Scripture

Choosing the Better Part

Steve · July 29, 2022 · 8 Comments

I am up early this morning in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where we’re visiting family. It’s about 4:30 as I begin to write this and I’m facing east, watching the sky grow orange at its base and ever brighter in its further reaches. The reservoir that lies about a football field away from the porch where I sit is slowly making its way into the light.

Sound is amplified by the expanse of water, so I’m hearing the world come alive for another day, too. A dog barks far across the water and the sound reaches my ears as if coming from a deep cave. A crow caw-caws. Several roosters are up and letting the rest of us know it. I’m just sitting here, taking it all in. I’ve got nothing better to do.

And as I read today’s Gospel reading from Luke 10, the well-known and commented-on story of Martha and Mary, I am reminded that this seeming “nothing to do” is the right thing to do. It is choosing the better, as Jesus tells the sisters:

Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”

Every day, like Mary, we get to choose to sit at the feet of the Lord and listen. Each day, we can sit amidst the glory of creation, welcoming another day and praising the Creator who made it and continues to make it anew. There will be time enough for us to let our “Marthas” out, time enough for the worries of the day, many hours ahead to do our work and bear our burdens.

But we begin by choosing the better part. The sun’s up. The geese are flying.

Grace + peace to you today.

Let Me Easter in You

Steve · April 24, 2022 · Leave a Comment

As spring comes to America’s Midwest, I am reminded of this reflection I wrote a couple of years ago for a group of spiritual directors. The conversations in it bounce back and forth between what I imagine the risen Christ might say to me and the common struggles of faith that spiritual directors often hear from those who share their stories with us (and also feel ourselves from time to time, of course). The title, “Let Me Easter in You,” was inspired by a poem by Gerard Hanley Hopkins.

“Let me Easter in you,” he says to me, handing me a piece of fish and a small helping of bread warm from the morning fire. We sit on the shore together and then he rises and looks out over the lake at his fishermen-disciples, earnestly but haplessly making their way and their living in the early morning light. He shakes his head and grins. “The fish are right there on the other side of the boat, and they can’t see them,” he says.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she says to me, her head in her hands and her tears spilling out through her fingers like spring water through reeds. “I am hungry for something I cannot even name. I am searching for something in all the wrong places that for all my life I have been taught and assured should be easy to find. But it’s not. It never is.”

“Let’s Easter together,” I manage to say, handing her a tissue and giving her my attention.

“Let me Easter in you,” he says to me, breaking open the bread with the two men he met on the Emmaus road and inviting me to join in the sharing. The bread is warm in my hand, and he is as close to me as that heat. He turns away from the two men and toward me. He smiles and shakes his head as he speaks: “I walked with them for miles, and they didn’t know it was me.”

“I don’t know what it all is supposed to mean for me,” he says, “all the words and stories and rituals and prayers. I’m told it’s supposed to set my heart on fire but all I sense is a cold void. Isn’t there more? Shouldn’t there be more?”

“Let’s Easter together,” I whisper, inviting him to speak his own story.

“Let me Easter in you,” he says to me, folding the garments and placing them at the place where he had been lain. We walk together into the sun-lit morning and out into the field, and I notice his hand reaching out to touch a slender stem of wheat, cradling its spike in a kind of blessing of the food it will become. “She thought I was the gardener,” he says. “She just couldn’t see me.”

“I don’t know that I believe anymore,” she says. “What sense is there to an empty tomb, a folded cloth, broken bread and a risen man? Why should it matter? When has it ever — even once — changed my life?”

“Let’s Easter together,” I say. “Let’s see what we hear in the silence and dark of deepest and richest soil. Let’s allow ourselves to remain buried long enough for the light of the sun to warm us into life again. Let’s take our time but reach ever-upward. Let’s gently burst from the deadness of our seeds, sprouting and digging our way back to the surface, a little curl of green barely visible but ever hopeful.

“Then a stem…a few leaves…a flourish of grain, something to be plucked and ground by stone, mixed and patted and baked and served as nourishment for another. Let’s Easter together, grasping a new chance at life when it is offered.”

A Blessing for Prodigals (Like Us)

Steve · March 27, 2022 · 8 Comments

Yesterday, I presented a day-long retreat on the Parable of the Prodigal Son to a group of friends and alumni of the Aquinas Institute of Theology, where I received my training in spiritual direction and now serve as a trustee.

I ended the day with this new prayer of blessing, a reminder of the four important life lessons embedded in the parable that lead to a deeper understanding and experience of God’s extravagant love for us — Stop. Turnaround. Be reconciled. Change.

As you head into these final weeks of lent, remember it’s not too late to do something that may change you forever.

May God bless us in our stopping, in our listening to a gentle inner voice that says: “Enough! This is not the way.” That says: “You know better than this. There is no life in this. Stop doing what you hate and what destroys.”

May God bless us in our turning, in the effort it takes to switch direction when we would rather not, and head in the direction of a home we know we can trust, back to the arms of a forgiving God, a slow and steady movement to an unchanging changer who is also the all-forgiving giver of everything that is good and holy and right.

May God bless us on our journey back to reconciliation and forgiveness, beaten down and tired and hungry and aching as we are, longing for something we know only God can give.

May God bless us as we arise each day and seek to find the holy and the sacred in the ordinary and mundane, as well as in the extraordinary. May we see them all as gift and may we trust God to give us what we need each day as we raise our hands in gratitude for all we have been given and in sorrow for all the ways we have failed to recognize a God who is so clearly evident.

May God bless us and by doing so transform us into God’s own image, full of mercy and healing and service and love. May we be perfectly compassionate as God is perfect in compassion.

