Today, in Mercy, on this feast of St. Benedict, we pray with the words of Psalm 105:
Seek always the face of the Lord.
One of the fundamental questions a spiritual director might ask us when we share our life experiences is this: “Where is God in this for you?” It is a steadying question which we can ask ourselves as we try to navigate our life challenges.
We can trust that God is somewhere in every situation, either encouraging us to go forward or to retreat — in either case, calling us toward the Divine and Loving Will. As we deepen in our habits of prayer, grateful quiet, and merciful practice, we begin to see God more clearly in everything.
St. Benedict prayed for this kind of vision. May we share in his prayer.
“Almighty God, give me wisdom to perceive You, intelligence to understand You, diligence to seek You, patience to wait for You, eyes to behold You, a heart to meditate upon You and life to proclaim You, through the power of the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Music: I Can See – Steve Green
This song shares the experience of the Emmaus disciples as their eyes were opened and the saw Jesus walking with them along their life’s road.
Today, in Mercy, Jesus cures a demoniac who is mute.
In Jesus’ time, the connection between ordinary disease and demonical possession was quickly drawn – perhaps too quickly. As we read some of the Gospel cures, our modern understanding recognizes epilepsy, glaucoma, cataracts and mental illness in the people Jesus touched and healed. But two thousand years ago, these conditions were assigned to demons.
This doesn’t mean demons don’t exist. Remember the Gerasene miracle where Jesus cast demons into pigs who then threw themselves into the sea? Dramatic evidence that demons are real!
Demons are real in our world too, embodiments of the evil that is always competing for control of Creation, that is always resisting the supremacy of Goodness and Love.
These demons masquerade in various costumes of power, prestige and pleasure. But they are all eventually exposed as addictive, self-consuming and destructive.
How dangerous and deceptive these demons are! The word itself comes from the same Greek root as the word “genius”. And they do have a genius for rendering us:
blind to narcissistic motivations
crazed with exaggerated self-importance
crippled by deceptive rhetoric
mute in the face of systemic evil
deaf to the cries of the suffering
dead to the power of transforming Mercy in our own souls
Even as you read this list, faces and moments of history and current events are flashing before your eyes. Circumstances in your own life, family and work suggest themselves. Bring these to your transforming prayer today. The touch of Jesus can deliver us from such demons. We pray for that touch in our own hearts and in our world.
Today, in Mercy, our readings bring us Hosea, the poet-prophet who lived eight centuries before Jesus.Although his warnings to Israel are stern, Hosea was, at heart, a lover – just as he imagined God to be.
Hosea tells us his personal story of marrying an adulterous wife, forgiving her, and welcoming her back to his love. He uses his own experience to challenge Israel, the “adulterous”, idolatrous beloved of God.
Hosea’s passionate poetry gives us the language and imagery of intense intimacy with God, a God who “allures”, “espouses”, and calls himself “husband”. It is the language of an unbreakable devotion and covenant.
This imagery can enrich our prayer and help us to deepen our realization of how much God loves us. God loves us as a parent would, as a friend would, as a lover would, as a spouse would. Still, God loves us beyond all these, beyond our human comprehension.
Any human love will always remain between two distinct beings. But Divine Love created us and lives within us. We are the very Breath of God Who, in loving us, loves the Divine Self into being.
In our prayer today, what a joy to surrender ourselves to this Amazing Love!
Today, in Mercy, our readings bring us the great prophets Ezekiel, Paul, and the Ultimate prophet, Jesus.
How did they become prophets? When they were little guys, how did they answer the perennial question, “What do you want to be when you grow up”? Unlikely that they responded, “A prophet, of course!” Probably it was something like a camel rider, a carpenter, or a farmer. So what changed them?
All three, by heritage and practice, were steeped in the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. As they grew up into the oppressive, idolatrous worlds of their particular time, the scriptural promises gave each of them hope. They developed, as the theologian Walter Brueggemann describes it, “the capacity to imagine the world seen through the eyes of … God.”
