Having started with the theme of poverty, moved through that of probability, we move to that of possibility. In Christian terms, we understand possibility as hope. Hope enables us to think in open terms, that all things are possible with God. We can take risks, trusting that God is with us through our successes and our failures. The sky is the limit. Beyond that, the Christian hope is the resurrection — that life promised us through baptism.
[reading of the Annunciation]
The Feast of the Annunciation is 25 March. It is one of those moments when we momentarily leave the solemnity of Lent and we turn backward or forward, whichever way you’d like to go, to the story of the Annunciation. Hearing the familiar story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary always comes as a shock in the midst of Lent, but given that tradition observes the Annunciation nine months before Christmas, we experience this delicious juxtaposition annually. (In 2035 and 2046 we will celebrate Easter Sunday in lieu of the Annunciation, but who’s waiting?)
Yet the story of Mary’s, ‘Yes,’ to God, and that of our Lenten journey find common ground because both speak of saying, ‘Yes,’ to that which is unknown. Both speak of the soul’s journey on an unknown path that can pierce our hearts, while bringing us a step closer to redemption.
Gabriel comes to Mary with the familiar words of greeting, ‘Hail, o favoured one.’ We know scripture well enough to remember that any angelic greeting with those words signals impending upheaval in the listener’s life. Gabriel’s greeting is no different. We know well his announcement of God’s outrageous plan for Mary as much as we recall her response, ‘Here I am’—that, in its simplicity, is so remarkable, heartfelt and unexpected.
Annunciations are fearsome and potentially dangerous things. Annunciations speak of God’s way for us and that way is some times contrary to our reason or desires. Mary’s simple response astounds us because, even after hearing and listening to the outrageous plan God has for her, she responds out of faith: ‘Here I am.’
Her response is reminiscent of other biblical persons of faith who have responded with the same confidence, yet not knowing where God was leading them. There is Moses, who, upon hearing God’s plans for Israel, asserts: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.’ There is Samuel who asks to hear more saying, ‘Speak, Lord….’ There is Isaiah, who assures God he will still be there, ‘I will listen as one who is taught, and given ears to hear.’
Mary listens in her bones. Despite Gabriel’s message, which portends potential havoc for her life, Mary trusts. The Gospel of Luke states she pondered these things in her heart. Whatever she heard and understood from Gabriel she took the message deep into her heart and let it rest in her soul until it was ready to be born of God.
What a response of faith and trust hers is, particularly when she will later hear another annunciation even more troubling than the first. Think of the presentation of Jesus in the temple when Simeon tells her, ‘A sword will pierce your heart.’ This second annunciation disturbs greatly because it speaks of a reality fulfilled, the birth—and death—of Jesus. Surely there are moments of panic and worry. Yet Mary’s second response is as tranquil and confident as the first, ‘Let it be.’
With each progressive annunciation, astonishingly, Mary welcomes what is being revealed for her. She learns more about her life and who she is called to be and what road she walks. Through a series of progressive ‘Yes’s, each one leading her deeper and deeper into God’s desire, Mary enters into her true identity and becomes her true self. God’s word always calls us more fully to being. Mary’s ‘Yes’ leads to the cross, and then to the resurrection — through her suffering and joy, Mary remains faithful to her initial response to God, ‘Here I am.’
There is another piece to Mary’s ‘Yes.’ Remember how Gabriel assures her that ‘nothing is impossible with God.’ She is not alone. Before Mary can say ‘Yes,’ she needs a human voice to address her and human arms to embrace her. That person is Elizabeth who, through her own improbable experience, gives Mary the freedom to cry out the Magnificat, that great hymn of reversals.
Did Mary really understand when the angel came to her that her heart would be broken, a sword thrust through it, a cross marked on it? Did she know what would happen when the angel Gabriel came to her and announced that she would bear Jesus, the Son of God?
I don’t think so. She, like many of us, started out on a journey of which she did not know the outcome. She, like many of us, did not know where she was going or what it would mean. Perhaps she found out a little in her walking the way. Whatever the case, she trusted.
Though the Mary we meet in today’s Gospel is a young woman, the betrothed of Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth, she still takes on the unimaginable. Alone she hears deep within her someone, something pulling at her heart, calling her to do and be what is unthinkable.
Mary, God’s favored one, becomes a woman of hope, because, in the face of hard and fearful times, she said Yes to God, a Yes that would draw her far beyond her imagination, capacities and understanding.
+
It is no big thing to be hopeful when things are going well, when we have a meaningful job, when our relationships with those we love are rich and joyful, when we are in good health, when the world is at peace. But when everything seems to be out of alignment, then it is harder to hope and convey it to those around us. And, in times when we are waiting for what we don’t know, it is even harder to know how to hope, how to pray or even how to say yes to God.
Yet the hope of which Mary is an example is the Yes we say to God and to ourselves precisely when all around us are fear, grief and uncertainty. Hope is the freedom to live with love and compassion in the midst of hard things that are out of our control. Hope is the capacity to care when the caring will break our heart. Hope sets us free to care and care and care again, to keep vigil in those circumstances when grief threatens to overwhelm us and those around us.
Perhaps these days Mary is the mother of hope because she is the one who brings to us this much-needed word. Hope is an active, chain breaking energy. Hopeful people move out and change things, take risks and are able to sacrifice their good for a larger good. Mary’s Yes comes from her heart of hope…. You, O God, have remembered your promise of mercy, the promise you made to our forebears, to Abraham and Sara and their children forever.
+
While not the only way to respond to God’s call, I have some thoughts about the way to say YES to this call, and to make a difference.
Sometimes we must live and serve faithfully and not be captured by our desire for results. It is like being willing to pray for healing for someone who will soon die.
Sometimes we are called not to be the solution but to be a sign, a witness to God’s dream for the world. When we pray and work for peace and the end of violence, we have to be ready to witness by word and action, take risks, and yet not see much happen as a result of our witness and prayer. We need to trust that God will use our sign.
