Hurry Up and Wait February 5, 2012 Fifth Sunday After Epiphany, Year B Isaiah 40.21-31

This distance between Isaiah 39 and Isaiah 40 is the distance between prophecy and fulfillment. Israel now lies mired in the mud on the banks of Chebar, her harps hung in the willows as she sits and weeps by the waters of Babylon.

And God’s prophet starts trash-talkin’.

In the midst of this mess Isaiah sets up an episode of Middle Eastern Idol in which he casts himself as Simon Cowell and blasts the conquering gods of the international stage. By contrast, he dares to exalt the God of the exhausted and to doxologize the Deity of the defeated.

The grammar of God defies the syntax of society. In the unseen sentence-structure of reality YHWH is the subject of every verb, and everyone and everything else is the direct object of YHWH’s action. The Babylonians invented astrology to discover how the stars governed their destinies. Israel worships the un-invented God who rides herd on the constellations like a cosmic cowboy at the OK Corral.

“Didn’t you get the memo?” the prophet fumes. Our God is not popping Red Bull to gin up extra energy. God does not sweat the latest poll numbers in the presidential primary or calibrate his mood to the fluctuations of the market. Nor do we manipulate God by the machinations of our religious mechanics.

“They that wait upon the Lord.” They that cling to faith when the temple topples; they that cling to faith when the bad guys win; they that stand their ground when seismic social shifts set it shaking beneath them – THEY  shall renew their strength.

“Fool,” writes the poet Charles Williams, “All lies in a passion of patience, my Lord’s rule.” In passionate patience possess your souls, and mount to the skies on the pinions of faith.

Passionately Patient,

Doug

Meditating on Mediation January 29, 2012 Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, Year B Deuteronomy 18.15-20

            Vince Lombardi didn’t like intermediaries.

            A possibly apocryphal story tells that All-Pro center Jim Ringo brought an agent with him to negotiate his contract with the Packers for the 1963 season. Lombardi excused himself and left the room only to return a moment later and bark, “You’re talking to the wrong guy. Jim Ringo has just been traded to the Philadelphia Eagles.”

            Israel wanted an intermediary.

            The undiluted voice of the Almighty left them rightly terrified, so God agreed to let Moses stand in the gap. But Moses was mortal, with an unfortunate tendency to strike rocks first and ask them for water later. As Moses’ death approached, the Lord promised not to leave the people without a mouthpiece. Like Moses, Joshua parted rivers and bowed barefoot before theophanies. Like Moses, Elijah parted rivers and baffled writs of habeas corpus. Samuel and Nathan, Isaiah and Jeremiah – down through the centuries God saw to it that Israel had a friend in court.

            Then God sent the ultimate intermediary.

            Twice, Luke records early apostolic preaching that points to Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of the Deuteronomic promise: Peter cites it after the healing of the lame man in the temple (Acts 3.22) and Stephen holds it aloft before the Sanhedrin (Acts 7.37). Moses received the law on a mountain; Jesus re-interpreted it on a mount. Moses fed Israel with miraculous manna; Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes. Moses handed down the law of the scapegoat; Jesus’ pierced hands mark him as the ultimate bearer of our sin. Moses died leaving no forwarding address; Jesus left a marked but empty grave.

            Humanity needs an intermediary.

            Vince Lombardi fired a player for introducing a foreigner into the negotiating process. The Father embraces the sinner who brings God’s own Son and thus God’s own self into the judgment. The only remaining question is whether we will listen to the words of God that come from the prophet of God.

Now You’re Talking!

Doug

Whaling Away January 22, 2012 Third Sunday After Epiphany, Year B Jonah 3.1-10

           D. Graham Burnett has written an eight-hundred page book on whales. As Paul Greenberg observes in his New York Times review of “The Sounding of the Whale,” “If the whale swallowed Jonah whole, then Burnett has made a considerable effort to get as much of the whale as possible down his voluminous intellectual gullet.”

            Many Bible readers gag on the whale and get no further: We debate whether it was a literal or anecdotal whale. We argue about whether it was a “whale” at all, or just a “big fish,” and whether either choice entangles the original manuscripts in a taxonomical error. Similarly, the rabbis of Jesus’ day went on at some length about the meaning of the prophet’s three-day lay-over in the maw of the sea monster: Jonah 1 and 2 seem to come in for far more discussion than Jonah 3 and 4.

            Jesus seemed to care about the Ninevites.

            “The sign of Jonah” (Lk 11.30, Mt 12.39) involved resurrection, but also repentance: “The men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation at the judgment, and will condemn it because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” Jonah preached badly to the Gentiles and the Gentiles repented. Jesus preached beautifully to the Jews and the Jews rejected. Jonah was a walking miracle but nobody in Nineveh knew it. Jesus walked around doing miracles and everybody in Israel knew it.

            “Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not believe in a literal whale, and insist on inerrancy, and defend the veracity of miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never cared about that stuff too much. But you never repented.’”

Hard To Swallow,

Doug

The Sounds of Silence January 15, 2012 Second Sunday After Epiphany, Year B 1 Samuel 3.1-10

William James famously defined religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of men in their solitude.” It’s a bad definition because it relegates what is inherently communal to what is entirely private. No one would suggest that politics or being a fan of a sports team could ever be solitary acts.

            It’s also a bad definition because our society murders solitude. C. S. Lewis jokes that “when the modern world says to us aloud, ‘You may be religious when you are alone,’ it adds under its breath, ‘and I will see to it that you never are alone.’” Writing in the New York Times, Pico Iyer notes that patrons of the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, California, whack out over two grand a night for the privilege of a room without a TV or internet access.

            Samuel heard God in solitude.

            By day, the boy tended a noisy temple where religious professionals seduced the sisterhood and wielded bigger-than-regulation forks to scoop up extra perqs. By night he lay alone in an empty temple and heard the Lord speak in the pre-dawn stillness. “The Word of the Lord was rare in those days,” not, perhaps, because God was not speaking, but because nobody was listening.

            Samuel shared God in community.

            Because Samuel had been alone with the Lord, he had something to say to somebody else. Because Samuel had been alone with the Lord, he found the courage to say it honestly. If the Lord did not let Samuel’s words fall to the ground, it may have been because those words originally fell from Heaven.

            What if we grew still long enough to realize that our old ways have failed because they are not, in fact, the ancient ways of God? What if we sat silent before the sputtering night light of our failing faith long enough to hear a message that would renew our youth like the eagle’s? What if blinded eyes saw well enough to guide young ears to hear the fresh revelation of God’s unchanging Word? The Christian poet T. S. Eliot offers us the answer in his poem “Ash Wednesday”:

Where shall the word be found, where shall the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Speak, for Your Servant is Listening,

Doug