Father Richard shares the universal need to express our grief: 

The human instinct is to block suffering and pain. This is especially true in the West where we have been influenced by the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. As anyone who has experienced grief can attest, it isn’t rational. We really don’t know how to hurt! We simply don’t know what to do with our pain. 

The great wisdom traditions are trying to teach us that grief isn’t something from which to run. It’s a liminal space, a time of transformation. In fact, we can’t risk getting rid of our pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach us, and it—grief, suffering, loss, pain—always has something to teach us! Unfortunately, many of us have been taught that grief and sadness are something to repress, deny, or avoid. We would much rather be angry than sad. 

Perhaps the simplest and most inclusive definition of grief is “unfinished hurt.” It feels like a demon spinning around inside of us and it hurts too much, so we immediately look for someone else to blame. We have to learn to remain open to our grief, to wait in patient expectation for what it has to teach us. When we close in too tightly around our sadness or grief, when we try to fix it, control it, or understand it, we only deny ourselves its lessons. 

Saint Ephrem the Syrian (303–373) considered tears to be sacramental signs of divine mercy. He instructs: “Give God weeping, and increase the tears in your eyes: through your tears and [God’s] goodness the soul which has been dead will be restored.” [1] What a different kind of human being than most of us! In the charismatic circles in which I participated during my early years of ministry, holy tears were a common experience. Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi reportedly wept all the time—for days on end! 

The “weeping mode” is a different way of being in the world. It’s different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. We’re finally free to feel the tragedy of things, the sadness of things. Tears cleanse our eyes both physically and spiritually so we can begin to see more clearly. Sometimes we have to cry for a very long time because we’re not seeing truthfully or well at all. Tears only come when we realize we can’t fix and we can’t change reality. The situation is absurd, it’s unjust, it’s wrong, it’s impossible. She should not have died; he should not have died. How could this happen? Only when we are led to the edges of our own resources are we finally free to move to the weeping mode. 

The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. It is what it is, and somehow God is in it. 

Job’s Emotional Courage

Richard Rohr notes the lessons on grief and lament we can learn from Job: 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find Job experiencing some of the common emotions of grief, including denial and anger. The first seven days of Job’s time on the “dung heap” (Job 2:8) of pain are spent in silence, what we might call shock or denial. Then he taps into anger; in verse after verse Job shouts and curses at God. He says, in effect, “This so-called life I have is not really life, God, it’s death. So why should I be happy about being born?”  

Perhaps some of us have been there—so hurt and betrayed, so devastated by our losses that we echo Job’s cry about the day he was born, “May that day be darkness. May God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it. May murk and deep shadow claim it for their own” (Job 3:4–5). It’s beautiful, poetic imagery. He’s saying: “Uncreate that day. Make it not a day of light, but darkness. Let clouds hang over it, eclipse swoop down on it.” Where God in Genesis speaks “Let there be light,” Job insists “Let there be darkness.” A day of uncreation, of anti-creation. We probably have to have experienced true depression, betrayal, or injustice to understand such a feeling. 

There’s a part of each of us that feels and speaks that sadness. Not every day, thank goodness. But if we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair. If we want to walk with Job, with Jesus, and in solidarity with much of the world, we must allow grace to lead us there as the events of life show themselves. I believe this is exactly what we mean by conformity to Christ (Romans 8:29).  

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only the last death but all the earlier little (and not-so-little) deaths. If we bypass these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. Many people learn that the hard way—through depression, addictions, irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course or to find some appropriate place to share them. Job is unafraid to feel his feelings. He acts and speaks them out. Emotions ought to be allowed to run their course. They are not right or wrong; they are merely indicators of what is happening. 

I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either. It is only because Job is willing to feel his emotions that he is able to come to grips with the mystery in his head and heart and gut. He understands holistically and therefore his experience of grief becomes both whole and holy. 

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Whom Must We Love?

An expert in Jewish religious law came to Jesus with a simple but important question: “What must I do to live with God forever?” In response, Jesus asked him, “What do the Scriptures say?” The man gave a wonderful answer that Jesus affirmed: Love the Lord with all of your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself. But that was not the end of his questions. He wanted to know the minimum requirement to fulfill these commands. What is a passing grade to graduate into God’s kingdom? So he asked Jesus, who qualifies as his neighbor?He was not the first person to wrestle with this question. Since being subjugated first by Greeks and then Romans, many Jews debated the extent of the command in Leviticus 19:18 to love one’s neighbor. At the time, popular teaching excluded any non-Jews from the category of “neighbor,” and another school of thought said any personal enemy (Jew or non-Jew) was to be hated and not loved. In the first century, many Pharisees did not consider non-Pharisees their neighbors, and another rabbinical teaching said “heretics, informers, and renegades” should be left to die in ditches. Given this diversity of opinion over who qualified as one’s neighbor, the man wanted to know where Jesus drew the line. Who exactly are we called to love?We will explore Jesus’ response over the coming days, but to begin I want to share a story told by former president Jimmy Carter that captures the spirit of Jesus’ answer.Before his political career, Carter served on an evangelistic mission trip to share the gospel with poor, Spanish-speaking families in Springfield, Massachusetts. His partner was a Cuban-American pastor from Brooklyn named Eloy Cruz. Carter was amazed by Cruz’s gentle spirit and ability to connect with everyone they met. At the end of their week together, Carter asked Cruz what made him so effective as a Christian witness. Cruz replied that he tried to live by a simple rule: “You only have to have two loves in your life—for God, and for the person in front of you at any particular time.”In his autobiography, Carter said, “I still refer on occasion to the books on my shelves by Karl Barth, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Kung, and other theologians, but Eloy Cruz’s simple words express a profound and challenging theology that has meant more to me than those of all the great scholars.”Like the religious expert who questioned Jesus, sometimes we can become so enamored with understanding deep theological truths that we lose sight of what’s most important. When we stand before God someday, our theology will come to nothing if we have failed to love those created in his image who stand before us today. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 10:25-29 MATTHEW 5:43-48 LEVITICUS 19:17-18 WEEKLY PRAYER From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you.
—Romans 15:24 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the disappointment faced by individuals and communities when reckoning with unrealized dreams. Inspired by the apostle Paul’s imprisonment, King calls for radical hope and determination:   

What, then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope…. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist but the achievement found in Jeremiah’s words, “This is a grief, and I must bear it” [Jeremiah 10:19]. 

You must honestly confront your shattered dream. To follow the escapist method of attempting to put the disappointment out of your mind will lead to a psychologically injurious repression. Place your failure at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Ask yourself, “How may I transform this liability into an asset? How may I, confined in some narrow Roman cell and unable to reach life’s Spain, transmute this dungeon of shame into a haven of redemptive suffering?” Almost anything that happens to us may be woven into the purposes of God. It may lengthen our cords of sympathy. It may break our self-centered pride. The cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God into the tapestry of world redemption.   

Many of the world’s most influential personalities have exchanged their thorns for crowns. Charles Darwin, suffering from a recurrent physical illness; Robert Louis Stevenson, plagued with tuberculosis; and Hellen Keller, inflicted with blindness and deafness, responded not with bitterness or fatalism, but rather by the exercise of a dynamic will transformed negative circumstances into positive assets.… 

How familiar is the experience of longing for Spain and settling for a Roman prison, and how less familiar the transforming of the broken remains of a disappointed expectation into opportunities to serve God’s purpose! Yet powerful living always involves such victories over one’s own soul and one’s situation.   

King’s hope is tied to God’s faithfulness and the transforming power of nonviolence: 

We Negroes have long dreamed of freedom, but still we are confined in an oppressive prison of segregation and discrimination. Must we respond with bitterness and cynicism? Certainly not, for this will destroy and poison our personalities. Must we … resign ourselves to oppression? Of course not, for this blasphemously attributes to God that which is of the devil. To cooperate passively with an unjust system makes the oppressed as evil as the oppressor. Our most fruitful course is to stand firm with courageous determination, move forward nonviolently amid obstacles and setbacks, accept disappointments, and cling to hope. Our determined refusal not to be stopped will eventually open the door to fulfillment.…  

Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.   

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John Chaffee 5 For Friday

1.
“We are utterly helpless to be anything other than infinitely loved by God.”

• Dr. Jim Finley, Former Monk and Psychotherapist
   
  Utterly helpless.  I love that.  The truth of that statement is so obvious to me, and it sparks joy within me to allow that truth to hold me.

Now, just for fun…

Let’s flip the statement and see how the comparison hits us.

“We can make God infinitely revile us.”

Yikes.

In the words of an old seminary professor, Dr. Timothy Wengert, “That ain’t no Gospel.”

I’ll stick with an interpretation of Christianity more in line with Jim Finley’s interpretation.

2.
“We’re going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us.”

• Beth Moore, Anglican Preacher and Author
   
  Beth is one of those people who seem to flip the right tables, ruffle the right feathers, and challenge the conventional status quo.  Somehow, she navigates doing it all in a more winsome way than I ever could be.  I have not engaged with her work as much as I could have by now, but everything I have come across seems spot-on.

3.
“The call to follow the crucified Messiah was, in the long run much more effective in changing the unjust political, economic, and familial structures than direct exhortations to revolutionize them would ever have been.
 
For an allegiance to the crucified Messiah— indeed, worship of a crucified God-is an eminently political act that subverts a politics of dominion at its very core.”

• Miroslav Volf in “Soft Difference”
   
  No comment.  This quote is dang good on its own.

4.
“God does nothing as a judge that he wouldn’t do as a father. And I will accept nothing in the description of God that I would find
abhorrent in a man.”

• George MacDonald, Scottish Preacher
   
  I was attending a small group meeting this past week, and this quote popped into my mind during our conversation.  The group is full of lovely people, and we were talking about the idea of God as a Loving Father.

Unsurprisingly, it is difficult for us to conceptualize God as a Loving Father.  Most of our models or archetypes for God are that of a Retributive Judge, Divine Debt Collector, or some Cosmic Mafia Don who demands fealty.  In response to this, MacDonald would likely say that many people consider themselves Christians and yet have pagan theologies or views of God.

All this reminds me of Jesus’ words, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven  give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11)

5.
“In souls, there is no illness caused by evilness [ἀπὸ κακίας] that is impossible to cure [ἀδύνατον θεραπευθῆναι] for God the Logos, who is superior to all.”

• Origen, Early Church Father
   
  Over the years, there were names I was told to beware of: Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Karl Barth, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Walter Brueggemann, and others.  Each of these people was considered movers and shakers, who were somehow revered and reviled at the same time.

Surprisingly, it was during seminary that I was told about these figures and yet we never studied them closely.  Not that I think I was given a poor education, but I have come to see that some gaps needed to be filled on my own time.

The more I engage with church history for myself and take up responsibility for reading the original sources, the more I wonder if we have lost the plot of Christianity in the West.  And yes, Origen is one of the more controversial since he was called a heretic long after he passed away (and likely a result of people misunderstanding his followers), but his writings and his systematic theology seem to make more sense of more of the New Testament than I expected.

Case in point, God is more able to heal than sin is able to destroy.

Richard Rohr describes how psychology and spirituality affirm the direction of growth. 

In the various schemas of development, psychology and spirituality come together beautifully to show us that our growth is going somewhere. The trajectory is toward union: union with God/Reality, with the self (mind, heart, and body), with others, and with the cosmos. All seem to agree that the beginning levels of our consciousness are dualistic, while the later or deeper levels are non-dual and unitive. The only way to move from stage to stage is basically by some form of wounding, failure, or darkness. All seem to agree that we have to go through a period of unknowing (which sounds like faith to me) to know at a more mature level. [1]  

But when we listen to the news or look around and within our own hearts, doesn’t it seem as if we might be going nowhere? Everyone is on their own to find and create their own personal meaning. It seems we’re all condemned to start at zero, with no shoulders to stand on, which makes the human task quite difficult in our relatively short lifetime. It basically doesn’t work, especially when we’re young and just getting started. In our postmodern age, we have rejected any strong sense of the common good or any Great Tradition. Thus, we are addictively repeating the same patterns that produce trauma, violence, suffering, emotional immaturity, low self-esteem, and far-too-premature deaths.  

