Meditation for Holy Saturday 2019 (the empty sanctuary and the empty tomb)

“Until I went into the sanctuaries of the gods

and understood what was to become of them.”

--Psalm 73:17

Where are the sanctuaries of my gods?  In this psalm, one of the themes the psalmist sings of is the fate of false gods and those who follow them. And it isn’t until he ventures into the sanctuaries of these “gods,” that he realizes what becomes of them.  It isn’t until we look into the sanctuaries of our gods that we realize what will be come of them, what will become of us.

What are the sanctuaries of my gods? The little sacred places that I have made for my own personal gods: sex and pleasure, fame and honor, praise and success.  My “gods” are held high in sanctuaries of loneliness, emptiness and desire; gilded sanctuaries of longing and self-pity; but what will become of them?  What will become of my gods?

In this Easter time, I must realize that they –even my sanctuaries—will be shattered, broken in two, their sacred veils torn from top to bottom, the very rock of their foundation will crumble and disappear like dust.  And there is nothing to be done about it. From dust they came, and to dust they will return. There is nothing to be done but go to the tomb (the real sanctuary of all such gods) and find it empty –and be glad. Our personal gods are empty vessels. The tomb is where such emptiness belongs.

Put away your childish things, your personal gods, your brokenness, your emptiness, and turn away from the tomb; the true sanctuary of all such gods.  Turn away the tomb and see the true God standing there waiting for you.

Be not afraid.

He has risen.  He has risen indeed.

Pharaoh’s hardened heart: Another look

“[the Egyptians]…whose hearts He turned to hate His own people,

To treat His servants deceitfully…”

--Psalm 105:25

Psalm 105 is a brief history of ancient Israel, with several verses on the exile and Exodus story.  And in it we come again upon this idea of God making someone obstinate or hateful –for some purpose known only to God. In this image from the Psalm we see God paradoxically turning the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians against His own beloved people. In some unspoken way this turning of the enemy's heart to obstinacy and hate and deceit is presented as necessary for the fulfillment of God's plan; it seems somehow essential for the building up of Israel.  God makes Pharaoh’s heart hard and obstinate, against Pharaoh’s own good and the good of the Egyptians. And God does this (it seems) so that Israel’s ultimate victory can somehow be recognized as even more astonishing; more miraculous.  Israel overcomes her foes who are powerful, obstinately bad, persisting in evil, and who  far outnumber her –but who, in the end, are defeated through God’s miraculous intercession.

But I am left pondering: How is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart necessary to God’s plan?  Even if this is just a myth (or hyperbole), why did the ancient story teller feel it necessary to put it in these terms? What lesson was God imparting by having His scribes write His story in this way?  If (for instance) God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is a metaphor –then what is it a metaphor of? And what lesson (or insight) was it supposed to teach? What psychological (or spiritual) insight was it intended to reveal?

1.       That God is willful and can do whatever He likes?  Even make our hearts hard and turn our ways to deceit? Sin?  -OR

2.       That God’s plan, the work of a loving God, may even be found in the hardened heart and deceitful ways of our foe…

And, in the end, the key question is: What does a loving God accomplish by changing the hearts of Pharaoh, the Egyptians, all of Israel’s foes “so that they hate His own people?” What is it that He accomplishes through this hardened heart that He couldn’t accomplish otherwise? Why didn’t He change their hearts so that they loved His people?  What part does this hardening of the heart play in God’s plan?  How does it reveal His loving presence?  Those are the questions, the paradox, I am pondering these days. 

Next I want to spend a little time considering this passage, this image, through the lens of the four-fold method; seeking in it the four levels of reading: literal, allegorical, moral & anagogical.

  

Afflicted by the Word of God --Psalm 119: xiv [Nun]

Sunday 20 November 2016

Psalm 119: xiv [Nun]

“…Lord, I am deeply afflicted:

by Your word give me life…”

Sometimes, it seems to me, that the way God speaks to us is through our mistakes, our seeing first one thing and then realizing it was another.  This happens to me all the time. I will see what I am certain is a dog sleeping next to a fence only to discover as I approach that it is a crumpled piece of cardboard box or a cluster of leaves; a shrub bustling in the breeze, on closer inspection, becomes a small child squatting in the grass, what appears to be some dropped laundry is actually an anaconda curled up and resting in the sun –or was that someone’s dress shirts?  For me, the world is often not what it seems at first glance.

When I first read the psalm this morning, I was certain it said:

           

            “Lord, I am deeply afflicted by Your word, give me life….”

And I was caught off guard by the insinuation that God’s word afflicts us.  The idea that God’s word, His will, “afflicts” us, was wonderfully troubling to me.  And in the next verse, when the psalmist asks that his homage be accepted and that he be taught God’s decrees –I felt a puzzlingly insightful paradox:

You afflict me with Your word God –I praise You; please afflict me more.  It is Your affliction (Your laws, Your decrees) that set me free.  Your will is my heritage—it is the joy of my heart….  It reminded me of Donne’s “Batter my heart three-person’d God…”

Then, I caught sight of that colon. The one I had missed. And instantly the reading changed. it became more accurate, but certainly less my own.  And that distinction seems important.

In this morning’s Divine Office prayer the reading was from Ezekiel 36.  It is one of my favorites.

I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your iniquities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you… taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts… live by my statutes…observe my decrees… You shall live in the land I gave your fathers, you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”  --Ezekiel 36:25-28

Coming upon that reading in light of my own misreading of the psalm, I found myself pondering not the stony hearts and the cleansing (which I am usually drawn to) but the statutes and the decrees and finally that promise of God’s:  “You shall live in the land I gave your fathers…” And I began to wonder about the affliction of God’s word, the affliction of His decrees, His statutes…

By living God’s statutes, by observing His decrees –by being “afflicted” deeply by His Word, we live in the land of our fathers—the land of promise. The Promised Land --our Eden—is there where we live by God’s statutes, where we observe His decrees. 

How often do we hear the voices of the secular world today proclaiming that God’s laws and statutes, His decrees are nothing but afflictions?  They are rules imposed on us to limit our pleasures and our freedoms.  But are they? Does unbounded pursuit of pleasure and sensation, utter self-fulfillment truly lead to an earthly paradise?  Or does it merely lead to what the psalmist refers to elsewhere as “licking the earth?” An uncontrolled obsession with sensation: taste, touch, sight, to encounter and contain everything –if possible?  Is that paradise? Or is that same endless, insatiable appetite –in fact—what we mean by Hell?

Is it possible that God’s statutes and God’s decrees are meant not as limitations on our freedoms, but guidelines for our pursuit of real, meaningful, fulfillment and true joy? Is it possible that the “affliction” of God’s words, His will, is the path to real freedom and complete fulfillment? Is it possible that wherever and whenever we live those words, those statutes, wherever and whenever we observe those decrees with openness and love and compassion… that place, that moment IS the promised land –becomes, for us, a garden of life –a place of Paradise, a moment of Paradise.  We are afflicted, by the constant badgering of the world, the anxieties and fears and conflicts (petty and large) by physical and psychological… and the pressure to seek always some new earthly pleasure or distinction or distraction to escape from those same pressures. But, today… today let us turn away from those cares, those afflictions, and let us today make the Kingdom of God here on earth… let us, today be truly afflicted by the Word of God.