Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

In our Office Gospel today, Our Lord asks, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under the bushel basket, or under the bed, and not on the lampstand?”

Many of us are probably familiar in one way or another with the admonition, “Don’t hide your lamp under a bushel!” Which usually means something like, “Don’t let your gifts go to waste! Don’t hide your talents or the various blessings with which God has blessed you!” And there’s definitely wisdom there—Beloved Friend, whatever gifts you’ve been given in life are meant to shared with those around you; indeed, your very being is a gift to the world and to the communities of which you’re a part!

And there are other dimensions to Jesus’ words to us this morning than the ones with which we’re most familiar. And what he says next reveals some of those dimensions, “For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”

Have you ever actually tried putting a basket over a living flame, or placing a burning lamp under a bed? Hopefully, your answer is, “No! I don’t want my house to go up in flames with me in it!” Because that’s precisely the point of what Jesus is saying to us today: the things we hide away, even the good things, have a way of being revealed in ways that are often unexpected, surprising, alarming…and even devastating. Just because they’re hidden doesn’t mean they’ve gone away.

And even the good things we hide—the talents, the gifts, the blessings—have a way of breaking out and revealing themselves in other aspects of our lives…and not always in ways that are helpful or healthy. Say someone has a gift for singing that they’ve repressed and hidden away because they don’t think they’re as good as someone else—very often that repression can lead to intense jealousy and possibly a lingering depression.

In Psalm 39, the Psalmist expresses something similar—they’re so afraid of speaking amiss or poorly that they decide not to speak at all, they decide to hide their voice completely. They write about what happens next in verses 3 and 4 of the Psalm in the Coverdale translation:

I held my tongue, and spake nothing: *
I kept silence, yea, even from good words; but it was pain and grief to me.
My heart was hot within me: and while I was thus musing the fire kindled, *
and at the last I spake with my tongue:

What follows in the Psalm is a frankly beautiful meditation on mortality and a stirring plea for God to hearken to the Psalmist’s tears.

Dear Friend, it’s true that all the blessings God has given you are intended to be given away, a fact that illustrates the wondrous strange economy of grace: the more we give of what we’ve been given, the more we have to give. But this giving is not just solely for the good of others, it’s for your own good as well. Part of who you are, by virtue of your human creatureliness, is realized and fulfilled in transmitting the blessings, gifts, talents you’ve been given to others, in the same way a candle transmits light, in the same way a lamp illuminates a home.

All of which is to say: Friend, at the core of your being, at the center and ground of all that you are, is a Living Flame of Love…

…Don’t keep it a secret! Become the Living Flame!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+