For our spirituality to be authentic, we must experience things from the inside out instead of just the outside in. In the materialistic and highly overstimulated culture in which so many of us live, we tend to let others define us instead of drawing from our own deep well. (Please do not hear that in an individualistic way; it is finally the exact opposite—which is truly a paradox.) Indeed, the goal of mature religion is to help us die before we die: die to our small or passing self so we can discover our Big Self. All major religions describe this in one way or another: A false and largely self-constructed identity must be surrendered before the True Self can stand radiant and revealed. Jesus said, “Whoever would save their life shall lose it, and whoever shall lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24), and “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies, it shall yield a rich harvest” (John 12:24). This is basic and essential conversion. Good religion and good psychology agree.   

Our contemplative practice is a “laboratory” in which we learn to die to our passing identities, emotions, and thoughts so we can receive the always-permanent and perfect mirroring of the Divine gaze. The rest of our life becomes the field in which we live out this participation in Love, bouncing back the gaze of grace to the Other and then having plenty left over for all others besides. [2]   

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I speak to you continually. My nature is to communicate, though not always in words. I fling glorious sunsets across the sky, day after day after day. I speak in the faces and voices of loved ones. I caress you with a gentle breeze that refreshes and delights you. I speak softly in the depths of your spirit, where I have taken up residence.
     You can find Me in each moment, when you have eyes that see and ears that hear. Ask My Spirit to sharpen your spiritual eyesight and hearing. I rejoice each time you discover My Presence. Practice looking and listening for Me during quiet intervals. Gradually you will find Me in more and more of your moments. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me above all else.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 8:1-4 (NLT)
1 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
    Your glory is higher than the heavens.
2 You have taught children and infants
    to tell of your strength,
silencing your enemies
    and all who oppose you.
3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
    the moon and the stars you set in place—
4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
    human beings that you should care for them?

Psalm 19:1-2 (NLT)
1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
    The skies display his craftsmanship.
2 Day after day they continue to speak;
    night after night they make him known.

1 Corinthians 6:19 (NLT)
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself…

Jeremiah 29:13 (NLT)
13 If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

Additional insight regarding Jeremiah 29:13:

According to God’s wise plan, his people were to have a future and a hope; consequently, they could call upon him with confidence. Although the exiles were in a difficult place and time, they need not despair because they had God’s presence, the privilege of prayer, and God’s grace. If we seek him wholeheartedly, he will be found. Neither a strange land, sorrow, persecution, nor physical problems can break our fellowship with God.

Choosing to Face Our Pain

Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem connects our individual healing from trauma with our communal healing from racism and other social ills. He describes “clean pain” as that which is faced and transformed instead of denied:  

Healing trauma involves recognizing, accepting, and moving through pain—clean pain. It often means facing what you don’t want to face—what you have been reflexively avoiding or fleeing. By walking into that pain, experiencing it fully, and moving through it, you metabolize it and put an end to it. In the process, you also grow, create more room in your nervous system for flow and coherence, and build your capacity for further growth.  

Clean pain is about choosing integrity over fear. It is about letting go of what is familiar but harmful, finding the best parts of yourself, and making a leap—with no guarantee of safety or praise. This healing does not happen in your head. It happens in your body. And it is more likely to happen in a body that can stay settled in the midst of conflict and uncertainty.  

When you come out the other side of this process, you will experience more than just relief. Your body will feel more settled and present. There will be a little more freedom in it and more room to move. You will experience a sense of flow. You will also have grown up a notch. What will your situation look like when you come out the other side? You don’t know. You can’t know. That’s how the process works. You have to stand in your integrity, accept the discomfort, and move forward into the unknown. [1]  

Richard Rohr considers the effects of trauma in individuals and social systems:  

When people at work, in our families, in politics, or in the church seem to be completely irrational, counterproductive, paranoid, or vengeful, there’s a good chance they’re acting out of some form of the survival mode, which can be triggered in many ways. Persons with trauma deserve deep understanding (which is hard to come by), sympathy (which is difficult if we have never been there ourselves), patience (because it’s not rationally controllable), healing (not judgment), and, frankly, years of love from at least one person or animal over time. 

Could this be what mythology means by the “sacred wound” and the church meant by “original sin”—not something we did, but the effects of something done to us? I believe it is. It’s no wonder Jesus teaches so much about forgiveness, and practices so much healing touch and talk. [2] 

Menakem emphasizes the possibilities for liberation created by the settling of our bodies:  

We need to join in that collective action with settled bodies—and with psyches that are willing to metabolize clean pain. I can’t stress this enough. Bringing a settled body to any situation encourages the bodies around you to settle as well. Bringing an unsettled body to that same situation encourages other bodies to become anxious, nervous, or angry. 

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God the Party Planner

While Jesus was dining at the home of a Pharisee, another guest said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” A banquet or feast was a common image in ancient Israel to describe eternal life and the age to come. In the language of popular evangelicalism, the guest was saying, “Blessed is everyone who is saved!”Jesus responded to this declaration in a strange manner. He did not deny the blessedness of those who will share in God’s banquet, but instead told a parable to challenge popular assumptions about who will be at the table. In other words, Jesus and his religious dinner guests had very different ideas about who was “saved” and who would enter God’s kingdom. To understand Jesus’ story we must know something about banquets in his culture.Because honor and shame were utmost in ancient Israel, celebrations in a village were very carefully scheduled to avoid conflicts. If a host held a banquet at the same time as another household it would bring shame upon his neighbor as well as himself. Practically, the poorly scheduled feast may reduce the number of people able to attend, again resulting in shame for the host.For these reasons, it was common for a host to send two invitations. The first invitation announced the banquet, ensured there were no competing events on the village calendar, and requested RSVPs from all of the guests. With the date and guests determined, the host then began the preparations for the elaborate feast which could take weeks. A second invitation was then sent when the banquet was ready to tell the guests to come and dine. The emphasis of Jesus’ parable is upon God’s intentionality. Comparing the arrival of his kingdom to a banquet means the Lord, like a good host, has put thought, time, and care into ensuring the arrival of his kingdom would not be a surprise and that his people would be ready to receive it. His posture is not one of exclusion but inclusion; his goal is not to keep as many people out as possible but to ensure everyone has the opportunity to join the party. That is the point of all the careful preparations.Have you ever considered that God has been preparing for you to be with him? He is not indifferent about your presence at his table but greatly desires to welcome and serve you. God is intentional about his relationship with you. You are not an afterthought, not a distraction, and never an interruption. This raises an important question—are you intentional about your relationship with him? As we continue to look at Jesus’ parable about the banquet, we’ll discover how God responds to those who disregard his gracious hospitality. DAILY SCRIPTURE LUKE 14:15-24 MARK 1:1-5 REVELATION 19:6-9 WEEKLY PRAYER. From Norwich Cathedral, England O God, whose Son Jesus Christ cared for the welfare of everyone and went about doing good; grant us the imagination and perseverance to create in this country and throughout the world a just and loving society for the family of man; and make us agents of your compassion to the suffering, the persecuted and the oppressed, through the Spirit of your Son, who shared the sufferings of men, our pattern and our redeemer, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Resilience Requires Flexibility

In conversation with CAC Publications Manager Mark Longhurst, author Cole Arthur Riley considered this year’s Daily Meditations theme of radical resilience:  

[Radical resilience] stirs some amount of tension and some amount of encouragement…. When you think about the origins of the word resilience, it’s closer to talking about plastic, something that returns back to its original shape after you bend it. I think humans don’t really work like that. We don’t go back to the way we were before we were broken or bent….   

I’m a recovering cynic, and I used to have so much resistance to language of resilience. It’s only really in the past few years that I’ve had to confront a kind of resilience that isn’t really about returning back to the way you were before, but is much more about reclaiming whatever new shape your form has taken. A resilience that doesn’t really ask us to forget, but that carries the memory of whatever harm or whatever fire we’ve been through. A resilience that carries that memory and still is committed to one’s survival and one’s going on in the world, however that shape looks…. 

It’s a radical idea. This is another James Baldwin quotation. He’s actually reviewing The Exorcist film and it’s this beautiful review. I recommend everyone read it because he’s talking about much more than The Exorcist; he’s talking about the terrors of the world. He says, “It was very important for me not to pretend as if the terrors of that time left no mark on me. They marked me forever.” [1] I think he’s getting at a kind of resilience that still carries memory, that still says we’re marked, we’ve been through something, but that we’re committed to ultimately surviving this thing. [2] 

CAC teacher and psychotherapist James Finley shares that it’s through the wounded places in us that God’s love reaches us:  

It is in experiencing and accepting how difficult it can be to free ourselves from our hurtful attitudes and ways of treating ourselves and others that we begin to understand that the healing path is not a linear process in which we can force our way beyond our wounded and wounding ways. Rather, it is a path along which we learn to circle back again and again to cultivate within ourselves a more merciful understanding of ourselves as we learn to see, love, and respect the still-confused and wounded aspects of ourselves. Insofar as these wounded and wounding aspects of ourselves recognize that they are seen, loved, and respected in such a merciful way, they can feel safe enough to release the pain they carry into the more healed and whole aspects of ourselves.  

We are now attempting to bear witness to the sweet secret of experiential salvation in which the torn and ragged edges of our wounded and wayward hearts are experienced as… the opening through which the gentle light of God’s merciful love shines into our lives. 

An Offer of Infinite, Not Immediate, Satisfaction

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who found a pearl of exceedingly high value, so he sold everything he had and purchased the pearl. If nothing else, this very short parable ought to convince us that Jesus and his kingdom are not opposed to self-interest. The merchant was clearly motivated by his desires when he sold everything to acquire the pearl. It was not an act of self-denial.Likewise, the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus endured the humiliation of the cross because of the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He knew that on the other side of his suffering was a satisfaction of infinite magnitude—he would be raised, given the name above all names, and his enemies put under his feet. Despite the claims of some contemporary worship songs, Scripture reveals that Jesus did not think about “me above all.” Shockingly, he also had his own glory in mind. Yes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16), but the Son also knew that his self-sacrifice would result in every tongue confessing that he is Lord (Philippians 2:11). We don’t talk about it very much, but self-interest was a factor in Jesus’ death on the cross. Somehow we’ve accepted the message that faith in Christ must be a miserable calling, and that any hint of self-interest is a betrayal of the faith and a sure sign of ungodliness. This view, however, is not found in the teachings of either Jesus or his Apostles. The problem is not having self-interested desires, but how the world tells us to fulfill them. Our consumer culture tells us satisfaction should come immediately and at no cost. Rather than patiently searching for a valuable pearl and sacrificing all he had to buy it, in our culture’s version of the parable the merchant should have purchased the pearl with a click, with $0 down, 0% financing, and free two-day shipping. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for a faith that costs nothing: cheap grace.What Jesus offers us with his kingdom is not immediate satisfaction but infinite satisfaction, and when we recognize the magnitude of the joy that is being promised to us, like the merchant in the parable, we will gladly sacrifice everything to get it. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 13:44-46 HEBREWS 12:1-2 PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11 WEEKLY PRAYER From Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to you. Give to me, or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Only the Beginning 

In growing psychologically, one moves toward increasing autonomy and independence. In growing spiritually, one increasingly realizes how utterly dependent one is, on God and on the grace of God that comes through other people. —Gerald May, Will and Spirit 

Over thirty years ago, Father Richard gave a talk at the 20th anniversary of Sojourners magazine and community. He affirms the benefits of psychological growth but urges us not to become stuck in individualistic worship of the self:  

When subjectivity became the reference point for human behavior, the psychological age began; by the late 1960s it became the language of the mainstream. It was a revolution just as profound and maybe more far-reaching than political revolutions or religious reformations. All of us are deeply affected by it; it is the air we breathe.  

The Jungian psychologist James Hillman summarizes it well:  

It’s the prevailing opinion we encounter anywhere in the therapy world, the self-help world, the afternoon talk-show world. All make clear the importance of childhood, of coming out from disempowerment (“be in control”), recovering from past abuses, working through to self-acceptance (“I can be comfortable with that”), and the confessional witness of “my own journey.” [1]  

These things are good to a certain point, and have helped countless people, but are only the beginning of the journey. The subjective self in our day is sometimes treated as objective truth. It becomes the unassailable “ground of being” which often cannot be questioned or left unaffirmed.  

It seems that it has become an accepted truth that the best thing one can do is “work on oneself.” Often it’s frowned upon in some circles to repress any feelings, fears, or sexual fantasies, while it may be totally acceptable to repress the objective issues of famine, habitat destruction, access to medical care, and weapons sales. 

When psyche meets psyche there is usually insight, communion, expansion, or at least distraction. It feels alive and will always lead us to another level of revelation or confrontation. But sometimes there is no goal beyond the process itself or that elusive thing called healing. This sounds a bit hard perhaps, but the enduring philosophical traditions have never confused existence with essence as we do today. We attach enormous significance to passing feelings, hurts, and experiences, things which the great world religions have called illusion, temptation, trial, grace, opportunity, passion, or “shadow and disguise.” They are means, not ends; windows and doorways perhaps, but surely not the temple itself. 

At best, the search for understanding or sobriety or healing is seen as the early “purgative way,” but not yet the classic “illuminative” or “unitive” paths. In these, we less and less need explanations, success, or control. Healthy spirituality points us through ever-changing psyche to never-changing Spirit. The Mystery has shown itself. It’s okay. It’s enough. No one, including the self, needs be blamed, shamed, or worshiped. If that’s not the freedom of the children of God, what would it possibly be?  

A Maturing Spirituality

Richard Rohr offers his own basic overview of the stages of spiritual development, which also account for our developmentally appropriate psychological needs:  

1. My body and self-image are who I am.  
   We focus on our own security, safety, and defense needs. 
    
2. My external behavior is who I am. 
   We need to look good from the outside and to hide any “contrary evidence” from others, and eventually from ourselves. The ego’s “shadow” begins to emerge at this time.  
    
3. My thoughts and feelings are who I am.  
   We begin to take pride in our “better” thoughts and feelings and learn to control them, so much so that we do not even see their self-serving nature. For nearly all of us, a major defeat, shock, or humiliation must be suffered and passed through to go beyond this stage.  
    
4. My deeper intuitions and felt knowledge in my body are who I am.  
   This is such a breakthrough and so helpful that many of us are content to stay here, but to remain at this level may lead to inner work or body work as a substitute for any real encounter with, or sacrifice for, the “other.” 
    
5. My shadow self is who I am. 
   This is the first “dark night of the senses”—when our weakness overwhelms us, and we finally face ourselves in our unvarnished and uncivilized state. Without guidance, grace, and prayer, most of us go running back to previous identities.  
    
6. I am empty and powerless.  
   Some call this sitting in “God’s Waiting Room,” but it is more often known as “the dark night of the soul.” At this point, almost any attempt to save ourselves by any superior behavior, morality, or prayer technique will fail us. All we can do is to ask, wait, and trust. God is about to become real. The false or separate self is dying in a major way.  
    
7.  I am much more than who I thought I was.  
   We experience the permanent waning of the false self and the ascent of the True Self as the center of our being. It feels like an absence or void, even if a wonderful void. John of the Cross calls this “luminous darkness.” We grow not by knowing or understanding, but only by loving and trusting.  
    
8. “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). 
   Here, there is only God. There is nothing we need to protect, promote, or prove to anyone, especially ourselves. Our false self no longer guides the ship. We have learned to let Grace and Mystery guide us—still without full (if any) comprehension.  
    
9. I am who I am. 
   I’m “just me,” warts and all. We are now fully detached from our own self-image and living in God’s image of us—which includes and loves both the good and the bad. We experience true serenity and freedom. This is the peace the world cannot give (see John 14:27) and full resting in God.

Why We Reject God’s Kingdom

Jesus’ parables comparing the kingdom of heaven to a man who finds a treasure in a field and to a merchant who discovers a pearl of great value are meant to be understood through an economic framework. Any rational person would gladly give up something of little value to acquire something of great value. Likewise, the value of God’s kingdom is so extraordinarily high that anything sacrificed for it ought to be released without hesitation. Jesus is illustrating that his kingdom is an unbelievable bargain.If that is the case, why do so many people still struggle to accept Jesus’ invitation? There are two possibilities. First, people are not always rational. In fact, there is strong evidence that people will act irrationally and against their own self-interests even when they know they are doing so. (For more I recommend Michael Lewis’ book, The Undoing Project, about two psychologists who won the Nobel Prize for proving the human mind is hardwired to make wrong decisions.) Our bent toward self-destructive and irrational choices confirms the Christian view that humans are universally corrupted by sin. There is another possibility also rooted in the power of sin. Even if we are functioning rationally, we may not recognize the value of what is being offered to us because of our poor vision or general ignorance. For example, when my son was little he was addicted to sugar. But if said to him, “Would you like some creme brûlée?” he would have immediately refused. Those unfamiliar words might conjure images in his mind of vegetables or some other unappetizing adult cuisine. His response would be very different, however, if I said, “Would you like some vanilla pudding, covered in sugar, and cooked with a blowtorch?”Our blindness or ignorance prevents us from recognizing the true nature and value of what is being offered. As a result, we cling more tightly to what we have and dismiss the glories available to us in Christ. C.S. Lewis wrote about it this way:“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ”DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 13:44-46 ISAIAH 5:20-21 ISAIAH 55:1-1-2 WEEKLY PRAYERFrom Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to you. Give to me, or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

To connect to the holy is to access the deepest, juiciest part of our spirits. Perhaps this is why we set up so many boundaries, protections, and rules around both sex and religion. Both pursuits expose such a large surface area of the self, which can then be either hurt or healed. But when the boundaries, protections, and rules become more important than the sacred things they are intended to protect, casualties ensue.  
—Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless 

Father Richard encourages Christians to embrace a sexual ethic that reflects a love of God, self, and others. 

In the area of sexuality, we all seem to have our sacrosanct areas that cannot be touched. Liberals will find some way to say that it is always good, while conservatives are determined to enforce rules and boundaries. Both groups seem to be nervous about nuance. Idols with clear shapes and explanations seem to be easier to live with. Our job is to keep working to enjoy, to respect, to reverence, to honor, to love, and to listen to our bodies—before we start controlling or judging our sexuality.  

The wisdom the Christian tradition offers is that whatever God is doing, it is certainly beyond cultural fears, fads, and social taboos. Open and prayerful people will likely discover a very intuitive and almost common-sense wisdom about what is real and what is unreal in regard to our sexual relatedness and the many ways it allows us to move and discover our true bodily and spiritual selves. 

The Catholic Theological Society summarized it well when it stated that our sexual actions must aim to be “self-liberating, other-enriching, honest, faithful, socially responsible, life-serving, and joyous.” [1] That is certainly the task and journey of a lifetime, but it is no more or no less than what Jesus said when he taught the greatest commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. The two loves “resemble one another” (see Matthew 22:37–39). They are each the school of the other. We will learn how to be properly sexual as we understand the properly passionate relationship that God has with us. And we learn how to be properly spiritual as we come to understand the true character of human longing and affection. 

Finally, the only biblical mandate that matters is to copy and allow the pattern of God’s love in us. If this sounds too soft, perhaps it means that we have never loved “all the way.” We have never let it carry us through all its stages, all of its internal ecstasies, loneliness, and purifications. To attain a whole and truly passionate sexuality is hard and holy work. 

God’s way of loving is the only licensed teacher of human sexuality. God’s passion created ours. Our deep desiring is a relentless returning to that place where all things are one. If we are afraid of our sexuality, we are afraid of God.   

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John Chaffee 5 For Friday

1.
“The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties-but right through every human heart.”

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian Author and Historian
   
  One of the things that we do is assume there is a line separating “us from them.”  This particular line helps us to wrongfully believe that people on “our side” are right or good while the people on “the other side” are wrong or evil.

However, Sozhenitsyn tells us the truth here.

That line goes right through every human heart.

There is some good in the other and there is some evil within me.  Just that simple acknowledgment starts to chip away at the dualistic thinking that I and my enemy are different from one another.  A more accurate picture is that the war between good and evil is a constant thing within every one of us.

2.
“I drink beer whenever I can lay my hands on any. I love beer, and by that very act, the world.”

• Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and Activist
   
  There probably was a point in my life when I believed that to love God inferred a certain disapproval of “the world.”  This is in part because of passages in the NT that decry “the world.”

One of the liberating teachings that I stumbled across from Catholic activist Dorothy Day (or at least it is attributed to her) is how she calls “the world” as “the filthy rotten system.”  Meaning, that she understood Scripture to be decrying abusive, power-hungry, dehumanizing, and callous behavior toward the lowest tiers of society.

OF COURSE, a Christian is supposed to love the world, in the same manner that Christ did.

OF COURSE, we are supposed to love this material existence, the Incarnation happened into it.

OF COURSE, we are supposed to stand up against injustice, the prophets of old did it first.

And so, Thomas Merton is simply tapping into that same stream.  He is a part of that same lineage.

And we can be, too.

3.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

• Werner Heisenberg, German Theoretical Physicist
   
  Science observes the world through the five senses.

Wonder and faith are the romancing tactics of God that come to us through experiencing our finitude while observing the world through our five senses.

4.
“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.”

• Romans 12:19
   
  This verse is always a hard one to swallow.  I can’t speak for others but there are certainly days when I would love to see accountability happen.  Then again, it is probably best to let the One who is Love be the one who does the judging.

After all, even Nietzsche said to “distrust anyone within whom the desire to punish is strong.”

5.
“Is there a third way, a Christian way?  It is my growing conviction that in Jesus the mystical and the revolutionary ways are not opposites, but two sides of the same human mode of experiential transcendence.  I am increasingly convinced that the conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution.  Therefore every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society.  Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change.  No mystic can prevent himself from becoming a social critic, since in serl-reflection he will discover the roots of a sick society.  Similarly, no revolutionary can avoid facing his own human condition, since in the midst of his struggle for a new world he will find that he is also fighting his own reactionary fears and false ambition.”

• Henri Nouwen in The Wounded Healer
   
  Whew, that might be the longest quote I have included in a 5 on Friday yet.

What I appreciate about Henri Nouwen is his ability to name things with a clarity that makes his point seem so very obvious.

Evangelicalism holds Christian mysticism with suspicion to its own detriment because it is a failure to recognize that at its roots Christianity has always been a mystical religion.

Evangelicalism also seems to hold activism with suspicion to its own detriment because it is a failure to recognize that at its roots Christianity has always been a revolutionary critique and subversion of cultural norms.

I say these things about Evangelicalism because I, once upon a time, butted up against opposition within it because I wanted to talk about and teach about the mystical and revolutionary spirituality of Christianity and was reprimanded for it.

Nearly 15 years ago, I was encouraged to read The Wounded Healer and it has since been a book that I return to every few years.  It has helped to shape my interior landscape and personal outlook so much that The Wounded Healer feels like an undeniable side of my own spirituality.

It may not be that Christianity is in decline or rise in the West.  I believe that every generation must be taught anew, to be built up from ground zero, and to be taught the best of the tradition.  Perhaps what is actually falling apart or is in decline is a false, amystical (did I just invent a word?), and passive… thing (?) that calls itself Christianity but has shallow roots and is without any true lineage.

This is hopefully where I can fit in.  Perhaps you as well.  We are each tasked with the job and the joy of sharing the deep wisdom (sophia) of the Christ to each new generation.  We are each responsible to the tradition for the transmission of the tradition.  We are each called to be like Christ, to be mystic revolutionaries, and encourage one another to follow in those same footsteps.

Creation testifies to the overflowing energy of God’s presence in our world. Our own generosity, our surprising ability to forgive, and our endless desire for more life all witness to this God-given energy [this eros] within us.  
—James D. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, Holy Eros 

Richard Rohr considers expressions of love that exist in our passion for one another:  

Sexuality is a much broader mystery than its physical expression. It’s an inner drive—which some call eros—toward the other and beyond the small self. A commitment to celibacy doesn’t negate this pull to give oneself to another. And at the same time someone can be sexually active and totally self-absorbed, which is not eros at all, but merely “lustful.” 

Healthy intimate relationships take away our existential anxiety. Even without touch, true intimacy overcomes our feelings of separateness and insecurity: “I’m not attractive; I’m not important; I’m not …” is our desperate and disparate state. Once someone affirms that we’re lovable and enough for them, once we begin to deeply trust ourselves, then we discover that what we also desire is agape, or divine love. Agape is much more inclusive and all-embracing than eros. Yet agape builds on eros and even deepens eros because it hugely expands our sense of True Self. Agape love includes and transcends all other genuine loves. [1] 

Womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas believes agape and human sexuality are connected:  

Agape is God’s love. It is an active love, the giving of oneself for the sake of justice and the building of an authentically human (loving) community. By perfectly manifesting agape, Jesus’ life and ministry … reinforce the understanding that to reflect the image of God is to do nothing less than nurture loving relationships….  

