Heaven’s light

 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. (Luke 9:28-29)

I can see this, somehow. There would seem to be no analog, nothing that compares to this moment on the mountain when the inner soul of Jesus filled the fullness of his outer appearance with the glory of heaven’s light.

His interior union with the Father shimmers through his finite, mortal body, unveiling the secret of his identity and revealing, once and for all, what we are intended to know, to feel and to become, one with heaven’s light.

The inner eye of my heart conceives the vision, if only because I have stood in the gaze of souls who loved truly, deeply and beautifully, their eyes glistening with a light that hinted of a world of beauty beneath and beyond all that is, a world more real than the ground beneath our feet or the touch of our beloved’s hand.

Such is the light filling Jesus on the mountain. We desperately need this vision. When we lose it, when we forget it, the triviality of the ordinary, the repulsive violence that fills the daily news, and the smug egotism of the powerful tempt us to nihilistic despair, which may become the great spiritual malady of our era.

When that takes hold, the light in our souls can be eclipsed by the capricious will of the powerful who indulge their whims to shape a world of their choosing, a world where love, beauty, commitment, grace, generosity and other virtues have no place or purchase.

Such is the sordid state of American politics, about which we may feel powerless to change, a state that … if we fixate there … dims the light of Christ in our lives, stealing our joy and shrouding our days in a cheerless, gray cloud.

This is why we so badly need the vision of Jesus shimmering with heaven’s light on the mountain. The light of God shines there, drawing us to come and see and never doubt that heaven’s inextinguishable radiance is not now and never shall be eclipsed.

The luminous glory shimmering in the very clothes of Christ is a vision of eternity. Holding it before our eyes, it fans the flame of faith, hope and love within us. 

Even more, it stirs our desire not just to see heaven’s holy light … but to stand inside that light, enveloped in its shining, so that our hearts are one, united with our Lord, knowing what is in him, tasting the sweetness of eternity.

Standing in heaven’s light, we feel the world of beauty beneath and beyond all that is … where those who mourn shall laugh, where those who want shall be full, where suffering is turned into redemption and the powers of death shatter like glass.

For Colleen … and all who need to feel the fire

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

I wonder how many of us feel like my cousin, Colleen. ‘I need a hug,’ she wrote, responding to a recent post. ‘I am scared to death every day I wake up. Any specific prayers or thoughts you can give me would be appreciated.’

If only there was a magic prayer to cast out fear and evict our worries and anger, amid the political upheaval that bombards our consciousness every time we watch the news, wondering, good Lord, what next?

For Colleen, the main demon is fear, for me it is anger at the brutal callousness and cruelty to human beings at home and abroad, evident in the actions of the current administration, cutting humanitarian aid and tossing committed public servants to the curb … with utterly no discernment about what is good, just and necessary.

Although our demons differ, Colleen and I—millions more, I suspect—face a spiritual crisis, as anger, fear or other demons like helplessness and despair claim ever-larger swathes of our consciousness.

We need to exercise an eviction notice or, better, perform an exorcism before the enemies of love possess our hearts. Anger, even righteous anger, can quickly metastasize into hatred, fear into immobility, despair into cynicism and helplessness into melancholy and sad despondency.

While I wish I had a special prayer for Colleen … and myself, there is a way of freedom … however partial it feels, at times … a way we can walk, which requires daily attention and maintenance.

Silly, sappy and naïve as it sounds, love is the only road to freedom, the only power strong enough to exorcise the damnedable powers that bind our hearts and tie us in knots.

Love casts out fear, First John 4 says. It does a pretty good job on anger, hopelessness, helplessness and a host of other chains that bind the heart, too. I speak from experience; more significantly, so do saints, mystics and ordinary Christians from any time and place you can possibly name.

The love that frees does not emanate in our souls; although as a gift in our creation and renewed in our redemption, it burns there, too, a living flame of love, to be sought, fanned and tended anew each day.

The deep substance of our souls … is the love God is, Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, tells us. We forget that … or maybe we never knew. Maybe we thought the surge of warmth, love and tears that bubble up, sometimes at the most unexpected and inopportune moments, is an aberration of little import, as opposed to our souls trying to break free and see the light of day.

Every day, we need to descend from our troubled minds into our hearts, there to find and feel the warmth of the flickering flame yet burning in us. Blow on those flames; stir love’s embers however you can. Savor whatever graces or memories, beauty or common moments awaken your heart.

And pray. Pray all your fears, your hopes and doubts and all the rest of it. Let it go, giving it all to Jesus, who bids you to come and sit in the sweet warmth of his love. You just may find the comfort and rest you need for one more day of loving your life and family and neighbors and this crazy, screwed-up world … and even yourself, which can be the hardest of all.

And Colleen, if none of this works, read Psalm 46, slowly, and remember who, in the last analysis, is still in charge.

Elon Musk meets the silent pulpit

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. … ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. (Luke 6:20,23-24)

I would have thought it impossible to read these words this week without seeing the image of the world’s richest man, standing in the Oval Office, explaining why it’s okay to starve children and refuse them life-saving medicines.

But I was wrong.

I heard two sermons today, one in a large Roman Catholic Church, another in a prominent Lutheran congregation. In neither case, did the preacher think it was important to mention that humanitarian agencies of their own church bodies were being eviscerated, told to stand down, forced to release staff, while millions of tons of food are wasting in warehouses and ship holds, going to rot, because they have been denied access to USAID food and medication supplies.

Not only that, neither preacher bothered to mention that the very agencies of their church bodies, among the most efficient and effective in the world at feeding the poor and working among the bereft and forgotten, are being denounced, reviled and defamed.

I can only wonder if the reason is cluelessness … or cowardice.

We should have been praising God. We should have been celebrating that we are being reviled and defamed for loving Jesus and loving the people to whom he most directed us. We should have celebrated the work and sacrifices of those who so faithfully labor to be the hands and heart of Jesus in the world’s poorest places.

But what we got … was silence.

I can hardly think of a moment when Jesus’ words about what it means to love and follow him have had more obvious and immediate relevance. The world’s richest man stood in the most powerful office on the face of the earth and declared war on the world’s poor, whom Jesus called blessed, favored, chosen, treasured, the delight of his eye.

But I heard nary a word about this, and I wonder how common my experience was this day.

I wonder if the Western church is capable, whether it remains a fit instrument to bear the message of the Gospel and suffer for it like so many in other places and generations before us.

I wonder if we are so institutionally-bound that we lack the courage to be hated for the sake of Jesus and his kingdom. And yes, I wonder the same about myself. Have I become so acclimated to church as I have known it that I am unwilling to face the challenge of our times?

Contrary to my conversation with one of today’s preachers, it is not enough to exhort people to place commitment to Christ and his kingdom at the center of their lives—without naming the particularity of what that means in the present moment. If the Gospel is not preached in its particularity, it is not preached at all.

Today, the pulpits toward which I eagerly leaned, hoping to hear the word of God in the power of the Spirit, gave me polite, apologetic rhetoric which ignored or tried to explain that Jesus didn’t really mean what he said when he blessed the poor and warned the rich that their benighted ways lead to ruin.

And all the while, people were and are dying … because so many are unable or unwilling to speak and hear the Word of God.

Lord, have mercy.

Take a knee

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken …. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people. (Luke 5:8-10)

I am suspicious of all attempts to divide the human race into two groups, defined by some trait or attitude. But today … amid the cacophony of voices in the news … I am tempted.

Let’s see how it goes.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those astounded by orange-burst sunsets … and those who quickly turn away.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who feel the darkness of their hearts … and those who only see it in others.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who imagine they understand the great questions of the day … and those who know they don’t.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who kneel before the holy … and those who don’t or won’t or would never think of it.

I prefer the kneelers … and the light-lovers … and the hearts who feel the weight of their sin, the limits of their wisdom and the certainty of their mortality.

They are my brothers and sisters, which is why I like Peter as he kneels among the slippery fish flopping about on the deck of his boat. Knowing the dark impurity of his soul, the unworthiness of his heart, his want of faith and love, he hides his face in the presence of the Divine Soul whose light exposes the depth of his darkness.

But he doesn’t stay there long, for mercy will not allow it. God cannot seem to resist a truly humble heart, who is poor in spirit and has surrendered all attempts to deny their poverty.

