Empty: Speaking to the Soul, March 30, 2023

 Philippians 2:5-11

Empty of all privilege and power, 
empty of all vanity and puffed up pride 
he arrives not as a great warrior 
astride a mighty war horse. 

Nobodies herald him, 
the collaborators yawn and snicker 
the authorities wave their hands dismissively 
-- for now. 

Empty 
not like the chamber of a gun,
not like a fainthearted suitor pleading his case
not like the scroll of years in a crosscut of a tree,
   rippling concentrically, 
         adamantly, 
                if finitely.
Not like the would-be tyrant’s vise-like grin.

Empty like a ledger wiped clean, 
power ceded so that love is seeded and sown;
empty like cedar branches holding the morning light 
already eons old.

Lord, make us empty 
the way petals unfurl like a fist unclenched 
the way a heart, unburdened, embraces hope 
so that we may stand in solidarity 
   with the least of the least 
   out of love with the stranger 
shedding all that holds us back 
   from embracing the dream of God for all
borne aloft on a rood of love.

--This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 30, 2023.

Watching, Waiting, Hoping: Sermon for Lent 5A

When I was about twelve, we went to San Diego, and my Mom took me to a beach in La Jolla that was a perfect little crescent moon. I had brought a mask along because I loved to look for shells as I swam, since the beach was usually picked over by the hundreds of people who had been there before me. And so the beach where we were was shallow, until it suddenly plunged to about ten feet deep, and that’s where the shells were, down past that plunge. So down I would go, and when I would find a treasure, I would swim back to shore and deposit it on my beach blanket. By the way, this was also about the time that my lifelong bitterness about men’s clothing having pockets when the corresponding attire for women had none was reinforced. It’s an injustice, I tell you!

But I digress. Anyway, back then, I also was really good at holding my breath—just like I am still holding my breath about those pockets. So at one point I was down scrounging along the bottom for shells, and I happened to look up, and noticed the waves rolling over me way over my head. I kind of sat and floated there for a while, watching those waves roll, seemingly inside-out, the play of light and shadow, all the different subtle shades of blue and gray spinning overhead. When I swam back to the surface, I saw my parents standing with a mixture of dread and fury on the beach. I guess I had stayed down there too long. They kept motioning for me to come back to shore, but I am no dummy and so I tried to give them some time to cool off before I got within spanking distance. They had been calling my name while I was down there, but I couldn’t hear them so far underwater. All I could hear was the rolling of the waves overhead—that and my own heartbeat.

The image of the waves rolling over your head is not always an image of comfort, I have to admit. For the ancient Israelites, who were a desert people and NOT a sea-faring people, the ocean was the place of chaos, disorder, danger-- the home of monsters like the Leviathan and that whale that gobbled Jonah up. The apostle Paul claimed to have been shipwrecked more than once during his missionary travels because he knew that would send a shiver down the spines of his audience, and prove how MUCH he had suffered in carrying the gospel all around on that treacherous, salty menace known as the Mediterranean Sea.

A few months after that experience at the beach, I first attended an Episcopal church. One of the things I first noticed when I began attending an Episcopal Church was the Book of Common Prayer. Even though there were Bibles right next to them in the pews (this being Oklahoma, after all, where “Bible Belt” is not just a phrase but a stating of the obvious), a goodly portion of the BCP was taken up with the inclusion of the entire psalter. It drove home to me the beautiful realization that the Psalter is the Prayer Book within the Prayer Book. And so this began a years-long fascination with the Psalter that continued today.

It is amazing what you see if you sit down and look at how the psalms are arranged. When you sit down and read the psalms in the psalter, you notice that often there are pairings within its pages. Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 go together, for instance, likewise Psalm 22 and 23, and also with Psalm 130 with Psalm 131.

Psalm 130 starts with a cry of distress and fear, but reminds us of this precious truth: mercy is part of the fabric of God. Ultimately, both this psalm and our gospel passage are about hearing: Does God hear us? And do we hear God?

Psalm 130 is a cry for help. And so I want you to imagine Martha and Mary praying that psalm as their brother falls ill, and as they send word to their treasured friend, Jesus. They are waiting like watchmen for the morning, certainly. And I believe they prayed this psalm knowing that God hears us and redeems us from death, from the breakers of death and suffering that roll over our heads especially in times of crisis and despair. But we have to be willing to wait, even while we are holding our breath as the waves seem to be crashing over us.

