Holy Poultry

Read Luke 13:31-35.

"How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (Luke 13:34)

A chicken? Really?

I imagine that if I asked someone to liken God to a bird and what kind of bird that would be, they might say a dove as the Holy Spirit comes to us, or an eagle so that we may be born or their wings. I could imagine the plume of a peacock or the majesty of a swam before I would think: Jesus is like a chicken. Surely there are other birds, beautiful or unusual, that instinctively shelter their young when a cunning predator threatens their safety. No?

We had chickens when I was a kid, seven hens that came with the farm my parents rented. They poisoned me when I was three with salmonella and pecked at my hands when I reached for their eggs. But they also constitute some of my earliest memories. They may not be such exotic animals, but they were part of my landscape. Right alongside memories of my sister crawling and some stray kittens we found in box alongside the road are the chickens strutting around the driveway. Chickens must have been common too to the townspeople where Jesus proclaimed, healed, and loved. He must have known that if he compared the way he loved people to a mother hen and her brood, they would have known exactly what he was talking about. And so there are times when we hear in the Bible of the unbounded, frightening, blinding glory of God. And then there are other times when Jesus' power is earthy and everyday and woven seamlessly into our world.

Reflection

Begin a list like this: Jesus' love is like... and what kinds of things can you imagine? Be concrete. Email me your list if you don't want to post it here.

Prayer

We give thanks, God, for the beauty of the land and people in which you have raised us up as your children. Clear our vision that we may witness you in the small and ordinary places of our daily lives. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen

What We Already Know

Read Philippians 3:17-4.

"Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things" (Phil. 3:19)

My favorite passage in the Bible comes when Moses exhorts his people to choose life. They are some of his last words before he dies, his last words before they cross the river Jordan into Canaan. He tells them, "I call upon heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him..." (Deut. 30:19-20). I love this passage because it cuts right to heart of the matter. There are essentially two ways of being: the way of life and the way of death. Since the moment we step foot from the Garden of Eden, God has been inviting us, sometimes gently, other times harshly, to choose life.

In Philippians, Paul makes the same sort of argument. He tells the people: there are two ways, that of destruction and shame and that of the cross and transformation. He tells this community, they know who the enemies are. It's no secret what kinds of habits or thinking come between us and our Creator.

This is true of us as well. Our instinctual selves know how to walk in the Way of Christ. And even in the complications and demands of daily living, we know what things pull us away from God. Come on, Paul says, you know. The Bible is always inviting us to get honest with ourselves and reject these enemies. It's a big risk getting honest because it means for every single one of us, something will change. But Paul is clear about something else too: although you may suffer for it, stand firm, for Christ will transform you.

Reflection

• What do you need to be honest about in your relationship to God?
• What could God transform in your life right now?

Prayer

God of life, remind us again that the choices are few. Give us the strength to walk in the Way of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen

What does God look like?

Read Psalm 27 again.

"Your face, Lord, do I seek."

I would imagine I'm not the first parent out there whose pre-k child wants to know what God looks like. Lately, my daughter has been asking the question at a higher frequency. I don't have a fixed answer to give her. Maybe I should. But how on earth do I answer that question anyway? And so I tell her something inadequate each time she inquires. Sometimes I say that it's a mystery and God is hiding. She wants to know where of course. I just say, "I don't know. Maybe you know." Sometimes I'll tell her that God looks like lots of things, like people we love or people who need us to help them, or like the deep ocean or the night sky. Or sometimes I'll say that God looks like Jesus and we don't know exactly how he looked but that Jesus was a human being once. (I was surprised actually at how satisfied she seemed with this explanation.) But then she'll ask me again the next night and I'll give up and say, "What do you think God looks like?" She is no fool and in a battle of wills over unanswered questions, I always lose. So we end up back where we started. "It's a mystery. I don't know really."

Only later do I remember that God is alive in her -- God pestering me at my dinner table at night with this insistent question. If that's true then maybe the question keeps coming up because God wants something from me. So I tried something different last night. I said, "Why don't we ask God." She said of course, "You do it." She always gives this order when she's suddenly shy. So I tell her, "Okay." And I close my eyes and sit silently across the table from her. Suddenly, this seems right; this seems like the answer I've been searching for. Just ask God. So I keep sitting, savoring the silence. After some long moments, she leans toward me and whispers, "What's God saying?" There's just no winning sometimes.

Reflection

• Has a child ever asked you this question? What did you say?
• Did you ever ask this question of a parent or teacher or someone you trusted? What did they say?
• Do you still ask this question?

Prayer

We seek your face, God. We seek it in the people we love and the strangers we meet. Help us seek it too in the people from whom we turn: our suffering neighbors, our difficult relations, even our enemies. These things we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen

Psalm Consolation

Read Psalm 27.

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"

I was surprised this year when I sat down to read the scriptures appointed for Lent this season. Why surprised? Like we all do, I think of these forty days as a time of penitence, of difficult undertakings and of setting ones face to Jerusalem. And yet...the actual scriptures work so hard to console us. Instead of being hit over the head with our shortcomings, the Word calls to us with consolation and protection (Psalm 91 in Week One). It assures us that we might know "the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13). Lent is a time of renewal: renewed trust in the promises of God (Psalm 63 in Week Three). In the final days before Passion Sunday, we hear of the a harvest of joy (Psalm 126 in Week Five). How hard God seeks to tend to our hearts in this season of honest accounting and repentence. How hard God works to feed us in our vulnerability and hunger in the spiritual desert of temptation.

Reflection

• Lent is a time for disciplined focus on God. How does God stregthen and console you?
• Which words of this week's psalm do you seem to need the most?

Prayer

God of light and love and consolation, you turn us to you. Help us to turn in love and forgiveness to one another. Amen

Okay, there's a little exegesis in this one...

Reread Genesis 15:1-18.

"When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces." (Genesis 15:17)

Slaughtered livestock and a vision of a smoking fire pot and flaming torch? This is one of those passages when I ask myself, "Just what is going on here!?!" It's one of those biblical moments when I feel the thousands of years between Abraham and myself. The world of Genesis sometimes feels so utterly remote, veiled really, by time and culture. So a little research...I discovered that this ritual of laying out the sacrifices and the walking between the halves was a Near Eastern oath ceremony. Abram (before he was renamed as Abraham) would have understood this command as a sign that God would keep his promise of fruitfulness in both land in children. God and Abram would be bound to one another in a covenantal relationship.

And yet, Abram does not pass between the animals. Only God does -- God as the smoking fire pot and the flaming torch. Does this mean that Abram receives the covenant without condition, that God carries the weight of its fulfillment? (see citation below)

What does this mean for us as 21st century Christians? I think it means a good deal in how we might understand God's grace as a freely offered and unconditional gift. I also think it means rituals are crucial to our life of faith. Rituals, our sacraments, are places where God reminds us of covenantal promises: fruitfulness, deliverance, and freedom.

Reflection

In what ways to you feel obligated to God? What would happen if you didn't meet those obligations?
How do church rituals sustain you?

Prayer

God who delivered us from oppression, continue to renew your covenant with us on this journey of Lent. Sharpen our ancestral memory that we might recall your bond to us. Amen

(The above citation is from the following: Deffinbaugh, Bob. "The focal point of Abraham's faith." Bible.org. 18 February 2010. Web. 2 February 2009.

Spiritual Nomad

Read Genesis 15:1-18.

"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying 'To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates..." (Genesis 15:18)

"Imagine," my friend says handing me a section of grapefruit, "Not far from here, Abraham was wandering around talking to God." We are seated on a bench at the edge of town overlooking the vast space of Negev desert below us. Behind us are paved streets lined with modest homes and flowering shrubs. The town does not peter out as it might here on the central coast where town centers give way to housing developments which give way to ranches then mountain cabins. In Arad, the paved streets of civilization end and the wilderness of the desert begins. The contrast in stunning. And so we sit on our neighborhood bench staring into Canaan.

The desert in Israel is different than the deserts here in the Southwest. They seem so much more emptier to me: no cacti or lush desert blooms, or tenacious animal dwellers. Without leaf rustle, the wind has only its own self to gust against and so sounds like the flapping of laundry on the line. And so for the desert wanderer, the smallest sign of life like bird wings or shepherd's steps come sharp to the ear. My friend and I wondered how loud God's voice might have been to our ancestor, our father, Abraham. Abraham, nomad who in solitude carved our covenental path. In Lent, we travel the desert of our interior, stripping bare the noise of world to hear again the promise of deliverance and abundance.

Reflect

• How do you observe the Lenten journey?


• What kind of wilderness or land has been meaningful in your own faith life?

Prayer

God of our fathers and mothers before us, from the beginning you have rooted faithful nomads in your love and grace. We remember in this season that we too are rooted in your freedom in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and our companion. Amen