Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly. Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.
1 Peter 5:2-3
The image of Jesus the Good Shepherd has blessed believers throughout the ages. As our weakness is lifted in the tender Divine Embrace, we find peace, hope, release of sorrow, and strength to go on.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Our reading from Peter calls us to be like the Good Shepherd. Christ called Peter to this ministry, and he calls us as well. As we accompany and support one another on faith’s journey, let us do so with tender mercy in imitation of Christ.
Poetry: The Good Shepherd – William Denser Littlewood (1831-1886)
Into a desolate land White with the drifted snow, Into a weary land Our truant footsteps go: Yet doth Thy care, O Father, Ever Thy wanderers keep; Still doth Thy love, O Shepherd, Follow Thy sheep.
Over the pathless wild Do I not see Him come? Him who shall bear me back, Him who shall lead me home? Listen! between the storm-gusts Unto the straining ear, Comes not the cheering whisper,— "Jesus is near."
Over me He is bending! Now I can safely rest, Found at the last, and clinging Close to the Shepherd's breast: So let me lie till the fold-bells Sound on the homeward track, And the rejoicing angels Welcome us back!
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. At the judgment the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation and she will condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is something greater than Solomon here.
Luke 11: 30-31
Just like the Ninevites in Jonah’s time, we are called to turn our hearts fully to God. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, many prophets were sent with this message. But we have been given One greater than any of these prophets. Jesus is the ultimate Sign of God’s desire for our faith, love, and hope. We are called to live according to his Word.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy,
We might ask ourselves how free we are of the need to demand signs from God. When we live in deep relationship with another person, we trust their good will and loving intention toward us. We don’t have to ask them every five minutes if they still love us. We don’t have to pick apart their actions to test their intentions. We trust that they want only the best for us. How much more we can trust God who sent God’s own Beloved Son to redeem us!
Music: Two hymns today.
Son of God – by Starfield
God’s Own Son, Most Holy – by Ryan Flanagan
Verse 1: (From Christian Worship: a Lutheran hymnal #17) God’s own son, most holy Came a servant lowly Came to live among us Came to suffer for us Bore the cross to save us Hope and freedom gave us
Verse 2: (From The 1982 Hymnal: Episcopal, #53) Still he comes within us Still his voice would win us From the sins that hurt us Would the truth convert us Not in torment hold us But in love enfold us
Chorus: (Derived from 4th verse Common Service Book Lutheran #10 and Lutheran Service Book ) Come, O come, Lord Jesus From our sins release us Let us here confess you God’s own Son
Verse 3 Thus, if we have known him Not ashamed to own him Nor have loved him coldly But will trust him boldly He will then receive us Heal us and forgive us
Chorus Come, O come, Lord Jesus From our sins release us Let us here confess you God’s own Son, most holy Keep our hearts believing That we, grace receiving Ever may confess you God’s own Son, most holy
Verse 4 (From: The Chorale Book for England #26, changed to new English first person plural) But through many a trial Deepest self denial Long and brave endurance Must we win assurance That his own he makes us And no more forsakes us
Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6: 7-8
I enjoy when Jesus is bluntly funny with his followers, as in today’s “Don’t babble!“. But my enjoyment wanes when I realize that he’s talking to me too. What about the quality of my prayer? Where do I fall on the “babble scale”?
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We might consider the quality of our prayer, just as we might consider the quality of our conversation with anyone we dearly love. Do we talk with them enough? Do we listen to them well? Do we talk about things that matter? Do we say “the important things” to one another? Do we know and love each other well enough that we can communicate without even speaking?
That deep silent dialogue with God is referred to as contemplative prayer. The site below is a great place to enrich our practice of this type of prayer.
One of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation, Jorie Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1992 (1995) winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has taught for many years at Harvard University as the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, the first woman to be given this position, which was previously held by Seamus Heaney and many other writers dating back to the first Boylston Professor, John Quincy Adams.
Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
Music: The Prayer – written by David Foster, Carole Bayer Sager, Alberto Testa and Tony Renis
The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them: Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.
Leviticus 19:1
How do we become more like our loving, merciful God? How do we become holy? Today’s reading offers us a series of “shall nots” and “shalls” to guide us: (Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger.)
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy
Let’s hold our lives in prayer beside these images.
Are there “nots” we wish to eradicate?
Are there imperatives we wish to live by?
Poetry: I Too Am Alone in the World – from “The Book of Hours” by Rainer Maria Rilkē
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every minute holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action, and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie. And I want my grasp of things true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother, like a ship that took me safely through the wildest storm of all.
Music: Holy God, We Praise Thy Name – Ignaz Franz
Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” (original German: “Großer Gott, wir loben dich”) is a Christian hymn, a paraphrase of the Te Deum. The German Catholic priest Ignaz Franz wrote the original German lyrics in 1771 as a paraphrase of the Te Deum, a Christian hymn in Latin from the 4th century.
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.
Mark 1:12-13
Isn’t it shocking that even our Godly Jesus experienced temptation?
There is a devotional tradition that considers temptation an act of God to test us. You have probably heard the tired old adage, “God will never test us beyond our endurance.”
I think that this is a limited and skewed image of God! God is not our Tester, our Tormentor, or our Tease. God is our Creator and Lover.
It is LIFE that tests us, and God abides with us in every aspect of that testing, just as the Father did with Jesus in the desert.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Let us go with Jesus to the desert in our prayer today, asking his enlightenment over any dark corners of our faith, hope, and love. Life can tempt us to choose less than God desires for us. Let us ask for the strength to always choose God Who is Love.
Poetry: THE TESTING (A TRIPTYCH) – Irene Zimmerman, OSF This is part 2 of a three-part poem by Irene Zimmerman. I highly recommend her beautiful spiritual poetry which illuminates the sacred scriptures.
Higher and yet higher he was led till all the kingdoms of the world lay spread before his eyes, more splendid still than he had ever dreamed. “Worship me and these are yours,” the Tempter said. Mountains boomed and echoed a thundering “No!” The Son of Man would choose instead to go where he was sent, to have no place to lay his head, to be content to spread himself cross-beamed above a common hill.
Music: Jesus Tempted in the Desert – text by Herman G. Stuempfle (1923 – 2007); tune by Thomas J. Williams (1890)
Thus says the LORD: If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land.
Isaiah 58:9-11
So many critical aspects of our lives hinge on the word “If”!
If not
If so
If only
If I had
If I hadn’t
If just
That critical “if” reminds us that all life is about relationship. It is about how we and the one with whom we are in relationship respond to each other. It is about choosing and deciding. And remember, as one of my early favorite theologians famous said:
Not to decide is to decide.
Harvey Cox in “On Not Leaving It To the Snake”
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We are in constant relationship with God Whose Breath is the source of our life. Our life should be an act of reverence for that gift, responding always to God’s hope for us. Isaiah puts some of those hopes into words for us today. In our prayer, we might hear God whisper special “ifs” to us as we open our life and heart before God’s love and mercy.
Poetry: If by Rudyard Kipling
I know this poem came to your mind as soon as you saw today’s picture – right? Well, here it is.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! and you will be a Woman, precious one! (my addition, I think Rudyard would be grateful))
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
Isaiah 58:6-9
In today’s passage from Isaiah, we are given clear instructions about fasting – some forms of this practice matter more than others.
Depriving oneself of physical comforts is an ancient practice of penance. It is intended to make us more prayerfully aware of the dynamic of sin and grace in our lives. But obviously, it is a self-centered spiritual practice.
Our reading tells us that God desires an other-centered fasting – the practice of mercy toward our sisters and brothers. And Isaiah is clear about who those needy brethren are.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy
In order to practice this mercy-centered fasting, there must be touch-points in our lives where we meet those in need. Today, we might examine our lives for our degree of insulation or isolation from society’s needy ones. We may isolate them by our attitudes, by our prejudices, by our physical distance, or perhaps just by our indifference.
Let’s ask ourselves today, “How might I reach out in prayer, service, and tenderness toward those who are in need of mercy?”
Poetry: Fasting – translated from Rumi
There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Spirit. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.
Music: Forty Days and Forty Nights
Forty days and forty nights You were fasting in the wild; Forty days and forty nights Tempted, and yet undefiled.
