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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)
Love, Rise
Sun, rise and welcome the new day I have dreaded Love, rise and stand in the gap of my silent fears I watch the sunrise because I long for your warmth River, rise and carry away this ache of sorrow Love, rise and wash over me with wonder I come to the water because I...
Wild Things
Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps; wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! - Psalm 148:7, 10 (NRSV) Listening to a 45 RPM vinyl as a child, I learned from the Irish Rovers why there are no unicorns in the world: they...
Christmas Praise
"Let there be rest for the weary, O God Most High, rest and peace to the brokenhearted, peace and pleasure for the despondent, and let freedom come like an angel to the earth." So sing the stars and constellations, the leviathan from its depths and the dragon from its...
Love
What we have confined, O Love, you have exploded. What we have defined, O Love, you have confounded. What we have constrained, O Love, you have released. What we have diminished, O Love, you have overflowed. What we have cast in stone, O Love, you have made to dance....
Song of the Prophet Mary
Let this breath be an insight into your glory and this flesh be alive with your joy -- for who else is so powerful yet so merciful as to be revealed through me for the sake of blessing? It is the same One whose name is told through generations and whispered in...
Cry Out!
How long, O Peace, will we hold one another hostage?How long will we demand endless penalty for every debt? "Make straight and wide a path in the wilderness so that all might travel safely in God's presence,"said the prophet -- but no, we insist, it can't be so easy....
Rock Bottom
O God, the nations have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the bodies of your servants to the birds of the air for food. - Psalm 79:1-2 (NRSV) The bleakness of early Advent – these first few days when the lectionary readings...
Riotous Reign
The Lord reigns! Let the earth rejoice! Clouds and thick darkness are all around the Holy One. Fire goes before the Lord, consuming adversaries on every side. God’s lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the...
In the Wee Small Hours
On that day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, Joshua spoke to the Lord; and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon; and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took...
