Grace in the pebbles

“You have shaken the earth and split it open; repair the cracks in it, for it totters…”Psalm 60:2 

“After this, Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized…” John 3:22

Photo by Lori Korleski Richardson

During Lent, I have taken to reading the psalms in the evening. Psalm 60 came as the lectionary assignment for last night, full of earthquakes, armies, enemies and God’s wrath. Not exactly comforting bedtime reading.

This morning’s reading from John 3:22-36 brings calm. Jesus is in the countryside, teaching his disciples and baptizing. A side discussion ensues about baptism and how it is a gift of the spirit. It is the only suggestion in any of the gospels that Jesus himself might have been baptizing people, though a few lines later the gospel writer says it is the disciples – not Jesus – who are performing the baptisms.

A couple of years ago, Lori and I traveled to the Judean countryside for a few days. In the morning I sat beside the Sea of Galilee and watched the sun rise. The beach was thick with stones and pebbles, the rubble from the earth split open from centuries of earthquakes and floods. I could easily imagine Jesus sitting on this shoreline, praying as the sun came up.

Nearby were olive groves, and it was easy for me to imagine Jesus and his disciples finding shade there at the noonday. No words were necessary for my imaginings.

I brought back a few olive leaves from the groves, and pressed them in my prayer book. I also brought back a pocketful of pebbles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I keep them in an olive wood bowl near my favorite chair at home.

Lately I hold one of the pebbles during my morning prayers. A few days ago, as I held the smallest of pebbles, I heard a small still voice telling me to look for the small pebbles of grace in my day.

I leave you with this today: Hold a pebble in your hand. Find the grace that comes your way. It might be very small, and unexpected. It might be a smooth or rough. But that pebble is a blessing that is yours to keep forever.

Also from today's readings. . .

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship.

Deuteronomy 10:12-20

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

The cool cleansing waters of the river

Sacramento River, taken with my iPhone

SACRAMENTO – The air here is very heavy with smoke from brush fires on the Sacramento River Delta. The evening breeze that usually brings us cool air brought us only stifling smoke last night, and the temperature today promises to be 104 degrees.

So it takes imagination this morning to think of the cool waters of the mountains, and to imagine the water long ago where Jesus and John the Baptist initiated people into the faith by immersing them in rivers.

The Daily Office reading this morning, from John 3:22-36, is a debate about the meaning of baptism and who is allowed to perform baptism. John is baptizing at Aenon near Salim, while Jesus is baptizing in another stretch of the Jordan River. A few nameless folk ask John the Baptist, who has the better baptism? John turns it into a sermon about belief in Jesus:

“He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.”

Ouch.

Baptism in the Gospel of John has become about being initiated into a relationship with Jesus, and that has become the central motif of baptism in Christianity through the ages.

But the Gospel of John was written last (nearly a century after the time of Jesus), and it represents the early Church adding its claim of exclusive truth onto the story of Jesus. Perhaps it is a layer of smoke?

I cannot help but reflect that baptism looks and sounds different in the earlier gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke. In those gospels, Jesus is drenched in baptism and through it shares with us in temptation and suffering. God declares Jesus beloved in baptism, and baptism becomes a marker not only of his divinity, but also of his humanity.

Unlike in the Gospel of John, in the three earlier gospels Jesus does not baptize – he is not a rival to John the Baptist. Jesus casts out demons and heals people, feeds them and invites them to his table. He does not check their baptismal certificates at the door.

I am left wondering if these two ideas of baptism are mutually exclusive. Apparently not for the early Church, for both ideas were left in the New Testament: Baptism as Jesus sharing our humanity, and baptism as our initiation into life with Jesus.

Christians have had a very difficult time through the ages living in the tension of those two ideas. Can we find a way to live with both ideas?

Maybe the flowing waters can bring us there.

My prayers this morning take me to the banks of the river, and I am surrounded by many familiar people who are in this world and in the next. I prayer for the waters to cleanse us of all that harms, wounds and hurts us.

I feel connected through the water to many memories, many people, in the past and in the present. I feel connected through the water to life everywhere. And I await the promise of the water that has not yet reached us and for the smoke to clear away.

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux