Resurrection and the Spirit.

Jesus' victory over death announces a turning point in the history of creation and God's dealings with humanity... The disciples rejoice in his new presence not only for his sake, but also because a new world is dawning for them in which poverty and death have been vanquished. [Brackley, 196]

Is it too early to think about resurrection?

Maybe. But maybe, in our Lenten disciplines, we need to prepare for resurrection as much as we need to prepare for crucifixion.

I recently heard a story about a Christian activist who had lived through some "troubled times" in history. Someone asked him how he kept going, how he kept living such a rich and faithful life in the face of it all. Without hesitation he said simply: "Because I know the end of the story."

Lent is not Easter, to be sure. And yet we might do well to remember that the path to the cross does not end, finally, with death, but with new life.

How might that clarify and deepen our Lenten journey in these final weeks?

I invite you to reflect with me on this question in these next few days.

Guide us, O God, as we move ever closer to the cross - and beyond. Amen.

Resurrection.

Where do we find hope today?

Part 5 invites readers to examine their experience in the light of Christ's victory over death, which signals the beginning of a new world (chapter 21, coming Monday).

Christ rises in those who live as he did; his Spirit in-spires them to liberating action (chapter 22, coming Tuesday).

The same Spirit enables us to find God in all things, working to bring about a new creation. God's self-gift moves us to respond with grateful love and service (chapter 23, coming Wednesday).

- Dean Brackley's introduction to the section titled "Resurrection" - our theme for the final week of our Lenten series

Blessed Are the Persecuted.

Since we are schooled to think that conflict is bad, we tend to avoid or suppress it. But defending what is right always brings conflict. (Brackley, 186)

Today, in lieu of a reflection, I offer simply this translation of the Beatitudes from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. It includes the famous line above and its surrounding verses, but put in a way that makes some sense to me - and, I hope, may be helpful as we consider what it means to be "blessed" and "persecuted" at the same time. It's a worthy thing to think about during this week of high conflict in our national politics.

+++

When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble."

+++

Ever-present God, help us to remember that you're present in the trouble, too. Amen.

The Solidarity of God.

In the section "Passion and Compassion," Dean Brackley writes:

The strongest obstacle to goodness is not brute force or cinder blocks but hearts that are cold and unmoved. Only a love that draws near in costly solidarity can transform that obstacle. The gospel announces that God has drawn near in just this way. (183)

Jesus... chose to suffer the consequences of sin. Like us, he suffered the legacy of sin, even to death. God did not send him to die in our stead as a scapegoat to placate the divine anger. The New Testament recasts traditional sacrificial language and transforms its meaning. When it says that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin, that means that in him God has drawn near and joined humanity's procession, shouldering the consequences of our moral failings like the rest of us. (181)

In Jesus on the cross, divinity shines forth. To say that God was in Jesus on the cross should not so much change our idea of Jesus; it should change our idea of God. (184)

How do you think of Jesus on the cross?

Were you raised, like so many of us, on the idea of atonement, of Jesus paying a demanding God the price of our sins with his life?

How do you think about it now?

Brackley offers us one suggestion above. It's not a new one. But it still shakes me every time I encounter it, whether it's from a liberation theologian or a Holocaust survivor.

Maybe the best way to say more about it is with a story. I invite you today to click on over to a post from my other blog, "Adventures Across the Border." It describes one of the most powerful experiences of my life - and a story that describes, I think, part of what Jesus is doing on the cross.

Beyond that, I leave you with a song today. In a perfect world, this would be in our worship hymnal, recommended for Good Friday. Read through the lyrics, then click on the video at the end to hear it.

Bruce Springsteen, "Into the Fire," from The Rising (2002)

The sky was falling and streaked with blood
I heard you calling me then you disappeared into the dust
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

You gave your love to see in fields of red and autumn brown
You gave your love to me and lay your young body down
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need you near but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

It was dark, too dark to see, you held me in the light you gave
You lay your hand on me
Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your love give us love

The Grace of Compassion.

We do not desire any more pain in the world. We simply want, and need, to share the pain that is there, in order to lighten the load for all of us. We want to be more and more a part of humanity's march, with its suffering, its hope, and its joy.

-Dean Brackley, from The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times (178)

This morning in adult forum we spent some time talking about grace and our experience of it in Holy Communion. None of us were quite sure how to define what we experience in Holy Communion. Most of us were not quite satisfied with "forgiveness" as a sufficient description. For the pastor and the intern, "grace" seemed like a better word, in part simply because it was a "bigger" word, with more space inside of it, capable of including lots of different blessings inside. We left with things more or less unresolved - though I think we did think through some important things together, all the same.

Our Prayer of the Day in worship this morning described addressed God as "God of compassion." That word - "compassion" - might be another word that fits inside grace, especially the grace that happens at Holy Communion.

We usually use "compassion" to mean something like "to care" - as in: She is compassionate; she cares for people.

But it literally means something even more specific. The Latin roots of "com" (with, or to share) and "passion" (an intense emotion, originally referring to suffering) lead us to a meaning that literally means "to suffer together with." To say someone is compassionate means that that person shares others' burdens.

Is this what Christ was doing, on his way to the cross? Is this what he invites us to do? Not to suffer, mind you, but to share in the burdens of others? And is this part of what God is doing to us when God gathers, and especially when God gathers us for the meal of Holy Communion, making us into a community - a body - that exists not just for its own sake but to share the burdens of others, that is, to be com-passionate? Does this happen, as Brackley suggests, so that the load might be lightened for all of us, and that we might be able to share in each other's suffering, hope, and joy?

If so, then Holy Communion - and this holy community - may well be more than we bargained for.

It would be all the more confirmation, I think, of the quote from Annie Dillard that Pastor Carol used in the March newsletter. Annie Dillard writes:

Does any-one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

Draw us out, O Lord - wherever you might lead. Amen.

The Way of Truth and Life.

[In making wise decisions, we must give] due attention to the three poles of experience: the world around us, our inner life, and the cultural word about the world. That will lead us to conclude that discovering the truth and sound discernment depend, first, on facing reality, especially the reality of the victims; second, on personal transformation and discerning interior movements; and, third, on identifying with a community that can sustain an alternative vision and praxis. (Brackley, 160)

All this week we have been reading the section titled "Discerning and Deciding." In the quote above, Brackley shares what is perhaps the second most important lens of all for thinking through how we discern and decide: The "three poles of experience," or the three legs on which we sit to see the world.

1) "Facing reality, especially the reality of the victims." We see the world through the lens of the cross, as Luther did. This means seeing the world not only through the cross of Jesus but also through the crosses of today's victims.

2) "Personal transformation and discerning interior movements." We are reborn in baptism - a "baptism once begun and ever to be continued," as Luther put it. We are surprised again and again by the boundless creativity of God's Spirit who continues to make and remake us - as individuals and as communities - in the different seasons of our lives. Sometimes we find that we must take time to notice when this is happening within us.

3) "Identifying with a community that can sustain an alternative vision and praxis." So often this one is forgotten! Forgotten by us introverts, yes, and forgotten, too, by religion that is steeped in our culture of rugged individualism - with all the pros and cons that implies. Is this what church is for us?

If so, it can help us with the ongoing "discerning and deciding" in our lives. Listen as Brackley elaborates (167):

We can only escape from [unhealthy hyper-individualism] if we recognize our need for a moral community that can support and challenge us in our search for truth and the right thing to do. Not every community will do for this, only those that draw on a deep tradition of practical wisdom. That is what churches are for. What they should do for us is nourish an experience of transcendence, a shared [experience of reality, especially the reality of the victims], and an alternative vision; and help us sustain that alternative in a hostile environment and communicate it to others. The first Christians faced just this challenge: to conserve and transmit their experience of Jesus and his vision. The Christian church was the answer to that need.

May our churches continue to answer that need in our day.

Three Ways to Make Decisions.

Ignatius clearly gave the... method of consolations and desolations priority over reasoning...

However, soon after his death his interpreters began to react against the so-called alumbrados, or enlightened ones, mainly in Spain, a loosely-defined movement whose participants fancied themselves enlightened by the Holy Spirit. They appealed to immediate experience of God independently of church institutions.

In reaction, early interpreters of Ignatius emphasized the dangers of private revelations. The reaction not only stressed the safeguards of obedience to church authority (as Ignatius himself had), but also the preeminence of reason in discernment.

In this way, contrary to Ignatius's teaching, the rational method for the time of tranquility came to be considered a safer and more secure path than the second-time method based on affective movements. The preference for the way of reason over the way of affect became enshrined in the Jesuits' Official Directory of 1599, which thereafter guided the presentation of the Ignatian Exercises. (Brackley, 151)

In this chapter, Brackley lays out Ignatius' "three ways to make decisions." These "ways" or "times" amount roughly to times of certainty, times of great emotion, and times of careful reasoning. (This is a little oversimplified, but it will do for our purposes - do read Brackley's chapter if you'd like more detail!)

What might surprise us is that Ignatius considered the second time, the time of great emotion - or more precisely the time of consolation / desolation - to be an acceptable time of making decisions.

Let's be clear: Ignatius is also quick to counsel against rash and careless decisions. By allowing emotions to come into the picture, he is not endorsing "hotheaded" decision-making.

Neither, however, is he endorsing decision-making through icily pristine reasoning. Rather, he suggests that sometimes our emotions do mean something important. God is present in our emotions, too, and paying attention to them can help us notice what is life-giving and what is life-draining. I imagine this is true for both individuals and communities of faith.

Some part of me thinks this may not be so surprising for us in 2010. My sense is that in the last several generations we have begun a move beyond the Enlightenment, beyond the idea that reason is our road to personal and social perfection. Reason's child, technology, continues to re-make our world over and over, often with wondrous, life-serving results in the fields of health and communication. But we've also realized, in part from a series of tragic world events, that we need more than what reason can achieve to fully satisfy our lives.

It's no wonder, then, that our theology - which once left emotion out of the picture as soundly as any science lab - has begun to recover a sense of the holiness of what we feel. Sifting through our emotions can be a minefield, to be sure, but pretending that God isn't at all present in them is just as dangerous a game.

What do you think? Does God sometimes work through our emotions? And if so, what does it mean about how we should attend to those emotions?

More Rules for Discernment.

How do we decide about whether to participate in a hospital strike, or how to respond to homelessness, or whether to marry Ben, or to enter religious life or ministry? On what basis? By what criteria? In matters like these, in the wide-open space beyond moral minimums, we follow the Spirit. The Spirit guides by consolation, but not by consolation alone. Nor is consolation infallible. (Brackley, 142)

Do you have rules for making important decisions in your life?

I don't necessarily mean that you have them written down or delineated by subset - I imagine most of us don't. But perhaps, in the course of making decisions through different stages of your life, you've learned certain things, and you've tried to remember them, and you've tried to bring them to bear on the decisions you make today.

And then maybe, much to your chagrin, you've discovered that it doesn't always work.

Sometimes we do our best to think through an important decision, remembering everything we've learned and using all of the available data at hand, and yet: The choice we made still seemed to be the wrong one in the end.

In cases like these, the wisdom Ignatius offers us is this:

God our Creator continues to love us first. Christ continues to walk with us. And the Spirit continues to lead us on, further and further into God's project. We are justified by grace, held in the arms of an unfathomable love, even when we fall short.

And then, once we've re-grounded ourselves in that gospel, we might take another look at our "Rules for Discernment" - the things we've learned over time about what leads to wise decisions. We might pull those things out into the open, and take a look at them again. Maybe we'll notice something we missed the last time.

There's always more to notice, after all, in the holy gifts that are our lives.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Life in the Spirit.

From Dean Brackley's The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola (126):

How much time and income should the Harrises devote to the Coalition against Homelessness? Should Carmen marry Ben? What expressions of affection are appropriate at this stage of their relationship? Should Chris enter seminary or novitiate? Should our group practice civil disobedience to protest the war?

Making wise decisions is the most important skill in life. It requires sizing up situations and determining the best course of action. This is discernment, a hallmark of Ignatian spirituality. Over a lifetime, we learn this art well or poorly. According to Ignatius's Foundation, all our thoughts, words, and actions should be directed toward the single goal of God's Reign. In the best of cases, we struggle all our lives to integrate our complex selves into single-minded service. The Spirit transforms us, resolving inner contradictions and sharpening our moral perception. In the end, beyond techniques and criteria, discernment is a matter of character and sensitivity, of becoming the person we should be.

At our Lenten book discussion group last Thursday, we noted how Lutherans have often struggled with the idea of "discipleship." We Lutherans lift up our great heritage of justification by grace through faith - the good news that we are saved by God and not by our own works. This is truly worth celebrating!

But sometimes we Lutherans get stuck there. It isn't that Lutherans don't live lives of faith active in love: On the contrary, Lutherans often show great care for the neighbor in need. It's just that in our theology we historically haven't spent much time thinking through what comes after forgiveness. We have often been so concerned about getting the order wrong - God loves us first and then we justified to live lives of faith active in love - that we haven't spent much time thinking through what a life of faith active in love might look like. "Discernment?" we might think. "Wise decision-making? Isn't that a 'good work'? If so, it won't save me! Best to leave it alone."

