Category: scripture

Come and See: Love One Another

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When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.”

Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.
John 13: 31-38

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.
~Malcolm Guite “Maundy Thursday”

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves
but if we find grace
to weep and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break our hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me
~Luci Shaw “Judas, Peter” from Polishing the Petoskey Stone

The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words.

During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but,
“Little children, love one another.”

The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, “Teacher, why do you always say this?” He replied with a line worthy of John:

“Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.” He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: “Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.”
~from Jerome, Commentary on Galatians


He calls us to draw near Him,
to gather together among the
hungry and thirsty
to the Supper He has prepared.

He washes the dirt off our feet;
we look away, mortified.
He serves us from Himself;
we fret about whether
we are worthy.

We are not.

He tells us the truth:
we cannot follow Him now,
we will deny we know Him out of fear, a
failing to love as commanded.

Starving and parched,
grimy and weary,
self-absorbed and fearful,
barely presentable
to be guests at His table.

We are made worthy only because
He loves us so.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Lyrics:
I, your Lord and Master,
Now become your servant.
I who made the moon and stars
Will kneel to wash your feet.
This is My commandment:
To love as I have loved you.

Kneel to wash each other’s feet
As I have done for you.
All the world will know You are My disciples
By the love that you offer,
The kindness you show.
You have heard the voice of God
In the words that I have spoken.
You beheld Heaven’s glory
And have seen the face of God.

Reflecting Light Like Drops of Dew

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Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards
Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,
It glances from the eyes, kindles the words
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright
With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.
Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being
They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;
The gathered glories of His wounded love.
~Malcolm Guite “All Saints’ Day”

The ordinary saints, the ones we know,
Our too-familiar family and friends,
When shall we see them? Who can truly show
Whilst still rough-hewn, the God who shapes our ends?
Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold
That is and always was our common ground,
Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold
To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound
From which the light we never noticed fell
Into our lives? Remember how we turned
To look at them, and they looked back? That full-
-eyed love unselved us, and we turned around,
Unready for the wrench and reach of grace.
But one day we will see them face to face.
~Malcom Guite “Ordinary Saints”

As grains of sand, as stars, as drops of dew,
Numbered and treasured by the Almighty Hand,
The Saints triumphant throng that holy land
Where all things and Jerusalem are new.

We know not half they sing or half they do,
But this we know, they rest and understand;
While like a conflagration freshly fanned,
Their love glows upward, outward, through and through.

Lo! like a stream of incense launched on flame
Fresh Saints stream up from death to life above,
To shine among those others and rejoice.

What matters tribulation whence they came?
All love, and only love, can find a voice
Where God makes glad His Saints, for God is Love.
~Christina Rossetti “As Grains of Sand“

At almost four in the afternoon, the
wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches
on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder
what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window
measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink
edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp
in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills
and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.
~Joyce Sutphen “On the Shortest Days” from Modern Love and Other Myths

We are created to reflect the Light sent from above, whether we are the smallest dewdrop, a grain of sand on an infinite beach, or the first rung on a ladder set for heaven.

We are here today due to sacrifices of ordinary saints who came before:
the parents who stayed up all night with our high fever measles,
the grandparents who nurtured us when our parents were too weary, the church members who prayed over us when we went astray.

We are who we are today because of people who invested in our surviving, who bore arms in foreign lands far from home, who strived to keep water and air clean, who grew good food not knowing who would benefit.

We are gifted from the reach of common grace that emanates from common people; grace such as this wrenches us away from caring only for ourselves and thrusts us into the lives of others.

We are all created in the image of a very personal God who knows our very folds and inner and outer flaws, but loves us nonetheless, reminding us to sacrifice self for the sake of the other, to reflect His Light no matter where He sends us.

We are unselved by the saints today: loved for who we are
yet created to love those we’ll never know.

Lyrics:
All around us and within us
And yet it’s only at times we notice
As real as rain, and soft as stardust
We know deep down, what nobody told us.

Chorus: Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and we then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Now is just a, moving image
Not a ribbon, a start and end
There is a bird, a hidden singer
That calls and listens, and calls again

Centered down and moving outward
Sometimes almost, to sweet to bare
There are endless ways to reach home
Just keep walking and I’ll meet you there

Standing closer to the veil
There’s a blurring of the borders
And I swear that I heard voices
But every act of, simple kindness
Calls the kingdom down and all around us


Comprehending the Difference

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foggydrops17

…the essence of sin
is man substituting himself for God,
while the essence of salvation
is God substituting himself for man.
~John Stott from The Cross of Christ

foggydrops15

Try as we might
to make things in our own image,
no matter what discontent we feel,
we fail to comprehend
we are not God
and never can be.

