Breakfast on the beach

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”

John 21:4-7a [from John 21, NRSVUE]

A week of Vacation Bible School, our first after long while. Thirty children, a dozen youth helpers, and another dozen adults. Decorated spaces and energetic music and four stories about the way God feeds God’s people. With manna. With endless enough. With vegetables and water. With bread and fish.

Me, I don’t anticipate VBS with unmitigated enthusiasm. The cartoon puppets and pop music and bright-T-shirts-for-volunteers are not my style. (I come home after, button on a cotton shirtdress, and feel myself again.) There are compensating charms, however: the children’s energy as they sing and move; the one whose pipe cleaner creation is a ‘funny squiggle dancing thing!’ and whose goodbye pat is soft on my back; discussion about how to be a friend, about feeding the whole world.

Mostly I love the stories. I love telling them, acting them, helping the children learn the words with their bodies as well as their minds. I love the moments when a spark seems to catch. We act out the story of Elijah and the widow, letting every child have a turn: each time a child-widow hands a last-cake to a child-Elijah, I slip another plastic cake out of my pocket and onto the ‘widow’’s plate. ‘Let’s do it again!’ the children clamor, and we do. One sunny face looks up and laughs: ’You’re being God making more cakes!’ She is delighted at her recognition of the story in the action; so am I.

I awake the last morning of VBS and feel as if I’ve been dreaming John 21, this text telling Vacation Bible School. I nearly laugh aloud with the recognition of the story in the week.

Breakfast on the beach.

John has already told Easter: Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the morning [20:11-18], and to the disciples that same evening [20:19-23], and to Thomas, too, a week later [20:24-29]. Resurrection has been experienced in the text, and resurrection has been written so that others may know it too [20:30-31]. So. Resurrection. What next?

John seems to take a breath to start on this next movement of the story: ‘After these things…’ He tells us what the disciples don’t yet know. Jesus will show himself again, and ‘in this way’ [21:1]. The disciples have been out on the sea all night, fishing without catching [21:3]. This is told in one terse verse, yet the action stretched over hours and involved much effort. Get the boat out to sea — push it from the shore until it floats, row out farther, hoist the sail to go to deeper water, then repeatedly throw and haul nets that are heavy even when empty. (Organize volunteers and decorate church spaces and plan a schedule and prepare snacks.) Dawn breaks, and in the half-light of early morning, the disciples realize they’ve drifted back in; they see the shore and a man on it. He calls to them, and they answer, admit the result of all their effort. No fish. Throw your net on the other side, the man says, and they do, and then the net is so full of giant fish that they cannot even haul it in.

Only then do they realize what we already know. The disciple Jesus loved is the first to voice his recognition: ‘It is the Lord!’ Peter, hearing, throws himself toward shore. The others come after. Jesus is there. A charcoal fire is burning; breakfast is prepared. ‘Bring the fish you just caught,’ Jesus urges, and they haul in the fish-laden net, and it does not break — this itself worth noting.

‘Come and have breakfast,’ Jesus summons [21:12]. They do.

See them there on the shore as the sun rises and lays a path of light on the surface of the water. The air is scented with the sharpness of morning, the tang of charcoal smoke, the smell of fish roasting and bread baking on a hot rock. The sun rises higher, dazzles in its brightness; the sky turns hard blue, the day grows hot. The disciples do not ask who Jesus is because they do not need to. Their feeling of unreasoning joy confirms what the beloved disciple had said to Peter. Their awareness quivers brim-ful, on the cusp of overflowing. Presence, Jesus had promised. Abiding, fruit-bearing, joy [15:4-11]. Now it is.

The disciples went out for fish. Knowing themselves sent [20:21], even if they weren’t yet sure to whom or for what, they went. Maybe they hoped to encounter again their Lord; maybe they hoped only to be found faithful to his sending. They know resurrection is real. They may not be sure of what comes next, but they move forward as if towards it. Their movement towards the next-thing draws the next-thing in. The long night of fruitless fishing is not fruitless. Day breaks and joy stands on the shore and calls to them even when they do not realize it is he. Awareness is retrospective — It is joy who has called to us! — then, eyes opened, they are able to remain for a time eating and drinking the awareness that God is present to them and they are present to God. On that dazzling bright morning, breaking fast after a long night, muscles aching with prior effort and present rest, realizing again as if for the first time, that resurrection does not end the story but begins it.

And God makes more cakes for us to share.

Let’s do it again!

True Bread

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

“For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

John 6:33-35 [NRSVUE; see John 6:1-15; 25-35; 66-69]

First there were just a few. Andrew and another followed the Lamb when John had pointed him out (John 1:37). Andrew told his brother Simon, and then there were three (1:40-42). Jesus called Philip, and Philip told Nathanael, and then there were five (1:43-51). ‘Messiah,’ we called him (1:41), the one written of (1:45), Son of God and King of Israel (1:49). ‘Son of Man,’ he called himself (1:51). We went to Cana. We went to Jerusalem. We went through Samaria. We returned to Galilee.

