Ezek22 Lectionary Reflections

Today’s Readings (text):

• Acts 13:14, 43-52 (RCL* 9:36-43)
• Ps 100:1-5 (RCL* Ps 23)
• Revelations 7:9 (RCL* 10-13) 14-17
• John 10:(RCL* 22-26) 27-30

Buddhists generally define “nirvana” as the state of being free from suffering, free from greed, hatred, and delusion, free from craving and anger, and so on. In today’s reading from the Book of Revelations, the writer talks about heaven:

For this reason they stand before God’s throne
and worship him day and night in his temple.
The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
They will not hunger or thirst anymore,
nor will the sun or any heat strike them.

Neither nirvana nor heaven is considered a “place.” Rather, they are “states,” as in states of mind. It is a state of absolute peace of mind, a state considered highly desirable in both Buddhism and Christianity. In Buddhism, nirvana is considered a state of “deathlessness,” while Christians know this state as “everlasting life.”

It should not surprise you that both great traditions have developed similar ideas of heaven: there is no suffering. We are protected from all thoughts of anger, craving, and so on. A common theme in both nirvana and heaven is happiness, but the Buddha has us attaining nirvana in order to bring about peace; Jesus has us being saved by love. My theory is that peace and love are exactly the same thing in that they are the result of a perfect state of unity:

When Jesus says at the end of today’s reading from John’s gospel, “The Father and I are one,” he doesn’t stutter. It is clear he’s claiming an absolute, unconditional and unequivocal unity with the Father.

This incredible claim is neither physical nor metaphysical: Jesus isn’t meditating to a higher plane of thought here. Rather, he is concluding that his love for the Father, proven by his absolute obedience to the Father’s commandments, forms a bond in his heart and in his mind with the Father. Buddhists believe that nirvana comes naturally to a person who lives a life of virtuous conduct according to the “Noble Eightfold Path.” They attain nirvana through real-world kindness.

On the other hand (or maybe the same hand), Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word.” We Christians achieve heaven and a perfect bond with the Father through love. God proved his love for us through his grace in our salvation, and we prove our love for him through loving our neighbors, our obedience — complete obedience, assuming Jesus’ life is our model — to his word.

By his “word,” he doesn’t mean just the things he spoke, as printed in the Bible. It’s much more practical and rooted in reality than even that: He meant his “trust” and obedience to his commandments. In fact, it would probably be better if we used fewer words and took more action in showing our love to our neighbors and in praying for our enemies.

The most famous Buddhist alive today, the Dalai Lama, once said, “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

Love is not some complicated philosophy, folks. By obedience to what Jesus taught us, the real-world experiences he gave us as examples, however steeped in parables they may be, we prove our love to him and to the Father. What he taught us is kindness, the same kindness God showed us when he sent Jesus to save us from our sins and the same kindness the Dalai Lama spoke about. Jesus has promised to shepherd us into eternal life, into a perfect happiness, a cessation of all suffering and craving, a share in his divinity.

The United States and Russia, which by far hold more nuclear devices than the rest of the world combined, are now in negotiations to reduce those nuclear stockpiles. When Ronald Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he stood ready to completely eliminate all nuclear weapons from both countries. That ultimate perfection should be our goal, if we are truly following Christ, but present negotiations aren’t even close. However, they’re a step in the right direction: at least a few hundred weapons of mass destruction will be eliminated from the world.

A movie coming out soon (now part of the Sundance Film Festival) is called “Countdown to Zero,” a documentary by Lawrence Bender. A Web site associated with the film asks people to demand a “zero” level of nuclear weapons from all nations.

In this sense, loving our neighbors — by not holding a gun to their heads, by laying down our lives for their sake, by reducing our ability to blow them to smithereens — goes along with peace. The idea of eliminating nuclear weapons, known by President Reagan more than two decades ago, is consistent with the teachings of the world’s great religions, shown here by heaven, nirvana, etc.

Some leaders today say the treaty we just signed doesn’t go far enough, although President Obama is having trouble convincing many politicians in both parties of the importance of even the proposed reductions (ratification by two-thirds of the Senate may not happen). For example, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader in Iran, who began large-scale military shows of force in the Persian Gulf Thursday, said he perceived the U.S. proposals as an “atomic threat against Iranian people,” state TV reported.

In nirvana or heaven, a state of pure love and peace, this sense of a threat would not exist. I therefore have to conclude that the ayatollah hasn’t yet found this state of mind.

The attainment of nirvana doesn’t lend itself to thought very clearly, though, and Christians believe we’re all sinners. But still, people do attain nirvana, and God still saves us by his grace. He does this for believers who love him, who achieve that same perfect bond of unity with the Father that Jesus talked about in today’s gospel reading.

The question is, How do we prove our love for him? Large-scale military exercises do not testify to a love for God. They instead reveal an underlying hatred (also not a true part of heaven or nirvana).

