Re-minded to Joy

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? … in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Acts 2:1-18, 11-13; text for Pentecost, June 9, 2019

Our house backs up to an elementary school playground. The children file out for recess and stand in line until dismissed to play. Immediately, then, they run and shriek. When I am home on a school day, I am amazed at the volume of the sound and the violence of its coming. There was a set of schoolchildren in tidy rows. Now — suddenly — there is a chaotic dispersion, pounding across the pavement, scrambling up the climbing equipment, skirmishing for balls. As I watch, some order emerges — whether the emergence is in their play or my observation, I do not know. There is one game over here, and another over there, and these few children squatted on their haunches at the edge of the pavement are probably poking at the hole in the blacktop that has been expanded over several school years’ worth of recesses. The expenditure of energy and the intensity of focus touch my heart.

I watch the children and wonder. When was the last time I effervesced in such a manner?

A few times in college, my friend and I went onto the green after dark. We ran and laughed and collapsed on the grass and all without benefit of alcohol. Who needs beer, we scoffed, when there is play. There was something intoxicating about abandoning the appearance of sense, making ourselves ridiculous for joy. A delight I feel still when singing aloud as I walk through the city. Tipping back my head and throwing my arms wide as if to embrace the wind on a gusty day. Grinning with excitement, and rising to tip-toes on the Metro platform when a train rumbles past and blows its horn. (I do not entirely forget myself, I admit; I do not wave at the train driver, tempted though I am.)

Why am I thinking about play, about being so intensely present as to risk ridiculousness? As if this text is about intoxication. Drunkenness is the claim is raised by those who don’t understand, who sneer at what they hear as noise. Peter rebuts the charge. Yet Peter’s rebuttal does not entirely dismiss the issue. Peter does not argue that the scoffers have mischaracterized the behavior but asserts that they have misunderstood its source.

This is not new wine imbibed, Peter asserts. This is God’s Spirit ‘poured out’ (Acts 2:14-17). Listen to what is being said and shouted and sung. Hear the order that emerges. This seemingly frantic babble, heard and understood in so many tongues, is all about God. It is praise for the Lord whose ‘word is very near … in your mouth and in your heart’ (Deut 30:14). It is wonder that they have lived into God’s promised days of visions and dreams (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). This is not passing gladness. This is rock-founded. This is not new wine. This is joy in the Lord.

Reading Pentecost I wonder. When was the last time I was that aware of joy?

Joy as effervescence, burbling forth forth like a spring, foaming over rocks as it tumbles out and down. Joy welling up as if I am a cup, brimful — I hold a moment quivering still, amazed at its presence, living water in me, joy’s meniscus curved slightly above the edge of my lip — and then I cannot but grin, cannot but wonder, cannot but tell. Did you see? Did you hear? Did you feel?

The Spirit’s spark that Pentecost was not stubborn resolve or impassioned argument or faithful duty. The Spirit’s spark was joy. The people flared bright with it, spoke flames with it. The Spirit lit a fire whose dancing tongues amazed and perplexed and confounded and transformed.

I watch the children. I read the text. I need to be reminded of joy. I need to be re-minded to joy. Wait and watch, sticks and kindling dutifully arranged in expectation of the spark. Realize, then, that the tinder is already aglow. I don’t need to wait for some coming but to see what has already come. Blow gently and increase the flame. Sustain it; be sustained by it. Dip my bucket into the well, trusting to draw it forth brimful and shining. Drink deeply and find myself intoxicated with its urgency. Catch someone else’s eye. Grin and gesture to the very well I drew from, look to see joy spark across.

Make myself ridiculous in the expectation. Make myself ridiculous in the experience.

That’s how it began. That is how it begins again.

Risk joy. Pray for it. Prophesy it. Live it. Tell it.

Time’s Spiral

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Rev. 7:13-17; from the text for Sunday May 12, 2019

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Rev. 21:1-5; from the text for Sunday, May 19, 2019

In 2002, Paul and I took our girls to the Chestertown Tea Party, a festival predicated on a historical (or not) event when Chestertown colonists followed their Boston brethren’s lead. Seven-year-old Elizabeth was enthralled. There was a parade down High Street, a military drill with General Washington, a tour of the Schooner Sultana, and — most exciting of all! — a reenactment. Patriots debated rights and liberty, then chased the British redcoats down High Street, rowed out to the Sultana, boarded the boat and tossed burlap-covered bales of clearly-labeled ‘TEA’ into the Chester River. Elizabeth waved her hat and cheered from the dock. At the end of the long day, our sleepy girl sighed, ‘That was the best day of my life.’

Seventeen years later, we were again at the foot of High Street on the Chestertown dock. A crowd had formed, all of us waiting. Children sat and squirmed and leaned over to see the water, and adults called them back from the edge. Cannon from the Sultana belched a flash of flame, a billow of smoke, a massive BANG! that caused all on the dock to cry out and cover their ears. Behind us we could hear the sound of muskets over the noise of so many excited voices. ‘Are they coming? They’re coming!’ Suddenly a clot of colonists were on the dock. They rowed out — in the face of further cannon fire — boarded the Sultana and dumped what were probably the same burlap-wrapped TEA-labeled bales. Children on shore cheered and waved, and adults did too, and Paul took a gazillion pictures because one of the costumed colonists clambering aboard the Sultana was Elizabeth.

It was again a best day. It was a best day in and of itself, and it was a best day for the way it connected back to that other, recapitulated it from a different perspective. The layering of memory was a palpable presence infusing the entire experience. Our sight held present and past together — one in front of each eye, slightly askew, like an old Viewfinder, so that all was seen with a fuller depth than otherwise possible, stereoscopically.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time this past week. How time moves, how time loops, the line curving back on itself, towards its beginning, as if its end is to meet that start-point.

As I was living this loop in my own experience of time, I was pondering Revelation, re-reading texts assigned for prior weeks. I’d wondered at the lectionary jump from chapter 7 to 21 — so many visions omitted, what could account for the progression? Reading the passages together gave a clue: the springs of water and wiping of tears promised in chapter 7 are realized in chapter 21. John sees the new heaven and new earth (21:1-2) — this is not just a vision promised but a vision present. What was anticipated now is. ‘The first things have passed away.’ I linger in the thought: that John saw it so, the city like a bride, God’s dwelling with humanity, every tear wiped away. John had heard it foretold — that the experience of the great ordeal would be swallowed up in blessing — and 14 chapters later, he sees it so. Fulfillment. Realized.

Except not. John sees it but he doesn’t live it. John sees all the way to the end of the book, past the command to write, the commitment that the words are ‘trustworthy and true,’ the renewed promise that the Lord Jesus, Alpha and Omega, first and Last, is ‘coming soon’ (22:12-13), the invitation for all to utter the summoning ‘Come!’ (22:17), the invitation for all themselves to ‘Come.’ John sees it all. But John doesn’t live at the end of the book. John lives at its beginning, when the promise of coming is new-uttered (1:7), when the letters to seven churches (Rev 2-3) make plain the brokenness not just of the world but of the communities that claim the faith of Christ. John lives the time when the promise is urgently needed, the time of the ‘great ordeal,’ the time when suffering speaks louder than life. John lives in that time, and into the vision, and all the way to vision’s end, to its fulfillment in newness.

Newness is not fulfilled in John’s lifetime. John sees it; a sure anticipation, but a vision, not an arrival. Yet because John sees it, he lives it. John lives newness even before newness has fully come. Because the end of the vision loops back to its beginning — the summons to come, the promise that the coming will be soon — that beginning is thereby transformed. Time does not, in fact, circle. The end of the line just misses its start point, curves on past, in a spiral towards newness. But as end and beginning are brought close, we see each more fully. And our new-enabled stereoscopic vision, enables us to see our present in clearer depth as well.

I have been pondering this all these past few weeks. Reading Revelation. Living my own time’s spiral. Anticipating my church’s area-wide conference. I write this in Baltimore on the first night of conference. I do not yet know how the whole will shape — events are yet unfolding, time is yet curving on. But already there have been glimpses of a grace-filled end. And those visions themselves alter the shape of the living now, the ever-present process of time spiraling onward and upward. An ascending helix, perhaps. Life itself. Building towards God’s end: newness, trustworthy and true.

