What time is it?

This is what the Lord GOD showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, “O Lord GOD, forgive, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The LORD relented concerning this; “It shall not be,” said the LORD.

This is what the Lord GOD showed me: the Lord GOD was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, “O Lord GOD, cease, I beg you! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The LORD relented concerning this; “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Amos 7:1-9; portion of lectionary text for Sunday July 14, 2019

We’ve had crazy rains this week. Monday’s morning rush hour storm led to flash floods. Photos of DC commuters atop their cars surrounded by swirling water made the national news. The good news is that new collection systems prevented 170 million gallons of sewage and runoff from reaching the Anacostia River; the bad news is that 50 million gallons still did.

Trouble about immigration continues. Reports describe conditions in border detention centers as squalid and worse. Meanwhile, ICE raids are publicized as imminent. Our bishop has called congregations to ‘prayer and action for migrants.’

And Amos sees visions of the land being eaten and pleads for Jacob ‘so small!’

I love the pathos in that plea. The nation’s sin has already been proclaimed — the luxuries enjoyed by the few, the oppression suffered by the many (e.g. Amos 2:6-8; 5:10-13; 6:4-7). Yet Amos sees it as too small to stand in the face of judgment. Amos is affected by the vision the LORD shows him, and his plea moves the LORD’s own affection for this people chosen and known (3:2), and the LORD relents from punishment. I love that too. The LORD relents.

The pattern shifts in the third vision. ‘This is what he showed me,’ the prophet writes, ‘The Lord standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.’ ‘Amos, what do you see?’ the LORD asks, and Amos answers as he can, and the Lord pronounces the meaning of the vision.

Commentaries point out that the meaning of the Hebrew translated ‘plumb line’ is obscure, that the vision Amos saw had to be explained by God. The disaster of locusts and of fire devouring is immediately obvious. A wall with some sort of weight held beside it may not be. Commentaries note that the LORD relents twice, but that the nation’s sin is so great, there is no third relenting. As if the shift is in some decision to firmness on the part of God.

But the shift is not only in God’s words. It is begins already at the start of the vision. Amos had seen nature great and terrible and the vulnerable land. Now Amos sees the Lord and a wall, a built thing laid upon the land. Amos’s prior pleas seem born of his own sense of vulnerability, of primary identification with the thing (people) upon which punishment is laid. ‘Jacob is so small!’ This third vision, Amos is shown the wall and the plumb, and Amos is invited to name aloud what he sees. The prophet still speaks, and the LORD still responds, but the dialog has shifted to a different plane. It seems to me as if Amos had been a witness protesting punishment of something else or other, as if Amos is standing just outside the relationship between the LORD and the land and protesting on the latter’s behalf. Now Amos is invited by God to recognize God’s own point of view (the Lord is standing there; the Lord is holding a plumb line), to acknowledge the terrible crookedness of the structure so-small Jacob has built.

Perhaps it is not that the LORD refuses to relent a third time, as if God rushes to voice judgment before the prophet can plead yet again. Perhaps it is the prophet himself whose view has shifted, perhaps there is a pause … and the prophet does not even open his mouth to plead. Because what can the prophet say? Yes, we built this. Yes, however soundly the first course of bricks was laid (or not), each successive course has been that bit further out of true, out of straight, out of plumb. Such a wall cannot stand. Perhaps it is the prophet — invited to see not just what God shows him but as the LORD God-self sees — perhaps it is the prophet who stays silent. Seeing that the land bears the burden that the people themselves laid upon it: that crooked wall. The intercession needed is not a plea directed to the LORD but a proclamation pronounced against the people. (Amos 7:10-15).

And the prophet’s silence becomes part of the dialog between prophet and God.

The movement of water and the movement of people are not two separate things. The land, the rivers, are burdened by our living, by our bad building. The weight of it is borne well beyond the acre we stand upon. When do we plead with the LORD on the land’s behalf? When pronounce the LORD’s judgment against the people? See what the LORD is showing us. Tell the time. Speak the vision.

“The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8b).

Immersed and Buoyant

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. […]

[Naaman] went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the LORD lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!” He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the LORD.

2 Kings 5:1-5, 14-17; excerpt from lectionary text for Sunday July 7, 2019

full text linked: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+kings+5%3A1-19a&version=NRSV

Naaman is a great man; a mighty warrior. Naaman is good at what he does. Maybe Naaman even is good. His wife’s maid, an Israelite captive, cares enough for his well-being to speak to her mistress. The women’s speech may be for their own sake — the status of the household is not unconnected to the status of its master — yet, reading, I imagine relationship — hierarchical, yes (this is the ancient world, after all) but flowing within that frame. Perhaps the slave-maid cares not only for household stability but for the household. Picture Naaman a man of rectitude. Self-disciplined. He knows what he is due, and expects it. He knows his own duty, and fulfills it. His sense of honor requires of him courtesy. He inclines his ear to one who owes him her survival, hears the possibility of hope from a slave, and commits himself to pursue it, even to another land. He is able to hear and willing to ask, and what he asks is the opportunity to buy.

Naaman does not request a gift. Naaman expects to pay with vast quantities of silver and gold and garments (2 Kings 5:5), with extreme exertion (5:13). There is a certain humility in Naaman’s approach. He is not demanding, not taking, not grabbing. He asks permission from his king; he approaches Israel’s king; he brings resources to procure what he requests. He respects the process and follows it dutifully. Yet maybe this deference betrays his pride. Naaman not only expects to pay, he wants to pay. He is offended when the prophet does not appear himself (5:11). Naaman knows what he is due. Naaman does not come as a supplicant. He comes with resources, treasures, all of which he is willing to offer. Naaman does not intend to accrue a debt. Naaman has planned and prepared to pay his own way.

Yet the message the prophet sends to Naaman is ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times’ (5:10). And once his servants have pointed out the absurdity of resisting the simple for having expected the difficult (5:11), Naaman ‘dips’ or ‘plunges’ or ‘immerses’ himself in the river (5:14).

The Naaman that emerges from his immersion is clean from leprosy. He is stunned at the healing, offers again all that he has brought — explicitly naming it ‘present’ or ‘blessing,’ a response to his new knowledge of Israel’s LORD (5:15). Naaman offers. Naaman urges. The man of God refuses. Twice.

The Naaman that emerges from his immersion is not only freed from leprosy. He seems, as well, to have been freed his proud insistence that he must pay his own way. Instead Naaman asks that something else be given to him, something more: two loads of earth from Israel, that he may take them home to Amon and there worship the LORD.

Having spent the week immersed in this text — gone all the way under, felt its ripples and waves and current more closely and strongly than I could have known from shore — it seems to me that Naaman’s asking is the most telling effect of the potency of God’s grace.

Naaman had been given victory. Naaman had been given healing. Now Naaman begs a gift. He becomes supplicant. He admits need. He risks refusal. He relinquishes his sense of self-sufficiency, stops clinging to the gifts (innate and material) that bought him prestige and position, the ability to pay, stretches out his hands, palms up and open to receive, and asks.

Naaman makes himself vulnerable.

As one realizes, when immersed, entirely encompassed by the force and flow of the water’s embrace, one already is. Immersed yet — asking grace — buoyant.

The Shock of Ascent

Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha said, “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?” And he said, “Yes, I know; keep silent.”

2 Kings 2:1-3; from the lectionary text for Sunday June 30, 2019

full passage linked at: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Kings+2%3A1-15&version=NRSV

Elijah and Elisha. Gilgal to Bethel. Bethel to Jericho. Jericho to the Jordan. And across the Jordan — miraculously parted — a whirlwind of chariots and fire catching Elijah up into heaven.

I know how the story ends. We all do. The end is told right at the start, in v. 1: the LORD is about to ‘take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind.’

Even those within the story know the event towards which it is aiming. Gilgal to Bethel. Bethel to Jericho. Jericho to the Jordan. At each point, the imminence of the LORD’s ‘taking’ is told. ‘Today’ say the prophets at Bethel (v.3). ‘Today’ say the prophets at Jericho (v. 5). Each time, Elisha replies that he, too, knows what will come. ‘Be silent,’ he says to them.

The pattern shifts slightly only at the Jordan. Now it is Elijah who alludes to himself being ‘taken,’ and his command to Elisha suggests the urgency of the time: ‘Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you’ (v.9). The taking will be soon. It is coming. It is nearly here. Neither of them knows the time. Neither of them can control the time. Only step by step respond to the sending sign. Gilgal to Bethel. Bethel to Jericho. Jericho to the Jordan. The points don’t map in a straight line; they reverse course; their route slants sideways. ‘The LORD has sent me,’ Elijah had said at the start, and commanded his companion to stay. Elisha refused. Elisha is intent … upon what? Upon clinging to his master? Upon walking the way? Upon watching and watching to see what he knows is coming unfold?

The story tells its end right at the start: Elijah is about to be taken up by the LORD. Those within the story know this taking is near. They tell of it; they look towards it; they wonder what it will bring: ‘If you see me as I am being taken…’ Elijah tells Elisha (2:10). Elijah cannot grant Elisha’s request nor foretell whether the LORD will grant it. Which itself is odd, since the LORD had commanded Elijah back chapters before to anoint Elisha prophet in his place (1 Kings 19:16). Could it be that Elijah has learned humility — to wait on instead of anticipate the LORD? (His tone has changed since 1 Kings 18:36-37). Or is the story not about Elijah but about Elisha? Elisha so focused on walking closely in step, putting aside those distracting other-prophets with their superfluous words — I know, I know, already I know; keep silent about what will be, so that I can see what is even as it unfolds. Elisha cleaving close to Elijah until he is able to articulate his hope for when they have been cleaved apart.

It’s a strange story. Not only for the whirlwind of chariots with its crackle of flames and thunder of hoofbeats, nor for the odd route along which Elijah says he is sent, nor for the words Elisha cried after his departing ‘father’: ‘The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ (v.12) — I hear his voice grow high-pitched and crack as Elijah is carried off.

The strangeness, too, comes in the mismatch of the verbs which narrate the event’s anticipation and realization and the verbs used by the characters within the story. How many times have I read this text and never noticed this? The companies of prophets say Elijah will be ‘taken’; Elijah himself says he will be ‘taken’; the verb in both places is the same. But the Hebrew of the bracketing narrative says something slightly different: v.1 explains that Elijah will be led up, brought up, caused-to-ascend; and so in v.11 it is: Elijah ‘ascends’ into heaven.

Is this why Elisha has to follow and watch so closely? Is this why Elijah cannot speak with certainty of what will be? Because they both know that what they know is partial, not the whole. They know enough to watch, to walk from Gilgal to Bethel, from Bethel to Jericho, from Jericho to and across the Jordan. They know enough to see that the LORD is about to act; they try to ready themselves to recognize the act. But they don’t really know. They can’t. All they can do is read and walk the signs step by step, place to place, word and word, continuing ’walking and talking’ (2:11). They know what is coming and still there is the shock of its in-breaking.

Some deaths come like that. And every birth. You know, and you know, and still you are stunned when you see that it is not, after all, a ‘taking.’ It is ascent. It is one being caught up by glory, into glory. And the other walking back, and further on. Still in the story, but having been given a glimpse of its larger frame. Your voice rises and cracks.

The knowing you’d had — that ‘taking’ is coming, even near — partial, insufficient, the knowing matters. The work to see and to hear and to talk and to walk — that matters too. By it you are brought across the river, to the encounter with crackling flame and pounding force. By it you are enabled to take the next step. To pick up the mantle and cross the river back and walk on into the portion of work that is yours.

I am still in my story. DOJ to seminary. Seminary to local church. Local church to doctoral work, and then across. An odd process, sometimes sideways. And if right here, right now I cannot even see to name the journey’s end, yet through this text, I am reminded of how partial my story is and given a glimpse of its larger frame. Gilgal to Bethel. Bethel to Jericho. Jericho to the Jordan, and then across. An end that is like but also unlike; expected yet impossible to anticipate; an end that is not an end but merely one more turn. Until the next. I do not know, nor fully can, the story’s frame. It will come as surprise; it cannot be else. But here within the tale, I can watch and listen and talk and walk on to the next thing, the next glimpse of heaven breaking in and catching a little bit of this world up into itself, until the kingdom comes.

Fire crackles and chariot wheels rumble and hoofbeats pound against the air.

Wisdom Calling

Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?

“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. …

The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. …

When he established the heavens, I was there,

when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, …

then I was beside him, like a master worker;

and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

Prov 8:1, 4, 22, 27, 30-31; from the text for Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2019;

for full text see: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Prov+8%3A1-4%2C+22-31&version=NRSV

Wisdom calling. Wisdom standing at the crossroads and raising her voice.

I have a crush on this woman. I don’t aspire to be her — such attainment is ‘too high for me’ (as the psalmist might say). I want to be near her, to spend time with her. Sit at an outdoor cafe and chat as we watch the passers-by. Then find ourselves occupied by our own conversation — leaning in, bodies turned towards each other, intent on our communion. Laughing aloud together for the very humor of being alive.

I want to be friends with her.

I imagine Wisdom so strongly. She calls to all, here and now. She stands at the crossing — that one, just there, where they’ve shifted the lane-lines over to make room for the new transit line coming in, and the buses lumber crowded in the construction-narrowed road (picture the bus with its shoulders hunched in, like the passengers that stand crammed in its aisle). Wisdom talks in high flights of poetry and with a well-grounded gumption. Wisdom talks to me.

