Wednesday, July 15, 2020

On the Lips of Eve: Psalm 139

There isn’t a word on my tongue Lord that you don’t already know completely. 

It can be interesting to imagine Psalm 139 coming from the lips of Moses, or Eve, or Job. It actually sounds very much like Job, This psalm with its harmonic notes and painting in similar hues as the book of Job. What we hear today is the cosmic sweetheart song. The verses that were ‘edited for content’, those verses skipped in the middle are a different key: an even earthier intimacy, and, straight-up vengeful anger. ‘If only, you God, would kill the wicked, These people talk about you, but only for wicked schemes’. Whatever the situation that led to the elaborate artistry of this psalm, it bears a strong suggestion of persecution may be due to such wholehearted devotion to God. Yes, I can imagine the whole psalm on the lips of Job. 

Then there are the other verses we skipped, Earthy, feminine ones that invite me to imagine Psalm 139 on the tongue of Eve. God is certainly so close, right there walking in the garden in that primordial time before time. I can imagine Eve being furious at the forces that oppose God, It only takes a bit of coloring outside the lines, and outside the garden. However, she comes to mind more for phrases such as: God knitting us in our mother’s wombs, and other subtle playful references to the creation stories, both hers, and the seven-day refrain of it was good, it was good. And speaking of coloring outside the lines, there are also in this whole psalm some illusions to creation stories of other ancient religions. 

Yet what really connects Eve with this psalm in my imagination is the repeating of the word know. Seven times in the whole psalm. Know as in the source of the phrase biblical knowledge. It doesn’t always mean that, but it does always convey the kind of relationship you might have if you shared a garden with God. 

Psalms are high art, carefully crafted art - so that even if you have never felt such closeness with God something in the poetry delights you, causes you to lean in, hum that tune for just a moment. This psalm in particular is a decentering poem of big faith, perhaps bigger than you feel sometimes. Could you give voice to this psalm in prayer for someone in your life, someone who needs to know they are not alone, that they are beloved, someone who is so caught in the heap that they cannot even express such feelings? 

Psalms are art, but they are not silly. They are likely rooted in real experience. All the experiences of life: the orientation, disorientation, and reorientation of this continuing COVID-tide moment are known in the Psalms. They are ready to pray words we didn’t know we needed, singing refrains we know by heart but forget to sing. This song, this psalm, was deep knowing truth: true for someone like Eve, and like Job, and for Teresa of Calcutta and Martin Luther King, Jr. and you and me. What makes scripture scripture it has a way of knowing our truths and birthing our imaginations that are already but also not yet. 

There isn’t a word on our tongues that God doesn’t already know.

Christ Church, Ridley Park, PA
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania
July 14/19, 2020

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Seeds are Never Wasted

Mustard is a seed. At least when we usually encounter it. Most of the mustard plants grown on this planet are not grown for their greens which are edible and medicinal, but for their seeds. Seeds that get ground up and emulsified and some of you put that stuff everywhere. And then, what about sunflower seeds? Potent packages of nutrition and flavor. Ever notice how nobody worries when sunflower seeds get snacked on instead of planted? 

The parable of the sower is the opening of the sequence of parables that Jesus offers about what the reign of God is like. Reign of God is why we don’t just do whatever we want. The kingdom of heaven is what this all means in the end. 

The thing about the metaphorical storytelling of parables is that the outside is simple, the inside is profound. You are not supposed to eat the shell of the sunflower seed: it is a valuable container, but not the point. The prize requires breaking open the shell. When we break open the shells of Jesus' parables about the reign of God we notice four commonalities: 
  • that the reign of God is already present, 
  • it is all over the place, 
  • it is revealed in unexpected simplicity, 
  • and it demands our commitment in the middle of evil opposition. 
If we read this parable from an assumption that the one with the most full granaries wins, then we are perhaps eating the shell and missing the tasty food. Because the one with the most toys wins is not the way God's creation works. A seed is no less valuable because it doesn't become a sprout or plant. The reign of God is as ever-present as seeds - which are everywhere. Sometimes seeds sprout and make huge blossoms.  TBTG. And many seeds make our plates tastier: ever notice how many spices are seeds? And plenty of seeds get eaten by birds: and God seems to like birds! God keeps tinkering with that design endlessly - so seeds that feed something God loves is not a waste. And then, sometimes, seeds go back to dust and God makes use of that potency all over again. Alleluia. 

