Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 14, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
There is only one river
I will hear what God proclaims; the LORD – for he proclaims peace. Near indeed is his salvation.
All around me are photographs and mementos from family, some long passed away, some not yet having reached their teenage years. Ah, there is a small picture of sweet young Margaret, with the biggest dimples and smile I have ever seen.
What is it about family that matters so much to me? I think about Amos, who grew up farming before God sent him into the desert of the city. Amos resists arrest by the priest of Bethel:
Off with you, visionary, flee! Never again prophecy in Bethel. And Amos replied, “I was no prophet, I was a shepherd and gardener. It was the Lord who sent me here and told me to prophecy!”
But it was true, Amos walked from the land of the south (Judah) into the land of the north (Israel). Amos was in foreign territory, and people probably spit on his feet, whether God sent him there or not. The distinctions between peoples were fierce. Aren’t they still?
In her own genius way, Annie Dillard invites us to consider our membership in the same world family.
Is it important if your father has died his death yet? Your child? It is only a matter of time, after all. Why do we find it supremely pertinent, during any moment of any century on earth, which among us is topside? Why do we concern ourselves over which side of the membrane of soil our feet poke?
“One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.” Joseph Stalin, that gourmandizer, gave words to this disquieting and possibly universal sentiment. How can an individual count? Do individuals count only to us other suckers, who love and grieve like elephants, bless their hearts?
We who breathe air now will join the already dead layers of us who breathed air once. We arise from dirt and dwindle to dirt, and the might of the universe is arrayed against us. “God speaks succinctly,” said the rabbis. (For the Time Being, p. 58-59)
Annie, who called herself a pilgrim and observed every detail every day of the natural world around her home on Tinker Creek, and won a Pulitizer for it, wonders why she and the rest of us humans see ourselves as so important. But, and she acknowledges this as much as anyone, we are.
It’s just that the other individual lives are as important as me. That’s all. Annie wants somehow to believe that about herself too. She revels in numbers, she resists saying much about God, she pokes at anything that seems a bit full of itself, looking … looking.
I have never read any theologian who claims that God is particularly interested in religion.
The human idea of elegance so often seems to be just grand comedy, but God puts up with it. And why should he not? Things here on earth get a whole lot worse than bad taste.
Every day, said Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, “the glory is ready to emerge from its debasement.”
Annie catches herself describing and decrying the debasement.
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death.
That’s my family you’re talking about! And mine, she says, But listen now: “there never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.”
In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture. Purity’s time is always now.
I look at my carefully framed photo of Margaret, surrounded by post-it to-do notes, and I’m waiting even right now for the “glory ready to emerge.”
Justice and peace shall kiss, truth shall spring out of the earth.
Paul himself could not wait either. His breathless words swing out in thin air, dancing along tightropes, jumping for joy.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens!
And Ephesians 1 goes on from there in praise by praise by praise of what God promised. What does not seem as yet to have come.
 But we have received the first installment of our inheritance, we are God’s possession to the praise of his glory.
Isn’t that enough?
(Amos 7, Psalm 85, Ephesians 1, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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