Proper 12 A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp12_RCL.html
The deepest truth is the one most hidden.
Martin Smith tells the story of how he went to search for an ancient well. He was a theology student in England, and one day he learned that in the Middle Ages there was a holy well outside of the old town where the seminary was located. Like so many of the ancient holy sites the chapel and other buildings at the well were destroyed during the Reformation. The site of the well was neglected and eventually forgotten except in local legend and some historical references.
One Sunday afternoon Martin got a bicycle and, armed with some amateur research as to where to look, set out for the rural area where he thought the holy well was sited. He found himself walking in the midst of a cow pasture, with nothing in sight except grass and weeds and cows and cow pies.
Martin kept walking, although he had no real idea where he was going.
In a low place in the pasture, Martin suddenly sank up to his ankles in mud. Using his hands, Martin dug away the mud and grass. Suddenly his fingertips scraped on stone. Over the course of a couple of hours Martin uncovered a small plaza of rough paving stones surrounding the holy well, still silently providing life-giving water underneath the mud and weeds and cow manure, still waiting to be found.
The most precious gifts lie hidden in plain sight.
Solomon’s famous wisdom is found completely in the simple prayer we heard today: “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?" In other words, give me wisdom. In the Hebrew Scriptures wisdom is not simply knowledge as we understand it. Wisdom is a living being, the “Hochma”, feminine and dynamic and creative, present with God at the beginning of all things.
Later, she was known as “Sophia”, “Holy Wisdom” through whom and with whom God continually redeems the chosen people.
In the New Testament she is the Holy Spirit, the breath, the life and depth of God. The Spirit raises Jesus from the dead, and is given to each of us baptized as a sign and seal and promise of glory.
Like Martin Smith’s well, Spirit is the hidden life of God. She hides in plain sight. She hides in our own depths. She is always at prayer within us.
A contemporary monk was asked how it was that he seemed to possess the gift of continuous prayer that St. Paul speaks of several times. His answer also spoke of wells: “I think that prayer was always inside of me, like a spring covered with a stone. Then Jesus came and took away the stone. Prayer has been welling up ever since.”
This is our most precious gift, God-with-us, God-within. When we hunger for prayer and wonder why we cannot pray, the answer is closer to us than our own breath. Spirit is sighing too deep for words within us. God in Christ declares us God’s own. God is for us. God’s gift is given free of charge. Any attempts we make to pray, either alone or gathered here, are simply focused moments when we ask God to take away whatever stone, or mud or weeds or cow manure, that may be obscuring the gift of prayer within us. In the end, it is disarmingly simple, it is so close we have trouble focusing our restless wandering eyes. Small as a seed, humble as yeast, but the treasure hidden in the field. I wonder if the merchant in Jesus’ parable found his treasure under mud and weeds and cow manure?
So often in church we talk about the church, we talk about our experience, we talk about the relationships, we talk about the building and the money and the tasks to be done.
How often do we talk about this: Wisdom given lavishly if we ask, Spirit praying always within us?
Perhaps if we speak about this hidden treasure, this deepest truth, all else will be given as well.
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Weeding
Proper 11 A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp11_RCL.html
It’s funny what you find in your lawn.
We have some lawn around our house, a cheerful mixture of grass and clover and dandelions and some things I cannot even name. It’s green, which is all that matters to me.
But the dandelions bug me because they’re greedy. They spread out and claim big round patches of ground, killing the other stuff. And they’re greedy of air space—ignore the lawn for a couple of weeks and you’ll see them, tall and insolent, waving their high stalks in the breeze.
On the rare occasions that I have time and energy to do so, I like to take my favorite tool, a weed-ripper shaped kind of like a screwdriver with a wide pronged tip, and dig them out. It’s very satisfying—I push the tip down as far as you can and patiently pry. I love the satisfying “pop” of the root—it’s like popping a big pimple. My reward is a surprisingly large plant cradled in my palm, a “lawn cabbage” as I like to call them.
The clover flowers came in late June. A neighbor keeps bees, and honeybees need all the help we can give them. So I cut the grass around the clover and left big patches. The bees seemed to appreciate that and the clover was astir with tiny flecks of gold.
Well, the clover dried up and began looking sad, and my daughter was stung on the foot as she walked through with sandals. So last night I got out our electric mower and began to cut the whole business.
As I cut the clover, I marveled. Hidden among the clover I found several of those nasty sort of dandelion cousins, those weeds that grow really savage spikes on their leaves. Stepping on one barefooted is like stepping on a land sea-urchin. They took total advantage of my compassion for the clover and the bees and grew their ugly spines tucked away from sight.
Good timing, for today’s parable is about seeds and weeds. This is one of the parables in which Jesus’ interpretation is his way to deal with the unwillingness of the disciples to use their imaginations.
Sometimes I feel that we are the ground, open for all kinds of seeds, good and bad. The older I get the more aware I am of the array of plants growing inside of myself. The good growth, the sweet nourishing harvest of kindness and forbearance and humility and prayer, grow very quietly. The Spirit crying “Abba” is a whisper. I am more aware of the big, thorny weeds—my capacity for judgment and for resentment and for selfishness. I see the spiritual task as a process of consistent weeding. If not, the dandelions quickly rise to wave in the breeze.
But sometimes I think that God is the seed and also the ground.
On Friday I drove once again to Mt Angel/Woodburn for hospice work. The abbey at Mt Angel has a bookstore and coffee shop with good wi-fi—it is a good place to catch up on charting and e-mail while absorbing some peace by osmosis.
On the table were some copies of the Houston Catholic Worker. The issue was mostly devoted to the enormous human tragedy of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the borders. The writer spoke of the racism of those who imply that these Central American children must have neglectful parents. No, they love their children passionately. Only because of the desperation of conditions in Central America do they choose the slim chance for survival vs the nearly certain fate of keeping them at home. Keeping them at home, to face conditions that we helped create by participating actively in their civil wars, by creating the economic conditions that foment poverty and desperation.
But the article spoke of efforts not only to help the children, but also to address the root causes of Latin American poverty and desperation. To not only cut the field, but to address the roots of seeds we planted.
I felt the stir of my old commitments and activist work in the 1980’s, the old passions that had gotten lost in the business of life and family and running church programs. I thought of our work here, to birth a community that addresses inequity and racism and cultural control, to be equals all together.
I thought with gratitude of those who have passion to ask the questions and to do the work. And as I sat in the coffee shop, I thought of all the good being done every day by good people, caring for the sick and the dying, speaking up for the vulnerable, the ways in which the world remains a place where compassion still has a voice.
Wisdom says, “For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power,
and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it.
Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness,
and with great forbearance you govern us;
for you have power to act whenever you choose.
Through such works you have taught your people
that the righteous must be kind,
and you have filled your children with good hope,
because you give repentance for sins.”
Repentance means another chance, another day for weeding. Another opportunity for us to make it right, to bring compassion. For the ground is good ground, and there is good seed, God-ground and God-seed.
I looked at the insolent little thorny plant, capable of ruining someone’s evening if stepped on unawares. I dug down with my favorite tool.
I do love the sound and feeling of that “pop.”
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp11_RCL.html
It’s funny what you find in your lawn.
We have some lawn around our house, a cheerful mixture of grass and clover and dandelions and some things I cannot even name. It’s green, which is all that matters to me.
But the dandelions bug me because they’re greedy. They spread out and claim big round patches of ground, killing the other stuff. And they’re greedy of air space—ignore the lawn for a couple of weeks and you’ll see them, tall and insolent, waving their high stalks in the breeze.
On the rare occasions that I have time and energy to do so, I like to take my favorite tool, a weed-ripper shaped kind of like a screwdriver with a wide pronged tip, and dig them out. It’s very satisfying—I push the tip down as far as you can and patiently pry. I love the satisfying “pop” of the root—it’s like popping a big pimple. My reward is a surprisingly large plant cradled in my palm, a “lawn cabbage” as I like to call them.
The clover flowers came in late June. A neighbor keeps bees, and honeybees need all the help we can give them. So I cut the grass around the clover and left big patches. The bees seemed to appreciate that and the clover was astir with tiny flecks of gold.
Well, the clover dried up and began looking sad, and my daughter was stung on the foot as she walked through with sandals. So last night I got out our electric mower and began to cut the whole business.
As I cut the clover, I marveled. Hidden among the clover I found several of those nasty sort of dandelion cousins, those weeds that grow really savage spikes on their leaves. Stepping on one barefooted is like stepping on a land sea-urchin. They took total advantage of my compassion for the clover and the bees and grew their ugly spines tucked away from sight.
Good timing, for today’s parable is about seeds and weeds. This is one of the parables in which Jesus’ interpretation is his way to deal with the unwillingness of the disciples to use their imaginations.
Sometimes I feel that we are the ground, open for all kinds of seeds, good and bad. The older I get the more aware I am of the array of plants growing inside of myself. The good growth, the sweet nourishing harvest of kindness and forbearance and humility and prayer, grow very quietly. The Spirit crying “Abba” is a whisper. I am more aware of the big, thorny weeds—my capacity for judgment and for resentment and for selfishness. I see the spiritual task as a process of consistent weeding. If not, the dandelions quickly rise to wave in the breeze.
But sometimes I think that God is the seed and also the ground.
On Friday I drove once again to Mt Angel/Woodburn for hospice work. The abbey at Mt Angel has a bookstore and coffee shop with good wi-fi—it is a good place to catch up on charting and e-mail while absorbing some peace by osmosis.
On the table were some copies of the Houston Catholic Worker. The issue was mostly devoted to the enormous human tragedy of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the borders. The writer spoke of the racism of those who imply that these Central American children must have neglectful parents. No, they love their children passionately. Only because of the desperation of conditions in Central America do they choose the slim chance for survival vs the nearly certain fate of keeping them at home. Keeping them at home, to face conditions that we helped create by participating actively in their civil wars, by creating the economic conditions that foment poverty and desperation.
But the article spoke of efforts not only to help the children, but also to address the root causes of Latin American poverty and desperation. To not only cut the field, but to address the roots of seeds we planted.
I felt the stir of my old commitments and activist work in the 1980’s, the old passions that had gotten lost in the business of life and family and running church programs. I thought of our work here, to birth a community that addresses inequity and racism and cultural control, to be equals all together.
I thought with gratitude of those who have passion to ask the questions and to do the work. And as I sat in the coffee shop, I thought of all the good being done every day by good people, caring for the sick and the dying, speaking up for the vulnerable, the ways in which the world remains a place where compassion still has a voice.
Wisdom says, “For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power,
and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it.
Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness,
and with great forbearance you govern us;
for you have power to act whenever you choose.
Through such works you have taught your people
that the righteous must be kind,
and you have filled your children with good hope,
because you give repentance for sins.”
Repentance means another chance, another day for weeding. Another opportunity for us to make it right, to bring compassion. For the ground is good ground, and there is good seed, God-ground and God-seed.
I looked at the insolent little thorny plant, capable of ruining someone’s evening if stepped on unawares. I dug down with my favorite tool.
I do love the sound and feeling of that “pop.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)