Wise decision-making won't save us, it is true. God alone does that. God alone frees us. As Brackley, our Jesuit companion, writes: "We are forgiven before we clean up our act."

But as my Old Testament professor might say, God loves us, yes, but God still has expectations. We are forgiven, yes, but now that we are forgiven we do actually need to get around to cleaning up our act - and not just cleaning up my personal act, but cleaning up our act as a human race.

And in his chapter "Life in the Spirit," Brackley suggests that this "cleaning up our act" is actually far more - and far more fun - than scrubbing away the dirt of our sinfulness. He suggests that - being filled with God's free and freeing love as we are - our post-justification, post-forgiveness, post-Egypt (to borrow the story of the Israelites) lives are to be lives of creative generosity in sharing God's love with the whole world.

Thanks be to God, we are not left to try and figure out these lives of creative generosity on our own. The Spirit, that third person of our Triune God, guides us by fanning the flame of love in our hearts. Thinking through how we might follow that wild Spirit as it fans the flames to and fro will be the subject of our next few chapters.

Of course, as Brackley point out, in our lives of creative generosity, we will make lots of mistakes. We could let them get us down - but we shouldn't. Listen to how Brackley puts it (128) as he once again echoes Luther's call to "sin boldly":

Infinite needs and demands lead to frustration, guilt trips, Messiah complexes, and crash landings - unless we have internalized the good news that we are forgiven before we clean up our act and that love will someday, somehow, triumph because God is laboring through us and despite us. This good news, this gospel, transforms harsh demands into the sweet yet challenging requirements of love. But though our response will fall short daily, our hope and inner peace are secure thanks to the good news, independent of our performance or measurable success. As Anne Patrick says, we must allow high moral demands 'to play over a ground alto of God's healing and empowering and justice-making love for us all.'

May it ever be so. Amen.

Expanding the Soul.

Today's chapter is just the surprise some of us (myself emphatically included) need to hear.

In "Expanding the Soul," Brackley takes up the notion of an exaggerated humility that binds rather than frees. In fact it is not really humility at all, but fear masquerading as humility, a vice pretending to be a virtue. He writes (110-112):

Many of us clip our own wings, or let others clip them. We remain silent and inactive when bold speech and action are called for. We can end up like T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, measuring out our lives with coffee spoons... Self-doubt prevents many of us from taking up new challenges. We avoid risks for fear of failure...

This drives [us] to anguish and prevents [us] from doing good. While God often inspires good people to undertake bold initiatives, the hypersensitive are subject to paralyzing doubts that keep them from translating their inspirations into action. They spontaneously ask themselves questions like, "Am I really seeking my own glory?" "Will this cause scandal?" "Would it be safer to back off, or at least wait?" "Couldn't x, y, or z go wrong?"

Guilty as charged, your honor.

A different way is needed. And that way, Ignatius suggests is not to throw out the humility of solidarity, but rather to make it a truer humility - a richer and more authentic humility.

Brackley writes (123):

The challenges we confront ought to inspire humility - but the authentic humility that leads to bold, creative action.

A humility that leads not to paralyzing self-doubt but to the bold, creative action of humility-in-practice; a humility that leads not to the hollow belief that is really unbelief but to the bold, creative action that springs from faith in the sure promise of God's project.

Once again, Ignatius does not sound so far from his reforming contemporary, Martin Luther, who wrote:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.

To "sin boldly" is, I think a characteristic of what Brackley calls the "magnanimous person" (122):

The magnanimous person is, literally, a great-souled individual, an expansive spirit. With appropriate self-esteem and a realistic sense of their talents, great-hearted individuals think big. They refuse to bog down in trivia. Unperturbed by minor grievances, indifferent to the "trinkets" of wealth and status, they are spontaneously generous, even prodigal, the opposite of the stingy, shrunken soul.

Great-hearted communities think this Way, too.

They live a Way of Life that is life abundant, overflowing with expansive spirit, full of boldly creative action, all in the service of God's Project of manna and mercy for all, a Project promised in history and even now breaking into our world. They live the Way of Christ.

And that is something worth living for.

Humility and Solidarity.

Our master was despised; the servant ought not be honored.
The master was poor; the servant ought not be rich.
The master lived by the work of his hands; the servant ought not live off his own rent.
The master walked on foot; the servant ought not ride horseback.
The master surrounded himself with the little ones, the poor, the workers; the servant ought not associate with the great lords.
The master was calumniated; the servant ought not be praised.
The master was poorly dressed, poorly dressed, poorly sheltered; the servant ought not roam about well-dressed, well-fed, and well-established.
The master worked and tired himself; the servant ought not look for repose.
The master wished to appear small; the servant ought not wish to appear great.

- Charles de Foucauld

As Ignatius sees it, our reflections this week have all been preparations for discernment - the practice of making wise decisions, big and small. We contemplate, or think through:

1) God's Project (Reign) for the world, the great banquet where everyone has enough

2) The example of Jesus, through the stories that have been written about him

3) The fact that both of these require Downward Mobility, the freedom to go radically against the flow of way of the world.

Today Ignatius challenges us to not only be free for poverty, but to prefer it - and actually to pray for it, not for its own sake but because it was the way of Christ and it because it is the best soil for resisting the currents that flow against God's Project.

Once again the road Ignatius sets before us is rocky and fraught with danger. Are we to romanticize poverty?

I hope not.

It is true that some are called to make a vow of poverty: many Christian saints - beatified by Rome or not - made vows of poverty in practice in the service of some greater call. Not all of us are called to such radical lives as theirs - though, Ignatius wants to impress upon us, some of us are, and all of us should be ready for such a call, should it come. This is heavy stuff, and not easily digested.

But there is a call I think all of us might consider: the call to humility, and specifically humility-in-practice, which Brackley calls solidarity. He writes (106):

Humility flowers into solidarity, identifying with others to the point of sharing their suffering... This is the logic of love. Our heart goes out to those who suffer - the way Jesus was moved by the leper, the crowds, and the widow of Nain - and we long to join them. Comfort and respectability are good things. But it is preferable to walk with the poor than without them.

I find it especially interesting that we are still in the section called Something Worth Living For. This invitation to radical solidarity is not intended to be gloomy. It is not bad news. It is not the Law. It is the Gospel! It is the good news! God invites us out of self-centered individualism, out of endless striving for accomplishments that never fully satisfy, out of the ways of the dominant culture. God invites us into a world of community with more than enough for all, and with boundaries far beyond those we normally imagine. We are invited to be "downwardly mobile" because that is where the vast expanses of the global community are in the present age.

Good news... but not easy news!

Downward Mobility.

Upward mobility can mean economic security for refugees and their children; and escaping poverty is good. But it can turn into an escape from the poor themselves. Which is it? Which will it be in the long run? (Brackley, p. 92)

This is one of the most exciting chapters in the book - and one of the most challenging to understand.

Brackley uses the term "downward mobility" as a way of challenging the notion of "upward mobility" so celebrated in our culture. It's a provocative phrase, and worth thinking about.

But we should be careful not to be flip about upward mobility. There are reasons, after all, why it has been celebrated in our culture. For the last several generations, parents have hoped for bigger and better things for their children - and America has been a place where these bigger and better things can happen. (One need only note the migrants still risking their lives to cross our borders to see that the possibilities of America are still taken seriously.) Is this so wrong?

It's important to note the core of Brackley's argument. It is not that achievement and accomplishment and financial growth are bad in themselves (they are not, and Brackley mentions how they might serve real purpose). And it isn't even that achievement and accomplishment and financial growth can lead to some kind of individual sin, like pride or greed, though this could happen as well.

Rather, the problem is that as we move "up" we can find ourselves moving away from the people we leave behind. On a global level, this means leaving behind the majority of the world's population - the "Two-Thirds" world who are on the bottom level of the global economic pyramid we've constructed.

So what is the solution Brackley proposes?

The [way] of Christ today is "downward mobility." That means entering the world of the poor, assuming their cause, and to some degree, their condition. (100)

Again, without equivocating or softening Brackley's position, we need to be clear about what he's proposing. Brackley argues that the way of Christ is "downward mobility" but not because there is some inherent good about a downward direction or some inherent good about poverty.

Rather, he argues for movement in this direction because it is the direction toward being in community with the majority of the world's population. He calls this solidarity.

Living in solidarity - which Brackley identifies as a primary aspect of the Way of Christ - leaves plenty for our middle-class tribe to do. Listen to how Brackley puts it:

More than anything else, we need "new human beings" who identify with the poor majority of the planet (sometimes called the Two-Thirds World) - including people in rich countries to who know about trade, finance, and human rights law and can help address the complex causes of misery. (103)

Now here is something worth living for! The gifts that God has given to us, put to work in the service of the global community - in the service of God's project.

I'm privileged to see this happening all around me. St John United is hosting a fundraising brunch for Haiti this Sunday: the congregation's gifts of cooking and creativity in publicity are being put to work in the service of God's project. SJU's Sunday School students are raising money for schools in the Middle East through the Pennies for Peace project - the second time this year that SJU kids have put their talents to work in the service of solidarity with the global community. It's exciting to see God's Reign breaking in, even today, even among us!

What will our next steps be? How will we continue this work that has already begun? How will Christ lead us even further into God's project?

I can't wait to find out.

The Two Standards.

When I was in college, I used to listen to pre-seminary students endlessly debate the "theology of glory" vs. the "theology of the cross." Enough already, I thought. It all seemed like too much religious jargon.

Only later did I begin to discover what could be powerfully relevant about a "theology of the cross," a Lutheran emphasis that insists God meets us not primarily in our accomplishments but rather in our weakness, in our brokenness, in our pain - not in what we have but in what we lack.

Today Ignatius lifts up what Brackley calls "the Two Standards," by which he means something like "the two flags" of armies heading into battle. I'm not sure this kind of language is the most helpful, but the stark division between two options for a way of life may, as Brackley puts it, "throw a bright light over the rocky moral terrain" of our world.

"To be placed with the Son is to be placed where he said he would be found: among the hungry, the naked, the sick, and imprisoned (Matt 25:31-46). It is to opt with the poor. Only in this way will "thy Kingdom come," the Kingdom of life in abundance, new social relations, with no more poverty, hunger, or tears (cf. Luke 6:20-26)."

Ignatius challenges us to think about what this might mean.

Then he goes one step further: He challenges us to actually ask Christ to place us with him: among the hungry, the naked, the sick, and imprisoned - and not in some abstract way, but quite literally.

This is so far from the Call or Invitation of contemporary culture - the call toward wealth and social status - that the idea of "two battle flags" actually starts to make some sense. Are there actually two calls pulling us in two different directions?

I think Luther, shaped as he was by a theology of the cross, might say yes. If it is true that Christ meets us in the crosses and crucifixions of our world - anywhere there is poverty and persecution - then it seems that we must be prepared to head in that direction if we are to continue journeying with Jesus.

So, here's my question for you: Can we begin to practice this idea today?

Maybe there are ways in which we might choose the Way of Christ by living in solidarity with the poor today. Maybe there ways we already do this. Maybe there are ways we might take the next steps along the Way.

Spending some time thinking about what this might look like is the Spiritual Exercise to which Ignatius invites us today.

Contemplation of Christ.

If we wish to take part in this Advent and Christmas event,
then we cannot simply be bystanders or onlookers,
as if we were at the theater,
enjoying all the cheerful images.
No, we ourselves are swept up into the action there,
into this conversion of all things.
We have to play our part too on this stage.
For the spectator
is already an actor.
He cannot withdraw.
…we cannot approach his manger
as if it were the cradle of any other child.
Those who wish to come to his manger
find that something is
happening within them.



- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from The Mystery of Holy Night

An inspired work of art - a painting or a poem - reaches out to us and into us, to question, enlighten, and inspire. A great story draws us into itself and discloses the deeper drama of life. Stories shape us when we recognize part of our own story in them. (Brackley, p. 73)

In the next steps of our journey we turn to consider Jesus, the One who calls us.

But how can we know Jesus? He walked the earth two thousand years ago. Some in our contemporary culture speak of having a "personal relationship with Jesus," but this makes many of us uncomfortable. How do we even begin to have a relationship with this Jesus - let alone walk alongside him as a friend?

One way that Ignatius suggests we might do this is by taking one of the Gospel stories and imagining ourselves inside of it. Find a few quiet moments sometime in your day - like with the Examen from last week. Then, instead of sifting through your thoughts and feelings, enter into the Gospel story and see what you find there.

The Ignatian method suggests several steps to guide this exercise.

+++

Pause in silence before beginning the prayer. Remember that you are loved by God. Imagine this love as the warmth of the sun upon your back.

Ask that God would lead you in the way that God would have you go, that your whole prayer be directed toward the service of God's project.

Imagine the story slowly. Allow it to unfold in your imagination. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? In your mind's eye, look around, and take it all in. As the events of the story unfold, pay special attention to the people. What are they saying? What are they doing? Pause wherever you need to.

Speak to Jesus about what's going on inside you as you watch this scene unfold. What are you doing in the scene? Are you a bystander? Do you relate especially to any of the people or any of the groups of people? Express this all to Jesus. Listen for his response.

Ask Jesus for what you want: to know him better. Remember that the goal of the exercise is not to obtain "answers," but to grow in relationship with Christ.

Close with a prayer of thanksgiving.

+++

There are other ways to think about this kind of prayer if you don't find this language helpful - other examples can be found here or on this site where someone has written out his prayers for you to see them.

Finally, must close by confessing that when I first tried this kind of prayer, it frankly didn't work. I felt nothing at all, and had real trouble entering fully into the story. Even today, I often find myself more confused by Jesus than anything else!

If you share some of these feelings, that's okay. Be honest with God and with yourself. Wait a day or two, and try it again. The important thing is not execute exercises perfectly. The important thing is not even to hear the Invitation perfectly clearly.

The important thing is simply to grow in relationship with Inviter. The important thing is to, like Bonhoeffer, approach the manger and see where it leads us.

And so we pray: Lead us on, Lord, lead us on.

The Reign of God.

In recent years, tens of thousands of people from all over the world have gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in Mumbai (Bombay), India, to celebrate their conviction that "another world is possible," a world free of mass poverty and environmental degradation, and to explore ways to bring it about. Are they deluded? Can we overcome poverty, violence, and environmental crisis before they overcome us? What do efforts like this have to do with the call and cause of Christ, and what does his message say about their values and prospects? (Brackley, 67)

The Reign of God is a banquet, a party, that all are invited join (Matt 8:11; 22:2; Luke 15:23). But since faith is lacking, God's revolution, which gathers us for that banquet, is slow, painful, under siege. Jesus said that God's Reign was underway in his ministry (see Matt 12:28; Luke 17:21). Already a present reality, it will fully triumph only in the future, even over the grave. "According to his promise we wait for a new sky and a new earth in which justice dwells" (2 Pet. 3:13). All creation longs to share in this liberation and communion (Rom. 8:19 - 21). The Reign of God means new human beings, new communities, a new, transfigured world (Rev. 21:5). That is the cause to which Jesus calls (Brackley, 70).

For some, this way of thinking about the Reign of God - or God's Project, depending on the language you prefer - may be new. It certainly was for me when I first encountered an inkling of it several years ago. Like a bolt of lightning, the idea that God's project was about more than getting us to heaven (and maybe getting us to be polite/pure along the way) opened my eyes and commanded my attention ever after. God's project is about justice? God's project is about making sure everyone has enough? In this world? Not only in some heaven, light years away?

It's a lot to take in - and can be hard to believe in a world trained on skepticism.

In the last few years, though, I've come to discover that there is a whole world of people who know this project of God's well - and they've been participating in it for a long time. From the south side neighborhoods of Chicago to the montañas sureste de México to a groundbreaking Sunday School program put into wonderfully creative practice in the Seattle Lutheran church I'm blessed to serve this year, I've encountered community after community that is living into God's project today.

Even when you catch a glimpse of this project, however, living it isn't always smooth sailing. It's so easy to become discouraged at the temples of injustice still to be torn down, at the banquet tables still to be built, at the slow, slow progress of change. How to we keep going when these start to weigh us down?

Maybe it's by remembering the promise of God's project in all its fullness. In our OT reading this week, God is speaking to Abram in a vision. Implicitly we understand that they are inside - maybe it is a darkened room, and maybe Abram is discouraged. So,

The Lord brought him outside, and said,
"Look toward heaven and count the stars,
if you are able to count them."
Then he said to him,
"So shall your descendants be."
And he believed the Lord;
and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

May it be so for us, too.

The Call.

In the First Week we reflected on "Getting Free." We now turn to consider what are freed for in "Something Worth Living For."

Between the First and Second Weeks of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius inserts the exercise traditionally called the Kingdom Meditation. In this exercise, retreatants consider the call Christ makes to everyone to collaborate with God's work in the world. This exercise prepares them to hear that call in the future and to consider now, beforehand, what a fitting response might be. (Brackley, p. 60)

A few Sundays ago we heard several readings about Calls: the call of Isaiah in a terrifying throne room, the call of Paul the persecutor, the call from Jesus to Peter and the first disciples. Today's chapter from Brackley invites us flesh out our idea of the Call. (In place of "Call," we might also use the word "Invitation," a sense suggested by the Greek word used in the New Testament.)

The aim of the exercise is not to experience the invitation during the exercise itself but to prepare for it (61).

The first thing Ignatius surprises us with is that before we hear a Call or Invitation we prepare. We are not necessarily expecting to hear a divine Call/Invitation this week - or this season of Lent - for we cannot control when such things happen, after all. Rather, we want to put ourselves in such a state of mind that when the Call/Invitation does come we will respond in the best possible way.

How do we do this? Personal spiritual exercises like our Examen from last week are part of the story, to be sure, but there is more to it than that. Our journey, after all, is not simply an intellectual exercise that we can pursue on our own, by ourselves, in a little room somewhere. Brackley suggests that we must be with people among whom such a call can emerge.

We discover our callings in response to the world. Mothers and fathers discover theirs in response to their children. Couples call forth from each other their vocation of spouse and lover. Martin Luther King discovered his prophetic calling during the Montgomery bus boycott. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany and Dorothy Day in Depression-era New York grew into their vocations in response to their turbulent surroundings. Our surroundings shake us, sift us, and draw our vocation from us.

A lot depends on where we place ourselves. If King had spent his youth hanging out by the pool, would we remember him today? The crucified people are a privileged place for hearing the call to service. They provoke the crucial question: What will we do to take them down from their crosses?

Faith recognizes the call to love and serve as the voice of Christ. Christ invites people of every time and place to participate in the Reign of God (59).

I find this idea particularly striking as we are preparing to hear a Gospel story on Sunday about Jesus' desire to gather us together as a hen gathers her chicks. (And, I should mention, as we prepare to study the Gathering part of our worship during Adult Forum this Sunday.) Must we be gathered together by God in order to hear our calling in the world? Must we be gathered together in the way God gathers - without regard for class or race or even personal creed? Is this a crucial part of the way toward the life God intends for us?

And if so, it presents us with all sorts of other counter-cultural implications. Becoming part of a community is not something that happens overnight. It happens over time. And if becoming part of a community happens over time, maybe hearing our Call, our Invitation from God doesn't happen in one "a-ha!" moment, but maybe it happens over time, too.

Gather us together, Lord, and prepare us to hear your Invitations in the ever-changing contours of our lives. Amen.

Rules for Discernment.

Yesterday we began thinking of ourselves as being on the road, but unsure of how to proceed on our journey. We are freed, yes, but... now what?

We began with one tool, the Ignatian Examen, a way of thinking through - on a daily or regular basis - where we have been and where we are. Today we add a second tool: the categories of consolation and desolation. We'll add both tools to our packs as part of a kind of Ten Essentials for the journey ahead.

In The Call to Discernment, our journeying companion Dean Brackley describes a variety of feelings we experience, some of them on a daily basis, some of them at various high or low points in our lives (44-45).

Everyday challenges can trigger the fear and discouragement that derail wise choices. Having to confront a difficult person can leave us dispirited. Gross evil - violence, greed, mendacity, intractable injustice - can make us feel overwhelmed. Failure can make us want to throw in the towel. Six months into married life a spouse can get a sinking feeling and start to wonder, What did I get myself into?

In cases like these, how much do our feelings accurately reflect our situation? Can we trust them as a reliable guide for making decisions, especially since ideas-for-action frequently arise from such emotional states?

On the other hand, life-reform also awakens joy, excitement, and a sense of freedom. A film like Gandhi or a religious service can stir up a deep desire to spend our lives in service. A conversation with a prayerful person can stimulate enthusiasm about learning to pray, or to pray better. If I've been down on myself, feeling guilty for some past action, somebody might affirm me and remind of God's forgiveness, leaving me feeling like I've just awakened from a bad dream.

[Ignatius encourages us to begin] understanding and responding to emotional states like those just described, which he calls "consolation" and "desolation." These are not just any emotions on the periphery of experience, such as pain from an illness or pleasure from a great piece of music. They are stirrings and moods, states and affective currents which affect us globally and endow ordinary emotions with a distinctive tone. That is because they have come from so deep within us that they seem, paradoxically, to have their origin beyond us.

There are other terms we might use for "consolation" and "desolation." We might think of "consolation" as including feelings like hope, faith, and love and desolation as including despair. In other language, we might think of consolation as feeling full of gratitude for and enthusiasm about our assets, while desolation is feeling full of discouragement about our needs and shortcomings.

To identify experiences of consolation, we might ask ourselves questions like the following:

When did I feel most alive today?

When today did I give and receive the most love?

When today did I have the greatest sense of belonging to myself, others, God, and the universe?

What was today's high point?

For what am I most grateful today?

To identify experiences of desolation, we might ask ourselves questions like

When today did I most feel life draining out of me?

When today did I give and receive the least love?

When today did I have the least sense of belonging?

What was today's low point?

For what am I least grateful today?

It is especially important to recognize that consolation is not simply about feeling "happy" or "optimistic." You might well feel, for example, a sense of belonging in the midst of personal loss or grief at the injustice of the world. In the same way, desolation is not simply about feeling "sad" or "pessimistic." You might well feel a momentary pleasure or a cheap thrill as you seek to patch over a deeper emptiness you might be feeling (read again the words of Barbara Brown Taylor that open our post from last Friday).

It also important to recognize that consolation and desolation are not simply individualistic feelings. Communities, neighborhoods, congregations, families, couples - any group of people in some form of common life together can go through times overflowing with joyful consolation or dominated by life-sapping desolation.

And, as Brackley is quick to point out, consolation is most commonly accompanied by an urge to serve others, to be facing outside of ourselves rather than turned in on ourselves - incurvatus in se, as Martin Luther put it. We also, he writes, feel consolation when we grieve for the sufferings of Christ, or for the crucified of today(49). While we may not feel "happy" about injustice, we may find ourselves drawing near toward others, and toward community with our brothers and sisters in Christ - especially toward our brothers and sisters who are suffering as Christ did - and this movement toward others is, after all, moving us toward the life God intends for us.

There are other descriptions of consolation and desolation that you can seek out if you would like to explore this tool for navigation further. And with that, we place our tools in our pack and turn to face the next stage in our journey, which we will begin on Friday.

Reform of Life.

Well, we've confessed and we've been forgiven. We've been baptized into the wet waters of new life! Nothing but roses from here on out, right?

Of course we know better. Life is messy - and sometimes it can feel like we are beset on all sides by its messiness. As Pastor Carol put it in her sermon on Sunday, we are baptized, yes, but before our wet heads have dried we are beset with questions, choices, a million little forks in the road, each of which has the potential to pull us down paths we should not go, away from the full and vibrant life God intends for us.

Jesus knew this problem well. Luke tells us in our Gospel reading from Sunday that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit when he was led by the Holy Spirit away from the baptismal waters of the Jordan River to go hungry and be tempted again and again.

Jesus knew that navigating the waters of the baptismal life is not always easy. As Dean Brackley puts it (44),

[The baptismal life] involves struggle. It stirs deep sentiments in us. As we commit to change [or to living out our baptismal covenant], we experience two kinds of feelings at a deep level: on the one hand, discouragement and strong desires to backtrack; on the other, enthusiasm, hope, and joy at the prospect of a new way of life.

How are we to navigate these currents, moving as they are in different directions?

Sometimes we use tools to navigate our way. Sometimes these tools don't tell us so much exactly where to go so much as they tell us where we have been and where we are - and sometimes knowing that much helps a great deal in figuring out where to go next.

One tool that Ignatius used and handed down to his followers was called the Examen. In the Examen, as Brackley puts it,

Ignatius... invites us to recall how God and many creatures gave us life and sustenance, as we were acting selfishly. This exercise produces gratitude and enthusiasm for the future. It also gives us a more mature appreciation of sin as ingratitude and betrayal. (40)

In that way, the experience reshapes our likes and dislikes, our will and our thoughts. Engaging that reality draws us out of ourselves and even moves our hands and feet to act. Sitting with reality, allowing it to work on us, working through the feelings and the thoughts it stirs is what we mean by contemplation. Contemplation arises naturally out of our need to be in touch with reality in its rich complexity. Contemplation in this sense is the opposite of flight from reality. Rightly understood, spirituality is the opposite of escaping from reality. We encounter Ultimate Reality not by leaving the world, but by plunging into it, as Jesus did. (22)

I invite you to take a few moments today to try this exercise. You can find a step-by-step guide to the Ignatian Examen here. You might consider printing out, if looking at a computer screen makes it difficult to focus.

Then, look back over a day - or a week, or a month, or a year, or even (as Ignatius suggested) an hour - and examine it in the way Ignatius suggests. This could take as little as 20 minutes.

I pray God's presence be with you in your prayers and examinations.

Forgiveness.

(image © daniel w. erlander www.danielerlander.com)

On Saturday I read the chapter on The Reality of Evil, and reflected on the first half of our rite of Confession and Forgiveness - the first half being the part where we confess. Sometimes this is the only part we remember - as if we begin our worship services simply with "Confession" and then continue with the service feeling vaguely bad about ourselves. But the rite in our cranberry hymnal is called Confession and Forgiveness for a reason.

And the Forgiveness part is truly shocking. Take the Reality of Evil, in its personal and global/systemic forms. Realize how overwhelming it is - take a moment to let it sink in.

Then realize that God's love is BIGGER than all the evil in the world, than all the evil we could have possibly done. This is hard to believe, but it is the amazing truth we proclaim in the second half of Confession and Forgiveness! And it is an amazing truth, truly. With a Love like that washing over us - over the whole world - we shall indeed overcome.

(Side note for Lutherans: This may be why Martin Luther almost considered Confession and Forgiveness the third sacrament - a means of grace on par with Baptism and Eucharist! He ultimately decided that Confession and Forgiveness was really the really the rite of Baptism without the water - and the water, for Luther, was important. This is why we alternate at the beginning of our Sunday liturgy, depending on the season, "Confession and Forgiveness" with "Affirmation of Baptism.")

In his chapter on Forgiveness, Brackley suggests something about Confession and Forgiveness that continues to stick with me.

First he suggests that it comes not just through churchly rites but through other people. God's forgiveness is "channeled by people who accept and forgive us in their own human way" (34). We might know this from personal experiences in our lives where a relationship has been restored after forgiveness took place.

But then he suggests that the same thing could be true on a global scale! What I mean here - and what I think Brackley means here - is not a matter of governments making carefully-worded public apologies for past misdeeds. Rather, what I think he is getting at is this (35):

Plenty of people suffer terrible injustice closer to home, in all our countries: abused women and children, oppressed minorities, homeless people, immigrants. Engaging them puts us in touch with the world, with ourselves, and with divine mercy.

Brackley goes so far as to suggest that this engagement, this restoration of relationship with the poor and the marginalized is the very "sacrament" of Confession and Forgiveness happening not in the church but out in the world. He writes (34):

It seems that God has chosen people like them as ambassadors of grace for people like me.

Then he lists others who have come to know this truth: Dorothy Day, Mohandas Gandhi, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Simone Veil, Oscar Romero... perhaps you know of others. Perhaps you have come to know this truth yourself.

It is the truth that makes the words from Sunday real.

God, who is rich in mercy, loved us
even when we were dead in sin,
and made us alive
together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
your sins are forgiven.
Almighty God
strengthen you with power
through the Holy Spirit,
that Christ may live in your hearts
through faith.

Amen.

The Reality of Evil.

Ignatius stresses coming to terms with evil, including our own, in view of God's healing and liberating forgiveness (Brackley, p. 21).

On Ash Wednesday, between the sermon and the marking of ashes on foreheads, we confess our sin with a lengthy litany - much longer than the confessions with which we sometimes open our Sunday worship. This extensive confession suggests that Ash Wednesday is not only about coming to terms with our own mortality - "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" - but that it is also about coming to terms with our sin, our participation in the evil of the world. It is as if we begin Lent by facing up to the reality of evil.

I have sometimes heard churchgoers wonder, with good reason, about the worship-opening Confession and Forgiveness. Why, after all, should we confess to deeds we have not personally done?

And I imagine this is especially true on Ash Wednesday. In our confessional litany, we declared "Our neglect of human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty, we confess to you." I must confess that I felt especially weird saying this one in our congregation. After all, with our soup kitchen and nightly SHARE shelter, with our support of various social ministries in and outside of the church, we do attend to human need and suffering, and we are not indifferent to injustice and cruelty! Why should we confess to such a thing?

The reason, I think, is that we are confessing not only as individuals but as a people. We confess as the specific group of people gathered in the pews that day, we confess as the whole church gathered across space and time, and we confess on behalf of the entire human race to our shared creator. We have sinned as a people, and we confess as a people.

It is when we step back and take this wide-angle view that we begin to see the true reality of evil. It is a reality that is illustrated well, I think, by the Dan Erlander image at the top of today's post (scroll up to see it again), and by the words our companion Brackley writes on page 26:

We have organized a world that that excludes billions from the banquet table and the decision table.

It is a moral problem, the great sin of our time. We rarely think of sin in these terms. We usually apply that label first to personal actions - theft, adultery, lying, homicide - and then, analogously, to original sin, habitual sin (vice), and, perhaps, structural sin...

[But] the New Testament locates them in a wider context, as part of the "sin of the world" (John 1:29). Sin is a large-scale enterprise, a kind of "anti-reign" opposed to the Reign (or Kingdom) of God (see 1 John 5:19; Luke 4:5-6). Sin "reigns" (see Rom. 5-7) in individuals and also in relationships and institutions. Personal sin is a participation in the anti-reign.

And we participate in this anti-reign every day. Even we, who have made impressive changes in our lives, even we, who are a part of a community that has its sights set on a more just and sustainable society, even we participate in this anti-reign, for we are inextricably wrapped up in a structure of society that is horrifyingly death-dealing. It is nothing short of evil.

And so we say:

Let us confess our sin in the presence of God and of one another.

Loving God, show us our sin. Give us knowledge of the part we play in the systems of injustice. Do not let us brush it aside or pretend it is less than it is, lest we live into a lie and not into the truth which you intend for us. Be our way, our truth, our life, and set us free. Amen.

Free to Love.

That hollowness we sometimes feel
is not a sign of something gone wrong.
It is the holy of holies inside of us,
the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God.
Nothing on earth can fill it,
but that does not stop us from trying.
Whenever we start feeling too empty inside,
we stick our pacifiers into our mouths
and suck for all we are worth.
They do not nourish us, but at least they plug the hole.

- Barbara Brown Taylor, from "Settling for Less"

These words from Barbara Brown Taylor remind me of Pastor Carol's sermon for Ash Wednesday, in which she invited us to a little "spring cleaning" of our souls.

In our spring cleaning, we might pull everything out into the open, so that we can see what we're dealing with. Then we might sort through all of the things that we have collected. Are there things - fears, desires, habits, ideas - we are carrying around in ourselves that have outlived their usefulness, and that we no longer need? Have some of these things now even come to be a burden on us, weighing us down or blocking our path? Are there things that are just, in Barbara Brown Taylor's words, just "pacifiers" serving to "plug the hole" rather than nourish us for the fullest life God intends for us? What shall we get rid of this year? What shall we leave behind?

At the beginning of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises stands an introduction he calls "The Foundation." Like a guide preparing us for the adventure we are about to undertake, the Foundation encourages us to shake ourselves free of attachments to things that might hinder us, that might trip us up, that might block our path on our journey with Jesus.

The Foundation, writes Brackley (p. 10), speaks to the heart of life's drama. It is about getting free to love.

This Sunday we will hear the story of Jesus' temptation. We will hear the story of Jesus preparing for his own journey - yes, Jesus, too, had to prepare! Different pacifiers are laid at his feet; each one he leaves behind. We are not told whether this was easy or hard for him. We are only told that we was human, and that like us, Jesus, too, had to get free in order to love.

Spirituality for Solidarity.

If you have a high-speed internet connection, I invite you to watch at least the first minute of this video. In it, a British TV host puzzles over the mysterious black smudge on VP Joe Biden's forehead - a smudge people around the world received yesterday for Ash Wednesday.

The TV host is now receiving a royal ribbing in the British press, but we shouldn't be too hard on her. The black smudge is strange, after all.

I was reminded of this myself yesterday when we had several visitors from the neighborhood join us at St John United for our Ash Wednesday services. These visitors don't normally attend our Sunday services - though a few have visited on occasion. But for some reason, Ash Wednesday drew them in.

As I left worship that evening, I puzzled over this. Who knows what stories led them here? Maybe they grew up in a Christian faith, and remembered Ash Wednesday from their youth. Maybe they still found certain Christian rituals powerful, even if they'd left other rituals behind. Maybe they just work on Sundays, and were happy for a weeknight service to join our community at worship. Or maybe their stories are complicated and complex, multi-facted and mysterious: hard to pin down. Maybe they are just like us.

What is it that draws us - all of us - into these strange rituals?

Dean Brackley writes that (p.8)

...our lives are too rich for... ordinary common-sense discourse to encompass. If the holy Mystery called God pervades our lives, as I believe it does, then we need religious symbols to point to reality as it actually is. Without that language, we sell our experience short.

I imagine that, since you have found this blog, you probably agree, to some degree, at least.

And yet you likely also know that stepping into those symbols, approaching the holy Mystery called God through ancient rituals, annual or weekly, can be a dangerous thing. You never know where it will lead you. It might even lead you back out into the world.

Brackley writes:

We are more aware today of the social and institutional dimensions of our lives. Christians are more aware of the social implications of their vocation and the mission of the church. We are all more conscious of the scope of misery in the world, of the institutional mechanisms of injustice, and of the global dimension of our moral drama. Responding to massive injustice according to each one's calling is the price of being human, and Christian, today. Those looking for a privatized spirituality to shelter them from a violent world have come to the wrong place.

Can these rituals do this, too? Can they lead us ever deeper, not only into ourselves but into the world, into a relationship of serious solidarity with our suffering sisters and brothers, in our neighborhood and in the farthest reaches of the globe? Can a smudge of ashes on a forehead be a part of this?

We can only hope.

For a variety of reasons we come, looking for a variety of things. May God gather us up - our questions, our fears, our dreams, our hopes - and guide us out again. Amen.

Meet Ignatius.

In 1517, a young German professor nailed 95 theses to the door of his neighborhood church. He was beginning to rethink his relationship with Jesus Christ, and he was eager to share his findings with others.

He wasn't the only one.

A little over a thousand miles away, in a northeastern corner of Spain, Ignacio Lopez was hit by a cannonball. It broke one of his legs and badly injured the other, and we was sent home to Loyola to recover.

For the next several months, Ignacio found himself with little to do but read. And so he did. He worked his way through a commentary on the life of Christ that encouraged the reader to imagine herself inside the Biblical stories. Ignacio tried it. He was never the same.

Ignacio spent the rest of his life developing and promoting a series of "spiritual exercises" based on the ones he had read about. He found companions along the way, and eventually formed the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits, who at the very least provide us with some pretty fantastic universities today.

Of course, we are Lutherans. In addition to knowing more about that German fellow than about Ignatius, we also carry around some hard-won principles about magical recipes for getting right with God.

God comes to us! we say. Not the other way around. We don't need to do some spiritual Stairmaster to find our way to some mountaintop Jesus.

Indeed. God loved us first, and washed us in a holy bath to a new life in Christ. God has freed us, freed us to: Live among God's faithful people! Hear the word of God and share in the Lord's supper! Proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed! Serve all people, following the example of Jesus! Strive for justice and peace in all the earth! New life! Amen!

And yet, and yet. As each of us knows all too well, life is complicated. It is full of ups and downs, rainy seasons and dry seasons. We get distracted and discouraged. Our energies run low, and we find ourselves a little less able and a little less willing to follow Jesus out of the gracious waters and into the new life, the new season, the new day to which he is calling us.

I think Ignacio's spiritual exercises can help us with this. They can help us deepen our inner wells, filled by God's stream as they are, and stoke our inner flames, lit by the Holy Spirit as they are.

Of course, if we are to deepen our "inner" lives, we must be careful not to let our "outer" lives dry up. We must not become navel-gazers. We must be sure we our spiritual exercises are part and parcel of the new life are living day by day, a life for the life of the world. To this end I have found it useful to adopt a particular angle on the spiritual exercises best articulated by Ignatian scholar Dean Brackley in his book The Call to Discernment in Troubled Times: New Perspectives on the Transformative Wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola.

Brackley is a Jesuit priest and professor who served in Manhattan and the Bronx before volunteering to take the place of one of six assassinated Jesuits in El Salvador in 1989. He had a middle-class upbringing in upstate New York, had a spiritual crisis that fractured the faith he was raised on, and finally found renewed hope by deepening his relationship with Jesus Christ through the exercises of Ignatius. But he did not do his exercises while hidden away from the world.

He writes (2-3):

[The Exercises] helped me notice that when I drew near to suffering I experienced a sense of solidity and some relief. Letting the drama of life and death break through my defenses - the drama of down-and-out adults and youth at risk in Lower Manhattan where I lived and worked - helped me gather together my scattered self. It did me good to get close to these people. Since then, that kind of experience has continued to nourish me. The crucified people of today lead us to the center of things. Eventually they helped me rediscover Christianity. Through those difficult years and ever since, the Ignatian path, Ignatian spirituality, has been crucial for finding my way.

Like Luther and like Ignacio, Brackley is unable to keep these experiences to himself. He hopes to share what he has found with us, that in Christ we might find new life for the life of the world.

He writes (p. 8-9):

With major institutions in crisis, we find it hard to say where the world is headed. Some believe this affords groups of deeply committed people a better chance to shape the future than they would have under more stable, less fluid conditions: an encouraging way to think about this state of uncertainty. In any event, we urgently need a critical mass of such people to make this century the century of solidarity and turn the swelling tide of misery, violence, and environmental crisis.

The good news (gospel) assures us that it makes sense to struggle against the odds and to celebrate along the way. I do believe, as the song says, that we shall overcome some day. I hope these reflections will stoke the inner flame of generous readers and provide them with resources to help bring that day closer.

It is my hope that our shared reflections on the themes of this book might deepen the wells of grace that sustain us - over a season, over a year, over a lifetime - for our daily work in God's world. It is my hope that they might challenge us to go deeper into the world that surrounds us, with all of its pain and all of its beauty. And it is my hope that they might deepen our understanding of the mystery of Christ, and of his journey to the cross and beyond.

May God bless and keep us on our journey throughout these forty days.