Our prayer is twofold: (a) the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and (b) the attainment of a state of peace where nobody feels threatened. This perfect state — of zero nukes and zero fear — can only be achieved through love. This perfection, the goal of both Buddhism and Christianity, is possible, thanks to the love in our Savior’s heart for us and for the Father.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Acts 5:27-32, 40-41 (RCL 9:1-20)
• Ps 30:2-13
• Revelations 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19+

The events reported here in John’s gospel — Jesus’ threefold question to Peter — show the greatest significance of Peter in all the gospels. John certainly had higher thoughts about the existence of God than anyone else, and Paul certainly traveled great distances in the name of Christ. But Peter had his place as well: to tend to Christ’s lambs and sheep, feeding them the Word.

But even in elevating Peter to a role of greater importance among believers (and thus someone for us to model our lives after), Jesus still commanded Peter that his primary concern was not his own well-being, but rather the spiritual health of believers. They were to feed off of his love, understanding it as fully as humans could. That was Christ’s command to Peter.

He asks Peter, “Do you love me?” three times, no doubt a reference to Peter’s three denials as Jesus was being led to his death on the cross. Jesus’ response to Peter each time goes something like this: If you love me then … do this. The three things he is asked to do are (1) feed my lambs, (2) tend my sheep, and (3) feed my sheep.

During the tsunami in 2004 and during a string of earthquakes this year from Haiti to China, we note the assistance provided by churches and Christian organizations to people who are hungry and homeless. Non-Christian organizations are also involved in providing humanitarian assistance, but our focus remains the great commission of Jesus to all believers.

A shameful battle for the souls of Haitian victims of the earthquake is under way between Protestant Christians and Catholic missionaries in Haiti. The in-fighting suggests that Catholic priests are doing too little to stomp out Voodoo practices, which Protestants consider satanic. Evangelist Pat Robertson even went so far as to say God brought the earthquake because Haitians had made a “pact with the devil” involving Voodoo religious practices from their African ancestry.

According to the Campus Crusade for Christ in Haiti, “An estimated 75 percent of Catholics are also increasingly involved in voodoo [sic], spiritism and witchcraft. … The steady growth of Protestant churches in the difficult economic and spiritual climate is cause for praise.”

But many who made the trip to Haiti failed to consider the laws of civil authorities. One Baptist group of relief workers was arrested for kidnapping, because they thought they could transport children across a national border. This ignorance prevented them from carrying out Christ’s mission there, and their actions, based entirely on uninformed and unhelpful (and non-Christlike) positions, landed them in an international incident that further distracted authorities from providing aid to victims of the earthquake.

What happened was that they drew attention away from the sheep and onto the shepherd. Such actions shift the emphasis to the church but completely neglect Christ. From our gospel, it would be as if Jesus had told Peter to tend to himself and his own beliefs, rather than to feeding and tending his lambs and sheep.

But that’s not what Jesus said. It is Jesus’ sheep who are paramount, at the top of our Lord’s thoughts. Certainly, he knew his church would survive, no matter what evils the devil threw at it throughout history. His instruction to Peter was clear: take care of the sheep and lambs.

We aren’t talking about feeding them with actual food, either, as John makes clear on several instances in his gospel. We’re talking about the Word, which as John told us, is “love.” The love Christ taught us is the “food” Jesus speaks of when addressing Peter (and thus, all believers, who are part of the Christ’s body, the church).

Our prayer is that victims of the earthquakes around the world this year, especially in the Pacific rim, find comfort and that aid organizations, including Christian missionaries, learn about the people God has put in these places so that they are able to provide better assistance.

As we hear in the reading from Acts, we are to follow God’s law, not man’s. But God created the Haitians to be exactly as they are. He loves them, just as he created them. Christianity, specifically the belief in Christ as the risen Lord, comes with people of many different skin colors, traditions, nations, and spans every difference known to human society. God’s law is simple: love your neighbor. Your many neighbors might not look like you or follow your traditions. But you are still required to love them.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Acts 5:12-16 (RCL* 1:27-32)
• Ps 118:1-4, 13-15, 22-24
• Revelations 1:9-13, 17-19 (RCL* 4-8)
• John 20:19-31

During the Eastertide, readings from the Acts of the Apostles are substituted for the usual reading from the Old Testament or the Hebrew scriptures. The basic lesson from either of the first readings is that the church claims to have authority — and people recognize that authority — and it is utterly compelled to carry out God’s mission on Earth: healing, preaching, and spreading the gospel of love to all corners of the world.

Let’s take a closer look at the reading from the gospel. It teaches three basic points about the Christian faith:

(1) Jesus breathes on his disciples
(2) Thomas touches Jesus’ wounds
(3) The book is written so we may believe

The gospel writer says, “And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’ ”

Jesus’ act of breathing on his disciples as he commissioned them here parallels God breathing life into human beings and all creatures. Yes, our DNA comes from our parents; the holiest of spirits that lives within us comes from God. As Jesus breathes his everlasting spirit into believers, he either reminds them or commands them about the forgiveness of sins.