First there were a few, and then more, and now there are five thousand. A mixed multitude of disciples and wonderers and wanderers in this place. Come because of the signs.

‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ Jesus had said. Why did he ask? Who were ‘we’ to buy bread? How were we to buy bread? Even if we had the six months wages burning holes in our pockets, it was impossible to imagine a sufficiency of bread available to buy nearby.

Look at Jesus and try to read his face. His brows are raised with the query. His mouth is straight. Do his eyes smile? Look at him looking at us, as if he is waiting for us to catch up.

Five thousand people. Five loaves. Two fish. A grassy expanse, room for all to sit, for all to see as food is taken and thanks are given. A hush falls as food is handed around, and food is eaten, and all are fed to fullness. Sounds of chewing and sighs of satisfaction. The spell holds until twelve baskets of leftovers are gathered. Then the murmurs of sharing rise in crescendo as the people begin to catch up — ‘the prophet! the one coming into the word!’ they acclaim (6:14)— then outrun their own understanding, clamor off course, try to force kingship upon him (6:15). Do Jesus’ shoulders sag at their stubborn confusion? He was already recognized as king, and he did not reject the title (1:49-51), but he withdraws from this force, from the crowd’s assumption that kingship is theirs to confer rather than his to be recognized. The crowd wants a king who provides bread and circuses upon demand. They are focused on the feel of their own bellies full; want a reliable repetition of the same. Having been exposed to the possibility of amazement, the crowds won’t risk greater expectation. Please, just another of the same, that’s all they ask.

‘Work for the food that is eternal,’ Jesus said (6:27). The crowd mis-recognized their cue, focused on the ‘work’ rather than the food: ’What must we do to perform the works of God?’ (6:28). Did Jesus sigh? Does he sigh? All the time we were with him, and we did not know, not even at the end (14:8-9).

Trust, Jesus says. The crowd wants a sign so before it can do that work (6:30). They have felt healing (6:2); they have eaten bread (6:14); they have not known them for signs of Jesus’ identity. They mistake in saying that the sight of sign must go before the work of trust. They have it backwards: the work is itself the sign. Their trust is the thing that will open up their eyes to see the truth of the bread they have already been given. ‘Come and see’ Jesus had said to us at the start of it all (John 1:39). Doing preceding the vision, as if it must be always so: following first; sight second. A daily practice of dawning recognition.

Looking back from after the end, times are suddenly joined in my mind. Standing in that grassy place, surrounded by people who had just been fed. The sense of dawning satisfaction — the moment before it reverted to fear of future hunger — everyone there resting a for a breath in glad contentment. Like children. Replete, and slightly tired after supper. The next day, and after, when many had turned back from the offensive claim of incarnation, the discomfiting claim of eternity, Simon Peter’s voice with that same simple tone, answering for us all, ‘Lord, to whom can we go?’ (John 6:60-69).

We did not know fully then. We do not know fully now (1 Cor. 13:12). Even so we may know enough to persist in following the one who has the words of eternal life, the Holy One of God (John 6:69).

‘I am the bread,’ Jesus announces. From heaven. Of life. Bread that tests (6:6). Bread that satisfies (6:12). Bread that is more than enough for those who have gathered in search of a sign (6:13-14).

True bread. Taste and see.

Standing before the king

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

In the third year of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.  The Lord gave King Jehoiakim of Judah into his power, as well as some of the vessels of the house of God. These he brought to the land of Shinar, and he placed the vessels in the treasury of his gods. Then the king commanded his palace master Ashpenaz to bring some of the Israelites of the royal family and of the nobility …. The king assigned them a daily portion of the royal rations of food and wine. They were to be educated for three years, so that at the end of that time they could be stationed in the king’s court. Among them were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, from the tribe of Judah.

Daniel 1:1-3, 5-6, from 1:1-21 [NRSVUE]

Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Four youths from Judah (the Hebrew calls them ‘children’), ‘of the royal family and of the nobility … without physical defect and handsome, versed in every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge and insight, and competent to serve in the king’s palace’ (Dan. 1:3-4). The description of their good looks and amazing insight sounds swoon-worthy until you realize it’s a procurement order. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has requested a bevy of these carried-off boys to be corralled, trained, and fed from the king’s own table so that they might in time ‘stand before the king’ (1:4, 5, 18).

To ‘stand’ is the idiom for service, a catch-phrase that can connect this text with last week’s, Elijah’s affirmation that he ‘stands before’ the LORD (1 Kings 17:1). The connection hints at what’s at stake for Daniel and his compatriots. They’ve survived the war. As they endure the captivity, they need to consider. Before whom do they stand? Israel’s God or Babylon’s king?

Babylon’s king is the overt actor. He laid siege to Jerusalem, carried off its treasures, ordered the boys be brought and trained and fed. Yet the chapter is bracketed with references to other kings: the king of Judah, which Babylon conquered (1:1), the king of Persia, which will conquer Babylon (1:21). The frame suggests the transience of earthly powers. Meanwhile, God’s power ‘gives’ Jerusalem into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand (1:2), ‘gives’ Daniel the favor and compassion of the palace master (1:9), ‘gives’ the four youths knowledge and skill in wisdom (1:17). God’s giving is stitched through the chapter, though God is not the actor strutting on the stage.

