Dr. Karla J. Bellinger

Dec 10 2024

Resurrection, in Spite of Us

Easter comes once a year. Yet in April of 2020, it didn’t seem to come at all. We were locked down from the COVID-19 pandemic; many, many were dying, dying alone. There were no liturgies at which to gather, no trumpeted alleluias, no family feast at the dining room table. I had been sick for weeks. My lungs still burned. I ate dry toast and watched Mass on my phone by myself at the kitchen table. It was an Easter morning of emptiness.

Mary of Magdala felt even more empty. She had a hollow cave in her heart that morning as she trudged toward the tomb. When she got there, the body was gone. “They” had taken the Lord, stolen the corpse of Jesus. The tomb was empty. Hollow. Gone.

When the Beloved Disciple entered the tomb, he saw that emptiness differently. What did he see that stirred him to rejoice? What made his chest to swell with confidence? We don’t know. But faith bubbled up within him. He saw. He believed. He rejoiced. In spite of the apparently hollow circumstances, God gave him this inner conviction: Jesus had risen from the tomb. Jesus was raised to new life. He knew!

I went out to my garden on that desolate Easter morning. The sun was shining. The air was warm. The birds were singing. The richness of spring was rising from the emptiness of winter. No matter how I felt inside, new life was swirling around me. My personal abyss was like a tiny island within a vast ocean of abundance. Resurrection was happening, going on in spite of me. The heavens still sang with alleluias—“Jesus is risen!” The angels still answered with joy, “He is risen indeed!”

What is happening with you on this day in 2022? No matter what, happy Easter!

Consider/Discuss

Human experience can feed faith—we can be lifted along by beautiful liturgy and the camaraderie of faith-filled friends. But there are other times, somehow, in the midst of desolation or pain or emptiness, that faith bubbles up anyway. We are flooded with belief. How does that happen? We don’t know. It’s a mystery. That inner certainty is a gift. Have you tasted it, even a tiny taste? What is it like to experience that inner assurance of faith as a gift from God?
Human life is full of big and small crucifixion moments. Human life is full of big and small resurrection moments. The glory of the Paschal Mystery is that there is One who transforms that darkness into light, that sorrow into joy, that hopelessness into hope. By the grace of God, we keep on making it through. Easter doesn’t just come once a year after all—Easter alleluias swirl round us all the time, for Jesus has entered into our abyss and has lifted it to new life. On this Easter Sunday, for what do you praise God today? Out of what darkness has the Son of Man lifted you to new life?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, the brightness of each new day is surrounded by your glory. The alleluias of your resurrection are deeper and more real than I can ever perceive. Give me your confidence, your blessed assurance, your joy, that even my darkest moments have been redeemed by you. Jesus, you are here; you are risen; you are alive; you are with me. This is the reality that is the firm basis of my life. Even when my earth-bound experience does not feel it, your gift of heaven-sent faith reveals otherwise. Thank you for health. Thank you for friends. Thank you for hope. Thank you for resurrection life. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Dec 10 2024

Jesus “Goes Low”

When I was about five years old, I remember trying to lift my dad’s bowling ball. I put my middle two fingers and my thumb into the holes of the ball and pulled up. It would not budge. My wrist hurt. Then I remembered my dad say, about lifting something that was heavy, “Go low.” So I stretched out my hands to get under the ball in order to lift it. It rolled to the right on the rack. I just missed smashing my little finger. I was small. The ball was heavy.

As I read today’s story of Jesus’ passion and death, it weighs heavily, like a bowling ball in my heart. What more can be said? Jesus died. Words feel too light, more like tossing around a ping-pong ball.

At the meal, the disciples are bouncing about as they argue about who will be the greatest. They are buoyant: they still see palm branches—Jesus is famous—we are important! They do not get the weight of what Jesus is saying. His words do not fit with their ebullience. The Son of Man must suffer in order to redeem the world. What is he talking about?

Jesus knows. It weighs on him in the garden. He allows himself to be humbled as much as a human being possibly can be humbled: shamed by a flogging; hung on a cross with the despicables outside the city walls. He is left to die, a nobody. Nowhere. Not important.

On the cross, Jesus “goes low.”

He stretches out his arms to get underneath the ball of the world, in order to lift it, to set it free. He redeems it all, no matter how sordid, no matter how heavy, no scrap left out. The weight is heavy. The weight is lifted.