This kind of vision is not unknown to our times. A few years ago, it was very popular to ask, “WWJD? – What would Jesus do?” Some people even wore bracelets and medallions of the letters to remind them to look at life through Jesus’ eyes.
Although a bit simplistic, it’s still a good visual reminder. What is less evident is the implied thought that we must KNOW Jesus well enough to UNDERSTAND what He would do. A casual acquaintance won’t do the trick here. Prophets are intimate with God through prayer and the works of mercy. Over years of faithful practice, they have come truly to see the world as God sees it. They beat with God’s heart.
A prophet is profoundly realistic about the world’s ills, heartbroken for those who suffer, but nonetheless convinced that God will make something amazingly beautiful for God’s People. This conviction impels them to live, speak and actfor this Godly vision.
We too are called to live with this kind of prophetic hope. It is not easy in our fractured world. But it is possible. Let today’s three Great Ones inspire and teach us.
Today, in Mercy, in our Gospel passage, some of the Baptist’s disciples come to question Jesus. They are confused that they have been encouraged to fast and repent while Jesus’ disciples are feasting and rejoicing. They put the question to Jesus very directly.
But, typical of Jesus, He doesn’t answer directly. He answers with metaphors. He could simply have said, “They don’t fast because I’m God, and they feel fulfilled in my presence.” But that kind of direct answer is a conversation-ender.
Jesus, like most great teachers, enjoyed metaphors. They’re conversation starters. They open up a whole world of consideration far beyond the initial question.
So Jesus, perhaps fingering the tattered sleeve of someone’s tunic, suggests tothese questioners, – You know, your faith is like an old piece of cloth. It resists new possibilities. Then, maybe pouring them a cup of wine, He indicates that they need to stretch and freshen their ideas about God. “Old wine skins can’t hold new wine.”
Most people resist the stretching that life brings us. Most times, we prefer things the way they are. We’d rather be comfortable, fasting with a well-defined god than to be stretched and re-woven by the spiritual opportunities of our lives.
But God is always making new wine, always offering a challenging, deeper invitation to holiness. These invitations come in many forms:
to shift our inner focus point from self to others
to open our minds and hearts to people who differ from us
to change the way we interact with the earth’s resources
to deepen our political consciousness with moral understanding
to confront toxic habits and policies in ourselves and others
to endure difficulty, loss and pain with an Easter confidence
Living with that kind of holy openness to God makes our life a feast, not a fast. What invitation is pouring out of your life today?
Today, in Mercy, our Gospel reading introduces Matthew, a Jewish tax collector. The setting is a dusty Galilean square, crowds bustling by after midday marketing. These are Matthew’s neighbors, and he knows them by name. He calls any tax delinquent passer-by to his customs post, bent on collecting the levies due to the Roman occupiers.
Matthew is not a popular guy. He may have gotten his government job through the influence of his father Alpheus, a man a little better off than his acquaintances. His fellow Jews may have resented Matthew’s education, economic status, and certainly his apparent complicity with a tyrannical government.
Matthew was probably treated like Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen Restaurant.Maybe that’s why Jesus noticed him that day.
But buried deep in Matthew was an unlit wick of messianic hope that only Jesus could discern. With the small spark of two words, “Follow me”, Jesus lit that hidden wick. And all the ensuing ages have been blessed by Matthew’s telling of the divine story!
When Jesus dined with Matthew’s other tax collector friends, the “righteous” Pharisees, entwined in their own sinful complicities, criticized Jesus for his choice of friends. Jesus makes his position clear: I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. His words imply that “the righteous” are irredeemable.
Jesus reminds us that God desires Mercy not sacrifice. Our holy words, laws, and rituals are empty if our actions impede God’s merciful love for all Creation.
We might want to sit at Matthew’s table ourselves today, and ask him to teach us more about that tender-hearted, transformative Mercy.
(May I digress today with a reflection I wrote a few years ago?)
The Fifth of July
Any fireworks in your neighborhood tonight?Any parades outside your window? Probably not.After all the speeches, sparklers and spectaculars, the “Next Day” dawns.I wonder what it was like for Jefferson, Franklin and Adams on Jul7 5, 1776.Did they wake up thinking, Declaration of Independence – signed.Now, make it happen?
When you get right down to it, most of our days are 5ths, 6ths, 7ths and 8ths of July.They are the days after graduation when we need to get a job.They are the days after the honeymoon when somebody needs to cook dinner and take out the trash.They are the days after the promotion when the first deadline looms and a bunch of faces are looking to you for the plan.
If the 4th of July is Independence Day, the 5th is Dependability Day, a day to celebrate the people we can always count on.They are there for the parades but they also stay around for the clean up afterward. They light the spark for the fireworks, but they have a hose nearby just in case. They put their “John Hancock” on the brave new dream, and they show up the next morning to design its daunting execution.
The 5th of July is a day to celebrate our own sense of responsibility or “Dependability” – to realize that most of us really do try to be good spouses, parents, employees, neighbors, sons, daughters and friends; that we do keep making the effort every day to be someone for others and not just for ourselves. It is a day to look around at the people in our lives and be grateful that most of them are trying to do the same thing.
Like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, we all need to wake up the next day, consider the “dependabilities”in our lives, and put our shoulders to the task of making a better world. Each of our lives is its own small country where the future really depends on how we show up on our5th of Julys. The fact that you get up every day and engage that challenge is cause for its own celebration.So if you have a little sparkler left in your back yard, light it for yourself tonight – and for your spouse, your boss, your kids, your colleagues – who all showed up today to do the best they could on the 5th of July.
Music: To wake you up for this July 5th, the inimitable Andre Crouch – You Can Depend on Me, Lord
The Fourth of July in 1955 looked like this to me:
• red, white and blue crêpe paper strung through my bicycle wheels
• an open fire hydrant at the height of the hot afternoon
• about six firecrackers, fizzling off a neighbor’s doorstep
• hot dogs, Kool-Aid and catching fireflies after sunset
We gathered our families, hoisted the flag, prayed for loved ones lost in a war too fresh to reflect on. We listened to music by John Philip Souza. We felt safe, strong, comfortable and grateful to be Americans. But my 10-year old America was very small.
It was an America before Civil Rights, Medicare and Medicaid; before the Kennedy and King assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate. It pre-dated Roe v. Wade, drug wars, mass shootings, 9/11, global warming, and marriage equality. It was a world without internet, cable news and Twitter.
It was a simple, circumscribed world that we will never see again. So we should stop trying, because it was not a perfect world.Its wounds and warts were about to fester. We have spent the intervening half-century doctoring ourselves for its recurring symptoms, never able to acknowledge the systemic cause of our pain.
For what it’s worth, here’s my diagnosis: Americans are afraid of God, and it’s making us sick.
But why are we so afraid?
Contrary to the long-held opinions of some, modern evidence suggests that God is not male, not white, not a warrior, not rich, and not even American! And this scares some of us to death! We need that kind of God to justify our greed, domination and global arrogance.
So we keep creating the God we need. He carries an AK-47 and has a nuclear button under his fingertip. He builds walls to control people who are poor, hungry, and shades of brown. He stratifies people based on wealth, whiteness and worth to the system. He believes America should be first, and the rest of the world last. He reshapes religion into a vehicle for his own heartless caricature.
If we could just gain our independence from this idolatrous God, we might have better reason to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Today’s reading from the Book of Amos tells us what this liberating God wants:
Seek good and not evil, that you may live; Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts, be with you as you claim! Hate evil and love good, and let mercy prevail at the border; Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will have pity on you.
I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD; I take no pleasure in your solemnities; Your false prayers I will not accept. Away with your noisy songs! But if you would truly honor Me, then let justice surge like water, and mercy like an unfailing stream.
Has doubt ever dogged you, or at least nipped at the edges of your soul?All kinds of doubt, I’m talking about! Doubt yourself. Doubt your loved ones. Doubt the Church, the government, the media. You get the idea.
Some doubt is good. It’s more like “discernment”, and it saves us from misplaced trust. A skill that’s honed through a lifetime, it can eventually be exercised prudentially, without skepticism or aloofness.
But another type of doubt can be crippling. Call it the “not enough” type: I am not good enough, smart enough, good-looking enough, experienced enough, – so on and on – to take on a challenge or make a contribution. Ever felt that kind of doubt?
There is third type of doubt which I call “the flip side of faith”. It’s that fine line where we balance between wanting to believe and wanting to know. This type of doubt whispers things like this in our minds: “You don’t really know if there is a God, so how can you believe?” But isn’t that the whole point of faith? If we really knew, for certain, of God’s existence, we wouldn’t have to believe!
What’s the difference between these flip sides of the coin?
With faith, we give our love and service unreservedly, even though we have not seen. With doubt, we skimp or reserve these until given proof.
So today, we meet “doubting Thomas”. He needed the touch of nail marks and lance wounds before he could believe. And it’s not hard to understand why.
The Resurrection of Jesus was mind-blowing. It changed history for all time to come. It conquered the one unconquerable – DEATH itself. Thomas had not yet seen proof of the Resurrection. The other disciples had. No wonder his coin was spinning between heads and tails!
What about us? Have we seen the Easter Power in our lives? Have we let God win the toss up between our faith and doubt? Today, on this feast of St. Thomas, we might ask his help to let us learn from the wounds of Christ exactly how that Power can assure us.
Music: Blessed Assurance ~ a well-known Christian hymn. The lyrics were written in 1873 by blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby to the music written in 1873 by Phoebe Knapp.
Today, in Mercy,our readings are harsh. We don’t want to think about our sinfulness, do we? We’re doing the best we can. Right?
Well, maybe not.
Our Old Testament brethren thought they were doing fine, too. But today’s reading from Amos lashes out at the societal sins of Israel: slavery, prostitution, systemic oppression of the poor, obstinate immorality, and idolatry. Beloved Israel – the nation that God had delivered from Egypt – had lost its way!
The prophet Amos demands that the people look in a mirror to see what they have become. He tells them that they are not doing OK, that they are a selfish mess, that they face the crushing wrath of God!
Today’s psalm reinforces the dire warning:
~ You use religion to justify your misdeeds ~ You deal with thieves and adulterers ~ You lie and provoke violence by your words ~ You slander and spread rumors in order to keep power over others Remember this, you who never think of God!
Sounds kind of familiar, maybe? Describes our 21st century reality too, doesn’t it?
Many of us read these passages and think, “Thank God I’m not doing any of this terrible stuff!” But that’s not enough. What we must ask ourselves is how we passively contribute to any of these societal sins by a myopic faith, plastic morality, prejudiced politics, and unexamined cultural choices.
Do we approve, or at least stay silent, when religion is used to ostracize people? When political power crushes the rights of those we disagree with? When our entertainment relies on violence and dehumanization of people?
It is painful and difficult to do this deep examination of conscience. We might all find ourselves complicit, in some way, with the evils we hate and fear.
Let the closing words of today’s psalm encourage us:
“Consider this, you who forget God, lest I rend you and there be no one to rescue you. The one who offers a sacrifice of praise glorifies me; and to the one that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”
Music: Sacrifice of Praise ~ Alvin Slaughter
Lord I lift a song of worship
For Your glory and Your grace
Let my heart reveal all my words fail to say
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
On the mountain in the valley
As I wait in my secret place
I will trust trust in the name of the Lord
Now receive this sacrifice of praise
Now receive this sacrifice of praise
You’re my shield. You’re my shelter
From the storm and from the rain
Cover me beneath the shadow of Your wings
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Hallelujah hallelujah
Hallelujah to Your name
For all You’ve done
You are and evermore will be
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Lord receive this sacrifice of praise
Lavish Mercy 