Surprised by Joy

Winter Camellias. Photo (c) Katherine E. Brown

“And seeing the star, they rejoiced with very great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother and, falling down, they worshipped him, and opening their treasuries, they offered him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Matthew 2:10-11 (from Matthew 2:1-12, NRSVUE linked here)

The Twelve Days of Christmas are past. Now we’re at Epiphany. Three Kings Day. January 6.

Does that last calendar-date caption sound now more political than liturgical? Maybe recent history reminds us that the text has been political since it was written. The first reported human speech in Matthew’s gospel is, after all, the query uttered by the magi, “Where is the one born king of the Jews?” Don’t adorn their question with the fairy-tale garb of tradition — opulent robes and jewel-studded crowns, imagined camels and an expansive retinue. That keeps the figures safely constrained in ancient story. Suitable for nativity plays (children wearing borrowed bathrobes and crowns of foil-covered cardboard). Nothing to do with our lives once the season’s church services are past. Nothing to do with reality.

Reread that query. Words said by humans, not angels. Words uttered in a real place, at a real time, to a real king — Herod, insecurely power-hungry given the larger real-world context of Imperial Rome in oversight of all his machinations. A query about a king that disturbs a king so greatly that all Jerusalem is disturbed with him. Does the idea of a power-hungry leader and a power-roiled city sound real enough?

Reread the magi, too. Not as kings with retinues but as analysts with responsibilities. In DC terms, maybe, career civil service. Matthew’s magi are not Luke’s shepherds, who were minding their own business out there in the fields until suddenly that choir of tinsel-haloed cherubs appeared in the church balcony. Matthew’s magi have a different role, a different work. They read the visible signs of change in the world; they follow where those signs lead. They observe. They inquire. They discern by what has risen new (that star) and by what is old (the prophets’ writings). They ask questions, including of traditions and cultures not their own. They engage in conversations, even conversations at cross-purposes (“Go and search diligently for the child,” Herod tells the magi as if he too desires to worship) — which to me is perhaps the realest part of this story’s reality: the intersection and opposition of desires both holy and horrific. Which intersection and opposition — accurate information and duplicitous intent — yet conspire to lead the magi towards their journeys’ end.

Herod sends the magi to Bethlehem. And as they go, they see again the star whose rising they had seen before. The star going ahead of them until it stood above where the child was.

“Seeing the star, they rejoiced with very great joy.”

Joy before they entered the house. Joy before they saw the child with Mary his mother. Joy before they knelt and worshipped and opened their treasury to offer him gifts. Joy maybe because the star they’d lost sight of for a while (else why would they have showed up in Jerusalem?) was again bright before their eyes. Leading them. Delighting them. Opening them for encounter anew.

Maybe the reason to return to this story year after year is not just to be reminded of its reality but to be recalled by it to the reality that undergirds and overarches our own story. Not absolving us of the responsibility to observe, to inquire, to set out as steadfastly and to journey as diligently as we can. But recalling us to the the star’s reappearing. Reminding us that our purpose is not power but worship. We may pause in power’s halls (the magi speak to Herod with equanimity, secure in their expertise, unafraid to ask) but it is the star’s promise that draws us on, that guides us to our true end: the encounter that drops us to our knees, curves our mouths into smiling Os of awe, opens the treasure of our hearts that we may give.

Joy is the pivot on which the magi’s journey turns, the twist that sends them journeying again. Traveling another way. Returning to where they had been even if they were not who they had been when they left, re-shaped as they were by their journey in surprising, delighting joy.

May I be re-shaped by their story to journey truly in my own.

Uncorrected Astigmatism*

photo (c) Katherine E. Brown

Now after [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Matt 2:13-18; excerpt from Matt 2:13-23

Our Christmas tree was a drug-store purchase 33 years ago. It is small, with wire branches and stiff paper needles. We trim it with tiny lights and decorations. Once the last is placed atop the whole (an angel made of a starched doily, formerly white), we turn off the overhead and take off our eyeglasses and ooh and aah as the tree is haloed with the chrysanthemum-rayed glow that comes of uncorrected astigmatism.

I think of our silly self-delusion as I read this text. The Slaughter of the Innocents. Every three years, this is the text for the Sunday after Christmas – some years the very next day. I have been at that worship: children are invited to wear pajamas; we all sing carols, again, as if to hold the sentiment of the season that bit longer. The worship service is nice. We feel it so.

I can’t imagine reading this text at such a service. It is too horrible a contrast to Christmas — to the holy wonder of late-night candlelight, the giddy excitement of morning gifts. Yet the calendar holds both together: the remembrance of the slaughter comes just after the celebration of the birth.

The juxtaposition shocks. It should shock. Our guts should twist with the horror; our hearts be pierced with the pain – with the way violence follows so naturally from the fear that grasps at power, that refuses consolation, that lashes out in self-defeating self-protection.

There’s no depth of field to sentiment’s glow. To neglect Rachel’s wailing is to ignore the brokenness of the world, the sick of our own souls, the need that the Creator came into creation to suffer and to cure. Still there is dark; still we are being born; still we hurt and – God forgive us! – still we hurt each other. We don’t need tender sentiment; we need astringent love.

The Jeremiah text that the gospel quotes continues on past Rachel’s lamentation into promise: “keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears … there is hope for your future, says the LORD. Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child I delight in? … Therefore I am deeply moved for him; I will surely have mercy on him, says the LORD” (Jer 31:15-20).

Jesus escaped that particular slaughter. But God did not. God suffered the frightened cries of the children, the frantic cries of their parents. God suffered it then and later and still.

God was deeply moved. God is deeply moved. God will surely have mercy on us all.

Glasses on. See as clearly as I can.

