Brian McLaren invites us to an imaginative experience of the painful reality of scapegoating that occurred on Good Friday: 

Let’s imagine ourselves with the disciples just before three o’clock on this Friday afternoon. A few of us have come together to talk about what has happened over the last twenty-four hours….  

Why was there no other way? Why did this good man—the best we have ever known, the best we have ever imagined—have to face torture and execution as if he were some evil monster?  

As the hours drag on from noon to nearly three o’clock, we imagine many reasons…. 

Jesus has told us again and again that God is different from our assumptions. We’ve assumed that God was righteous and pure in a way that makes God hate the unrighteous and impure. But Jesus has told us that God is pure love, so overflowing in goodness that God pours out compassion on the pure and impure alike. He not only has told us of God’s unbounded compassion—he has embodied it every day as we have walked this road with him. In the way he has sat at table with everyone, in the way he has never been afraid to be called a “friend of sinners,” in the way he has touched untouchables and refused to condemn even the most notorious of sinners, he has embodied for us a very different vision of what God is like….  

If Jesus is showing us something so radical about God, what is he telling us about ourselves—about human beings and our social and religious institutions? What does it mean when our political leaders and our religious leaders come together to mock and torture and kill God’s messenger?… Is this the only way religions and governments maintain order—by threatening us with pain, shame, and death if we don’t comply? And is this how they unify us—by turning us into a mob that comes together in its shared hatred of the latest failure, loser, rebel, criminal, outcast … or prophet?… What kind of world have we made? What kind of people have we become?… 

In the middle of the afternoon … even from this distance, we can hear Jesus, “Father, forgive them!” he shouts. “For they don’t know what they are doing.” 

Forgive them? Forgive us?   

Our thoughts bring us again to the garden last night, when Jesus asked if there could be any other way. And now it seems clear. There could be no other way to show us what God is truly like. God is not revealed in killing and conquest … in violence and hate. God is revealed in this crucified man—giving of himself to the very last breath, giving and forgiving.  

And there could be no other way to show us what we are truly like. We do not know what we are doing, indeed.  

If God is like this, and if we are like this … everything must change.  

____________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Stop trying to work things out before their times have come. Accept the limitations of living one day at a time. When something comes to your attention, ask Me whether or not it is part of today’s agenda. If it isn’t, release it into My care and go on about today’s duties. When you follow this practice, there will be a beautiful simplicity about your life: a time for everything, and everything in its time.
    A life lived close to Me is not complicated or cluttered. When your focus is on My Presence, many things that once troubled you lose their power over you. Though the world around you is messy and confusing, remember that I have overcome the world and in Me you may have Peace.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT)
A Time for Everything
3 For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.

John 16:33 (NLT)
33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

Help us to trust in Your timing and embrace the simplicity of living one day at a time. Grant us the wisdom to discern what truly matters today and release the rest of our worries and concerns into Your care.

As we draw near to You, may our lives find clarity and peace amidst the world’s chaos. Let us focus on Your presence, knowing that You have overcome the world and given us peace that surpasses all human understanding.

Guide us, Lord, to align our hearts with Your perfect timing and to find contentment in Your plan for each moment. Your way is better than any way we could imagine for ourselves. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Richard Rohr names how fear diminishes our ability to love and forgive:  

Jesus came to resolve the central and essential problem of hate. We’ve produced so much utopian talk about Jesus and love, we’ve forgotten Jesus had a very hard time getting to the issue of love. First, he had to expose and destroy the phenomenon of hatred. Once he exposed the lie and illusion of hate, love could show itself clearly—and it did.  

The pattern, unfortunately, remains the same. Hate, it seems, is the ordinary, daily agenda. Love is the way out of this ordinary programming. The Gospels present the dilemma in a personal narrative that grounds the whole issue in history and in one man’s enlightened response to the human situation. Jesus accepts the religious and social judgment of hate and publicly bears the consequences, but in an utterly new and transforming way that reveals new patterns and possibilities. For two thousand years, he has remained the most striking icon of a possible new agenda. His death exposed the lie and the problem. His risen life tells people their lives could have a different story line. He didn’t just give us textbook answers from a distance; he personally walked through the process and said, “Follow me.”     

I believe fear is almost always behind hate. Sometimes it looks like control, but even then, people are usually just afraid of losing something they think they have. It is almost always unrecognized or unaddressed fear that justifies hatred. The best and most convincing disguise for fear is seeming virtue, or godliness. Then it never looks like fear. It looks like reason, prudence, common sense, intelligence, the need for social order, morality, religion, obedience, justice, or even spirituality. It always works. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14, NRSV). What better way to veil vengeance than to call it justice?  

