I’ve always loved the call of Isaiah. It has so much grandeur with God seated on his throne, so much detail with the hem of God’s robe filling the temple. When the seraphim glorify God with the resounding Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts”), incense fills the air and everything shakes like it’s all going to come roaring down.
Isaiah is scared out of his wits, of course. He knows he’s seen too much, and can only think about how unworthy he is to be there. He remembers when the evil thoughts of his heart became words in his mouth. He’s a man of unclean lips. Rather too helpfully, one of the seraphim picks up a live coal from the altar, so red-hot he has to carry it with tongs, and touches that unclean mouth. That’ll sear away those sins! So when God issues an invitation – “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” – Isaiah can now utter the classic words of humble submission, through blistered lips: “Here am I; send me!”
The apostle Paul never got his lips burned. Yet he never quite got over the fact that he had missed the boat for so many years. All of this Jesus stuff had happened while he was in Pharisee U, and by the time he got his diploma he was ready to haul every one of those Christian misfits off to prison. God had a different idea for him, however, and it took a voice from heaven and a few days of blindness for Paul to get the point. After that there were never enough days for all of the missionary work he wanted to do, so he thought of himself as one untimely born, the last of the last to whom the risen Jesus had appeared.
Simon Peter and his buddies got burned figuratively, toiling all night and coming up with nothing. All they had in their fishing nets was muck and seaweed, and now they had to put off sleep in order to wash those nets. While they were hard at work, the wandering preacher who had healed Simon’s mother-in-law showed up again. He commandeered the boats for a better view of his congregation from out on the water. So Simon wearily obliged and took him out.
After Jesus was done preaching, he told Simon to drop the nets again. Simon protested. He was bone-weary, and didn’t want more muck on those clean nets. But then he remembered his mother-in-law, and did what he was told. This time when he pulled the nets in, there were so many fish in them that the nets began to break. Wide-eyed and fully awake now, he called James and John, his partners, to bring their boat. The fish filled both boats and then some, and they began to sink. Now Simon was scared out of his wits. He, too, knew of his sins. But instead of getting hot coals, Jesus gave him reassurance: “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” They were so impressed that when they got back to shore, they left their boats and nets and fish behind and followed Jesus.
Blistered lips, untimely births, sinking ships. Does it take something that spectacular for God to get our attention? Unfortunately, it sometimes does. God often shows up when least expected. And when God does show up in all of God’s glory, it is overwhelming. But for Isaiah, Paul, and Simon – and for us – glory is tempered with grace: grace that forgives sins, that builds faith, that gives purpose to life. And in response to that grace, our only faithful response is Isaiah’s: “Here am I; send me.”
Epiphany 5: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Hearing Things
What would you do if someone came to you and said, “God spoke to me and said such-and-such”? No one has yet come to me with that statement, but I already know that I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. I’d want to hear more. If he or she was truly hearing voices, or a Voice, it would be essential to determine whether the next step is a psychiatric evaluation or spiritual direction. Just because we live in a post-Enlightenment world doesn’t mean that God is now voiceless.
The prophet Jeremiah doesn’t come right out and say that he heard a Voice, but it’s clear that he has a conversation going with God. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you,” says the word of the Lord. It’s a commission to go out and be a prophet. Like Moses, Jeremiah objects; unlike Moses, he runs out of objections pretty quickly. I’m only a boy, he says. But God replies, don’t say that! I will send you, and you will speak whatever I command you. [Note to those in my parish: God makes no reference to frontal lobe development.] Action swiftly follows words, for God touches Jeremiah’s lips and puts the words in his mouth. He got off easier than Isaiah, who had a hot glowing coal put on his lips.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knows Jeremiah better and more thoroughly that the prophet knows himself. That’s a promise that God makes to all of us, whether we like it or not. If you can make it through the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians without recalling every wedding at which you heard it read, without getting caught up in love, love, love, love, love, then you’ll hear those wonderful verses: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I am fully known.” This is the same state of being fully known that Jeremiah experienced, at the deepest and most intimate level. Most importantly, it is being accepted and loved at that level as well.
