While in a prayer meeting this week this question and the answer came quick. I had started with the question of Isaiah the prophet’s poetry which I suppose we can call the Lord’s poetry. Who reads God’s Word deeply? And then question in my mind “Well for that matter, who reads poetry? Who reads poetry?”
The answer came as a picture first and then as words.
Who reads poetry?
Perhaps those who will
tarry under trees
‘till their souls
rooted in soil
breathe
again.
Heavenly Father,
We cry out to you,
“Come.” Come and be with us Immanuel – today,
In this Christmas season,
In this exam season.
Be with us in our struggles and in our joys.
We are waiting for You. Reveal to us the glory of being with you in your communion — the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We yearn for Your counsel, Your strength, Your guidance, Your peace , Your justice and righteousness.
And yet we are busy, sometimes too busy to stop and pay attention to Your counsel and to receive Your strength, Your guidance, Your peace, Your justice and righteousness.
Right now we quietly sit before You to reaffirm our longing for You and our willingness to walk with You. (pause)
We pray over others who are not paying attention to Your kingdom or are unaware of Your goodness, and greatness, light for life; Reveal to these dear ones in darkness — Your counsel, Your strength, Your guidance, Your peace, Your justice and righteousness.
We ask for hope and justice for the patients impacted by the Zimbabwean doctor’s strike, for the doctors and nurses. Grant them your wisdom and generosity.
In many places Peace seems far away and pain seems more powerful. We look for You, the Prince of Peace to show yourself to those impacted by shootings in Mexico, by political changes in Namibia, and by struggles in Iraq and Iran. We need Your guidance to steward the earth so people experience your love and care. Come Lord Jesus, Come.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Please join me in the Lord’s Prayer —
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for yours is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever.
Amen.
“Thus did Job continually.” Job 1:5
Sometimes when a man dies
it’s only his children who knew
The contours of a smile turned up
when troubles pulled him down
The soft tears of laughter formed
in the crucible of tenderness
The quick retort of a word marked
by pain — the fear that he was not
enough. But do they know his
prayers? These shall live on
“Because this people has rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah…”
Isaiah 8:6
Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah.
I would flee these tall halls reeking of despair,
where men move like ghastly shadows
and women are chased by whispers in the air.
O, the normal people with eyes that do not see.
They ascend in cages to empty rooms
but are no better — hearts without space for keys
and glassy views staring back with gloom.
Anxiety stalks us equally no matter the hour.
No enemies are required for this disease.
We yearn for an eternal healing flower,
yet no peace is found in a lonely ease.
Whispers seem louder in dark alleys.
Send me to the gentle flowing waters of Shiloah
and I will consider your grace in all my valleys.
I will drink deeply of your spring, Yeshua.
It’s Thanksgiving in America. I am thank full. I’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving twice each year now for 25 years. My Canadian day comes in October and the American day comes — well today in November. That’s half my life, yet I still miss the way life is organized around this holiday in November — in America. At least I miss how it was organized in my family.
I realize that in 25 years even Thanksgiving in America has changed. The anticipation of shopping on Friday after Thanksgiving has given way to a whole week of ads and sales meant to agitate us because we are missing out, or there are new gadgets we really need, or our stuff is wearing out, and the special persons in our family need to know they are special to us and that is only possible if we buy them something — a lot of things. It’s not Thanksgiving in Canada, but this script is the cultural language of this very week in November!
So now I find myself asking, how do we make this week a genuine set of holy days?
Reckoning
I find the mythology of Thanksgiving to be insufficient for the demands we experience today to reckon with history as it’s told to children and to reconcile with peoples whose ancestors experienced the rush to occupy the land by whatever means. As hopeful as some settlers may been that settling could be a peaceful endeavour, their venture was often prepared through some kind of violence.
I don’t bring this up to generate guilt. Rather I bring up the rough centre of our history so as to generate humility and mercy.
The wealth enjoyed today came at someone’s expense. Not only did someone work hard, but someone else may have been displaced or denied an opportunity. The belief that we are each a self-made people is fundamentally flawed. Our economy has a context. For there is in our enjoyment of liberty in America (and in Canada) an idealism formed of complex thought and fundamental views of human rights. The ideals have many sources and can be traced to indigenous people in North America, to British and European philosophical streams, to the tradition of decision-making councils of North Africa and to biblical ideas extending back to Jesus and then to Israel. Yet, this idealism is fragile; it can be overtaken by blindspots, and it may even be dismantled. Our ideals have been selectively applied. If we are to name the blindspots one of them would be hubris.
When hubris and amnesia runs it course justice gives way to dehumanizing language and then oppression, slavery, and exclusion. Thanksgiving days have become for me an inescapable marker for hubris and selective amnesia and a counter play: the deliberate and desperate attempt to treasure what is more important in our relationships to God, to self, to people, and to the stuff of earth. These plays take shape as reckoning, receiving, repenting and remembering. And then hopefully rejoicing.
Receiving
Last night at a birthday celebration for one of my children we reviewed the gift that is in each person’s name. Two of my children have names that are derived from Micah. The question generated in the name “Micah” is “Who is like God?” The question is meant to generate humility and an attentiveness to God’s call by a people who historically had journeyed from a place of enslavement to a place of liberation:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
Early in the history of Israel God warned them of the deathtrap created by hubris and its accompanying amnesia. In Deuteronomy he says, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD you God… Otherwise when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your hearts and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you… He brought you… He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:10-18)
Repenting
Hubris is a terrible burden. It has many sources. One of its sources is greed. Some in our congregation were recently surprised by the power of four words, “greed which is idolatry.” Writing to the church in Colossae, The Apostle Paul assigned greed as one of the powers of our earthly nature that we must put to death, otherwise it will dominate our lives (Colossians 3:5). One of my friends was stunned by connection of greed with idolatry. But that’s how it is — our hearts will follow our treasure and our treasures will define our hearts. Our relationship to the stuff of earth is fundamentally a question of worship. It has been noted by others that you know some thing is an idol the moment someone tries to take it from you and you feel crushed at the core of your person. Such idolatry leads to the death of justice.
Sadly our histories and therefore many of our collective holidays are shaped by greed and by hubris. When holidays are shaped like that humility and mercy and then justice will slip away. Let’s redeem the holy days.
Remembering
Perhaps a good way to start is the very way we see Jesus dealing with the temptation to meet the desires of his body with a self-directed act of power. You may recall Jesus was compelled by the Spirit of God to go from His baptism in the Jordan to meet with God in the wilderness. After a long season of fasting and prayer we get to listen in on the devil’s temptation, “If you are the Son of God tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus defeats the devil by recalling the work of God in the wilderness, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:3-4). What has Jesus done? He has remembered.
The context for Jesus’ quotation of Scripture is Deuteronomy. He recalls the call Moses gave to the people of Israel to remember God when they are no longer pilgrims but have become settlers. The call goes this way:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Deuteronomy 8:2-3
Three questions to evaluate our memory
Thanks giving requires remembering.
Who are we remembering?
Who are we forgetting?
Does humility and mercy and then justice flow from our thanks giving into our relationships?
And then comes rejoicing.
Notes on the picture: For more on Danh Vo’s work, We The People, read his story in the notes provided by The Guggenheim.