Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 7, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s Scriptures)
Land where our fathers died
The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness, to deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine. Our soul waits for the Lord.
According to The Face of Rural America, a 1976 bicentennial publication of the Department of Agriculture, the United States, including Hawaii and Alaska, is made up of 2.3 billion acres of land. Half of that land is used to produce crops and livestock. Another third of the nation’s total land area, including Alaska, is forested.
What’s left is mostly urban areas, which are growing at the rate of about 1 million acres each year. That’s about the size of Phoenix, LA and Houston combined.
Famine in the rest of the world has barely touched the United States of America. Because of this our gratitude has sometimes degenerated into entitlement, unless we are the ones who actually run the combines and butcher the meat into pieces for the grocery store. Even then … most of us rarely call our home the promised land.
Abraham, by faith, sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.
Because we expect rather than appreciate, we also forget that we die too. Not from famine, probably, but certainly often from overwork, from walking to and fro on the face of the earth, attending everyone and everything except our Source. An ancient sage said that:
In secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.
She was talking about the celebration of Passover, and each week’s reminder, Sabbath. Shabat. A day of rest and gratitude.
Celebrating my life in these rhythms allows me to also celebrate my death. I don’t go go go go all the time and then go again the next day every day until the end of time. And as I gradually remember that, I recognize the beauty of each breath, rather than expecting them to last forever. The future is less about plans than about acceptance. Hope springs out of joy, not fear.
Jesus couldn’t tell us this often enough.
Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
These are the words of a man who celebrated his Sabbath every week, and who prayed every day, and whose Father spoke to him, and who passed on the love of his Father to us.
Sell your belongings and give to the poor. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, for you have an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
This requires death here in the world, death as a most lovely part of life. The wheat ripens, and so do we.
Be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Mary Oliver died three years ago. As she got older … as she lived 14 years after her partner Molly died, she thought more about death. This is nothing new. Abraham too, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of us gradually come to terms.
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us— as soft as feathers—
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones. – Mary Oliver, from “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field”
 After awhile there is nothing much left to say, but always just one more breath, one more breath, Sabbath after Sabbath, learning the art of loving from the Maker of Love, until the breath becomes air, and we fly away.
(Wisdom 18, Psalm 33, Hebrews 11, Matthew 24, Luke 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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