Holy Week – Prudent Graces

“When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.”

Psalm 126:1 [KJV; see Psalm 126]

Psalm 126 lives in my mouth in its King James cadences, whether spoken aloud or in my mind’s ear only. The “t’s” in “turned” and “captivity” are clipped in soft staccato while the “e” of “dream” stretches longer than its single syllable. Its sound ebbs as I am drawn into the vision it pronounces. Remember that dreaming? Remember what it was to live a dream?

Pause at the thought of dream, then let the recitation of it tumble from my lips. My mouth pronouncing the phrases is again brimful of brightness. Remember what it was when others saw our joy, named it for us, even before we ourselves recognized that our shoulders were lifting, our steps become lighter? “The LORD has done great things for them.” O! Savor it!

My singing tongue slows, then continues, resolutely: “The LORD has done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” The glow of remembrance fades even as I recollect it. My voice catches, my tone shifts from reverie to plea: “Turn again our captivity, O LORD!…” Memory of God’s prior graces moved into urgent demand of God-self: remember us, do again great things for us.

Psalm 126 is a psalm from a middle place. Prayed by a people who know God has done great things for them. Prayed by a people who know, also, that the great thing is yet unfinished, who pray that God is not done with them.

I pray this psalm as I walk in the day. I pray this psalm as I lie down at night. I pray this psalm as I read the news. I pray this psalm as I move into Holy Week. I will pray this psalm on past this Easter Sunday, as I am praying it now, past all the prior Easters that have been.

“Christ is risen!” we will proclaim on Sunday. The sanctuary will be filled with flowers and the Hallelujah Chorus and jubilation. Our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy.

And then we will leave the sanctuary and go into the world. And then we will find, again, or still, that resurrection has changed everything and that the world remains broken.

The LORD has done great things for us! Turn again our captivity!

The Hebrew is something like ‘Turn, O LORD, our returning ….’ The verb echoed in its object; the dream memory of v.1 revised in v.4 to imperative demand. ‘Turn our return.’ The unfamiliar syllables feel awkward in my mouth. They resonate differently than “turn again our captivity.” The latter might be read as a turning-back, a restoration to what was before. I’ve pictured it so: freed exiles streaming back to a rebuilt city. Perhaps this psalm was rooted in a real memory of return, yet in that history, the city’s rebuilding was but an incomplete fulfillment. God called God’s people to further walking. God’s people called God to further rescue.

Read Psalm 126 not as returning back to some prior way of being but as turning on to what yet will be. The final verses tell it so: they do not rest in the storehouses of some prior season’s harvest but call for sowing anew and promise that the resulting harvest will be abundant, occasion for new shouts of joy. Easter does not turn back the clock nor deny death. Easter overcomes it: Thomas knows the risen Jesus not by his unblemished skin but by his wounds.

The world remains broken. Sow the seed anyway. Because resurrection has changed everything. Because we can practice it. Must practice it. Sing joy — even in tears, even while weeping — that in singing we experience already the harvest anticipated as God turns our return on towards God’s intended end.

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.

Tag: Holy Week

Turn our return!

‘Proclaim the Lord’s Death’