‘Come now’

When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Isa 1:15-20 (from lectionary text for Aug 11, 2019; full cite Isa 1:1, 10-20)

It is somewhat unnerving to come to this week’s text in a week after news of new shootings, new raids. Bodies torn open. Families torn apart. (I find myself almost, perversely, relieved that the last shooting of the series — the last as of this writing, and based on the information now known — seems to be ‘merely’ wanton criminality rather than flowing from our nation’s divisions.)

It is difficult to read the text’s reference to ‘hands full of blood’ as anything other than literal in such circumstances. Yet the blood-full hands are not only those dripping from intimately physical violence, the oppression of brethren (whether distanced as ‘other’ or acknowledged as kin). The blood-full hands are also those which have offered the right sacrifice — ‘the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats’ (Isa 1:11) — yet who live in complicit accommodation of the systemic iniquity. The reference to ‘blood’ implicates not only that wickedly shed but also that properly required and accounted for. Even that reddens the hands. Open your palms; spread your fingers wide; flare your nostrils at the iron smell; see the red so bright before it darkens, grows thick and sticky. You’ve touched pitch; did you think you could escape the stain? Rub your hands together; the spot remains.

The blood-full hands are literal and metaphorical. The bloodshed is individual and communal. And even that widened gaze is not enough. Not this week. Because this week has felt a fresh storm of violence, physical and emotional. I need not just a word to the community (notwithstanding all my teaching, my inmost and utmost conviction that this text was given to and through and for community) but a word to me. A word to bring me through to next week. That’s all I ask. Not a forever word but one for-now, a sustaining sufficient to bring me through these days and back again to the text for next week’s word.

Maybe it’s because last week’s text already evoked the motif of the LORD as parent: ’When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son’ (Hos 11:1). Maybe it’s because the motif appears as well in verses just prior to those assigned for this week: ’I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me’ (Isa 1:2b). Maybe it’s because of how I myself feel after this storm of emotion, of anger, of weeping. I am left wrung out, not just limp but lined and turned askew with the marks of its twisting. I read and re-read, and a line catches me. It catches my eye, first, and then, as my lips shape to sound the words, my ear. ‘Come, let us argue it out, says the LORD’ (1:18). And though the ‘Come’ is plural in Hebrew, in English I can hear and imagine it as addressed to me, even me. ‘Come,’ the LORD invites, ‘Come now. Let us argue it out.’ Let us dispute it; let us reason it out. ‘Let us reach an understanding,’ reads the translation of the Jewish Publication Society. The summoning is implacable but not harsh. Is there not a warmth in it? The LORD wants the argument, the reasoning, the understanding. The LORD wants the conversation. The mouth of the LORD speaks as a mother does to a child wrung limp, turned askew by a temper tantrum, the throes of violence having passed, leaving a damp exhaustion behind … and the corresponding inability to figure out any way out of the impasse, any way to resist the paralysis, any way through to newness.

The mouth of the LORD has spoken. The storm need not be a full-stop end of sentence. There is another word. There will be another after that. And it is through the word, the speech, the argument, the reasoning, that the cleansing shall come. It is through relationship that the scarlet stain will be lifted and the white of snow or wool given instead.

Newness shall come. I don’t know how. I don’t need to know fully — I did not ask a forever word, after all, but a word sufficient for this day, for the next. And this is the answer. Come now, the LORD invites. Let us talk together. Through this day, and on into the days coming.

Twisted System

When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the LORD said to him, “Name him Jezreel*; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” She conceived again and bore a daughter. Then the LORD said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah**, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.” When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi***, for you are not my people and I am not your God.” Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.”

Hosea 1:2-10; lectionary text for Sunday July 28, 2019

The text and I are in the kitchen together. One of us is at the sink, washing dishes. The other stands looking at the dishwasher’s back. For a moment neither of us speaks. I can no longer stay silent.

‘‘Wife of whoredom’ — really? — my God! do you hear how alienating that sounds? Who wants to spend a week with those words ringing? They’re coarse and unwelcoming. Hostile, even.’

‘’Wife of whoredom’ — of course it’s alienating. Don’t you hear what’s going on?

‘What I hear is ‘whoredom.’’

‘So then you stop listening? Because it’s offensive? Because it’s uncomfortable? No! Don’t shut your ears and refuse to hear more. And don’t assume you know what I mean and start talking over me, responding to the point you assume I’m making. It’s not about the sex. It’s not about fertility cults or harvest orgies or temple prostitution. Don’t turn away! Listen to me!’

The voice of the text had risen strident. Now it drops without losing any of its fervor, its force somehow stronger in its quietness.

‘It’s about fidelity. It’s about identity. And it’s about how brokenness is bigger than just one person, just one couple. Brokenness spreads like cancer throughout the land. We beat each other with it, blame each other for it. We forget and lose who we are meant to be.