I wonder what of God’s presence was palpable to Daniel and Hananiah and Mishael and Azariah. Were they aware that God — who had given their homeland to an invader — would give them the favor and knowledge and skill to survive, to thrive in this strange place? What was it that sustained their commitment to stand before the God of Israel even while standing before Babylon’s king? What did they know, or hope? And when?

The chapter pivots at verses 7 and 8. The palace master ‘sets’ Babylonian names on these boys from Judah (1:7), and Daniel ‘sets’ his heart on not ‘defiling himself’ with the royal food and wine (1:8). It reads almost as if he’s shaken himself awake, becomes a speaking actor in the play rather than a prop shunted about the stage. Description gives way to dialogue, the negotiation of the ‘test’: ten days of vegetables (or maybe ‘seeds’) and water, after which Daniel and friends appeared so much haler than the other candidates that they were allowed to continue on their restricted diet. They are allowed to refuse to defile themselves.

The text never defines how the royal rations would defile. Suppositions are multiple. Perhaps the foreign food violated kashrut. Perhaps the king’s portion is imperial indoctrination. Perhaps the preferred rations echo the ‘seeds’ and ‘growing things’ of Genesis 1:29, as if Daniel and friends, carted off to the king’s gardens in Babylon, will to live as if in God’s garden of Eden.* Or the text is meant to evoke the water and manna of the wilderness: a daily sustaining and a test that leads to knowledge.** Or the text is determinedly indeterminate — staking itself on the explicit claim that this refusal is necessary to avoid defilement, and the demonstration of God’s giving, subtle but sure — while requiring continual wrestling with its possibilities. As Daniel and his friends had to live in the tension of their time, so do we have to live in the tension of the text, allowing it to resist any tidy resolution so that it can speak to our own untidy lives.

How do you know who you are in a setting where everything is not what it was?  How do you maintain identity when all around you is strange, even hostile?  How do you allow yourself to change without becoming strange to yourself?  How do you commit to God’s reign while subject to the powers of the world? This text invites us into the questions not by offering an answer so much as a process. It refuses to conflate God’s kingship and any other but recognizes, even magnifies, the tensions between. (The palace master may change the boys’ names from -of God to -of Babylon; the text itself refuses, uses the names that include God’s name.)

Shake yourself awake. See what’s at stake. Set your heart to stand before the LORD. Hope in God’s giving. Commit to the tension — that’s how the lines sing.

Faith feeds on commitment.

* Anne E. Gardner, ‘The Eating of ‘Seeds’ and Drinking of Water by Daniel and Friends: An Intimation of Holiness.’ ABR 59 (2011) 53-63.

** Michael Seufert, ‘Refusing the king’s portion: A reexamination of Daniel’s dietary reaction in Daniel I.’ JSOT 43(4) (2019) 644-660.

A widow of Zarephath

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” … Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “Go now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there, for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”

1 Kings 17:1, 8-9, from 1 Kings 17 [NRSVUE]

Elijah springs into the narrative fully formed, as if we’re expected to know who he is without ever having been formally introduced. Ahab we know. Ahab was introduced by lineage and title: he’s son of Omri and now king over Israel (1 Kings 16:29). Ahab’s reign is ‘evil’ (16:30), not least for his having married a foreign princess and for worshiping foreign gods (16:31-33).

Elijah is unknown. He appears suddenly, challenges the king with the LORD’s judgment of drought (17:1), then hides himself away, according to the LORD’s word (17:2-4). The text follows Elijah as a camera might — first to the wadi, where he will be sustained by ravens; then to Zarephath, where he will be sustained by a widow — yet that close focus is both framed by the larger faithlessness and adds a different light to it. Elijah’s sojourn in Zarephath is not a pause in the action but an action that recasts the story as a whole, resisting rigid definitions of fidelity by showing openness to encounter.

Drought has ultimate consequences. Its effect stretches beyond Israel’s borders. An intermittent wadi and the kindness of ravens sustain Elijah at the start of the drought, but soon the wadi is dry (17:6) and the LORD sends Elijah out of Israel, to a town in Sidon, the kingdom from which Ahab’s wife had come. ‘I have commanded a widow to feed you,’ says the LORD, an echo of the earlier word ‘I have commanded ravens to feed you’ (17:9, 5).

Elijah rises and walks and goes in to the gate of the city. And — see! — a widow is there. She is gathering sticks to make a small fire to bake cakes of the last of her meal to eat with her son before the both of them die (17:12). Like the Israelites in the wilderness, this woman expects death. Her plan is not to avoid the doom but to measure its arrival. Instead, a different destiny arrives and calls to her; this fate asks for a drink of water, asks for a morsel of bread (17:10-11).

