Through Stained Glass: Week 4 -- Becoming Committed

 

Fourth Sunday of Lent

March 10,2024

Reflection Title: Becoming Committed

Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107: 1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21 

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Imprisoned by the Nazis after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer found his plans interrupted. But like others punished by the authorities for their threats to the reigning political powers—the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Alexei Navalny, and so many others—he did not abandon his voice. “Commitment,” wrote Howard Thurman, “means that it is possible to yield the nerve center of (one’s) consent” to a greater need than oneself. The poet Mark Nepo tells us that “the challenge of the living is to take what we hear, despite our diminishments, and make whatever music we can for as long as we can….to keep listening, to keep meeting life.” Bonhoeffer himself saw his confinement as “opportunity.”

In the Numbers text, the Israelites express frustration and anger about their wilderness experience, complaining bitterly about the lack of food and water, and about the poisonous snakes whose bites are killing them. They are impatient, petulant, eager for their exile to be over. They have lost their commitment—no longer sure of the opportunity evidenced by their liberation from the tyranny of Pharoah. Assuming they have offended God, they ask Moses to intervene, and God responds in a mysterious way. He tells Moses to make a serpent of bronze so that if a snake were to bite someone, the person could look at the bronze serpent and live. What an ironic and unexpected intervention—to make something that is killing folks a means of their survival! God is speaking a simple and literal language the stubborn and short-sighted Israelites can understand, much like a parent might take children afraid of the dark out into the darkness to dispel their fear. It is about changing perceptions and expectations—about expanding our awareness and world view. We are called beyond a myopic perspective based on fear, self-interest and immediate gratification into a mind-bending embrace of the possible, even the unexpected—an understanding not of what life is but what it could be. You can almost hear God sighing as God searches for a way to manifest this wider view to self-absorbed folks whose minds and hearts are lost in the literal. 

The poet Wendell Berry writes that “it may be when we no longer know what to do

 we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.” Over and over, God meets us where we are—in our diminishments and in our possibilities. God calls us into God’s steadfast love, a love that continually surprises us and awakens us to the commitment of discipleship. “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God,” says John. This is not always easy work. As social justice advocate Dorothy Day wrote, “People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.” It would perhaps be easier for us to give up—to see God’s interruptions as stumbling blocks, but what if we were to see them instead as stepping stones—as a way to move toward deeper commitment? “The heart is a muscle that wants to be exercised,” says Mark Nepo, “and though it feels like I will end each time my heart is broken, my heart only breaks into a larger version of itself.” What a statement of becoming!

God repeatedly cracks open our stubborn hearts, challenging us to yield the nerve center of our consent and to pay closer attention to needs around us that are bigger than our own desires for safety, security and personal recognition. In this breaking, we awaken to a life of committed service—one step at a time—until, as Frederick Buechner says, we come to the place where our deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet. The poet John O’Donohue calls this coming into the “rhythm of our longings.” God so loved the world, writes John in his gospel, that God sent the light to guide us. “For we are what (God) has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.” This is the heart of our commitment, our call to bear the beams of love in a wounded world, snakes and all.

The Questions for the Week:

• Scriptures tell us that God’s “steadfast love” is the grounding for our lives and work. How does that constant love provide you with a foundation to move forward even when you are not sure of the way? Can you think of times when God has led you in directions you had not anticipated—or maybe even welcomed? How did you respond?
• What are the things that block your path or distract you from living into the “rhythm of your longings?” How do you distinguish between the selfish desires of your heart and the “becoming” call of the Holy Spirit that results from mindfulness and freedom?
• To what are you deeply committed? How have your spiritual commitments changed? What were the stepping stones that led you there? What risks have you taken along the way, and how have they affected you?
• When has your heart been broken? How has that experience led you to a deeper understanding of yourself and a greater awareness of what God is calling you to become?

The Practices for the Week:

• Create a spiritual “to do” list and be mindful of the ways in which your daily activities feed or obstruct your spiritual engagement. Every time you feel a conflict, stop for a moment and witness the intersection. You might record the moment in a journal or write a short prayer to ask God what God is asking you to discern.
• Make a list of your “commitments” and reflect on how they are “bearing the beams of love.” Do something that makes you uncomfortable and that draws you closer to the world’s hunger.
• Participate in centering prayer at First Presbyterian Church.

The Prayer for the Week:

My Christ, my love, my encircler,

Each day, each night,

Each light, each dark,

Be near me, uphold me,

My treasure, my truth.

(from Celtic Prayers from Iona)