Reading Thrones

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Revelation 22:1-5; text for Sunday, May 26, 2019

This is not a devotion about Revelation. It is a rant about reading.

Game of Thrones has ended.

I never watched the show in full. We don’t have cable. And when I first heard of it, it sounded much too graphic for my cosy-Cotswold-cottage taste in tales. But a few seasons in, I read a Washington Post review by Hank Stuever, an apology for his initial dismissal of GoT: it turns out, he wrote, that GoT ‘accommodates both the casual viewer and the rabid fanatic’; that it ‘demands your attention but rewards any effort you give it, no matter how small.’*

I read this review in the midst of my doctoral coursework. I was delving deep into the ways the biblical texts interweave, how they re-read and re-tell each other. How the river of Revelation 22:1 ‘rose from the earth’ in Genesis 2:6, flowed out of the garden (2:10), through psalms and prophets, and all the way to John’s vision. How Revelation’s ‘tree of life’ was planted in Genesis 2:9. How light apart from sun and moon was the very first word spoken by God (Gen 1:3; sun and moon and stars do not appear till v.16). I mention this confluence of my studies and Stuever’s review because it explains my reaction: I was not so much interested in watching GoT as jealous on behalf of my own story, which — I stoutly maintain! — equally ’demands your attention but rewards any effort you give it.’

‘Why do we assume people can’t read it?’ I railed, then, to a scholar visiting to present on the intertextual references in the gospels. Why do we resist letting it be itself? We simplify its complexity, turn it into a bumper sticker cliché, as if readers cannot digest anything longer than 280 characters. Is it that we do not trust the readers? Or that we do not trust the story’s power to hold? So instead of telling the story, we tell it as about something else — a guide for right behavior, individual happiness, community construction, or eternal life.

That particular rant past, I wondered about GoT. I read reviews and summaries, watched clips online. As build-up for this last season began, news coverage exploded. I even read discussion on the theme of apocalypse — defined not as reversion to the way-things-were but as transformation to entire newness — and whether the show would turn towards this end. I was particularly struck by the myriad of theories between the penultimate and final episodes. Viewers were going back through the words and images and interactions of prior seasons of the TV show. They were referencing passages from the books which had never been filmed. They were even looking beyond the world of the narrative and into the world of the actors (So-and-so ‘hasn’t tweeted farewell to the character he played so is the character really dead?’).

They were reading. Reading with all their heart and mind and strength. Reading in service of understanding the dynamic of the story, trying to anticipate its final turn, its ultimate unfolding.

Game of Thrones has ended. The ending seems to have dissatisfied many, who want it redone, to which others retort It was never yours to do.

Revelation has not ended. The book was written, yes, that part’s done, but the story’s final turn and ultimate unfolding is written not for the sake of the anticipated end but for now. So that we can read it. Our presence is requested; our participation is invited. Don’t shy away for fear it won’t hold. Lean in. Trust it. Be confounded by it. Question it. Study the text. See how particular images and snippets of plot connect to images and snippets from elsewhere in the larger sweep (‘the season 1 promotional poster …’; ‘Dany’s dream …’; Genesis creation … ; Ezekiel’s vision … ). Read beyond the covers of the book (tweets and talk show quotes; church tradition; individual experience). This is our story to read, our story to live. Story that rewards attention, that challenges, that sustains. Story as God’s gift, given. Read it devotedly and dynamically. Reading it so, we can live it so. And living it so — well that’s how we tell, and write, the ending God has written for us.

*Yes, I searched online to find and accurately quote Stuever’s March 29, 2013 review: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/the-triumphant-return-of-hbos-game-of-thrones-were-not-worthy/2013/03/29/d9f24ee8-917c-11e2-9abd-e4c5c9dc5e90_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4c0e7193b9d2

Step by Step

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying […] ‘I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” Acts 11:1-4, 16-18

full Acts text for Sunday, May 19, 2019, Acts 11:1-18

At the beginning of the week, I came to this text knowing that it is about a key transition in the life of the early Jesus-followers: the gospel going out to a community (a ‘house’) of non-Jews. Now at week’s end, I take from the text the realization that it is as much about the process of life unfolding as it is about this particular pleat in God’s plan.

‘Step by step.’

The text begins with a critical query on a practical aspect of being community — you ate with them? — and ends with all present recalled to the ideal that all peoples shall see the glory of the LORD (Isa 40:4), that ‘God shows no partiality’ (Acts 10:34), that ‘even’ the nations shall receive God’s gift of life (Acts 11:18). The ending praise sounds as a crescendo after a silence of realization and reflection — Oh, this is what was promised then … seen in our-very now …. The voices rise, rejoicing for God’s radically inclusive gift.

Notice the mis-match? They still haven’t figured out how that gift is to be lived. Do we eat together? Whose table do we sit at? Whose recipes do we use? That’s going to take longer to figure out. (See Acts 15, Acts 21, 1 Cor. 8, Gal 2, and so on.). Yet somehow that’s okay. For now. They’ve been recalled not just to praise of God’s plan but to renewed sight of it.

‘Step by step.’

This phrase applies not to each of Peter’s movements through the story but to Peter’s explanation of his movements. ‘Step by step’ is how Peter reviews and reflects upon what had happened. The prayer. The vision. The summons. The Spirit. Jesus’ words not just recalled but re-heard. Peter hadn’t understood them because he hadn’t yet lived them. Now he did, because he had. And still there was more to live, and still more to learn. Peter never saw the path in full — could his imagination have stretched so far? (Could my own?)

You ate with them? Isn’t that the way of it? We may recite the ideal almost unthinking, but pragmatic aspects of living sharpen the focus — and in revealing the stress points, invite us to look farther on. Where are we headed? Where is God guiding us? And if the answers to these questions do not match, what then? How can we be re-minded not just of but to the ideal.

’Step by step.’ A call to continually recalibrate our way and reform our imagination. Maybe it’s walking that makes the way, but it’s telling that lets us see the way we’ve made and the way God calls us to and if or how the ways connect. Step by step. Look back to see where we’ve been; look here to see where our feet are planted now; look ahead to see as far as the next turn. And then, once that stretch is walked, review and reflect and re-tell. In order to rejoice and walk on ahead, so far as the next turn.

New Life, Again New

Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Acts 9:36-43; text for Sunday, May 12, 2019

Tabitha is a disciple, the only woman in the New Testament so called. Other women are described in ways that connect them with discipleship, but only Tabitha is explicitly titled. She is introduced as ‘disciple’ before she is even introduced by name. ‘Disciple’ identifies her as one who belongs to the Way (Acts 9:2), who ‘calls upon’ the name of Christ (Acts 9:14). Before we know anything else about Tabitha, we know the most important thing: Tabitha is one who lives the claim of resurrection, of new life in Christ. And Tabitha dies.

Tabitha is dead. She ‘became ill and died.’ She was washed and laid out. Her fellow-disciples know she is dead, and they send for Peter. Maybe they send as if in urgent query — how could death have taken one who claimed life? Maybe they send in hope of comfort. Maybe they send for witness — see, this disciple, this life given to good works, is ended. ‘Attention must be paid.’ And, yes, maybe they send for Peter as if to collect on his proclamation that in Christ death is not the end of life.

By the close of the passage, Tabitha’s life is returned to her. Peter prays and speaks her to rise, he helps her from her deathbed to her feet. Peter shows Tabitha alive, and the report of her living spreads beyond the saints and widows to whom first she is shown until many in Joppa believe in the Lord.

I read the story for Tabitha, as Tabitha. How do I show myself alive? How do we, who already claim identity as disciples, show new life? After all, the story ends in the report that transforms. If the report of Tabitha’s raising does not transform, perhaps it is because we who tell it need, first, to be waked by it ourselves. To hear its voice saying, ‘Get up,’ and to open our eyes to its truth in our lives, to take its hand and be lifted to our feet, to realize that our own new life must be repeatedly renewed, so that our own renewed-newness can be the report that is told.

All Tabitha has to do to prove new life is show up alive. Maybe that’s all that would have been visible: Tabitha still a disciple and devoted to good works and charity. But surely even the most ardent disciple would have been transformed by this bodily experience of God’s reviving power. I imagine wonder leaping morning by morning at the sight of day, and even in the night joy deepening in the realization that nothing, nothing, is beyond God’s reach nor God’s desire to hold. Tabitha’s new life must have embodied that shock in ways beyond the daily renewal of faithful discipleship, but in expectation of further and otherwise unimaginable transformation. It may not have looked much different, but it cannot have felt the same, and surely, even subtly, that showed.

How do I live resurrection? How do I embody not just the daily renewal of faithful discipleship but the conviction of further transformation in ways beyond my imagining?

Partly, perhaps, continuing to practice discipleship as ever: feed the hungry, comfort the grieving, visit the prisoner, care for the sick. Bear the name of Christ as if cupping in my hand a precious gift. But somehow at the same time, expect to be borne by that name into relationship that may discomfit as well as delight, into newness I cannot yet know but only discover. Or be discovered by.

Bearing the Word

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Acts 9:10-17; Text for Sunday, May 5, 2019

Saul will ‘bring my name’ to many, the Lord tells Ananias, who is reluctant to go to this man who has persecuted many who ‘invoke’ the name of the Lord. Called upon in vision by that Lord, Ananias is taken aback, wonders if perhaps the Lord needs reminding of who Saul is, based on who Saul has been.

‘Go,’ the Lord repeats. ‘For he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people Israel.’ And in faithful duty, Ananias goes.

Bringing the name. Usually I read this and think of the work as verbal. Something Saul is to say. It is not only that I have in mind Saul’s later career — as he declares and proclaims and instructs and writes letter after letter — it is that speech seems implicated even in this particular passage. The saints are those who (literally) ‘call upon’ the name of the Lord. Ananias goes and speaks to Saul of the Lord Jesus, the one who had appeared to each of them. To bring the name then is to say it, to utter words, or write them on flimsy slips of paper, or even cast them into the ether online.

But Saul is not literally to ‘bring’ Christ’s name. Saul has been chosen to ‘carry’ — bastazw — the name. As one may ‘carry’ a pair of sandals (Matt 3:11), a jar of water (Mark 14:13), a purse or bag (Luke 10:4), or a cross (Luke 14:27).

As a womb may carry a child (Luke 11:27).

Saul is not just to tell but to bear the name of the Lord.

Now I hear the work differently. It is more than the gusting of windy words — spirit-filled as they may be. It is a tangible substance, with a palpable weight.

Sometimes bearing it is a burden. Shoulders sag; knees bend; back and mind and heart grow weary with the load. Acknowledge this. That a call to bear the name is a call to suffering: the suffering of one who must encounter as brother an erstwhile enemy; the suffering of one who must go among strangers and love them as kin while counting his kin as strangers, leaving them to the care of the Lord.

And then comes the feeling that the weight may not be a chore but a foundation, a sturdy structure on which to stand, even a rod that stiffens the spine and lifts the chin and steadies the gaze. That to bear the name is not to heft a heavy load but — to borrow the old rabbinic image — to be lifted by a pair of wings.

To bear the name of the Lord is to bear the life of the word within your own body, to give your own and only life to its nurture in the womb and in the world. To know that life and body together are marked by the encounter with the name. There was a before when I bore only myself, or so I imagined. Now I bear the name … and reshaping my life around its substance, I find myself borne.

‘Proclaim the Lord’s Death’

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26; text for Holy Thursday, April 18, 2019

What does it mean to ‘proclaim the Lord’s death’? The phrase catches at me as I read these verses. Three verses.

Three verses set in the middle of a longer argument Paul is making to tell the church in Corinth what they are doing wrong in worship, how they should be doing right. Three verses that aren’t particular to the situation in Corinth at all, of teaching that didn’t originate with Paul, as if this is merely the hook on which Paul hangs the argument that matters.

Or is this hook itself the point?

‘I received from the Lord’ — Paul is not the source of this teaching but its conduit — ‘what also I handed on to you’ — Paul is not the end of the teaching, nor meant to be its end. Paul received it in order to hand it on; handing it on was the reason for his receipt of it. The word was not given to be swallowed into silence but to be spoken on. It is a word held in trust, a word not given for Paul’s sake only but for the sake of those to whom he would speak it.

What have I received in trust? What have I been charged to speak on to others? What did not begin with me nor is meant to end with me? With you? With us?

