Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Today’s text

John 13:31-32

When he had gone, Jesus said: Now has the Son of man been glorified, and in him God has been glorified. If God has been glorified in him, God will in turn glorify him in himself, and will glorify him very soon.

Reflection

It’s intriguing that this exclamation should come right after Judas leaves the room. Emotionally, the scene feels right, but it also makes you, Jesus, look too much like me.

It’s as if Judas leaves, and immediately you are freed to be … yourself, as if something hindered you from being the fullness of who you are.

That is not exactly good news to me, although I empathize with your feeling, if I understand what might be happening in you.

There is nothing more that I want today than to be myself, and it seems there is nothing harder to be. Why is that?

There are moments of flowing freedom when the feeling, the passion I have for the people and things I love streams effortlessly from my soul.

Defensiveness flees, self-consciousness disappears and the soul is a fountain of generosity. All that matters is this flow in which action and identity are one, and there is no separation, no distinction between the heart’s deepest desire and one’s words and acts.

But there are far too many moments when the mouth can’t or won’t speak the truth the heart knows. Fears and angers block the flow, and the core of the soul is lost from view. Try as I might, I can’t prime the pump and make it come out and reveal itself.

I want to return there; to find the center of the soul, to live from the fountain that I know is there, but something blocks the way.

Until it is removed, until those fears or angers or struggles subside, what I most deeply am remains hidden, and life has no flow.

I don’t know how I dare project all this on you, Jesus. But I can’t help but notice: Judas leaves, his simmering hatred of what is happening with you and your inner circle departs the room, and your first word is of glory.

And this?

Glory is the showing forth of the love in which you live, the love that lives in you.

Can it be that the humble love that is God’s glory cannot flow so smoothly or cleanly in the presence of hatred? Hatred and overheated emotions surely block the flow of your life in me, but in you, Jesus?

Did you, like me, feel stymied by fears or concern about the reactions of others? Did you struggle to be the soul you knew yourself to be, the soul of holy love, craving to be known and given?

I want to believe you are above all this, elevated beyond the frailties that hem in my heart. Certainly, you struggled with these more valiantly and successfully than I. But I wanted to imagine that if I fully could give myself to you, this struggle would cease for me--just as I imagined that it had for you.

But it can’t, for the love that is the heart of your soul--and so deeply hidden in mine--is endless and infinite. Revealing such a glory can’t help but be a struggle for finite, mortal flesh.

Revealing this glory is central struggle of our lives, the one that makes us human and opens our souls to the joy of knowing and being the glory you are.

Pr. David L. Miller