04/01/2024
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image: Mantegna, Andrea - La Résurrection
From Our Minister General Brother Ken Taylor
“…[Jesus] he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him…” Mark 16:7b
“Let us begin again, for until now we have done nothing.” Francis of Assisi
a Christian life is nothing else than a daily [return to] baptism… Martin Luther
Greetings and Peace in Christ our risen Savior.
This year, once again, I have found that I all too well identify with the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Time and again we see that they misunderstand Jesus. They bicker about their importance. They overestimate their abilities to stand fast with Jesus till the end. They fall asleep during the watch, even as Jesus prods them to stay awake. Then, when faced with the specter of real danger they scatter into the night. We see that Peter denies Christ in that critical moment, and then is sorrowful that he was unable to live up to the task…
The vowed life, and thereby the Christian life, shows us all that we are all too human and frail. Time and again in our walk along The Way, our shortcomings are made apparent. Our vow to obedience shows us that the ‘spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’. [Mark 14:38b] We are daily challenged as sometimes our prayers get squeezed out by other ‘important things’. Our vow to poverty [simplicity] is compromised by the lure of some new kitchen gadget. Our vow of chastity to ‘love all without distinction’ is strained by our encounters with others who differ from us politically. Our commitment for advocacy, to stand for the poor, to embrace the marginalized, to give voice to the voiceless, is muted by our fears of how that might affect our position in our communities, or our relations with others. Our desire to Care for Creation feels fraudulent when we forget to bring our cloth bags into the store to save on plastics, or when we forget our water containers and succumb to grabbing yet another single use plastic bottle to quench what we feel is ‘thirst’. The shortcomings go on and on…Amen?
At times we feel that it is all lost. In original ending of Mark, ending at 16:8, we are struck by how there is no ‘appearance’, just an empty tomb, and a call to go back to ‘Galilee’, the place where our walk with Jesus began. The beauty of the Gospel message is that we don’t have to be perfect. Actually, we are unable to be. But as we return to our baptism, as we return to the callings of our Christian vocations, as we [re]encounter our vows as Lutheran Franciscans, as we return to the table to be fed with God’s Holy Food of Christ’s body and blood, we find that we are always being formed by God’s enduring love. We are not chastised for our failures, we are encouraged, and strengthened to begin again. As we review how Christ has been walking with us all along, and as we return to renew our commitments to live a life of prayer, to live simply, to love all without distinction, to advocate for the poor and marginalized, to take measures to care for all of God’s Creation, we find that the next time, as we rest in God’s grace, mercy, and love, God’s Way of Life is shown to us through Jesus our Christ. And this realization takes what once was bitter, and it then becomes sweet as honey dew and quenches our deepest thirst…
May you hear the call of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, to return again to the beginning, to know that you have been baptized, named and claimed for God’s Holy purposes. May you profoundly be encountered in the bread and the w**e at God’s table. May you be refreshed to begin anew, for up till now, we have all done nothing, yet.
