Tags
be not afraid, burdens, experience, healing, Isaiah, Luke, participate, psalm 85, Scripture, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, yoke
One could say I’m rather stuck on a theme carried over from last week’s messages as I see and hear short but powerful texts from Scripture. It’s the power of words that makes me stop and say to no one in particular in the ethers of my bedroom, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before!” At other times it’s the tenor of the entire cluster of readings that wakes me up to the obvious, reminding me of something I have most likely known for decades. Both experiences speak this morning.
- Throughout today’s texts (IS 35: 1-10, PS 85: 10-14 and LK 5:17-26) there is a consistent feeling of promise. God is working on physical wholeness and psycho-spiritual healing for all creation – not just humanity, and the urging not to be afraid is palpable. Assurances abound that God will do this!
- In the “never heard it before” category is the gospel acclamation that says, “Behold the king will come, the Lord of the earth, and he himself will lift the yoke of our capacity.” I learned long ago that when Jesus told the people to take his yoke upon them, he was speaking metaphorically of the burdens that they carried, those he shared with us being lighter than those demanded by the laws of the religious leadership. Not so long ago I heard capacity defined not just as “the maximum amount that something can contain” like water in a bottle or pain the body. Rather another nuance was added, i.e., “the ability or power to do, experience or understand something.” For me, that moved the definition from one of passivity to active participation. This morning I am aware, therefore, that not only are my burdens light because I do not carry them alone but, in addition, I have the offer of laying them down totally if I am willing to work on expanding my capacity for living fully.
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Once a month now at the Sophia Center we have a noon gathering to ponder the lectionary psalm of the day. A few months ago it happened that a section of the longest psalm in the Bible (PS 119) showed up on our meeting day. As I thought about how to present this snippet of a greater whole, I found my answer in a section of commentary that said, “Experiences are often repeated again and again. As we go over the same territory learning in new ways, truth becomes grounded…” The six chosen verses for that day were in the same section but not tightly sequential. Our normal practice is to read what appears just once through, either by one person, antiphonally (alternately by two groups), or all together. I decided to experiment by having each participant read one verse that we then commented upon before going on to the next one. The result was quite profound. There were six of us present that day. Six different voices describing the same sentiment deepened the meaning and solidified it in our hearts. And then the next verse built upon that deepening.
Today Christians throughout the world celebrate one of the major feasts of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Known as “The Assumption” it is one of those tenets of Christianity which is not proven by Scripture but is rather “taken on faith.” That Mary was “taken into heaven, body and soul” seemed a logical conclusion to the life of the one that the Council of Ephesus in the year 431 had called Theotokos (God-bearer), the mother of Christ who was believed to have been “conceived without sin.”
In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared a feast celebrating Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as a dogma of the Catholic faith. There are many feasts of Mary and this one was not a new thought; it’s reality had been celebrated by Christians with rituals from as early as the sixth century. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven is, ironically, something “assumed” since there is no concrete evidence of the fact that Mary, like Jesus, was taken body and soul into heaven at the time of her death, because of her esteemed role in the birth and life of Jesus in this earthly realm. It is one of those instances that the Church follows the sensus fidelium, a time when “from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals.” The Pope was, in a sense, just certifying what people had believed and practiced for centuries.
Yesterday I was speaking with someone who had participated in last weekend’s workshop at The Sophia Center for Spirituality about how simple, and yet how effective, the activities were. We concluded that it was a combination of the engaging manner of Jan Phillips, the presenter, that engendered trust by her honest sharing and the resultant willingness of the group members to act in like manner that carried the day. The focus of the sharing, a consistent energetic current that undergirded such success, was the life experiences of the participants and how those experiences had been transformative in some way. The genius of the process was that the transformation came from the simple exercise of speaking our truths aloud. Happy or sad, difficult or easy, long past or recent, we recounted our life events as we saw them and recognized ourselves in the eyes and hearts of the willing hearers in our midst. We found our creativity in the extraordinary poems that we wrote in 10 minutes, prompted by a series of necessarily included words like a color, a location, a body of water, a person…We moved our bodies in a simple circle dance and found it easier to do in the singing and connecting of hands and smiling eyes. In short, we realized our common humanity and celebrated our desire to reach out from that place to a world in need of our blessing and gifts.
Over the past 48 hours I have had the opportunity to spend time with two women whose fathers died this past summer. Last night my own father appeared in a dream which I only remember for his passing presence and the appearance of his wedding ring – not on his hand but clearly his – a strong symbol in his life and the lives of our family.
Reading today’s assigned Scripture texts for liturgy made me wish everyone – from the famous to the infamous – would pay attention to the messages. First we have Paul pleading with the Philippians to be united and then in what we actually call the psalm response the psalmist takes a humble tone that might actually turn things around if all were to act out of it. I imagine it as a conversation between God and us today. See if that makes sense and what might be the result if everyone took it to heart.
Not awakened by any word of Scripture this morning, I will pass on only a brief sentence said once (or probably many times) by Emily Dickinson – a perfect beginning to another round of work or study or dreaming new dreams:
