The Heals and Toes of God’s Coming Reign

“The Spirit is moving farther and farther from the centers of power and propriety toward those most victimized by the empire.”

(Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope)

For years I was privileged to share ministry with an organist of international acclaim and accomplishment who was, at the same time, among the humblest of friends. Having preceded me by decades in the chancel of this historic church, his tenure there continued beyond my own 19. Countless sanctuaries across the country are filled with the music of his students - congregations who never heard Carl’s name but who were nonetheless blessed by his pedagogical and artistic excellence. Not merely a musician who happened to play in a church, Carl was a church musician who was attuned to the movements of worship - its surprises and inspirations - and responded to them as the Spirit led. As I acknowledged at his funeral a few years ago, Carl was my pastor, though he surely would have balked at the attribution. In the wordless eloquence of music, he proclaimed the gospel in transformational ways. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, sometimes improvisationally and sometimes according to the massive scores he had reproduced and taped together and positioned on the music rack, Carl reliably elevated whatever I might dribble out from the pulpit up to within close sight of heaven. Quite often, in ways that give fresh and tangible meaning to the overworn, increasingly cloying phrase, his literally were the “hands and feet of Jesus” that transported us over its threshold.

I was struck, when I had the disciplined patience to listen carefully, how often all that vitality was carried by his feet, sliding over the peddles with deceptively subtle power. Most of the time, the fingers ignited the flash and fizz. Their sprints and pirouettes, their trills and trumpeting command of the melody garnered most of our aural attention. Only rarely did we notice that, for all the noteworthy agility of the fingers, the heft of the music was borne by the feet; that without them, the notes prancing above them would be shallow, thin, and reedy. One could stand and watch and be mesmerized by the hands dancing upon the keys, while all the time, virtually hidden from view by console and bench, were the feet, moving the measures to their compositional resolution. Given that one of Carl’s rituals of grace was to polish the shoes of his students before their senior recital, I think he understood this better than I.

I thought of Carl and his laboring feet as I reflected afresh on the Christmas story. As Luke unfolds the story, the cast of characters is striking. The “where” and the “who” and the “among whom” is notable for what is missing. There are no “important” people - no “movers and shakers”, no rich and powerful influencers. There is no castle or Capitol, no prestigious address. There are only peasants and poor in a marginal town, laborers and lambs, an old lady and a young girl, and their husbands who followed rather than led.

“It’s a strange way to change the world,” we might say to God. And revealing, as Kelley Nikondeha hints in the quotation above. “God is working his purpose out,” the old hymn almost metronomically sings, but hardly in the gears and engines we might expect. Through the “irrelevant poor” and peripheral,

according to Luke, rather than the name-recognized and volubly “powerful.”

“But what about the kings?” someone will surely object. “Surely their presence counters the claim.”

Of course the answer is in the clarification that the magi in Matthew’s telling were scholars, not kings, and “not from around here” at that. Foreigners and academics - adjectives neither of which would afford them credence today.

We in the church could benefit from reading this precious story with a different set of eyes - one’s not blinded by the celebrity politicians we love to trail around after like obsequious sycophants, thirstily lapping up any drivel of “significance” they might leak out in a shallow puddle behind them. We have become addicted to the center, to the klieg lights, to the loud, to the prestigious. Having given up on persuasion, we have, like the tyrants of every generational empire, settled for coercion. One of the most dangerous places to stand today is between us church people and a news camera, or a politician, oozing facile moralities and certainties about God’s approbations and disapprovals.

Meanwhile, God strikes a match and lights a candle in the bleakness of the periphery, among the utilitarian creatures and common folk where most of us have forgotten - or would never think - to look. And from there, with them, sets about to change the world.

God changing the world with the pedals and the feet; 

Never mind what the hands are playing.

It is Hot Here

In recent days I posted on Facebook the news that I had placed first in an international writing competition sponsored by a cultural group in Spello, Italy.  It was, of course, a rich honor that I savor.  The parameters of the contest limited prose submissions to a single page, double-spaced.  Of course, by sharing the news of the award, I opened myself to the inevitable requests to read the winning piece.  With no small amount of humility, then, I reprint it below, affording the reader the opportunity to argue with the judges.  It is, as they rightly discerned, a dark piece, but ultimately a hopeful one.  As far as I am concerned, it is that hope which is far more important than the prose.  If, then, you find any inspiration to join me in that hopefulness, that would be more precious to me than the prize money.  With that, then - keeping in mind that it was written in August - the submission:

It is hot here.  

That isn’t unusual in these latter days of summer, but the heat is compounded by extended drought.  It has not rained for weeks.  The grass browns and refuses to grow.  The wildflowers drip their color.  The sunflowers bow their heads, no longer able to seek the sun.  Great cracks cleave the soil.  Across the road, the corn, for which this farmland is famous, is shriveling.  The rivers, once flowing and then reduced to simply muddy soil, are now but hardened dirt.  No longer navigable by boat, we walk there.