The message is always the same; Old Testament, New Testament, doesn’t matter, the words soon come, ‘Do not be afraid.’

But it is never spoken to the arrogant who are certain of their wisdom, preening in their power and proud of their perversity. It is only for knees that know how to bend … and hearts who know how to confess … and souls who have tasted the tears of mortality.

God, who is Eternal Light and the sweetness of unfailing mercy, invites us to bring our darkness, our doubt, our fear, and the certainty of our unworthiness into the embrace of everlasting love.

For Christ, who is transcendent goodness, kindness and beauty, lifts us from our knees, again and again, amid the tears of joy that appear each time we catch the corner of his smile … and hear his voice, ‘Do not be afraid.’

Bag-ucation

‘This child [Jesus] is destined … to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed ….’ (Luke 2:34-35)

The malignant malice and ignorance of Elon Musk and his cadre of young tech-bros transports me to the belly of a C-130 turbo prop flying at 20,000 feet over the horn of Africa.

How I’d love to go back and take them with me, riding the bags, not that I think it would do much to illumine the darkened souls of those who imagine human life and society can be reduced to a series of algorithms.

There are a few things they don’t know as they stump their way through the national treasury like a bear in heat, supposedly eliminating waste and fraud, which would actually require them to know something about what federal dollars do.

I am far from an expert, but I know what it is to ride bags of USAID grain into war zones and killing fields amid rampant starvation.

I sat on those bags and climbed into the cockpit more than once or twice to listen to pilots talk to aid workers on the ground, who advised them whether it was safe to land. I watched men young and younger than Musk’s arrogant army scramble to unload tons of grain and cooking oil from those planes, loading them on smaller trucks and jeeps before hostile soldiers and warlord bandits descended with AK-47s to steal it.

Those jeeps and trucks bore many signs, like, WFP, the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services, International Committee of the Red Cross, Goal, and Doctors Without Borders. The food whisked away went to feeding and distribution centers run by these agencies and others, including the Sisters of Charity, Save the Children and Lutheran World Federation-World Service, whose initials, LWF, were also emblazoned on some of the C-130s.

It is not only domestically, within the United States, that the U.S. government depends on public-private partnerships—such as with Lutheran and Catholic social services—to accomplish aspects of its mission.

Those bags of grain represent only a small portion, I’m sure, of the work and reach of USAID. But I know this much: Lives are saved. Regions are stabilized or given the hope of stabilization. U.S. foreign policy goals are served, undergirding the reputation of the United States as a just, generous and reliable partner in the welter of global affairs.

I doubt Musk and his minions know much, if any of this, and they show no evidence that they care to know, as they slash away at the fabric of relationships that help hold the world together and keep it, at least, somewhat sane and decent.

Still, I would love to take them for a ride in one of those Southern Air Transport planes. I’d have them scramble to pick of 50-kilogram bags of grain and carry them down the ramp and onto the trucks. I’d like to watch them look over their shoulders, wondering if they were about to come face-to-face with armed men, who didn’t give a damn who they are or what they think they know.

I want aid workers to walk them among starving kids with orange hair, kwashiorkor, as they withered away. 

I’d like to bring them face-to-face with something beyond a confounded computer screen so they might see the faces of these kids—and the young men and women who work among them, revealing a depth and beauty of heart they, too, could have … if only they could feel something beyond the cocksure arrogance of those who know little more than numbers on a screen.

I’d call it bag-ucation.

The eyes have it

Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Lord, let your servant now depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation. (Luke 2:27-30) 

Crystal blue eyes, shining clear as an April morning, shimmer in memory when I hear Simeon’s name. I knew Simeon. I still know him and always will, except his name is not Simeon. It’s Eilert. But he is Simeon to me. Of all the souls I want to meet in that realm where tears are no more, Eilert is on the short list.

I want to look into his moist, blue eyes one more time. But I don’t need to wait. All I need to do is close my eyes and imagine old Simeon taking the infant Jesus in his arms and blessing God, his heart a fountain of gratitude.

For when I do, the face I see is Eilert’s … in the last hours of his life, his eyes as blue as the day I met him, his heart as generous, his words blessing me one last time as he had dozens of times before. As surely as Simeon held Jesus in his arms, Eilert held my heart in his.

‘Just know, we love you, and we love you a lot,’ he whispered. ‘But now it’s time for auf wedersehen.’ That was more than 40 years ago, or was it yesterday?

The old man’s heart, like Simeon, was a fountain of gratitude. He had seen what he needed to see, touched what he needed to touch, felt what he needed to feel to die in peace, knowing his life, the life of his people and the life of this crazy world rest in the hands of a Faithful Love, stronger than every death that was ever died or ever will be.

Eilert had tasted salvation in the beauty of the earth, the bounty of the soil, the goodness of love and the stories of Jesus he read from the worn Bible and devotionals lying on his kitchen chair.

His heart rested in peace in the early morning hours when eternity came to claim him, leaving me the holy privilege of closing his eyes on this earth for the last time.

Those eyes have lived in me all these years, and I suspect they always will. It was one of those moments that reveal your heart so clearly that the mind, so slow on the uptake, begins to understand what you most dearly want and need.

I want to see and touch and feel the faithful love of the One who is Love, the One held in Simeon’s arms and Eilert’s heart, the One who made their old eyes glisten with gratitude and so filled their hearts with words of blessing that they spilled out … even on the grossly unworthy, like me.

I want my eyes to shimmer with the secret of Love’s Living Presence that maybe, just maybe, I might bless someone as surely and profoundly as they continue to bless me. Maybe then, the Holy One will have some reasonable return on the great investment of love and wonder the Lord has poured out on me.

For I, too, have seen the Lord’s salvation, not least in the sparkle of old eyes alive with the Love who is everywhere present … and every moment for us.

Walk this way

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove Jesus out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (Luke 4:28-30)

This was the first time Jesus faced a hostile crowd. But he wasn’t surprised. He expected it, and it didn’t stop him from being himself.

It shouldn’t stop us, either. More on this in a moment.

My mind and heart travel to far away places when I hear of immigration enforcement agents scoping out schools, workplaces and churches, looking for people living in this country without documentation.

I’ve seen and heard why people cross borders without proper papers. The outward reasons are obvious—war, famine, civil unrest, violence, economic deprivation, hopelessness. But the deeper reasons are only two-fold … fear and hope.

Countless stories repeated these themes in several languages as I reported on church efforts to shelter, feed and provide safety for refugees and displaced persons. I have no doubt I would have done the same thing they did, if I had been in their shoes, even though many of those I saw had no shoes.

No border between me and safety, food or hope for my family would have deterred me. More than merely the instinct for self-preservation and comfort, this is what love does. It is what love requires.

Remembering those reporting trips, sitting in refugee camps, listening to hundreds of stories, walking in 100-degree heat or huddling low as freezing rain beat on tent flaps, I met human souls who wanted and needed and hoped for the same things I did, and who could not imagine having a small portion of what I could take for granted.

There were no documented or undocumented on those brutal roads and mud-thick mountainsides. There were only human souls, made in the image of Christ—the love he is, the deep self within them, hungering for shelter.

And here lies what most disturbs me about the callous immigration policy being pursued by the new administration. There is a profound inability, or perhaps a determined unwillingness, to see the humanity of those who came to the United States wanting only an opportunity to live and work in peace.

Spiritually blind, the pain of families ripped asunder by the deportation of an undocumented parent does not seem to matter, nor the destruction of young souls torn from the only country and language they have ever known.

That the United states has long needed a sustainable and rational border and immigration policy is obvious. But as one who calls Jesus, Lord, the apparent refusal to see and consider the faces and hearts of human beings is unconscionable.

For followers of Jesus, mercy and compassion are not options. They are the way of Jesus, never to be ignored—overriding every other consideration or commitment to party, politics, class or convenience.  

This is what is so striking to me about Jesus when he was roughed-up and thrown out of town for suggesting his townspeople had no greater claim to the graces and mercies of God than those foreigners they didn’t much like.

He didn’t argue with them, but passed through and went on his way, bringing healing and mercy, welcome and release to the poor, the blind, the forgotten and the fearful.

That’s his way, a way that met with hostility often enough. He was not surprised. He wasn’t shocked, nor did he get distracted. He just kept walking the way of mercy. So should we.

It is impossible to say what this means in any particular situation. At the very least, we must call, agitate and insist on compassion for human souls. Perhaps we can start by knowing our neighbors, asking congregations and agencies serving the strangers and aliens among us what they need.

Watching the water

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ (Luke 3:21-22)

On a hot June day, I visited the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism. Standing thigh deep in the Jordan River, I marked the foreheads of fellow pilgrims with the sign of the cross, my right side soaked as I reached into the stream over and over to make sure each one got suitably wet.

It’s impossible to say how our baptismal remembrance affected the 18 or so who stood with me in the river. The charter bus appeared to ferry us to the next holy site before we could gather our thoughts, let alone risk sharing them. Vulnerability is hard.

I didn’t want to go, then or now. I wanted to stay there, sit on the bank and watch the water flow south, carrying my mind into the depth of my heart.

And I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be there … with Jesus.

Even now, more than six years later, I imagine myself sitting there, beside Jesus, silent, as he prays, knowing only that I don’t know what to say, what to ask, or quite how I feel, except that I want to be there … with him … because being with him, feeling him near, I know that I don’t need to know what to say or what to do or what to ask … because I have what my heart needs.

It's like having loved someone for a very long time and feeling them love you for a very long time. When they are gone … for a few hours … or days … let alone forever … you feel incomplete, wanting only to touch them again, see their smile and feel their presence in the house because the rooms begin to echo with an emptiness only they can fill.

I suppose that’s the way human hearts are made, needy and always needing. Only fools deny this. The wise embrace it, letting their need lead them to love’s fulfillment, which is the only thing capable of filling the emptiness.

Follow your need far enough, and you might begin to realize you crave a love from which nothing, not even death can separate you, a love from which all love comes and to which every love points.

And this is why I go back, if only in my imagination, to sit on the bank watching the water. For Jesus came there, stood in the river among a bunch of people like me, shadowed by death, bearing the weight of their sins, longing for release.

Sitting beside him, heaven’s voice lingering in his ears, both of us enveloped in the warm rays of divine love, there is nothing to say or do. It’s enough just to be there … with him.

Far better than the coffee

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

Good coffee brings people to this busy suburban corner. But most are looking for something more, as am I.

I didn’t get my favorite seat in the southeast corner of the café, today. Two elderly Japanese men occupy that space, chatting amicably in their native tongue.

To my right, a gravel-voiced businessman, white wires dangling from his ears, gazes into his laptop, speaking with an associate, chuckling at what he hears. ‘You make this fun,’ I hear him say.

Behind me, a high school girl studies her notes, as another girl stretches her legs on the chair in front of her and sinks into her book. All the while, steam hisses from an espresso machine as the barista, who called me by name, prepares the next drink.

Nothing unusual here; it’s like this most days. But don’t imagine it’s not special. It’s extraordinary, provided you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Each of these lives—and all the rest you care to name—came to be in the Word Christ is, their souls imbued with his life and light. They are graced with the Joyful Love who willed each of them into existence, whether they know it or not.

Just look closely, the English mystic, Julian of Norwich, suggests, and you can see it. ‘God is everything that is good,’ she wrote, ‘and the goodness that everything has is God.’

Goodness is not hard to find in this place. It’s so plentiful it is nearly impossible to name it all. Students studying, a man enjoying work that appears natural for him, while two friends chat the afternoon away in the language in which they first heard words of love and care.

Christ’s light gets so buried in some lives and places it can disappear from our sight. But the light remains, however hidden, even in hard-bitten hearts and in the worst of circumstances.

But on days like today … and moments like this … the created goodness and beauty of human souls whispers the great truth our hearts most need to hear.

We live in a Christ-soaked world. The Incarnate Word of God, our beloved Christ, is born into a world where he has always been and will always be.

His appearance in human flesh, full of grace and truth, opens our eyes to see him in all that is good, feel him in all that is love, and savor his touch in the simple joy of being alive in a place like this … where you can hear his love chatting away in a language you can’t begin to understand.

Except, you actually understand quite well … that this is far better than your coffee.