Our Lady of the Lights

 He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick. (Matthew 12:20a)

Sobering memories dampen the spirit today, September 11, memories and faces.

There was the mother I met on her deck in Brooklyn a few days after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York. Looking at the ash on the deck rail, she refused to disturb the dust, wondering aloud if it was her daughter.

I remember a parochial school teacher, her voice breaking as she described standing for hours at the school door, holding her student, waiting for a father who never showed up.

But more than these is the indelible image of a young woman at Union Square in lower Manhattan. She kept watch over thousands of candles as hundreds sat around her in stunned silence, staying long into the wee hours.

The memorial grew larger every night, and every night she was there when I sat among the silent and watched, transfixed by the beauty of her soul and the grieving love of those who held each other in the darkness.  

Night breezes would extinguish a few candles from time to time, and she would crawl among them, gently stretching and twisting lest she topple one of the fragile flames as she relit a smoldering wick.

She never lifted her eyes, not once that I could see. She kept watch over the lights as though they were her children, tenderly caring for each one through the night.

I never learned her name. She spoke to no one, and I didn’t dare interrupt her vigil. It would have been sacrilege to distract her from a work so holy.

When I wrote my story I called her Our Lady of the Lights, the Madonna of Manhattan.

Sitting there, we were all her children, the light of her love holding us all together, warming us in the night.

I wonder where she is today. I wonder if she ever really knew the beauty of what she did ... or how grateful at least one of us is 20 years later.

But I doubt I’m the only one.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

Love has us all

 

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. (Luke 6:35)

Nothing is less realistic than imagining you can work up pleasant thoughts about those who hurt or belittled you. We carry a thousand wounds from childhood and whenever we have been injured along the way, typically trying to push them aside as we age as if that were possible.

Ignore them as we may, they remain in wounded corners of the psyche, appearing at unpredictable times to remind us that there is work left undone.

Take a long walk away from the noise of traffic, construction down the street, a plane overhead, the music of a familiar voice calling you to necessities of the day. Soon enough, the mind becomes a quiet pool from whose depths  memories appear, words you wish you’d never heard, a disparaging glance, slights large and small that still cut from decades past.

No act of will can make them disappear, and the self-righteous ego rails against the hurt, conjuring reprisals to hurl against the ghosts that haunt your wounded heart. Or maybe that’s just me.

But I doubt it.

The necessary work is that of forgiveness, which is a really an invitation to ride the wave of a very great love, letting it pick you up and carry you along until it breaks on the rocks, splashing over the wounded places in your heart and the wounding faces you have long carried.

Maybe then you can see them as they are, every one of them as imperfect as yourself and as needy. And as loved, by the Love who is that wave longing to lift us from old hurts into the freedom to let it go, knowing ... Love has us all, every last one of us.

It the only healing.

David L. Miller

 

One of the crowd

And [Jesus] came down with them and stood on a stretch of level ground. A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases (Luke 6:17-18a)

You don’t really understand this scene until you imagine yourself amid the crowd, craving Jesus’ touch, knowing you have needs you cannot meet.

It is better to speak of need instead of needs, however. What niggles deeply within is the hunger to feel truly and wonderfully alive, to be lifted beyond the sadness of our mortality and be touched by something, by someone who fills our being with a life that transcends the life we are living.

This is why they clamored after Jesus. They craved the mysterious something that was in him, aching to feel and know it within themselves. Surely, they suffered diseases and maladies of all sorts, but beneath these was the gift and burden of their humanity crying out for food that satisfies the hunger they could not name.

Our humanity begins to die within us when this desire is lost to the despair of believing there is nothing more to life than getting the best we can out of the years we have.

They are my brothers and my sisters, these souls who crowded near Jesus, who hungered to touch him, who wanted him to hear their voices and turn and see them and reach out his hand.

