June 3, 2020               (today’s lectionary)
The unfazed mercy of God
Mwanga … Lwanga from Buganda. Don’t them mixed up. One was a king and pedophile with sixteen spouses (spice?), many with the title “Lady.” His father, also king, had 85 wives, so he was cutting back, I guess. Mwanga saw missionaries as colonial invaders and killed many of them, Catholics and Anglicans alike. Charles Lwanga was the chief page in the court, who protected many of the other pages from Mwanga’s sexual attacks and helped them become baptized Catholics.
On June 3, 1886 Charles Lwanga was killed by the state, separated from his friends by “the Guardian of the Sacred Flame” for private execution. As he was being burned Lwanga said to the Guardian, “It is as if you are pouring water on me. Please repent and become a Christian like me.”
Paul VI canonized Lwanga and his companions and then in 1969 became the first pope to visit sub-Saharan Africa.
Paul, an Apostle, to Timothy, my dear child.
Most of Paul’s epistles begin with these most beautiful words, Grace and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Here, and also in his other letter to Timothy, Paul includes the sweet, strong word “mercy.”
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. The Jesus Prayer carries many Christians through each day, days of suffering and comfort, days of travel and imprisonment, in great crowds and alone in the desert. Have mercy on me. J. D. Salinger’s heroine in Franny and Zooey fell into the Jesus Prayer and never really came out. Her companion was skeptical, to say the least. She fell to the floor and prayed the Jesus Prayer to the last. Have mercy on me, a sinner!
I pray for you constantly, Timothy, night and day. Just the very purpose of the Jesus Prayer. The pilgrim asked his spiritual director how to pray without ceasing:
“Say the Jesus Prayer three thousand times and come back tomorrow.” The pilgrim did, and returned.
“Ah, you have returned. Say the Jesus Prayer six thousand times and come back tomorrow.” When he awoke after this second day and night, the Jesus Prayer began to feel like his own heartbeat. In this ecstasy he set out on journeys through Russia, where he shared what he was learning from God in his prayer. “All will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Julian said that, but no doubt the pilgrim said it too.
Stir into flame the gift of God. Name the flame, claim the flame, call it Spirit. It needn’t settle down into a simple candle lighting the night, although it is that, too. This flame can become a spiritual conflagration, and in that energy it will be like living water is being poured into your soul.
Bear your share of hardship. Paul is in prison, Timothy is not. Timothy grew up comfortable, like Paul; Timothy like Paul must push back on his own sense of entitlement and accept chains, whips, and curses for the name of Jesus.
He saved us and called us to a holy life. My life is holy without saying, isn’t it? Made by God, unique and co-creative? But I don’t sustain that holiness on my own. Holy simply means “set apart,” and in my frenzy to fit into the world I leave holiness behind. Until.
Until God “saves me and calls me to a holy life,” again. Reborn into the holiness I started out with.
Jesus destroyed death. Jesus brought life. Jesus made our lives immortal. And so I suffer. So, Timothy, you also will suffer. Not to be ashamed, far from it. I know that my redeemer lives. Job said that. And I say it too. God guards this amazing treasure inside me and keeps it safe.
 Unto you, O Lord, do I lift up my eyes
Oh, yes! I lift up my soul
My eyes are the eyes of your servant
And I keep them always on you
Have pity on us, O Lord
Restore to us the joy
Of your salvation
 Will you not believe in what I say? “I am the resurrection. I am the life. Whoever believes in me will always live.”
But those Sadduccees, so everyday sad, you see, asked a lawyer’s question of Jesus about inheritance and obligation, complicating it to the seventh power.
Jesus challenged their postulates AND their theorems. His geometry was higher than theirs, when he said, “Are you not misled?” Of course they were misled! But they weren’t about to admit it. Could they perhaps go home to their quiet rooms at night and reconsider? That is what Jesus prayed for. Because no one really truly dies. Not even that witch who was not merely dead but really most sincerely dead? Nope.
Here is how Jesus changed the paradigm. He took the sad you sees back behind the burning of the bush, to listen more closely when God said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
And then, turning everyone around so their eyeballs must have been twirling upside their heads, he applied these words to all of us. Our God is an awesome God. “He is not God of the dead but of the living!”
No more dying there, we are going to see the King!
Jesus just never missed a beat.
            (2 Timothy 1, Psalm 123, John 11, Mark 12)