Who is the guest here, and who is the host?

Elijah is the supplicant; he comes from away, is recognized as foreign. The widow is of the place. She is mistress (‘ba’alah’) of a household (17:15, 17), a house with an upper room in which is a bed for Elijah’s use (17:17-19). She is of the place while Elijah knows himself but a sojourner, reminds the LORD he is ‘dwelling as alien and dependent,’ as the lexicon defines the verb Elijah uses in his prayer (17:20).

Yet ‘the word of the LORD in [Elijah’s] mouth is truth’ (17:24). The word to the LORD from Elijah’s mouth brings life (17:22). The presence of Elijah in that particular house leads to its sustaining: the jug and the jar are not exhausted, and the household eats many days (17:15). Elijah is there by the widow’s sufferance; she is sustained by his sojourning. Elijah receives life through the widow’s hand (17:11); he returns life through his own body and voice, calling on the LORD to make full Elijah’s initial word and return life to the boy (17:19-22).

Who receives, here, and who gives? Who, in giving, receives. And who, receiving, realizes that a gift has been given?

The story resists the binaries, the false opposition of either/or, in favor of a shifting perspective that sees in each a guest, in each a host, in both of them an exchange of receiving that gives life. The story stretches the categories, allowing each participant to stand separate even as each bends towards the other. ‘As the LORD your God lives’ the woman says to Elijah, an oath that connects to Elijah’s commitment without claiming it as her own. Even at the end of the story, when Elijah returns to her her again-living son, she does not say that the LORD is her God. She says that Elijah is a man of God (17:23-24). Maybe this, too, is her gift to Elijah, a reminder of God’s power and Elijah’s authority, before Elijah is called to show himself to the king (18:1).

We live in a season of division. Categories are rigid. Compromise is anathema. Consensus is the impossible dream of a naive idealist. Conversation, even, is suspect as potentially undermining conflicting claims of purity. Battle lines are drawn, opposing ground is trenched, each side is dug in.

But the LORD sent Elijah across a boundary. To be a stranger seeking sustenance; to be a stranger giving grace. To talk together and to eat together and for three years abide in the same household, sharing the domestic particulars in which the ideal is enfleshed. To stand sure in who and whose you are (Elijah’s name means ‘my God is the LORD’) while bending towards the other enough to learn of them, and of them to learn yourself, and something more of God.

That God’s power stretches across borders. That God’s good is not constrained by creeds. That God wills and works life in ways that confound our categories.

May we be drawn into encounter that shifts our perspective, shows us God, shares God’s love.

Bread from heaven

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.” … When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

Exodus 16:4, 14-15; from Exodus 16 [NRSVUE]

Friday morning, I open my pocket prayer book and read praise to God ‘who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine’ (Eph. 3:20). Sunday morning, the preacher recites the same line from the pulpit. I start at the unexpected repetition, sit thinking the paucity of our asking, the skimpiness of our imagination. I have this on my mind as I come to read — again, and hoping for the first time — Exodus 16.

Exodus 16. The story of bread from heaven [Exod. 16:4]. Flaky stuff, fine as frost [16:14], like coriander seed, and honey sweet [16:31]. Each of you gather what you need, Moses tells God’s people [16:16]. Some gather more, some gather less, but each finds they have gathered not too much nor too little, but for each tent-hold enough [16:17-18]. Manna rains down as an unexpected and precisely calibrated grace. Bread for the day.

Bread is given for the people’s hunger, and bread is given as a test, whether the people will follow God’s teaching or not [16:4]. I resist the word ‘test,’ at first, as if its purpose is our failure. But teachers do not test students to fail them but so that they learn, and show they know. What if God’s test, too, is invitation rather than stumbling block? What if its purpose is the possibility of practice?

The practice of dailiness: each morning gathering. The practice of sufficiency: each household having enough. The practice of consumption: heavenly bread hoarded breeds maggots and stinks [16:20]. The practice of pause: on the sixth day, double portions are gathered and kept for the seventh, for no bread falls on the Sabbath [16:22-27]. The practice of trust that underlies all of these.

I picture it covering the ground, a flaky frost of honey-sweet seeds. I imagine God’s people getting up early, going out in the morning’s first freshness to gather and prepare it. I wonder how it can be boiled or baked [16:23] yet melt in the heat of the sun [16:21], how kept over, it grows foul, except on the sixth day, when it stays good for the next day’s eating [16:24-26]. The logic of my questions is preoccupied with natural processes; the logic of the text is that these realities do not constrain God’s power, nor God’s will to work life beyond our asking, beyond our imagining.

I notice, then, that God’s people do not ask in this text. Not at first. They assume a dread outcome. They (implicitly) accuse Moses and God of — at best — culpable neglect. They do not ask.

