Naked he fled.

My forsthia bushes have been going strong for about a week now. They seem to glow from within.
I'm starting to meditate on St. Mark's account of the Passion of Jesus. I am intrigued by two verses that appear only in Mark and seem superfluous. After Jesus has been seized by his enemies in the garden and all of his disciples have "deserted him and fled," Mark says, "A certain young man was following him, naked except for a linen cloth. They seized him, but he left behind the linen cloth, and naked he fled." (14;51-52)
Throughout his Gospel Mark shows the disciples as pretty dim. They simply don't get it. They consistently misunderstand Jesus and here at the end they run away. It's as if this young man thinks that he's not like them. He sticks around. But when push comes to shove, he is so eager to get away that he wiggles out of what little he has on and runs off. I sort of admire him for giving it an extra try and feel sad that he so desperately gives up.
Ray Brown asks "Why is the absolute failure of the disciples Good News?" and he answers, "The mystery of Mark's Gospel is that God succeeds and accomplishes his purpose amidst human failure." That's Good News for those of us who fail so often.

Maryland Day

March 25, 1634, 17 English gentlemen, mostly Catholic, about 200 laborers and servants, mostly Protestant, and 3 Jesuits landed on St. Clement Island to begin the settlement of a new colony to be called Maryland. They established religious freedom and separation of church and state. On April 21, 1649, this policy became law, the Act Concerning Religion, the first legislative grant of religious toleration in the New World.
In 1689 the Church of England had gained enough power to pass harsh penal laws against Catholics. They were not allowed to hold office. Worship was restricted to private residences. Soon they were made to pay a double tax and lost the right to vote. In 55 years they had lost the religious freedom that had been their dream.
Those who complain about the "lack of religious freedom" in our country today cheapen the meaning of the phrase.

Spring Promise

 

"Somewhere deep in the being,came penetrations of the senses by all that seemed to promise new impulse--color, scent, sound--which gave people hopes of being more themselves than ever, and yet better." --Paul Horgan in "Whitewater"

Lifted Up

 

This sculpture is on Mount Nebo from which Moses saw the Promised Land before he died. It represents the Cross as well as the bronze serpent that Moses raised up on a pole in the desert to save those bitten by poisonous serpents.
In John 3;14 Jesus says to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." In John "eternal life" starts here and now and lasts into eternity.
In John 8:28 Jesus says to the Jewish religious leaders, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will relaize that I AM." These "I AM" sayings of Jesus are spread throughout John's Gospel. It is God's proper name that God gave Moses from the burning bush. Jesus' repeated use of this in the Gospel is his clearest claim to be God.
In John 12:32 Jesus tells the crowd, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself." The Greek word used for "lifted up" in these three verses also means "exalted." The lifting up of Jesus on the Cross continues in his exaltation as he rises and ascends to the Father. Every human being is drawn into this "lifting up." The image I find helpful is that of a whirlwind that sweeps up the entire human race with Jesus into the Father. All that is required of us is to let go.

The Hour Has Come

 

At the wedding feast of Cana, when Mary tells Jesus that the host has run out of wine, he says to her, "My hour has not yet come." He repeats this several more times in the first half of the Gospel. Finally in 12:23 he says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."
In the past I had read those words as a kind of non-response to what had preceded. Some Greeks have come to Philip and asked to see Jesus. Two commentaries I used for meditation and prayer this week helped me to see a connection that I had never noticed before. The arrival of the Greeks confirms the Pharisees' frustrated words in verse 19, "The whole world has gone after him."
This, in turn, points back to a line much earlier in the Gospel in which the Samaritans tell the woman at the well, "We know that this is truly the Savior of the world." (4:42)
Not just his mother and some guests at a wedding, but the whole world represented by these Greeks, now bring Jesus to declare that the hour has come for his death and resurrection, the "hour of his glory."
When we hear only a brief bit of the Gospel read on a Sunday, it's hard to make the connections that the author of the Gospel intended.

Dying into Life

 

We are having a series of very warm days, extraordinary for these mountains this early in the year. Forsythia is the first plant to bloom in my yard, but it's not completely out yet. These branches are close to the ground. I guess that gave them the courage to blossom. I like this picture of new life bright against the dead leaves. Without the apparent death of winter there would be no new life of springtime.
John 12:23-28 is my favorite passage for a funeral. It is part of this Sunday's Gospel reading. John does not have the scene of Jesus' agony in the garden the night before he dies, that the other three Gospels have. I get some sense of a similar struggle in this passage in John.
Jesus knows that the time is drawing near for his death and tries to make some sense of it for himself as well as for his followers. He says, "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit." Jesus must die before he can rise to new life. Somehow death holds within it the seeds of new life.
The dying and rising of Jesus makes it possible for each person to go through death into new life. It also helps me to think how the little deaths that I face all through my life give way to a richer life. It seems that there can be no joy without sadness, no full life without suffering.

God Breaking Through

 

I wanted to make sure I got in here this quote from St. Augustine that I read on my vacation in Falling Upward:a Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life:
"You were within, but I was without.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
So you called, you shouted,
you broke through my deafness,
you flared, blazed,
and banished my blindness,
you lavished your fragance,
and I gasped."