Tom Petty WAS right. The waiting is the hardest part.

That’s why this word is repeated four times at the center of this psalm.

Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.

What we hear in all our readings is the power of God’s voice, and the reminder of what amazing things can happen when we listen to God’s voice directed back at us. Jesus weeps at Lazarus’s grave, just as surely as God weeps alongside us when we despair or feel the waves breaking over our heads. God sees us loves each of us individually enough to speak words to us of forgiveness, of presence, of a new, better restored life to us—if only we will listen, and have faith. God’s voice is the power of resurrection in our own lives, calling us out of the tomb of hopelessness and fear.

The psalter reflects this same assurance. Take a look. Turn in your Books of Common Prayer to Psalm 131 later and see. Psalm 131 comes from a place of calm and security—the psalmist even goes so far as to envision themselves as a child upon its mother’s breast—one of the most obviously maternal images for God in the entire Bible. Where Psalm 130 begins with a cry as the waters rise over our heads, even by verse 3 we are reminded of the forgiveness that is intrinsic to God’s relationship with us and God’s self-disclosure to us.

If you consider the two psalms together, you will notice that Psalm 130 begins with the author’s own personal experience of anxiety and plea to God, followed by a reminder to himself of God’s justice and compassion, even though the word “feared” is used at the end of v. 3. In v. 4, the psalmist has moved to hope through verse 5. You can hear with wistful longing when the psalmist speaks of “my soul waits upon the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”

The idea of “waiting upon the Lord” is one that I think especially resonates in this time of pandemic, anxiety, and fear. In Psalms for a Pilgrim People, Anglican priest Jim Cotter, whose work also was included in the beautiful New Zealand Prayer Book, rendered the psalms in verse. Psalm 130 was entitled “Watching and Waiting:”

Dare I enter the dark?

Empty, exhausted, and ravaged,
in the depths of despair I writhe.
Anguished and afflicted, terribly alone,
I trudge a bleak wasteland, devoid of all love.

In the echoing abyss I call out:
no God of Compassion hears my voice.
Yet still I pray, Open your heart,
for my tears well up within me.

If you keep account of all that drags me down,
there is no way I can ever stand firm.
Paralyzed and powerless, I topple over,
bound by the evil I hate.

But with you is forgiveness and grace,
there is nothing I can give - it seems like a death.
The power of your love is so awesome:
I am terrified by your freeing embrace.

Drawn from the murky deeps by a fishhook,
I shout to the air that will kill me:
must I leave behind all that I cherish
before I can truly breathe free?

Suspended between one world and the next,
I waited for you, my God.
Apprehension and hope struggled within me,
I waited, I longed for your word.

As a watchman waits for the morning,
through the darkest and coldest of nights,
more even than the watchman who peers through the gloom,
I hope for the dawn, I yearn for the light.

You will fulfill your promise to bring me alive,
overflowing with generous love.
You will free me from the grip of evil,
O God of mercy and compassion.

Touching and healing the whole of my being,
you are a God whose reach has no limit.
All that has been lost will one day be found:
the communion of the rescued will rejoice in your name. (1) 

This psalm, which begins “out of the depths,” is also ironically what is called “a psalm of ascents.” These were chanted by pilgrims as they climbed the steps to the Temple in Jerusalem. And fittingly, the movement starts from a low place and ends on a high place. We *may* be in the deep, with the water over our heads, but God is near, hears us, forgives us because God treasures each of us, and accompanies us.

The structure of the psalm is much like a liturgy: v. 1 is the invocation, vv. 2-3 are a confession and absolution. It is at verse 2 that we are reminded that God watches us, including “taking note of what is done amiss.” The absolution in v. 3 ends with the unfortunate choice of the word “feared” used in its original sense that we have completely lost. “Feared” in this context originally meant evoking a feeling of respect and awe. In vv. 4-5 we center ourselves in the presence of God, as in the heart of the liturgy—if we are really paying attention, if we are here not just to check off a box but to worship and praise. A watchman looks for morning because his shift on the fortifications is then done, the danger that lurks in the night is now driven back by the light of day, and the watchman anticipates home and bed after a job well done. In vv. 6-7, we too turn for home—not as individuals, but as a community that has just shared communion and reminded ourselves of our bonds with one another and with Christ. We leave, assured of God’s care for each of us and presence alongside us, offering us renewed and restored life sustained by faith.