This week, Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement from the Supreme Court after the Court concludes its work this summer. He’ll turn 90 on April 20 and is the longest-serving member of the current Supreme Court by more than a decade. Justice Stevens has personally defended the humanity of the people whose cases made their way to the nation’s highest court.

“Personal letters, snapshots of family members, a souvenir, a deck of cards, a hobby kit, perhaps a diary or a training manual for an apprentice in a new trade, or even a Bible — a variety of inexpensive items may enable a prisoner to maintain contact with some part of his past and an eye to the possibility of a better future,” he wrote. “Are all of these items subject to unrestrained perusal, confiscation or mutilation at the hands of a possibly hostile guard?”

Because of hope in a better future for prisoners, perhaps after a measure of rehabilitation while serving time in prison, Justice Stevens seemed to believe they should not be subjected to the confiscation of personal effects. Unfortunately, he was outvoted on that one.

Unlike the Supreme Court majority, Jesus, like Justice Stevens in writing the above dissent, has faith in us. Yes, we need to have faith in him, but it is clear here that Jesus needs us as well. Even though Peter and all the disciples were sinners, our Lord still breathed the Spirit of God into them.

Next look at the famous incident with Thomas, who needs to feel Jesus’ wounds before he’s willing to believe in the resurrection. He wasn’t just going to say, “Oh Jesus is Lord,” without the proof. Alfred Lord Tennyson, in In Memoriam, wrote:

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

That is, people who approach faith in God blindly, repeating words of a memorized creed, can have a weak faith, one that can be shaken with a well reasoned argument, such as, “You don’t really believe snakes can talk, do you? Well, it says in the Bible that snakes talked. So, the Bible must be a lie. And all the stories in it, including the one today about Thomas, must be nothing more than a literary device.”

On the other hand, those people who have read the story in Genesis critically, where the snake talks to Adam and Eve — and understood it for what it is — have a faith that cannot be shaken. They have considered the possibility that the story is not historical, found it plausible, and read it for what it really is: a message from God about sin and separation from God. Reading the Bible critically is something like Thomas sticking his hands into Jesus’ side.

One of my favorite TV shows is the Bill Maher show on HBO. Mr. Maher is an atheist, but he is very informed about organized religion and very funny. Plus, his opinion that God doesn’t exist is more logical than the story in the Bible that God sent Jesus to pay the debt for all our sins.

What I wish to point out here is that if we Christians could be as strong in our faith as Mr. Maher is in his non-faith (for lack of a better term), we would be preaching love to all corners of the world, as Jesus asked us to do. There wouldn’t even be a question about how to do it.

But so many of us have not put our hands into Jesus’ side yet, figuratively speaking. We haven’t seen the evidence that God exists in our world. We haven’t seen how different the love in a toddler’s heart for his parents is from that of an infant. We haven’t witnessed the spirit of giving, forgiveness, and love that drives so many people in their daily lives.

Instead, many people blindly follow what they think the Bible or their minister tells them is “the truth.” Listen, if there were anybody on Earth who were privy to “the truth,” they wouldn’t need to have their own TV show or the millions and billions of dollars the Catholic Church has. My conclusion is that nobody knows “the truth.”

Many atheists stick their hands, figuratively, into the sides of science or elite intellectualism. Scientific evidence is very convincing. It doesn’t help matters that the only Christian rubbish coming out of uneducated preachers for the past few decades has been that carbon dating is inaccurate and the fossil record doesn’t really say what scientists say it does.

We can continue the name-calling, but saying that others are wrong will not help us to increase our own faith or our fortitude for friendship with others or with our Lord. Instead, we should realize the lesson taught to us by Thomas here: honest doubt is the only path to a strong faith. In addition, we need to learn from atheists, who have a powerful conviction. Even though the content of our belief is fundamentally different, don’t be afraid of self-criticism or of critically considering other sides of a debate. Rather, learn from everything God has put in your world.

Finally, as the writer of John’s gospel message today tells us, Jesus did many things that were not written in the Bible. Therefore, God obviously didn’t intend for the Bible to be historical or even complete. It certainly wasn’t intended to be used as an argument against the fossil record. It’s not even a complete biography of Jesus Christ. Since it falls short of complete on the subject of our Lord’s life and teachings, you can bet it’s nowhere near complete about the other stuff.