Body-bread. Covenant-cup. ‘Do this,’ the Lord’s repeated instruction. ‘Do this.’

Is ‘this’ the taking and breaking? The drinking? The thanksgiving?

Paul repeats the teaching he received, then shifts from first-person quotation (what Jesus said) to second-person exhortation: ‘Eat this bread; drink this cup.’ For in doing this, Paul says, ’you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’

It is not only that body-bread and covenant-cup proclaim the Lord’s death but that ‘doing this’ is a proclamation ‘until he comes.’ The cross is central, but it is not the whole. Paul’s words make plain that it is not the end: there is yet more to look forward to, more to live towards.

‘Do this,’ Paul instructs. His words do not only characterize the action as proclamation, they frame the time of proclaiming, the Corinthians’ ‘now,’ living between Jesus’ death and Jesus’ return. Which is our ‘now’ too; we live still poised between death and return; in this time of proclamation. Declaration. Statement. Witness.

‘This’ is not memorial but testimony. ‘This’ is not over, ‘this’ is not past. ‘This’ lives.

We live in the time between death and return. Whether we feel ourselves resurrected or waiting in the tomb for the voice that calls us out, still, we live in the time of resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection, the promise and foretaste of our own, the power that lets us live even while we wait.

Body-bread. Covenant-cup. Resurrection-proclamation.

The word did not come to be swallowed into silence but to be told aloud with our mouths and with our lives.

Until he comes. Again. And we live beyond all our imagining.

Smelling Memory

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

John 12:1-8; Text for Sunday April 7, 2019

Memories are tagged by senses as well as words. The sight of a particular blue, the sound of a musical note, the feel of a knitted blanket, the taste of a familiar dish. Of all of these sense-triggers, smell goes deepest, evokes the most. The smell of bread baking, of beef stew simmering. The library smell of old books, wood and wax. The milky smell of a baby. The fall tang of wood smoke. The sharp green of fresh-cut grass. Hyacinths honey-sweet and lavender astringent and blue.

What did Mary remember when she uncorked that perfume? What did she remember as she anointed Jesus’ feet, wiped them clean with her unbound hair? Did Mary think of Lazarus her brother, so lately dead and buried? Did Mary think of Martha, her sister, who had called Jesus Messiah and Lord? Did Mary think of Jesus ordering the stone to be rolled back in spite of Martha’s warning of the foul smell of four-days-past death? Did Mary remember that what had emerged from the tomb was her living, walking grave-cloth-bound brother, coming out in response to Jesus’ call? Did Mary remember what those grave-clothes smelled like, when Lazarus emerged? Had she clung to her brother through the musky-sweet scent of decay? Or had he smelled instead like new-born life?

The whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

What did Mary remember at the end of it all, whenever after she smelled the fragrance of the nard? Did she remember Lazarus sitting host again to the one who had hosted his return to life. Did she remember Martha paused in the doorway, bringing in the bread and wine, smile of joy turning into an O of surprise? Did she remember Judas’s question? Did she remember the rest of them gathered there?

Or did she only remember him? Did she only remember the hem of his robe and the shape of his feet as she washed them in perfume and wiped them with her hair? Did she only remember somehow knowing that this would be one of the last times he would be with them. Did she only remember that this was her last time to make her thank-offering for one life returned, her gift-offering for another death coming?

Six days before the Passover. The third day after that. Whenever after Mary smelled the perfume, what did she remember of the love-offering she had given? What did she experience of the love-offering she had received?

revised from 2010

Becoming New

‘So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’ 2 Cor 5:17

Sunday March 31, 2019; Epistle (2 Cor 5:16-21)

Have you seen a new-born morning? Walked out into air all pearl after night’s rain and with rising sun. Felt the ground slightly soft underfoot and seen the grass green as emerald. Smelled spring, a subtle, earthy freshness. Sensed life not just revived but rejoicing, quivering in the held poise of the perfect present, at the same time as it perceptibly gathers itself into forward motion, into the fullness of a fresh-washed, beautifully-born day.

This is not such a morning; not such a day. Overcast. The light low. The sky holding rain.

I let too much of the day get away from me. As I have let too much of the week get away from me. Not that the time rushes unusually quickly, only that I see it step and do not set my own stride to keep pace with its passing. I should be able to. But I don’t. I am tired, I say. I haven’t slept well. Which is true. Yet insufficient explanation for my sluggish step.

I have thought on this text during the week. Certain phrases caught me: ‘the ministry of reconciliation,’ ‘the message of reconciliation.’ We are ‘reconciled to God’ to ‘become the righteousness of God.’ Reconciliation the ground of righteousness, not its result. Righteousness the growth of reconciliation, not the other way around.

Reconciliation a necessary word in this divided world. A necessary work.

I feel too worn to undertake it.

Maybe I’ve started at the wrong end of the text. Our becoming the righteousness of God is the culmination of Paul’s argument, not its beginning. Righteousness is the ultimate end, and reconciliation the penultimate step towards that end. And before that?

New creation. Everything become new.

I can’t see it; I can’t feel it. Can I know it anyway?

Push away from the desk. Leave the text. Go for a walk. Step out of the house into the gray, surprisingly warm day. Before I’ve reached the end of the front walk, I see vinca, pale purple, and pachysandra’s tiny white blooms. Daffodils — the sight of them always puts new heart into me. Forsythia flowers rich yellow. On down the road, around the neighborhood. More daffs; more forsythia; their yellow a glad color under the dull sky. Magnolia trees have moved from bud to bloom — oyster-shades of muted purple and pink. Some sort of bush with tiny white flowers, distinct against even tinier green leaves. I spy a few hyacinths blooming.

The world perceptibly turning towards new. Yet the old persists. The flowers grow up through last fall’s brown leaves. The tree-branches are still mostly bare and the grass still winter-faded. The world is not yet new-born. At least not today. And yet, and yet: the persistence of the grays and browns are lovely background for the pinks and mauves. The tiny white blooms seem distinct in their purity. The yellow shines steadily in the dull light. The newness does not have to be entire to be complete: the new shows plainly against the old, and the old is renewed by the juxtaposition. All is seen new even as it is being renewed. There is reconciliation in the recognition.

May that seeing be the seed of further renewal, of reconciliation — of old and new; ‘us’ and ‘them’; weariness and bright hope; even me and myself. And all with the Lord God.

Bearing Figs

Then [Jesus] told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Luke 13:6-9

text for Sunday March 24, 2019

What was wrong with the tree? Why did it not bear fruit?

Was it that the tree had been planted in the wrong place? Was there was too little sunshine, or too much? Was the soil was too acidic, or not enough?

Surely the tree longed to bear fruit.

Maybe the tree looked at the other trees in the orchard, saw all of them bent with the happy, heavy weight of fruit. Some trees bore fruit that was round and red; others longer and green; some trees were hung with fuzzed-globes of warm yellow while others bore smaller globes, with a purple-blue haze to the skin. But no fruit hung from her branches. The tree wept for her own barrenness, for the wrongness of her planting in this place, for the fruit she had been meant to bear but had not.

The master came to look at her, “Three years I have looked for figs,” he said, grieved to find the branches empty.

Figs?

‘Sir, let it alone for one more year,” said the gardener. “I will dig around it and put manure on it.”

Figs? The tree heard and wondered.

The gardener came to the tree. “Figs,” he murmured, soft as a breeze. “You are meant to bear figs,” he told the tree, “You have always been meant to bear figs. Be fruitful. Bear figs.”

The tree listened and began to hope. Her barrenness was not the master’s design; it was a grief to him as well as her. The gardener dug around the tree, and put manure in the soil. The gardener put new heart in the tree. “Figs,” the gardener whispered blessing to the tree. To her neighbor, he whispered “apples” and to another “pears” or “peaches” and “plums.” The tree listened and began to understand. She was meant to bear figs – not the fruit that every other tree bore, but figs, green-skinned, purple-fleshed, seeded and sweet. The tree had blamed the planting, blamed the garden, blamed her own inability to be something she was never even asked to be. Now she realized her true purpose.

“Bear figs,” the gardener promised. The tree heard and believed. The tree put away her tears and began to bud. The tree bore figs for the master’s joy, and her own.

*originally written 2010