodbye to the biographical account of Mary in the Bible. Her influence does not end, however.
(See the broad international portrayals of Mary at www.biblia.com/Mary)
Bad Preaching
Oh, and this too on bad preaching. That reminds me, I should be working on the message for this week…
Lent: Confront the Mouldy Bits
See what a sister has written on her hatred of lent. God loves a sense of humor and those who cut through the Phariseic piety to get to the heart of the matter. Getting the 409 out in our lives … not such a bad idea.
On the Mountainside with Jesus: Lent Reflection 4
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
When Peter and the other Apostles stand before the Sanhedrin and proclaim “We must obey God rather than men!” he gives us the practical definition of meekness in the biblical sense. It is hardly the mousy, weak, and cowardly connotation that the word takes on today. Quite the opposite; the one who is fully surrendered to God’s will, despite the pressures of man, is meek. God’s will becomes their will.
The closer we become to the Source, the more that our meekness will radiate in our lives. This is a winsome power that can attract others to throne and cause still others to make that U-turn in their lives. Meekness in the face of threat is ultimately a sign of trust in God and it will be reflected as such. So much so, that the Gamaliel’s of our day will also be forced to confront the origin of our meekness saying “…if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will no be able to stop [it]…” (Acts 5:38-39)
I suppose that during Lent we can meekly sacrifice the right of way on the freeway for a few weeks. Or, we can fully surrender our wills, our rights, and our lives to the One who has paid the price for our restoration.
Bearing All: Anna Nicole Smith
I’m glad to see that the pastoral blogosphere has been bearing up well under the pressure to comment on the sudden end to the tragic life of Miss Smith. It is with a deep love of Christ that Steve Sjogren’s comments on our proclivity for passing judgement. Only God knows the true condition of a person’s heart. Todd Rhoades summarizes this in conjunction with a video currently showing on YouTube that has Miss Smith proclaiming Jesus as her Lord and Savior.
An object lesson in slowing our judgement reflex…
Lenten Encounter with Jesus 3
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
The mourner’s heart is not one that has simply been touched briefly by sorrow, a tear drop that evaporates on a sun baked cheek. It is a heart that has been broken because it has been willing to care deeply. It is a soul that has made itself vulnerable, exposing the most tender of flesh to the elements and risking that sorrows will embed themselves like irritants, slowly to become pearls. To mourn is to be moved to action by these heartbreaks. To have loved and suffered loss like the God of creation.
As we walk toward Golgatha, we must allow our hearts to be broken again and again by the injustices of a sin-shattered world. We grieve at the single mother who desperately lets her infant slip away. Tear are shed as we witness the public video of two young people who have so devalued one another through casual unfaithfulness and then subject each other to further humiliation. We mourn our relatives who refuse to be humbled by the cross, oblivious to their eternal fates. We are moved to act to stop the slaughter in Darfur.
Yes, let’s just give up secular music for the next forty days. We can mourn at not hearing the latest cultural contribution by Beyonce. Or, shall we expose our tender hearts to the arrows that pierce the Lord’s heart?
The Real Faithful Mary
Scot completes his excursus of the biblical account of Mary’s life, locating her at the foot of the cross with John , Mary Magdalene and others. Their desire to remain close and committed to Jesus is beautifully and horrifically portrayed in the pen and ink by Pietro da Cortana to the right. Our view of Mary is radically changed by this vignette of discipleship; she can no longer simply be the passive Mary who nods her assent to the angel informing her that the Messiah is about to be brought into the world through her service. She is here, her heart pierced by the sword of sorrow, seeing both her son and her Lord radically changing the course of history.
Does she know at this moment that her messianic understandings are being completely upturned or does she fear that Jesus’ whole life has gone wrong, ending disastrously? Mary possesses the most complete revelation of His vocation so it is reasonable to read into her discipleship a resignation to the horror of the cross that is leading to the long expected salvation. To quote McKnight,
Jesus would not wear the crown of Caesar Augustus or the fine apparel of Herod Antipas. He would hang there, naked and beaten, and give to Mary and the world a radically new view of what it means to reign in this world. To reign in this world, Mary began to learn, was to give one’s life for others as Jesus had given his.
This is the real Mary, the mother and disciple, who followed her Son and her God to what might have seemed like the bitter end. Her transformation from an unknown young woman to becoming a member of John’s and Jesus’ families is complete. Though her biblical story comes to end in the nineteenth chapter of John, her legend expands through extra-biblical accounts. Perhaps though, the best way to view Mary is as we see her here, at the feet of the Lord, following him despite the personal cost. Faithful. The same faith that we all pray to be able to demonstrate at our most critical moments.
First Sunday in Lent Readings
The first Sunday reading is Deuteronomy 26:4-10. In response, read 
Psalm 91. As we walk toward the cross, our human emotions cause us to fear it. We ask, what if, and why, and how will this work out? God reminds us, we have nothing to fear in His presence.
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 