A positive embrace of human sexuality is critical to agape, and it is crucial for those who would radiate what it means to be created in the image of God. Human sexuality is what provides [us] with the capacity to enter into relationships with others. Sexuality is that dimension of humanity that urges relationship. Sexuality is a gift from God that, if properly appreciated, helps [people] to become more fully human by entering into loving relationships. [2]  

Douglas parallels God’s eros and our own: 

Human passion must be seen as more than lust or desire for sexual activity.… For me, passion … is that divine energy within human beings, the love of God, that compels them toward life-giving, life-producing, and life-affirming activity and relationships in regard to all of God’s creation. So while passion certainly encompasses the biological production of life, it means more than that. It is a powerful, creative dynamism. It is a glimpse of God’s perfect passion for life. Human passion is God’s passion bursting forth from the human being as an insatiable desire to foster life in all aspects of one’s living. Such an understanding and appreciation for human passion as a glimpse of God’s own passion demand an embrace of human sexuality. [3]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I am creating something new in you: a bubbling spring of Joy that spills over into others’ lives. Do not mistake this Joy for your own or try to take credit for it in any way. Instead, watch in delight as My Spirit flows through you to bless others. Let yourself become a reservoir of the Spirit’s fruit.
     Your part is to live close to Me, open to all that I am doing in you. Don’t try to control the streaming of My Spirit through you. Just keep focusing on Me as we walk through this day together. Enjoy My Presence, which permeates you with Love, Joy, and Peace.

RELATED BIBLE VERSES:

John 3:8 (NLT)
8 “The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”

Additional insight regarding John 3:8: Jesus explained that we cannot control the work of the Holy Spirit. He works in ways we cannot predict or understand. Just as you did not control your physical birthday, so you cannot control your spiritual birth. It is a gift from God through the Holy Spirit (mentioned in Romans 8:16; 1st Corinthians 2:10-12; 1st Thessalonians 1:5,6).

Galatians 5:22 (NLT)
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, …

Additional insight regarding Galatians 5:22-23: The fruit of the Spirit is the spontaneous work of the Holy Spirit in us. The Spirit produces these character traits that are found in the nature of Christ. They are the by-products of Christ’s control – we can’t obtain them by trying to get them without his help. If we want the fruit of the Spirit to grow in us, we must join our life to his (discussed in John 15:4-5). We must know him, love him, remember him, and imitate him. As a result, we will fulfill the intended purpose of the law – to love God and our neighbors. 

Richard Rohr reflects on our need for human and divine intimacy: 

The big secret is this: an infinite God actually seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, or desire for such union, only the intimate language of lovers describes what is going on: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and, of course, suffering. This is the vocabulary of the saints. Our biggest secrets and desires are only revealed to others, and even discovered by ourselves, in the presence of sorrow, failure, need, when we are very vulnerable, and when we feel entirely safe in the arms of love. When that happens, there is always a broadening of being on both sides. We are larger people afterwards. Those who never go there remain small. 

It’s only when we are in such a tender place that God can safely reveal the “innards” of God to us. Those who are self-sufficient remain outsiders to the mystery of divine love because they will always misuse it. Only the need of a beloved knows how to receive the need and gift of the lover, and only the need of a lover knows how to receive the need and gift of the beloved. 

How does this secret of intimacy become unhidden? Only when we stop hiding—from God, from ourselves, and from at least one other person. Such risky self-disclosure is what I mean by intimacy and it is the way that love is transmitted. Intimacy happens when we expose our insides—and this is always scary. We must be prepared to be rejected and the pain of rejection after self-disclosure is so great that it can sometimes take years for us to risk again. 

Richard shares what his practice of celibacy has revealed to him about intimacy: 

I wonder if we know how to be intimate with God if we have never practiced mutual self-disclosure with at least one other human being. I sincerely doubt the possibility. Sexuality creates an obvious and ideal container for true intimacy, at least now and then. Celibacy reveals that an awful lot of sex is not about intimacy at all. Healthy celibacy and healthy sexual encounters demand deep, true intimacy; unhealthy expressions often contribute to an effective avoidance of it. (I write this after almost 50 years in a celibate community of men, and after counseling lots of others in a sexualized world.) 

Intimacy is not just a well-kept secret of the soul, not just a mystery that defies logic, not just a poverty that we avoid; I believe vulnerable intimacy is the entrance into and the lynchpin between all human and divine love. It really does not matter which comes first; it is just important that we pass through this gate of fear and find what lives inside. Intimate love is the true temple that we all desire. I guess we have to want to love and to be loved—or we will never go there. 

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An Interdependent Spiritual Ecosystem

In 1958, the Chinese government began a nationwide campaign to rid China of sparrows. The birds, the government claimed, were responsible for eating seeds and grain essential for the growing Chinese population. Millions of citizens were mobilized to trap and kill the birds, destroy their nests, and crush their eggs. The campaign was brutally effective. By 1960 the birds had been virtually eradicated from China. That was also when the government realized sparrows do not only eat grain—they also eat insects. With their predators gone, insect swarms multiplied and more rice was lost to pests than before the sparrow campaign began. The ecological imbalance contributed to a famine that killed an estimated 45 million people. Eventually, China replaced its sparrows by importing 250,000 birds from the Soviet Union. Science has taught us how seemingly unrelated parts of nature can affect each other. A small change in one part can ripple through the system and magnify to affect another. Ecosystems are complex webs of interdependence. This applies to other systems as well—economic systems, social systems, and even spiritual systems. Unfortunately, like the Chinese government, we often have a compartmentalized vision. We fail to recognize how one part of our life impacts another, and this can lead to tragic consequences, especially in our relationship with God. We’ve been looking at Jesus’ parable about an unmerciful servant. He owed his king an astronomical debt of 100 million denarii, but the king was merciful and forgave the full amount. The twist in Jesus’ story comes when the forgiven man encountered a fellow servant who owed him just 100 denarii but refused to show him the same mercy.When word reached the king he was furious. “You wicked servant!” he blasted, “I forgave you all of your debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” The king rescinded his mercy and threw the man in jail. Jesus concluded with a sober warning: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” The parable is a challenge to our compartmentalized view of faith. We have been shaped by a culture of hyper-individualism that emphasizes my “personal relationship with God,” and we often see this relationship as hermetically sealed off from all others. Faith is something we engage in privately, and we assume receiving God’s forgiveness is independent from every other relationship we have. This is why a seemingly devout Christian can justify mistreating his employees, show indifference toward a suffering group he does not identify with, or support policies that exploit the poor. He assumes these parts of his life exist in distinct, isolated spheres. Jesus, however, repeatedly emphasizes the inexorable link between our relationship with God and our relationship with others. They form a single, spiritual ecosystem in which forgiveness in one place will ripple through the entire web to affect every other part. Likewise, our refusal to show mercy toward others will impact God’s mercy, or lack of it, toward us. The story is a warning to those who would claim a life with God, but persist in cultivating anger, bitterness, and hatred toward others. As Jesus said, “The measure you use for others will be measured back to you” (Luke 6:38).DAILY SCRIPTUREMATTHEW 18:21-35 GALATIANS 6:7-10 MATTHEW 6:14-15WEEKLY PRAYERFrom John Baillie (1886 – 1960)God, let me put right before interest, Let me put others before self, Let me put the things of the spirit before the things of the body. Let me put the attainment of noble ends above the enjoyment of present pleasures. Let me put principle above reputation. Let me put you before all else. Amen.

As you breathe out, say “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” 
—St. Symeon the New Theologian 

James Finley describes the boundless nature of God’s mercy:  

What does it mean to ask Jesus Christ to have mercy on me? It’s to ask God to have mercy on me in the waywardness of my ways. I know by my own actions that I’m not true to the person I really am called to be. I know this in my weakness, so I ask Christ to have mercy on me. At the very heart of this prayer is the heart of Jesus because God is love, and when love touches suffering, the suffering turns love into mercy. Jesus is like a field of boundless mercy…. There’s an infinite love within us that we can in no way whatsoever increase—because it’s infinite. God is infinitely in love with us. But just as we can’t increase it, we can’t threaten it either. We’re an infinitely loved, broken person. In acceptance of the brokenness, the infinity of the love that shines through the brokenness gets brighter and brighter.  

There’s a moral imperative to do our best not to continue with things that are hurtful to ourselves and others. You have your list, and I have mine. That’s important. But grounded in us is in an inner peace that is not dependent on the ability to overcome the hurtful thing. St. Paul had a thorn in the flesh and asked God to remove it, but God said, “Leave it there” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). The thorn is the teacher, the place where it isn’t looking good, if this is all up to you. But it’s not up to you. It’s up to God giving Godself to you as infinitely lovable in your brokenness and incompleteness. This is experiential salvation. [1] 

CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault illustrates God’s ever-present mercy:  

The story comes to mind of the little fish swimming up to its mother, all in a panic: “Mama, Mama, what’s water? I gotta find water or I’ll die!” We live immersed in this water, and the reason we miss it is not that it is so far away but, paradoxically, so close: more intimate to us than our being itself.…  

[Mercy] is the water in which we swim. Mercy is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God—and the light by which we know it.…  

The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional—always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being. Just like that little fish swimming desperately in search of water, we, too—in the words of Psalm 103—“swim in mercy as in an endless sea.” Mercy is God’s innermost being turned outward to sustain the visible and created world in unbreakable love. [2]

The Magnitude of our Debt

In response to Peter’s question about forgiveness, Jesus told another parable. The story is about a king settling his accounts with his servants. The scenario would have been familiar to Jesus’ first-century audience. Kings collected taxes from their subjects by hiring financial ministers or governors to manage the process on his behalf, who in turn hired tax collectors in towns and villages. These roles were very lucrative because only a portion of the funds collected was paid up the chain of command, and those at each level pocketed some of the revenue for themselves. Therefore, the more tax collectors you brought under your supervision, the more revenue you could take for yourself. It was the ancient world’s version of a multilevel marketing scheme. One of the king’s tax collectors in Jesus’ story owed an astronomical amount of money—ten thousand talents. For some perspective, a first-century historian reported that the entire tax debt of Galilee, Judea, and Samaria was 600 talents, but in Jesus’ story this one man owed 10,000. A talent equaled 10,000 denarii, and one denarius was the normal pay for a single day’s work. Therefore, the servant’s debt of 100 million denarii would have required about 300,000 years to repay. Clearly, Jesus was using hyperbole to make a point. Being unable to repay the debt, the king ordered the man, his wife, and his children to be sold as slaves, and all of his property liquidated. The servant, however, fell on his knees before the king and begged for more time to repay what he owed. This would have provoked laughter from Jesus’ audience. They knew the man’s request was ridiculous. No amount of time would ever be enough to repay 10,000 talents.Jesus’ parable was intended to show the inescapable magnitude of our sin before God; the utter hopelessness of our position. There is nothing we could possibly do to free ourselves from its grasp, and those who think they can rescue themselves from sin are as ridiculous and delusional as the servant in the story. The parable should also make us question religious traditions that say the debt of my sin may be paid back with prayers, good works, meritorious rituals, or time spent in some kind of purgatory. Such traditions simply do not recognize the true nature of sin and the depth of our depravity. They diminish the magnitude of our debt in order to make salvation seem humanly achievable. The unintended side effect, however, is that these traditions also diminish the magnitude of God’s mercy.Until we grasp the depth of our sin we will never recognize the true scale of God’s kindness. In the story, the king is filled with compassion for his servant, and rather than merely granting him more time to repay what he owed—a pointless gesture anyway—the king canceled his debt entirely. The emphasis is upon the king’s mercy, not the servant’s effort to repay his debt. Likewise, in the cosmic economy of God’s kingdom, we are powerless to repay our debts, but thanks be to God that he is compassionate to everyone who confesses their sins and cries out for mercy. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 18:21-35 MICAH 7:18-19 COLOSSIANS 3:12-13 WEEKLY PRAYER From Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) Lord, we pray this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world. Look with mercy upon this generation of your children so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions. We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they may resist oppression with courage. We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue, or rest content to have our ease at the price of other men’s sorrow and tribulation.We pray for all who have some vision of your will, despite the confusions and betrayals of human sin, that they may humbly and resolutely plan for and fashion the foundations of a just peace between men, even while they seek to preserve what is fair and just among us against the threat of malignant powers.Amen.