Wednesday, July 22, 2027
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God, who do you love?
Mary Magdalene went and announced (shouted breathlessly with great joy): “I HAVE SEEN THE LORD!”
So Lord, we’ve piled the pictures high of Mary’s worship, Mary’s untamed shouts and sobs of joy, and of the disciples’ uncertainty, of their skepticism, of their disbelief, of their incompleted grief. Surely they didn’t already forget what Jesus told them …
Chill out boys, before three days have past I will rise again. I have to go to Jerusalem, where I’ll be killed and then raised back to life three days later. (Day doesn’t mean years, but it could mean “any part of a day.” At least according to Wes Huff talking with Joe Rogan.)
And just listen to this: marveling at the beautiful temple built by King Saul: “If you destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days.”
So my words for or against the timing or historical certainty of Jesus’ returning to life are kind of beside the point. As Richard Rohr, Nikos Kazantzakis  and many others have pointed out, Jesus came to get us BEYOND WORDS. Of course when we use words to debunk words, we run smack into one of the classic paradoxes. But I don’t want to run from that – just acknowledge the reality of BABEL, that tower of incomprehension reaching toward the sky, built by people anxious to either be like God or at least “understand” him.
But I want to remember that in this context, talking with the Lord and listening to him talk with me is what I get up in the morning for.
Yes. That’s true, David. And when you get caught up in your mind, as you do EVERY morning lying in that bed when your thoughts pound your mental pavement over and over and over, I am waiting, more or less patiently, until out of your silence you remember me! You get up and talk to me. You know the drill: Everything is just as it should be. And then, you can improve it.
My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
My flesh pines and my soul thirsts for you. I am like the earth parched, lifeless, and without water.
Ron Rolheiser, as his own particular cancer returns, finally finished his third in a trilogy of books about young life, midlife, and later life. Always he has returned to Goethe’s desperate and hope-filled phrase, INSANE FOR THE LIGHT.
John of the Cross, using slightly different language, described three phases of life in which we 1) struggle to get our lives together, then 2) struggle to give our lives away, and 3) struggle to give our deaths away, as a gift to others.
Rolheiser, one of Margaret’s and my favorite retreat masters, shares the Goethe poem one more time, creatively translated by Minnesota farmboy poet Robert Bly,
Tell a wise person or else … keep silent because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive, what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love nights,
      Where you were begotten and where you have begotten
      A strange feeling comes over you when see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness and a desire
      For higher love-making sweeps you upward.
      Distance does not make you falter. And
Now, arriving in magic flying and finally
      Insane for the light … you are the butterfly … and you are gone.
And so long as you have not experienced this: to die and so to grow
      You are only a troubled guest
                  On the dark earth.
Say yes, young man. Keep walking through the doors until one is slammed in your face. Then give it a push. Not a tentative hint of a push, but a real God-power-behind-it PUSH.
Who knows better than Jesus and his friend Mary Magdalene how God’s power gathers you, makes your muscles taut, ready to beat down temptation toward success and life in the bright lights?
Well, let’s ask Jesus what he thinks.
David, let me ask you back. When have you NOT been anxious for success, and about finishing the race, and about flying around in that particular light, the beautiful David butterfly, thinking “Look at me! Don’t you love me?”
And yet everything is as it should be. All manner of things are well. Be still. I will be satisfied with your presence.
And then ask for more.
Jaws of this paradox are not meant to crush us, just squeeze away enough ego for us to really welcome the child. In TA (transactional analysis), we are always both punitive parents and nurturing parents. And we are always both frightened, parent-pleasing children, and natural, free, playful children. Managing these internal relationships is up to our Adult. Helping us recognize the trap of either-or-ing is also up to our Adult.
That adult is ME, David. Your freedom to love in the face of certain death is always there. Because everything is as it should be. And …
Yeah, Lord, I’m learning again and again, for 76 years, that I can always improve it. What is my freedom? The gift you give every born on earth child?
To see how to learn and let myself swarm insanely for the light. Insane because I know when I get there I’ll … poof! Be gone. Salmon pushing upstream to spawn and die. Push against the current and the darkness anyway. In spite of what I “know.”
In my bedroom, new turquoise room darkening drapes part in the afternoon to unveil bright 140 degree Texas sunlight. I want to take a nap now. And then as evening comes, I might open them and just stand there soaking in the sun.
Mary, she pushed every envelope and there I was. She found me, David. Keep on pushing. The skin of the caterpillar is breaking, breaking, breaking! What you will become is always about to be.
Everything is always at every moment as it should be.
So … with that strength … PUSH, and see what I have for you in the kingdom of God. Aren’t you ABSOLUTELY ready to die?
I told a few in truth: YOU ARE NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF GOD. And that, on this day and every day, is what I say to YOU.
My child Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached hundreds of sermons in the twelfth century on the Song of Songs, struggled to understand how to respond to my love. Here’s what he said, nine hundred years ago:
- You must learn to love yourself.
- Out of that love, you love ME because you expect me to give you what you want.
- Then in spite of yourself, you discover the greatest gift is to stop with the list of needs and just notice ME, in the glory of my kingdom.
- And at last, you lose yourself in me. Boundaries no longer have any power, and you and I are one.
There is a consequence. T.S. Eliot wrote, fearful, confident, certain: The fire and the rose are one.
Shadrach, said to the king, WE KNOW GOD WILL RESCUE US. BUT EVEN IF HE DOES NOT!
Will I burn to death when I step into the fire?
You don’t need to know, David. Everything is as it should be.
(Song of Songs 3, 2 Corinthians 5, Psalm 63, John 20)
#