I think the message here is to all of us: stop using the book for a purpose other than that for which it was written. The writer of John’s gospel tells us what that purpose was: so “that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”

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(*) The Revised Common Lectionary of the Christian churches (RCL), copyright by the Consultation on Common Texts, as endorsed by about 16 Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic church.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Genesis 1:1-2:2
• Genesis 22:1-18
• Exodus 14:15-15:1
• Isaiah 54:5-14 (not in RCL*)
• Isaiah 55:1-11
• Baruch* 3:9-15, 32-4:4
• Ezekiel 36:16-28
• Romans 6:3-11
• Ps 118:1-2, 16-17, 22-23
• Luke 24:1-12

In the Latin, the words of the angel to Mary at Jesus’ empty tomb, right after “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” are “Non ibi est; resurrexit.” “He is not here; he has risen.”

There’s nothing quite like the Roman Catholic mass on the Easter vigil among all the Christian celebrations. The priest sets a fire outside, after sunset, symbolizing the light of Christ rising amid the darkness. Oil is blessed, to be used in anointing the sick and new Christians during the course of the next year. Many Protestant churches, particularly Lutheran churches, have maintained a large part of the Roman rite that celebrates the Easter Vigil in the Holy Night of Easter.

It is with great sorrow that we note widespread reporting in renowned news sources of the apparent complicity of the pope himself in the cover up of the sexual abuse of children, not only in the United States but in Ireland and other European countries as well. I don’t wish to propagate rumor, but the document trail from a case in Wisconsin is rather convincing.

The Vatican’s chief spokesman has acknowledged that the Church’s response to cases of sexual abuse by priests is crucial to its credibility and it must “acknowledge and make amends for” even decades-old cases: “The nature of this issue is bound to attract media attention and the way the Church responds is crucial for its moral credibility,” Father Federico Lombardi said on Vatican Radio, Reuters reported.

Although the cases cited happened “even decades ago, acknowledging them and making amends to the victims is the price for re-establishing justice and looking to the future with renewed vigor, humility, and confidence,” Father Lombardi said.

The Vatican’s statements, however, miss the point: That sexual abuse happened is the fault of the priests who committed it. It is horrible and carries both civil and religious penalties. That the abuse was covered up, cast into the darkness of a church that represents light, not only at Easter but in our hearts throughout the year, is the part that is irreconcilable. The church leadership remains in denial about that aspect of the sex-abuse scandal.

With this massive cover up (and even what some are calling a cover up of the cover up), the church has lost its moral authority. Pope Benedict has denied any personal involvement in a cover up, referring to accusations as the “petty gossip of dominant opinion.”

That is why, this Easter, we ought to turn to the church as the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection was intended. We are an Easter people. We are the people of the fire. The promise of eternal salvation with our Lord has caused the shedding of light on the gross injustice by abusers and by those who covered up the abuse.

Christ is not dead: he lives and is walking with us on our journey. We spend each day in joyful anticipation of the world yet to come. But we seem to be seeking the living (Christ) among the dead (the church’s leadership). We need to go back and tell Peter (the people of Christ’s great church) and the others (the civil authorities) that the Lord has gone to meet them at Galilee (our safety and home in the church of our childhood and of our culture), just as he promised (in the gospels).

But rather than focus on the many children who have been sexually abused by protected members of the clergy, I wish to focus on 2,152 students in Baltimore, whose Catholic schools will close at the end of this school year.

“I wish there were a painless way to do this,” Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, spiritual leader of the area’s half-million Catholics, said in an interview. “It’s going to be quite painful. It’s going to have a ripple effect beyond what we can predict.”

At the root of the closures is the fact that the archdiocese of Baltimore doesn’t have enough money to keep the schools open. Donations have fallen, and attendance at the schools is down, as is the ability of many parents to pay the tuition.

Of course, a consideration for the underlying cause of donations dropping off is beyond the scope of news organizations like the Baltimore Sun, which reported the story above. The answer, obvious to everyone except perhaps those in the church who have developed a severe case of denial or blindness, is the 400-pound gorilla in the room, known as the priest sex-abuse scandal.

Children are losing when it comes to the church in many ways. The degradation of support for young people goes beyond the Roman Catholic Church as well, but Catholics have the biggest attention right now. The churches our Lord has built failed them and will continue to let them down if the light doesn’t rise from the darkness soon.

Our prayer is that the Roman Catholic Church, in all her glory, as Christ himself set her on the path to salvation, will follow her leader and rise from the grave in which the sex-abuse scandal, cover up, and cover up of the cover up have put her. We pray that she will take note of the fire after sunset in her own beautiful Easter Vigil ceremony and shed a new light on this issue — one that offers prayerful reconciliation and joyful hope for a new world.

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* Because many Protestant churches do not consider the book of Baruch part of the true canon, they may substitute Proverbs 8:1-8, 19-21; 9:4b-6 and Psalm 19 for this reading, according to the Revised Common Lectionary. In addition, some churches add two readings to the salvation history: Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13 in between the first and second readings in the Roman rite; Ezekiel 37:1-14 after the reading from Ezek 36; and Zephaniah 3:14-20 just before the epistle. The total number of readings listed in the common lectionary is nine: three are added, as listed, and one is removed (Isaiah 54).