‘Yes, the words are alienating. How else to name alienation? How else to make it plain?’

The text and I are facing each other now. Her face is worn; her voice hardly more than a whisper.

‘Read me through. Try. Hear the pain behind the anger. Think how it feels to have to name your daughter ‘not-pitied,’ your son ‘not-my-people.’ These your children whom you called as your own: ‘I will take you as my people, and I will be your God’ (Exod 6:7). These your children whom still you love. These your children who have turned away, who seek security and power and purpose elsewhere. Whose claimed identity is no longer God’s-own but …

‘… but their own.’ Now I am speaking back to the text. ‘Who live as if they have made themselves and called themselves. Who cry in the dark, nor can figure out why or what is wrong. Who do not realize how far from that way they have strayed. Because still they make the ‘right’ decisions, celebrate the ‘right’ festivals. Who respond to the promptings of the larger society — whether walking lock-step or rigidly resisting — so that its imperatives govern their way, define their lives. The system is sick, and it’s twisting us all. And worst of the sickness is that it’s unacknowledged or mis-diagnosed.’ My own voice is now a whisper, echoing that of the speaking text. ‘So it’s not about the sex. It’s about the children.

The text replies, ‘Yes. It’s about the children.’

‘Is it plea, then, rather than judgment? To name them ‘Not-pitied’ and ‘Not-my-people?’

‘Oh, child. It is both. A plea for turning and a warning of consequences. The sowing of Jezreel (‘God sows’) is judgment. The sickness must be named and the sickness must be treated.’ Her voice is warmer, now, but still firm. Her face is set — she will not relent — there’s ache and understanding in her gaze. There is love. My own eyes drop. The text presses.

‘Where do you find your worth? How do you define your worth? What is the name you’re truly living now?’ the text asks. ‘What is the true name you were meant to bear?’

Still gazing down, I feel for a moment a hand resting blessing on my head. The text speaks on, ’In place of the name ‘Not-my-people’ it shall be said, ‘Children of the living God.’’

* Jezreel means ‘God sows.’ ** Lo-ruhamah means ‘Not-pitied.’ *** Lo-Ammi means ‘Not my people.’

Text in Context

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’” And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Amos 7:10-13

The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

Amos 8:11-12

[Amos 7:10-13 part of lectionary text for July 14; Amos 8:1-12 lectionary text for July 21, 2019] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Amos+8%3A1-12&version=NRSV

I try to read the coming-Sunday’s texts on Monday, to live with them through the week, to see how text and context read each other. Sometimes the connecting line is subtle, so personal that I am not entirely sure whether I am connecting dots or marking them in myself. All I can do in such a case is to re-commit myself, every week, to read the word and read my world, each in light of the other. All I can do in such a case is pray that through practice and repetition and return, the discipline of reading and re-reading, I am not just reading the text but finding myself read, writing and re-writing my life over and over on the way limned by the Word.

That’s why I do this.

Then there are the weeks when I open my Bible to the text prescribed by the lectionary, and find the connecting line from word to world writ stark and bold. When the vision is not just personal nor even particularly subtle, but writ in letters so large and ‘plain … that a runner may read it’ (Hab 2:2). And because the lectionary is a contrivance — useful but not the word itself — sometimes the connection crosses the lines between lectionary divisions — just as the news is not over when we put our paper in the recycling but continues across days and weeks.

There is a nation, the text says. A nation enjoying the security of its ‘restored’ borders (2 Kings 14:25) and a season of prosperity. A nation of ‘great houses’ and ‘houses of ivory,’ a ‘winter house’ and a ‘summer house’ (Amos 2:15). A nation whose residents have ‘built houses of hewn stone’ and ‘planted pleasant vineyards’ (5:11), whose fortunate ‘lounge on their couches’ and eat and drink like gourmands (6:4-6). Who amass the latest in luxury items and experiences, who enjoy a rising real estate and stock portfolio. A nation whose leaders claim fidelity to the ideal’s claim on their identity, with ‘festivals’ and ‘solemn assemblies’ (5:21), with concerts (5:23), and parades and fireworks. There is a nation urged to rejoice in its own strength (6:13)

Yet a nation which will not hear the one who ‘reproves in the gate’ (5:10). A leader who calls judgment conspiracy (7:10) and seeks to eject the one who sees affluence and power — ‘something good’ — and insists on writing them ‘bad.’

‘The land cannot bear all his words,’ the leader says (7:10). Conspiracy, the leader charges (7:10). ‘Go, flee away’ (7:12), the leader commands, go back to where you came from. The leader does not engage with the substance of the proclamation (perhaps Amos’s charges are irrefutable — the poor are trampled (5:11), brought to ruin (8:4), sold for silver (8:6); righteous are afflicted, bribery is rife, the needy are pushed aside (5:12); religious festivals are mere pauses in practices of deceit (8:5)). Instead, the leader asserts that the land, the city, the sanctuary are the king’s (7:13), as if possession entails exclusive right to speech. As if any countervailing voice is an act of infidelity, even treason, to the nation’s ideals, rather than the plaint of the LORD God-self who charges the nation with having betrayed its own founding covenant, the writing by which it was formed (2:4).

There is a nation which ‘commanded the prophets saying ‘You shall not prophesy’’ (2:12).

I do not know whether I would have recognized Amos as the LORD’s messenger. Living as I do in a house (singular), able to lounge in bed or on the couch, aware that my fridge and cupboards are filled with food, my closet with clothes, my shelves with books, Amos’s word would have made me uncomfortable. (Because it does.) I might have disagreed with Amos’s assessment — he finds only falsehood, from sanctuary to market to the court in the gate, in a tone so strident that I suspect he exaggerates, ignores the small mercies that must also have existed. (Amos prophesies imminent and ultimate disaster, yet the nation is stable for decades after his own.) Even if I entirely agreed with Amos’s social diagnosis, I likely would have critiqued his prescribed remedy. The rolling down of justice with an accompanying flood of righteousness (5:24) sounds not just threateningly transformative but so vague as to inhibit legislative implementation. (It’s as impracticably vast as ‘Love God and love your neighbor.’) (Oh.)

Yet I hope I would have listened. I pray I would have tried to hear.

Not just for the sake of remedying those particular injustices, averting that prophesied catastrophe (the land trembling and sinking under the waters, the earth darkened in broad daylight, the grief and mourning as ‘for an only son’ (8:8-10)), but for the sake of hearing itself.

For comes a time when nation will know famine (8:11-12). Not a famine of food or drink but a famine of the word, a dearth of truth. Comes a time when we realize not just our lack but our desperate need. Comes a time when we will know ourselves starving and parched. We run to and fro; we search and we seek. Yet if we have refused to hear, we will not even know if we find. If we have grown unwilling to listen to truth, unaccustomed to listening for truth, we grow unable to hear truth. God may even speak, and we will not know.

I pray for the humility to listen. I pray for the courage to speak.

That seeking with and through each other, we together find and hear the word of the LORD.

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).

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?

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.

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.]

Silence and Speech

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch. …
Upon your walls, O Jerusalem,
I have posted sentinels;
all day and all night
they shall never be silent.
You who remind the LORD,
take no rest,
and give him no rest
until he establishes Jerusalem
and makes it renowned throughout the earth.

from Isaiah 62:1, 6-7; from Isaiah 62:1-7

Jan. 20, 2019

I’m cheating. Is it cheating? The lectionary text is Isaiah 62:1-5, but I’m reading two more verses. Because what catches me is not the imagery of Zion as a bride (v.4), nor Jerusalem renamed (v.2), nor whether the crown of beauty and royal diadem (v.3) should be understood as reference to the rebuilt walls of the post-exilic city — all of which are important issues, properly the focus of scholarly and devotional attention.

What catches at me is the very first line: ’For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent.’

Silence. Enjoined. Invited. Unbearable. Unsustainable.

Silence and speech. Recurring motifs throughout the book. I’ve spent the past few years focused on them, from the prophesied hardening of Isaiah 6:6-10 (‘… stop their ears and shut their eyes’), through the renewed call to listen and to look (Isa 42:14-18), on to the servant, ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’ (Isa 42:19), yet ‘given the tongue of a taught-one* … to sustain the weary with a word,’ whose ear the LORD wakens (Isa 50:4), and further to the promise that ‘all your children shall be taught-ones* of the LORD’ (Isa 54:14). Silence and speech. I had followed that thread so far and am not sure that I ever had hit upon this particular passage. Or been struck by it.

Silence and speech. I thought that first line caught because of the work I have done. Now I wonder if the work itself caught me first. Because I have felt silent. Because I want to speak. Because my ear has been wakened. Because it’s no good listening if I cannot tell others what I hear. Because I don’t always know what I’ve heard until I say it to someone else. Because the imperative to speak is given so that I know. So that I am known. So that I know I am known.

Yet this passage says even more. Something new to my ears.

‘For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’

Zion. Jerusalem. The LORD’s bride; ’My Delight’; ’Married’ (Isa 62:4) This is not about me as an individual nor about a particular other to whom I might speak. This is about the people of the LORD. Whose vindication, whose salvation, will shine out like the torches of dawn … so long as I do not keep silent.

Is it is as conditional as that? Does the vindication of the Zion depend on my voice? Of course not! Yet might it require it? Might the raising of my voice towards that end effect its realization? Might my speech expand not just the expression but the experience of God’s grace? Might I be obliged, even if not responsible?

Words reminding me. Speech reminding Zion. Utterance reminding the LORD. That vindication is promised, salvation is sure, glory is to be seen and a new name given and claimed.

‘For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.’

I raise my voice to participate in the promise.

*literal translation of the Hebrew