Only people who have moved beyond their wounded ego and the need to control all outcomes, only those practiced at letting go, can see fear for the impostor that it is. To be trapped inside of our small ego is always to be afraid. Great religion tries its best to free individuals from the tyranny of their small and fragile selves. It always points toward a larger identity that we call the Godself, the True Self, the self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), the trustworthy Lover. Healthy and true religion, like Jesus himself modeled, tells us there is Someone we can trust. [1] 

Jesus came to reveal and resolve the central and essential problem—humanity’s tendency toward fear and hate. Love is the totally enlightened, entirely nonsensical way out of this pattern. Love has to be worked toward, received, and enjoyed; the first move is to recognize our deep capacity for fear and hate. But remember, we gather around the negative space quickly, while we “fall into” love rather slowly, and only with lots of practice at falling. [2] 

________________________________________________________________

Sarah Young

 I AM a God who gives and gives and gives. When I died for you on the cross, I held back nothing. I poured My Life like a drink offering. Because giving is inherent in My nature, I search for people who are able to receive in full measure. To increase your intimacy with Me, the two traits you need the most are receptivity and attentiveness. Receptivity is opening up your innermost being to be filled with My abundant riches. Attentiveness is directing your gaze to Me: searching for Me in all your moments. It is possible to stay your mind on Me, as the prophet Isaiah wrote. Through such attentiveness you receive a glorious gift: My perfect Peace.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Philippians 2:17 (NLT)
17 But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy.

Mark 10:15 (NLT)
15 I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”

Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)
3 You will keep in perfect peace
    all who trust in you,
    all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

Today’s Prayer:

Dear God,

You are the ever-giving God, pouring out Your life for us without reservation. In a world full of distractions, help us be receptive to Your abundant blessings and attentive to Your presence in every moment.

Grant us the grace to receive Your gifts with open hearts and to fix our gaze upon You, finding perfect peace in Your presence. The kind of peace that surpasses all of our understanding. 

May our lives be offerings of joy to You, given with childlike trust in Your love and care.

In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

The Cross of Racism

Theologian James Cone (1938–2018) draws a parallel between Jesus’ crucifixion and the lynching of Black Americans:  

Theologically speaking, Jesus was the “first lynchee,” who foreshadowed all the lynched black bodies on American soil. He was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America. Because God was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word about his meaning, God was also present at every lynching in the United States. God saw what whites did to innocent and helpless blacks and claimed their suffering as God’s own. God transformed lynched black bodies into the recrucified body of Christ. Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America. When American Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross.  

God must therefore know in a special way what poor blacks are suffering in America because God’s son was lynched in Jerusalem.… The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. [1]  

Jennifer Garcia Bashaw charts a path forward for Christians to stop racial scapegoating: 

The final step we must take to abolish the scapegoating of Black Americans is to raise up the voices of the victims, to hear their experiences and learn from their resiliency. We need to listen to Black historians and Bible scholars, Black theologians and ethicists, Black social advocates and pastors, Black artists and poets. They will be the lights that lead the church from ignorance to understanding; they will show us how to live into the inclusive and liberating kingdom of God rather than the empire of domination and power…. We have a long way to go before our community resembles the beloved community of Christ. Those of us who have participated in, allowed, or ignored racism must walk the painful road of confession and atonement before we can mend the rift in the body of Christ that we caused….  

God’s power does not enslave, or lynch, or choke, or disenfranchise. It preserves life, lifting up the needs and voices of the oppressed and giving them dignity. This is what Jesus did in his life and death and what God’s spirit does in the resurrection and through the message of the Gospels. We who are followers of Jesus must stop our scapegoating and the racism that powers it if we are to walk on that resurrection road behind him. [2]  

============

Father Richard explains the Hebrew scapegoat ritual and how the pattern continues to play out in secular contexts today: 

In Leviticus 16 we see the brilliant ritualization of what we now call scapegoating, and we should indeed feel sorry for the demonized goat. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Israelites from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was taken out into the wilderness and left there. And the people went home rejoicing, just as European Christians did after burning a supposed heretic at the stake or white Americans did after the lynching of Black men. Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe—for a while at least. Usually, the illusion only deepens and becomes catatonic, conditioned, and repetitive—because of course, scapegoating did not really work to eliminate the evil in the first place. [1]  

As a Christian, I do believe that Jesus’ death was a historical breakthrough. It is no accident that Christians date history around his life. Afterward, we could never see things in the same way. The seeds of the gospel were forever planted into human history, but some followers of other religions seem to have “watered the seeds” more than many Christians. It seems to me the Christian West was so destabilized by the gospel that it had to go into “overdrive” to hide its shadow and cover its fear and its need to hate others. All this despite the teachings of its designated God! The central message of Jesus on love of enemies, forgiveness, and care for those at the bottom was supposed to make scapegoating virtually impossible and unthinkable.  

Many Christians, with utter irony, worshipped Jesus the Scapegoat on Sundays and, on the other six days of the week, made scapegoats of Jews, Muslims, other Christian denominations, heretics, sinners, pagans, the poor, and almost anybody who was not like themselves. One would have thought that Christians who “gazed upon the one they had pierced” (John 19:37) would have gotten the message about how wrong domination, power, and hatred can be. The system has been utterly wrong about their own chosen God figure, yet they continue to trust the system.  

Scapegoating depends upon a rather sophisticated, but easily learned, ability to compartmentalize, to separate, to divide the world into the pure and the impure. Anthropologically, all religion begins with the creation of the “impure.” Very soon an entire moral system emerges, with taboos, punishments, fears, guilts, and even a priesthood to enforce it. It gives us a sense of order, control, and superiority, which is exactly what the ego wants and the small self demands.  

The religious genius of Jesus is that he utterly refuses all debt codes, purity codes, and the searching for sinners. He refuses to divide the world into the pure and the impure, much to the chagrin of almost everybody—then and now. [2] 

======================

When Jesus was born, angels sang his praises and kings fell on their knees with royal gifts. He was the object of sincerest worship. Near the end of his life, a similar scene unfolded. Men again fell on their knees before Jesus and gave him royal gifts. Their voices praised him and they called him “King.” This time, however, their worship was utterly insincere. The Roman soldiers who celebrated strength and power spit in Jesus’ face and ridiculed this weak, pathetic excuse for a king. He was a buffoon compared to Caesar who lived in a palace, commanded armies, conquered cities, and inspired the worship of millions. Jesus was the antithesis of all that their world valued, so they used him as an oddity for their amusement. They dressed him as a king and pretended to be his subjects, but he was merely a clown in their circus of cruelty.  Like the Roman soldiers, we are eager to worship the powerful, the beautiful, and the triumphant. That is why we prefer to imagine Jesus in the guise of earthly kings or his post-resurrection glory. Popular images of Jesus in our culture depict him as healthy and strong; an attractive man with a chiseled chin and brawny arms. Sometimes he’s even flanked by the symbols of imperial power—flags, eagles, guns, and fighter jets. This mighty American Jesus is also a clown; a mockery of the true Christ. But while the Roman soldiers who adorned him with imperial symbols intended to insult Jesus, ironically many who drape him in the flag today do not. A powerful Jesus who shares our political and cultural enemies is easy to worship, but the gospels challenge us with a different question. Are we willing to worship a weak, humiliated, and broken Jesus? Are we willing to pledge our allegiance to the Jesus covered in spit and blood, wearing a crown of thorns, robed in contempt, and despised by the world? We cannot embrace the Jesus of majesty and reject the Jesus of mockery. They are the same.The Apostle John learned this when he was given a vision of heaven. One of the elders announced with majestic language the arrival of Jesus, “Behold, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, who has conquered.” But when John turned to look at this almighty, triumphant King he saw a Jesus of utter weakness: “I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.”  DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 27:27–31  REVELATION 5:5–6 WEEKLY PRAYERKarl Barth (1886–1968) O Lord God, our Father. You are the light that can never be put out; and now you give us a light that shall drive away all darkness. You are love without coldness, and you have given us such warmth in our hearts that we can love all when we meet. You are the life that defies death, and you have opened for us the way that leads to eternal life. None of us is a great Christian; we are all humble and ordinary. But your grace is enough for us. Arouse in us that small degree of joy and thankfulness of which we are capable, to the timid faith which we can muster, to the cautious obedience which we cannot refuse, and thus to the wholeness of life which you have prepared for all of us through the death and resurrection of your Son. Do not allow any of us to remain apathetic or indifferent to the wondrous glory of Easter, but let the light of our risen Lord reach every corner of our dull hearts. Amen.

As Holy Week begins, Richard Rohr reflects on how quickly we tend to transmit our pain to others:  

Human nature, when seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. 

When we read today’s news, we realize the pattern hasn’t changed much in all of history. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together for some reason. Scapegoating, or the creating of victims, is in our hard wiring. Philosopher René Girard called “the scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1] 

The sequence, without being too clever, goes something like this: we compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn, and we crucify. If we don’t recognize some variation of this pattern within ourselves and put an end to it early on, it’s almost inevitable. That’s why spiritual teachers of any depth will always teach simplicity of lifestyle and freedom from the competitive power game, which is where it all begins. It is probably the only way out of the cycle of violence. 

It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been “sacralized violence”—violence that we treated as sacred, but which was, in fact, not. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. They imagine they are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, their children, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground or being responsible and prudent as a result. It never occurs to most people that they are becoming what they fear and hate. [2]  

Therapist Matthias Roberts describes how Jesus defied the scapegoating pattern:  

Jesus walked willingly into a human world defined—as it still is today—by violence and dependence on scapegoats…. He was murdered not because God wanted or needed his sacrificial death but because as humans, when the stakes are high, we determine who is in and who is out through violence and death.  

But Jesus … broke the system because what was supposed to happen didn’t.  

The scapegoat didn’t stay dead. And the victors, in this case, didn’t get to write the only version of the story.  

The scapegoat came back to life and told a different story, a truer story, a story about life and love. And through his story, Jesus revealed our ideas about God had been wrong all along.  

God and Jesus are nothing like the violent and vengeful world we live in. [3] 

A Gospel According to Scapegoats

Theologian Jennifer Garcia Bashaw describes how the Gospels are liberating for the excluded and scapegoated:  

From the inception of the Gospel narratives, we can see that they were not just stories written about a scapegoat—they were stories written by scapegoats…. When the [New Testament] authors told the stories of Jesus’s life or of the early church, they wrote and interpreted from this fringe position. The Gospel writers also focused on the stories of the marginalized…. These were the people Jesus taught, healed, and befriended in his life—the societal victims and outcast people who lived not only on the periphery of the empire but on the periphery of their own culture. The gospel story, then, is a story about a victim, written by victims, and featuring victims. It is good news for victims; it is a scapegoat’s gospel. [1]  

Jesus’ death on the cross reveals the violence of scapegoating.  

Jesus willingly becomes a scapegoat to draw attention to the scapegoaters; he submits to death on a cross to draw attention away from the scapegoats.… In his life, Jesus championed women, befriended and healed the poor and the disabled, and welcomed in the outsiders. In his death, Jesus becomes the woman, the infirmed, and the outsider. The Jesus who saved women from society’s shaming was himself publicly shamed, stripped naked, and despised. The Jesus who healed sick and disabled bodies became disabled himself, flesh pierced and torn, weakened and held captive by nails and his failing body.… If Jesus’s life reversed the fate of victims he had met, then his death reverses the fate of future victims. He becomes the scapegoat to end all scapegoats—and exposes the truth that could end human blame and violence once and for all.  

As they tell the Jesus story, the Gospel writers ensure that followers of Jesus see his scapegoat death for what it is…. They show us the innocence of Jesus so that we might recognize the innocence of all scapegoat victims before it is too late…. After Jesus became a victim on the cross, exposing the scapegoat mechanism and its fatal effects, the story is carried forward by the scapegoats of Jesus’s society. It is the women disciples who discover the tomb (Mark 16:1–8; Matthew 28:1–10; Luke 24:1–11; John 20:1–18) and become the first witnesses to the resurrection and the first evangelists to carry the news to other Jesus-followers. [2] 

 Jesus’ death compels us to join in solidarity with the scapegoated. Bashaw continues:  

Without a clear comprehension of Jesus’s pattern of life and death, those of us who follow Jesus can unknowingly become the ones who scapegoat rather than the ones who follow the scapegoat. When we enter the story of Jesus with an eye on society’s victims, however, we can grasp more fully the life, ministry, and death of the scapegoat that was supposed to end all scapegoats—Jesus. Maybe then we can stop creating scapegoats and work on their behalf instead. [3] 

Note: For Holy Week, we are taking a short break from the “Lessons from Naaman” series to reflect on the events leading up to Jesus’ death. We will return to the Naaman series on April 1. The great power and authority that Jesus had revealed day after day was not on display after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Miraculously healing the severed ear of the guard in the garden was the final miracle Jesus would perform. The mighty prophet from Nazareth who had healed the blind and raised the dead appeared powerless by the time of his trial in the courtyard of the high priest. With a word he had silenced the sea, but he did nothing to silence the false witnesses and evil accusers that night. Frustrated by his lack of cooperation, the high priest finally came to the heart of the matter: “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God, or not?” he demanded. “I am,” Jesus said. His words were chosen deliberately to invoke the proper Hebrew name of God. “And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” He was quoting a familiar image of the Messiah from the prophetic words of the Old Testament, but the vision of power and authority stood in sharp contrast to the man in chains before them. His claim sounded as ridiculous as it was blasphemous. Here was a mouse claiming to be a lion.It was too much for them to take. This passive, uncooperative carpenter could not be the mighty Messiah, the Savior of Israel, and God himself in human form. The priests tore their robes at Jesus’ blasphemy and unanimously condemned him to death. They slapped him, spit on his face, and mocked him. To these men, Jesus was worse than a liar and more embarrassing than a blasphemer. He was a joke.Amazingly, these men were the most educated scholars in Israel. They had memorized the Scriptures from childhood and had parsed their meaning all of their lives—and yet they could not recognize the God of Scripture when he stood before them clearly declaring his identity. It is easy to stand in judgment of these elders and priests, just as they stood in judgment of Jesus. But we dare not because their blindness could easily be our own. Instead, humility should lead us to learn from their example so we do not repeat their mistake. They possessed the scriptures, acquired knowledge, studied their theological traditions, and occupied important religious offices. But these things did not give them the ability to see the truth or to discern the presence of God. Likewise, we must be careful that our knowledge, traditions, and ministries do not cause us to miss the true presence of God. While we search for him in the powerful, the spectacular, and the impressive, the Lord may pass us by in the faces of those we deem worthless. DAILY SCRIPTURE MARK 14:60–65  JOHN 5:39–40 WEEKLY PRAYER. Karl Barth (1886–1968) O Lord God, our Father. You are the light that can never be put out; and now you give us a light that shall drive away all darkness. You are love without coldness, and you have given us such warmth in our hearts that we can love all when we meet. You are the life that defies death, and you have opened for us the way that leads to eternal life. None of us is a great Christian; we are all humble and ordinary. But your grace is enough for us. Arouse in us that small degree of joy and thankfulness of which we are capable, to the timid faith which we can muster, to the cautious obedience which we cannot refuse, and thus to the wholeness of life which you have prepared for all of us through the death and resurrection of your Son. Do not allow any of us to remain apathetic or indifferent to the wondrous glory of Easter, but let the light of our risen Lord reach every corner of our dull hearts. Amen.

Father Richard writes about encountering the Risen Christ in our ordinariness and woundedness.

I’ve noticed in the Gospels that even after two appearances of the Risen Christ, the apostles return to their old job of fishing (John 21:3). They don’t join the priesthood, try to get a job at the Temple, go on more retreats, take vows, leave their wives, or get special titles. Nor is there any mention of them baptizing each other or wearing special clothing beyond that of a wayfarer or “workman” (Matthew 10:9–10). When the inner is utterly transformed, we don’t need symbolic outer validations, special hats, or flashy insignia. 

We can also note that the Risen Christ is never apparent as a supernatural figure, but is mistaken in one case for a gardener, another time for a fellow traveler on the road, and then for a fisherman offering advice. He seems to look just like everybody else after the Resurrection (John 20:15; Luke 24:13–35; John 21:4–6), even with his wounds on full display! In the Gospels it appears we can all go back to “fishing” after any authentic God encounter, consciously carrying our humiliating wounds, only now more humbly. That is our only badge of honor. In fact, it is exactly our woundedness that gives us any interest in healing itself, and the very power to heal others. As Henri Nouwen rightly said, the only authentic healers are always wounded healers. Good therapists will often say the same.  

True mysticism just allows us to “fish” from a different side of the boat and with different expectations of what success might mean. All the while, we are totally assured that we are already and always floating on a big, deep, life-filled pond. The mystical heart knows there is a fellow Fisherman nearby who is always available for good advice. He stands and beckons from the shores, at the edges of every ordinary life, every unreligious moment, every “secular” occupation, and he is still talking to working people who, like the first disciples, are not important, influential, especially “holy,” trained in theology, or even educated. This is the mystical doorway, which is not narrow but wide and welcoming. [1]

Matthew Fox affirms mystical experience as a gift:

Deep down, each one of us is a mystic. When we tap into that energy we become alive again and we give birth. From the creativity that we release is born the prophetic vision and work that we all aspire to realize as our gift to the world. We want to serve in whatever capacity we can. Getting in touch with the mystic inside is the beginning of our deep service…. 

Mysticism is about the awe and the gratitude, the letting go and the letting be, the birthing and the creativity, and the compassion—including healing and celebration and justice making—that our world so sorely needs…. Every mystic is a healer. We are healers all. [2]

_______________________________________________

Sarah Young

 Rest in My Presence, allowing Me to take charge of this day. Do not bolt into the day like a racehorse suddenly released. Instead, walk purposefully with Me, letting Me direct your course one step at a time. Thank Me for each blessing along the way; this brings Joy to both you and Me. A grateful heart protects you from negative thinking. Thankfulness enables you to see the abundance I shower upon you daily. Your prayers and petitions are winged into heaven’s throne room when they are permeated with thanksgiving. In everything give thanks, for this is My will for you. 

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 

Colossians 4:2 NLT

An Encouragement for Prayer

2 Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.

1st Thessalonians 5:18 NLT

18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” —Genesis 28:16

Author Barbara Brown Taylor considers how God shows up in all things:

The Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God…. People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay.

Taylor admits how easy it is to miss these ever-available encounters with God:

According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.”

How does one learn to see and hear such angels?

If there is a switch to flip, I have never found it. As with Jacob, most of my visions of the divine have happened while I was busy doing something else. I did nothing to make them happen…. I play no apparent part in their genesis. My only part is to decide how I will respond, since there is plenty I can do to make them go away, namely: 1) I can figure that I have had too much caffeine again; 2) I can remind myself that visions are not true in the same way that taxes and the evening news are true; or 3) I can return my attention to everything I need to get done today. These are only a few of the things I can do to talk myself out of living in the House of God.

Or I can set a little altar, in the world or in my heart. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome the place is. I can flag one more gate to heaven—one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it—where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not. I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it, maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to wherever I am due next.

Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two. Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.

________________________________________________________

Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: March 21

    Trust Me and don’t be afraid, for I am your Strength and Song. Think what it means to have Me as your Strength. I spoke the universe into existence; My power is absolutely unlimited! Human weakness, consecrated to Me, is like a magnet, drawing My Power into your neediness. However, fear can block the flow of My Strength into you. Instead of trying to fight your fears, concentrate on trusting Me. When you relate to Me in confident trust, there is no limit to how much I can strengthen you.
    Remember that I am also your Song. I want you to share My Joy, living in conscious awareness of My Presence. Rejoice as we journey together toward heaven; join Me in singing My Song.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Isaiah 12:2-3 (NLT)
2 See, God has come to save me.
    I will trust in him and not be afraid.
The Lord God is my strength and my song;
    he has given me victory.”
3 With joy you will drink deeply
    from the fountain of salvation!
Psalm 21:6 (NLT)
6 You have endowed him with eternal blessings
    and given him the joy of your presence.

Theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) believed that cultivating inner stillness allows us to experience the divine. Lerita Coleman Brown writes:

As a seminary student walking home late one night, Thurman noticed the sound of water. He had taken this route many times, and he had never heard even a drip. The next day Thurman discussed his observations with one of his professors, who told him that a canal ran underneath the street. Because the noises of streetcars, automobiles, and passersby were absent late at night, Howard could discern the sound of water.

Thurman equates these sounds… to the inner chatter within our minds that prevents us from being aware of God’s presence. Quieting the surface noise in our minds is what Thurman urges us to do when he instructs us, as he does throughout his writings, to “center down.”

What attracts and holds our attention determines how and when we will experience God. “In the total religious experience we learn how to wait; we learn how to ready the mind and the spirit,” he writes. “It is in the waiting, brooding, lingering, tarrying timeless moments that the essence of the religious experience becomes most fruitful. It is here that I learn to listen, to swing wide the very doors of my being, to clean out the corners and the crevices of my life—so that when His Presence invades, I am free to enjoy His coming to Himself in me.” [1] Thurman believed this activity may also require letting go of hatred and bitterness so that in coming into your center, you are coming into God as the Creator of existence because “God bottoms existence.”

Brown finds in Thurman’s writings an invitation to be open to the possibility of everyday mysticism for all. 

Thurman demystified mysticism by framing it simply. Mystics are people who have a personal religious experience or an encounter with God. This description has freed me and many others from thinking that God appears to people only after years of prayer and living an ascetic, isolated life. Thurman believed anyone can be a mystic if they are open to the experience. He opened a door to a world where mystics move freely among us and live ordinary lives. Mystics are the ones who can hear the water flowing beneath the street. They know how to quiet the surface noise enough to hear the meaning of all things coursing below daily life.

Everyday mystics are people who commune with the presence of God, receive guidance through prophetic visions, voices, and dreams, and commit themselves to living for God rather than solely for themselves. Their vision for life is larger and more expansive, knowing that they are alive for a reason, a purpose that will benefit human spirits they may never meet…. Thurman lived out an identity grounded in mysticism, as he regularly felt oneness with God and on occasion experienced visions. He also believed that mystical moments should stir people toward love, community, and social action.

=================

One by one, all of Naaman’s pagan assumptions about Israel’s God were dismantled. By refusing to even meet Naaman, Elisha was showing that Israel’s God did not depend upon human mediators or experts. By not giving Naaman any elaborate healing ritual to perform, Elisha was revealing that Israel’s God could not be controlled by magic or incantations. And by rejecting any gift or payment for his healing, Elisha was telling Naaman that Israel’s God was self-sufficient. He needed nothing from the hands of mere mortals.The independence of Israel’s God stood in sharp contrast with the deities of Naaman’s country. Despite their ferocious reputations, pagan gods were dependent upon their human subjects for food (offered through sacrifices), and shelter (provided through building temples), and their blessings could only be cajoled from their hands (usually through the sorcery of priests). The entire premise of pagan worship was that gods could be manipulated because they had needs. But how do you control a God that has no needs?That was Naaman’s shocking discovery in Israel. What kind of God needs no sacrifices, no temples, no priests, and no offerings? What kind of God cannot be managed with rituals and spells? At some point, an even more marvelous thought must have entered Naaman’s mind. This God of Israel who needs nothing and cannot be controlled chose to heal his leprosy anyway. What kind of God freely loves and blesses a foreigner; the enemy of his people? A casual reading of the story may lead us to conclude that Naaman’s amazement and eventual devotion to Israel’s God was the result of his cleansing from leprosy. We may assume it was God’s miraculous power to heal that transformed Naaman’s life. But it wasn’t. Other gods were known to heal, and lesser deities could manifest miracles—as we see in the story of Moses and the Egyptian sorcerers (see Exodus 7:8-13). The real turning point for Naaman was not his healing, as amazing as that was. Rather, it was Elisha’s refusal to accept Naaman’s gifts. That is when the great man from Syria was confronted with the shocking fact that Israel’s God had healed him expecting nothing in return. What transformed Naaman was not God’s power, but God’s goodness. In a word, it was grace. DAILY SCRIPTURE ROMANS 5:6-8  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYER Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence and my will—all that i have and possess. You, Lord, have given those things to me. I now give them back to you, Lord. All belongs to you. Dispose of these gifts according to your will. I ask only for your love and your grace, for they are enough for me. Amen.

Dr. Barbara Holmes continues to share her experiences with everyday mysticism.

What was it like growing up as an ordinary mystic? Dreams and visions were shared, discussed, and interpreted. Ancestors and elders communicated with us from the life after life. They issued warnings, blessings, and updates. It took a while for me to realize that what I considered normal was considered weird by everybody else.

Despite this history and my acquaintance with biblical mystery, I tried to subdue the mysticism in me as I entered the academic world. I remember creating the longest, most boring PowerPoint ever on the subject of mysticism when I first started teaching. I used words like “noetic” and “ineffable.” Of course, my students went into an academic stupor, and I wondered why they didn’t get it. Instead, I should have wondered why I was hiding in plain sight. The students already knew that something was different about my process and background, and they sought me out to tell me their stories.…

I know about everyday mystics because they were in my house, in my family, at the corner store, and hugging me at church.… They mediated the realms of life and the life after life. They were amazing, and they were a little bit scary, too.

The everyday mystics I grew up with had knapsacks full of spiritual gifts. They could conjure in the kitchen, offer blessed assurance, and braid hair. An aunt or a grandma could shake the dirt from a bunch of beets and transform it into a dish that took you to heaven, even when you don’t like beets. The elders knew how to cure you of your ailments…. The mystics I knew could get a prayer through. They could birth babies and they could bring you messages from the other side.

Holmes looks for the Divine Presence in all of life. 

I hear mystery in drumming, in singing bowls, rattles, and in basic hymns, but that’s not the only place mysticism is found. Sacred texts of all faiths contain stories of wondrous happenings. In the Christian tradition we’ve got virgin births, burning bushes not consumed, waters parting, healing, and prophetic leadership. Yet some Christians are nervous as to whether miracles are tied to faith! Miracles and mysteries can be extraordinary. They can be experienced by the entire community or as a vision or a dream for an individual. Today, we are not looking for colossal mysteries like the parting of the seas. We just want to tap into, or at least recognize, everyday mysticism. Our ancestors hosted this type of mysticism for ages, and we didn’t lose our connection to those many sources of wisdom until more recent generations when we decided that scientific verification and proof would be the only criteria by which we decide between reality and delusion. But we can make better decisions now. We can acknowledge the continued value of science as we explore our worlds and while we continue our dance with the mysteries of life.

After being miraculously healed of his leprosy, Naaman offers Elisha a lavish gift of gold, silver, and expensive clothing which the prophet utterly rejects despite Naaman’s urging. When we read these verses with our modern, Western eyes, we assume Naaman was offering a generous gift out of gratitude, and that Elisha was refusing it out of humble piety. It all appears very polite and gentlemanly. Read these verses through ancient Near Eastern eyes, however, and a different story emerges.Once again, it’s important to understand how idolatry and pagan religion worked in the ancient world. Only then can we see what religious assumptions Naaman practiced in Syria and carried with him as he sought healing from the God of Israel. Having been deeply shaped by Christian religious values for 2,000 years, even non-Christians in our culture think of religion in terms of devotion to God and expressive worship. Simply put, for many modern people religion is deeply emotional. That was not the case for pre-Christian, non-Israelite pagan cultures. Bible scholar Nijay Gupta describes ancient pagan religion this way: “Religion was not about love or friendship with the gods; it was about maintaining a healthy circle of reciprocity… The gods didn’t want devotion…They wanted compliance and homage rendered in ways that were orderly and ritualized, practical and predictable.”Gupta also compares pagan religion to the mafia. Just as a mob boss expected the neighborhood to pay him both money and respect in exchange for his protection, pagan deities were appeased in a similar fashion. No one liked the gods, and they certainly did not love them. The gods were to be feared and respected, and if you honored them correctly hopefully they’d keep their side of the agreement. Consider a vending machine. Receiving your Doritos has nothing to do with your feelings toward the machine. All that matters is inserting enough money and pushing the right buttons in the correct order. It’s mechanical, not emotional. Likewise, paganism was fundamentally transactional rather than devotional. Contrast this with Israel’s God who describes himself as “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:7), and whose greatest commandment to his people was to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). For the God of Israel, worship was not about appeasement, mechanics, or payment. It was about the heart. The very different values that animated pagan and Israelite worship help us see the subtext of Naaman’s interaction with Elisha.Naaman’s extravagant offering of gold, silver, and clothing was intended as a payment to Israel’s God for his healing. As God’s representative, Naaman assumed Elisha would accept it as the proper and necessary reciprocity. Therefore, it was not genuinely a free gift offered by a heart overflowing with gratitude, but a payment understood to be obligatory for God’s blessing. I’m not saying Naaman was not thankful for his healing, only that his offering was not given for that reason. Just like we are thankful when a doctor heals our chronic back pain, but gratitude is not why we pay the bill. That part is simply expected.And this explains Elisha’s refusal to accept Naaman’s gift. If he had taken the money, Naaman would have returned to Syria assuming Israel’s God was just like all the others—more powerful perhaps, but essentially the same; a divine vending machine or a malcontent mob boss demanding cash and respect. By rejecting any payment, Elisha forced Naaman into a religious crisis. He was provoking a revolution in Naaman’s thinking as he grappled with what it meant to encounter a God who operated like no other; a God who graciously healed foreigners without expecting or demanding anything in return. DAILY SCRIPTURE ACTS 8:14-23  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYER Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence and my will—all that i have and possess. You, Lord, have given those things to me. I now give them back to you, Lord. All belongs to you. Dispose of these gifts according to your will. I ask only for your love and your grace, for they are enough for me. Amen.

Richard Rohr identifies mysticism as a way of knowing accessible to all: 

While most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I’m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word “mysticism” simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, in contrast to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.  

Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.  

Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit! Contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole” (see Matthew 8:13; Mark 5:34; Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” and often did not belong to the “correct” group! They were people who affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it! 

Pentecostals and charismatics are significant modern-era exceptions to this avoidance of experience; I believe their “baptism in the Spirit” is a true and valid example of initial mystical encounter. 

Richard praises the Franciscan approach to mysticism:  

In my experience, Franciscan mysticism is a trustworthy and simple path precisely because it refuses to be “mystified” by, or beholden to, doctrinal abstractions, moralism, or false asceticism (although some Franciscans have gone this route). The Franciscan way is truly a sidewalk spirituality for the streets of the world, a path highly possible and attractive for all would-be seekers. It doesn’t insist every person must be celibate, isolated from others, highly educated, or in any way superior to our neighbors. In fact, those kinds of paths might well get in the way of the experience itself. A celibate monk or nun may have a totally dualistic mind and live a tortured inner life—and thus torture others too. Everyday workers and caregivers with mystical hearts and minds can enlighten other individuals, their families, and all they touch, without talking “religiously” at all.  

A Life Steeped in Mystery

CAC teacher Barbara Holmes shares her experience with everyday mysticism. 