I am driving that very road, held by the red light, a bus just beside me. The weather is drab and damp, not even poetically so, yet I am aware of delight rising with me. I turn the feeling over and realize Oh, it is because I get to spend the week with Wisdom. It is because I am headed to the library, where I will pull commentaries and lexicons off the shelves, and look up words and learn from others’ insights. Pay attention to that joy. It’s telling something.

Wisdom calls. Heard or unheard — the very mention of crossroads suggests all the traffic that passes by without even pausing; now the light turns green, and I turn left — Wisdom cries out to all who live. And for all the seeming playfulness of her proclamation, Wisdom’s delight is not ignorance or avoidance or petty weakness. Wisdom knows creation. She was there before its beginning and through every step of its coming to be. Wisdom’s hymn trumpets deep awareness and full engagement and potent strength.

Wisdom sings her birth from the LORD — not just created but gotten, in the old English sense, begotten; the verb in v.22 the same as in Gen 4:1, in Eve’s exultant joy at the birth of her first son. The birth image echoes again in v.25: ‘brought forth’ is a verb suggestive of the writhing and travail of childbirth. The LORD in labor, bearing and bringing forth Wisdom, keeping her near, delighting in her daily delight. Wisdom hymns her identity as joy; joy before the LORD, joy in the world, delight in humanity. She is entirely herself, and the self that she so freely rejoices in is not solitary but relational.

I come home from my library delving and pick up the ‘Outlook’ section from Sunday’s Washington Post (a day late) and see the cover article, ‘Changing Channels,’ about women after 50, stories from eight women who’ve reinvented their lives, themselves. The article opens with the line, ‘When women turn 50, the world starts to tune them out ….’ Woman Wisdom! I think, standing on that street corner, calling to the passers by. As the article continues, the women describe an ‘energy shift,’ a new sense of freedom to be themselves, to discover anew who those selves are. This is me, I realize as I read. Second calling (or third, depending on how you count). Wandering and wondering and recognizing again and again that I myself (and at my age too!) am in-process. And the freedom to claim that becoming, is that not also Wisdom?

I am in-process, still being created, still being born. As Wisdom — way back before the beginning of it all — once was. And as Wisdom even now delights in the joy of that eternal and daily newness, so might I.

Wisdom stands on the corner, and she looks me full in the face and smiles warmly and stretches out a hand and says, ‘Come and see…’ (John 1:39). She shows me wonders vast and tiny. She shows me how to see and how to hear. How to laugh. And — please God — how to tell.

I am being born into friendship with Woman Wisdom. A laughing thought, indeed! Yet that is the promise. ‘I love those who love me; those who seek diligently will find me’ (Prov 8:17). The promise is plural — not just to me, but for each of us, all of us. Be attuned to the delight that signs the encounter.

Birth involves writhing and travail. But — oh! — then comes the light, and the shuddering gasp and intake of breath, and the life.

And ‘the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy’ (Job 38:7).

A Taught Tongue

The Lord GOD has given to me a tongue of those-taught to know to sustain the weary with a word. He wakes in the morning, in the morning he wakes my ear to hear as those-taught. Isaiah 50:4 [my translation]

Text for Sunday, April 14: Isa 50:4-9; linked here https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isa+50%3A4-9&version=NRSV

My translation is clunky. This is deliberate. I want to have to think about every word. I don’t want my eyes to glide across the line merely reminding myself of the text and what I know.

I want to hear it. I want to know something new.

Which is risky, and frightens me a little.

I’ve bought a book by an author I’ve never read before. I am excited to hold it in my hands, to anticipate hearing a voice and stories which are to me entirely new. I open the book, tugging at its still-stiff binding, and suddenly I am aware of a frisson of fear. What if it is not what I expect? What if I find I don’t care for the author’s voice, or her story? Or — perhaps worse — what if I do? What if I am taken with it all, and am taken thereby to someplace I do not want to go? My worry is not that I shall have wasted money or time in reading. It is that I shall have wasted part of my heart in caring. I am already so tired; I do not have the energy for another’s book-bound pain.

My study Bible helpfully captions Isaiah 50:4-11, ‘The Servant’s Humiliation and Vindication’ just in case I can’t follow the progression from smiting and spitting (50:6) to flint-faced confidence (50:7-8). Some of my students immediately ‘know’ that this passage is about Jesus; the connection between Jesus and Isaiah’s servant is an early Christian tradition (Acts 8:32-35). But I assign my students articles that identify the servant as the prophet who wrote, or the prophet Jeremiah, the king Zedekiah, the holy city Zion, or the nation of Israel, sometimes called Jacob (e.g. Isaiah 41:8). I have in my files as many articles again. The reams of studies can make it seem as if as if the text was written to be a riddle — ‘Who is the servant?’ — a test of our ability to answer correctly.

