“Like all those wacky, loveable sinners in the Bible, we are also confused and hurt and looking for a way out of the mechanized violence of the world and into the light of Christ’s Kingdom.”
“Love one another as I have loved you,” he said. So, I am left to wonder how I might be a friend to the one who has betrayed me, how will I love even her? So far, I am not doing too well, but I am trying.
“We all need time to prepare, to get ready for the next festival.”
I will be waiting and listening in the wind and looking out across the desert, wherever I go, I’ll be waiting. I’ll keep my ears open. I am waiting to hear her say, “You’re not going to believe this…”
“There are a million different ways to be found by God and adopted into God’s family, but becoming an heir takes a lifetime!”
We want to hold on, don’t we? We want our loved ones to remain present and in their bodies because we don’t want our lives changed, now or ever. Not like that. There is attachment to the way things are. But, when Jesus was on his way to whatever is next, he said, “Let me go.”
Listen to the announcements God is making to you this week. Be encouraged in the tenderness of a friend, or the naked vulnerability of a brave spring daffodil. These are announcements about the kind of kingdom that will come when at last Jesus’s prayer is answered:
Honestly, I do think that surviving this world with your soul intact is the most heroic thing we can do. When you embark on that journey, though, all the forces of darkness will try to crush you
Most recently our own Episcopal bishops announced that they, too, are aware of this situation and they have so graciously carved out nearly two whole hours during dinnertime to listen to the stories of women who feel they have been abused. Two hours. Perhaps the mascot for GC 2018 should be a biting serpent. They are treating women the same way the Israelites treated Miriam.
Part of Jesus’s message that we should follow him is to allow the spirit of God to rest on us too. That is why whenever two or more of us get together the spirit of God is there with us. No sacrifice needed, no priest or bishop, and no temple either. Really, all that can go away.