Consider/Discuss

You and I, we are too small to lift the weight of the pain and suffering, the injustices and hardness of heart of the human race. We need a Savior. Holy Week is a good time to ponder the weight that Jesus carried. We will move liturgically through each moment of Jesus’ humiliation. Can you feel as he felt, pray as he prayed, move as he moved? What is it like to go that low?
How do we carry the weight of our own lives? Sages of the ages tell us that we can suffer selfishly—rebel and complain—and thus shift our own burdens to others. Or we can “go low,” bearing with our suffering as Jesus did, so that the burden may be easier for others. What does it mean, on a daily basis, to share in the sufferings of Christ, to be like him in bearing one another’s burdens?

Living and Praying with the Word

Jesus, this feels like foolishness. Emptying yourself, taking the form of a slave, becoming obedient to the point of death—how does that work? Why did you do that? If you were God, you could have come down from that cross and smashed the lights out of all of those politicians who maneuvered you toward death. Yet you didn’t.

We are small; we don’t really get it. We still frolic about as though this core of Christianity, this Paschal Mystery that “you died because you love us,” was a light little plaything: something that we have heard before, something that we just say, something that we take for granted. Deepen our understanding of what it means to walk the way of the cross, so that when we come to Easter, we see how much you have lifted for us. You died because you love us. Show us this week, Lord, what that really means.

Dec 10 2024

Circling for the Kill

I drove past an intersection where a group of crows were picking at a carcass on the road. It reminded me of the scribes and Pharisees, hovering around the woman caught in adultery. She was dead meat to them, bait, used to test Jesus.

Who was she? What was her life like, such that she was willing to risk death by seeking comfort in another man’s bed? We don’t know. Jesus didn’t fall for the test. We don’t know what he wrote in the sand, but somehow he reframed the story. How? Maybe a clue comes in how often this reading uses the word “one.”

Jesus singled the “crows” out, one by one, and challenged them: Who will be the first to throw a stone? You? Or you? Or you? One by one, they went away, beginning with the eldest.

Jesus didn’t treat the woman as carrion—he saw her. He straightened from the ground. He looked her in the eye and asked, “Has no one condemned you?” “No one,” she said.

Judgment changes when it sees “the one.” Jesus shifted the condemnation of the group to the mercy extended to “the one.”

Have you ever judged someone and then later you heard their whole story? It sets you back with an “Oh” and an “Oops.” Accurate understanding is the first step in right judgment. This is the key to God’s mercy—God knows our story, inside and out. You and I, we are not a part of a crowd; each of us is “one,” unique in God’s eyes. We matter to God.

This unnamed woman mattered. Jesus scraped her off the road and brought her back to life, to set her on a new path. He delivered her from death.

Perhaps she then began to sing, “The Lord has done great things for me—I am filled with joy!”

Consider/Discuss

Have you ever wondered about the youngest “crow,” the Pharisee who left last? Did he consider himself righteous and without sin? Did he walk away still hefting a rock in his left hand? As we move toward Holy Week, what are you and I not seeing? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you where your heart is still hardened. Is there one for whom you still hold a rock in your hand? How could you retell that person’s story as “one” whom Jesus loves? And then forgive, in this week before Easter?
Two thousand years later, there are people who are still dismissed as dead meat. Why is there hardness of heart in cultures, in families, in governments, and in places of employment? What can you and I do to help the unseen be seen, to foster justice, to help the “whole story” to be told?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, you know each of our stories. You know our whole story. Help us to see that each person we meet is your unique “one.” A baby born in a refugee camp in Syria is precious in your eyes. A starving girl in South Sudan is “one” to you. A heroin addict living in a doorway in downtown Detroit is irreplaceable in your vision. You call us to become like you; we are never done learning to see as you see. Show us how to be “one” who can help.

Dec 10 2024

The Impatient, Running Father

History has called me “the prodigal son.” But you have never heard my story. Jesus knew. He lived next door in Nazareth. The arrogance of the Pharisees may have awakened his memory. I heard him say, “You wash the outside of the cup while the inside stays filthy.” He knew my brother.

What was it like to live with “Mr. Perfect”? All my childhood, he tormented me when nobody was looking. Kicked me around, mocked me, like I was worthless. When Dad came around, he was all pure and innocent and law-abiding.

I couldn’t take it anymore. When I got old enough, I had to go. I had to make my own way. So I left. Can you blame me? It took me eight years to come home. I saw a lot in those years. I grew to be a man. I tried to make it on my own. I got lost so many times. Why did I stay away so long? The problem wasn’t the money. The problem was facing his look of superiority, his loathing that I couldn’t make it. I’d rather die than come crawling back to that.

My father? When I was a teenager, I took him for granted. He was simply there. I was so bottled up about my brother that I just . . . didn’t see him.

One evening, when I pressed on my belly button, I could feel my spine. I was dying of hunger. That night, I dreamed of my father’s eyes, full of tears. He was waiting for me, wanting me to come home.

You know the rest of the story. My brother hasn’t changed. Life is good. I am sorry that he is too bitter to see that. But it doesn’t matter. I still love him.

My father wants me to be close. I want to be near. It is good to be here, home with him.

Consider/Discuss

How do we get so bottled up about the pains of earth that we do not see the compassion that surrounds us, the love of the Father who wants us close?
What’s it like to be the father in this story who wants his sons to be near? How is God like that? How does the prodigal feel to be so welcomed?

Living and Praying with the Word

Father of compassion, only you know the depths of hurt that family can cause. The pains of earthly life can so bottle us up that we cannot see straight. In this story, sometimes we are the one who wandered away. Sometimes we are the one who drove the other away. Sometimes we are a bit of each, all messed up from things that happened long ago.

Forgive us our bitterness, hates and jealousies. Forgive us our deepest faults this Lent, dear God. Help us to forgive those who have hurt us. Yes, we are broken. Yes, we are sinners. You welcome sinners. You run to meet us. No matter what we have done, you want us to be near. In you, we have our home. No other home can satisfy. Hold us close to you, Lord, and never let us go.

Dec 10 2024

The Mercy of Manure

In the story of the burning bush, the great and majestic “I AM” hears the cry of the Israelites in bondage and devises a plan to deliver them. In today’s Gospel, God the Gardener hears the cry of the little fig tree and conceives a plan to rescue it. What do these two stories have in common? God is the One who wants to save. Does it matter whether it is an entire nation or an insignificant little fig tree? No, it doesn’t. God is, by nature, Deliverer, Rescuer, Redeemer.

I have a cherry tree that I’d like to rescue. It has a split in the bark that seems to be stunting its growth. I don’t want it to die. I want it to flourish. Maybe I should spread manure around it? Organic fertilizers seep nutrients into the soil slowly. The roots then can absorb what they need to make the tree grow and (hopefully) bear fruit. Manure is mercy to a sick tree.

God wants us to flourish, too. God doesn’t want us to die. Yet one of the first things that a gardener learns is that there are no guarantees in gardening. Will the manure work? Maybe. Maybe the tree will still perish. (If it dies, I’ll cut it down and replace it with a couple of blackberry bushes.)

There are no guarantees in holy rescuing either. God works to redeem the nation of Israel. They resist. God sends prophets to bring them back. They resist. God sends a Son to rescue us. We resist. The Holy Spirit continually comes to direct us. We resist.

The season of Lent is another of God’s “tries.” But there are no guarantees that what God wants to happen will actually happen. We have the free will to respond or not. Will we allow God’s manure of mercy to seep into us, to rescue us so that we flourish and bear fruit?

Consider/Discuss

There are no guarantees in gardening. There are no guarantees in relationships. There are no guarantees in parenting. There seems to be a continual tension between what we try to make happen and what actually happens. Life’s difficulties cannot be solved like a math or engineering problem that has a definitive answer. Some things cannot be resolved for certain. How do we deal with that? How do we carry on? How do we plunge ahead day by day in a spirit of courage and patience until the surety of heaven finally rescues us?
Sometimes we run into situations in which we may be tempted to think, “I cannot do any more.” As a gardener, I can chop down a dead cherry tree. As a Christian, only God can make that judgment about a human being. Who might we feel like giving up on? What mercy can God extend through us to that person?

Living and Praying with the Word

God, you are the Diligent Gardener, the one who never gives up. You always keep trying. You extend mercy to the most diseased, the most broken, and the most wounded. Sometimes we are tempted to give up. You know the situations and the unresolved tensions that discourage us. We hand those over to you now.

Lord of valor, do not let cowardice overtake us. Fill us with the courage of persistence. keep us going, keep us trying, keep us spreading mercy as you spread mercy. Help us to flourish as fertilizers for on this earth until that day when we meet you in heaven.