Covered up by love and mercy, through and through

Wednesday, September 19, 2023

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Covered up by love and mercy, through and through

Bishops must be irreproachable, temperate, self-controlled, decent, hospitable, teachers, patient, gentle, peaceful, generous, never divorced, not alcoholic, dignified, fatherly, mature and reputable.

Deacons must be dignified, honest, generous, not alcoholic, never divorced, and reliable.

Women should be dignified, quiet, temperate and faithful in everything.

These lists scare me. In yesterday’s devotion, Ron Rolheiser said relationships with others and with God should be honest and full of good humor as well as sincere appreciation. Rolheiser’s list (here it is in full) did not scare me. What’s the difference?

Steve Garnaas-Holmes sees a difference too, although he is looking at a passage from Genesis about climbing Jacob’s ladder.

Was it a long, long ladder,

a skinny rickety thing

reaching up through clouds,

through the stratosphere, the mesosphere,

 

golly, all the way to the stars?

(Was there a little landing,

a resting spot on the moon?)

Or did it transcend space,

because it’s not about altitude,

but presence,

vanishing up into God?

Was the angelic traffic heavy,

was it like downtown or the airport,

everybody rushing to get somewhere?

Or was it more casual? Or maybe

more stately, like a church procession?

Paul’s list looks from the outside in. Except that the “in” isn’t exactly what I want to be, and I need to say so, know that, confess my dithering. Steve’s first thoughts point me out, toward wanna-be images, projections of an ideal that replace the real, one side of things that does not include the “shadow” side. The side I’ve hidden in my closet.

But maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree. Surely I must have known many who measure up to Paul’s requirements (although I think they were also honest about when they did not). The part of me that calls this description “goody two-shoes” reduces its virtue and value, failing to recognize or remember how these qualities must be internally strong in good leaders, bishops, deacons (and women).

Still, Steve calls their residence a tiny “resting spot on the moon.” He knows we must move past the literal ladder (and Paul’s list of behaviors?) to the spiritual reality underneath.

What if it was really just

a little wooden stepladder

and the angels of heaven

all went up and down on it at once

because heaven is the presence of God

and it’s right here,

and their going wasn’t so much travel

as a change of perspective?

 

What if your heart is the ladder,

and angels are on the move,

and a little bit of you goes all the way

to God and back,

even when you sleep through it?

And that “little bit” of me might wake up on the wrong side of the bed, even after visiting heaven, and be cross with Margaret, and break the yokes while frying them, and even (maybe) say a bad word. I might forget to pray. Before I tie on my deacon’s apron, or pick up my bishop’s miter, or (if I were a mom) wake up the kids for school.

But I went to heaven anyway? And in the course of the morning that amazement might come back to me, probably would come back to me (who could forget such a thing for long?).

I imagine Jesus himself having mornings like this, out of which he moved into his day.

As Jesus drew near the gates of Nain he was moved with pity for a widow who had lost her son. He stepped forward and touched the coffin and said, “Young man, I tell you, arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

The point is never how things look on the outside, and always how God works through me, or you, certainly through Jesus. It’s then that young men rise from the dead.

(1 Timothy 1, Psalm 113, John 14, Luke 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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