When you feel this, when you see that hand reaching out and pulling you into an embrace, it is then you understand what words cannot convey. You know the heart of the One who is the heart of God for whom your heart hungers.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

The final freedom

 

September 6, 2021

On another sabbath  [Jesus]entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. (Luke 6:6-7)

It is Jesus’ freedom that most impresses me and which I most want. Opponents watch his every move, seeking opportunities to pounce, but Jesus is marvelously free from all this.

Neither the judgments of opponents nor the approval of friends define or determine his actions. He acts according to inner impulse, living out the identity he is within, undeterred by those who denounce him.

What defines him, of course, is the oneness he shares with the Loving Mystery with whom his heart communes. He is like all the rest of us in this regard. Only in communion with a great love do we know and find freedom to be the soul we are.

I find myself in a unique position, different from any I have known in my 69 years. Many things that defined me are gone ... and gone for good—professional standing, role, place and position, along with whatever privileges and respect they afforded.

What is left, however, is greater than what was before, an opportunity to enter the final freedom found only as one releases the external supports the insecure heart uses to give itself significance, an opportunity to allow my heart to rest in God alone.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

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 [D1]

Just breathe

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
    because he has anointed me
        to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives.” (Luke 4:18)

Back in his hometown, Jesus preaches a sermon that begins with these words. Everything goes well until he suggests the good news he brings cannot be limited to “people like us.”

This is the first and last thing one should know about the Spirit of God. It cannot be hemmed in, limited or predicted. The Spirit blows where it will, Jesus was known to say. You never know how or in whom the Spirit may show up.

But you can recognize it whenever and wherever it appears, if you know what to look for.

The Spirit has one big work: breathing life into creation, which means you and everything else there is.

If you are walking down the street and see the silly smile of someone who is happy just to be alive, grateful for reasons they may not understand, you are seeing an example of the Spirit’s best work.

The Spirit is about freedom, about life, about feeling your heart lift from burdens that literally crush life out of you. It is about liberation for people oppressed by anything and everything—physically, emotionally and spiritually—that crushes their spirits and drains their joy for the wonder of being alive.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Jesus said at his hometown sermon, which means he is about liberating bodies, minds and spirits that they might shine with the light of life within them.

That light and life is the Spirit’s breath that is in everything that lives, right down to the spastic squirrels burying acorns among my black-eyed susans.  

The Spirit’s greatest friends have been busy in Covid wards and Afghani airports and Louisiana bayous. Wherever you see life doing battle with death ... know who you are looking at.

And take a very deep breath.

David L. Miller

The masters’ heart

“It will be as when a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one." (Matthew 25:14-15a)

This is where the story starts, a man going on a journey gives three employees some cash. The tale ends successfully for the first two who did something with it, but disaster for the third guy who buried his bit in the backyard, thinking his boss was a harsh, unforgiving jerk who expected a fat return even when he didn’t invest.

The story is one of Jesus’ judgment parables. At its end, the first two guys “enter into the joy” of their master, Jesus says. The third is consigned to the outer darkness far from the master’s joy and generosity.

And this is what he ... and most Christians ... don’t understand. They don’t understand where the story begins, with the generosity and hope of the master, who is not harsh or unforgiving. He is trusting and full-hearted, giving some of his substance that his servants might do something good with it ... even as he has.

The first two servants took risks. One supposes they could have lost it all, but they knew what the third servant failed to recognize. The master is not harsh but has a magnanimous heart so that failure is not fatal but forgivable.

They trusted the master and engaged what they were given, even as we can engage what we are given. “Talents” the parable calls them. We might better call them life. We are given life, breath, material reality, genetic inheritance of one sort or another and the inimitable, inherent potential that unfolds through millions of encounters large and small for as long our bodies last.

The trajectory of our lives is in large part determined by whether we live in the outer darkness of fear, like the guy digging up the master’s cash in the backyard, or whether we live in joyful freedom, knowing the master’s heart.

David L. Miller

 

 

Verbish

 Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.  (Matthew 24:42)

Most certainly, God is a verb ... or at least verbish.

Were I still a parish pastor, right about now I would be preparing to lead a group of squirrely third graders through the basics of Holy Communion.