God has brought them out of slavery in Egypt. They had groaned under the burden of their oppression [Exod 2:23], then praised God at their salvation [15:1-21]. Now, six weeks after singing, they seem to claim Egypt as a halcyon place: they were proximate to fleshpots, ate their fill of bread [16:1-3]. Better for God to have struck them down with full bellies there, they protest [16:4]. They know they will die from hunger. They do not ask for bread. Can they not imagine the possibility? Do they not trust its realization? Are their spirits still so broken by their cruel slavery [Exod 6:9] that they cannot hear that they were redeemed not for a different form of death but for life?

God hears their complaint. Heavenly bread is God’s response to the people’s need — an implicit refutation of the implicit accusation. Heavenly bread is God’s answer to the question the people have not asked, and heavenly bread draws from the people a question they could not have asked before. The people see this unexpected, unexpectable, coriander-seed-honey-sweet-fallen frost-flake — and they say to each other, ‘Man hu?’ ‘What is it?’ [Exod 16:15]. Their encounter with this miracle bread jolts them out of their anxiety into a present wonder, an explicit asking. What is it?

‘This is the bread the LORD has given you to eat’ [16:15]. Moses tells them to gather, and how much, and that it is to be eaten, not kept over [16:16-19], except on the sixth day, for the Sabbath [16:22-26]. Moses’ answer defines the ‘what’ not by its substance but by its source and its purpose. Here’s what to do with it, Moses says, here’s how to be in relationship with it. Daily. Sufficiently. Consuming. Trusting it will be provided because the provider of it can be trusted.

The question the people are surprised into asking becomes the name of the substance that surprised them: manna. The word an abiding reminder of gift beyond expectation or imagination. An invitation to persistent practice. A test not meant for failure but for formation, for coming to know [16:6, 12].

Manna. Summons to risk the asking that expands the trust, enlarges the imagination, extends the knowing. Gather and eat and taste the sweetness.

Here, in the wilderness, turn and see the glory of the LORD [16:9-10].

Labyrinth Progress

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go up to me on the mountain and be there. And I will give to you the tablets of stone and the instruction and the commandment which I wrote for their teaching.’

Exodus 24:12 [my translation], from Exodus 24:1-18 [NRSVUE] *

There’s a labyrinth in the woods where we walk. It doesn’t seem to be an official installation; no park signs herald its presence. We noticed it a few years ago, probably in winter or early spring, some time when the brush nearest the trail had died back enough that it could be seen. Stones are set in an irregular circle, within which a way is marked. The path starts at the edge, seems aimed directly at the center, then loops back and out, then in again. It’s a little labyrinth, really. Two or three wide strides would carry me entirely across it. Instead, I make my steps small enough to fit in its bounds. I follow the path toward the center, am carried back to the outer edge, then curve around in again. I walk a weaving back and forth, in and out. I hear the breeze rustle last season’s leaves and the creek run over rocks nearby.


Labyrinth progress, walking and reading: in towards the heart, then curving away. Overwhelming theophany, divine summons — all of this has happened before. Already the LORD invited and the people committed to do all which the LORD had spoken (19:1-8). Already the LORD came in cloud thick as kiln-smoke, in thunder and lightning and a trumpet that set flesh to trembling, and Moses, called, went up the mountain and talked with God (19:16-20). Exodus 24 reprises the antiphony of divine speech and human assent: the people promise ‘to do’ and ‘to hear’ (24:7); they are blood-bound in covenant (24:8); and the elders go up and eat and drink in the presence of a shining blue, smooth as pavement and clear as light (24:9-11). They have left Egypt; they are at the mountain. The act of encounter seems complete.


How, then, to understand the LORD’s further invitation to ‘Go up to me … and be,’ the promise of more to be given, instruction written on stone, purposed for teaching (24:12).

Chronological logic may suggest that this invitation is told out of order, came back before ‘all these words’ were declared by the LORD.** Yet maybe chronology is not the primary logic in the narrative. The looping back of the story may be a reminder that seeming completeness is not the same as complete. That Moses is — we are — summoned to further encounter, and encounter again.

The LORD says to Moses, ‘Go up to me on the mountain and be there. And I will give … ’ — promising Moses further gift. Summoning Moses to be in ongoing expectation.

To be in expectation is to recognize that what already is is partial. It is to resist the mistake of conflating our kingdoms with God’s, of claiming our constructions of power and identity as ultimate. To be in expectation is to know that all our going has not yet brought us to the completeness of it all. We suffer still the travails of empire and of wilderness, and we impose them on others and on creation itself. Crises continue, and none of them are new, and all our going has but led us back to the same ground, even the same trenches, newly named but familiar underfoot. It is not that we have never seen God flaming atop a mountain; it is that we mistook that flame for fulfillment. As if our own experience has already encompassed all that God has promised to work. The LORD’s invitation to go up, to be, to be given more reminds us that what is is not what is to be.

There’s also this: the LORD says to Moses, ‘Go up to me on the mountain and be there.’ God is not calling Moses to some divine waiting room (Moses flipping the pages of an outdated periodical till he is seen and handed the scrip for wholeness) but even in a state of expectation, to be in the presence of the glory of the LORD tenting on the mountain in fire and in cloud (24:15-18).

We’re not just waiting for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We’re called to present ourselves to God’s presence even in this state of aching expectation of God’s further gift.

I walk the path towards the heart of the labyrinth, am carried back around the outer edge, then in again, and out until, having walked to the center, I pause, then step in faithfulness to the path’s guiding back out again. To resume walking on the woods trail, beneath the trees and beside the creek. Reminded to be in expectation, reminded — even in ache of brokenness — to persistently listen for the invitation to go up to God and be.

Labyrinth progress, walking and reading: in towards the heart, then curving out for further return.

* The lectionary lists this text for Transfiguration Sunday, the transition into Lent. I’ve been circling towards a center and away again, and continue weaving a way into the Easter season.

** Robert Alter translates Exod 24:1: ‘And to Moses, He had said — ’ using a pluperfect to suggest the slipping of the sequence. [Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: Translation and Commentary (W.W. Norton: 2004) p.455].

‘Come and see’

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

Jesus ‘said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”’

John 11:34 [from John 11:1-53 NRSVUE]

Sitting in the chapel for our mid-week Evensong. Listening to the lector read John 11. Hearing the familiar story of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, all of whom ‘Jesus loved.’ Lazarus is sick, and the sisters send word, yet Jesus dallies two more days (11:1-6), in which time Lazarus dies (11:13-15). Only then does Jesus go, to be greeted by Martha and by Mary. Each sister in turn asserts that had Jesus arrived more quickly, their brother would be alive (11:21, 32). ‘Yet even now …’ Martha adds (11:22).

‘Where have you laid him?’ Jesus asks; they say, ‘Lord, come and see’ (11:34).

Come and see.

The phrase read aloud catches me unexpected. In the midst of so many familiar phrases, this one leaps out suddenly, surprisingly, clear as a bell.

‘Come and see…’

It’s the invitation Jesus makes at the beginning of John. Two would-be disciples ask Jesus where he is staying. ‘Come and see,’ Jesus replies (1:38-39). ‘Come and see,’ Philip invites skeptical Nathaniel (1:45-46). ‘I saw you,’ Jesus tells Nathaniel, and hearing this, Nathaniel sees who Jesus is; ‘You will see greater things than these.…’ Jesus says (1:47-51).

Come and see. This is the phrasing, the invitation, made at the start of Jesus’ public ministry, before even the ‘first of his signs, at Cana in Galilee’ (2:11). Come and see, Jesus invites followers. Come and see, one follower invites the next. ‘You will see,’ Jesus promises.

And now, here, the phrase is repeated but the invitation is inverted. ‘Lord, come and see,’ Jesus is directed to Lazarus’s tomb, to death and its expected stench.

Death permeates this passage. Jesus has been threatened with death (11:8); disciple Thomas expects death (11:16); Lazarus has experienced death — surely stinks, his sister says, with the smell of four days’ decay (11:39). Death is the postscript to the passage. If Lazarus’s exit from the tomb rings triumphant, the next notes sound ominous: the raising of Lazarus is the sign that precipitates the plot to ‘put [Jesus] to death’ (11:53).

Yet there is this at the start: Jesus’ statement that Lazarus’s illness will not lead to death but to God’s glory, to the glorification of God’s son (11:4). Death permeates this passage but does not define it. Because the word that comes after death is not just life but glory, not just Lazarus to his sisters restored but all God’s dispersed children gathered into one (11:51-52).

Sitting in the chapel. Listening to the lector read. Hearing the familiar story and being caught for the first time by invitation in it.

‘Lord, come and see,’ we summon God to the sites of our suffering.

God responds to our call to come and to see by coming and by seeing. By weeping at death, even at the necessity of God’s own passion — for Jesus’ proclamation of glory is anticipation of the cross. (‘What should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour’ [John 12:23-28]).

‘Lord, come and see,’ we summon God to the sites of our suffering as if God is not already acquainted with the tomb, as if our suffering is not also God’s own.

God comes and sees and weeps for death and works new life. ‘I have come. I have seen,’ God says to us.

‘Now, you, too, come. And you shall see greater things than this.’

Concert Season*

Candle procession. photograph (c) Katherine Brown

‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.’ … ‘which means, “God is with us.”’

Isaiah 7:14, excerpt from Isa 7:10-16 [NRSVUE] and Matt 1:23, excerpt from Matt 1:18-25 [NRSVUE]

The middle school does not have its own auditorium, so concerts are held at the high school. Tonight’s concert is chorus and orchestra. The auditorium is a cacophony of noise; talking, laughing. Students cavort; parents visit. Odd squeaks sound as one instrument is bowed, then another – individuals rehearsing the awkward bits, each of them alone, not yet in concert. Punctuating the chaos comes the tinkle of piano keys as the accompanist runs through the songs, adding a spritely rhythm to the random-patterned, rising-falling noise.

The chorus director gathers her brood onto the risers. There is some awkward stomping and giggling but no crashes. She sketches a movement with her hands, and the chorus begins to sing a scale – soft voices, vulnerable. On the other half of the stage, the orchestra director sets the beginning strings to tune; they scratch and squeak. The advanced orchestra waits, clustered in little groups, some kneeling backwards in their seats, chatting and laughing.

The concert begins with the chorus, continues with beginning strings. Then the advanced orchestra moves onto the stage.

The performers take their seats. They settle sheet music on the stands; they ready instruments. After a pause, a dark-haired girl — the first violinist – stands, tucks her violin under her chin, and draws her bow across its strings. A single note sings solitary. Is then joined by others, as bows are drawn across violins and cellos and a bass. The notes come in slightly different times and keys until the wavering dissonances are resolved and merge. The director enters, bows, lifts his baton, motions the music to begin.

I love that initiating note … the others that join…. The potential of all the music to come is held in that long-drawn not-quite-chorded note. There will be carols and dances and a concerto by Liszt. But first there is this note, offered up, fragile and tenuous and pregnant with possibility. As small and frail and potent as a baby born God-With-Us. A note begun sweet and solitary. A note rehearsed year after year, across seasons and generations, in different keys and rhythms, until all the instruments are added, and the dissonances drawn together, and the music swells in full power and one song.

Presence signed: God-with-us.

*originally written 2010

The Limits of Sense

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Isaiah 11:3-4, from 11:1-10 [NRSVUE] (Lectionary text for Dec. 4, 2022)

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

Isaiah 35:5-6a, from 35:1-10 [NRSVUE] (Lectionary text for Dec. 11, 2022)

It is the seeming rejection of sense perception that catches me when I read Isa 11. Not the ‘wolf living with the lamb’ or any of the peaceable kingdom images. Not the ‘shoot’ coming from the ‘stump of Jesse,’ the ‘little child’ leading; the promised ’root’ Paul claims as Christ [Rom. 15:12]. It’s the fact that this coming one shall not judge by his eyes nor decide by his ears [Isa 11:3].

That forswearing of senses strikes at odds with the prophet’s earlier proclamation to ‘Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes’ [Isa 6:10]. If sensory deprivation is prophesied as the LORD’s judgment, and restoration of vision and audition is prophesied as the LORD’s coming grace [Isa 35:5-6], then how am I to understand the mission of this promised shoot? The one who ‘shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear’ but will judge with righteousness and decide with equity [Isa 11:3-4]? Isaiah 11 sets sight and sound in opposition to righteousness and equity, complicating the idea of a simple progression from blindness to sight. This text describes vision and audition as senses whose usefulness is suspect.

I compare translations; consult lexicons; search scholarly articles. The shoot from the stump of Jesse shall ‘delight in the fear of the LORD,’ or perhaps shall ‘sense’ in the fear of the LORD (as the JPS translation suggests). ‘Fear of the LORD’ is the sixth of the spirit-gifts which shall rest upon him: wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and fear of the LORD [Isa 11:2]. A variety of values (near-synonyms?) for that which should undergird right judgment. Not the seeing of eyes nor the hearing of ears but fear of the LORD, the ‘beginning of wisdom’ [Prov. 9:10].

Does it seem backwards to describe knowledge as a spirit-gift, rooted in reverence? Do we trust what is taught or do we conceive of learned interpretation as less reliable than direct perception? Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Our senses are how we apprehend the world around. Our senses are the basis of our witness of and in the world. We know what we saw, we declare, we know what we heard.

Except we don’t. Not really. Sight is interpretation. When we look at light and dark, lines set on a page or shapes shifting in the world around, we don’t just see but interpret the form and the movement. More than that, until we learn it, we may not even see it.

This is what I learned from learning Syriac. Syriac script is consonantal. Vowels are written as tiny marks added around the consonants like some sort of decorative surround. Syriac vowel shapes are varied, and when first I encountered them they seemed to me random squiggles. They were to me literally indecipherable. I consistently floundered in my guesses as to which vowel was which until finally the professor said, Can you not see the letters? She enlarged the pages double-sized so that the squiggles stood out clear to my sight. Only then could I see: each was distinct, had a different shape, stood for a different sound. I had to learn the details writ large before I was able to see them writ small.

I couldn’t see them until I knew them.

We don’t know what we see; we see what we know.

We cannot judge by our own sight until we are taught how to see.

The prophet does not reject sense perception so much as require its right re-ordering, calling us to learn righteousness and equity. Instruction is promised; the Word will flow from Zion [Isa 2:1-5]; calling people to walk God’s holy highway and to sing joy [Isa 35:8-10].

The sprig sprung from Jesse’s line is like the ‘child who has been born for us’ [Isa 9:6] or the ‘servant’ whose tongue is taught [Isa 50:4]. The church reads these as Jesus, who told those who asked to ‘Go and tell what you hear and see’: blind eyes seeing, deaf ears hearing [Matt 11:4-6]. (Jesus’ juxtaposition of sense terms suddenly makes me wonder if he thought by his answer to open the ears and eyes of those who had asked!)

The sprig sprung from Jesse’s line may be read as Jesus. Yet reading Jesus in this text does not exhaust its possibilities. It promises not only ultimate judgment and ultimate restoration, but also proposes a way to wait in the meanwhile. I cannot see and hear and study to save myself. But I can be reminded that my sight and hearing are limited by what I know and re-called to look and listen and study to be in relationship with the world. Copy righteousness and equity over and over until their shapes are fixed in my hand and my eye. Recite fear of the LORD with my lips and mouth. Walk God’s instruction with my feet. Practice sight and hearing and pray sense enlarged with ‘the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea’ [Isa 11:9].

Counting Almosts

Photograph (c) Katherine Brown

[Jesus said:] ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

Matthew 24:36-44 NRSVue

Are we there yet?’ It’s a familiar phrase. Perhaps heard by some of us as we braved the highways for Thanksgiving reunions. Along with its close relation, ‘How much longer?’ Or our own family’s peculiar version: ‘How many more ‘Almosts’? As in, ‘Are we Almost There, or almost Almost There, or …?’ When our girls were small, the Almost was a variable measurement, not directly correlated to miles or time, although obviously linked to both and affected by traffic. Besides this, the Almost adjusted to accommodate conditions inside the car: shorter tempers could mean shorter intervals between Almosts, as the quicker countdown suggested swifter progress towards the goal. On the other hand, the official Almost tracker (me) was known to deliberately hold a particular Almost an inordinately long time when the question was asked just-too-often.

Are we there yet? It’s a biblical question. It’s a universal question.

The disciples in Matthew’s gospel ask their own version. ‘Tell us,’ they say privately to Jesus, ‘when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ (Matt 24:3). That is the question that Jesus answers in the beginning of this passage when he says, ‘But about that day and hour no one knows.’

Actually, Jesus’ speech is longer than that. The disciples’ question is back at verse 3, and Jesus talks for 33 verses, telling of false messiahs and heavenly portents, of betrayal and suffering and steadfast commitment, of the birthpangs of the world, before looping back to their query with a response that is not really an answer. ‘When?’ they had asked. ‘No-one knows,’ Jesus replies. I suspect it’s not the answer desired; I trust it is the answer needed.

The disciples are on a journey with Jesus. They have repeatedly re-calibrated time-till-arrival. They ask ‘When’ and want to hear ‘Almost’ because they don’t want the ‘Now’ they’re living to continue as it is.

We know that. ‘How long?’ we ask when our present is being endured, rather than enjoyed. We can face the journey if we’re actually almost there. Or almost Almost There. When we are fully present, connected, immersed in the experience — sharing meals or telling stories or singing songs along the way — then we look up, surprised at how the time has flown, and we say ‘Already?’ rather than ‘When?’

‘When?’ the disciples ask. Because life in an occupied land is hard. Because they are tired of oppressive division and injustice. Because they are eager to see God’s promises of salvation realized. Because it is so close. Isn’t it? Matthew’s gospel is 28 chapters long, and the disciples are already in chapter 24 — they must be Almost There!

Some 2,000 years on, Jesus’ disciples still live in a time of uncertainty and uneasiness, of oppressive division and injustice, still read tribulation and know pain and cry out in protest. When are you coming to make it all plain, Lord? When are you coming to save?

‘About that day and hour no one knows,’ Jesus replies, re-timing our attention from ‘that hour’ to this one.

This is the hour we are to heed; this is the hour we are to live.

We are not invited to endure this time — waiting with breath held, jaw clenched, fists gripping so tight our knuckles pale — nor to escape it — reverting to some fictional past, dreaming of a pie-in-the-sky future.

Jesus invites us to know this time. Eating and drinking and marrying. Working in the field and in the house. Or the office or the school. Living in the here and in the now. Busy with and alongside of others. Jesus does not just re-direct attention to this must-be-lived present, he describes a busy-ness that joins people together. Dividing lines are not drawn until the ‘when’ of which Jesus does not tell us. That end comes in God’s time, at God’s judgment, in fulfillment of God’s goal of intimate presence and ultimate salvation (Matt 1:21-23). Meanwhile, there is work to do. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, welcome the stranger (Matt 25:31-46)

Are we there yet? No. Christ’s return will be unexpected but as unmistakable as lightning streaking across the sky, as irresistible as a flood that comes or a thief that breaks in to take.

How much longer? I don’t know. I don’t know if I could bear to know.

Maybe that’s why God doesn’t tell. Because we are too small to bear it rightly. Because we can’t live just counting down to the future, holding on until it comes. We have to live in the present. Deeply. Devotedly.

Devoted to God. Devoted to our neighbor. The neighbor I know and love, and the one I don’t yet know or don’t yet love. Not drawing lines that divide but sharing burdens among — seed time and harvest, grinding and baking. Feeding the hungry. Tending the sick. Welcoming the stranger. Working diligently and watching vigilantly until that day.

How many more Almosts? Fewer than when Matthew first wrote. ‘Therefore you also must be ready.’ And awake.