News from Sophia Christi

Jesus shocks us into attention today by telling us to turn our backs on our families and everyone we love, or we cannot be his disciple! This is a statement very few of us can swallow. Turning our backs on family and loved ones makes little sense to most people, and it seems the very opposite of what the Gospel commands! How can we love our neighbor and ourselves and, at the same time, turn our back on those who are closest to us—those we love, those who often present us with our greatest challenges around loving? It’s a conundrum until we realize Jesus’ first-century Palestinian listeners aren’t disturbed by his words. This is a familiar style of speech to them. It is used to underscore and emphasize a point, increasing the importance of what is being said. No one in the crowd would have taken him literally to mean they should renounce (or hate!) their families and loved ones. So what is Jesus saying, then? What is his point? I think it comes down to the message he delivered to Mary Magdalene when he spoke to her before the empty tomb that pre-dawn morning following his crucifixion. “Don’t cling to me,” he said. Don’t cling. “If you will follow me you must let go.” Clinging is a fear-based response to the threat of loss, and all change brings loss. Clinging is the opposite of freedom, and disciples must have freedom. Jesus’ final words to Mary that morning were “go and tell my sisters and brothers all I have told you.” Go and tell; spread the word. We must have freedom to move, freedom to think, freedom of mind and heart if we are to be given a mission and trusted to carry it out. Detachment from anything that would hold us back, therefore, is an ongoing requirement for every disciple. It is an uphill journey for most of us and, in many ways, detachment is the central challenge and theme of every life, conscious or not. (more…)

When we talk about ‘faith’ probably most of us imagine we are talking about religious beliefs. But the theologian Paul Tillich would say that even            supposed non-believers believe in something. It may not be God but it could be nature, science, a set of principles or even something like the free market economy. We humans need a sense of containment and belonging in order to feel secure in this world, so we look for something or someone larger than our own small selves to believe in, to rely on, and then put our ‘faith’ there. But this is not the meaning of ‘faith’ in our readings today. Sr. Mary McGlone, who writes the Scripture column for the National Catholic Reporter, says “faith is not a belief in something…[it is a] radical openness to whatever God is bringing about.” She says “faith is a verb,” an action word. It keeps us moving and open, “ready to be taken by surprise, and to be led in ways [we] could never anticipate.” This is what we see in the story of Sarah and Abraham leaving their home country to wander in the desert for 40 years, not knowing where they were going except to some “promised land” they ended up never seeing. Still, they believed their descendants would get there because they trusted God’s promise. Faith as ‘openness to change’ is also what we hear in Jesus’ words to his friends as they walked with him toward Jerusalem. They didn’t know where they were going either, but they trusted him, which opened them to whatever God was bringing into their lives through him. They left the security of knowing where they were headed even when, at times, they begged to know the future, wanted concrete answers, and sometimes resisted where Jesus seemed to be taking them. Their world was changing dramatically just as ours is today. It was changing on a smaller scale, perhaps, than ours, but first century life in Jerusalem and the surrounding region was full of tension. Religious and political earthquakes were brewing that would completely destroy a way of life that had been in place for generations. In less than 40 years after Jesus died the Temple in Jerusalem would be gone, demolished by the Romans, and the ancient Jewish system of worship would abruptly die. In the midst of such disruptive forces threatening to befall the region Jesus tells his friends not to live in fear. He addresses them as a “little flock”, setting them apart from the mainstream because of their faith in a God who calls them beyond their comfort zone into an unknown future. (more…)

We come together as God’s People each month to be fed as the Body of Christ with the Body of Christ. We come to feed each other, to support and encourage each other during what, for many of us, are very painful times. And this is good. In many ways we need each other more than ever now. We listen to words from our Scriptures, words we’ve heard many times before, and they invite us to think about our lives and our world in another way, a way that leads toward heartfulness, hope, faith in an overarching plan we cannot see but can dimly sense when we put fear aside. And those ancient words come alive if we let them. They dance through our minds and unsettle our hearts. Deep questions surface, and we may begin to ask with interest, “what is God calling me to, calling US to, here and now?” Sometimes we sit with that question and remain clueless, forced to wait for Spirit to reveal a hint, or guide us toward a next step in discovering an answer. But sometimes in simply asking that question an image or thought pops into our mind, and we instantly KNOW the answer. At those times the answer can be terrifying because it requires a change we aren’t ready to make. Instead of being like Mary when Gabriel came with a message and a question, we aren’t ready to say “yes!” We may even dismiss the thought or bury it for a few days, weeks or decades! I’ve done that. Maybe you have too. Change is scary, especially if it threatens to upend just about everything you’ve come to know and depend on.

Scripture challenges us to think in new ways and to grow, to become more and more who we are—God’s Family, God’s People, God-infused people. And Scripture reminds us of who we are, individual cells in God’s Body which is made visible in Christ. Does that seem extreme? If so, listen again to Paul’s words. The Body of Christ taken as a whole, he says, is the “image [the face] of the unseen God.” In other words, we can SEE God only if we recognize the face of God in what God has created—nature, creatures, people, the earth, the world. All of this created reality, taken together, Richard Rohr calls “the Christ Mystery.” In this he builds on Paul’s theology; he isn’t making up something new. (more…)

In Seasons of Our Joy, Arthur Waskow writes: “Seven weeks of seven days. Day by day, week by week, the community watches the spring grain grow, watches with hope and with anxiety. Day by day, week by week, the community moves forward from the moment of freedom’s first explosion—[the Exodus] moves forward with hope and with anxiety. Will the earth succeed in unfolding its fruitfulness? Will we succeed in finding new truth and [exercise] our freedom?” It is “a season full of hope [and] a season full of anxiety that hope may fail.” It was the question in ancient Israel. It is the question of our culture today. Liberation from slavery under the Pharaoh in Egypt had taken Moses and their ancestors deep into the desert where they wandered without hope for years. Many died—even Moses—without seeing the Promised Land. The Jewish people remember—hope can fail. Jesus’ followers—those early disciples—also remembered. Seven weeks of seven days following Passover they awoke each morning remembering the horror of the crucifixion. On Shavuos, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of First Fruits, they gathered in one room. Jesus had appeared to them the evening of his resurrection and had breathed onthem, his own breath, his life. “Receive the Holy Spirit” he told them. He offered them freedom, liberation from the bondage of fear and hopelessness. He offered his Peace, offered them Hope, and gave them a way out of anxiety and despair. Receive the Spirit, he said. She will teach you about forgiveness. What you forgive you let go. What you don’t forgive remains within you. The choice is yours. (more…)