Today’s Readings (text):

• Isaiah 50:4-7 (RCL* -9a)
• Ps 22:2, 8-9, 17-24 (RCL* 31:9-16)
• Philippians 2:5-11
• Luke 22:14-23:56 (or, shorter, 23:1-49)

Today’s gospel, the longest single reading in the entire lectionary, will dominate services or masses across the country today. It is the story of Judas’ betrayal, the trial and punishment of Jesus, and his death on the cross.

But conversation around the country is dominated by the health care reform bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama earlier this week. The vote in the U.S. House of Representatives was mostly along party lines: no Republican voted for the bill, and only about 30 Democrats voted no, the remaining 219 voting for the health care reform bill.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was against passage of this bill. Joining them, many Christian Democrats in the House pledged a “no” vote on the grounds that the bill would fund abortion. But Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat, at first an apparent champion for the unborn, got President Obama to write an executive order that seems to prevent any federal dollars from funding elective abortions.

The problem with that deal is, executive orders can be rescinded just as quickly as they are signed, and no court can enforce the provisions of an executive order. The bottom line about the executive order is that it’s probably meaningless. For sure, it can’t erase what is now in federal statute in the bill signed by the president Tuesday. Here is what the new law says about abortion:

Health plans could choose whether to cover abortion, but individual states could prohibit the coverage of abortions by health plans that are offered for sale through any insurance exchanges states form.

If the health plan you choose covers abortion and receives federal subsidies, the federal dollars must be kept in a separate “account” and funds from that account cannot be used to pay for abortions. In other words, only premium payments and co-payments can be used to cover the procedure. Enforcement of this separation of funds is left up to the states.

Finally, if you want abortion coverage, you would have to pay for that separately, and that “account” would cover only abortions, not other medical care.

We hear the prophet Isaiah say in today’s Old Testament lesson, “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting.”

I’m not sure in this case whether anti-abortion Democrats gave their cheeks to Rep. Stupak or the other way around. What happened was, for me, when I heard the congressman say abortion won’t be paid for in the 2,400-page health care reform bill and then actually read the bill for myself, I felt betrayed. I’m just not sure who betrayed me.

Was Mr. Stupak playing Jesus or Judas here? Maybe he was both. Maybe all politicians are. But who is telling the truth? I don’t know. I doubt if I’ll ever know. Only our Lord can separate the truth from a lie.

With all this mess, I feel blessed to have a God who tells the truth, a sovereign Lord who keeps every single one of his promises. Subjectively, I tell myself this must be true, because this worldview makes more sense than anyone else’s explanation to me. Jesus kept his promises, starting with his payment for our sins on the cross. Prophets like Isaiah predicted these things would happen, and Jesus fulfilled those prophecies with his very life: the suffering, death, and resurrection.

What about our own lives? In our human imperfections and half-truths, many of us combine episodes of standing up for what we believe in with acts of selfishness and getting something that serves our own best interest. You can be sure that a 2,400-page law will play on both sides of human nature as well.

For example, the new law will help to ensure innocent children can get the medical care they need. Lawmakers are not children, so this provision was clearly not a selfish interest.

However, several aspects of the bill seem self-serving, arbitrary, and almost capricious, such as the amount of the penalty each individual pays if he or she fails to purchase health insurance and employers don’t offer it. A 1 percent penalty (2.5 percent in 2016), based on income, seems steep for most Americans, and the harshness of that penalty, while it will deter many from going uncovered, seems to violate constitutional principles, such as those found in the 14th Amendment’s equal protections clause.

This is why Jesus’ sacrifice was the perfect one: His life and well-being were completely insignificant in comparison with what his death caused: the paying of the debt for all our sins. We Americans have allowed health care to get out of control on many levels. It remains to be seen whether the number of abortions will increase or decrease under the bill, but someone had to turn his back to those who were doing the whipping. And although the current law is much less than perfect — it was, after all, developed by humans — we know only God is perfect.

We look to Jesus for the perfection of love, not to our political leaders, and while I wish the latter could have done a much better job of writing a law that takes better care of Americans, I remember that Paul wrote, “Equality with God is not something to be reached for.”

Perfection like that is not something we can expect from humans. We (and God) will forgive, thanks to our Lord’s actions about 2,000 years ago, but some of our hope in government seems eroded today, especially in its ability to rise above worldly (or, political) views and triumph in an occasion of greater glory. For that we need Jesus, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and we Americans had almost forgotten.

“Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” Paul wrote.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Isaiah 43:16-21
• Ps 126
• Philippians 3:8-14 (RCL* 4b-14)
• John 8:1-11 (RCL* 12:1-8)

In the wisdom of people who have prayerfully studied scripture and developed the major lectionaries of our Christian churches, Isaiah 43 in the First Reading (or the Old Testament Lesson) has been paired with an episode in which Jesus came to the defense of a woman (for adultery in the Roman Catholic reading or for “wasting” perfume to make Jesus’ feet smell nice in the Revised Common Lectionary).

But the profound prophecy in Isaiah 43 (”Behold, I am about to do something new. Can’t you perceive it?”) necessarily begs the question: What’s so new about Jesus forgiving a sinner? Well, the answer is: Nothing, because we’re looking in the wrong place. We need to look at the other places in the gospel passages.

When Jesus came to the defense of (and didn’t condemn) the woman about to be stoned for adultery, he “bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger.” And then while all her accusers were walking away, he did the same, “Again he bent down and wrote on the ground,” scripture tells us.

Yes, he spoke, but speaking and teaching and forgiving were not new things for Jesus at this time. But when he wrote something with his finger (we are not told what he wrote), that was something new indeed. In fact, the only other instance of God actually writing in the entire canon of scripture—in all 73 or 66 books, depending on which version of the Bible you use—is when he wrote the tablets for Moses, handing down the law.

God first gave us the law (we don’t know what those original tablets said, either, since they were destroyed before Moses could read them for his people), and then he replaced the punishments that had been given for the law (maybe not on the original tablets, but through Moses) with forgiveness, bending down to write probably a new law in the sand.

Adultery was still against God’s law, in Jesus’ book, but a new covenant was written, “Nor do I condemn you. Now go, and don’t sin any more.” The way I see it, Jesus here “completed” the 10 Commandments. We don’t know what he wrote, but his actions speak volumes. We should not sin, but we shouldn’t condemn or stone people to death for committing adultery, either.

In the Revised Common Lectionary, we see something new as well: the first foreshadowing of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal in John’s gospel as he accuses Mary Magdalene of not giving money to the poor from the sale of the perfume. John even observes Judas’ hidden agenda in accusing Jesus.

But take a look at the Epistle as well, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. “For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things, and I consider them so much rubbish,” he writes. That is, whatever he had was lost—everything on Earth. It has been replaced with the promise of his resurrection in Christ, “not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ.”

I usually try to include more modern references in these reflections, but the fact is, the events described in the gospel passage, Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and their prophecy in the Old Testament lesson are three of my favorite passages of scripture. I suspect people who read these reflections have their favorite events as well. I’m a writer, and when Jesus used his actions in defending and not condemning a woman accused of adultery to become a writer himself, well, that did it for me.

There are a few notable exceptions, but typically, it is the written account of something that has the largest significance in our minds. One exception that comes to mind would be the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg. For that disaster, the spoken news account plays a more significant role in our historical memory. But for most other events in history, the written account outlasts and outweighs the spoken account.

As John says at the end of his gospel, Jesus did many, many things that could not be written down. Some of those things are part of our tradition, but what mostly survives in our churches is what people did get the chance to write down. Well, this is the one time that Jesus himself, God incarnate, wrote something down. That stands alone as his indication of the importance of forgiveness in God’s kingdom.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Joshua 5:9-12
• Ps 34:2-7
• 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21
• Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The story of the prodigal son appears only in Luke’s gospel, missing from both Mark and Matthew among the synoptic gospels. We usually refer to this parable as “The Prodigal Son,” shifting all the emphasis of the story to the son who goes off and squanders his inheritance, only to return to his father, begging to be taken back into the family.

By putting the emphasis on the lost son, we lose some of the understanding of the importance of the older brother and his outburst in Luke 15:29b-30: “Look, all these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders,” he protests. “Yet you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.”

We also neglect the role of the father in the parable. According to the way Jesus tells the parable, the lost son acts on his own accord. He doesn’t come back because he gets a letter from his father or something; rather, he runs out of money and would probably have died without assistance from his family.

In today’s crazy world, we have reality TV. One show in Spain, entitled “Patricia’s Diary,” specializes in reuniting people with long-lost family members. Last month, producers discovered something had gone terribly bad with one episode.

It all started in 2003, when a 38-year-old woman spotted her father on the show, telling the TV audience he had not seen his two daughters since 1966, when he and their mother split up.

The daughter first spoke with him on the telephone, and then they decided to meet at his house. The father reportedly kissed her on the lips during one of their meetings, but she returned with him afterwards to her home. He allegedly sexually abused her there, with sexual abuse continuing and even rape occurring, according to court testimony.

He has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his crimes, which he still claims were invented by his daughter as revenge for him abandoning her as a child, “because of the lack of support which she had suffered throughout her life.”

The roles are reversed a little here. It is the father in Spain who plays the prodigal son from our Lord’s parable. While his daughter apparently had every hope of behaving like the father in the parable, the long-lost father’s intentions with his daughter were apparently very different from those of the prodigal son — or maybe not so different.

What we see in the case in Spain is a man who had lost everything. Maybe he squandered away a loving relationship he once had with his daughters’ mother. Maybe he squandered away a guiding hand he once had with his daughters. He very likely felt just as empty inside as the prodigal son did before going back to the family and seeking to reconnect.

But just because the beginning of the story is the same as the prodigal son parable doesn’t mean the story happens as our Lord would have liked. When the daughter welcomed her father and, in effect, killed the fattened calf for him, he raped her.

A blogger on family.com, Beth McHugh, writes, “Sadly fathers do rape their own children and sometimes they even rape their infant children. They can even rape several daughters over a period of years.” These rapes often go unreported, because, as Ms. McHugh writes, many daughters feel that sexual assault is how their father shows them they are loved.

And while the father in Spain will spend some time in prison, we must distinguish between his actions, which occurred after his daughter welcomed him home, and those of the prodigal son in Jesus’ gem, where the only question of punishment comes from the elder son. For the father — and for heaven in this metaphor — it was enough that the son returned. He had done wrong, but as far as the father was concerned, he was home. His wrongdoing ended there, as we hear in the Old Testament lesson, “Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.”

The father in Spain, on the other hand, sinned after his daughter opened her arms and her house to him. For that, you get prison. And penance. The elder son would be happy to extend the story of the parable to modern-day reality TV, thus gaining a fuller understanding of God’s sense of justice and sparing a love between a father and one of his daughters. But in Spain, things didn’t go according to God’s plan, did they? Love does not need a confession; nor does it demand restitution. Love is enough by itself. Taste and see God’s goodness, which is love.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15 (RCL* Isaiah 55:1-9)
• Ps 103:1-11 (RCL* 63:1-8)
• 1st Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12 (RCL* 10:1-13)
• Luke 13:1-9

Today’s gospel reading is the parable of the fig tree, but even if we are not a person who plants fig trees in our gardens, we can get the drift of the story. For three years, the tree bears no fruit, leading the owner of the fig tree to want to cut it down. But the person tending the garden convinces him to leave it for just one more year, during which time he will pay special attention to it. “If [it doesn't bear fruit next year], you can cut it down,” he tells the owner of the fig tree.

In the mid-1800s, in the Kansas Territory town of Osawatomie, peaceful people who were against slavery, ideologically led by ministers such as Rev. Samuel Adair, stood their ground, holding on in the face of militant pro-slavery forces. Although the peaceful abolitionists lost a few battles in guerrilla-style warfare, they were winning a publicity war back in the East.

Because they stuck it out, there was more time for settlers to come from free states in the North, and soon, people who opposed slavery outnumbered — and outvoted — those who supported slavery.

This is kind of like the fig tree parable. It takes time for a tree to bear fruit. It doesn’t always happen in the first, second, or third year. Sometimes you don’t get fruit until the fourth year. The peaceful abolitionists in Osawatomie didn’t win any elections when their movement began. Rather they chipped away at the pro-slavery majority by giving time for like-minded settlers to make their way to Osawatomie. And today, the town enjoys the same commitment to peace prevalent in the time of Samuel Adair.

Our God is a God of infinite goodness, but the time he allows in his schedule for us to turn to him is not so infinite. God works on his own schedule, not on ours. When the psalmist declares, “The Lord is kind and merciful,” the “mercy” refers to the time given after we have sinned but during which no punishment occurs. God alone decides the time for punishment, as he did in the many punishments written about in the Old Testament.

So really, the fig tree story is a little like a call to repent. It tells us God will give us time and show us mercy, but after that time has elapsed — and we don’t know when that will be — if we still haven’t turned our hearts, minds, and strength to God, that’s it. He cuts down the fig tree.

Finally, the single most popular page on this Web site is my retelling of the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, featured in today’s Roman Catholic Old Testament reading. The Revised Common Lectionary uses a passage from the Book of Isaiah today, which basically gives the same advice that could be gleaned from the fig tree parable. I have no idea why the Moses story is so popular among Google searchers, but it seems to have become a hit. I wrote it for a seventh-grade religious education class, along with other stories from the Bible.

Please take a moment to read the moral of the story at the bottom. Keep in mind that our God is infinite in his goodness in our lives. He continues to refresh our minds with new events that bear witness to his kindness. The Burning Bush story asks us, Would we recognize God and his actions in our lives today? Would we give witness to his glory as he works through us every day?

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* RCL refers to the Revised Common Lectionary of the Christian churches, copyright by the Consultation on Common Texts, as endorsed by about 16 Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic church.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18
• Ps 27:1, 7-9, 13-14
• Philippians 3:17-4:1
• Luke 9:28-36

I’m a collector of crosses and crucifixes. I selected two from my collection, put them out on an island in my basement, and took the picture above.

These are two rather different depictions of the cross of Christ, aren’t they? The one on the right depicts the suffering that St. Benedict saw in the crucifixion of our Lord. The one on the left, on the other hand, is intended for wedding ceremonies, a gift you might give to a new couple to decorate their new home or apartment. Many people even put the cross on their bodies, not only as jewelry, but as tattoos.