Three things reside “with” Yahweh: forgiveness (v. 3), steadfast love (chesed, translated here as “plenteous redemption” in v. 7), and the power of redemption, also in v. 7. Redemption is a word we seem to skim over and take for granted in our worship and in our understanding of God’s forgiveness, so it bears emphasizing: to be redeemed is to be reclaimed, ransomed, restored to wholeness and home. It is to be a captive who has been freed from captivity—in this case, the captivity to sin to which we all are prone when left to our own desires and devices. These three qualities that dwell with God demand an ethical response from us, as we acknowledge and give abundant thanks for God’s redemption and restoration of us to new life.

First, we give thanks when we truly worship with our hearts and allow that worship to transform how we live in the world. That is what we are here for in the first place, after all. Second we share that gift of forgiveness and reconciliation with those we encounter rather than judging them, condemning them, or targeting them. I am convinced that right there is a word that needs to be preached to those struggling for power and control in our common life together outside these walls. As the writer Anne Lamott famously remarked, you can be pretty certain you have created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.

God not only hears us, God calls us to be honest that here are times when the waves crashing over our heads are waves of our own fashioning, as we fall subject to the temptation of sin—when we act hatefully toward marginalized groups in our society—or just remain silent as the powerful in the world perpetuate injustice and hatred in our names. So God calls us to listen for God’s voice of resurrection and redemption in our own lives—to listen, and to be formed and shaped by the ethic of abundant love, abundant life, and abundant grace that we ourselves receive.

When we hear that voice of forgiveness of resurrection, we can then feel the power of God’s loving call to us in everything we do, and we can then embrace the pure joy of Psalm 131. I share again Jim Cotter’s beautiful interpretation of Psalm 131, which he entitled “Calm and Contentment:”

Dear God, my heart is not proud,
nor are my eyes haughty.
I do not busy myself in great matters,
nor in what is beyond me.

I am glad I depend upon my neighbour,
I make no great claims of my own;
Sealed off by myself I would never know gifts,
never know the bonding of trust.

I have calmed in quiet and my whole being,
I am like a child contented at the mother's breast,
in the stillness I look into the eyes of my lover,
I am absorbed in the task of the moment.

It is like the silence of an evening in spring,
made intense by the bleat of a lamb.
It is like the waves of the sea come to rest,
no more than a whisper in the caress of the shore.

The silence and stillness lift the woodsmoke of prayer,
a song of quiet gratitude wafting it high.
Aware of descendants an ancestors with us,
we join the soft chorus of praise. (2)

Listen carefully. We are those dry bones, being restored to new hope and new life at just the word of God being spoken over us. We ARE Lazarus, beloved so much that Jesus weeps over us, drawing us forward in response to the loving call to us from the grave of our own fears and prejudices.

God’s dream for us is resurrection, redemption, and abundant life. All these things are there for us. All we have to do is listen. Listen, and come forth out of the tomb, our of the depths.

Preached at the 505 on March 25 and at the 10:30 Eucharist on March 26, 2023 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Psalm 130

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Citations:

1 and 2) Jim Cotter, Psalms for a Pilgrim People, kindle edition.

Lazarus Unbound: Speaking to the Soul March 23, 2023

John 11:1-45

To the sound of distant weeping I exited:
“Eleazar, Eleazar,” my sisters cried
but the keen came as if from the bottom of a well,
recessing like a long, slow tide; fevered rasp
of buzzing insects in the sick room;
and my scroll was torn in half with what I thought
was finality.

All was still. I rose and spun
and I cooled like a stone skipped into a river
pain and broken body shrugged off, a spent husk:

At this point of the page I resume:
I had shed this tomb of a body and rolled back the stone.
In golden sunlight, walking under a canopy
of lupine-blue sky, hands at waist facing forward, fingers open
as bobbing seas of wildflowers
- anemones and poppies, rockrose, Aaron’s rod-
weave their stems around my wrists,
and I absorb the honeyed petrichor of a desert in bloom,
murmuration of sparrows from a wadi nearby

swallows swooping from the tops of locust trees.
The difference between a field and a wasteland is in the flowers.
All was rest. All was God. All was peace.

A kaleidoscope of colors and I am jerked back
by the voice of love, insistent.
From the depths he called me to rising with a voice tear-choked.
Then the longed-for renewal of breath back into a body
now stretched like a new wineskin across my soul.
I am a somnambulist, stumbling pale in my shroud
toward an aperture so bright all was white beyond,
heart pounding like a child’s eager fist at a door.



--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, March 22, 2023


This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 23, 2023.

Scripture Reference: John 11:1-45, Lent 5A

Image: Jose Luis Castrillo, The Resurrection of Lazarus

Refreshment: Speaking to the Soul, March 9, 2023

John4: 5-42

Lenten violet and white papel picado flutter overhead,
the bougainvillea blooms sprawl
over the crisp white tablecloths,
altars beneath the warming Oaxacan sun.

Come, be refreshed. Offer up your cup
from stall to stall, a feast amidst fast
for stranger or friend, all receive refreshment:
Agua frescas, jamaica, tamarindo, chilacoyata, horchatas,
tejate brimming from clay bowls
on the Dia de la Samaritana.
The Pacific air is redolent and vibrant
with chocolate, sugar,
sunlight and music.

Remembering the heat of another noonday sun,
in Samaria, scorned for its mongrel faith,
sprawled between the boundaries
of Jerusalem’s industrialized religion
and Galilee with its olives and figs,
crocus and anemone,
cyclamen nodding from rocky crevices.
His face was turned toward home.

He did not seek more contention
or midnight visitors brimming
with questions. He sought
a shortcut. The route
should have been along seashore or river bank,
but God so loved the world,
and the world begins
within the hostilities in Samaria,
beyond boundaries of belief,
or the scorn of gender
or judgment and prejudice.

Photina sought to retrieve her water
when the gossiping tongues remained at home,
the heat of the sun less bitter,
her footsteps slowing as she took in
the shimmering shape of the dusty traveler
seated despite the noonday heat.
Only her need overcame her wariness. But
despite all differences,
he did not judge her but loved her,
stripping away all the rumors that clung to her,
and seeing a disciple instead.

Through her refreshed perception
she was emboldened to witness;
by calling her to tend his humanity--
his weariness, his thirst, his hunger,
and seeing hers--
the disillusionment, the contempt she bore
even among her kindred, the
burden of abandonment and scorn
but also the strength of mind and heart to dare.
His words provoke and promise,
testimony received and boldly proclaimed
to her and to us.

Nicodemus saw he was from God,
but Photina saw he was Savior.

Come, be refreshed.
Let down your bucket within your heart
to receive the living water of joy,
faith and hope--
a wellspring of witness.

Come be refreshed and restored,
stranger or friend,
by the love that was always within you
from the Maker’s handiwork
and seal upon your soul.

It is only those who have need of Jesus
who hear the hope of the invitation,
who receive the offered cup of fresh water
of God’s kingdom.


Note: the Oaxacan festival of the Dia de la Samaritana will be March 17 this year.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 9, 2023.

Where the Wind Blows: Speaking to the Soul March 2, 2023

Abraham, back when 

he was just two syllable Abram
heard the voice of God
from within his soul
speak so convincingly that even
as his molars still
rattled from the conversation,
he packed up
wife and cattle and nephew
and headed to an unknown land.
In doing so
he left behind
all he had ever known.

I am a good man,
admired, respected,
a leader.
So through the anonymity
of dark-veiled streets
I went, seeking answers,
overflowing with questions.

I started with oil:
Rabbi, we know
that you were sent by God.
He blinked up.

And to be fair,
I did barge in
in the middle of the night.

There were signs.
But I wanted answers.
Instead I got riddles.
And he left me here.

To be brave enough
to let go of our “certainties”
—which are often just opinions
wrapped up in fear
and cynicism.
“The wind blows
where it chooses.”
And I hear leaves
rattling down the narrow alleys

I took my questions to Jesus.
The answer took me
someplace unexpected.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 2, 2023.