Thursday, January 22, 2015

Experiencing God - 203 Discovering a Lonely Place

"Now Simon's mother-in-law had gone to bed with fever, and they told Him about her straightaway.  He went to her, took her by the hand and helped her."
Gospel of Mark

Who do you take your troubles too?  Do you allow Jesus to be the Lord, healer and guide of your personal life?

There is a quote from St. Jerome, an early church scholar and producer of the Jerome Biblical commentary:

"Can you imagine Jesus standing before your bed, and you continuing to sleep?  It is absurd that you would remain in bed in Jesus' presence.  Where is Jesus?  He is already here offering Himself to us.  Faith beholds Jesus among us."

As we get older and after dealing with many situations and problems (whether through work, family or encounters with others in community) we can begin to think that we can handle everything on our own.  After all, we have the experience to back up what we say and do.  What we often fail to realize is that everything is constantly changing.  We are changing ourselves.  Although our experience is good, it may not necessarily apply to our changing circumstances. 

Jesus is the only one I know who can keep us in touch with changing circumstances, and then give us the guidance and direction we need.  A simple reflective question we may ask ourselves: "Jesus, how would you handle this situation which has come up in my life?"  

In order to do this, we have to follow Jesus' practice of going off to a lonely place for a while, and being there in prayer.  We need a place where we can ask the right question and listen for His response. 

In the above Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus helped Simon's mother-in-law, and He went on to help many others who came to Simon's door that evening.  The next morning, He went off to a lonely place to pray.  When Simon and his companions saw that Jesus was missing, they went out in search for Him.  They were quite anxious to continue on with what they experienced from the previous successful evening.  "Everyone is looking for you" they exclaimed after finding Him.  But the continuation of yesterday's success was not a part of God's plan for Jesus.  "Let's go elsewhere to the neighboring towns so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came." 

Who do we take our troubles too?  Do we allow Jesus to be Lord, healer and guide in our personal lives in changing times?  Where do we go when the way we've done things in the past no longer seems to be working?  

As St. Jerome says in his commentary:  Jesus is always there offering Himself to us.  Our faith beholds Jesus among us.  Why do we continue our sleeping?  

It is in prayer; the going off by ourselves to a lonely place, to seek the Lord as our guide that we will find the answers. 

Experiencing God - 202 Beyond the Rules

"Is is against the law on the Sabbath day to do good, to save life?"
Gospel of Mark

One of my favorite bicycle rides is going across the Angus L. MacDonald Bridge on the bike lane.  It's great when you have the whole lane to yourself; no worry about cars, and the view of the Halifax Harbor is the best.  Some may say: "Are you not worried about the height, maybe driving over the side of the bridge?"  I would say to that: "It's impossible.  The lane has two huge steel railings on either side, and its almost impossible to get over them.  So I can ride across quite freely, without fear of falling off."  

I like to think of our rules in this way.  Rules are there to provide safety, to provide order.  They are the railings which enable us to move about freely and spontaneously.  We need rules in our society, and we have a lot of them.  We also need them in our churches.  But the one thing we have to be aware of is that following the rules for their own sake does not lead to meaningful worship of God. Worship and faith have to do with relationship.   

It follows and is similar too that ancient expression from Plato or Socrates: ""Justice without mercy is not really justice at all." Justice without mercy can turn into the worst type of cruelty.

In the above Gospel from Mark, Jesus is asking a question to the Pharisees:  "Is it against the law (or rules) on the Sabbath day to do good, or to save life?"  He received no answer because they were so obstinate.  To further His teaching, Jesus, on the Sabbath, asked the man with the withered hand to stretch it out, and He healed it, breaking what the Pharisees saw as one of their sacred rules.  What the Pharisees failed to realize was that the Sabbath rule was there to assist them to enter into meaningful worship of God, and not as a test to justify themselves before others. 

Following the rules, for them, became more important than the mercy, compassion and love towards which the rules pointed.  And that's why they failed to stop to help the man on the edge of the road who was beat up and robbed in the Good Samaritan story.  

Our rules take us only so far. They provide the order we need, the railings that keep us from falling offside. They permit us to move freely and spontaneously without fear.  But they all point to something greater.  We are in relationship with God.  We are in relationship with one another. And these relationships create a connection and bind us together with a responsibility towards one another and with God that goes beyond the mere practice of rules.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Experiencing God - 201 Courage in Times of Trial

"Take Courage!  It is I. Do not be afraid."
Gospel of Mark

Does Jesus ever seem distant when trials and difficulties come?

At times, in scripture, we can get so caught up in the story and the events that are happening that we miss the underlining teaching. 

Right after Jesus performed the miracles of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, He leaves the disciples so that He could go off and pray.  The disciples go off by themselves, across the Lake of Galilee where they are confronted with a life-threatening storm.  Although they are experienced fishermen, they recognize the seriousness of their situation and fear for their lives.  It was in their most desperate moment that they sighted Jesus coming towards them on the Lake.  And they heard the words of reassurance come from the One who they thought was a ghost:  "Take Courage!  It is I.  Do not be afraid."  In other words: "Don't give in to fear and panic, take courage, be calm.  You are never alone.  I am here with you."

There's a couple of points in Mark's Gospel story that are easy to miss.  As Jesus was coming towards the disciples, Mark includes a very unusual phrase.  "Jesus meant to pass them by, but when the disciples saw Him, they thought He was a ghost and cried out." 

The Israelites believed that to see God's face meant death.  In Exodus, we have reference to God setting Moses in a hollow of a rock and covering him with His hand until He had passed by.  This was to protect Moses from looking upon the face of God. 

Jesus, in being attentive to the panic and fear of the disciples, acts in a different manner.  Jesus reveals a new relationship, a new way of responding.  He comes to be with those who are afraid.  He assures us with the words: "IT IS I".  It is His presence with us, His walking with us, that defines a new type of relationship between ourselves and Christ.  It is this presence, this walking with us that drives out all fear as described in the letter of John. 

"In love, there can be no fear, but fear is driven out by perfect love."

Mark also says in the Gospel story that the disciples hearts were hardened in respect to the miracles.  In the Jerusalem Bible it says that their minds were closed.  Mark is looking for something deeper from the disciples and from his readers.  Mark is looking for something deeper from us than just the surface reading of this Gospel narrative.  Mark is hoping that we will begin to question our owl level of intimacy with Christ. 

During our own wind-tossed times; during the storms in our own lives; will we be able to stand firmly on that stabilizing rock of our faith in Christ?   Will we know, no matter what comes our way, we are not alone? 

Christ is there, sharing our journey.  His presence is not just an intellectual understanding or consent.  It is something real, something sustaining, something healing. 

Do we experience Jesus as present with us when trials and difficulties come our way?

Friday, January 2, 2015

Experiencing God - 200 Surrender

"Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter, and will not be able."
Gospel of Luke

In my late twenties, I went through what I would call a difficult time, a time of struggle.  Although I was succeeding in most of my goals -- I had an excellent job, good opportunities; I was happily married with three children; I had or could have had most of the things I wanted -- however, I continued to feel empty.  As a result, I felt like a failure.  Since my wife and I were connected with church, I started to move towards greater involvement in volunteering in search for an answer as to why I was feeling this way.  I started to teach Sunday school, and eventually joined a prayer group.  None of these activities seem to work, to take away the emptiness I was feeling until one evening.  I was at the prayer meeting, feeling very low, when in my desperation I reached out to Jesus and cried for help.  That moment of surrender changed everything.

When speaking about the narrow door, we must understand, first of all, that Jesus is the door through which we must enter.  Jesus is the way through. As Jesus says in Revelation: "I stand at the door and knock.  If you answer, if you open the door, I will come and sup with you." 

But we have a resistance to opening that door. 

This "resistance" makes the "way" narrow, because we battle with an alternative way of thinking, of believing that it has something to do with us.  Many, including myself, attempt to find an alternative route to God through the exercise of our self-will, through doing something ourselves through our own effort.

Jesus makes it clear in the above Gospel that we must strive to enter through the narrow gate.  We confuse this"striving" to "doing it ourselves", when it is not that at all.  The Greek word for "striving" is to agonize.  The implication here is that those who seek to enter the narrow gate must do so by struggle.  Unfortunately, we often interpret this struggle with something that we must accomplish.  This only hinders the process of surrendering to God's more perfect plan for our lives.

The narrow gate is difficult because of the resistance we experience from our own human pride, our natural attraction to doing things on our own, mostly because of our need to maintain personal control over our lives and the lives of others.  Surrender is a process of letting go of that.

The exhortation by Jesus to "strive" is a command to repent, to surrender to Him; not just stand and think about it, or complain that it's too hard or too small.  We are not to ask why others are not entering. We are not to be concerned with the number who will or will not enter.  We are to plow ahead, despite the resistance; and in doing so, we become liberated. We become the source of encouragement for others to follow.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Experiencing God - 199 Gift of Faith

"But to all who did accept Him, He gave the power to become children of God."
Gospel of John

Last night, I watched a movie on TV called "Heaven is for Real".  I read the book a few years ago.  It is a real story about a four year old boy who had a "near death experience" as the result of a ruptured appendix.  After his recovery from this near death experience, he began to reveal, little by little, to his shocked parents, his experience of "going to heaven" during the critical time of his illness.  Some of the things he revealed were quite extraordinary. They were, not only beyond the knowledge of a four year old boy, but things about others he would not have otherwise known.

This movie gave rise to some interesting discussions in our family afterwards.  How did we react to the movie?  What evidence do we see that gives credibility to the Gospels and its teachings?  For example, we know that:

1.  Jesus was a real historic figure.
2.  Jesus had a specific teaching which, if it were not true, would suggest that He was mad; yet His life would support the position that He was very sane, perhaps even more so than anyone else.
3.  His apostles and followers believed in Him and His teachings to the point of sacrificing their own lives in martyrdom for His cause.
4.  Jesus and his teachings have affected the lives of millions of people in the centuries that followed.
5.  And, of course, the greatest miracle of the conversion of one's heart to faith, is a common phenomena to those who accept Christ in their lives.

And yet, not all people come to faith in Christ.  Faith, as St. Paul would describe it, is a gift of grace. In the prologue to John's gospel we read:  "But to all who did accept Him, He gave the power to become children of God".  

For those of us who have accepted Christ, do we not often take for granted this tremendous gift that has been given to us?  For those of us who have received this gift of faith through Grace, is it not something that we should be honored to share?  

Does our gift of faith entitle us to look down on those who do not share this particular gift?  Certainly not!  After all, it is a gift; which means, something that is given to us by another.  A gift is something that is not necessarily given to everyone.  I have not been given the gift of music, at least to any extent.  I do not write poetry; I do not excel in certain sports, and none of my teachers ever considered me a genius.  Yet, I do have this gift of faith in Christ which I cannot fully explain; and as with you, through this gift, I experience very strongly this connection with God, which again I cannot explain.  

Yet, we know that, like a spark, our own faith can ignite the hearts of faith in another, if the right conditions exist. 

I remember a song from my early days as a christian:

"It only takes a spark to get a fire going,
and soon all those around will warm up in its glowing.
That's how it is with God's love, once you've experienced it;  It's fresh like spring, you want to sing,
You want to pass it on."

So we don't look down on a brother or a sister who has not received the gift of faith, but, when the time is right, we joyfully share that gift with them in the hopes that they too may share in our joy.