Every person has had some mystical experience. Maybe the seas have not parted, and maybe they haven’t walked on water, but there have nevertheless been amazing miracles in our lives. We just haven’t shared them in community, so we don’t feel comfortable sharing them as individuals. I will tell you the basis of my personal mysticism so that you will consider yours…. 

I’m an ordinary, everyday mystic. I’m not claiming special powers, just a life steeped in mystery. My family was comfortable with mysticism, spiritual discernment, and the use of spiritual gifts such as healing and words of knowledge. My Aunt Lee, a Gullah shaman Catholic, was my biggest influence. She saw dead people and mediated mystery for our family. She could tell you who was coming and going and how they were when they got to the other side!… She relayed messages from ancestors on the other side back to us. Once a relative transitioned to the other side, she would tell us the age they had chosen to represent their physicality.  

It seems that at least in her understanding, you could choose your age in the life after life. So when you saw people in dreams, you would see them embodied as the age that best reflected their spiritual joy. My dad chose his 50s, and when I see him in dreams, that’s what he looks like. My mom chose her late 30s. I’m not familiar with that look for my mom, so I always hesitate, because at this point on the spiritual side, she’s younger than I am. There were all kinds of rules about dreams and encounters. My aunt’s messages always included what they called “verification.” She would seal the deal with the information that no one would know except the loved ones who had gone on. She’d tell you where a piece of lost jewelry could be found, or the content of a few last words spoken in private.  

Those were the mystics of my dad’s side of the family. And wouldn’t you know it, we have a bunch of them on my mom’s side too.… We’ve traced our DNA linkages, and my mom is from the Tikar people of Cameroon with surprising interconnections with China. As an everyday mystic, DNA testing helped me with the spiritual healing of cultural and historical loss.  

The weird part is that all of this seemed normal to me. Despite the fact that schooling and further education tried to invalidate my experience, I knew that everyday mysticism was real. I could not be persuaded or taught otherwise. I’m describing mysticism as a natural part of everyday life and all of the things that I’m describing happened in ordinary time. There was no weird music, sweeping cloaks, or spooky incantations … just a deep understanding of the sacred and a willingness to allow the gifts to lead.  

==============

Tipping has long been customary at full-service restaurants and bars, for taxis, and in hotels. Coffee or ice cream shops often had a tip jar where a customer might drop their change, but most fast food and counter-service restaurants never asked for a gratuity. When Starbucks added a tip screen to their credit card transactions in 2022, however, it signaled a change. Suddenly it seemed like every business in America started asking for tips.A few weeks ago, while purchasing a protein bar and bottled water from one of those airport terminal snack shops, the self-checkout screen asked me if I wanted to add a 20 percent tip. For who? I thought. That’s when I realized our tipping culture is getting out of control. It also provoked me to research the trend.When traveling in Europe, some Americans are surprised to discover that other Western democracies do not share our habit of tipping. That’s because America’s gratuity culture germinated from its unique history. Following the Civil War, when millions of formerly enslaved African Americans were seeking jobs, few white business owners were inclined to hire them. Eventually, some were allowed to work in service positions without pay. Instead, they relied entirely on tips from customers. Most famously, black workers on Pullman train cars “shined shoes, made beds, woke up passengers and so on. They worked long hours and relied heavily on tips for pay.” In time, African Americans filled more gratuity-funded service jobs as doormen, elevator operators, and drivers.Eventually, as more business owners realized tips were an easy way to reduce their expenses and shift labor costs directly to customers, the practice expanded throughout the country. So, what began as a racist policy to avoid paying African Americans a fair wage became a widespread, and uniquely American practice. Even today, 160 years after the Civil War, more businesses are adopting the custom—even ones that have replaced their employees with a self-checkout screen! Why am I sharing this history lesson? Because it illustrates that gratuity isn’t necessarily about gratitude. Strictly speaking, a tip or gratuity is supposed to be a gift offered in thankfulness. It is neither expected nor demanded. But in reality that’s not how it’s practiced. In many places, failing to leave a tip is deeply offensive and the moral equivalent of stealing. The worker feels cheated out of their well-earned pay. I know this snub well having worked for tips at a car wash in high school. At least as it’s done in America, tipping is not a free act of appreciation; it’s an obligatory act to finalize a transaction.Which finally brings us back to Naaman’s story. After following Elisha’s instructions and bathing in the Jordan River, Naaman’s leprosy disappears. After this miraculous healing, Naaman returns to Elisha and presents him with “a gift.” Remember, he had traveled from Syria with an astronomical amount of wealth—approximately 750 pounds of silver and 6,000 pieces of gold. To the casual reader, this looks like a very generous tip—an act of gratuity flowing from Naaman’s thankfulness.But despite urging him to accept the money, Elisha refused. “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” Why did the prophet reject Naaman’s gift? Because Elisha recognized when a gift was not a gift. He understood that not all gratuities are about gratitude. In the coming days, we will examine what was really behind Naaman’s gift, and why Elisha’s refusal to accept it is what ultimately caused Naaman to give his allegiance to Israel’s God. DAILY SCRIPTURE PSALM 50:7-13  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYERIgnatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my intelligence and my will—all that i have and possess. You, Lord, have given those things to me. I now give them back to you, Lord. All belongs to you. Dispose of these gifts according to your will. I ask only for your love and your grace, for they are enough for me. Amen.