Thoughts

One of the canticles¹ for Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer is “The Second Song of Isaiah,” taken from Isaiah 55:6-11, which ends with these words:

For as rain and snow fall from the heavens *
and return not again, but water the earth,
Bringing forth life and giving growth, *
seed for sowing and bread for eating,
So is my word that goes forth from my mouth; *
it will not return to me empty;
But it will accomplish that which I have purposed, *
and prosper in that for which I sent it.

Whenever I pray this canticle, I imagine Christ (who is God’s Word) ascended into the heavens to fill all things, swirling and flowing and moving at all times and in all places, working to manifest God’s salvation, but never through coercion, always and only through Love—through wooing, reaching out, and inviting those who will respond to Love’s call.

Because God’s Word is eternal and “will not return empty,” we can trust this work of salvation will be accomplished somehow through the humble power of love. But we also know that God doesn’t work alone—God does not work for us without us, but with us and through us, with our cooperation and active participation. Because salvation isn’t a commodity we passively receive, it’s a life we are drawn into, and life is about engagement and involvement and participation and communion.

We get to learn, and grow into our authority as witnesses and ambassadors of the life God shares with us. The Church is the fullness of Christ who fills all things. Think about that: we are the Body of the One who fills all things. We’re the agents of salvation, even as we learn to participate in salvation. Through our announcement and demonstration and enactment God works, even though sometimes we can’t cast the demons out. God is patient with us while we learn. And we learn through active, embodied participation, so let’s pray and work and engage as if God is with us and working through us. Every prayer, every act of love, is a word that goes forth from God’s mouth that will yield a harvest, accomplishing what God wants, prospering in the purpose for which God sent it.

1. A canticle is a liturgical song taken from a biblical text. ↩︎

Today is the feast of Joanna, Mary, and Salome (the traditional “Myrrh-bearers” who came to the tomb of Jesus early in the morning to anoint his body with myrrh and other spices). I was particularly moved by the Collect for their feast today:

Almighty God, who revealed the resurrection of your Son to Joanna, Mary, and Salome as they faithfully came bearing myrrh to his tomb: Grant that we too may perceive the presence of the risen Lord in the midst of pain and fear, and go forth proclaiming his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holt Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

It seems like these days we all need an abundance of grace to perceive the presence of Jesus in the midst of pain and fear. May it be so.

In Matthew 24, Jesus warns his disciples about dangerous times to come, and as we seem to be entering into a very contentious and dangerous time in our country, I take some comfort from Jesus’ words. Specifically, and perhaps oddly, I was struck by how Jesus promises deliverance in the midst of disaster, not necessarily instead of disaster.

All the worst things may be happening–wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, economic disaster, political violence and unrest, false prophets leading the faithful astray, people betraying each other and hating each other, innocent people persecuted and abused, people’s love growing cold–but the one who endures to the end will be delivered. And remarkably, despite all this chaos, the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations. Salvation comes in spite of the bad things, not instead of the bad things.

This is comforting not because it means “It’s finally the end times!” but because the church has always been facing these kinds of disastrous socio-political conditions. Our current crisis is not new. The church has always been facing the end of the world, since its conception. Not that we seek these kinds of times. Of course we don’t. “Save us from the time of trial” Jesus taught us to pray. But we have confidence that times of trial are not the end, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God. This is the deep structure of reality that we live in, even when the world has gone mad.

Our task is ultimately not to win elections or save democracy or prevent bad things from happening. Certainly we ought to put our bodies on the line with and for our marginalized neighbors, and work to preserve and strengthen democracy as an act of practical love for those the powerful seek to tread underfoot. But all is not lost if we lose this fight. Christians have been losing for a long time, and losing is never the end. We follow a crucified Savior, after all. The ultimate loser.

I guess I’m saying that it’s a matter of perspective. Our task is to wake up each morning to whatever reality brings us, pay attention to the deeper reality of God’s presence and work in the world, and endure to the end. To not let our love grow cold. To not let the fear and anger of our political climate make us betray and hate each other. To simply act in love in the present moment, and leave the rest to God.

This is how we participate in the kingdom that is still being proclaimed across the whole world. If we endure through the disaster, we will be delivered, despite the chaos, despite whatever we may lose. “Acquire the Spirit of Peace,” St. Seraphim of Sarov said, “and a thousand souls around you will be saved.”

This little vignette from Exodus 32:9-14 has always fascinated me:

The Lord said to Moses… “Let my fury burn and devour [these people]…”

But Moses pleaded with the Lord his God… “Calm down your fierce anger. Change your mind about doing terrible things to your own people.”

Then the Lord changed his mind about the terrible things he said he would do to his people.

God changing his mind in this passage (and Numbers 14:11-25) has been explained in a variety of ways, because it messes with our conceptions of divinity. God changing in any way flies in the face of the Greek idea of the impassibility, or changelessness, of God. More importantly, I think, the text presents Moses as more compassionate and level-headed than God, which flies in the face of the New Testament’s assertion that Jesus is better than Moses, and the full revelation of God, “the exact imprint of God’s very being” as the Hebrew writer puts it.

So how should we read passages like this? It occurs to me that we can interpret them as pictures of the normative process of wrestling with and revising our ideas about God. Perhaps the way God appears in the text is not necessarily the way God is in reality, but simply the conception of God that the communities that produced the text had.

And yet God works in those stories, from within that distorted vision of God, to speak to us and lead us into the truth of who God is, ultimately revealed in Jesus.

So if you ever find yourself assuming about God or even hearing something from God that doesn’t seem as good as Jesus, feel free to argue with that “God” about how he should change his mind. Perhaps you’ll grow into a fuller picture of who God is, for you and for the world.

“How terrible it will be for you legal experts and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. You don’t enter yourselves, and you won’t allow those who want to enter to do so… Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you. How often I wanted to gather your people together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that” (Matt 23:13, 37).

---

Right after Jesus’ most incisive indictment of the religious authorities, he moves toward the whole corrupt system with lament and solidarity: he goes to Jerusalem to die for those he denounces, and through sacrifice and solidarity save everyone caught in the thrall of sin and death.

Prophetic anger and denouncement must always be accompanied by prophetic anguish and weeping. Be wary of prophetic speech (especially your own) that is all anger and no anguish. All denouncement and no weeping. All fire and no ashes. All snark and no lament.

If you cannot find and feel the tragedy of the situation you seek to speak into, and weep on behalf of all who are caught in the web of injustice, your prophesying will turn in on itself and become bitter. Weeping purifies prophetic speech and makes it fruitful.

You do well to feel angry about injustice. Don’t suppress or bypass that vital and necessary emotion. But don’t get stuck there. Keep moving through the anger with God, and find the anguish. Then you’ll know what to say and how to say it.