Lent

Jan 24 2025

Scripture Study for

After their deliverance from Egypt, the work of forming Israel into God’s people continues. Although they have seen God’s power to save, they have not experienced God’s ability to provide. Until they come to trust that their God is capable of meeting all of their needs, they will not be able to be faithful to the covenant relationship. The cry for water, revealing doubts that God is “in their midst,” is thus a “test” of God’s trustworthiness. God’s quick provision is intended not only to provide life-giving water, but also to inspire trust in the God with whom they will shortly enter into covenant relationship.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that, whereas sin alienates us from God, faith in Christ brings about peace with God. More than this, Christ makes it possible to share in the divine life, which gives hope of future glory. This hope is firm because the believer already experiences the “love of God,” which can mean God’s love for the believer, the believer’s love of God, or both. In the first case, the Spirit and the life of grace are from God, a gift of love and a firm promise for the future. In the second case, the believer is able to love God through the transforming power of grace.

Today’s Johannine reading dramatizes a central theme found in the Prologue. Just as the Word was in the world but the world did not know or accept him (1:10–11), so at first the woman resists Jesus, “knowing” only that he is a Jew, estranged from Samaritans. But Jesus persists, declaring that if she really knew who he was she would have asked for “living water” from him, a metaphor for divine life and grace (“to those who did accept him, he gave power to become children of God” [1:12]). Eventually the woman comes to believe that he might “possibly be the Christ.” As a result of her testimony, others encounter Jesus and come to “know that he is truly the savior of the world.”

Jan 24 2025

That First Commandment? God Is Serious!

Do you remember your most embarrassing moment? The time you tripped and fell onstage during a play? How about the day you threw up in biology class?

Psychologists say that negative memory weighs heavily. Your great-aunt can say all kinds of nice things about you, but you still remember the day fifteen years ago when she said something critical. If you have/had loving and patient parents, you still probably remember the few times they absolutely blew up. If they were the enraged-all-the-time types, you probably wouldn’t remember that at all, for it was the norm.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus gets mad. Really mad. Turning over the tables in the temple must not have been his norm: all four Gospels have an account of Jesus driving out the money-changers. Years later, when his actions and his words were being recorded, they remembered this moment of fury and every one of them wrote it down. Jesus wanted better: “This is my Father’s house,” he cried. “Make it right!”

Could Jesus be both sinless and angry?

If we see someone mistreating a child, we get really hot inside. We want better. If we are treated as an object—as nothing, as worthless—fire burns within us. We want better. Moral theologians tell us that emotions carry no sin in and of themselves. What we do with our emotions—that is our moral responsibility. Injustice should make us angry. Indignation must move us to action.

Jesus wanted better. My mom once said to me, “God takes the first commandment very seriously.” When the Lord gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, he said, “You shall have no other gods besides me.” And meant it.

Consider/Discuss

When have you been angry about something that was not right? What did you do about it? Did you wish later that you had done something differently? How can we allow the Holy Spirit to direct our anger so that we do and/or say the right things, even in a moment of fury?
Jesus wanted his Father’s house to be a place of prayer, not a stinking location of commerce. How do we safeguard reverence for places of worship? How do we safeguard reverence for the people who frequent those places of worship? How do the two sometimes conflict?

Living and Praying with the Word

Here in the middle of Lent, Jesus, you again plead to make things right. You want this world to be just. You yourself experienced deep emotion. You know human nature by sharing in it. So you know that feelings can throw us off. You know what passion can do— positively and negatively. Help us to sort through all of that so that we do the right thing in each circumstance.

Jan 24 2025

Scripture Study for

The Ten Commandments summarize God’s expectations of Israel, partner in the covenant. By delivering Israel from bondage and bringing them into this relationship, God is forming a people who will be a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), set apart and shaped by God to manifest God’s character to the other nations. The commandments are a template, as it were, of the minimum standards by which Israel should conduct itself as a people and as individuals in order to be a holy nation that “looks like” God. This is, in fact, why God has created Israel in the first place—to be a “kingdom of priests” (19:6) to mediate God’s holiness and righteousness to the rest of the world.

As it is today, it was common in the ancient world for “thought leaders” to attract followers. The tendency to follow the most eloquent speaker has led to divisions in the Corinthian church. Thus Paul contrasts human wisdom, thought to be manifest in the persuasive speakers, with divine wisdom, which is found in the cross of Christ. Of course, the world does not see any wisdom in the cross, an instrument of torture and death for criminals, and it is thus a stumbling block for accepting the full gospel. Paul will struggle to get his audience to understand that what God has done in Christ cannot be understood or evaluated according to the “wisdom” of the broken social order. Nor can it be modified or diluted to make it palatable to the larger society.

A theme in the Gospel of John is that in Christ, the glory of God is in the world: The “Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (1:14). The Greek reads “pitched his tent among us,” a reference to the ancient tabernacle, which was filled with the glory (the presence) of God (Exodus 40:35). The scene this week picks up this theme by portraying Jesus as the new temple who, though destroyed by humans, will be raised again by God. It is this glory manifest in Jesus that allows him to perform the various signs that draw people to him. At the same time, Jesus is fully aware that human hearts are fickle and that even the divine glory can be rejected by “human nature” in its present state.

Jan 24 2025

Transformed by the Brilliance of God

I was shoveling the driveway. It was negative two degrees. The snow was deep. The sky was blue. The late February sun was strong. Sparkles of brilliant white glistened in the snow where the sun shone upon it. It was cold. It was very bright. I felt my eyes flooded with light.

As I tossed that white stuff onto the snowbank, I thought about the Transfiguration: Jesus bathed in light with a face shining like the sun, his clothes dazzlingly white. Maybe it was the brilliance of the snow or the brightness of the sun; maybe it was the contrast with so many drab and dreary months of winter gray; I don’t know which it was, but that image of “dazzling” grabbed hold of me. Dazzling—

God is dazzling!

I wonder, what did it feel like for Peter and James and John to be so dazzled by Jesus at the Transfiguration that Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all of the synoptic Gospels—tell this story?

What does it feel like to be dazzled? Other than snow in the sunshine, what kinds of dazzling brightness do we experience? I think of the shimmer of sunshine dancing on water . . . a mountaintop glowing with the pink and gold of a sunset . . . the twinkle of dew sparkling on spider webs in the morning sun. Moments of beauty flash into my mind. Tastes of God’s radiance shine through the created world.

The light of God enfolds us with the warmth of being beloved. As Isaac was beloved, as Jesus was the Beloved, so we too are beloved. To be beloved is dazzling. Radiant brilliance seeps into us.

Consider/Discuss

How about you? Have you seen the snow sparkle, the sun shine on the water, or the gold of the sunset? If not while shoveling snow, when and where have you been dazzled by light . . . astounded . . . awed . . . ?
If we want to experience God, how do we do that? This Lent, center yourself in the Holy Spirit and take little sips of belovedness. Ponder the dazzling brightness of God. For ten seconds, let your ribcage swell with the joy of Jesus; for twenty seconds, savor a child-like wonder; for thirty seconds, glory in the created world that you see in front of you. You are wanted, cherished, cared for: that is belovedness. That is prayer. In small sips, dwell, abide, and remain in the dazzling light of God.

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, there is much that we don’t know about your transfiguration. Maybe you were always dazzling when you walked on this earth and the Transfiguration was the only time the apostles saw it. As children of light, we are surrounded by an ocean of your divine light. Wherever we are, wherever we go, the Holy Spirit seeks to reveal beauty and goodness and dazzling Presence to us. You know our blindness. Show us your reality, Lord, and let us not shy away from being dazzled by you.

Jan 24 2025

Scripture Study for

The relationship between Abraham and God begins with the promise of descendants. The son born of the barren Sarah is apparent proof of God’s trustworthiness. Now the order to sacrifice that son puts Abraham in a seemingly impossible position. If he disobeys God, the relationship is over. If he obeys, he puts to death the sign of God’s trustworthiness, which would also effectively kill the relationship. Abraham is famously stoic in this scene, and we have no idea what he is thinking, but his actions imply an incomprehensible trust in God in the face of this dilemma. Concentrating on the ethically problematic aspects of the story might lead one to miss what most ancient readers were able to appreciate, which is the profound trust, not just obedience, that Abraham manifests by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

The second reading also treats of the sacrifice of a son. Paul has been assuring his Roman audience that they are destined for glory as God’s adopted children in Christ (8:14–22). In fact, God’s benevolent providence is such that everything can be used to bring about this divine end; God’s purpose will not be thwarted (8:28). Because of this, there is nothing to fear. Paul drives this point home with the example of Jesus. The God who went to such great lengths for us as to allow the only-begotten Son to be sacrificed will surely not abandon us; the death of Christ is a sure sign of God’s good intentions for those who love. Only those who refuse to accept their inheritance can fail to receive it.

The transfiguration of Jesus takes place six days after he announced to his disciples that “the Son of Man must suffer greatly . . . and be killed and rise after three days” (8:31). The experience on the mountain thus points to the future by displaying the glory that Jesus already possesses as God’s Son. Although Jesus must suffer and die, his glorification is assured. Moses and Elijah, both of whom received a revelation of divine glory on a “high mountain” (Exodus 34:5–9; 1 Kings 19:11–13), represent the law and the prophets, both of which have prepared the way for the Messiah. The identity and mission of Christ are confirmed by both God and the Scriptures.