First Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Another Lenten Journey Begins

 Another Lenten journey is under way. The journey began with the ashes of Ash Wednesday. It will end on Holy Saturday, outside a tomb, waiting for the celebration of resurrection on Easter Sunday. In between is a six weeks journey which – for most of us – will include commitment, spiritual disciplines, struggle, failure followed by renewed commitment and trying again. In a way, the Lenten journey is a lot like the rest of life – aspiring, trying, failing, aspiring again, trying again, failing again. If nothing else, the Lenten journey teaches us about grace – our need for it, the abundance of it from the heart of God.

Many of us participated in an Ash Wednesday service to begin our journey. The ashes of Ash Wednesday are a reminder of our humanness. We received the ashes in the form of a cross, reminding us of the grace we need in our humanness.

Truth be told, most of us are uncomfortable with our humanness. Being human means we are not yet full grown. We are still in process, learning and growing. Being human means we live with limitations. We do not have an endless supply of anything – energy, strength, endurance, patience, love. You name it, at some point, we run out of it. When we run short, we need to rest, recharge, refill, renew. In other words, being human means living with recurring needs. Again, truth be told, most of us don’t like to feel like we are needy much less in any way dependent. Being human also means we make mistakes. We stumble and fall. We don’t always get it right the first time. We don’t always make straight A’s. Whatever way you say it, being human means we are not perfect. We aspire to do more than we can live up to. There is always a gap between what we know to do and what we can do. The biblical term that means “falling short” is sin. Being human means we live with the reality of dealing with falling short, i.e., sin.

And that’s where the Lenten journey comes in.

Historically, Lent is a season of repentance. It is focused on how we fall short. It is a season of resolve, expressing our desire to do/be better. It is a time when we choose to give up something as an expression of this desire. (The practice of giving up something for Lent is tied to Jesus’s statement, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me,” Mark 8:34. More about that in my next blog.) The Lenten season is a time of renewed focus on spiritual practices – what is commonly called spiritual disciplines because they require self-discipline to practice them.

Ironically, the Lenten journey as we traditionally practice it sets up the resolving-trying-failing-resolving again-trying again-failing again-repeat-it-until-you’re-blue-in-the-face cycle that is a normal part of our human condition. Therein is the downside of Lent. Therein is also the potential gift of Lent.

The downside of Lent is its focus on our humanness with its falling short. It’s the wrong focus (in my opinion). It keeps us focused on ourselves, on our failure (sin), on our behavior – what we do or fail to do. It makes the journey about me. (Shaming ourselves for our sinfulness is one of the ingenious ways the ego-centric self keeps the focus on “me.”)

The upside of Lent is our struggle with our resolving-trying-failing-resolving again cycle can lead us to a better focus – or should I say, better foci (as in two).

Hopefully, this behavior-focused cycle will eventually lead us beyond our obsession with our behavior and with how we fail to measure up, i.e., sin. Hopefully, repeated failure will eventually lead us to ask “Why?” Why do I do what I do not want to do? Why can’t I do what I aspire to do? (Check out Paul’s lament about this struggle in Romans 7:15-24.) When we stop fighting our struggle and seek to understand our struggle, we are in a position to move beyond the struggle. We are in a position to make actual progress.

We move beyond our struggle when our focus shifts from our behavior to our heart, from the external to the internal, from the symptom to the source. Jesus, following Jeremiah, identified the heart rather than our behavior as the problem. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within,” (Mark 7:21-22a).

We like to focus on our behavior because we have some degree of control over it. We, on the other hand, have no control over what lies in our hearts. We are powerless to control it. Paul spoke of this powerlessness as being a slave or captive to sin, Romans 7:6, 17, 20, 23. The good news is that God can change what is in the heart!

The heart is the first proper focus of the Lenten journey. The heart is where the battle is won. The second proper focus of the Lenten journey is God, specifically, the grace of God.

Our struggle with our humanness points us to God. It calls us to open our hearts anew to God and to the Spirit’s work of transforming them. It calls us to reclaim the grace and forgiveness which God freely lavishly on us. It calls us beyond guilt and shame, self-condemnation and self-hate. It invites us to join Paul in his conclusion: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through our Jesus Christ our Lord! … There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” Romans 7:24-24a; 8:1. It calls us to live in the power of the Spirit rather than out of self-effort and self-reliance, Romans 8:3-4, 12-17.

And so another Lenten journey begins. May it lead us into personal transformation – by leading us to focus on the interior realm of the heart, by leading us to focus on God, not self, by leading us once again to open our hearts to the transforming grace of God, by leading us to live in glad dependency upon the Spirit. 

Transfiguration Sunday, 2023 - Listen to Him!

The challenge is one we all encounter on our spiritual journey. We cannot avoid it because it is a normal, inherent part of the spiritual journey. How we navigate this challenge determines the progress we make – or don’t make – on our spiritual journey. How we navigate this challenge determines whether we grow or become stuck, trapped in stagnant spiritual immaturity.

This challenge is reflected in the transfiguration experience of Jesus. The account in the gospel of Matthew - Mathew 17:1-8 – suggests the experience was for the three disciples Jesus took with him on the mountain retreat: Peter, James, and John. What the three disciples experienced on the mountain falls into three parts.

First, Jesus was transfigured before them. “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white,” Matthew 17:2. It was as though the veil that separates the physical realm from the spiritual realm was briefly pulled aside, allowing them to see Jesus in the glory he would experience beyond death. Then they saw Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah – the lawgiver and the first of the Hebrew prophets recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. As though these two visions were not enough, the three disciples were overshadowed by a cloud, representing the presence of God. A voice spoke to them out of the cloud. God spoke to them.

The background to their experience is what helps us understand what God said to the three. Six days before the transfiguration experience (Matthew 17:1), Jesus had engaged the three, along with the other disciples, in a conversation about his identity. In that conversation, which took place at Caesarea Philippi, they said what they had been thinking and whispering among themselves. It was the first time they said it out loud. Peter was the one who spoke for the group. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Matthew 16:16. They recognized that Jesus was indeed the long-awaited messiah.

Jesus affirmed Peter for his insight, saying it was from God. Jesus then began to build on that understanding. Now that they recognized Jesus as the Messiah, he began to teach them what being the Messiah involved. He began to teach them of the suffering and death he would experience in Jerusalem, Matthew 16:21. Jesus understood that the Messiah was the Suffering Servant spoken of by the unidentified prophet of the exile, Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12. The vision Jesus had at his baptism confirmed this understanding, Matthew 3:13-17.

Suffering and death were the farthest things from the mind of the disciples when they thought of Jesus as the Messiah. Their thinking about the Messiah was shaped by the world’s view of greatness. Their thinking revolved around how the world uses power. They assumed the Messiah would be a warrior king like David – one who would defeat their enemies and restore the nation to a place of dominance among the nations. Acting out of this kind of thinking, Peter rebuked Jesus for talking about suffering and death.

In Peter’s rebuke of Jesus, we see the challenge we all inevitably face on our spiritual journeys: hearing what we don’t want to hear, embracing what we don’t want to accept.

The spiritual journey involves moving from how the world trained us to think and live to accepting and embracing how Jesus taught us to think and live. The ways of God Jesus taught and lived challenge how we inherently think and live. Like Peter and the other disciples, we naturally hold onto what we already think, resisting what Jesus teaches us. We struggle to hear what we don’t want to hear.

That’s where the transfiguration experience comes in. In the transfiguration, the three disciples saw Jesus in a glory that far exceeded what they had envisioned. They envisioned Jesus as the messianic king ruling an earthly empire – much like the Roman emperor. In the transfiguration, they saw Jesus exalted in a spiritual realm. They saw a glory that exceeded anything they could imagine. They saw Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus about what he faced in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). In other words, they heard the Hebrew Scriptures confirm what Jesus was saying to them about his suffering. (“The law and the prophets” was how the Hebrew people spoke of their scriptures.) Then, to drive the point home, they heard the voice of God speaking to them.

What God said to them has two parts to it. The first part of what God said echoed the voice Jesus heard at his baptism. “This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased,” Matthew 17:5. “This is my son, the Beloved” came from Psalm 2, the coronation psalm that was used whenever a new king was crowned. This phrased affirmed the disciples’ understanding of Jesus as the Messiah. It was as though God said to Peter, James, and John, “You’ve got it right … up to a point.” The second phrase – “with whom I am well pleased” – came from Isaiah 42:1, the first Servant Song. This phrased affirmed what Jesus was teaching them about the nature of the Messiah. Jesus, as the Messiah, was the Suffering Servant of the Lord.

The second part of what God said to the three disciples was pointed. “Listen to him!” Matthew 17:5. In essence, God said, “Quit resisting!”

Being a follower of Jesus calls for a teachable spirit – a willingness to learn what Jesus taught. When we live out of a teachable spirit, we recognize the resistance that rises from deep within when what Jesus teaches challenges what we think. When we live out of a teachable spirit, we are willing to acknowledge the resistance without clinging to it. A teachable spirit leads us to sit with that which goes against what we think and how we live, open to the Spirit’s guidance. (Remember: insight comes from God, through the Spirit’s work.) When we live out of a teachable spirit, we are open to new understanding and insight – understanding and insight shaped by the ways of God. A teachable spirit is evident in the willing to move beyond how the world trained us to think and live, embracing the ways of God Jesus taught. A teachable spirit is the pathway to progress – spiritual growth into the likeness of Christ. We can never grow spiritually as long as we cling to the ways the world trained us to think and live.

The challenge – hearing what we don’t want to hear, embracing what we don’t want to accept – is a normal part of our spiritual journey. It offers us the opportunity to take the next step on our spiritual journey to becoming like Christ.

Listen to him!

You Have Heard It Said

“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” Matthew 5:21-22.

I wonder if any of us realize the significance of what Jesus said. Six different times he said, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you.” Each time he challenged the traditional understanding of the Law of Moses – about murder, about adultery, about divorce, about oaths, about retaliation, about relating to an enemy. He challenged the foundational teachings of his religious tradition.

Let’s be clear. Jesus didn’t discount those teachings. In fact, he did just the opposite. He came to fulfill the law, Matthew 5:17. That is, he came to reveal what the law meant and to live the life that the law pointed to. When Jesus said, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” he reinterpreted the six laws, giving them new and deeper meaning. He went beyond the law’s focus upon behavior – what not to do – to the underlying principle embodied in the law – what to do. He said to a people who built their lives around the law that the law was not fulfilled when they conformed their behavior to its demands. The law was fulfilled when they followed the principle embedded in it.

For example, the underlying principle of “You shall not murder” is recognize and respect the dignity and worth of every person, without exception. Jesus said every time we are angry with another or judge another or insult another, we discount them, robbing them of their dignity and worth. Every time we function out of us-them thinking we discount and devalue the other as less than. According to Jesus, we are guilty of murder.

This shift in focus – from the prescribed behavior to the underlying principle – is life changing. It reorients our thinking. It refocuses our religious life. It moves us beyond our natural focus on behavior to focus on the attitude and spirit residing in our hearts. It moves our emphasis from the external to the internal. It calls us to recognize, name, and address what lies in our hearts so our hearts can be cleansed and our lives transformed. It calls us beyond self-effort with its trying-harder-to-do-better resolve to an openness to God’s grace and the transforming work of the Spirit. Only God can transform our hearts.

Jesus’s statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” was radically significant.

His statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” has an added bonus in today’s religious climate. His words offer guidance in how to read the Bible. We are to read the Bible in the light of the life and teachings of Jesus. Our religious beliefs and understandings are to be shaped by the character of God and the ways of God that we see in Jesus’ life and teachings. Sometimes what Jesus taught calls us to surrender what our religious training taught us to believe - just as Jesus’s statement “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you” called his followers to a different, deeper understanding of their religious tradition. (See Peter’s experience in Acts 10 for an example.) 

“You have heard it said . . . but I say to you.”

The Wisdom of God and the Mind of Christ

Wisdom – it’s not a word we use much anymore. In our world, we speak of knowledge. We talk about intelligence – even artificial intelligence (AI). We have built a world based on artificial intelligence. We have developed an unintended dependency on AI.

We pursue and depend on knowledge, believing knowledge is power. If we can answer the question “why?”, we can understand what created the situation and, thereby, address the contributing factors. We can master the situation. We can be in control.   

Whereas our culture focuses on knowledge, the ancient Hebrews spoke of wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are different. Knowledge focuses on facts – the who, what, when, where, why, how factors of life. Knowledge pursues scientific understanding of what is. Wisdom is deeper than knowledge. Wisdom is about the nature of life and how life is designed to function. For the ancient Hebrews, wisdom was tied to God. It was rooted in who God is. It was expressed in the ways of God.

In his letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul spoke of the wisdom of God, contrasting it with the wisdom of the world. (Corinth was located near Athens, the epicenter of Greek philosophy and learning.)

Paul said the wisdom of God was rooted in “the depths of God,” 1 Corinthians 2:10. It grows out of and is an expression of the character of God. When we speak of the wisdom of God, we are speaking of the deep things of God, the things that lie at the heart of God.

Paul said the wisdom of God is secret and hidden, 1 Corinthians 2:7. It lies in the realm of mystery, outside of human understanding. We struggle to understand the wisdom of God primarily because it stands in contrast to human wisdom.

Although the wisdom of God is secret and hidden, the Spirit of God knows the heart of God and thus the wisdom of God, 1 Corinthians 2:10, 11b. The Spirit teaches us the wisdom of God, revealing to us the nature (character) of God and the ways of God, 1 Corinthians 2:12-13. In teaching us the wisdom of God, the Spirit nurtures within us the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2:16. The mind of Christ is thinking shaped by the character of God and the ways of God. Such thinking is “the renewing of the mind” of which Paul spoke in Romans 12:2. It is the key to a life transformed into the likeness of Christ.

The wisdom of God is reflected in the ways of God. It is expressed in grace and forgiveness, in using power to serve – particularly the powerless and vulnerable who are easily exploited by others, and in embracing every person as a beloved child of God created in the image of God. When our lives are shaped by the wisdom of God and our thinking reflects the mind of Christ, we value people more than material things. We use material things to address the needs of those in need.

The wisdom of God and the ways of God stand in contrast to the so-called wisdom of the world and its ways. While the wisdom of God is expressed in grace, the world functions out of merit-based thinking. While the wisdom of God is expressed in forgiveness, the wisdom of the world speaks in terms of “getting what you deserve.” While the wisdom of God uses power to serve others, the wisdom of the world teaches us to use our power for our own advantage. It leads us to use power violently - over, down against others for personal benefit at the other’s expense. The wisdom of the world trains us to think in terms of us-them in which “we” are always better than “those other people” (better than-less than thinking). The wisdom of the world teaches us to think in terms of scarcity, leading us to acquire, accumulate, and hoard as much as possible for our future wellbeing, even if others have to do without.

Paul said that following the wisdom of the world was what led “the rulers of this age” to crucify Jesus. Following the wisdom of God and living the ways of God, Jesus was a threat to those whose identity, status, standing, power, and wealth were tied to the ways of the world. Following the wisdom of the world, they used their power to eliminate the threat he represented to their world.

We have been trained to think with the wisdom of the world. It is our default way of thinking and living. The Spirit is at work in us, the followers of Jesus, teaching us the wisdom of God and moving us beyond the way the world trained us to think. The Spirit is creating the mind of Christ in us so that we may love as Jesus loves.