‘The Lord will always guide you, giving you relief in desert places. He will give strength to your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never run dry.‘
Today’s reading from Isaiah repeats some of yesterday’s text and it too ends on a hopeful note. I hear in Isaiah’s words the motif of the covenantal bond between God and Israel. While the demands are high and far reaching for Israel, God promises to sustain them
Isaiah’s words were originally for a people in exile. He holds out the hope of their triumphant return to their own land. This will need a change in political fortunes and also a change in their hearts and minds. If they can make this change they are promised strength in their bones and relief from what has been the ‘desert’ of their lives in exile.
Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the Lord who speaks – to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?
Whenever I hear this reading from Isaiah I am struck by the fact that humanity has always struggled to act with integrity. We so easily say one thing and do another. I am pulled up short when I examine my own life and remember the times when things were done for show and my motivations were questionable. Lent gives me the chance to own those times.
Isaiah’s words ring so true today. We don’t have to look far to find ‘unjust fetters’ and ‘the homeless poor.’ In the centuries that have passed since Isaiah preached, the human story has unfolded in triumph and tragedy. Each generation has the chance to take stock and to work for change. We are familiar now with what theologians call ‘structural sin’. There are concrete things that we can do to highlight this. This is important. But of equal importance is our own inner work.
Are there those whom we ‘oppress’ with our attitudes? Are there those whom we have burdened with a yoke? Are there people with whom we refuse to share the ‘bread’ of our time, our love?
Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God, obeying his voice and clinging to him: for in this your life consists…
Today’s reading from Deuteronomy offers us a mini framework for our Lenten path:
choosing life, living in love, obeying his voice, clinging to him.
Each day God invites us to choose life. It happens in all the small choices, the things we’d hardly notice. The big things are more obvious. Just as we can choose life, we can also live in a way that gives life to others.
How can you choose life today? How can you give life today?
‘Now, now – it is the Lord who speaks – come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning.’ Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again, for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, and ready to relent. Who knows if he will not turn again, will not relent, will not leave a blessing as he passes, oblation and libation for the Lord your God?
To British ears ‘fasting, weeping, mourning’ can sound more than a little dramatic. We prize the understated and controlled response to almost everything in our daily lives. But Lent asks of us something radical and perhaps dramatic. Lent invites us to turn our hearts to God. It is a time for us to take stock and to notice the ways in which we have become lukewarm.
However we make the journey of Lent, God is waiting for us to turn to him. Into our lukewarm hearts God waits to pour tenderness, compassion and graciousness. One of the tasks of Lent is to ensure that our hearts are open. The armour that we often feel need can be laid aside.
Throughout the liturgical year there are some hymns which seem to draw together all that I hold dear in biblical imagery and incarnational theology. Hail to the Lord who comes is one of those hymns. This hymn helps me make an immediate connection between the Gospel scene of the presentation and my own life. Sometimes I need those connections to be very obvious.
Hail to the Lord who comes, Comes to the temple gate, Not with his angel hosts, Nor in his kingly state;
But borne upon the throne Of Mary’s gentle breast; Thus to his father’s house He comes, a humble guest.
The world’s true light draws near All darkness to dispel, The flame of faith is lit And dies the power of hell.
Our bodies and our souls Are temples now for him, For we are born of grace – God lights our souls within.
O Light of all the earth! We light our lives with thee; The chains of darkness gone All sons of God are free.
The hymn opens with a scene that is fairly easy to picture: Mary and Joseph, a little travel weary, come in faithfulness to the Temple, clutching their precious child. I imagine them standing on the Temple threshold, breathing in the sacred. They are filled with that awe that we have all experienced when we enter a sacred place. I imagine Joseph holding the offering tight and Mary holding Jesus tight. The gift in Joseph’s hands represents the love and longing of every faithful Jew to fulfill the Torah. The gift in Mary’s hand represents the love and longing of everyone who looked forward to the coming of the Saviour.
Can we see ourselves in the scene? Can we picture our hands open with all that we hold precious?
The world’s true light draws near All darkness to dispel
The promise of this light draws Simeon and Anna near. They have walked towards this light all their lives. Each prayer, each small act of kindness, each fulfilling of the Torah has made space inside them to recognise and receive the light. And there they stand, bathed in that light. God’s promises have come full circle.
Our bodies and our souls Are temples now for him,
These are the lines that touch me most from this hymn. They speak of wholeness and the goodness of every created thing. Read alongside the Gospel text they invite each one of us to be that Temple. We build the Temple out of the many fragments of our lives. It’s incarnational. It’s messy. But the promise is there that we are ‘born of grace’ and God ‘lights our souls within’. We were carried once, a precious bundle held tight. Our parents made an offering of all they held dear when they brought us to church for Baptism. God’s light has always been within us.