I must look full at the bitterness of Rachel’s refusal to see the strength of God’s saving love.

*Devotion written in 2010; posted 2019; updated 2024

Concert Season*

Candle procession. photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presence signed: God-with-us.

*originally written 2010; posted 2022

Sunday Morning Balcony Prayers

photograph (c) Katherine Brown*

Sunday mornings when I can, when there is time between staff’s pre-worship meeting and worship itself, when there is no class to teach or other meeting between, I go up to the balcony and I sit in the highest, farthest-back pew, and I look out past the rows in front of me, and the balcony rail, over the sanctuary below, and I pray.

Sometimes my prayers are worded. A list of names, of needs, of thanks. A petition that there will indeed be worship in this place, and that I may know it. Sometimes my prayers are wordless. A deliberate setting aside, an attempt at stilling myself, to this particular present, this particular place. The cream-white walls of the sanctuary; the shallow curve of the ceiling; the stained glass in the far front wall.

Sunday morning balcony prayers.

In the chancel below, the choir rehearses to piano accompaniment. The head usher refills the oil in the tall candlesticks set on the altar. Someone else maneuvers a long pole to open the high-up shutters on slender side windows. Now the sanctuary is less shadowy, more light. In the balcony, the AV team opens the console and begins setting up.

I am in the highest, farthest-back balcony pew, slightly apart from all the preparation that continues apace, looking for stillness in the pen on the page. The piano drops out and I pause my pen to listen. The choir sings, ‘Here I am to bow down. Here I am to worship.’ Hear the harmony, giving the melody line richness and depth. Think of all the parts that move, the parts in which we move. Move towards one another, towards that which is other entirely.

I sit and I listen and look straight ahead. The far wall seems to recede as I stare at it, growing slightly smaller and more distant … and the space between, the sanctuary itself, grows bigger, as if it could hold the world. As if it does.

I think of other spaces, other sanctuaries. Flying my bike down the hill and along the nearby line park. The trail curving with the creek and between the trees which stretch so tall, their green canopy a sanctuary ceiling above. Joy in this flight, this path, this place. The amber-watered creek. The marshaled trees. The blue sky. Others also ride and walk; they push strollers and hold leashes, and their presence is part of my gladness. Crows caw roughly and robins chirrup frantically and that loud, clear-water warble is the song of the tiny wren. We are all here; here is all of ours. Life not as possession but as participation, membership, movement.

Back to the balcony. No seraphim-sung Holy, Holy, Holy (Revelation 4:8). People’s voices, here on earth; human bodies moving. Choir now rehearsed. A choir member waves to me (I am apart but not invisible!). The AV team runs mic check. All of these strands being gathered together. Woven into worship. Here. In other churches, other places. None of this mine. All of this ours as we are invited in. Members in the movement and the music.

Lay my pen down. Close the book and fold my hands in my lap and be. Be spun. To be woven again into the whole.

*I waited to take the picture until the path was clear of walkers, bicycles, and chipmunks.

Babies in Christ

photo (c) Katherine Brown

“And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people but rather as fleshly, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food….”

1 Cor. 3:1-2a [from 1 Cor. 3:1-9 NRSVUE]

Babies cry. Newborns mewl; infants wail; toddlers howl.

Babies cry for hunger. Babies cry for being wet. Babies cry because the toy is beyond their reach, the task beyond their capacity. Babies cry because the bed is so big and the room is so dark and they are so very alone.

Babies cry. “Silly,” we say, scooping up our dears, “there’s nothing wrong.” We soothe the flushed, hot, tear-wet faces until sobs give shuddering way to hiccups and thence to quiet. “Silly,” we tease, but we’re wrong. The tears were infantile; the need was deep: food, warmth, love. Crying came not from foolishness but for the lack of words to disclose the need.

(Remember how the tantrums ended when words began? Remember how – even now – there are times when words get stuck inside and the urge to sob rises again in your own throat?)

Think of the churches as infants – connections and congregations but babies propped up in their pews, loudly wailing their need. The jealousy and quarreling irritate as much as any infant’s again-in-the-nighttime howl. But the frustration is for the wailing, not the child. (Was it so for Paul? When he called the Corinthians “infants” was he reminding himself of love as much as calling them to mature?) How do we worship? What gifts matter most? How do we relate to each other, with the world? Who is set apart to lead, and how? The quarreling is infantile; the need is deep: to see the right path, to walk it true, to live and grow in Christ.

Think of the churches as infants – conceived in love and of grace, birthed through the baptism of Christ’s offering for us. Don’t think of the petty jealousies or bitter quarrels – all of these are but accidents of transition, incidents of maturing. Do not start with the present inadequacies for fear they seem the all. Start instead with the initial intention – holding the beginning as present frees you to look toward its ultimate fulfillment.

Babies grow in painful and amazing stages. Each day’s experience extends the neural pathways, re-wires and reinforces critical connections, stretches and firms the foundation so that the next day’s connections can be grown. Experience and learning and growth are interdependent, each building and buttressing the other— and the crying, even, is part of the process.

Think of the churches as infants – God’s being-built buildings. (“Encourage one another,” Paul wrote the Thessalonians. “Build up each other.”) We build ourselves and we build each other and we build together – as one – towards God, who gives all the growth, until we have grown from not-worded infancy to the full measure, the incarnate Word.

(c) Katherine Brown; originally written 2/13/2011

Breakfast on the beach

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breakfast on the beach.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And God makes more cakes for us to share.

Let’s do it again!

True Bread

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

True bread. Taste and see.

Standing before the king

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faith feeds on commitment.

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

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

A widow of Zarephath

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bread from heaven

photograph (c) Katherine Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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