Have mercy

Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Good works

Some desert wisdom...

A brother asked one of the elders: what good thing shall, I do and have life thereby? The old man replied: God alone knows what is good. However, I have heard it said that someone inquired of Father Abbot Nisteros the great, the friend of Abbot Anthony, asking: What good work shall I do? And that he replied: Not all works are alike. For Scripture says that Abraham was hospitable and God was with him. Elias loved solitary prayer, and God was with him. And David was humble, and God was with him. 

Therefore, whatever you see your soul to desire according to God, do that thing, and you shall keep your heart safe.

The downside of Luke 10

I think the downside of Jesus "breaking the Law" by healing on the Sabbath in Luke 13:10-17 is that it gives some justification for our modern / post-modern total disregard for sabbathkeeping.  The upside of this passage is that Jesus is not going to be hemmed in by silly requirements, he's not going to refuse healing for one who suffered for 18 years just to placate some religious professionals who were too caught up in the minutia of religious requirements.

However, don't think that Jesus didn't believe in Sabbath!  He certainly did, and certainly believed that rest and turning toward God was essential for living the abundant life.  Going to pray, taking time away, getting out to the desert were all essential and core experiences for Jesus.  These were not mere "breaks" from lots of teaching and healing and proclaiming, nope.  These were the core, the heart, the guts, the skeleton of his very life and ministry.  Are they are the core of ours?  Were they are the core of the religious nitwits of his time?  Probably not.

So, yes!  Get busy healing, and if you need to heal and do ministry in violation of some silly nitwits, do it.  However, at the core of our life should not be earthly treasures (remember the readings just recently), but rather, our core should be in turning to God, and in prayer, rest, Sabbath, and penitance.  From there, and there alone can our ministry emerge full and abundant.

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Luke 13:10-17

¹⁰Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. ¹¹And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. ¹⁴But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” ¹⁵But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? ¹⁶And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” ¹⁷When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Dry times on the journey

The Old Testament reading from Sunday was Deuteronomy 34: 1-12 in which Moses and his band of 'not so merry' men and women and children finally (nearly) complete their journey across the desert. They have crossed the plains of Moab and Moses climbs up Mount Nebo, "and the Lord showed him the whole land." The Lord shows Moses the Promised land that had been dreamed of for those forty days in the wilderness. "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying 'I will give it to your descendents'; I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross over there." You may remember that Moses had disobeyed the Lord earlier in the journey, and so the consequence was that Moses would not make it to the Promised Land.

Moses was an incredible leader, and the stories about him, from the babe in the basket, to the burning bush to the plagues on Egypt, to the crossing of the Red (reed) Sea, to the many years in the desert, Moses is worthy of study, reflection, and prayer.

What is most interesting to me about Moses on this day, is his time in the wilderness, in those dry patches of the journey when most of the people around him were really having a tough time. Walking through the desert, leading the people using whatever charisma and enthusiasm that he could muster. In our own time today, a time of financial loss and uncertainty about the future, a time of political attacks and meanness, a time of rapid change, a time that is swirling with the pace of change and growth, a time when the chasm between wealth and poor is growing ever bigger - this is a time to take time to recognize that we may be entering a kind of desert place. We may, indeed, be entering a dry time on the journey. Our assumptions about many things are being called into question, and we may, like the wandering Israelites, need to bind ourselves one to another, and bind ourselves to God.

This is not a sentimental nor a simplistic notion, rather, the story of our ancestors can be instructive as we enter dry times - and there are stories, and spiritualities, and theologies that emerge from others' dry times which can aid us in even this dry time.

Turning to the desert fathers and mothers and their writings is one place to begin. Another, is to consider deeply the greatest commandment - and its implications:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22: 34-46)

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey