REFLECTIONS FOR THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT - MARCH 5TH, 2018
Bishop Kristina Rake
Today's reading: 2 Kings 5:1-15 (full text below the reflection)
In our first reading, Naaman, a commander in the Syrian army, is afflicted with leprosy and seeks out the prophet Elisha. Elisha had received the mantle of prophecy from the Great Prophet Elijah, who was taken up bodily into heaven without tasting death.
Elijah had even brought a child back from the dead and commanded the weather. His assistant and protégé, Elisha, was proving just as powerful with God.
Naaman, a Gentile, has faced the hardships of traveling to Elisha because he is told Elisha has the power to heal him. He's brought forth riches, treasure, and an entire retinue of servants, displaying his grandeur to Elisha.
Naaman was also reminding Elisha of his status as a military conqueror of Israel, for Assyria had already destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel forever and its military were currently occupying the land.
Elisha refuses to see Naaman. He sends word to the group, which is literally at his door, that Naaman can wash in the Jordan 7 times and be made clean.
What's interesting is Naaman's reaction. He isn't insulted that Elisha won't see him, even though that would be a rational response. He's upset that the remedy is SO EASY. Naaman thinks Elisha is toying with him because Elisha has offered the healing without all of the fanfare and grandeur with which Naaman has requested it.
Naaman has offered Elisha a show, even though at the heart of his travel is the humility of asking a subjugated vassal with a foreign god for help. Elisha won't offer a show in return, even though the miracle itself will demonstrate his powerful intercession and God's immense Glory.
We moderns think the same way. We seem to believe that God's mercy must require some grand effort on our part, some extraordinary action that will "force God's hand" into treating us with loving kindness and mercy.
When we leave the confessional and say our penance, we think, "Surely it isn't that easy. There has to be more to it."
How hard we work to "win" God's approval and love. We expect to have to earn God's mercy because we want to have control over God's mercy. We want control over God, frankly. If there is some action, some way, in which we can get God to respond to our desires, we would attempt it no matter how strenuous.
We want control. We want certainty. We want to act because if the results depend upon us, then we control the results.
But that's simply not how it works. Naaman is furious that there wasn't more to it and, in a very human snit, he's about to leave without performing the easy task of bathing.
His servant points out how irrational that is and so Naaman does his simple, repetitive bath. He is healed as a result and clearly humbled by it.
So I ask you, What action can you perform right now that will cause God to love you more than He does at this very moment? What can you do to make Him have mercy on you and keep you in existence as He has been doing already?
Of course, the answer is "nothing". God cannot love us more than He does. We can do nothing to cause His love to increase because His love is free and always at its fullest, causing us to remain in existence.
We would like to think it isn't that easy and that we can do something to earn God's love. But that isn't true. God is simple. His mercy is free. His love is free.
We humans are the ones who complicate matters. We make things complex and difficult for ourselves.
If we would only remove our human need to earn, to control, to achieve, then we'd be able to trust and enjoy the gift of God's love and forgiveness.
Let's stop complicating God. His motives are very simple to state, though impossible to comprehend. We are not worthy of life, yet He bestows it. We are not worthy of love, yet He sends it. We are not worthy of forgiveness, yet He grants it.
We are loved, not in spite of who WE are, but BECAUSE of who GOD is. And that is good news, indeed.
Amen.
First reading
2 Kings 5:1-15ab
There were many people with leprosy in Israel, but none were made clean, except Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:27).
Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram, was highly esteemed and respected by his master, for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram. But valiant as he was, the man was a leper. Now the Arameans had captured in a raid on the land of Israel a little girl, who became the servant of Naaman’s wife. “If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria,” she said to her mistress, “he would cure him of his leprosy.” Naaman went and told his lord just what the slave girl from the land of Israel had said. “Go,” said the king of Aram. “I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman set out, taking along ten silver talents, six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments. To the king of Israel he brought the letter, which read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
When he read the letter, the king of Israel tore his garments and exclaimed: “Am I a god with power over life and death, that this man should send someone to me to be cured of leprosy? Take note! You can see he is only looking for a quarrel with me!” When Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments, he sent word to the king: “Why have you torn your garments? Let him come to me and find out that there is a prophet in Israel.”
Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. The prophet sent him the message: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” But Naaman went away angry, saying, “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the LORD his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy. Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?” With this, he turned about in anger and left.
But his servants came up and reasoned with him. “My father,” they said, “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it? All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.”
Bishop Kristina Rake
Today's reading: 2 Kings 5:1-15 (full text below the reflection)
In our first reading, Naaman, a commander in the Syrian army, is afflicted with leprosy and seeks out the prophet Elisha. Elisha had received the mantle of prophecy from the Great Prophet Elijah, who was taken up bodily into heaven without tasting death.
Elijah had even brought a child back from the dead and commanded the weather. His assistant and protégé, Elisha, was proving just as powerful with God.
Naaman, a Gentile, has faced the hardships of traveling to Elisha because he is told Elisha has the power to heal him. He's brought forth riches, treasure, and an entire retinue of servants, displaying his grandeur to Elisha.
Naaman was also reminding Elisha of his status as a military conqueror of Israel, for Assyria had already destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel forever and its military were currently occupying the land.
Elisha refuses to see Naaman. He sends word to the group, which is literally at his door, that Naaman can wash in the Jordan 7 times and be made clean.
What's interesting is Naaman's reaction. He isn't insulted that Elisha won't see him, even though that would be a rational response. He's upset that the remedy is SO EASY. Naaman thinks Elisha is toying with him because Elisha has offered the healing without all of the fanfare and grandeur with which Naaman has requested it.
Naaman has offered Elisha a show, even though at the heart of his travel is the humility of asking a subjugated vassal with a foreign god for help. Elisha won't offer a show in return, even though the miracle itself will demonstrate his powerful intercession and God's immense Glory.
We moderns think the same way. We seem to believe that God's mercy must require some grand effort on our part, some extraordinary action that will "force God's hand" into treating us with loving kindness and mercy.
When we leave the confessional and say our penance, we think, "Surely it isn't that easy. There has to be more to it."
How hard we work to "win" God's approval and love. We expect to have to earn God's mercy because we want to have control over God's mercy. We want control over God, frankly. If there is some action, some way, in which we can get God to respond to our desires, we would attempt it no matter how strenuous.
We want control. We want certainty. We want to act because if the results depend upon us, then we control the results.
But that's simply not how it works. Naaman is furious that there wasn't more to it and, in a very human snit, he's about to leave without performing the easy task of bathing.
His servant points out how irrational that is and so Naaman does his simple, repetitive bath. He is healed as a result and clearly humbled by it.
So I ask you, What action can you perform right now that will cause God to love you more than He does at this very moment? What can you do to make Him have mercy on you and keep you in existence as He has been doing already?
Of course, the answer is "nothing". God cannot love us more than He does. We can do nothing to cause His love to increase because His love is free and always at its fullest, causing us to remain in existence.
We would like to think it isn't that easy and that we can do something to earn God's love. But that isn't true. God is simple. His mercy is free. His love is free.
We humans are the ones who complicate matters. We make things complex and difficult for ourselves.
If we would only remove our human need to earn, to control, to achieve, then we'd be able to trust and enjoy the gift of God's love and forgiveness.
Let's stop complicating God. His motives are very simple to state, though impossible to comprehend. We are not worthy of life, yet He bestows it. We are not worthy of love, yet He sends it. We are not worthy of forgiveness, yet He grants it.
We are loved, not in spite of who WE are, but BECAUSE of who GOD is. And that is good news, indeed.
Amen.
First reading
2 Kings 5:1-15ab
There were many people with leprosy in Israel, but none were made clean, except Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:27).
Naaman, the army commander of the king of Aram, was highly esteemed and respected by his master, for through him the LORD had brought victory to Aram. But valiant as he was, the man was a leper. Now the Arameans had captured in a raid on the land of Israel a little girl, who became the servant of Naaman’s wife. “If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria,” she said to her mistress, “he would cure him of his leprosy.” Naaman went and told his lord just what the slave girl from the land of Israel had said. “Go,” said the king of Aram. “I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman set out, taking along ten silver talents, six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments. To the king of Israel he brought the letter, which read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
When he read the letter, the king of Israel tore his garments and exclaimed: “Am I a god with power over life and death, that this man should send someone to me to be cured of leprosy? Take note! You can see he is only looking for a quarrel with me!” When Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his garments, he sent word to the king: “Why have you torn your garments? Let him come to me and find out that there is a prophet in Israel.”
Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. The prophet sent him the message: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” But Naaman went away angry, saying, “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the LORD his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy. Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?” With this, he turned about in anger and left.
But his servants came up and reasoned with him. “My father,” they said, “if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it? All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” So Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of the man of God. His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
He returned with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.”
GOD'S LOVE FOR US
12/4/17
“Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.” –The Princess Bride.
The most profound insights into the human condition come from the most unexpected places sometimes.
Life is pain.
That’s not all that life is, but life IS painful.
There is no Easter without Good Friday. I know many churches that do not celebrate Good Friday. They sanitize life and present a “rainbows and butterflies” Christianity that simply doesn’t resonate with the experience of the average person. They preach a health and wealth theology: if you’re good, if you have faith, nothing bad will happen to you. If you suffer, your “lens is dirty” and you must clean it (from sin) in order for God’s blessings to “shine through” and make your life better.
There is no greater rubbish preached in the world today than that. “Health and wealth” theology, the belief that being good is what brings blessings and being bad is what brings pain, is no friend to scripture. It is antithetical to the entire message of Christ, who tells us that we must “take up our cross” to follow Him. It stands as an affront to Paul, who so often spoke of his sufferings with joy, pointing to their importance in his Gospel message, and saying so eloquently that “I make up in my sufferings what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.”
The Book of Job discusses why bad things happen to good people; it ends without a satisfying answer. In the end, God explains only that God is God and Man is Man and we don’t understand. The Book of Jonah discusses why the evil prosper and also ends without a satisfying answer; bad people will do evil things and then continue to prosper.
Essentially, if I were to summarize the message of the Gospel about pain, it is this: you will suffer at the hands of others through no fault of your own. That’s life.
God didn’t promise that our lives would be easy. He promised that, if we believe, we will have true life—and so we do.
Yet, we are MORE than what life does to us. Even life is more than what happens in life.
Sadly, most people do not absorb that truth until much later in life because they endures the worst of their pain while they were children. This produces a spiritual hindrance that stalks a soul throughout her life because our parents are our first typological figure for God. Regardless of how we may feel as grown-ups, throughout our youth, it is our parents who teach us who God is simply by being who they are. It is their behavior towards us that will ultimately generate our later concept of how God interacts with humanity.
If your parents were strict and authoritarian, you learn to fear God; to attempt to appease God via manipulation. You will ultimately come to hate God, consciously or unconsciously, because you have been taught that you must excel in all undertakings in order to procure God’s love. That’s what they did with their parents, right? The people who were supposed to love them unconditionally?
What about neglectful parents? Children of such caregivers must wonder if there is even a God up there who cares what happens to them.
What about children of abusive parents? The very strictures of religion must feel to them like whips and chains keeping them from a God who wants them to be free from God.
What can we say about those with absentee parents? So many adults in this world treat God like an absentee father, a divorced dad, whom we visit on weekends but who has no relativity to the remainder of the week.
None of these images for God is real. They are idols we have unconsciously created in our minds because the most powerful beings we knew for our first decade-and-a-half of our lives left their psychological footprints in our souls. It isn’t our fault. It isn’t our sin that caused this conception of a tiny and implacable god.
So I need to tell you something that will be hard to hear at first, but here it goes:
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that our parents loved us unconditionally.
Listen again: the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that our parents loved us unconditionally.
You’re probably horrified by this statement, so let me explain. Our parents are human. They got tired. They got frustrated. They had expectations. They were happier when we did well and angrier when we got emotional at the wrong times. They wanted the best for us and pushed us to do more and to excel. They punished us when we did wrong, sometimes unjustly. They overreacted, under-responded, forgot important things, threw away toys, hated some of our friends, and imposed silly rules based on their own fears and shortcomings.
In short, our parents were human and loved us as much as any human ever will, but that love wasn’t divine love, so it was certainly conditional.
Because human beings—fickle, egotistical, sinful, weak, and anxious human beings—were our first types for God, many of us have a warped view of who God is.
There’s an old joke about a famous theologian who dies and goes to heaven and meets God.
“Are you God?” the theologian says.
“Yes,” God replies.
“Then take me to your leader.”
We all suffer from idolatry, which is the worship of anyone or anything other than the true God. When you think God is some cosmological Santa Clause, or someone who demands a magical faith formula to stay out of hell, or even someone who will love you if you’re good—then you are guilty of idolatry. None of those beings is the One God, Living and True. They are idols, remnants of your childhood.
We must acknowledge our parents’ flaws, their selfishness, their pettiness, their sinfulness. Then we need to understand that God is not like our parents.
Toppling these particular idols is extremely painful. It requires us to accept two truths: no one ever loved us as much as we deserved to be loved and we did not deserve the bad things that happened to us.
Think about how deeply you’ve always believed those two lies: I got what I deserved and was loved as much as possible.
How devastating. How untrue.
God loves you in a way you will never comprehend. You cannot do one thing, ever, in any way, to make God love you any more than he does at this moment.
He will never tire of you. He expects you to be truly and completely you, free from sin, knowing Him, the True God of Life and Light.
Rudyard Kipling talked about how the slaughter of these small idols causes us pain, but is ultimately worth the struggle. He said (paraphrased): “when we realize that we have worshiped an idol rather than the real God, it is very painful. But we mustn’t lose heart, because it happens to a great many people. When the native finally realizes that his little wooden idol does not have the power to save him, it is not because there is no God. It is because the true God is not made out of wood.”
Think about who God is to you. Then ask yourself if the God you just described is worthy of worship. Is it a small god, one whom you’d dismiss as false if someone else described it to you? Does God make you anxious? Worried? Cold? Angry?
If so, you are not worshiping the true God. To worship Him is to be acutely aware of both His tremendous love for us and our inability to earn that love in any way.
God gazes at you like a newborn at its mother. God adores you—His gaze is so intensely ablaze with love that if He looked away from you for a second, you would cease to exist. It is love that holds you together in existence and love alone. That love is a free gift because God is love and He gives of Himself to all of creation.
God doesn’t love you because of who you are or what you’ve done. He adores you because of who God is and what God’s done.
You will never know a love like this in your lifetime: the love and peace that surpasses all understanding. But you can meditate everyday in the arms that cradle you, as the still small voice that whispers sweetly to your soul: “You are my beloved.”
And, one day, when you die and walk that road toward home, God will see you from afar.
And He will run to you with joy.
+Bishop Kristina Rake
12/4/17
“Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.” –The Princess Bride.
The most profound insights into the human condition come from the most unexpected places sometimes.
Life is pain.
That’s not all that life is, but life IS painful.
There is no Easter without Good Friday. I know many churches that do not celebrate Good Friday. They sanitize life and present a “rainbows and butterflies” Christianity that simply doesn’t resonate with the experience of the average person. They preach a health and wealth theology: if you’re good, if you have faith, nothing bad will happen to you. If you suffer, your “lens is dirty” and you must clean it (from sin) in order for God’s blessings to “shine through” and make your life better.
There is no greater rubbish preached in the world today than that. “Health and wealth” theology, the belief that being good is what brings blessings and being bad is what brings pain, is no friend to scripture. It is antithetical to the entire message of Christ, who tells us that we must “take up our cross” to follow Him. It stands as an affront to Paul, who so often spoke of his sufferings with joy, pointing to their importance in his Gospel message, and saying so eloquently that “I make up in my sufferings what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.”
The Book of Job discusses why bad things happen to good people; it ends without a satisfying answer. In the end, God explains only that God is God and Man is Man and we don’t understand. The Book of Jonah discusses why the evil prosper and also ends without a satisfying answer; bad people will do evil things and then continue to prosper.
Essentially, if I were to summarize the message of the Gospel about pain, it is this: you will suffer at the hands of others through no fault of your own. That’s life.
God didn’t promise that our lives would be easy. He promised that, if we believe, we will have true life—and so we do.
Yet, we are MORE than what life does to us. Even life is more than what happens in life.
Sadly, most people do not absorb that truth until much later in life because they endures the worst of their pain while they were children. This produces a spiritual hindrance that stalks a soul throughout her life because our parents are our first typological figure for God. Regardless of how we may feel as grown-ups, throughout our youth, it is our parents who teach us who God is simply by being who they are. It is their behavior towards us that will ultimately generate our later concept of how God interacts with humanity.
If your parents were strict and authoritarian, you learn to fear God; to attempt to appease God via manipulation. You will ultimately come to hate God, consciously or unconsciously, because you have been taught that you must excel in all undertakings in order to procure God’s love. That’s what they did with their parents, right? The people who were supposed to love them unconditionally?
What about neglectful parents? Children of such caregivers must wonder if there is even a God up there who cares what happens to them.
What about children of abusive parents? The very strictures of religion must feel to them like whips and chains keeping them from a God who wants them to be free from God.
What can we say about those with absentee parents? So many adults in this world treat God like an absentee father, a divorced dad, whom we visit on weekends but who has no relativity to the remainder of the week.
None of these images for God is real. They are idols we have unconsciously created in our minds because the most powerful beings we knew for our first decade-and-a-half of our lives left their psychological footprints in our souls. It isn’t our fault. It isn’t our sin that caused this conception of a tiny and implacable god.
So I need to tell you something that will be hard to hear at first, but here it goes:
The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that our parents loved us unconditionally.
Listen again: the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that our parents loved us unconditionally.
You’re probably horrified by this statement, so let me explain. Our parents are human. They got tired. They got frustrated. They had expectations. They were happier when we did well and angrier when we got emotional at the wrong times. They wanted the best for us and pushed us to do more and to excel. They punished us when we did wrong, sometimes unjustly. They overreacted, under-responded, forgot important things, threw away toys, hated some of our friends, and imposed silly rules based on their own fears and shortcomings.
In short, our parents were human and loved us as much as any human ever will, but that love wasn’t divine love, so it was certainly conditional.
Because human beings—fickle, egotistical, sinful, weak, and anxious human beings—were our first types for God, many of us have a warped view of who God is.
There’s an old joke about a famous theologian who dies and goes to heaven and meets God.
“Are you God?” the theologian says.
“Yes,” God replies.
“Then take me to your leader.”
We all suffer from idolatry, which is the worship of anyone or anything other than the true God. When you think God is some cosmological Santa Clause, or someone who demands a magical faith formula to stay out of hell, or even someone who will love you if you’re good—then you are guilty of idolatry. None of those beings is the One God, Living and True. They are idols, remnants of your childhood.
We must acknowledge our parents’ flaws, their selfishness, their pettiness, their sinfulness. Then we need to understand that God is not like our parents.
Toppling these particular idols is extremely painful. It requires us to accept two truths: no one ever loved us as much as we deserved to be loved and we did not deserve the bad things that happened to us.
Think about how deeply you’ve always believed those two lies: I got what I deserved and was loved as much as possible.
How devastating. How untrue.
God loves you in a way you will never comprehend. You cannot do one thing, ever, in any way, to make God love you any more than he does at this moment.
He will never tire of you. He expects you to be truly and completely you, free from sin, knowing Him, the True God of Life and Light.
Rudyard Kipling talked about how the slaughter of these small idols causes us pain, but is ultimately worth the struggle. He said (paraphrased): “when we realize that we have worshiped an idol rather than the real God, it is very painful. But we mustn’t lose heart, because it happens to a great many people. When the native finally realizes that his little wooden idol does not have the power to save him, it is not because there is no God. It is because the true God is not made out of wood.”
Think about who God is to you. Then ask yourself if the God you just described is worthy of worship. Is it a small god, one whom you’d dismiss as false if someone else described it to you? Does God make you anxious? Worried? Cold? Angry?
If so, you are not worshiping the true God. To worship Him is to be acutely aware of both His tremendous love for us and our inability to earn that love in any way.
God gazes at you like a newborn at its mother. God adores you—His gaze is so intensely ablaze with love that if He looked away from you for a second, you would cease to exist. It is love that holds you together in existence and love alone. That love is a free gift because God is love and He gives of Himself to all of creation.
God doesn’t love you because of who you are or what you’ve done. He adores you because of who God is and what God’s done.
You will never know a love like this in your lifetime: the love and peace that surpasses all understanding. But you can meditate everyday in the arms that cradle you, as the still small voice that whispers sweetly to your soul: “You are my beloved.”
And, one day, when you die and walk that road toward home, God will see you from afar.
And He will run to you with joy.
+Bishop Kristina Rake