But what if the text does not pose that question?

The Lord GOD has given to me a tongue of those-taught.

The NRSV describes God’s gift as ‘the tongue of a teacher,’ but the Hebrew is ‘taught-ones,’ or ‘disciples.’ The same term recurs at the end of the verse, applied to the speaker’s ear waked to hear. The organs of hearing and of speech linked by this descriptor of each as taught, each as open to receive the LORD’s gift, the LORD’s waking.

What is the LORD waking me to hear? Is it even a question? And if the LORD wakes me, instead, with an answer, then what is the question I am meant to have asked?

What if the point of these verses is not the identity of the servant but of the ‘me’ gifted by the Lord GOD? The one wakened to hear, wakened to be taught, wakened to speak as one who has heard and learned. The one who knows that the waking and the teaching are not only for my own, personal, sake, but for the sustaining of the weary. Even if the ‘weary’ and the taught are the exact same ‘one.’ Or ‘ones.’ It’s plural, after all.

It’s easier, I realize — and, I admit, fun — to follow the threads of text-connection — to pretend that the point is the question ‘Who is the servant?’ Because once we answer that, right or wrong, we can be done with it. Because ‘the servant’ is Jesus or Jeremiah or Jacob or Zion, but in any case not-me, not us.

But what if the text is not a riddle but an invitation. Morning by morning to be waked to listen, so to speak the story I — we — have heard. Which means morning by morning to be waked not just by the noise of birds singing the sun up or school buses rumbling past but by others’ voices, others’ stories. In print, in person, even in ancient texts read anew. To risk not just my time and energy but my heart. To identify with and as, even at risk of being pulled unwilling to places I did not want to have to go. To be able to set my story, there, so, with all the rest, to see it in its proper shape and size and to see the way it fits as part of the larger whole. To sustain with my speech, and, speaking and hearing, to be sustained.

We are on the verge of Holy Week. From Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through his suffering and death, and past death into life. If it’s only about Jesus, we can tick the boxes, turn in our test papers, and promptly forget the whole.

But what if it’s about us? What are our ears waked to hear?

Drone Tones

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 27:1

Sunday March 17, 2019; Psalm 27 full text linked below:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+27&version=NRSV

I am reading Iris Origo’s Italian War Diary** this week. On July 11, 1943, she woke to the sound of booming. Her diary records the noise of naval bombardment, the reports of allied landings in Sicily, and the ‘little festa’ celebrating her newborn daughter’s christening. ‘A day of strange contrasts,’ Origo wrote, adding, ’The introit [for the Mass] is appropriate: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? … Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident…’ I read Origo’s journal and wonder how people are able to live, when dailiness itself is warped by being woven with the weft of war.

I do not suffer the shudder of bombardment punctuating the introit to Mass, nor — as Origo heard through the waves of her own labor pain — the groaning of an injured airman in the next room. But I read the news. Last week’s Ethiopian airplane crash. Yesterday’s massacre in the New Zealand mosque. Other events, less traumatic, but closer to home.

There are times I am overwhelmed with it all: the scale of suffering, the number of needs, the amount of things that must be done, that I could and should do. I am pulled askew, taut and thin, stretched as if to breaking. The present pain of the world sounds a drone tone to my life — as the sounds of bombardment were to the sung introit of Origo’s daughter’s Christening Mass. An untimely syncopation, pulling any sense of melody off-key. Such days I cannot even recall hope, much less sense it. If only I could fix myself towards some single point, I think, if only so, then at least I could claim it.

‘One thing I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple’ (Psa 27:4).

One thing only. One thing enough.

The psalmist knew the same trouble as I, as Origo, as any. The psalmist is similarly pulled. The psalm does not strike a single note but many, it is woven through with a whole gamut of emotion, of need, of desire. The psalmist is battered by circumstance, aware of enemies, even, at times, feels forsaken by the LORD.

‘Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud … Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!’ (Psa 27:7a, 9).

Yet the drone-tone through the psalm is not, in fact, the world’s pain, nor even the psalmist’s. Those are named, and truly, and held up to God. Attention is paid, as it must be. But the sustaining tone behind the noise is the singleness of the psalmist’s conviction of the LORD’s beauty, of the LORD’s succor: ‘he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock’ (Psa 27:5). The warp is kept taut and true despite the varied weft by the singleness of the psalmist’s hope in the LORD’s hearing and the LORD’s goodness.

‘Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD’ (Psa 27:14).