And I think there’s nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. So often, however, we forget what the cross meant to Jesus during his own life as a man on Earth. We forget the excruciating pain, shame, and horror he endured, because as we turn the cross into a sacred symbol, a hallowed testament of our faith in Christ and his resurrection, we naturally become less appalled at the image of his death.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians, certainly one of the happiest and most joyful books in the Old or New Testaments, reminds us in Chapter 3, Verses 18-19 (”For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ … their minds are set on earthly things”), that we are enemies of his cross if our minds allow us to live lives of indulgence.

We don’t know any more about our own futures today than Paul did about his two millennia ago. Therefore, Paul uses words that are somewhat vague, like “lowly” and “humiliation,” to describe our earthly shells. This is Jesus the Christ, who died on the cross after suffering humiliation. This is the animal sacrifice made by Abram in our Old Testament lesson, providing food for birds of prey.

Paul then uses words like “glory” to describe the body of Christ: “He will transform the body of our humiliation (or, our humble bodies) that it may be conformed to the body of his glory” (3:18). This is the flaming torch that passed between the pieces of Abram’s sacrifice. This is the image of Jesus transformed on the mountain in our gospel. This is the light and salvation spoken about in the psalm verse.

Religion and spirituality is not intended, in Christ’s kingdom, to be available only as far as we benefit from it. Rather, it was crafted by God out of the suffering of Jesus. Many Christians in the world, particularly in Muslim countries, are persecuted, as Christ was persecuted, for their belief in him and the doctrine of his resurrection.

In fact, persecution is so bad in Malaysia at this time that the former bishop of the Protestant Church in Germany characterized Christians as the most persecuted group in the world. The non-governmental organization Open Door estimates that about 100 million of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians are subjected to persecution in their native land.

They share, first hand, in the deprivation and humiliation that a strong commitment to Christ can involve, even today. Yet they are not afraid to stand up for their beliefs. After a three-year ban on the use of the Bible in churches—simply because it refers to God, in their native language, as “Allah,” a use to which Muslims objected and got laws passed—a judge in the highest court in Malaysia finally ruled on Dec. 31 that Christians could use the word “Allah” just as legally as Muslims could.

Mission accomplished, but the decision only increased threats against Christians in Malaysia. The situation in Malaysia is representative of how God works in our world. Jesus goes up on the mountain, the scene turns brilliant white, and God says, “This is my chosen Son.” This is the promise of our own transformation, as our earthly bodies are transformed into light at the hands of God.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Deuteronomy 26:4-10
• Ps 91:1-2, 10-15
• Romans 10:8-13
• Luke 4:1-13

The readings during Lent take us on a deep journey into the meaning of our faith and our life as Christians, leading to our rebirth in Christ. Paul’s letter to the Romans, especially Chapters 9 to 11, from which we hear an excerpt today, is considered by many to be the heart of the argument for Christianity.

To the Jews, Paul’s ideas here, in Chapter 10, would seem foreign. Jewish law typically divides people into three types, based on obedience to the law, which earned favor with God: the good, whose balance was in God’s favor; the bad, who were on the debt side in terms of obedience to God’s law; and the people in between, who could perform an act of obedience to get on God’s good side.

When Paul writes to the Romans, because of their unbelief, he tells them their way of looking at God’s justice isn’t right: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” Paul wrote.

Even though Paul clearly believed in predestination (that we were created by God to be with him), our salvation requires that we say out loud that Jesus is Lord and believe “in our heart” in the doctrine of the resurrection. Think of the heart as a relationship like one you would have with a good friend who is always at your side. If those conditions are met, Paul says we will be saved, regardless of how many acts of obedience or how many acts of disobedience (sins) we have performed.

If you don’t think that’s heavy stuff, you would be wrong. It formed an entire basis for the Reformation, one of the most significant events in the history of the world. Of course, many non-Christians live today, who have not had the benefit of hearing this doctrine. Paul’s letter here is specifically about the unbelief of the Jews in the resurrection, so we will restrict our discussion to the topic at hand. But just because this particular way of salvation is open to everyone doesn’t mean it’s the only way to come to the Father through Christ.

But for us, we must believe not only that Christ lived and died, but we must believe that he rose and lives, present tense. He ascended victorious and now walks with us every minute of our lives.

As Christians, when we believe that in our heart and walk with Jesus at our side, it’s not possible to do anything contrary to the law, although the strict legalism and that whole “letter of the law” thinking is dead. Jesus ended it with his resurrection, as he brought all believers into good favor.

He did this for everyone — as Paul says, “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek” — meaning salvation is open to everyone, including those who would be considered “in debt” under the Jewish law. Consider the psalmist’s words today: “Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.” Even when we are a person on the bad side of the scales of God’s justice, the Lord, our friend, Jesus, walks with us when we ask.