I would enter the room wearing my Indiana Jones fedora, ready to launch into the adventure it always was, not knowing what would come and doubting my ability to hold the attention of 8 and 9 year-olds. But I always knew, sooner or later, one of them would crack a joke at my expense or stump me with a question and reduce the room to raucous laughter.

I used to consider paying one or two of kids to make sure that happened at some point, so that they knew this was all about love, the love that brought us to that room and held us together as we learned—and as they opened their hands for the first time to receive ... and every time thereafter.

It never grew old, not once, not in all the years I stumbled through those sessions, always wanting to share just a little bit more to help them know what I knew every time I broke the bread and every time I opened my hands to receive what nothing on earth can hold.

That is done now, but remembering is a blessing beyond compare. Faces stream through my mind and heart, children I wish I could hug once more and let them know how much they are loved and how dearly I treasure every one of them, including those that were, well, a challenge.

Would to God that I could name them all ... from all the years, including the faces who have gone on before me, now knowing the Love I know only in part.

As we met and talked and laughed together in all those rooms through all those years, God was not an object outside of us to be known, but the flow of love and laughter among us. A verb not a noun. Or at least verbish.

And we were caught up in the flow, encompassed and carried in an all-possessing love.

Joy, healing, freedom, pretty much everything our hearts truly need is in that flow, so go with it. Wherever you go. It’s always there.

David L. Miller  

 

 

Return to ‘yes’

 

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” (2 Corinthians 1:19-20a)

Sooner or later one comes to realize all attempts to fulfill one’s life are futile.

They all fail because they are all more less the product of the ego’s attempt to satisfy itself, thinking, “If I just do this ... or go there ... or get that ... or accomplish this, I will be satisfied.” Fulfillment will follow like the dawn.

But it’s an illusion for at least three reasons I can see.

First, the human heart is a bottomless abyss, always aware there is more it doesn’t have and might well enjoy. Second, because the human ego is inherently arrogant, thinking it can satisfy itself by its own actions and best laid plans.

And third, because we tend to think we know or can figure out what we need, but this is just another version of reason two: arrogance.

We don’t, of course, know what we need, until what we need finds us, and that what is really a Who ... who is known only in moments of knowing a great love you cannot deny and know you did nothing to deserve.

It is right about then that the heart grows still, and you begin to realize this is what you needed all along.

If you can resist the urge to do something or hang a label on what is happening in you, in other words, if you can just be there, you can abide in the Loving Mystery who is saying “yes” to your life in all its mottled glory, with its loves and losses, its failures and false steps, its sins of omission and commission, its best intentions and futile efforts to give itself what it actually needs.

The human heart is a reservoir for the glory of God, which is to say, for the Love who says “yes” to us every blessed morning, if we can just find a place and way to listen.

If you find such a place and a way, go back there, return often. You will stop asking questions about life’s meaning.

David L. Miller

  

 

Heaven’s gate

 

Jesus said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)

It was here all along, this balcony, early morning before the sun is high, its rays filtered through the locust as the martins play above. It’s here, the gate of heaven.

For here, at least today, is where I meet you as tears of recognition silently tell me it is you, and you are as pleased to be with me as I with you.

But it is not this place, blessed as it is, but you who are the gate of heaven.

Here, with you, heaven opens, and an incomparable mercy descends from an infinite realm asking nothing except to be here, in this moment, as eternity fills temporal time and the distance between heaven and earth dissolves.

Stay close, Jesus told his first disciples, I suspect, with sly smile tugging at his lips, knowing how much he had to share and how greatly he longed to share it.

They followed for the same reason as the rest of us, hoping to catch a glimpse of the heaven that opens when your heart knows him near.

There is no better healing.

David L. Miller

Spirit & life

It is the spirit that gives life.  (John 6:63a)

The spirit is life. So look around. Take stock when love and peace, joy and freedom touch the heart and breathe life into your mortal flesh.

‘Tis an eternal moment in which the Spirit of Life finds an opening in your shuttered heart to breathe in and then out, blessedly carrying you along in its flow.

Such is the Spirit’s nature. Like the current of a stream or a morning breeze, it cannot be grasped but savored as it caresses the heart, wakes joy from its slumber and dissolves the illusion of aloneness.

For we are not alone, but alive in the Spirit’s playground. All that awakens our senses to joy and beauty, goodness and grace is the breath of the Spirit resuscitating our hearts that we might lighten up, laugh and join its holy game of giving life to the dead.

So notice when the breath of dawn awakens a sigh, when the martin’s flight gives wings to your heart, and when the smile behind the counter is so honest and real that it becomes a sacrament of Love’s holy nearness.

Stop there. And breathe. Someone is trying to bring you back to life.

David L. Miller

For this

 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace ... . (Galatians 5:22a)

It was a boisterous baptism ... one long remembered.

Three small children bounced against the font, stirring waves on the face of the waters. I handed them two baptismal candles to hold until the moment we lit the light of Christ for Amelia and Madeline, twin girls.

Wide-eyed at their great responsibility, the children stood quietly until they discovered baptismal candles make fine swords. The ensuing fencing match proceeded half-way down the center aisle, until they were summoned to the water’s edge ... as each infant was lowered into the waters of eternal blessing.

Completing the rite, Will, the twins’ four-year brother and victorious fencer, held back, not wanting to leave the font. He looked up at me, and I spontaneously reached for the anointing oil and marked him as I had marked his sisters. “Beloved Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”

“He blessed you,” his father whispered as he led him back to the front pew.

 “You were born for this,” the inner Voice of Love whispered at just that moment. But the Voice was not just for me.

The Spirit’s inner speaking is the deep truth of every human life, in every situation. Each of us is born to know and to share the joy of God’s love flowing through us.

Just give yourself to bless the moment, whatever it is. And listen. The Spirit will tell you what you need to know

David L. Miller

 

 

It’s all grace

 

... the only thing that counts is faith working through love (Galatians 5:6b)

He was only 15 months old, and I never caught his name, but he’s already my teacher, offering a lesson I tend to forget.

His mother carried him through the door of the coffee shop, stood him on the floor and fiddled with her purse. He looked over and fixed his gaze on me, and there we were, eye-to-eye, his grin bright as the morning. I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to; some things are just too wonderful.

You can’t pay for this. You can’t make it happen. It’s a given moment, a little grace on a day, like all days, when we very much need it. You either receive it or let it pass as if it were nothing of value.

It’s that way with children’s smiles and all God’s gifts. You cannot pay for that which is freely given. And to think you did something to deserve it dishonors the giver.

We are given life without asking to be born. We are given every new day without a prayer being offered. We receive the mystery of the person we are, shaped by genetics, time and history, as a gift we continue to unwrap until the end of our days.

It’s all gift, grace, from a giver. No, a Giver.

Greatest of all is the gift of standing before God justified, welcome, wanted and treasured so greatly that all the love Christ is ... is given to us. Our actions, however good or evil, cannot start or stop God’s self-giving love and welcome.

The only way to put yourself in proper relationship with such love is to soak it in and say, ‘Thank you,” knowing you bask in a smile considerably warmer than that of little boys in coffee shops.

Then, pass it along ... and expect to be surprised.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

A new creation

 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

A wooden triptych sits on my desk at home. Folded up, it looks like a branch cut from a tree, four or five inches tall and two inches in diameter.

Unfold it on its string hinges and three figures rise in relief. On the left, a robed figure stands erect, hands together in prayer. A soldier, holding a sword, point down, directly in front of him, appears on the right. Both figures keep vigil over Jesus in the center panel, his arms spread wide on the cross.

A Wichi craftsman from the Chaco forest in northern Argentina carved the piece from a single piece of dark wood.

 I don’t know how long I’ve had it. I only know that in the last year it has become a sacrament in which I partake. It is there, waiting each day when I first come to my desk. Before I begin my work, I pick up it up, kiss the relief of Jesus and whisper to him, “I adore you, O Christ, and I bless you. By your holy cross you redeem the world.”

Without fail, the image of Jesus on the cross appears in my mind as I hold him close to my breath. His arms and body, wreathed with branches and leaves, reach out in welcome to take me in. Drawn into his eternal embrace, I am in him, part of him, wanted and loved, gathered with so many others whom I suppose are as needy as me.

With his love flowing through my heart and my lungs breathing the sweet air of freedom, the work can commence. For I know who I am, as only the heart can know. Once more aware that I am ever in Christ, I give myself to the work of the day, a free man.

Pr. David L. Miller

Freedom

 ³¹ Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. ³² And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

Tied in knots after a restless night, the deck beckons with a promise of freedom.

Memories haunted the dark hours, failures and faux pas, rejections and judgments from self and others for not having been good enough, not having done enough, never truly becoming the human soul I know that I am ... or could be ... and bring it to the light of day.

Knowing, too, there is so much less time, now, to become myself before my time is done.

All this I take to my chair as a faint breeze gentles the air stirring hope for a different knowing, one that soothes the battered soul and frees the heart to breathe. So, I pray.

Lord, you are ever near. May I know your loving presence in the breeze of dawn and in the mystery of this heart that I will never truly understand. But I know that you do. So I come here once again. Just to be with you.

With that, I read a verse, a story, and Jesus’ words carry me to faces from along ago. Souls who touched my own, even though I can barely remember a word they said because I was so young. What I recall is what it felt like to be with them.

And in the silence, comes the voice I came here to know. Yours. “Abide in me. Just be. Here. Listen. Say nothing. All I want is your presence. With me.”

All those faces were your own, weren’t they, Jesus? Each one, loving me. Each one, telling me who I am. Each one, silencing the night voices.

Each one speaking the Love, you are, the love that wants and invites me to come here and sink into your presence that you might untie the knots in my soul and set me free.

As you have, once again.

Pr. David L. Miller

In Galilee

 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.' (Matthew 28:9-10)

The Galilean hills rise quickly behind the village of Capernaum where Jesus made his home. It was a fishing village on north shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Today, the ruins of an ancient synagogue stand 100 meters or so from the shoreline, a few pillars and paving stones weathered smooth by shuffling feet and exposure to the elements. The lake, blue and wind-whipped on summer afternoons, stretches eight miles wide and 14 miles south from this point.

It’s easy to visualize Jesus walking the shoreline, talking to young men who soon followed him on a journey that cost them everything, including their lives.

It is here, among these hills, Jesus promised to meet them after he was raised. It’s fitting, I suppose.

There is nothing spectacular about Galilee. It was a common, work-a-day place where men and women toiled out their lives, sowing seeds hoping some of it might grow, casting nets into the deep praying for a catch to sustain them for one more day.

Galilee was the place they reared their children, buried their dead, shivered through winters and sought the warmth of human friendship to cushion the hard times, which were all-too frequent. Galileans lived in obscurity, and few of power or influence paid much attention.

But it was there and to them that Jesus first appeared. This is the place human souls first gathered around him, hungry to feel and know more of whatever mystery it was that filled him.

And at the end of the story, this place of obscurity becomes the land of resurrection, as Jesus returns, inexplicably risen and alive, after the powers of this world had done their worst to be rid of him.

Go to Galilee. There you will see him. That’s Jesus’ promise then ... and now.

We need not go anywhere, of course, because Galilee is here, the common places of our lives. We live in Galilee, toiling out our lives in the heat and cold, knowing joys that kiss our eyes with tears and sorrows that hang like weights, dragging us into the deep.

But amid it all there is this love, the Love he is and ever shall be, who finds and fills the heart so that we swoop and soar like the purple martins out my window. And he will do so, until our time in Galilee is past and we see him face-to-face.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

 

Older than the hills, newer than tomorrow

The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and for evermore (Psalm 121:8)

 We don’t know what awaits us on any given day, let alone what the next month or year may bring. Nor do we know how long this life will last or what sorrows or joys will awaken our tears.

 But we do know there is a Love who comes to us in the great and small things of our lives, a Love who promises to be with us amid the uncertainties that surround our existence.

 And we are not alone in this knowing, which is good to know. Others have left a witness to this Mystery who haunts our days and warms our souls in odd moments when we are looking for nothing in particular.

 “I look to the hills,” writes an ancient poet who failed to share his name. The greatness of the hills awakened his awareness of a benevolent Presence who inhabited the heights as well as the valleys and anywhere else he found himself.

Most significantly, he discovered that Presence his own soul, so that he knew something ... Someone ... he could not begin to describe.

There is One who watches over you, he said, sees your going out and your return home, holding all your journeys in safekeeping because your life is more precious than you know. So breathe, the poet counsels, and know. Know that in every moment of grace and every ounce of love, you meet this Mystery, who is free as the wind, lighter than air, stronger than death and closer than your breath.

Watching, yes, but this One also comes, silent as the dawn, slipping past our guarded hearts, whispering a Love older than the hills ... and newer than tomorrow.

 Pr. David L. Miller

Joy

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17).

We can pretty much predict when happiness comes. It is right there at the beginning of the word—hap, which refers to chance or luck or a favorable event that pleases us. Winning the game, success at work, a kind word or smile, these all bring happiness.

But joy is more elusive ... and deeper. It flows from the heart’s inner room when our soul is satisfied, one with the Love who is our home.

Joy releases silent tears that wash away everything else but its presence. It floods the heart with a wave of warmth and gratitude, sometimes for no reason we can see.

You never know when it might appear. It's free, like the wind. Joy can come in the midst of grief, like when we savor the smile of a soul no longer with us, or for the gift of simply being alive on a fresh April morning. 

Joy can never be reduced to words, and when it washes over you it is best not to try. It’s like trying to snatch morning light in your hand as it filers through the blinds. The most and best you can ever say is, "Thank you," to the wondrous mystery from whom it comes. 

Ultimately, joy is the fulfillment of our humanity, as the Love in whose image we are made awakens at our core, filling us whole until it pours from our pores and leaks through our eyes. 

And every time it comes, you know: This is my home, the One from whom I came and the One to whom I will go. 

Pr. David L. Miller

The place of peace

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ (John 20:26)

The morning news has nothing to commend, violence and unresolvable conflict wherever one turns, everything well-seasoned by long injustice and inevitable mistrust. If ever this ends, my lifetime won’t be long enough to see it.

The unsettled heart wants nothing more than peace, as if that were a small thing and not … everything.

And the mind knows what the heart doesn’t want to admit. There is no peace, even when there is justice. Opposition and the clamor of egos to get their way are ever there. It’s the nature of things, or better to say … it’s our nature. Stress and tension remain, inevitable elements of human existence.

We have lost the way or the key or whatever is needed to arrive at the place where the mind grows quiet and the heart rests, no longer insisting that the world serve us, catering to our whims and wills.

Of course, we never knew the way or held the key to the place of peace. For that place is a heart larger than our own.

Peace is a gift to be received, not a state we create. It is the wonder of love filling the temple of the heart’s inner room, leaving room for nothing else, so that we become, if even for a moment, the love who rushes in to fill the ache of human emptiness.

And this love, this Love, stands before those who failed and fled and denied him, breathing a single word, Peace. Peace be with you.

He gives what we cannot give ourselves, the peace that welcomes us whole regardless of the state of our lives. He offers a kind of knowing, love’s knowing, that washes over the heart and carries us into a heart that is immeasurably greater than we can know.

So do nothing. Just stand or sit or be wherever you are and hear this one word spoken to the world by the Wounded One to whom the world did everything possible to reject and kill.

He offers a single word that washes the soul and frees the heart to love and be the peace we so greatly need. Just listen … then listen again.

Peace.

Pr. David L. Miller

 

It’s enough

 

Maundy Thursday 2021

 Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. (John 13:1-5)

This is enough. If I had no other reason to love Jesus than this one moment, this is enough. This is beauty beyond compare, love beyond speaking.

Jesus gets up from the table, casts off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself and pours water in a bowel. Then he kneels ... and washes his disciples’ feet, an act of crystal purity flowing from his heart, giving himself to his friends who could never comprehend the depth of the love who chose ... them.

Watch him as he takes a foot in one hand and washes it with the other. These are the hands that held and blessed children. His hands welcomed lepers who had given up hope of ever knowing the grace of human touch again.

He had bent low to lay his hands on the despairing who fell at his feet, daring to hope that maybe the mystery in him could and would heal them.

He had held the hand of a little girl pronounced dead, lifting her by the hand and delivering her into the arms of astonished parents.

And now, in an act of exquisite love for the uncomprehending and undeserving, he washes his disciples’ feet, loving them completely and loving them to the end.

I see his hands and in them I see the hands of my Sunday school teacher, Grant, red and chapped from working outdoors all his life, strong from milking cows, making hay and building fence. His hands welcomed us every Sunday to his class with a strength born of a love none of us could begin to understand at 10 and 11.

I see Magdalena’s hands, arthritic, a network of blue veins across the back, weathered and worn from chores indoors and out, hands that gently cared for her orchids, bringing them to blossom, beautiful, but none so much as her. I remember her hands laying atop mine as she prayed for me and for hundreds of others, struggling for words to express a fraction of what was in her heart that we might be warmed by the enduring flame of love she felt within.

I also see my hands picking up Hana, a little Ethiopian girl, who long ago insistently tugged at my pant leg until I picked her up and sat her in the crook of my arm. She patted my face and kissed my cheeks, aching to touch and be touched with a love denied her because of the disease that ravaged her family and made her an outcast. I held her, praying that she might live and grow and one day hold her own child as I held her.

In their hands, I see Jesus’ hands, and in Jesus’ hands I see their hands.

And in all of them, I see the hands of the Love who pours from Jesus’ heart as he kneels at the feet of his disciples and washes their feet. In the touch of his hands, the gentleness of grace, the beauty of blessing, we know the Love who labors in the depth of human souls and works in the great tides of history to love us into truest humanity and create a community joined in the heart of God’s invincible love for all creation.

So it is: If all we ever know about Jesus is this one moment as he washes feet, this is enough for us, enough to know that wherever we are in life’s journey, whether it be dark or light, we rest in very good hands.

We adore you, O Christ, and bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L, Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strange power

 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

A wooden triptych sits on my desk at home. Four or five inches tall, it was carved from a single piece of wood. Human figures rise in relief from the walnut background.

On the left, a robed figure stands erect, hands together in prayer. A soldier holds a sword directly in front of him, point down, on the right. The middle panel is Jesus, arms wide on the cross.

Each time I return to my desk, I pick up the tryptic, kiss the relief of Jesus and pray, “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

This sounds like nonsense, of course. How does a crucified man, suffering excruciating pain and degradation redeem anything? It is the very opposite of success, power, status, wealth or any of the other things we are told we should want.

It makes no sense, until you see ... really see ... a mother holding and caressing her infant, or a teacher going that extra mile for a troubled child or any of a thousand other instances where love goes out of its way expecting no reward ... other than the sheer grace of loving.

Then it becomes clear that if anything is going to save this world it is the willingness to give yourself away, loving beyond any and every expectation.

Jesus dies on the cross, rejected, tortured, humiliated by purveyors of merciless power, eager to demonstrate that they owned him and could do what they like.

But they didn’t own him. He refuses to surrender to the hate that kills him, breaking history’s ugly cycle of paying back insult with injury, hate with more hate. He lives the Love who lives in him right to the end, blessing those who curse him, showing mercy to the merciless, grace in the face of evil.

There’s nothing about the cross that suggests power, yet only this has the power to save us from ourselves.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

By your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Pr. David L. Miller