Sometimes we are called simply to show up, to be present when we can do nothing. It is like being called to sit for hours by a friend who has just lost her child; befriending an alcoholic whose entire life has been lost and who has to start all over again; being in solidarity, sharing in the struggles and hope of people impoverished and abandoned. . .simply being present, silently some times when no spoken word, no action is adequate.
Sometimes we are called to be prophets: that is, to know and believe deeply in our hearts the Dream of God, and to live and struggle for that dream among the people God calls us to serve. As in the case of a small mustard seed, or a pinch of yeast, God can and will make something of this small witness of ours. I think of a small group of Palestinians and Israelis who for many years have believed in and worked for reconciliation and peace between their two peoples, and who are still at it even in these dark times.
+
Are we not all like Mary, making our way along paths uncharted?
What keeps us, like Mary, going on those roads whose ways are not clear to us and whose outcomes are unknown? Do we have the same sort of trust that Mary did—a trust that is not based on an awful lot, but on the abiding presence of God?
Can we say yes to God’s tuggings at our hearts, a ‘yes’ that is not as the sure response of having life in control, but is as a risk, as a leap into the unknown?
This sense of trust in God’s ways is a lot to ask of us, sometimes. It is hard for us sometimes to let go of that control, to take that leap into the unknown. Letting go can bring incredible pain as our roots that we have lovingly set down over time are ripped out of the ground. Yet letting go and trusting in God can help us let go of our preconceived ideas so that we may dare to hope and dream of God’s desire for us.
Something new, something wondrous, something beautiful can come of our letting go and trusting in God. When we try something new, when we let go of something old, when we grow and are transformed, we find God in our midst.
Hymn 689
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
he moved my soul to seek him seeking me;
it was not I that found, O Saviour true,
no, I was found of thee.
I find, I walk, I love, but oh,
the whole of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee:
for thou wert long beforehand with my soul,
always thou lovest me.
Part of Lent is to walk more intentionally God’s road, to go into those places we might not enter otherwise. Part of Lent is to take tentative steps toward answering God’s calls with an unconditional ‘yes.’ Part of Lent is finding those people, those places and those forms of prayer that lead to a greater trust—a trust that can undergird all that we do.
Antonio Machado has said, ‘Traveller, there is no road; the way is made by walking.’ Embarking on that journey, however, is costly. Yet as God’s chosen, we can do none other than walk, journeying on God’s road. We can do none other than trust, as did Mary. Perhaps, then, in our walking and trusting in God, we, too, can reach the point where we can answer with integrity, like Mary, Here I am… let it be. And so today we pray for the capacity to say YES to God, for hope, for the freedom not to have to flee from times or places where we or others struggle with need, fear or grief, but like Mary to be able to give of ourselves and come to know the hope that sets us free to care and care and care again.
And so poverty, probability and possibility co-exist… but of these three, the greatest is possibility, that open place where God can work within us, allowing us to do far more than we even would have imagined possible.
Questions for third meditation
Where have you let God enter your life without restriction?
When have you said YES to God, not fully knowing where it would take you? What happened?
When have you been set freed when you least expected it?
Reading for meditation: Luke 1.26-38
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spirituality. Show all posts
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Probability
Probability is playing the game, hedging one’s bets. We do things, gauging how much people will like what we have done, how successful we are, how much income it might bring us and all sorts of controls. It does not completely paralyse us as poverty may but it does clip our wings because we are too busy worrying about the outcome to allow ourselves to soar.
Long before she went off into an odd sort of mysticism, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross changed the way we accept hearing bad news, particularly that involving our death. She spoke of five stages, stages now that many wish they had never heard of! One of the stages in coming to acceptance with death is bargaining. Think of Faust, bargaining with the devil.
Sometimes people bargain because they think it will buy them time. They will bargain with God — Job’s friends figured he would, but Job knew that to do so would compromise his relationship with God. Jonah tries another tactic: he simply hedges his bets. By jumping on a ship, he thinks he can flee God. Eventually, when the ship is about to sink in a storm, he realizes that it probably is his presence that is causing the turmoil and offers to be cast overboard. He’s still betting though; maybe if he does this, he’ll be left alone. Even after getting swallowed up and spat out, he thinks he can escape God. We don’t know the end of the story; the parchment is damaged, but we do know that for all his gambling, Jonah ends up sitting under a shrub (ha qiqon, the only place where this appears), waiting for Nineveh to get its due. And when it doesn’t, he complains.
Another gambler, less directly is the rich man, sometimes called Dives.
[Luke 16.19-31]
+
The story in this gospel reading can lead us off into many different directions — asking questions about the resurrection, justification by works, punishment for one’s actions on earth. Initially, I’d like to consider how it provides us an example of someone who bargains with God when it is too late. It is a cautionary tale at the least. Once we have looked at the bargaining aspects of the story, then we can move onto the effects of bargaining on our relationship with others.
The story of the rich man and Lazarus is another story that is unique to the Gospel of Luke, though this one has its roots in Egyptian and Jewish story-telling traditions. The rich man, often called Dives, from the Latin translation of the word, ‘rich,’ and the poor man, Lazarus, whose name in Hebrew means ‘God helps’ or ‘God provides’ are opposite characters both in life and in death.
The rich man is nameless in the story, which is remarkable since one would usually think that the rich would be famous and have a name… but not in stories of God’s kindom. The rich man feasts daily — truly an extravagance for the times. If you remember the story of the prodigal son, the father runs out and kills the fatted calf for him — even the wealthy saved up such bounty for special occasions. Yet the man in this story feasts every day. His purple robes and white linen clothes also signify extreme opulence (what I call ostentatious opulence — opulence that exists for the sole purpose of being seen): the dye for the purple robes came from snails (don’t ask me how that is done); and it is assumed that the linen clothing was the man’s underclothing. Not bad. Some people have nothing while others can afford expensive underwear.
In contrast to the rich man stands, or rather lies Lazarus. This contrast is a violent one, a harsh one. Lazarus, the one whom God helps, is the only person in all the biblical parables that has a name, no small detail. His name indicates someone dependent on God. In addition, his name suggests someone who, though unrecognised by people, is dearly known and loved by God. The name also sets up a poignant detail later: the rich man shows he knows who Lazarus is.
