Friday, September 21, 2012

Today’s text

Mark 9:30-32

After leaving that place they made their way through Galilee; and he [Jesus] did not want anyone to know, because he was instructing his disciples; he was telling them, 'The Son of man will be delivered into the power of men; they will put him to death; and three days after he has been put to death he will rise again.' But they did not understand what he said and were afraid to ask him.

Reflection

We know people like this, people who give themselves away in love and trust.

They love those they have been given to love, and they trust that the One, the Mystery who made them, will raise them up when they lose themselves, when for love’s sake they surrender to tasks that wither the life out of them … or even get them killed.

They are the souls who most clearly show us who Jesus is and what God is like, magnetically drawing us to be as they are and know what they know.

Names come to mind, great names, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., for example, but faces appear, too. And so many of those faces are not far away, nor are they people whose decisions and sacrifices show up in the daily news.

They are people who give themselves with care to the tiny tasks of the day, to each person they meet, to the situations that come, the needs that arise, and who struggle for patience and grace amid the set-backs, slights and frustrations that are part of living.

They are parents and grandparents who love us, the children who don’t run from the absorbing needs of aging parents, the teacher, the nurse, the helper, the friend or neighbor who cares for our loved one even as much as we do.

They are wives and husbands who forgive the failures of the imperfect people to whom they share their lives and who hang in there when the going is hard.

They are the ones who make food for the homeless and remember the lonely and forgotten who feel life has passed them by and no one cares.

They are us, not just the saints of old or the great ones whose deeds are known and celebrated by millions.

Jesus soul, the Soul of the all-merciful God, is different from yours and mine, yet this is the soul he seeks to give away and give to us, in two ways.

His soul is given to reveal God’s kingdom of divine love. He gives himself to this reality, this vision of a world not yet come, knowing his suffering and death will reveal it, making it real.

And he invites us to walk the path of loving, doing justice and giving ourselves in grace and care. Walking this path, the seed of the Christ Soul within us sprouts and grows so that we have and know the Soul who has us.

If you keep your eyes open, you just may see his great Soul, and amid tears you may find it within yourself.

Pr. David L. Miller