Step to that beat. Not because it is easy nor even obvious. But because it is the only way to keep walking through the valley when hope cannot be felt nor recalled but only claimed. One step. The next. Wait for the LORD. Claim the LORD my light and my salvation. Claim the LORD my goodness through all my days. Claim the LORD claiming me.

May the days be woven straight, even when the path runs slantwise to sense, to justice, to grace. May the days be woven true with and into love. May the sum of all the weaving be the pains eased, the hurts healed, and the world returned to wholeness as all shout together with joy.

** quotes from Iris Origo, War in Val D’Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1044; London: Pushkin Press (2017), pp. 63, 59.

Marking Mercy

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming, it is near—
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come. …
Yet even now, says the LORD,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the LORD, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.

Joel 2:1-2, 12-13; text for Ash Wednesday March 6, 2019

A season of uncertainty. I read the news of the world, of the nation, of the church. Of disarmament, of immigration, of investigation, of exclusion, of dissolution. The lack of shared vision unsettles. The weather itself conspires to contribute to the sense of confusing variation. We’re a week into March by the calendar but a month back towards winter by the weather, experiencing a reprise of unseasonable cold, even snow.

Lent begins this week. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the days that take us to Easter. My thumb dipped in oil, pressed into ashes, marking the sign of the cross on someone’s forehead. The cross signed on my own forehead. Dust you were and to dust you shall return. The murmured reminder sounded to each. Skin touching skin; grease and ash between. So many foreheads, each unique. All of them smudged with the souvenir of our shared mortality. Incongruous. Unifying.

One year, late home from the evening service, I looked in the mirror and saw above my tired eyes, a question mark smudged on my forehead. The sooty cross had shifted shape. Did it tell the uncertainty of a passing season? Did it signal a deeper mystery?

We know our near-term destination. At the end of Lent, comes Holy Week, the church’s re-living of Jesus’ death and resurrection, undertaken in anticipation of our own. The days can be counted, the steps marked in time as if on a map. But so much we do not know. Who or what will we encounter along our way? What or who will encounter us? Who will we be when we encounter Easter? And who when Easter — God’s Easter, not the church’s — encounters us?

Jesus taught his disciples to pray: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt 6:10). Yet the prophet Joel makes plain that God’s kingdom does not wait on our will. The day of the LORD comes when God wills, with trumpets and in gloom. The mystery of the prayer, the mystery of the season, is not that God waits for our cue but that we are tuned to God’s design, that we may greet our Lord trembling not with the terror of righteous judgment but with the joy of reconciliation, the grace of reunion, the amazement of love overwhelming

‘Yet even now,’ says the LORD. Even as the trumpet is sounding. Even as gloom looms dark, obscuring the way. Yet even now, there is time, there is direction, there is the promise and presence of LORD who is ‘gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.’

Abounding in steadfast love. For us.

That mystery persists. That mystery abiding has the power to sustain even in this uncertain season.

Cross or question, may the ash-mark upon my forehead be a gateway to the journey.

Transfiguration

for Sunday March 3, 2019

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them. Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him on Mount Sinai.

Exodus 34:29-32

Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Luke 9:28-29; full lectionary text linked below

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+9%3A28-36&version=NIV

This has been a hard week for the people of God called Methodist, the people among whom I live and work and love, to whom I am committed, with whom I have communion. Some of whom now have been dealt the blow of exclusion. News is still too new to know if, or how irrevocably, communion has broken. But the specter itself aches. I feel uncharacteristically wanting Ash Wednesday, texts and liturgy that match my mood.

But first comes this Sunday, when the church recalls Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. The lectionary twins the text from Luke with that of Moses’ transfiguration. The writer of the gospel evokes Exodus motifs: dazzling white glory, shining shadow cloud, divinity speaking on the mountain. Jesus is about to accomplish his own (literally) ‘exodus’ at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). Moses and Jesus. The figures are connected. But I don’t think their comparison is the sum of the gospel’s aim. Such reading is too facile, too swiftly exhausts the significance of the text. If it is about no more than proving Jesus’ identity as ‘Son,’ then we the church could just recite the creed and be done. It would be a much more efficient use of Sunday mornings. But we’re given — yet again — a story.

One story. Doubly told. A story about encounter with the LORD. About how that transforms those who are directly there and those who encounter them.

Moses has been on Mount Sinai 40 days and 40 nights (Exod 34:28). Moses has asked, and been granted, a vision of the LORD’s glory — an encounter so powerful that God himself must shield Moses from its full effects (Exod 33:21-23). The LORD, who knows Moses by name (Exod 33:17), descends in a cloud and proclaims his own name: ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation’ (Exod 34:5-7). Moses has spoken with the LORD; Moses has heard God’s own mouth proclaiming God’s own nature: ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy’ (Exod 33:19). No wonder Moses shines with the reflection of God’s glory! No wonder Aaron and the rest are terrified! Moses mutes his glow, tells what the LORD had told. Ever after, when Moses speaks with the LORD, his face again shines (Exod 34:34-35).

Do Peter and John and James shine when they came down the mountain? Like Moses they had stood in the presence of God, been enveloped by the cloud, heard divine speech (Luke 9:33-35). But unlike Moses, when they came down the mountain, they had nothing to say. Not yet. They kept silent (Luke 9:36). Maybe because they still did not understand the encounter they had had, and until its fullness was revealed after Easter, they were unable to receive it, unable to tell it, unable to glow with the reflection of its glory. In time that would come. In time, maybe, they would glow. In the presence of joy. In the practice of love. In the experience of communion.

I have seen that glow. Not the overwhelming glory that tells me that I am in the direct presence of divinity but the glow that tells me the one whose face is shining has been. And the glow of encounter has shined on my own face. I don’t always know it, think only that I am telling of some newness I have seen, some wonder I have encountered, don’t even realize I am aflame until the person to whom I am talking lights in response and I realize. Oh. This is it.

Here’s the thing: I have seen that glow on those who hold inclusion as dear as I do and on those who do not. I have learned from them; they have learned from me. We have disagreed about how God sees and yet at times — to our mutual surprise — we have recognized a glow of glory and lit a new sight of God for each other. I believe the LORD has been delighted by the spark kindled, the light spread.

Transfiguration Sunday is not only about Jesus but about the church. We live after Easter. We are no longer to remain silent as the disciples did. We are not to turn away from each other’s light nor quench each other’s fire. We are called to encounter God with and through each other, to shine in communion, to glow with the glory of the LORD, the LORD, merciful and gracious.

May God’s mercy and grace heal those hurt, guard the glow, and restore our hope of inclusive communion, that we may all look full and loving at each other whole, ascend the holy mountain, speak with the LORD, and feel our faces shine bright with God’s glory.

Reading the News

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Isaiah 6:1

Excerpt from lectionary text: Isa 6:1-13

for Sunday, February 10, 2019

In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah ben Amoz went into the Temple. Maybe he went for duty; maybe he went for solace. Maybe he went for sense of presence that had sustained him in the past. The presence that he felt not in but through the pillars of bronze capped with lily-work, the basins of bronze and carvings of cherubim, the lamp stands of pure gold, the altar … (1 Kings 7:15-50).

In the year of the new Congress, in the month after the government shutdown — the month in which it might happen again — in the week of a multitude of news stories about race and politicians and public figures, of fingers pointed and voices raised and all of it accusation and none of it dialogue, I opened the book of Isaiah. Maybe I went for duty; maybe I went for solace; maybe I went in hopes of a new encounter with the presence that has sustained in the past.

In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah went into the Temple. He stretched out his arm and felt weight of the door shift as he pushed his hand against it. And maybe, when he entered, he heard the priest say, ‘This week, worship will focus on the pomegranates.’ And maybe Isaiah thought ‘The pomegranates? Again?’ It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading this fruit nor appreciate its rich symbolism. But I’ve made a study of it already, recently, have pored over so many scholarly scrolls. I know how the pomegranate links Temple and the high priest’s robes (Exod 28:33-34) and the land itself (Deut 8:7-10). I have studied the way this text links to the rest of the book — the reference to lips and mouth, the motifs of deafness and blindness — all themes which recur, with variations, from Isaiah 6 through Isaiah 29 to Isaiah 42 and on. But this is the year King Uzziah died. But this is the week that every time I open my laptop, there is a new ‘Breaking News’ scroll, and this text is too familiar, and I had hoped that we’d be set to something new, to stretch our study and pondering, to encounter sustaining presence amid this urgent and pervasive instability.

Isaiah set himself to read again the familiar fruit, in the familiar space, in the Temple, set above the capitals. I set myself to read again the familiar text, in the familiar space, between the Song of the Vineyard of Isaiah 5 and the encounter at the Fuller’s Field of Isaiah 7. Isaiah set himself to read again the familiar fruit in the new space of Uzziah’s death.

And Isaiah saw the LORD and heard the singing and smelled the smoke and felt the shaking of his own heart pounding in sync with pivots on the thresholds.

