About two-thirds of the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark focuses on what true religious practice looks like. Jesus does this by contrasting the behavior and teaching of some of the Pharisees and Scribes with a simpler, truer and more straightforward way. (Simple is not the same as easy.) In the Gospels the Pharisees, Scribes, Sadducees and Elders are frequently presented as opposing Jesus, his way of living and his teaching. What is Jesus’ complaint? What is it saying to us?

On top of the Torah, over centuries, those who studied these five books (known as “The Law”), tried to spell out the details and implications of what is written. This is how they ended up with 613 commandments – much beyond the Ten Words God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai. These were first passed on as an oral tradition. So far, so good – at least as intentions go. The experts just wanted the people to be holy. But who could possibly follow all the little sub-points extracted from the Law? Only those who knew them and were well-off enough to live independently. This created a class system based on religious practice = the Holy and the Sinners.

Jesus comes along, accepts and befriends “sinners,” and presents them with an image of God who is Merciful Love, instead of Law-enforcing Judge. Jesus also reduces all those commandments (human rules) to love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self. Do this and you have fulfilled God’s requirements. No wonder there were clashes with those who clung to the 613!

When those who considered themselves in good standing with God confronted Jesus about some of his disciples, who had failed to properly wash their hands before eating, according to the tradition, Jesus responded by quoting the Prophet Isaiah. “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Uselessly they worship me, teaching humanly manufactured precepts as if they are from God” (Isaiah 29:13) “You put aside God’s commandment and hold on, with a death-grip, to human traditions.” Jesus calls them out as hypocrites.

A hypocrite, from Greek theater, was an actor who covered his face with a mask – hiding who he was in order to play a part. Jesus is saying, “You are phonies, pretending to be righteous, holy, religious. It’s all a show!” Who are you really? Drop the pretense! Put down the mask! It’s remarkable that Jesus was so much more comfortable with the simple people who were just being themselves, who weren’t trying to look good, who weren’t trying to impress, who weren’t putting on a show. They allowed others to see who they really were, as they were, with their gifts and their faults.

Do we put human teachings above the commandment to love, trying to look like we are doing what God wants? Are we hypocrites? With whom, or before whom, do we feel the need to put on a mask – to pretend to be who we are not inside? Who are we trying to impress? Is our favorite mask being right, or appearing humble, or looking strong and having it all together, or seeming helpless…? Do we play a part in our relationships instead of being ourselves? Are we acting, or are we simply who we are? Jesus invites us to let go of the fears that drive us to the deceit of hypocrisy. God is truth, and loves us madly – just as we are. 

True beggars, actual beggars? Is there, technically speaking, a difference? What is this about? On the street corners, and along the roadsides of too many countries there are people, human beings, standing or sitting, reaching out their hands for something. In our own highly developed country they can be waving hand-written signs at those stopped or passing by. Anything $ Helps.

Isn’t a beggar, a beggar, a beggar? From my experience, it seems there can be a distinction made. But then, my background in philosophy tends to want to clarify things by delineating differences.

Thousands of desperate migrants have been swept up and bused into our city from the southern border. Most are fleeing economic collapse, or systemic violence. They have left all: home, relatives, the culture that identifies them, in hopes of making a better, safer life in our country, which they still see as a land of promise. Sadly, the sheer numbers, and presence everywhere, is hardening people’s hearts here, stealing our usual compassion and generosity. We need to hear these displaced people’s stories. But we need to want to learn names and listen to tales of desperation and hope.

These ragged fugitives, who have never known freezing temperatures or wind-driven snow, for me, are a stark contrast to the marijuana immigrants, with their windproof and waterproof tents and down sleeping bags looking for enough cash to express their freedom though hybrid smokes or candies. Obviously, temporary highs don’t deal with these people’s inner pain. Tomorrow they will be at the same intersection asking for more assistance to try to ease  untouchable hurt.

