Go Deep

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authority, Jesus, John, Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Psalm 30, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, voice

Today’s gospel – the very long story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead – (JN 11: 1-45) offers several themes worthy of reflection. It’s easy to give it a cursory reading because we know the story from the moment Jesus got the word from Martha and Mary that Lazarus was ill, through the delays, the strange behavior of Jesus (not rushing to the home of the sick man, his dear friend), theological conversation about the end times when all will be raised, to the cinematic moment when Lazarus emerges from the tomb still bound in burial bands, when Jesus gives the order to untie him and let him go and John concludes that many people came to believe in Jesus from that day. (Whew! Try to diagram that sentence, if you will.)

What I noticed today more clearly than ever before when reading this story was the authority in the voice of Jesus at every turn. Clearly, he had come to understand his mission – the reason he had come into the world – and perhaps how Lazarus could illustrate something that Jesus knew about God’s willingness to save us all.

I’m still ruminating on the themes…so I urge you to read the text aloud, stop at each juncture and wait listening (as Psalm 130 urges us today) for deeper understanding of what Jesus was saying and doing to ready us for the events that await us in the remaining days of Lent.

Out of the Depths

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Ancient Songs Sung Anew, despair, Easter season, familiar, forgiveness, impact, Lent, Lynn Bauman, mercy, practices, prayers, presence, Psalm 30, responsibility, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

My first thoughts on this fifth Sunday of Lent centered around my relatively low level of attention for what (in my experience anyway) was always called “the holy season of Lent.” I do not disparage that title; more Christians are likely aware of religious practice during these six weeks than at any other time in the year. It makes me wonder, however, why the fervor doesn’t often last throughout the fifty days of the Easter season. Perhaps we find it easier to do penance than to rejoice! If so, what does that have to say about our image of God? But I digress…

The tenor of my offerings over these last weeks comes, I think, from my conviction that although reminders of special times are important, it is our everyday devotion that will move us toward God, sort of a “one step at a time” approach, and I sometimes think that we become so familiar with certain prayers or practices that they can lose the impact of their meaning for us. Take Psalm 30, for instance. I can recite the whole thing and recognize that we are being called to repentance by the psalmist’s cry, but sometimes it sounds so dire – as if I am the worst sinner in the universe – that I refuse the import of what can be gained by reflection on the meaning and stop at the part about my guilt, thereby missing the resolution in the last verses. I miss both my responsibility to repair relationship and God’s willingness to allow it to happen. Maybe it’s because the psalmist is talking about the relationship of the nation of Israel to God rather than my person. Thus, I come to my point. I find in Lynn Bauman’s translation of Psalm 30 a recognition both of my responsibility for my unworthy actions and an acknowledgment of God’s willingness to hear my longing for the benevolent embrace of forgiveness and love. It only takes the effort of silence to recognize the possibility. Listen to this text below with your heart wide open.

Lord, I am calling to you again, from the depths; in this place of despair hear my voice. Listen, listen, if you will, for I am crying. If you were to note everything, all missteps and offenses, none of us could stand before you uncondemned. But always, always you forgive, and make us whole again, and so we stand in awe before you, waiting. My whole being waits for you, my God, listening for your presence. I long to hear your voice again, speaking. So like a watchman who anticipates the crack of dawn, my heart waits for the first-light of your word. Listen, listen, wait in silence listening for the One from whom all-mercy flows, who is the secret source of our redemption, and the healing of the wounds our sins have caused. (Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p. 334)

 

 

 

 

 

Joy in the Morning

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dancing, joy, Lectionary, lunch with the psalms, mourning, praise, psalm, Psalm 30, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

One of my favorite moments of the week is really a half hour. It happens every Tuesday noon at our weekly “Lunch with the Psalms” offering at the Sophia Center. As it has evolved, nobody brings a lunch. Rather we just “chew on” the psalm of the day from the lectionary for the Eucharist. We look at different translations, reading reflectively and comparing word choices, then considering the meaning and applications – sometimes for our world and sometimes for our personal lives. Sometimes we just bask in the language itself.

Yesterday there were only two of us present for this weekly feast but, as we often remember that “where two or three are gathered,” Christ says, “there I am in the midst of them,” it was delightful. Our consideration was Psalm 30 and in one of the alternate translations we chuckled at the part that sounded like a teenager addressing God but were caught in a different way with the vivid lines that expressed a more mature relationship. I decided it would be worth sharing the entire text here today, followed by the most evocative lines of commentary, in hopes that you might share our experience of God’s faithful servant,  the psalmist, in the vicissitudes of life and know again the constancy of God’s care.

It is you I praise, my God. You took me by the hand to lift me high up off the ground. You did not let my adversaries trample over me. O God, when I called out to you, you heard my cry for help and nursed me back to health again. I was dying and you revived me. It is you who saved my life when I was spiraling down. Let everyone who serves you praise the sacred name we know and now confess. If indeed you are ever angry, God, it flashes out for one brief moment and then is gone, but your kindness never fades even for an instant. It is life itself. Tears may wash me through the night, but when the morning breaks your joy awaits.

Once in great prosperity, with grace abounding, foolishly I said, “I will never be disturbed. I am as strong and sure as any mountain.” But suddenly, it was as if you were not there. It was as though your face had turned away. I found myself in deep despair. I called, I cried, I begged for pity, Lord. I argued with you. “God,” I said, “What good would it do you if I vanished into death? And would the dust that’s left when I am gone keep promise or speak your praise? Lord, listen, hear and help me now,” I pled and prayed.

Then suddenly, you turned my mourning into dancing, you stripped the rags of grief away and wrapped me round with your astounding joy. Now from my heart there pours unceasing song, a voice with music and with praise, that will sing on to you forever. (Psalm 30)

Question: The contrast between depression and despair and joy are great in this psalm. What is the experience of joy? Is it simply that the problems of life are resolved in your favor, or is there something more and deeper than this?

The Dance of the Possible

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change, create, cured, Downton Abbey, future, go forward, good, happiness, hope for the future, Isaiah, Jesus, John, live from the heart, Psalm 30, rejoice, resolution, risking, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, transformation

Today on my trek to the kitchen for coffee I was grateful for conversation already in progress there about last evening’s finale of Downton Abbey. Every relationship was either happily resolved or at least sufficiently hinted at so that no one was “left out in the cold.” After six seasons of trial and error, distress and turnabout, the acceptance of change and hope for the future provided a fitting and worthy conclusion.

With that smile of remembrance I proceeded to my daily task which seems now as hopeful as the coming spring in every text I encounter. I see connection in it all but perhaps it is simply the fact of today being Monday that has brought such willingness to greet the day. Below is the collage; see if it holds together in any coherent way.

1. Isaiah 65: 17-21 begins with God saying Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create…
2. Psalm 30 sings of transformation because of God’s mercy: You have changed my mourning into dancing; O Lord, my God, forever I will give you thanks.
3. The verse before the gospel urges and then promises: Seek good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord will be with you.
4. The gospel (JN 4: 43-54) tells the story of the royal official whose son is cured simply by a word of Jesus. As a result he and his whole household came to believe.
5. To that alternation of God’s action and the resultant good effect on humanity, I add a Monday word from Jan Phillips that pushes toward the future  – first a prayer (Wake me from my sleep and rouse me/ break through my dreams like a bird/ Be the voice that guides me/ Let your kindness flow through me day and night.) and then a reflection on personal spiritual authority that takes me back to the beginning after the end of Downton Abbey. She writes:

When you think of the people who have inspired you, changed your thinking, altered the course of your life, are they not the ones who spoke and lived from the heart? Are they not the ones who stand before you with the courage to simply be who they are, to share their visions, their struggles, their fears? This is the stuff of spiritual authority – this transparency, this risking, this willingness to say, “It’s a new frontier here, and not one of us has a map, but with what we know together, we can surely make it.”   (No Ordinary Time, p. 24)

So let us go forward in hope!

Hope on the Horizon

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God, heavens, Isaiah, Jesus, John, new consciousness, newness, Psalm 30, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The readings this morning are quite helpful for those of us who are beginning to think – after a night of snow and sleet with high winds – that winter will never end. It all starts in the first line from Isaiah the prophet whose message from God is, “Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind.” Isaiah’s description of this “new earth’ continues and is enhanced by Psalm 30 which sings praise to God for having rescued the faithful ones and by the story in John’s gospel of the cure by Jesus of the royal official’s son. But, wait. Back up a moment. Aren’t we still living on this same old earth? And, even though Pluto has been downgraded in status, aren’t all – or most – of the planets and stars still intact in “the heavens” – or is Isaiah talking about THE heaven, the place we’ll be living after this?

I may sound a bit facetious here, but the meaning of this prophecy and the way we see its fulfillment in Christ are, most assuredly, about something more than what is taking place on the physical plane. Often, however, it is on this level that we continually choose to live, failing to notice deeper meaning. Jesus sounded a little grumpy even as he was attending to the long-distance healing of the royal official’s son.  When he was asked to heal the boy his first response was, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” Was he able to heal the son? Of course. Was he willing? Yes. I think, though, that it must’ve been hard for him to be working among a whole population of literalists. He was on earth to facilitate the coming into being of a new consciousness, the only way that the earth and heavens can truly become new – by loving God and neighbor and thus coming to the unity that God had in mind when the “first” earth and heavens were created.

I’m fortunate to have many opportunities to participate in conversations with people whose focus is the possibility of such newness. We wonder sometimes about the convergence lately of scientific and spiritual thought. We are encouraged by the amount of sharing in interdenominational gatherings of Christians and those of other faith traditions. Sometimes we muse on why so many new discoveries in science and religion (archeologically and otherwise) have been made in our lifetime. Are we perhaps ready to go to that deeper place? In the face of terrible trauma on earth and in human life are we ready to move to forgiveness of the past, willing to embrace “our neighbors” without distinction, able to see that our salvation is in love and love alone?

There seems no time like the present to embrace this hope for newness.