We light our lives with thee; The chains of darkness gone All sons of God are free.
In these days of darkness and uncertainty we might look outside ourselves for light. In fact, the light we seek is already within us. We often glimpse it in others first. Today’s feast is an invitation to celebrate the light within each one of us.
How is God calling you to celebrate the light this Candlemas?
Though our liturgical calendar tells us that we are now beginning the second week in Ordinary Time, there are remnants of Epiphany in our liturgy. The celebration of the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus and the Wedding at Cana are all connected. They are all seen in Greek as Epiphanes ( Ἐπιφανής), meaning ‘manifest’. In three different, but connected ways, we see the glory of God made manifest.
I always have a sense at the beginning of Ordinary Time that I need to gird my biblical loins and attend to the Scripture that will be laid before me. Today’s story of the Wedding at Cana helps me enter Ordinary Time with a sense of awe and mystery. John’s Gospel lays out for us golden threads for us to follow.
Malcolm Guite weaves together here John’s golden threads and the ordinary stuff of our lives:
EPIPHANY AT CANA Here’s an epiphany to have and hold, A truth that you can taste upon the tongue, No distant shrines and canopies of gold Or ladders to be clambered rung by rung, But here and now, amidst your daily living, Where you can taste and touch and feel and see, The spring of love, the fount of all forgiving, Flows when you need it, rich, abundant, free.
Better than waters of some outer weeping, That leave you still with all your hidden sin, Here is a vintage richer for the keeping That works its transformation from within. ‘What price?’ you ask me, as we raise the glass, ‘It cost our Saviour everything he has.’
Look back over the week. Have you seen water turned to wine? Where have you sensed ‘the spring of love, the fount of all forgiving’ ?
Beginning here we glimpse the Three-in-one; The river runs, the clouds are torn apart, The Father speaks, the Sprit and the Son Reveal to us the single loving heart That beats behind the being of all things And calls and keeps and kindles us to light. The dove descends, the spirit soars and sings ‘You are belovèd, you are my delight!’
In that quick light and life, as water spills And streams around the Man like quickening rain, The voice that made the universe reveals The God in Man who makes it new again. He calls us too, to step into that river To die and rise and live and love forever.
Malcolm Guite
‘He calls us too, to step into that river, To die and rise and live and love forever.’
It’s helpful to have this feast at the beginning of a new year. Beginning a new year is like stepping into the river.
Perhaps you have already had experiences of dying and rising this week? As a new week begins there will be invitations to live and love.
However the week unfolds, God is there assuring us ‘You are beloved, you are my delight.’
In the Desert Tradition, the men and women who fled to the physical margins of society, developed a very particular relationship with Scripture and particularly with Biblical characters. They were judged by the Master to have understood the Scriptures in so far as they embodied the virtues of the Biblical characters.
This teaching came to mind today as I listened to the Gospel. When I ask myself how can I embody Mary’s virtues, I am brought back to this verse:
As for Mary she treasured all of these things and pondered them in her heart.
In the regular rhythm of monastic life I am invited to treasure and to ponder many things. Silence provides the seed ground for this to happen. It’s always an invitation. I imagine Mary as someone who had always been closely attuned to the many ways in which God speaks. I imagine that the Psalms and Prophetic books had sunk into her bones. She knew what to treasure.
How is God calling you to treasure and to ponder as this new year begins?
By the time we reach the Seventh day of the Christmas Octave my heart and my mind have been invited to move in so many different directions. It is quite a challenge. So today I value the familiarity of the Prologue of John’s Gospel. The rhythm and the repetition of the words still me in a way that I can’t quite explain.
In trying to choose an image to reflect the profundity of the text I was drawn back again and again to the verse which always stands out for me:
The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
It’s the idea of Jesus living among us that always speaks to me. I like to think of him doing normal things, learning crafts from his mother and father. In his ordinary life those around him see his glory.
Where have you seen glory during this Christmas Octave?
I have always loved the prophetess Anna. There is an air of mystery about her as I try to imagine what it would mean to never leave the Temple. Anna has a single focus: she’s there to serve God until her last breath. She stands in a tradition of men and women whose whole lives are given over to the single-hearted service of God. Anna’s heart and mind must have been finely tuned to the things of God.
Maria Boulding’s description of the chosen people in her book, The Coming of God, expresses something of how I imagine Anna:
‘The chosen people were created to be a centre of attunement, receptivity and expectation, a place of felt need and desire. They were to listen to God’s word, to long for him, and to be the womb-community which would bring forth the One who was to come.’
Who are the Annas in your own life? How is God calling you to listen to his Word and to long for him?