Shall not we your sorrow share And from worldly joys abstain, Fasting with unceasing prayer, Strong with you to suffer pain?
Then if Satan on us press, Flesh or spirit to assail, Victor in the wilderness, Grant we may not faint nor fail!
So shall we have peace divine; Holier gladness ours shall be; Round us, too, shall angels shine, Such as served You faithfully.
Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, Ever constant by your side, That with you we may appear At th’eternal Eastertide
Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
The capacity to choose is a Divine gift that enables us to will our relationship with God. God desires the gift of our free choice to love Him.
What an act of divine courage for God to place hope in us! God does not demand our love. God waits for us to choose.
And God does not punish us if we choose otherwise. The choice is its own punishment because it is a rejection of the gift of divine life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we give thanks for the gift to choose, and for God’s desire for our love, we do so in the light of today’s Gospel. It clarifies the character of a sincere choice for Jesus Christ:
Then Jesus said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves and take up the cross daily and follow me. For those who wish to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for my sake will save them. What profit is there for us to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit ourselves?”
Luke 9:23-25
Poetry: from Kahil Gibran
Do Not Love Half Lovers. Do Not Entertain Half Friends. Do Not Indulge in Works of the Half Talented. Do Not Live Half a Life, And Do Not Die a Half Death.
If You Choose Silence, Then Be Silent. When You Speak, Do So Until You Are Finished. Do Not Silence Yourself to Say Something, And Do Not Speak To Be Silent.
If You Accept, Then Express It Bluntly, Do Not Mask It. If You Refuse, Then Be Clear About It, For an Ambiguous Refusal Is But a Weak Acceptance.
Do Not Accept Half a Solution. Do Not Believe Half-Truths. Do Not Dream Half a Dream. Do Not Fantasize About Half Hopes.
Half a Drink Will Not Quench Your Thirst Half a Meal Will Not Satiate Your Hunger Half the Way Will Get You Nowhere Half An Idea Will Bear You No Results.
Your Other Half Is Not The One You Love, It is You in Another Time Yet In the Same Space It is You when You Are Not.
Half A Life Is a Life You Didn’t live, A Word You Have Not Said, A smile You Postponed, A Love You Have Not Had, A Friendship You Did Not Know.
To Reach And Not Arrive, Work And Not Work, Attend Only To Be Absent. What Makes You A Stranger To Them Closest To You And They Strangers To You.
The Half Is a Mere Moment Of Inability, But You Are Able, For You Are Not Half a Being You Are A Whole That Exists To Live a Life Not Half a Life.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.
Matthew 6:17-18
Ashes are a sign to remind us that our bodily life is impermanent. Someday we will return to the earth, just as Jesus did. But the grace of our Baptism assures us that we will also rise again, just as Jesus did.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy: As we bear the sign of ashes on our foreheads today, we also carry the joy of that Baptismal assurance. Therefore, in a joyful spirit, we offer our hidden prayer of thanksgiving to God for the times in our lives when “ashes” have been transformed to glory.
Poetry: Blessing the Dust – Jan Richardson
All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners
or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial—
Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?
This is the day we freely say we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning.
This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.
So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made, and the stars that blaze in our bones, and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.
The sacred season of Lent opens before us. Ash Wednesday is the first step in our journey with Jesus into the mystery of the Cross and the glory of the Resurrection.
Lent is an annual journey that most of us have taken for many years. We are familiar with the readings and rituals which lead us through these forty days. They are rich, complex, and profound – to the point that sometimes we may get lost in their complexity.
For the Lavish Mercy blog this year, I would like to simplify each day’s reflection by choosing only one word from the readings as the focus of each day’s prayer and meditation. My hope is that we receive that word in whatever manner it speaks to us in our particular circumstances.
You will notice that each day’s picture of the chosen word is overlaid on a repeated template:
The Word of God takes flesh in the person of Jesus and in our own lives. The purpose of our prayer is to become more and more one with that Word which comes to us in many forms each day – scripture, nature, relationships, events, the fruit of prayer, the gifts of silence….
I hope our Lenten reflections, and the single word they offer, will inspire us as we accompany Jesus through the dark and light journey to Easter morning.
Lavish Mercy 