Lazarus is beyond being dirt poor. He lies at the rich man’s gate in the hopes of receiving food, mere table scraps. He is probably crippled and has literally been thrown down, cast down at the gate. The gate is high and ornate, almost like those gates which serve as entrances to cities, temples or palaces. Lazarus is not only crippled, he is suffering. And unlike the rich man who is clothed in sumptuous apparel, Lazarus is covered with sores. His situation is as desperate and tragic as the rich man’s is full and luxurious.
Lazarus has a basic desire — to eat — even the scraps of bread which, having been used as napkins to wipe one’s face and plate, are thrown on the ground. It is unlikely the rich man responded to Lazarus’ request.
To add insult, Lazarus has to endure wild dogs, curs, licking his wounds and sores. Again, this is not a gratuitous detail: Lazarus becomes unclean and in the Jewish system of the times, to be unclean meant to be out of place and unwelcome.
But nowhere in this sad description do we read of Lazarus attempting to bargain with God. There’s none of the psalmist’s if I suffer or go to Sheol, I cannot praise you, God, any more. Lazarus somehow endures gracefully.
Then Lazarus dies. There is no mention of burial. In lieu of that, the gospel states that Lazarus is borne up immediately by angels to Abraham’s bosom, a place of safety and protection and intimacy. Lazarus goes from being a lonely sufferer at the rich man’s gate to an accepted, blessed saint at the side of Judaism’s patriarch.
The rich man also dies. The rich man has a burial — to both Roman and Jew, a proper burial was imperative for respect and cleanliness. But in death, the rich man’s stature and wealth no longer count for anything. He is in Hades, the closest equivalent to the Hebrew, Sheol. The rich man looks up and sees Lazarus at Abraham’s side. Between the two groups is a chasm neither can cross.
Yet even in death, the rich man presumes his former status. For the first time ever, he really notices Lazarus, but his noticing him is only because he wants Abraham to send Lazarus with water. The use of Lazarus’ name in his appeal suggests that the rich man knew all along who he was, making his neglect of Lazarus even worse. The rich man asks for a drop of water, a request for something small, just as small as Lazarus’ requests for crumbs. But just as there were no crumbs for Lazarus, there will be no water for the rich man. The difference is the rich man has no hope of reversing his fortune. He has sealed his own fate by his actions.
Abraham’s response to him makes it perfectly clear. You are reaping what you sowed. You did not care for your neighbour while you were living. You are not condemned because you were rich but because you became indifferent to your neighbour. You ignored your neighbour, while squandering your God-given wealth on yourself.
And here is where he begins to bargain with God. He is so miserable, he sort of understands that something went wrong, enough that he wants God to send an angel to his brothers so that they do not befall the same fate. Maybe he is not bargaining for himself, but he sees that he bet and lost; maybe there is a way he can spare his brothers the same. This is when he learns that he is stuck. He lost his bet.
+
We run the risk of being the rich man ourselves. We have God-given gifts and wealth. The question we must honestly ask ourselves is what do we do with this wealth? How do we use it? Do we hedge our bets? As Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod once reminded us, what is the first cheque we write each month? Is it to God or Mastercard? If we live with our fists tight, and our cards close to our chests, hedging our bets, how can we let God in then? Do we live in a circumscribed world where everyting is predictable and safe and no one is different? And then…
Have we ignored our neighbour or have we served our neighbour? And who is our neighbour? As Anglicans, we have sisters and brothers scattered throughout the world. As Anglicans, we are connected to them through our common belief in God (a belief that, as shown by the Lambeth Conference, varies widely in its expression throughout the world). We may never know our brothers and sisters face-to-face. In some ways, that makes it easier to ignore them in the way that the rich man chose to ignore Lazarus who lay at his gate. But to do so would be also to ignore the biblical imperatives, found in both the Hebrew and Christian portions of scripture, namely, to love our neighbour.
Who is our neighbour? This morning there are neighbours in Haiti and Chile who desperately need our help. Tomorrow, they may be on the other side of the world of street. (I took notice that BROC and The Bus did not get their requested amounts in Tuesday’s town day votes; you can bet we will see the fall out of that decision.)
They are the neighbours we sometimes would like to ignore because: ‘They are far away from us, they look different from us and they are poor,’ a state of being in which none of us really wants to be. Yet they are our brothers and sisters and we are called, as children of God, as children of the light, to respond to their needs.
Nelsa Curbela of Guyaquil, Ecuador wrote:
When you choose an ideology, you can fool yourself. When you choose the poor and are one of them, you can be sure you won’t fool yourself. The reading of history depends on the place in which we locate ourselves… And we locate ourselves in and with the poor, with the cultures that are oppressed but alive, like the yeast in the dough, like the seeds that tolerate the hot sun and the desert but are ready to germinate, to flourish and provide food with the first dew and early rain that nourishes them.
In other words, when we let go of our cards, open our heart, enter into a place where we can no longer control things, we find freedom even in poverty, even in probability. There is a French proverb which says: ‘When you die, you carry in your clutched hands only that which you have given away.’
In other words, those of hymn 9:
To give and give, and give again,
what God have given thee;
to spend thyself nor count the cost;
to serve right gloriously
the God who gave all worlds that are,
and all that are to be.
That truly is letting go of a bargaining stance, one based on probability.
+
As a postscript, a slightly different approach to this question of probability, a non-bargaining approach is that of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and bathed them with her tears. She did so, not because she was trying to win his favour or pardon but because she wanted to. Somewhat problematic in our theology is the thinking: if I repent of my sins, God will forgive me. Would God never forgive me? Or is it more: If I don’t repent of my sins, I will never know God’s forgiveness which is already there? I go more with the latter thinking: God’s forgiveness is already there but we must have the disposition of heart to know to ask for that forgiveness. If we never ask, then we will never know God’s graciousness.