A (Very) Short Story of Joseph of Nazareth

Steve · December 18, 2021 · 6 Comments

All in all, Joseph gets pretty short shrift in the Gospel Christmas narratives, and very little is said about him after that. He’s the quiet guy standing in the back by the shepherds and the sheep. We don’t know how long he lived but it seems clear that he did not live to see Jesus begin his ministry. He’s not mentioned after Jesus’ “missing years,” even when Mary is.

But I like to imagine the role he played in raising Jesus to manhood — to teaching him a trade, showing him the right way to build things that last, and modeling for Jesus the best way to be a gentle man in an often-violent world.

So imagine yourself with the opportunity to meet him. Sit on a hill with him overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Feel the breeze coming off the water and listen as he tells you the improbable but true story of how he came to be the father and guardian of the Son of God. He is a bit older now, wise in his ways, and eager to tell the story of how the whole thing started. Listen…

I want to tell you an improbable story. Even now, in my old age, I can scarcely believe all that happened to me back then, but I can never forget it. Even as other memories of my life begin to fade, there is nothing — not even the vagaries of a fading memory — that can steal this incredible story from me. It is, first of all, the story of how the birth of my son, Jesus, came about. But even beyond that miraculous day, it is a story about how I was changed forever in a single moment. I want to tell you that story. Do you have a few minutes?

It all began when I was betrothed to Mary, a beautiful young woman with so much spirit and faith and promise, but before we had lived together or had done so much as hold hands while walking in the olive grove on the hill behind her parents’ home. It was in that very olive grove on a cool spring day that she came to me with what was, at first, devastating and heart-wrenching news: She was expecting a child.

She told me a story that, as much as I loved her and wanted to marry her, was incredulous. She said the child was a miracle, a gift, the fruit — not of an elicit encounter with another man, but through an encounter with God’s holy spirit. How I wished that could be true. But I could not believe her. I was no fool.

But I did not want to shame her, to leave her open to ridicule or worse. I knew there was a way to sever this relationship in an honorable way, a simple decree of divorce. She would find a way to move on, to care for her child and get on with her life. That’s all I wanted for her. I made plans the next day to visit the temple to begin to quietly make the arrangements. I went home.

But that night, I had a dream unlike any dream I had ever had. A dream, but so much more than a dream. In it, an angel — it had to have been an angel — said to me, as clear as day:

“Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

And when I awoke in the morning, I knew something had changed in me in that dreamlike moment I could have never seen coming. Something softened. Something opened up. I remembered the stories of the prophets, the ones I had heard since I was a child. Something in me came alive, and I began to put the pieces together. And these ancient words of holy scripture came to me from somewhere deep inside:

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”

I knew what I needed to do. I ran to Mary’s house and knocked on the door. It was early but she was up, sitting in the corner near the fire, stirring the pot. She didn’t look surprised to see me at all. It was as if she knew I was coming and knew what I was going to say.

I held her face in my hands and she smiled up at me. I knew everything had changed. I knew I would never be the same. I said to her, “Yes. Together we will do this improbable thing. Yes.”

Encounters with Jesus: Three Changed Men

Steve · July 4, 2021 · 2 Comments

Written below (and in the video at bottom…keep scrolling) are three short monologues written from the perspectives of three men whose encounters with Jesus surely changed their lives, or at least I imagine they did, for sometimes scripture tells us a part of the story and leaves the rest to our imaginations.

In Matthew 7:31-37, we find a deaf and mute man whose intimate encounter with Jesus heals him and opens up a new world of sound and communication. In John 2:1-12, we meet the nameless waiter at the wedding feast at Cana who unknowingly plays a role in Jesus’ first recorded miracle. And in Luke 19:1-10, we meet the diminutive Zacchaeus, who climbs a tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus but receives so much more in return for his small act of faith.

As you read, listen and reflect on these stories, ask yourself these questions: What have been my encounters with Jesus? Through which people, circumstances or sacred moments have I experienced even a glimpse of him?

Feel free to leave some comments on my blog of your own experiences.

[Artwork above by Steve Tadrick.]

Three Changed Men

[Three men enter and face the audience, each speaking in turn, as if giving testimony.]

Man 1:

He led me away from the crowd
unable, as I was, to speak or hear
motioned me close
wet fingers suddenly on my face, in my ears, on my tongue.
I pulled back, but he pulled me closer
his glance upward
his groan and that word tumbling out – “Eph-pha-tha!”
and I was suddenly opened
the sounds around me as much music
as the cantor’s voice
I had only imagined.

Man 2:

I failed, forgot the obvious
a waiter at a feast without enough wine
threw up my hands
nowhere to turn at that late hour.
In the corner of my eye I saw
a quiet conversation between mother and son
couldn’t hear but the gestures were clear:
“Help them,” she implored. He nodded, reluctantly.
She approached me, saying: “Do whatever he asks.”
His command simple: “Fill the jars with water.”
I scoffed but did.
“Now draw some out,” he said, almost instantly.
I dipped in and brought the cup to my lips
ready to spit out the lukewarm nothingness of water
but instead received the very finest
saved until the end when it was needed most
the beginning of faith revealed in a sudden unexpected taste.

Man 3:

I am just a wee little man
so even the children pointed and laughed
as I scampered up the sycamore.
I just wanted a glimpse
recognition that I was
hoping for a wave or a nod.
My expectations were quickly exceeded
he saw me
sought me out
invited me down and to table (my own)
even as the crowd sneered.
But I am changed, have no choice but to change
have gained a companion
was lost, now found
unseen, seen.

Chorus (the three, all together):

In the short distance between us.
He whispered: I see you.
All we really wanted
was to be seen.

Man 1: Opened.

Man 2: Astounded.

Man 3: Invited.

All: Changed.