It is hot here.  And dry.  And all of us are withering.

I am talking not just about the climate, but about the cultural climate as well in which nothing has the relational breath to grow.  Fecundity is yesterday’s virtue.  The present season is loud, but thoughtless; roiling but stifling.  Rhetorical flames scorch and savage, and the cracks pull wider, deepening.

It is hot here.  And suffocatingly dry.  We, too, are cleaving.

Summertime should be the season when the promissory notes of spring come due.  We should be plucking and savoring the nurtured and nourished harvest.  Instead we shelter away, avoiding the yellowed leaves and wrinkling fruit of our gardens and orchards and communities, praying for rain.

Rain from the clouds, and cooling rain from each other.  In the meantime, we are withering.

 

And then I recall that the native plants in the prairie – the species with deep roots adapted through the centuries to the vagaries of climate and diverse abuse – depend upon occasional fires to clear invasive encroachments and crack open protective seed shells so that new life can flourish.

We pray, then, for rain; and for roots anchored that deep, and for seeds of new life liberated by the fires that encircle us.

We pray that fecundity - yesterday’s virtue – might yet be tomorrow’s hope.

A Paradoxical Gaudete

It is the 3rd Sunday of Advent, a mark of seasonal time traditionally labeled as “Joy.”  It is a poignant juxtaposition.

This weekend our small congregation of family convened at the south Texas graveside where an open grave would receive my mother’s ashes.  Together contemplated the immensity of the moment - the profundity of the finality; verbalized a few remembrances, read a couple of scripture verses, joined hands in a prayer, lowered the precious box, and accepted the offered shovel.  Each of us took a turn, replacing the soil that had been broken into a furrow to receive this seed of eternal life.  Scoop by scoop, a final scrape and a smoothing, and then the awkward silence of completion.  A few more words, then taking our seats back in the car, we drove away.  

We have thought a lot about this conflictual transition - individually and collectively.  There is, of course, the chasmic loss - of routine and companionship for our Dad after 70 years of marriage; of anchoring, circumscribing maternal love for my brother and me.  Like turning, shifting tiles of a kaleidoscope our orientation has not yet settled into a new pattern.  If it ever will.  

And yet pushing against this tumbling void is a grateful experience of peace.  For a lifetime Mother nursed a body that was rarely a friend and miserably often was an active enemy.  Without belaboring the details, she bore it courageously, graciously, tenaciously.  She once enumerated the surgeries she had undergone through the years.  It was an extensive list.  She suffered, though few would know it except in these latter months.  Hardly a tragic figure, Mother saw herself as the most fortunate person alive.  A constellation of deep faith, exuberant joy, creativity and nourishing attention, she routinely drank the nectar of happiness squeezed from the stones of circumstance.  If she hurt along the way, that, she would have adjudged, was small enough price to pay.  

But she hurt, and we knew it.  Collectively we ached on her behalf.

Among the traditional readings for this roadside pause in Advent are verses from the prophet Isaiah.  Historically they were addressed to the exiled people of Israel, aching to return home.  The words describe the landscape of the spirit as well as the terrain separating where they were from where they longed to be.  They are, I know, corporate words of passage and promise.  

But suddenly, this time around, they are acutely personal ones as well.  No longer words of far off and hoped for redemption, I hear them now as promise fulfilled; assurance satisfied - a highway not only cleared but traveled; a stream in the desert buoyantly floated down.  With joy, indeed.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;

the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus  it shall blossom abundantly 

and rejoice with joy and shouting.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,

the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the Lord,

the majesty of our God.

Strengthen the weak hands 

and make firm the feeble knees. 

Say to those who are of a fearful heart,

“Be strong, do not fear!

Here is your God.

He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense.

He will come and save you.” 

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,

and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; 

then the lame shall leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness 

and streams in the desert; 

the burning sand shall become a pool 

and the thirsty ground springs of water;

the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;

the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 

A highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Holy Way;

the unclean shall not travel on it,

but it shall be for God’s people;

no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 

No lion shall be there,

nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;

they shall not be found there,

but the redeemed shall walk there. 

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return 

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

(Isaiah 35:1-10)

We will light today this 3rd candle of Advent - not one of the purple ones of elusively opaque and enigmatic hope, but the pink one proclaiming realized joy.  Whatever Mary might have thought of that divergent color, Merita would have loved it.  Pink was her favorite color. 

Strength and restoration.  The grace of new life.  The Holy Way the prophet bespoke, paved with the petals of gladness and joy, from which sorrow and sighing have fled away.  

With gratitude and peace we light this candle.  Those, and perhaps I can even say it amidst the enduring grief,

Joy.