These latter are not bad people, they just have no clue as to what human life is meant to be about. Both populations beg. One group is unimaginably, desperately needy. The other doesn’t seem to recognize it’s own deeper needs. One group doesn’t know what it has. The other knows what is essential.

The migrants are looking for work so that they can feed, clothe and educate their families, and just live without constant deprivation and/or terror. Some have taken to offering to wash car windshields while traffic is stopped at a light. We who are comfortable see them as a problem. They all challenge our well-established sensibilities and lifestyle. But could there be another layer or level to our discomfort?

In some sense we are all beggars. No one, not one of us, can do well without the help and support of others – as much as we in the US of A hate to admit this. Our very being comes as a loan. We owe. Big time! If we are able to stand at all, we stand on the help and achievements of those who’ve preceded us. It may be that the people, whatever their story, on our street corners and roadsides, with their in-our-face poverty, mirror to us our own neediness. If we haven’t yet accepted our interdependence this reflected image of our own limitations can be frightening and painful. We haven’t learned that no one can “do it themself.”

Several years ago, while living in a L’Arche community in Erie, PA, I was introduced to a style of praying using a beggar’s bowl. In India, and other countries, those who are poor often have a bowl to reach out for alms, and a sack to hold what is given in the course of a day’s begging. Every Lent we have placed a small, slightly battered, old wooden bowl in our prayer corner. As so often happens, I don’t have words to capture all that is moving inside, especially when I reflect on the pain and brokenness of our beautiful world and all it’s suffering people. This can be overwhelming. So, I pick up the bowl and silently hold it in my lap, occasionally lifting it and reaching its emptiness, the emptiness of my own powerlessness, out to God. And we cry together. This simple exercise helps to keep my heart open to be moved by compassion – the compassion of God.

 Over the course of just under four weeks, three people who had a real place in my life died. One after a lengthy battle with a cruel cancer; one from a previously undetected heart condition; one instantly, while watching television, from an aneurysm that burst in the brain. The first I met in 1995 while studying in Spokane, Washington. The second I was introduced to by a friend back around 1966 in my hometown of Milwaukee. The third came into my life about ten years ago here in Denver. I participated in two of the funerals; the third was overseas. Death has been more central to my awareness these days.

Since a diagnosis of an unpredictable and aggressive form of cancer five years ago though, death has been closer by. Naturally, pushing into the late seventies tends to make for a shrinking circle of friends and acquaintances. The question is how to walk side-by-side with this inevitable companion. 

We know, in our heads, from a very early age that death comes sooner or later to complex living creatures. But we don’t apply this physical fact to our complicated selves. Death is always someone else’s deal. What are we avoiding? What’s the fear in this? My guess is our dread of the great unknown. What’s going to happen to me after I die?

People of faith are invited to live fully in reference to life as it unfolds each moment. Yet many of us live, probably unconsciously, in reference to death. We can spend our days running as fast as we can to fill up our ears, eyes, minds, time with noise, distraction, busyness, so we don’t need to face our mortality. We might run countless marathons, pump iron, inundate our system with supplements. Death is quite patient. We can do all the makeup, botox, lifts of various body parts, plastic surgery to try to appear to keep a step ahead of death. “Can’t you see how young we are? Death must be years away! Right?”

Jesus, becoming one with us in all things (except sin, St. Paul adds), embraced our whole cycle from conception and birth to death – a particularly horrific death at that. He’s gone before us, believing, trusting that Abba-God had more for us than this  – Life beyond life. So, the passage might be a bit rough, but what’s in store for us is an eternal loving embrace in communion with all we have loved, somehow continuing to assist others who are still on the way. Death never is the last word.

Christmas season and New Year are ripe for wonder and pondering. Beneath all the commerce and marketing overlays lie unfathomable questions. We celebrate newness and unimaginable gift. But what do we do with these treasures – if we recognize them at all?

Every day, every moment is new, never before experienced. And we are new also. What has been is not all we are. We have fresh possibilities to explore, if we are awake and aware. Do we have our eyes open to see them?