I can’t help but think that God desires us to let go of our fears which hold us, to stop calculating so that God can work freely in us.
But neither is probability the whole story. There is more….
Questions for second meditation
Where in your life have you taken a risk, gambled and lost?
Where have you held your cards close to your chest?
Where have you taken risks and not counted the cost?
Where was God in all this?
Readings for meditation: Luke 16.19-31; Matthew 26.6-13; Mark 14.3-9; John 12.1-8)
Long before she went off into an odd sort of mysticism, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross changed the way we accept hearing bad news, particularly that involving our death. She spoke of five stages, stages now that many wish they had never heard of! One of the stages in coming to acceptance with death is bargaining. Think of Faust, bargaining with the devil.
Sometimes people bargain because they think it will buy them time. They will bargain with God — Job’s friends figured he would, but Job knew that to do so would compromise his relationship with God. Jonah tries another tactic: he simply hedges his bets. By jumping on a ship, he thinks he can flee God. Eventually, when the ship is about to sink in a storm, he realizes that it probably is his presence that is causing the turmoil and offers to be cast overboard. He’s still betting though; maybe if he does this, he’ll be left alone. Even after getting swallowed up and spat out, he thinks he can escape God. We don’t know the end of the story; the parchment is damaged, but we do know that for all his gambling, Jonah ends up sitting under a shrub (ha qiqon, the only place where this appears), waiting for Nineveh to get its due. And when it doesn’t, he complains.
Another gambler, less directly is the rich man, sometimes called Dives.
[Luke 16.19-31]
+
The story in this gospel reading can lead us off into many different directions — asking questions about the resurrection, justification by works, punishment for one’s actions on earth. Initially, I’d like to consider how it provides us an example of someone who bargains with God when it is too late. It is a cautionary tale at the least. Once we have looked at the bargaining aspects of the story, then we can move onto the effects of bargaining on our relationship with others.
The story of the rich man and Lazarus is another story that is unique to the Gospel of Luke, though this one has its roots in Egyptian and Jewish story-telling traditions. The rich man, often called Dives, from the Latin translation of the word, ‘rich,’ and the poor man, Lazarus, whose name in Hebrew means ‘God helps’ or ‘God provides’ are opposite characters both in life and in death.
The rich man is nameless in the story, which is remarkable since one would usually think that the rich would be famous and have a name… but not in stories of God’s kindom. The rich man feasts daily — truly an extravagance for the times. If you remember the story of the prodigal son, the father runs out and kills the fatted calf for him — even the wealthy saved up such bounty for special occasions. Yet the man in this story feasts every day. His purple robes and white linen clothes also signify extreme opulence (what I call ostentatious opulence — opulence that exists for the sole purpose of being seen): the dye for the purple robes came from snails (don’t ask me how that is done); and it is assumed that the linen clothing was the man’s underclothing. Not bad. Some people have nothing while others can afford expensive underwear.
In contrast to the rich man stands, or rather lies Lazarus. This contrast is a violent one, a harsh one. Lazarus, the one whom God helps, is the only person in all the biblical parables that has a name, no small detail. His name indicates someone dependent on God. In addition, his name suggests someone who, though unrecognised by people, is dearly known and loved by God. The name also sets up a poignant detail later: the rich man shows he knows who Lazarus is.
Lazarus is beyond being dirt poor. He lies at the rich man’s gate in the hopes of receiving food, mere table scraps. He is probably crippled and has literally been thrown down, cast down at the gate. The gate is high and ornate, almost like those gates which serve as entrances to cities, temples or palaces. Lazarus is not only crippled, he is suffering. And unlike the rich man who is clothed in sumptuous apparel, Lazarus is covered with sores. His situation is as desperate and tragic as the rich man’s is full and luxurious.
Lazarus has a basic desire — to eat — even the scraps of bread which, having been used as napkins to wipe one’s face and plate, are thrown on the ground. It is unlikely the rich man responded to Lazarus’ request.
To add insult, Lazarus has to endure wild dogs, curs, licking his wounds and sores. Again, this is not a gratuitous detail: Lazarus becomes unclean and in the Jewish system of the times, to be unclean meant to be out of place and unwelcome.
But nowhere in this sad description do we read of Lazarus attempting to bargain with God. There’s none of the psalmist’s if I suffer or go to Sheol, I cannot praise you, God, any more. Lazarus somehow endures gracefully.
Then Lazarus dies. There is no mention of burial. In lieu of that, the gospel states that Lazarus is borne up immediately by angels to Abraham’s bosom, a place of safety and protection and intimacy. Lazarus goes from being a lonely sufferer at the rich man’s gate to an accepted, blessed saint at the side of Judaism’s patriarch.
The rich man also dies. The rich man has a burial — to both Roman and Jew, a proper burial was imperative for respect and cleanliness. But in death, the rich man’s stature and wealth no longer count for anything. He is in Hades, the closest equivalent to the Hebrew, Sheol. The rich man looks up and sees Lazarus at Abraham’s side. Between the two groups is a chasm neither can cross.
Yet even in death, the rich man presumes his former status. For the first time ever, he really notices Lazarus, but his noticing him is only because he wants Abraham to send Lazarus with water. The use of Lazarus’ name in his appeal suggests that the rich man knew all along who he was, making his neglect of Lazarus even worse. The rich man asks for a drop of water, a request for something small, just as small as Lazarus’ requests for crumbs. But just as there were no crumbs for Lazarus, there will be no water for the rich man. The difference is the rich man has no hope of reversing his fortune. He has sealed his own fate by his actions.
Abraham’s response to him makes it perfectly clear. You are reaping what you sowed. You did not care for your neighbour while you were living. You are not condemned because you were rich but because you became indifferent to your neighbour. You ignored your neighbour, while squandering your God-given wealth on yourself.
And here is where he begins to bargain with God. He is so miserable, he sort of understands that something went wrong, enough that he wants God to send an angel to his brothers so that they do not befall the same fate. Maybe he is not bargaining for himself, but he sees that he bet and lost; maybe there is a way he can spare his brothers the same. This is when he learns that he is stuck. He lost his bet.