Try as we might
to pick ourselves up when we fall,
no matter the anguish we feel,
we struggle to understand
He fell to earth specifically to catch us:
He bled our blood, shed our tears, brought us home.

fogdrops2
leafdewy

Lyrics from Psalm 84:

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

3 Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise!

Come and See: And It Was Night…

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After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”

The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side. so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?”

Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.”So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,”or that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out.

And it was night.
John 13: 21-30

And he (Judas) that went out — was himself the night…

~St. Augustine, Tractate 62 on the Book of John

There is in God, some say,

A deep but dazzling darkness, as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

           See not all clear.

  O for that night! where I in Him

  Might live invisible and dim!

~Henry Vaughn from “The Night”

Ask what the moon witnesses in the night.
Ask what we, as fallen creatures, do in the dark.
Darkness was not banished by God in the beginning, so we would search, blinded, for Him.

We are promised this in the Word: “and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light… Revelation 22:5.

The Word in the beginning set a dark universe in motion.
The Word is both flesh and Savior to a world dwelling in darkness.
The Word as Spirit thrives eternally to enlighten our hearts, our minds and hands.

Darkness is not banished. But it is overcome.
And so, we have a lit pathway leading us home.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

And What if?

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What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge “What if you slept…”

What might our dreams tell us of heaven?

The last few nights I dreamed of those with whom I once had a warm friendship but no longer do.

My dreams were of grace and reconciliation, of walking and talking together and rediscovering our common goals and beliefs rather than dwelling on estrangement and sadness as we’ve gone our separate ways.

Upon waking, I wondered what vision of heaven this suggests: finding the lost treasure of connection that I allowed to let go.

Restoring a friendship is like waking, holding a strange and beautiful flower plucked in a dream. I cradle it gently in my hand as the precious gem it is.

What then is still possible? And what might I do with this flower now?

To Keep Looking Out

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Dawn comes later and later now,
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning
watching the light walk down the hill
to the edge of the pond and place
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon
the water, sowing reflections
to either side — a garden
of trees that grew as if by magic —
now see no more than my face,
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,
night in its thick winter jacket
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,
and at the waiting window found
the curtains open to my open face;
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,
must now keep looking in.
~Ted Kooser “A Letter in October”

God knows we seek out light
these autumn mornings

praying to see multicolors filling the lines outside;
my face a shadow in a blackened window pane

Some mornings we can only see our own reflection
mirrored by darkness, startled by time, as we wonder what comes next.

God knows, as each year passes, we need His Light illuminating us as we look beyond ourselves, but even more as we look within.

Come and See: Lifted His Heel Against Me

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When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.

For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ (Psalm 41:9)

I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”
John 13: 12-20

Rembrandt Head of Christ

I, too, stood on the sacred image … on the face of the man who has been ever in my thoughts, … on the best and most beautiful face that any man can ever know, on the face of him whom I have always longed to love.

I understand your pain and your suffering. It is for that reason that I am here.

Lord, I resented your silence.

I was not silent. I suffered beside you.
~Shisaku Endo from Silence – an interchange at the end of the book between Father Sebastian Rodrigues and the voice of the Lord Jesus

Then Judas in his hot desire
 Said, “Give me what you will.”
Christ spoke to him with words of fire,
 “Then, Judas, you must kill,
One whom you love, One who loves you
 As only God’s son can:
This is the work for you to do
 To save the creature man.“

“And men to come will curse your name,
 And hold you up to scorn;
In all the world will be no shame
 Like yours; this is love’s thorn.
It takes strong will of heart and soul,
 But man is under ban.
Think, Judas, can you play this role
 In heaven’s mystic plan?”

So Judas took the sorry part,
 Went out and spoke the word,
And gave the kiss that broke his heart,
 But no one knew or heard.
And no one knew what poison ate
 Into his palm that day,
Where, bright and damned, the monstrous weight
 Of thirty white coins lay.

It was not death that Judas found
 Upon a kindly tree;
The man was dead long ere he bound
 His throat as final fee.
And who can say if on that day
 When gates of pearl swung wide,
 Christ did not go His honored way
With Judas by His side?

~Countee Cullen “Judas Iscariot”

And then there is the love for the enemy–
love for the one who does not love you
but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain.
The tortured’s love for the torturer.
This is God’s love.
It conquers the world.
~Frederick Buechner from The Magnificent Defeat

Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. Psalm 41:9

…he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15

Jesus knew Judas would “lift his heel against him” – Jesus chose him for that very reason, a close friend who had been a cherished part of the twelve.

The kick is hard, but not unexpected.

A heel crushes the image of Jesus and all that is good and beautiful.

Yet, this Lord is able to understand the pain of the betrayer and know suffering so much, He brings it onto Himself.

It was for this reason He came. It was for this reason He invites us to eat the bread of life alongside Him. We are filled and forgiven because He loves us enough to take our kicks and crushes.

What a gift to be known so well by God Himself.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

Come and See: Not My Feet Only

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Ford Maddox Brown — Washing Peter’s Feet

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?”

Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”

Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”

For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
John 13: 1-11

sculpture by Mark Greine

What e’er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.
~George Marion McClellan from “The Feet of Judas” in 
The Book of American Negro Poetry 1922

artist Otto Stemler

Being thorough, I remove a holey sock
to view a diabetic man’s filthy feet.
I use the time to complete our talk
of what drove him to live on the street
as I wonder how any of this can help.

While he tells me more of his medical past,
I run warm water into a stainless bowl.
I immerse both his feet and begin to ask
myself what good it does for this poor soul
to allow himself to undergo this ablution.

Silently I sluice the water between his toes
and soap the crusty callous at his heel.
I marvel at his arch and notice how closely
it fits my palm. I know he can feel
this proximity too. He shuts his eyes.

Months of useless layers peel away,
revealing layers useless weeks ago.
Removing the tough brown hide of yesterday
yields clean pink skin, but we both know
this ritual will be useless days from now.

Still, this moment may withstand time’s test,
teaching us each lessons unknown before.
I learn the medicine of selflessness.
He learns what medicine is really for–
the hope that basin, soap and touch can bear.
~Robert Fawcett “Washing Feet”

Jesus washing the feet of his disciples by Finnish artist Albert Gustaf Edelfelt

I’ve washed feet as part of my job, learning the medicine of selflessness:

…as an aide in a rest home caring for the crippled feet of the elderly,
as a medical student in an inner city hospital seeing the homeless whose socks had to be peeled off carefully to avoid pulling off gangrenous toes, as a doctor working with the down and out detox patients from the streets who had no access to soap and water for weeks.

People always protest, knowing the futility of washing
when feet will only become grimy again.
Like Peter, we never believe our feet,
those homely gnarled bunioned claw-toed calloused parts of us,
deserve that attention, and certainly not love.

We are ashamed to have someone care about them, care for them, when we don’t care enough on our own.

I have never washed the feet of someone about to betray me,
leading me to my death.

I have never had my feet washed by someone
who understood my heart needed cleansing
even more than my feet, who loved me that much.

So, I must not forget:

He kneels before us, the humility and towels of a servant as His only raiments.

He gently cups our heels in His palms, washes and dries our soles and arches and toes,

but what is truly cleansed is our beating heart,
held with such care in His loving hands.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

A Life-Cherishing Force

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Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
For poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
~Mary Oliver from A Poetry Handbook

…I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
~Mary Oliver from “Everything” from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

Poetry may make us from time to time
a little more aware
of the deeper, unnamed feelings
which form the substratum of our being,
to which we rarely penetrate;
for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
—T.S. Eliot from The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Much of the time, on the surface, we appear a tangled mess –
a jumble of unarticulated feelings and desires, needs and wants.

Deeper down, there is a hungry soul in a place that can’t be seen.

We rarely dip in there; it can be a sore spot we are tempted to touch
but avoid doing so because of its tenderness.

The bright light of a few well chosen words can ring us like a bell;
we are struck dumb finding such clarion clarity comes
to a place so well hidden.

A rope of words drops to lift up the lost and sad and empty –
a reminder mere words can rescue and revive.

Come and See: Wanting Human Praise More Than Praise From God

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Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet:

“Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:

“He has blinded their eyes
and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
nor understand with their hearts,
nor turn—and I would heal them.”

Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.

Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God.

Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

“If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”
John 12: 37-50

…glory means good report with God,
acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment,
and welcome into the heart of things.
The door on which we have been knocking all our lives
will open at last.

The promise of glory is the promise,
almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ,
that some of us, that any of us who really chooses,
shall actually survive that examination,
shall find approval, shall please God.

To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…
to be loved by God, not merely pitied,
but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a son—
it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory
which our thoughts can hardly sustain.
But so it is.
~C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

 

Riches I heed not, nor vain, empty praise;
Thou mine inheritance, now and always.
Thou and thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art.
~Eleanor Hull – 4th stanza of Be Thou My Vision

We all love praise, even vain empty praise which rings hollow in our ears. Even so, it feels as glorious as the transient golden light of October – gilded and alluring.

After all, the next step is withering and dying unto winter.

In our desire to be loved, too often we demand proof we have value, either by an impressive salary, or the number of “followers” we have on social media, our name placed on a building, or surrounding ourselves with people who tell us only what we want to hear.

Jesus is well aware that publicly acknowledging a belief in Him alone can come at great cost: it means turning away from the passing praise and admiration from others.

Instead, Christ came into the world to save us with His promise of glory — not for a temporary “feel-good” moment — but so we would forever truly understand the Father’s delight in us, His children.

Nothing can be more glorious than that.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.