Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on March 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Transparent honesty between God and humankind requires expression. One cannot have intimacy while guarding silence. It is not permitted to us both to hold our guard and dance with our creator.
Both God and man must speak if the perforated boundary between heaven and earth is to yield, if Jerusalem is to descend, if prayers are to reach the altitude where Heaven can hear. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, John, textures on March 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »
One of the shocking details of John’s report of Jesus’ first sign, at a wedding in a Galilean village, is the notice that his disciples ‘believed in him’ as a result of his action. One wonders what they were doing prior to the moment:
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
One does not accrue the plausible accusation of being a glutton and a drunkard unless one hangs in places known for serious eating and heavy drinking. Jesus’ accusers must have had plausible grounds for such an accusation, reported in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on March 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Grace is the self-effacing friend at a gathering, lurking profitably behind the scenes, setting the table and wiping away crumbs when no one is looking. Kindness seeks no limelight, calls no attention to itself, is most contented when the hum of lively conversation seasons the room with its own subtle romance.
Grace has no self-exalting agenda. Rather, kindness gives, levels the path of the other, sets the stage for good things in which it calculates no immediate gain save the satisfaction of its companions. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on March 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Help is available.
This is the message that the poet who created Psalm 46 underscores in a time when it seems all that is reliable has been shaken. It takes only one earthquake experience to have that existential stake driven into the soul that only comes when the earth moves.
Anything else can be assumed to shift under duress. But the earth is not supposed to move. It us the Unmoved Thing, the stage upon which all manner of furniture makes its scraping sound as it comes, performs its task, and is whisked away. People march, race, crawl, and drag themselves across it, some lingering beyond their welcome, others making us wish they’d stayed.
But the earth itself does not move. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Leviticus, textures on March 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The final chapters of the book of Leviticus mark out Israel’s two fundamental choices and their consequences in terms of YHWH’s blessing and curse. Here all the particulars of priestly legislation fall away, throwing into view only the largest features of the moral landscape. A choice for YHWH means a decision to live by his judgments and statutes. Its recompense is his blessing in the most earthy, satisfying form. The contrary choice represents a decision to live like all the other nations, outside of the exclusive, covenantal relationship that YHWH desires. It will bring down, we are told, wasting curse upon the people.
Yet the resolute dualism of Israel’s options and her destiny are not precisely symmetrical. YHWH’s tenacious fidelity excludes any mechanistic and level playing field, any notion that naked human will were the only variable in play. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Leviticus, textures on March 1, 2009| Leave a Comment »
In circles far removed from that insight into human affairs that is native to ‘honor-shame’ cultures, a quick and easy reflex dispenses with all talk of helping a man save face. We are about truth, we flatter ourselves. Not for us the fudging of responsibility’s sharp edges. Let the chips fall where they may and good people who have fallen into difficulty with them. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Mark, textures on February 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »
It would have been a heady experience to walk Galilean roads in he the company of the prophet from Nazareth. Not only was the intimacy of life shared with him available to precious few. His select ‘disciples’ could also look back on the experience of having been chosen by name.
Most of us do not wake one morning with aspirations of greatness that had never afflicted us before. Rather, the accumulation of perquisites that gather around modest success gradually adds up to something. Sometimes it is lethal.
We so easily begin to sense that we merit these things, these minders, this cell phone, the undeniable whiff of prestige that follows us about, this company car. We begin to sense our greatness. We never asked for it, yet it is there in the professionally servile glances of these minders.
It grows on us.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
Though the image of the impoverished fisherman out fending off the wolf of hunger by braving the sea’s waves in the early morning may owe more to romanticism than to reality, Jesus’ followers seem generally to have come from modest origins. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on February 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The potency of despair lies in part in the pretense of permanence. When caught in the deathly grip of sadness, we believe this is all we shall ever know. The promise of dawn seems unthinkable.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God. (Psalm 43:5 NRSV)
There is a reality more concrete than despair, more trustworthy and closer to the core of what is true. Despair clouds our view of it, indeed makes it seem a mirage, a mockery, a tormenting seduction not worth the time it would require to take its measure. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Leviticus, textures on February 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The best lies masquerade as self-evident truth. For example, people are to be valued according to their productive capacity.
The code of conduct for the emerging Hebrew nation flies in the face of this pragmatic assessment at every turn. One’s aged parents, potentially a limping, whining, festering drag on forward progress are to be revered. One day a week is to be thrown to the wind against all economic calculation.
You shall each revere your mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.
Both pieces of legislated ethics require a choice. One decides to invest love, treasure, and time in just this way, trusting that the long-term outcome of a society where the aged can grow old without watching their back and the strong do not need to worry about being worked to death trumps the short-term upside of blasting through these restraints and, as we say, going for it.
(more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Mark, textures on February 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The gospels narrate the words and deeds of Jesus in the common Greek vernacular of their time. This simple linguistic observation might obscure the fact that Jesus’ first and most commonly used language was almost certainly not Greek. He seems to have employed Aramaic as his lingua franca, though he was probably capable of managing Hebrew and Greek.
Nothing about this is extraordinary. We are accustomed to reading about the lives of great and less-than-great men and women in translation. (more…)
Canter Bridge 