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].

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].

Building New

To the leader. A Psalm of David, 
when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. 
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions. 
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me. 
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment. 
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.  
You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. 
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. 
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.  
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me. 
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me. 
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, 
and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Psalm 51:1-12, lectionary psalter for March 21, 2021; from Psalm 51

This is how spring comes in the neighborhood. Birdsong backed by notes of yard work and home improvement projects. The rustle of a rake pulling last season’s leaves from the garden, then scraping across a paving stone. A new fence going in: the buzz of saws cutting wood, and the sw’thuk of the power hammer fixing pickets to the rail. We walk past a house being renovated. For weeks this winter, that house had trash set for bulk pick-up (old furniture, luggage, board games, stuffed animals that looked at the sky from atop the pile). I’d mourned the dismantling of a family home and prayed at the passing of people I did not know. Now the for-sale signs have been replaced with a home design board. A dumpster sits by the curb. The battered metal awnings are gone; windows replaced; bricks fresh painted. A new porch is being put on. The smell of sawdust hangs in the air. We wonder if the interior is being totally gutted. We wonder when it will be done.

I’ve been in Psalm 51 since Ash Wednesday. I wonder when it will be done.

‘Have mercy on me, O God … blot out my transgressions.’ Wash, cleanse, blot, purge. A litany of demands, starting from that first: ‘Grace me, as is your faithfulness, as is your compassion,’ your rechem, or womb-love. The psalmist’s ‘I’ pleads with the ‘you’ of God. As if these two (we two?) are the only two in the world. ‘Against you, you alone, have I sinned,’ the psalmist proclaims, yet the proclamation of exclusivity rings false to me because the ancient superscription connects this psalm with a context. The psalmist’s sin against the LORD was suffered in the bodies of a woman taken and her husband killed. The superscription opens up the psalm, resists sin’s spiritualization. Sin, transgression, iniquity: these are more than imperfect ideation. The suffering we cause our neighbors is the suffering we cause our LORD, the offense from which we need to be cleansed, the brokenness which needs restoration. However ardent the plea, it is a sham unless the reconciliation between self and God is broadened to include reconciliation with the other.

The litany proceeds from wiping away the old iniquity to creating a clean heart. It’s not a steady progress. The first series pertains to erasing what was: wash, cleanse, purge. Verse 8, then, is Janus-faced: bones already crushed naming the hope for joy bone-deep. But not joy yet: ‘Hide your face from my sins.’ Are God’s eyes covered? Maybe God’s gaze is not averted so much as intensified: looking past and through all the evil that has been, back to the goodness of creation’s original intent and future hope. Rebuilding the psalmist in that sight.

‘A clean heart create in me, God, and a firm spirit renew within me.’ William Ross** argues that the psalm’s verbs evoke damaged structures reconstructed by God: ‘do not scrap me … refurbish the joy of your salvation for me, reinforce me with a willing spirit.…’ Crushed bones as broken walls, self as built city. ‘In sin I was birthed’ [v.5] describes the sin of the broken world into which I was born, in which I live, the structures from which I suffer and the structures from which I benefit. The bones that need to be broken, the spirit re-founded and firmed and renewed, are not just mine alone but those of the community. Yet the psalm makes plain that I am not absolved from my responsibility. Suddenly its ardent individuality seems not fraud but summons: I am involved in the world. I myself need to repent. I myself need to ask for — and to work for — holy joy, renewed and firm and amid — leavening? — the whole.

I’ve been in Psalm 51 for weeks. I’ve read it, resisted it, returned to it. I wonder when it will be done. So much needs to be ripped out. Some was good for a time but not good for all time. That too must be given over. Torn out, broken, crushed. The metaphors are so violent! Dust clouds over the dumpster as pieces of an old life are hauled out and thrown away. It hurts. Who wants to have part of your heart torn away? Maybe the only way it can be borne is in community. All of us needing to repent. Each of us saying to God, ‘Against you, you only, have I sinned.’ I can speak only in the midst of others also confessing in the voice of the psalm’s ‘I’; all of us together trusting that the tearing out of the old will result in a newer-firmer, wider whole.

I can’t make myself new in this same-old life. The psalm reminds me that I’m not expected to. The newness is God’s work. Mine is study and prayer and proclamation in community.

This is how spring comes. The first green of the daffodils spears through the ground. We look daily to see the spires grown higher. One morning the green is topped with yellow. It is as if the daffs had waited for us to look away so to surprise us with the flowers’ arrival. Oh. Spring.

‘A clean heart create in me, God, and a firm spirit renew within me.’

** William Ross, ‘David’s spiritual walls and conceptual blending in Psalm 51.’ JSOT 43(4) p. 607-29, 622-223 (2019).

Psalm Upside Down

You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! 
For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him.  
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the LORD.
May your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him. 
For dominion belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.  
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him. 
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord, 
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

Psalm 22:23-31, lectionary psalter for Feb. 28, 2021

The light has had a peculiar intensity these past days. It’s not brightness, exactly, at least not the sort that gilds the tree trunks or glows on the house bricks. It is clarity. In the afternoon the sun shines strong through the back windows and fills the kitchen. It’s not just that light shows more clearly the kitchen contents — cupboards and countertops, cups and crumbs — but that the kitchen has become a container for this other thing, for light itself.

We’ve had so many grey days, so many days of snow and rain. I have grown accustomed to the dull light, welcomed it as restful. It does not occur to me that I need not just rest but reviving until the ‘rains are over and gone,’ and a gusty wind has blown the sky clear. This happens every spring. I do not look for the turn of the year. I settle into a holding pattern of wool sweaters and shawls and mugs of hot tea and do not feel how deeply the long dark has settled into me with its own holding weight. Then comes this light so clear and strong, and I realize I have missed it. I put on rubber boots and walk the neighborhood. Yards that were snow dusted are now purple-carpeted with blooming crocus. Birdsong is piercing sweet. In the muck and gravel beside the road, there is a shape of shining light, a puddle showing sky and treetops upside down.

I had read this psalm one of the grey mornings. Snow fell and smoothed the untidy ground into a certain unity of shape and shade. I sat at my desk, and milk-pale light lay across the page, and cold radiated from the window glass, and I wondered that we should read just the ending praise from this psalm that starts with a cry of God-forsakeness. How can the exultant proclamation that ‘future generations will be told’ of God’s salvation make sense without the recitation of the abyss from which the tellers were delivered?

But maybe — sometimes — that pit itself is not known until one is plucked out of it. The fall is not always so precipitous as to call attention to itself. It may be a creeping dullness, a subtle descent, its nadir not recognized until a outstretched hand has brought you out to a broad place.

Notice the parallel in the lines of verse 26: ‘They shall eat, the afflicted, and they will be sated; they shall praise the LORD, those who seek him.’ Satiation is the answer to affliction. Praise is the result of seeking. Hunger — for food, for the LORD — is implied but not stated, nor is finding listed as the necessary precondition of praise. Seeking is.

And, as seeking leads to praise, so praise may be the start of seeking. Glimpse the sky in the puddle and let yourself be tipped with delight to lift your eyes and look at the sky. There’s not a leaf nor a cloud hiding its brilliance. Realize together both the light and your hunger.

Dine on praise. Pray your seeking be sated by God.

Sifting Shifting Witness

photo (c) Katherine Brown (color enhanced)

The mighty one, God the LORD,
 speaks and summons the earth
 from the rising of the sun to its setting. 
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
 God shines forth.  
Our God comes and does not keep silence,
 before him is a devouring fire,
 and a mighty tempest all around him. 
He calls to the heavens above
 and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 
“Gather to me my faithful ones,
 who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” 
The heavens declare his righteousness,
 for God himself is judge. Selah  
Psalm 50:1-6, from Psalm 50, psalter for Transfiguration Sunday

Have mercy on me, O God,
 according to your steadfast love;
 according to your abundant mercy
 blot out my transgressions. 
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
 and cleanse me from my sin. … 
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
 and put a new and right spirit within me. 
Do not cast me away from your presence,
 and do not take your holy spirit from me. 
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
 and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Psalm 51:1-2, 10-12; from Psalm 51 for Ash Wednesday

‘The LORD speaks and summons the earth.’ The LORD calls the earth, cries out the earth, from the sun’s rise till its going in. I read the line, and the LORD calls the earth to be, summons it to unfold itself, as if creation does not exist but for God’s daily re-call. In my mind God’s speech unfurls rainbow banners across the heavens. I look out the window and see pink glowing from sky to snow-ground.

This summons, though, is not to being but to judgment. The LORD who flames from perfect-beauty Zion in fire and storm consuming, whose righteousness the heavens declare, calls a gathering ‘that he may judge his people.’ ‘For God himself is judge.’

This is where the lectionary selection for Transfiguration ends. As if it is safe to summon the shining-bright LORD as judge and not recount the judgment. As if it is honest or true to not read on to God’s arraignment of God’s own people. As if the mountaintop was itself the end and not the transition (literarily, liturgically) into a next phase of relationship. Lent.

Where am I in this psalm? Who is God speaking to? Who is the LORD speaking of?

Having called the earth as if to be, the LORD calls to heavens above and earth below to witness the charges. I am not called as witness, however. As I count myself among God’s own, numbered among God’s ‘faithful,’ I must count myself among those arraigned, against whom God testifies. We are not invited to overhear God’s speech to others but to be addressed by God. We are summoned to ‘Hear!’

What we hear is both censure and assurance. God’s people — we, I — are arraigned not for our failures of worship but for something else. Sacrifice as we practice it is not an inherent offense. Nor is it needed by God. All is already the LORD’s. Who are we to set aside some portion only? As if it all — as if we — are not already God’s own. As if God has a hunger that can be slaked only by our burnt offerings. The LORD rejects our offerings as necessary for God’s sake, yet the psalm continues on into exhortation: sacrifice thanks; pay your promises; ‘call on me in the day of trouble.’ The LORD does not reject us or our offerings. If there is rejection, it is of our ordering. We are the ones who need this discipline taken on, that distraction given up. The LORD, of grace, accepts our need as offering, and God promises to deliver.

But the psalm does not end there any more than it ended after that initial summons to judgment. The LORD castigates the wicked. How comforting it would be to think this address, at least, is against ‘others,’ and this is the part I can overhear. These harsh words against those who ‘hate discipline’ and ‘cast my words behind you,’ who befriend thieves and adulterers, who speak evil and deceit and slander against their own kin — I would rather witness these words than take them to myself.

Except that these words, too, are addressed to those who carry God’s covenant on their lips. These words, too, are addressed to those counted as kin, which is why their falsity is such an offense. If I draw that line between, am I not risking the same slander? It is the LORD who is not like us, not we who are not like each other. I must see that if I am to see at all.

I need re-creation as much as anyone else. To be ‘washed of my iniquity, cleansed from my sin,’ ‘restored to joy and sustained in willing spirit.’

I need not just to listen but to hear to bear God’s promise truly on my lips and know God’s word present in my heart, so that I may bear God’s name in the world.

Let me not forget you, LORD.

Let me learn to see myself with your eyes that I may see you with my own.

Psalm as Snow Day

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‘Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them….

‘The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy.’

Psalm 111:2, 7, from Psalm 111, lectionary psalm for Jan. 31, 2021

Every week, I read the text — whichever text it is — a first time. I will read it again and I will do research and I will read it yet again, seeking the spark that arcs across from the ancient word to my own world. Sometimes flame flares so swift and strong and bright that words flow without much effort. Sometimes the spark catches but smolders; there is something there, but I struggle to know it. Sometimes there seems no spark at all, and I think I’ve chosen the wrong text of the lectionary four. I worry at the words like a dog worrying at a bone, working that a spark might fly, worrying that this time none will.

Every week — or two — I read the text a first time. Looking to see a light to see by.

The week I read Psalm 111, I immediately knew v.7 was the intended spark: ‘The works of his hands are faithful and just.’ The works of God’s hand. This is a phrase I’ve studied much and know well. Humans are God’s handiwork. This is where I would spend the week: pondering my identity as a made-creature, my calling to be faithful and just. With a sigh of satisfaction, I read the rest of the psalm, turned out the light, and settled to sleep, secure that verse 7 would spark. I would gather the tinder — translations and lexicons and what commentaries I have — strike the text, watch it flare, tend the flame, and write the fire.

The tinder didn’t catch. Because the text did not spark. Because in the Hebrew, the predicate in v.7 is a pair of nouns: ’The works of his hands truth and justice.’ The meaning shifted in my mind. Not that God’s handiwork — otherwise unnamed — has the quality of being faithful or just but that God makes truth, God makes justice. Truth. Justice. These themselves are the works of the LORD. The lexical study surprised. I checked multiple translations hoping one would give me back the adjectives of the NRSV. None did. I felt bereft. I had thought myself spoken of, or to, reminded of being God-made; reminded to be faithful and just. ‘The works of his hands truth and justice.’ I felt as if a door had closed and shut me out of the psalm entirely. I circled the psalm again. Noting the way ‘works’ ties it together: ‘works’ are great, are studied and delighted in; ‘works’ have power, are shown; ‘works’ are truth and justice; God’s instructions are ‘worked’ in truth; those who ‘work’ them gain understanding. ‘Works’ are a definite thread; but do they connect to me?

Sunday snow came. Monday snow came. The ground was covered over. The air moved with the falling of the flakes. The world was transformed. I had a snow day — entirely unexpected. Entirely unexpected as well was the way the snow drew me out and into it. Crunching across the ice-glazed, snow-covered grass. Wanting to see and hold in my mind’s eye a picture of just snow and sky and trees. Shades of gray, white to near-black. Wanting to go deeply in. Apart. No houses, no cars, no wires, none of the messy interconnectedness that is human life in this close-in suburb. Wanting to see the world that is not-us — deep green holly, dark cool evergreen, bare tree branches stretched out and up — all overlaid by this grace of snow — its shape and shading at once stark and soft, striking and subtle. Other.

Snow day as Sabbath unexpectedly imposed, unexpectedly allowed. Snow shifting the quality of the light. I’d been reading for a spark to summon me to examination of self and world, to whatever next-work is needed (and so much next-work is needed). I’d been following the thread in search of a knot to keep it from pulling loose. Snow shifted my sight to show psalm and snow day were the same gift. Stop tugging at the thread, stop worrying for a word of exhortation. Stop. Experience a word of wonder. This psalm is about the LORD. It is a summons to sit and study honor and majesty and greatness and power and mercy and grace and truth and justice. Stand. Snow cold underfoot. Snow coming down. Listen. Snowfall has a sound of its own even as it makes all the other sounds different. Look with open eyes, soft gaze. Snow light changes sight.

Look to see the LORD whose work I am. Only then can I see the work I am made to be.

This is wisdom; this is delight: wonder in the LORD.

Perfect hate; perfect love

How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand:
when I awake, I am still with thee.
Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee?
and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm 139:17-24, excerpt from Psalm 139, lectionary text for Jan. 17, 2021

(King James Version because that’s what I’d memorized way back when.)

I memorized this psalm when I was in college. I wandered campus reciting it, gestured with my hands to show ‘beset behind and before,’ quickened my speech to pull the darkness over me, then slowed my cadence to count thoughts more numerous than sand. With dramatic passion, I rejected the wicked, then with a hastening urgency addressed the LORD directly, alibiing my firmness. ‘Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? And am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee?’ See me, God? I have ranged myself with you against all those ‘bloody men.’ I am on your side. So you are on my side. Yes? My tone implied the question; hinted at uncertainty; perhaps accounted for the difficulty I had in memorizing the last verses. ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts….’ I chanted them formally, as if to distance the risk of such a prayer.

Psalm 139 has felt so privately mine that I am surprised to find it in the lectionary cycle. It expresses a relationship too intimate to recite in community — ‘You have searched me and known me ….’ The lectionary portion reinforces that sense as it includes only the verses that dwell on the relationship of psalmist and LORD — omitting any reference to the wicked, to enemies, to any other that would complicate or contradict the connection so intense and pure and personal. As if this is the only axis of relationship that is. Yet for two weeks, now, of all the psalm’s poetry, the lines that have lingered are those omitted from the lectionary. I find myself pondering ‘perfect hatred.’ The phrase catches and sticks in a mind still disturbed by the violence at the Capitol as a symptom of anger and fear and hate that is not new only newly fomented. The inauguration was at most a pause in the storm. Division persists.

This practice of writing words is personal. This is a devotion, not a manifesto. I write for my own need and faith relationship; theology (if that), not politics. The presenting offense that day was against the Constitution, not the Bible. It pertains to the way we relate to each other in and as this nation, regardless of how any of us relates to God. Except, except … I am commanded not just to love the LORD but my neighbor. I cannot ponder my own personal escape into the ‘uttermost parts of the sea’ and ignore the violent tearing of our national fabric. Yes, it was a a fabric flawed in its original weaving, but the pattern of its dreamed ideal has a beauty worth furthering. This leaky vessel should be rewoven not ripped apart. We are all in the same sea and so far away from shore.

A day or two after the insurrection, The Washington Post quoted a demonstrator still crowing over the battle for the Capitol, justifying the violence by distinguishing opponents from neighbors: “These police are protecting the villains inside that building. Somebody back in a small town, that’s my neighbor,” [the interviewee] said. Maybe it was happenstance that the man quoted defined the ‘villains’ of Congress in opposition to those whose identity he construed in terms of literal proximity. To me, though, ‘my neighbor’ connected immediately with Jesus’ command to love neighbor as self, and the man’s definition was at odds with Jesus’ teaching how to love as neighbor, stretching ‘self’ across a striking line of division. Love of neighbor is God’s ‘royal law.’ The law goes farther still: Love the stranger among you as yourself. Love your enemy.

That one quote — of the entire article — went deep and twisted. It evoked words I love and claim and am claimed by, yet its undermining revision passed unremarked. Either it was overlooked or was seen as more of the same from one among a crowd which had perpetrated violence under — literally — the banner of Christ. I was angry. I hurt. These words that to me are treasure were mistreated, made to be of little account. Into this miasma of exhausting emotion came Psalm 139. Its proud proclamation of ‘perfect hatred’ complicated my pondering of neighbor-love. What is ‘perfect hatred’? How does it fit in a faith that is lived not just as a private intimacy between me and the LORD but in relationship with the national neighborhood?

Some commentaries assert that these verses are ‘unpleasant,’ ‘ugly,’ yet justified as an example of honesty before the LORD. The honesty — not the hate — is what we are to emulate: name the hate so that God can transform it to love. I am not convinced. The flow of the psalm itself does not suggest that the hate is meant to be a transitory state, set aside as perfection in love is reached. The hate described is perfect, complete, full. How can the proclamation of perfect hate be a part of the process of being perfected in love?

Perhaps the answer begins in following the flow of the psalm. Say it aloud. Allow the cadences to pull me in and pattern my thoughts. Begin with the declaration of God’s presence, close as breath. Recite the impossibility of escaping from God — and then the truth that enemies make it difficult to experience God’s presence. ‘Depart from me therefore!’ Then pause. Remember. Neither I nor the wicked can depart from God’s presence. All those prior verses made that plain. We are bound together in this world, its morning wings and sea surrounding, its light and its dark, its already-written, still-imperfect, yet coming-to-be. Take a fresh breath and pray those last two verses. Claim perfect hatred not as passionate emotion against the other but as passionate commitment to the LORD. That commitment requires the risk of the prayer to be divinely searched, divinely tried, that I may learn to oppose in myself that which opposes the LORD, that I may oppose it as well in any other. The end of the psalm takes me back to its beginning, the declaration that, bidden or unbidden, God has searched, God has known. God will do so whether we ask or not. Bidding God’s knowledge of me, I bid my own of God. This is the axis of relationship that makes the others possible.

‘Lead me in the way everlasting.’

Lead me in the way of love. Lead me to long and work and live for love’s perfection. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of stranger, love of enemy, love of myself. Love of this fragile vessel that is our national neighborhood.

Cup my palm as if God’s right hand, holding us afloat on this wide sea that is not our own.

The word that breaks in.

Ascribe to the LORD the glory of his name; worship the LORD in holy splendor.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars; the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare;
and in his temple all say, "Glory!"
The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
May the LORD give strength to his people! May the LORD bless his people with peace!

Psalm 29; psalm for Sunday, January 10, 2021

Newness is not to be grabbed. It is gift to be received, to be grasped-by. So I sit upstairs at my desk to read and write and look and listen. I am given the particular text; I am given the particular time. I work to connect the two, and I pray for newness to come.

It is a grey day. The light is low. The sky is soft, folds of greys, ranging from creamy-pale to a subtle violet. The trees are black against its ground. Their bare branches stretch tall, seem to reach, bend and sway as the wind blows.

An aptness at the outset connects text and days, liturgical and political. Psalm 29 is the text given for Sunday. The day I sit to it is Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas, the celebration of the arrival of the Magi — ‘three kings’ in tradition’s claim — who follow a star and ask King Herod where to find the child born king. The focus of Epiphany is usually on the Magi, and their miracle star. At stake is a clash of kingships, and of kingdoms. And on this very day, Congress meets to ceremoniously process the tally of Electoral College votes so to effect the ideal of peaceful transfer of power according to the people’s will.

I read Psalm 29. The cedared height of Lebanon skips like a calf in my mind’s eye as the trees outside my window dance in the wind. I imagine a forest flinging itself around in some mad jig. At first there’s a playfulness to the picture. Then I re-read and realize: the forest is flung. The trees don’t dance of their own accord but as the wind takes them. As the voice of the LORD thunders and breaks and flings and flashes, convulses the wilderness, whirls oaks and strips the forest bare.

As the voice of the LORD makes be.

Give glory to the LORD, O heavenly beings, the psalm begins. Give to the LORD ‘the glory of his name’ — a definite glory, peculiarly God’s own, not to be confused or conflated with the glory or strength of any other being. Give glory to the LORD whose voice sounds with terrible power through the rest of the psalm — over the waters, through the forests, upon the mountains, within the wilderness, until all who see and hear and feel God’s power cry out ‘Glory!’

‘The LORD sits enthroned as king forever.’

At stake in the psalm — as in the day, liturgical and political — is the clash of kingships. Heavenly beings are not to set themselves above the LORD, nor is anything on earth. The imagery is violent. Creation itself is overwhelmed. The voice of the LORD has a destructive power. Its end, though, is not chaos but the conquering of chaos. The voice of the LORD does not destroy for destruction’s sake but for the sake of life, for shalom — that is peace, and more than peace, wholeness.

‘The LORD sits enthroned as king forever.’

I hear helicopters passing over. I wonder if they are headed downtown, if they carry news crews or the National Guard. The morning’s planned ‘protest’ of Congress’s ceremonial attestation has morphed into a mob action. I leave my desk for updates. I see photos and videos of the crowd streaming onto the Capital grounds, surging up the steps, smashing doors and windows, swarming through the hallways. They bear American flags and Confederate flags. They bear massive banners emblazoned with Trump’s name. They bear banners that say ‘Jesus Saves’ and ‘God Wins.’ The relative sizes suggest that Trump is the senior member of this trinity. I text friends. I turn on the television to flip through the news updates. The aptness of the psalm is unnerving — its claims of God’s sovereignty are literally contradicted on the streets, Trump and God conflated in the signage borne. The psalm reminds of what’s at stake: ‘The LORD sits enthroned as king forever.’ Kingships clash.

Day turns toward dusk, and flash-bangs light up the Capitol. Dusk turns to dark, and events continue to unfold. Congress is back in session. Senators speechify and commentators opine. I talk back to the television, in fervent response to the violence itself and to the sanctimony of the belated disavowal of such mayhem. I am angry with those whose dismay seems self-serving. I am angry with those whose words seem sincere yet dangerously mistaken. ‘This is not the America I know,’ they say, as if their experience is the sum of national identity. ‘This is not who we are,’ they offer, as if history effectively contradicted the claim.

This is us. Conflating the unholy with the holy. Confusing the dominion delegated to us with our own will. Shrinking our conception of neighbor to the one near us. Excluding the other. Grabbing after power. Trying to save ourselves alone. We articulate other ideals, even strive to live them. But this is who we live. This is who we are. Name it truly. This is not who we want to be; this is not who we are called to be. Tell the truth; make space for transformation.

I want to write flames and thunder and trumpets. I want words that blaze high enough to light the dark, brass that rings clear amid the din. I am shocked at my own urgency. It is not my anger alone that takes me aback but my intense desire to word it. Why bother? Why add more words to the myriad already spoken and texted and posted and published? Where are such words to be found? What difference do they make?

‘The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD, over mighty waters. … The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness.’

Words do things. Words divide. Words incite.

‘The voice of the LORD causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare; and in his temple all say, “Glory!”’

Words strengthen and words bless. Words have power to make things be.

I am given these words — already aflame — that acclaim as king the LORD, God who will not suffer any other to share the glory of his name or throne. Feel their force stripping away false claims. Let myself be grasped and moved by their power. Add my voice to the throng saying ‘Glory!’ The chorus praying peace that is healing and wholeness for all lives, not some, that words and voice together may further that end.

Birth breaks the world open. We are broken of our own doing. Pray birth, now, of God’s own in-breaking.