+
We run the risk of being the rich man ourselves. We have God-given gifts and wealth. The question we must honestly ask ourselves is what do we do with this wealth? How do we use it? Do we hedge our bets? As Bishop Mary Adelia McLeod once reminded us, what is the first cheque we write each month? Is it to God or Mastercard? If we live with our fists tight, and our cards close to our chests, hedging our bets, how can we let God in then? Do we live in a circumscribed world where everyting is predictable and safe and no one is different? And then…
Have we ignored our neighbour or have we served our neighbour? And who is our neighbour? As Anglicans, we have sisters and brothers scattered throughout the world. As Anglicans, we are connected to them through our common belief in God (a belief that, as shown by the Lambeth Conference, varies widely in its expression throughout the world). We may never know our brothers and sisters face-to-face. In some ways, that makes it easier to ignore them in the way that the rich man chose to ignore Lazarus who lay at his gate. But to do so would be also to ignore the biblical imperatives, found in both the Hebrew and Christian portions of scripture, namely, to love our neighbour.
Who is our neighbour? This morning there are neighbours in Haiti and Chile who desperately need our help. Tomorrow, they may be on the other side of the world of street. (I took notice that BROC and The Bus did not get their requested amounts in Tuesday’s town day votes; you can bet we will see the fall out of that decision.)
They are the neighbours we sometimes would like to ignore because: ‘They are far away from us, they look different from us and they are poor,’ a state of being in which none of us really wants to be. Yet they are our brothers and sisters and we are called, as children of God, as children of the light, to respond to their needs.
Nelsa Curbela of Guyaquil, Ecuador wrote:
When you choose an ideology, you can fool yourself. When you choose the poor and are one of them, you can be sure you won’t fool yourself. The reading of history depends on the place in which we locate ourselves… And we locate ourselves in and with the poor, with the cultures that are oppressed but alive, like the yeast in the dough, like the seeds that tolerate the hot sun and the desert but are ready to germinate, to flourish and provide food with the first dew and early rain that nourishes them.
In other words, when we let go of our cards, open our heart, enter into a place where we can no longer control things, we find freedom even in poverty, even in probability. There is a French proverb which says: ‘When you die, you carry in your clutched hands only that which you have given away.’
In other words, those of hymn 9:
To give and give, and give again,
what God have given thee;
to spend thyself nor count the cost;
to serve right gloriously
the God who gave all worlds that are,
and all that are to be.
That truly is letting go of a bargaining stance, one based on probability.
+
As a postscript, a slightly different approach to this question of probability, a non-bargaining approach is that of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and bathed them with her tears. She did so, not because she was trying to win his favour or pardon but because she wanted to. Somewhat problematic in our theology is the thinking: if I repent of my sins, God will forgive me. Would God never forgive me? Or is it more: If I don’t repent of my sins, I will never know God’s forgiveness which is already there? I go more with the latter thinking: God’s forgiveness is already there but we must have the disposition of heart to know to ask for that forgiveness. If we never ask, then we will never know God’s graciousness.
I can’t help but think that God desires us to let go of our fears which hold us, to stop calculating so that God can work freely in us.
But neither is probability the whole story. There is more….
Questions for second meditation
Where in your life have you taken a risk, gambled and lost?
Where have you held your cards close to your chest?
Where have you taken risks and not counted the cost?
Where was God in all this?
Readings for meditation: Luke 16.19-31; Matthew 26.6-13; Mark 14.3-9; John 12.1-8)
First talk of the Quiet Day — Poverty
When I was an aspirant for Holy Orders, my sponsoring diocese had us participate in a Ministry-Study year. During that year, we were sent forth from our sponsoring parish to another one to 'try out' ordained ministry. We worked with a seasoned priest, doing whatever fit. Once a month, those of us in the process, eight when I went through, met having read a book in common, and written a paper. One of us would read the paper to the rest and we'd launch off into a discussion.
The priest with whom I worked said pretty early on, that whenever he was stuck on a sermon, he would visit someone and post visit he would get the necessary inspiration. I have always held those words in mind and so, this when the Holy Spirit (or muses) seemed recalcitrant, I was casting about. Then on Tuesday, in a conversation, I heard these three words put together — poverty, probability and possibility. Bingo! There was the thread. The original conversation focused on Sir John Smith and his Hope Institute but they work here.
POVERTY
Poverty is probably one of the most pervasive and paralysing aspects of the human condition. It is everywhere we turn; it is near and far. We struggle with Jesus’ saying that the poor will always be with us because surely that is not what God intends for creation.
I could show you any series of photographs of places in the world where there is extreme poverty and ultimately it would become numbing. Grinding poverty is like chronic pain: it wears down the soul until there is little fight or will left. Hope seems gone; God seems absent.
The images coming out of Haiti and now Chile are breathtaking in their devastation. Some of us saw just a few photos of Haiti last night but God knows, there are plenty more on television or in the paper. They are breathtaking when you think of the loss of life and the loss of potential. I don’t really think I need say more… and to show the photographs is perhaps even to descend into voyeurism.
This winter I saw a photo essay of Detroit. So much of the city now is abandoned that the local government is talking about razing the abandoned houses and moving people out of neighbourhoods if too much of one is empty. In fact, the city has lost half its population. A recent NPR report states: Drive down the Chrysler Freeway, and you see wave after wave of rotted-out, burned-out homes. Much of the city is a mausoleum of enormous, empty auto plants that need new life. It is astounding to see such landscapes in our country but we know they exist.
Then there’s the poverty that can surround us in our beautiful state of Vermont. Garret Keizer writes of Island Pond in his A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry:
‘Island Pond is like no other place on earth. Island Pond confirms no one’s belief in reincarnation: I cannot imagine anyone standing for the first time at the intersection of its main streets and thinking: “I’ve been here before.”
‘When I close my eyes and try to imagine Island Pond — or Brighton, as it is properly called — I find that no single mental picture can contain it. Instead, I see a kaleidoscopic view of discordant images — from the Old West, from Appalachia, from the blue-collar neighborhoods around Paterson, New Jersey, where I grew up, yes, from Vermont, too, turning slowly in the pale light of a mid-winter sun, and captioned with the original settlement’s name of Random. The same thing happens when I think in terms of time. Island Pond is not Lake Wobegon, “the little town that time forgot,” nor is it, as I once quipped, “the little town that time forsook,” but a town in which time has come undone. At least that’s how it seems, as one’s eyes move from the classic brick railroad station, to the boom-box-toting kinds leaning against the sheriff’s car, to the gray-haired hippies leaving the new supermarket, to the World War II tank parked outside the American Legion Hall, to the kerchief-covered heads of the women of an ever-growing religious sect that has chosen Island Pond as a good place to wait for the Apocalypse. …
‘Without a doubt, there is something depressed and depressing in this town, even for someone like me who has grown to love it. If a number of vacationers come here, so do a number of social workers. One magazine journalist called its main street “ugly,” much to the resentment of many Island Ponders, but I’ve never heard anyone call the main street “picturesque.” Actually, it’s the lack of anything even remotely precious that forms some of my affection for the place.’ (1)
There is local poverty, too. We don’t have to look far. Mary Pratt described it in her poem, ‘Benedicite Around the Block.’ (2) While dated, it describes well our neighbourhood.
Throughout the past year, I have been attending meetings of the downtown business partners. I say I am the odd one out because my business is a bit different than theirs — I am not selling anything to make a profit; I am inviting people to come and see, but some of our issues are the same as theirs. All you have to do is look out the door to see how empty West Street is between Church Street and Merchants Row. It would seem as though dissention between business owners, the city and the downtown partnership impedes cooperation and networking.
Physical poverty is very real for us. You can probably come up with your own examples.
+
Spiritual poverty is just as present but perhaps harder to pinpoint. There is one form, acedia, the noon-day funk that was the enemy of monks.
The concept of acedia begins with the ever-observant desert fathers and mothers who first perceived and diagnosed the condition. Their first impulse was to shoo it away like a pesky insect by keeping occupied, as in the narrative of Anthony beset ‘by many sinful thoughts’ and cured by angelic advice to stay busy plaiting rope. Poemen avers that ‘acedia is there every time one begins something, and there is no worse passion, but if one recognizes it for what it is, one will gain peace.’ And John Cassian adds:
It is also good to recall what Abba Moses, one of the most experienced of the fathers, told me. I had not been living long in the desert when I was troubled by listlessness [i.e., acedia]. So I went to him and said: Yesterday I was greatly troubled and weakened by listlessness, and I was not able to free myself from it until I went to see Abba Paul. Abba Moses replied to me by saying: So far from freeing yourself from it, you have surrendered to it completely and become its slave. You must realize that it will attack all the more severely because you have deserted your post, unless from now on you strive to subdue it through patience, prayer and manual labor.
Clearly acedia is not willful sloth or indolence, less so ‘sin,’ but a spiritual lethargy or indifference, a turpitude that affects the well-intentioned. Amma Theodora says:
You should realize that as soon as you intend to live in peace, at once evil comes and weighs down your soul through acedia, faint-heartedness, and evil thoughts. It also attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members. It dissipates the strength of soul and body. ... But if we are vigilant, all the temptations fall away.
John Cassian went further than his conversation with Abba Moses to describe the physical symptoms so literally, even to the hour of the day when they peak, that acedia became known as the ‘noonday devil.’ He provides an excellent description of the psychology of acedia as well, indicating that acedia is a ‘tedium or perturbation of heart ... akin to dejection and especially felt by wandering monks and solitaries, a persistent and obnoxious enemy to such as dwell in the desert.’ He goes on:
When this [acedia] besieges the unhappy mind, it begets aversion from the place, boredom with one’s cell, and scorn and contempt for one’s brethren, whether they be dwelling with one or some way off, as careless and unspiritual-minded persons.
The listlessness of acedia is akin to a feeling of inertness, John Cassian notes, producing no spiritual fruit, a sense of any practice being ‘empty of spiritual profit.’ John’s remedy, following desert tradition, is a level of sustained activity approximating rigorous physical labor and what were to be called works of mercy, which fend off cynicisms. Physical labor as a solution is seen in the example of the first Christian desert hermit Paul, who regularly wove baskets of palm leaves. But being too far from a market to sell them Paul would burn his handiwork once a year and start over. (3)
Acedia might be seen as tedium of soul but what to do with those moments of the dark night of the soul, those moments when the poverty of the soul is so great that one feels unable to move? Those times are the moments when one touches the bottom, and perhaps finds out that despite it all, it is solid, even if one feels like a hermit crab scuttling for shelter. Those are the moments we call outright depression. And if the soul is troubled, so then, is the mind and the body because all operate in a trinity of energy.
If the soul is troubled, how does one function?
The writer of Psalm 22 expresses so well that despair in the opening line, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my distress?’ My reaction to this psalm is Pavlovian because we say it on Maundy Thursday as we strip the altar and chancel, and then pour wine on the horns of the altar before washing it entirely, rendering the altar a mortuary slab as a presage of Good Friday. I can hear the congregation praying this psalm as the altar party quietly and reverently removes everything that is not nailed down.
And then we pray this psalm again on Good Friday prior to the reading of the Passion according to Saint John. The theme of abandonment and desolation threaten to overpower us. We can scarcely breathe, so deep is our grief unleashed by the events of so long ago that take on the losses and sorrows of the current day.
Psalm 22 aptly is called a psalm of desolation. It probably is one that you have uttered in some form or another at some point in your life. Despair is understandable. Feeling as though God has abandoned you is equally understandable. But even Simone Weil, a French Jew, writing in the 1930s perceived that even when we have turned our face away from God our feet are nailed to the ground at the foot of the cross and God is still there, waiting for us to turn back again.
The psalm alternates between utter desolation —
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; *
by night as well, but I find no rest.
6 But as for me, I am a worm and no man, *
scorned by all and despised by the people.
7 All who see me laugh me to scorn; *
they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,
8 He trusted in the LORD; let him deliver him; *
let him rescue him, if he delights in him.’
12 Many young bulls encircle me; *
strong bulls of Bashan surround me.
13 They open wide their jaws at me, *
like a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water;
all my bones are out of joint; *
my heart within my breast is melting wax.
15 My mouth is dried out like a pot-sherd;
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; *
and you have laid me in the dust of the grave.
16 Packs of dogs close me in,
and gangs of evildoers circle around me; *
they pierce my hands and my feet;
I can count all my bones.
17 They stare and gloat over me; *
they divide my garments among them;
they cast lots for my clothing.
to moments of hope and confidence:
9 Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, *
and kept me safe upon my mother's breast.
10 I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; *
you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, *
and there is none to help.
18 Be not far away, O LORD; *
you are my strength; hasten to help me.
24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; *
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him.
As with any psalm of desolation, by psalm’s end, the tone has changed into confidence. The psalmist says he will praise God in the great congregation. By psalm’s end, the psalmist promises:
My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him;
they shall be known as the LORD’S for ever.
An unknown Jew wrote on a cellar wall in Colgone, Germany during WWII:
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when he is silent.
It is possible to move from a place of acedia or, worse, desolation, with God’s mercy and grace. Even when we are in those moments, we do discover that the bottom is solid. There are even people walking with us. And, yes, God has not abandoned us even though we might feel as much.
Poverty is real. But it is not the whole story.
END NOTES
(1) Garrett Keizer, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1991), 39-42.
(2) In Women’s Uncommon Prayers, Elizabeth Geitz, Marjorie Burke, Ann Smith, eds., Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000, 32-33.
(3) http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/acedia.html
Questions for first meditation
Where in your life do you feel poor?
Where is there spiritual poverty?
What does being poor in heart mean?
Where do you find consolation?
Where is God in all this?
Psalms for meditation: 22, 103
The priest with whom I worked said pretty early on, that whenever he was stuck on a sermon, he would visit someone and post visit he would get the necessary inspiration. I have always held those words in mind and so, this when the Holy Spirit (or muses) seemed recalcitrant, I was casting about. Then on Tuesday, in a conversation, I heard these three words put together — poverty, probability and possibility. Bingo! There was the thread. The original conversation focused on Sir John Smith and his Hope Institute but they work here.
POVERTY
Poverty is probably one of the most pervasive and paralysing aspects of the human condition. It is everywhere we turn; it is near and far. We struggle with Jesus’ saying that the poor will always be with us because surely that is not what God intends for creation.
I could show you any series of photographs of places in the world where there is extreme poverty and ultimately it would become numbing. Grinding poverty is like chronic pain: it wears down the soul until there is little fight or will left. Hope seems gone; God seems absent.
The images coming out of Haiti and now Chile are breathtaking in their devastation. Some of us saw just a few photos of Haiti last night but God knows, there are plenty more on television or in the paper. They are breathtaking when you think of the loss of life and the loss of potential. I don’t really think I need say more… and to show the photographs is perhaps even to descend into voyeurism.
This winter I saw a photo essay of Detroit. So much of the city now is abandoned that the local government is talking about razing the abandoned houses and moving people out of neighbourhoods if too much of one is empty. In fact, the city has lost half its population. A recent NPR report states: Drive down the Chrysler Freeway, and you see wave after wave of rotted-out, burned-out homes. Much of the city is a mausoleum of enormous, empty auto plants that need new life. It is astounding to see such landscapes in our country but we know they exist.
Then there’s the poverty that can surround us in our beautiful state of Vermont. Garret Keizer writes of Island Pond in his A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry:
‘Island Pond is like no other place on earth. Island Pond confirms no one’s belief in reincarnation: I cannot imagine anyone standing for the first time at the intersection of its main streets and thinking: “I’ve been here before.”
‘When I close my eyes and try to imagine Island Pond — or Brighton, as it is properly called — I find that no single mental picture can contain it. Instead, I see a kaleidoscopic view of discordant images — from the Old West, from Appalachia, from the blue-collar neighborhoods around Paterson, New Jersey, where I grew up, yes, from Vermont, too, turning slowly in the pale light of a mid-winter sun, and captioned with the original settlement’s name of Random. The same thing happens when I think in terms of time. Island Pond is not Lake Wobegon, “the little town that time forgot,” nor is it, as I once quipped, “the little town that time forsook,” but a town in which time has come undone. At least that’s how it seems, as one’s eyes move from the classic brick railroad station, to the boom-box-toting kinds leaning against the sheriff’s car, to the gray-haired hippies leaving the new supermarket, to the World War II tank parked outside the American Legion Hall, to the kerchief-covered heads of the women of an ever-growing religious sect that has chosen Island Pond as a good place to wait for the Apocalypse. …
‘Without a doubt, there is something depressed and depressing in this town, even for someone like me who has grown to love it. If a number of vacationers come here, so do a number of social workers. One magazine journalist called its main street “ugly,” much to the resentment of many Island Ponders, but I’ve never heard anyone call the main street “picturesque.” Actually, it’s the lack of anything even remotely precious that forms some of my affection for the place.’ (1)
There is local poverty, too. We don’t have to look far. Mary Pratt described it in her poem, ‘Benedicite Around the Block.’ (2) While dated, it describes well our neighbourhood.
Throughout the past year, I have been attending meetings of the downtown business partners. I say I am the odd one out because my business is a bit different than theirs — I am not selling anything to make a profit; I am inviting people to come and see, but some of our issues are the same as theirs. All you have to do is look out the door to see how empty West Street is between Church Street and Merchants Row. It would seem as though dissention between business owners, the city and the downtown partnership impedes cooperation and networking.
Physical poverty is very real for us. You can probably come up with your own examples.
+
Spiritual poverty is just as present but perhaps harder to pinpoint. There is one form, acedia, the noon-day funk that was the enemy of monks.
The concept of acedia begins with the ever-observant desert fathers and mothers who first perceived and diagnosed the condition. Their first impulse was to shoo it away like a pesky insect by keeping occupied, as in the narrative of Anthony beset ‘by many sinful thoughts’ and cured by angelic advice to stay busy plaiting rope. Poemen avers that ‘acedia is there every time one begins something, and there is no worse passion, but if one recognizes it for what it is, one will gain peace.’ And John Cassian adds:
It is also good to recall what Abba Moses, one of the most experienced of the fathers, told me. I had not been living long in the desert when I was troubled by listlessness [i.e., acedia]. So I went to him and said: Yesterday I was greatly troubled and weakened by listlessness, and I was not able to free myself from it until I went to see Abba Paul. Abba Moses replied to me by saying: So far from freeing yourself from it, you have surrendered to it completely and become its slave. You must realize that it will attack all the more severely because you have deserted your post, unless from now on you strive to subdue it through patience, prayer and manual labor.
Clearly acedia is not willful sloth or indolence, less so ‘sin,’ but a spiritual lethargy or indifference, a turpitude that affects the well-intentioned. Amma Theodora says:
You should realize that as soon as you intend to live in peace, at once evil comes and weighs down your soul through acedia, faint-heartedness, and evil thoughts. It also attacks your body through sickness, debility, weakening of the knees, and all the members. It dissipates the strength of soul and body. ... But if we are vigilant, all the temptations fall away.
John Cassian went further than his conversation with Abba Moses to describe the physical symptoms so literally, even to the hour of the day when they peak, that acedia became known as the ‘noonday devil.’ He provides an excellent description of the psychology of acedia as well, indicating that acedia is a ‘tedium or perturbation of heart ... akin to dejection and especially felt by wandering monks and solitaries, a persistent and obnoxious enemy to such as dwell in the desert.’ He goes on:
When this [acedia] besieges the unhappy mind, it begets aversion from the place, boredom with one’s cell, and scorn and contempt for one’s brethren, whether they be dwelling with one or some way off, as careless and unspiritual-minded persons.
The listlessness of acedia is akin to a feeling of inertness, John Cassian notes, producing no spiritual fruit, a sense of any practice being ‘empty of spiritual profit.’ John’s remedy, following desert tradition, is a level of sustained activity approximating rigorous physical labor and what were to be called works of mercy, which fend off cynicisms. Physical labor as a solution is seen in the example of the first Christian desert hermit Paul, who regularly wove baskets of palm leaves. But being too far from a market to sell them Paul would burn his handiwork once a year and start over. (3)
Acedia might be seen as tedium of soul but what to do with those moments of the dark night of the soul, those moments when the poverty of the soul is so great that one feels unable to move? Those times are the moments when one touches the bottom, and perhaps finds out that despite it all, it is solid, even if one feels like a hermit crab scuttling for shelter. Those are the moments we call outright depression. And if the soul is troubled, so then, is the mind and the body because all operate in a trinity of energy.
If the soul is troubled, how does one function?
The writer of Psalm 22 expresses so well that despair in the opening line, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my distress?’ My reaction to this psalm is Pavlovian because we say it on Maundy Thursday as we strip the altar and chancel, and then pour wine on the horns of the altar before washing it entirely, rendering the altar a mortuary slab as a presage of Good Friday. I can hear the congregation praying this psalm as the altar party quietly and reverently removes everything that is not nailed down.
And then we pray this psalm again on Good Friday prior to the reading of the Passion according to Saint John. The theme of abandonment and desolation threaten to overpower us. We can scarcely breathe, so deep is our grief unleashed by the events of so long ago that take on the losses and sorrows of the current day.
Psalm 22 aptly is called a psalm of desolation. It probably is one that you have uttered in some form or another at some point in your life. Despair is understandable. Feeling as though God has abandoned you is equally understandable. But even Simone Weil, a French Jew, writing in the 1930s perceived that even when we have turned our face away from God our feet are nailed to the ground at the foot of the cross and God is still there, waiting for us to turn back again.
The psalm alternates between utter desolation —
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; *
by night as well, but I find no rest.
6 But as for me, I am a worm and no man, *
scorned by all and despised by the people.
7 All who see me laugh me to scorn; *
they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,
8 He trusted in the LORD; let him deliver him; *
let him rescue him, if he delights in him.’
12 Many young bulls encircle me; *
strong bulls of Bashan surround me.
13 They open wide their jaws at me, *
like a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water;
all my bones are out of joint; *
my heart within my breast is melting wax.
15 My mouth is dried out like a pot-sherd;
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; *
and you have laid me in the dust of the grave.
16 Packs of dogs close me in,
and gangs of evildoers circle around me; *
they pierce my hands and my feet;
I can count all my bones.
17 They stare and gloat over me; *
they divide my garments among them;
they cast lots for my clothing.
to moments of hope and confidence:
9 Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, *
and kept me safe upon my mother's breast.
10 I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; *
you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, *
and there is none to help.
18 Be not far away, O LORD; *
you are my strength; hasten to help me.
24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; *
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him.
As with any psalm of desolation, by psalm’s end, the tone has changed into confidence. The psalmist says he will praise God in the great congregation. By psalm’s end, the psalmist promises:
My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him;
they shall be known as the LORD’S for ever.
An unknown Jew wrote on a cellar wall in Colgone, Germany during WWII:
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when he is silent.
It is possible to move from a place of acedia or, worse, desolation, with God’s mercy and grace. Even when we are in those moments, we do discover that the bottom is solid. There are even people walking with us. And, yes, God has not abandoned us even though we might feel as much.
Poverty is real. But it is not the whole story.
END NOTES
(1) Garrett Keizer, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1991), 39-42.
(2) In Women’s Uncommon Prayers, Elizabeth Geitz, Marjorie Burke, Ann Smith, eds., Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2000, 32-33.
(3) http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/acedia.html
Questions for first meditation
Where in your life do you feel poor?
Where is there spiritual poverty?
What does being poor in heart mean?
Where do you find consolation?
Where is God in all this?
Psalms for meditation: 22, 103
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