Grace infuses time and place. God has entered and permeated all creation. The slow, persistent, nearly invisible work of transformation moves on – despite us if necessary. But we can do our part to advance God’s Kingdom through our choices and actions for the good of all.

Grace is pure and simple gift, given, waiting for our response. We might refuse, ignore, ridicule, reluctantly accept, try to exchange for something we imagine to be better, or we might wholeheartedly welcome gift, using it joyfully and well. We are continually offered gifts of all types, shapes, sizes. 

 If we live one day or one hundred and two years that lifespan is given for us to learn, to grow, to make life better. But we are free to waste the gift of our life, or worse, to pledge allegiance to respectable evil. In some small way, the choice is ours.

Nothing is owed to us. Not today. Nor tomorrow. We need to make good use of whatever opportunities we are given. And if we make plans, we would do well to not hang on to them too tightly.

“And the angel left her.” This is the final line from the story of the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:26-38). The story of the Annunciation is the most frequent gospel reading during the month of Advent. A messenger from God somehow informs Mary that she will be the mother of the Son of God, whom she will name Jesus. Mary asks about how this could come about. She is engaged with all the rights of a married person, but she has yet had no “relations with a man.” The angel replies, “Leave that up to God, who alone can do impossible things” – at least impossible for our minds to comprehend. When Mary states, “Let it be as you have said, I am God’s willing servant,” the angel departs, without a further word, stage right. I find this exit very stark, even cold.

Think about it.You’ve had dreams and plans for how your life would play out. You are about to be married to a good man, a hard worker, honest and faithful. Suddenly all that seems to be turned upside down. And you’re not even able to get a hint on how this astonishing promise will unfold. You don’t question or doubt your, “Yes,” but now you are left alone to explain this potentially socially-awkward situation – unmarried and pregnant. Especially since “adultery,” when discovered, was subject to being stoned to death. The angel left.

Mary hurried out of town to visit her older, wise relative, Elizabeth, whom the angel informed Mary was miraculously six months pregnant with a son of her own (who would grow up to be John the Baptizer). Maybe Elizabeth had some counsel for her. At least the long journey and time away would give Mary a chance to reflect on how to proceed, before the pregnancy began to “show.”

Of course, everything turns out incredibly well. As happens when we give God enough room to do grace-full work. But often, it seems, after we commit ourselves to a difficult path because we understand that this is what God desires of and for us, the initial comfort and consolation disappears and we are left (so it feels) alone to work things out. This is not easy. Social pressure, short cuts, compromises emerge and offer their  wonderful solutions to “take care of our problem.” 

At this point we need to check deep inside and rediscover, or remember, those moments when we had the felt-sense of God’s powerful and caring presence, when we knew, without a doubt, that God was totally faithful, no matter what. Sometimes we need the angel to leave us to grow up in our believing, beyond anything we thought possible.

Dread or optimism? It’s possible to find either of these moods emerging as we approach New Year’s Day. Will 2023 be better or worse than 2022? And for whom? Perhaps these aren’t the best questions with which to enter a new year.

What would go into making 2023 truly new for us? This would call for a dynamic and very intentional mindset on our part. It might begin with asking ourselves, “What onerous baggage do I carry forward from year to year?” “Why can’t I put it down and leave it behind?” “How can I let it go, once and for all?”

It would certainly help to examine and name what negative attitudes, fear-rooted behaviors, biases (for and against), self-centered inclinations and/or destructive habits that burden me and wear me down. Having done a thorough review of our life, then it’s a matter of coming to clarity and certainty that these accretions that have covered me over the years like slimy moss, are preventing me from living as freely, fully alive, as loving as I really would prefer to live.

The steps are: become aware of what feels bad about how we are living, recognize our deeper desire to become a better version of our self, ask for God’s help (we cannot do this solo!) to let go of any and all that is pulling us down or causing us to go around in circles year after year like a hamster on a wheel, and choose the newness of life that is waiting for us. We’ve secretly tried hundreds of times to do this on our terms. Let’s try a new way.