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Many Miracles
The crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard [the disciples] speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? … [Yet] in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power. What does this mean?” Acts 2:6-12 excerpted (NRSV)
Language is a delightfully mystical phenomenon. Set aside the oddities of grammar and the hazards of translation, and you’ll find that language is a kind of miracle: A few funny scribbles on the page, a line here, a swoop there, and voilà! The scribbles now convey ideas that live beyond the page and the ink.
I can write three symbols, for example—R, E, D—and your mind’s eye immediately paints a picture of blooming roses, or of campfire sparks drifting up to the sky on a summer night, or of your grandmother’s red sweater that she wore to church on Pentecost and Christmas, always with a gold broach appropriate to the holiday.
Letters are only scribbles and sounds, yet when assembled together, they can capture our lived experiences. Miraculous!
As with most miracles, of course, language can be a source of confusion and conflict. Do we insist upon a single interpretation, confining language like wine to an old flask? Do we worry its inconsistencies to the point of death-by-grammar, concerned that nothing so messy as language can yield new possibilities—like the darkened sun and the bleeding moon welcoming God’s new day? When communication is strained, should our tongues retreat from language in favor of silence?
I imagine someone muttered to themselves on the day of Pentecost: “This is too many tongues, too much fire, too many languages, too much noise.” But who is God, if not the One with too many miracles still unfolding?
Prayer: I prefer to understand it all, O God. Thank heavens the Holy Spirit continues to interrupt and confuse me with new miracles.
cross-posted with the Daily Devotional (ucc.org)
Faith-in-Flesh
Evil is well worth our anger, our outrage, our fury, our deep indignation. Violence too is a worthy recipient of our defensiveness, our horror, our disquiet, even our fear. To rage against the injustices of the world is an appropriate response of Christian faith.
And yet…
Carrying all that rage and fear around on our shoulders as if they are the yoke of Jesus is not faithful living. Holding anger tightly within our bodies—in a knot in our backs, in the tension of our hips, in the shallowness of our breath—is not a spiritual practice. Allowing fear to establish a residence in our guts, hunching our shoulders permanently forward to guard our hearts, fatiguing our minds with the obsession of resentment—these are not the disciplines to which Christ calls us.
If we were called to a faith of rage, we would be followers of Peter with his sword swinging wildly in the Garden of Gethsemane.
If we were called to a faith of fear, we would be adherents in the church of Ananias and Sapphira with their hands clenched tightly around security and their hearts racing with anxiety.
If we were called to a faith of self-righteousness, we would be siblings to the sons of Zebedee in our clamor for seats of judgment and control.
And if we were called to a faith of stiff necks and tense backs, we would be known by the sign of a millstone rather than the sign of the cross, weighed down by worry, tripping over our own doubt.
Instead…
We are called to a faith of radical love and abundant life. We are called to displace the bitter anger from our bodies with a strong backbone of love, the kind of loving backbone that moves easily to make room and holds steady to protect joy. We are called to exhale fear from our guts, to breathe in the expansiveness of hope. We are called to throw off the burden of anxiety from our shoulders, so that we have room to bear the light yoke of Christ.
Anger and fear and heartache have their place in faith—God knows!—but when they sink their roots into our bodies, psyches, and nervous systems, we are hindered from faith. So we choose to love from our physical core, trading fear for community. We love from our hips and our backs, releasing resentment in favor of hope. We love with our whole bodies, because Christ did too. We love, and God is known.
cross-posted with Witness for Justice (a ucc.org publication)
Pit of Despair
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. - Psalm 31:9-10 (NRSV) I do not wish...
Hyssop
Sprinkle death with truth, O Mercy, to dispel its plague upon the living. Mark every doorway with wisdom to guard against violent hatred that courses through the streets. Purge evil with fragrant hyssop. Bind up broken spirits and bones with cleansing joy. Make of...
Upstream
To make my way to the Source, I pray, and to understand how it carves through the rock and reshapes the earth along its holy path; I pray to meet the One who loves the path -- its movement more than its destination -- and to learn the patience of unknown ends; To...
Whispers
I hear a voice I had not known: “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket. In distress you called, and I rescued you. - Psalm 81:5b-7a (NRSV) I’ve never felt close to God in a personal buddy-buddy kind of way. It’s never been my...
Telling Trauma’s Story
Book publishing and church pastoring share a vocational aim: meaningful storytelling. A book can change your life with its story. So can the church. The church can mold your personal story, help you make sense of good and evil, shape your imagination for what is...
Covenants
Your promises I welcome, numerous and good, but the blamelessness I simply cannot manage. Perhaps, O Perfection, we can come to a different arrangement? I could give you my fear and awe -- easily; my name and faith, too -- several times over; but human things, O...
Sleepless
Tell me, stars, how often God has shown up for you in your cold existence. Over the millennia, how often has God been your renewal, your hope, your reason for being -- or have you died already, unnoticed, your light unrequited? Tell me, tears, if you ever grow tired...
Remembering
Remembering, O Light, that your sign of mercy is my sign of trust, from horizon to horizon, sunrise to sunset, mountains to seas. Taking a deep breath in, letting trust reach down to my toes. Remembering, O Life, that your time of patience is my time of wilderness...
Restraint
The LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” - Genesis 2:16-17 (NRSV) When the new year dawned last month, my social media feed was filled with people saying...