One of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux that I come back to again and again is “On Loving God” (De Diligendo Deo). In it he talks about the four degrees of love. The fourth degree, which few souls on this side of heaven attain, is loving oneself for the sake of God. It is to be totally immersed in God, to fully know as we are fully known. As Bernard says of such blessed people, “they are wholly immersed in that sea of eternal light and bright eternity.”
The danger in being so blessed – or in hearing voices – is that we can become transfixed on our vertical relationship with God. But that is not enough. We are called to love God and our neighbor. The relationship needs to be both vertical and horizontal. As Teresa of Ávila once wrote, no doubt thinking about her fractious convent, it’s a lot easier to tell if you’re growing in love of your neighbor than growing in love of God. It’s a lesson that’s hard to learn, and one that people don’t like to hear. Jeremiah was friendless because of his prophecies. Jesus was almost thrown over a cliff by the hometown crowd. Only that connection with God, that being fully known, kept them going. Sometimes it is only the promise of being full known, being fully loved, that will sustain us. “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
4 Epiphany: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30.
The prophet Jeremiah doesn’t come right out and say that he heard a Voice, but it’s clear that he has a conversation going with God. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you,” says the word of the Lord. It’s a commission to go out and be a prophet. Like Moses, Jeremiah objects; unlike Moses, he runs out of objections pretty quickly. I’m only a boy, he says. But God replies, don’t say that! I will send you, and you will speak whatever I command you. [Note to those in my parish: God makes no reference to frontal lobe development.] Action swiftly follows words, for God touches Jeremiah’s lips and puts the words in his mouth. He got off easier than Isaiah, who had a hot glowing coal put on his lips.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” God knows Jeremiah better and more thoroughly that the prophet knows himself. That’s a promise that God makes to all of us, whether we like it or not. If you can make it through the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians without recalling every wedding at which you heard it read, without getting caught up in love, love, love, love, love, then you’ll hear those wonderful verses: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I am fully known.” This is the same state of being fully known that Jeremiah experienced, at the deepest and most intimate level. Most importantly, it is being accepted and loved at that level as well.
One of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux that I come back to again and again is “On Loving God” (De Diligendo Deo). In it he talks about the four degrees of love. The fourth degree, which few souls on this side of heaven attain, is loving oneself for the sake of God. It is to be totally immersed in God, to fully know as we are fully known. As Bernard says of such blessed people, “they are wholly immersed in that sea of eternal light and bright eternity.”
The danger in being so blessed – or in hearing voices – is that we can become transfixed on our vertical relationship with God. But that is not enough. We are called to love God and our neighbor. The relationship needs to be both vertical and horizontal. As Teresa of Ávila once wrote, no doubt thinking about her fractious convent, it’s a lot easier to tell if you’re growing in love of your neighbor than growing in love of God. It’s a lesson that’s hard to learn, and one that people don’t like to hear. Jeremiah was friendless because of his prophecies. Jesus was almost thrown over a cliff by the hometown crowd. Only that connection with God, that being fully known, kept them going. Sometimes it is only the promise of being full known, being fully loved, that will sustain us. “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
4 Epiphany: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Making Comments
If you want to comment on any of these blog entries, it's easy. At the bottom of the entry you'll see # comments. Click on this and a comment page shows up. Type in your comment and preview it if you like. You can sign your name or use Anonymous. Before you can post the comment, you'll have to type the wavy letters in the space provided (which proves that there's a real human being involved). That's all there is to it! You might start a conversation or discussion. And the author (me) will know that someone in cyberspace is reading. I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say!
Monday, January 18, 2010
We Are All One Body
Three views of the unity of people of faith are given to us this week. In Nehemiah all those who have returned to Jerusalem from exile are standing in the rebuilt city as Ezra reads the book of the law to them. It’s a book they no longer understand, so a group of translators with unpronounceable names interpret as Ezra reads. The law they hear is one of promise but also judgment, and they weep.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul compares the church, the Body of Christ, to a human body. Just as no part of a human can go it on its own, or ignore the other parts, so the Body of Christ is made up of interdependent members. The Corinthians were a notoriously fractious group, and Paul is anxious to convince them that they really need one another. Immediately after Sunday’s passage comes the wonderful paean to love in chapter 13, which we’ll get to hear next week.
Finally, Jesus returns to his home and is invited to speak at the synagogue on the Sabbath. This won’t turn out too well, as we’ll also see next week, but for now everything is going smoothly. “Hometown Boy Makes Good,” the Nazareth Hawk Eye editor might be thinking.
Three views of people of faith, all of which interlock with one another. Unity is the common denominator in Nehemiah. All the people gathered together in the square. The ears of all the people were attentive as Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people. They all stood up, they all said “amen, amen,” they all wept. The writer is stressing the corporate character of what went on. Is this hyperbole? Perhaps – although if you’ve seen images of Middle Eastern men bowing in unison in mosques, it may not be far from the mark.
Even in unity there is diversity, however, and where people are different, some will inevitably think that they are better and more indispensable than others. That’s the battle Paul was fighting in Corinth. By using the human body as a metaphor, he created an easily understood appeal for interdependence. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks writes about a neurological condition where parts of the body are no longer recognized as “self.” One man kept falling out of bed because he tried to throw his “alien” leg on the floor. I’m really glad that I’m not at a church that works that way!
The most wonderful verse in this week’s Gospel is, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on [Jesus].” That completes the view of people of Christian faith: eyes fixed on Jesus. With eyes fixed on Jesus, we truly see the Body of Christ. We see the Scripture being fulfilled in our hearing. We see how God has appointed apostles, prophets, teachers in the church, gifts of healing, forms of leadership, forms of assistance, and the like. We see each part of the church as self rather than aliens. We don’t all bow in unison – at least not Episcopalians! – yet the union and unity we share in Christ remains. In this month of parish annual meetings, that is something to celebrate.
Third Sunday after Epiphany: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul compares the church, the Body of Christ, to a human body. Just as no part of a human can go it on its own, or ignore the other parts, so the Body of Christ is made up of interdependent members. The Corinthians were a notoriously fractious group, and Paul is anxious to convince them that they really need one another. Immediately after Sunday’s passage comes the wonderful paean to love in chapter 13, which we’ll get to hear next week.
Finally, Jesus returns to his home and is invited to speak at the synagogue on the Sabbath. This won’t turn out too well, as we’ll also see next week, but for now everything is going smoothly. “Hometown Boy Makes Good,” the Nazareth Hawk Eye editor might be thinking.
Three views of people of faith, all of which interlock with one another. Unity is the common denominator in Nehemiah. All the people gathered together in the square. The ears of all the people were attentive as Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people. They all stood up, they all said “amen, amen,” they all wept. The writer is stressing the corporate character of what went on. Is this hyperbole? Perhaps – although if you’ve seen images of Middle Eastern men bowing in unison in mosques, it may not be far from the mark.
Even in unity there is diversity, however, and where people are different, some will inevitably think that they are better and more indispensable than others. That’s the battle Paul was fighting in Corinth. By using the human body as a metaphor, he created an easily understood appeal for interdependence. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks writes about a neurological condition where parts of the body are no longer recognized as “self.” One man kept falling out of bed because he tried to throw his “alien” leg on the floor. I’m really glad that I’m not at a church that works that way!
The most wonderful verse in this week’s Gospel is, “The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on [Jesus].” That completes the view of people of Christian faith: eyes fixed on Jesus. With eyes fixed on Jesus, we truly see the Body of Christ. We see the Scripture being fulfilled in our hearing. We see how God has appointed apostles, prophets, teachers in the church, gifts of healing, forms of leadership, forms of assistance, and the like. We see each part of the church as self rather than aliens. We don’t all bow in unison – at least not Episcopalians! – yet the union and unity we share in Christ remains. In this month of parish annual meetings, that is something to celebrate.
Third Sunday after Epiphany: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21.
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