Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Today’s text

John 13:12-17

When [Jesus] had washed their feet and put on his outer garments again he went back to the table. 'Do you understand', he said, 'what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash each other's feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you. 'In all truth I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, no messenger is greater than the one who sent him. 'Now that you know this, blessed are you if you behave accordingly.'

Reflection

‘Blessed are you.’ It’s music to my ears.

Blessed is no ordinary word, no mere best wishes. It bears the weight of the All-Holy and All-Loving.

To be blessed is to share in the substance of divinity, to participate in the reality of who and what God is. It is intuitively to know that the impulses of one’s own flesh and blood, nerve and muscle, translate the secrets of eternity into sensate knowing.

Touch and feeling, intuition and insight can fill with knowledge of the One who is beyond all knowing

This is all invitation to pick up our respective towels and wash feet where we are, to serve, to give ourselves fully to the tasks of loving.

In the giving, we will be blessed. In the serving, we will know God, not because we serve or are good, but in the very acts of loving service we will touch and taste the heart of the Unknowable God.

That Holy One will be known to us in a dark but savory knowing, a knowing that no words can say, a knowing beyond reducible concept, a knowing akin to knowing one’s own breath. Only closer.

And when we know, we will know what it is to be blessed.

I long for your blessing. I long to taste and touch the mystery of Love Unknowable. My frustrated soul fades to gray depression and immobile self-absorption without the consolation of such blessing.

So what do you do, Jesus? You point me to my daily-ness, to the tasks that need be done, the people who need to be loved and blessed themselves, to a world where souls hurt and fear, get sick and lose battles, laugh and long.

You say nothing, Jesus. You just point in the direction of blessing.

May I know you amid the mess this day. And may my mind find words to say.

Pr. David L. Miller