‘How long, O LORD?’ Isaiah heard himself ask, presented as he was with God’s impossible command: to prophesy with the expectation of being ignored, to persist in the face of stubborn rejection, to speak knowing that very speech would — surely, perversely — cause the audience to turn away, to add to the online comment field ‘How long do we have to discuss this? How long are we going to go over this old ground? He is the problem, not us. He is reprehensible. We never harbored those thoughts, participated in those practices, laughed at those photos.’ How long?

Reply comes that persistence is required. Because the rejected word is not the last word. Because the hardening, the closing-off, the people turned to stone is not the point but the path. There will be planting where there was pulling up. There will be new growth where there was only burned-over ground. Because there cannot be new growth until the ground has been cleared. Because the people cannot be healed until they realize they are sick. Until we realize that we are sick unto death.

In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the LORD in the Temple. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw himself. Maybe Isaiah saw himself so devastatingly clearly because Isaiah saw the LORD, so high and lofty. Maybe Isaiah saw the LORD high and lofty, because suddenly Isaiah saw himself as he never had done before.

Stretch out your arm; put your hand up to the door; feel its weight shift in response to your push; enter into the text though you have done so countless times before. Read the known text; read the news. Whichever reading occasions the vision, may it come. Overwhelming in its very reality. Bringing into shocking conjunction the image of holiness, the conviction of sin. Leading to the necessary cry: ‘Woe is me, for I am a woman of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.’ Proclaim it. For according to the promise, ‘Woe!’ is not the ending but the hope of its beginning.

Two Texts At a Gathering

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” …
But the LORD said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you,
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
“Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:4-10

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. … [Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. … And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:1-2, 7-10, 13

texts for Sunday Feb. 3, 2019

Which route to take through the thicket this week? The reprise of silence and speech, as from Isaiah 62? The continuation of Paul’s writing the Corinthians about gifts? Which passage speaks more strongly? Or do they speak to each other. I know the text-connection is just a trick of the lectionary, which lists both passages this same week, but I wonder all the same. I imagine the texts as two guests at the same gathering. What do they share beyond acquaintance with the host?

Maybe they engage with the classic, ‘What do you do?’ Or maybe ‘When …?’ After all, the words of each arise out of the particular time and place in which he worked: Jeremiah prophesying at the end of the kingdom of Judah, in the shadow of the crisis of exile; Paul instructing the Corinthians, a church in the crisis of its growing pains. Each spoke in a different world. Which does not mean their words cannot speak to each other.

Imagine overhearing these two texts, standing at that gathering, glasses in hand, surrounded by the buzz and movement of others also there, talking towards their own particular connection.

A dialogue on speech: ‘You shall speak whatever I command you… ’; ’If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels….’ A dialogue on prophecy: ‘I appointed you a prophet …’; ‘And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries….’ Does it seem each overture of Jeremiah’s is undermined by a retort from Paul — ‘I am a noisy gong’; ‘as for prophecies they will come to an end…’? Listen again, and closely.

‘The word of the LORD came to me,’ Jeremiah tells, as the conversation swirls around them both. The LORD said, ‘I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’ Only in Jeremiah’s speech, what the LORD says is ‘I have given* you …’, a giving which recurs towards the end of the encounter, as the LORD stretches out his hand and touches Jeremiah’s mouth and says ‘See, I have given* my words in your mouth.’ Giving. Gifts.

‘Gifts!’ Paul exclaims, in delight at the connection. ‘That’s what I am talking about: the gifts God gives in and through and for the body. And the greatest of these is love.’

‘Of course love,’ Jeremiah replies. Did the command to pluck up and pull down cloud the issue? It is love that connects God and prophet and people so closely that the suffering of one is experienced by the other as grief and heart-sickness, hurt and dismay (Jer 8:18-21).

‘Love bears all things,’ Paul murmurs.

‘Love gives all things,’ Jeremiah says. The LORD gave me myself; the LORD gave me God-self. Paul nods in rueful recognition, recalling a certain encounter of his own (1 Cor 15:8).

Not an easy gift, love. Its force breaks in to life-as-it-was and plants life as-it-might-be, life growing towards complete.

The texts’ conversation continues, overture expanding into symphony; the music of their exchange stretching past their two times and on into my own. Breaking in and giving still.

* [literal Hebrew; the NRSV connects Jer 1:5 and 1:10 by repeating the verb ‘appoint,’ stressing the connection of Jeremiah’s appointment as prophet and the nations/kingdoms he is appointed over; the Hebrew of the MT connects Jer 1:5 and 1:9 by repeating the verb ‘to give,’ stressing the connection of the LORD giving Jeremiah as a prophet and the LORD giving words to Jeremiah’s mouth.]