Mustard growing everywhere
Our reading today isn’t just a simple parable. It is also an interpretation of a parable, An interpretation that seems to be digging into frustration and disappointment. I've been thinking about the seeds of ideas and dreams that Christ Church had been fiddling with back in January. I have been wondering about the sparks of hope that I doodled in February. And how many of those seeds and doodles could have been amazing, and I grieve that we are not able to live into them. But the ideas - those seeds they weren't wasted. The nurture, the spice, the divine initiative, it lives on in new forms that we might not recognize yet.

2020 is not what we expected and certainly not what we wished. We have lost so many lives, 133,000 at this moment. It is wretched and we have much to lament, but I also believe we can act and pray and speak for living the love we are capable of. Jesus is working through our soils and seeds toward the reign of God, Planting in us what is needed for right now, and for what comes next. The reign is already (and also not yet), it is sown everywhere, it is surprising, and it demands our duty.  God is the sower.  We are seeds.

July 7/12, 2020
Christ Church, Ridley Park
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Children, Wisdom, and the Marketplace

I always imagined a fountain. I imagine these young people playing around a fountain in the middle of this marketplace. What's in my imagination isn't a plaza in Jesus's day but something mid-twentieth century, maybe a little like a scene from Roman Holiday. I guess I imagine a fountain because of the connection with John the baptizer. Or maybe it's a place from my mid-70s West German childhood. The children I imagine playing certainly look like my friends, they sing the songs we would have sung and tell the stories we would tell. We all come to scripture with a lifetime of memories and art that fill in the space between the text.  What do you see and hear?

If you look beyond this imagined fountain in this marketplace, Jesus and some of his companions have come to get some fruit, some bread, whatever. Jesus and his friends run into some of curious opponents who are so intrigued or bothered by Jesus's holiness and teaching. So bugged that they just can't let him be.  In the background, these children could be singing what we would think of as a nursery rhyme, or it could be the equivalent of a pop song. They were not quoting Aristotle or uttering proverbs, however, Jesus raises their presence up to eye level. 

Childhood is a modern ideal. Of course, there have always been children, but the sweet darling vision of innocence that we might assume when we hear of children isn’t what Jesus’ hearers assume. Generally, people loved their children, the gospels themselves witness to such wholehearted familial love. However, the cultural norm, especially in the wider Hellenistic world, considered children in general to be on par with squirrels or stray dogs. Germy and in the way, a drain on resources until they could contribute, unfocused: plenty of the same critiques we might make today when we are quite frustrated with our children.  In this ancient situation the repeated New Testament use of children as a positive analogy for the way of discipleship - it would have gotten your attention because it sounded somewhat insulting. And here where children are raised up as carriers of sacred truth and wisdom, is stepping way outside the status quo. 

In 2012 a boy named Robbie was stuck at home, or maybe he was in the hospital again. When you have a brittle bone disease some times of immobility are just par for the course. So to keep him busy his older brother-in-law started a video project with him. It was a silly little delight intended just for themselves, a video of what a "Kid President" might have to say to anyone who would listen. Things like: if you can’t think of anything nice to say you aren’t thinking hard enough. And: give people high fives for just getting out of bed. Being a person is hard sometimes. It was a playfulness but he managed to same some things that apparently we need to hear.  The internet is our modern marketplace and that child, he uttered pep talks that went viral. 

One of the things that's changed since Jesus's day is sometimes we are more willing to hear the truth from a child than a peer. Especially a child with a muppet-like laugh and a sly smile. I believe a big part of the reason for this change in the embrace of childhood is because of Jesus himself. His very Incarnation, his humble birth to struggling parents in a backwater town: it changed how we see all children and our duty to them. We don’t inherit our world from our parents, we borrow it from our children. How should that truth, in the light of Jesus, shape our choices? What are they saying that we should hear? 

The scene we just witnessed in the marketplace has Jesus responding to his detractors saying, we just can’t win with you, because you are not even listening.  These children get something you don't.  He is also subtly repeating the fragility of his own life, the threat that he was under. The commentary regarding he and John, some of those bad reviews are punishable by death. Jesus whistles a tune of his own fragility in this life for being so transparent to God.

The very image of God's heart, Jesus doesn’t show up to issue report cards or reject the way we are made. He comes alongside our play fountains and our dark valleys. He sings along and welcomes us: the gluttons and challengers and the last and the least and the lost. He comes to love us all so wholeheartedly, to sing along with us so naturally, that our tune falls in line with his. 
Do you hear his song, and won't you sing along?

June 30/July 5, 2020
Christ Church, Ridley Park, PA
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania