“…worse off than before…”

12 December 2016

Matthew 12: 43-45b

  

“When an unclean spirit goes out of someone it wanders through waterless country looking for a place to rest, and cannot find one. Then it says, ‘I will return to the home I came from.’ But on arrival, finding it unoccupied, swept and tidied, it then goes off and collects seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and set up house there, and so that person ends up worse off than before.”

How is it that the best of our efforts often seem to only leave us “worse off than before…?”  We drive the evil spirit out and we feel a sense of relief and of release and of achievement.  The evil spirit that has plagued us has fled and we are back in control of our life. No more sin. No more of this addiction or that abuse or this habitual behavior.  No more resentment and bitterness. No more gossip and back-biting.  No more gazing at others with jealousy or as if they were merely objects for my own contemplation and pleasure.  No more letting the air out of my boss’s tires when the security guard is on break.  I am free of that demon and I am free to move on with my life.

But, it isn’t true.  As the Lord says here: the demon may leave for a time, but when it comes back and finds my house in order, it will return to take up residence –bringing “seven other spirits more wicked than itself.”  And then, I will be worse off than before.  I might as well not even try. I might as well just continue with my sin and my one demon –better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t, as the old saying goes. 

Sometimes when I am reading scripture, I simply want to throw up my hands and cry out:

What on earth do you want me from me?

I’ve been reading Matthew for the past couple of weeks and find many things in this Gospel to comfort me in my affliction and to afflict me in my “comfort.”  But this particular parable is simply perplexing –and fearfully so.   What is Christ saying?  To the early church perhaps He was giving an eschatological lesson and warning of troubles to come, as I find implied in a footnote to my New American “Study” Bible.  However, it seems to me that this is also very clearly meant as a lesson for the individual –as well.  A lesson with psychological as well as spiritual insight.  For me, the paradox in Jesus’s words is often the most important element. And here I find in this apparent lesson about driving a demon away, and cleaning up our spiritual house, the paradox that by making things better, we may –in the end-- only make them worse.  And that troubles me.  And that trouble makes me think that perhaps God is speaking something true, because the truth –though it will definitely set us free-- should rarely make us feel comfortable.

What is the lesson Jesus is really teaching here? Is it a lesson in resignation?  Acceptance?  Or is it a lesson in in vigilance and perseverance?  Yes –you may break your bad habit.  Yes, you may stop your sin.  Yes, you may even have the best intentions and a strong prayer life and good meditation practices and you may have begun praying the Rosary every day and maybe you’ve begun to tithe finally and you are intentionally turning the other cheek and avoiding near occasions of sin –Yes! You are cleaning your spiritual house.  But, watch out.  Sin isn’t about your strength or your habits or your will-power.  Sin is the state of a fallen world, and –like a spilled glass of milk—it spreads into every crack and crevice it can find. 

I wonder if Jesus wasn’t simply offering a fearful prognosis for our fallen state or for the future of the church.  I wonder if, perhaps He was simply explaining a truth of the spiritual life.  That yes, our best efforts will tend to be met --not with glory and hosannas! But with more trials. Despite our best efforts, the demons will come and they will only intensify their efforts to work on us. The more we clean our spiritual house, the more the demons will come to spend time there: tempting us and testing us.  And that makes me wonder if --perhaps-- the real paradox here is that the presence of these demons is a sign of our making spiritual progress? The more we try to clean house, the more we try to be the people God calls us to be --the more demons will come to test our resolve. The more they will try our patience and our perseverance.

As I pray on this, I think:  Herman –wake up.  Be vigilant.  You can’t escape these things.  You cannot escape these trials. The demons are real, and they are coming –even unto seven times seven times seven.  But, don’t be afraid.  Remember –you aren’t alone. And remember it isn't about you or your efforts.  it is about putting your faith in Christ! Trust Him.   Even in my darkest hour, the darkest night of my soul, I am never alone.  Remember: “I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.”

When you fail, when your spirit falters, when the demons return (as we know they must) –do not despair.  You are not alone.  It is a hard path to follow, but on His way to the Cross our Lord showed us what we need to do. 

In the words of the prophet Isaiah, I offer you, dear friend, this invitation: 

“Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain…”

“You brought a vine out of Egypt…”

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Psalm 80

It is Thanksgiving morning and I am reading Psalm 80 as part of my morning prayer. It shows up, every fourth Thursday here in the Divine Office. And I have read it many many times.  And always it troubles me. Sometimes, I rush past the troubling in search of comfort, ease, solace. Other times I linger over it, confused and frightened even. Occasionally, I come to it with that sense of over familiarity which can cause us to not really look at something or someone; taking someone or something for granted, we too easily miss the truth or the beauty of it, of them.

            So, before pondering this psalm anew, I would like to take a moment and give thanks to God for so much that I too often take for granted; for the gift of His love, His Word, and for the grace of faith and the consolation of prayer. Thank you God for all the many gifts You have given me: family, friends, work, prayer. Even struggles. All of Your creation that awakens in me a sense of wonder and joy each morning –for this, O Lord, I thank You. The birds calling the dawn, the trees whispering with leaves, the clouds, the breeze, the sun, even the ants and the spiders and the rush of squirrels racing to work. O, Lord, for all this –and for the quiet of an early walk stirred only by shadows and occasional cat… I thank You.  And for my home, for my country, O Lord, I thank you.  You have planted us here, in this beautiful land, this fruitful, abundant land and You have made us flourish and grow.  And for so much more, Lord, I thank You.

        And perhaps this psalm is not so randomly arrived at this lovely Thanksgiving Day.  Here we have the psalmist telling of a glorious time in Israel’s history, when she was brought out of Egypt and flourished in the land and became, for a while, a mighty nation. The first part of this psalm seems very apropos for a Thanksgiving Day prayer.  God’s protection, God’s grace, God’s guiding hand, His design for our benefit is celebrate in the first part of this passage.  Employing the image of a vine brought forth and transplanted, the psalmist tells the story this way:

You brought a vine out of Egypt;
    you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it;
    it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade,
    the mighty cedars with its branches.
It sent out its branches to the sea
    and its shoots to the River.

Why then have you broken down its walls,
    so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?
The boar from the forest ravages it,
    and all that move in the field feed on it.

The first lines of this passage seem like a list of glories and things to be thankful for. God guides, He protects, He plants us in a fruitful land, makes us thrive… And for these things we are naturally grateful.  They feel like blessings and seem signs of a loving God who must have some glorious design planned out for out for us.  Of course, we would be thankful.

            God brings us out of Egypt and plants us in His place, picked out for us; He even drives out other nations, clears out the spot just for us.  He makes it ready just for us.  Then, He makes us thrive there. Rain. Fertile soil. Sunlight. Cool evenings; warm days. We thrive.

And yet there is that last image of the broken wall and the ravaging beasts scavenging the beautiful deep-rooted bountiful vine of Israel.  That broken wall, for me, seems to be the eternal question. The piece of this psalm that I keep coming back to; the part that I get hung up on, the image that troubles me most.  And so, every fourth Thursday when this psalm shows up (Week II of the cycle), I read it and either skim right through it without thinking; oh, that one again! Or I stop and find myself snagged on this particular verse and unable to let it go; yes –that one again!  Why God? Why did that wall exist, why did you give us all this security and success if You were just going to break down the wall and let all this happen? Why do You build us up only to let every scavenging creature (man or beast) pluck our fruit and feed upon us?  If You truly love us, if we are Your children, why did You bring us out of Egypt, build us into Your mighty city and Your thriving people… then abandon us? Why would you break down the mighty walls You Yourself put in place?

Is it because, perhaps, He has a purpose? A design? And that the building up, the protecting and nurturing are a part of the purpose, and that the broken wall and scavenging beasts are part of that design?  And is it just possible, that all of this is a sign not that God has abandoned Israel… or that God has abandoned us… But, a sign of God’s boundless love?

When I begin to contemplate this question I tend to think of two things: first, the historical event of the exile and captivity of God’s people around this time.  I imagine the psalmist may even be speaking literally of these events. The confusion, the fear, the horror of these actual events; how the people suffering them must have felt abandoned by God. “You built us up and made us great –so, why have you turned on us, Lord? Why have You broken down Your wall of protection?” And then the diaspora –again an event that certainly felt like a curse in the moment. The beasts and the boar ravage Your vine O, Lord. All who pass by, pluck its fruit and carry it off!

But, then I wonder to what purpose?  Why would God allow His chosen people to be ravaged and plucked? Carried off into exile? Why would a loving God do that? Did He do it? And I think again of those birds and the squirrels that I give thanks for every morning.  When they pluck a seed or a nut or a berry from a vine, what happens? They carry it off and drop it somewhere. Perhaps they even eat it, then leave it somewhere in their droppings.  That is one of the ways the flowers, the berries, and the vines are spread. That is one of the ways the fruitfulness of the world is shared. One of the ways nature has for spreading her seeds. Certainly it doesn’t seem glorious to be plucked up from all security and safety and comfort and dragged into exile –but is it possible that God uses this as a way of spreading His seed, His grace—spreading His Holy presence in the world?

I wonder.  But, I don’t know.  I don’t know if God is making these things happen (for whatever reason) or just letting them happen? At times like that, I look around and ask myself:

Where is God in this moment?

Is He the hand behind it? Did He break down the wall of my protection? Is He the one who is putting me to the test? Trying me in His crucible? In His fiery furnace?  

Or is He the hand holding me up as I go through my trial?  Is He the strength by which I endure? Is He the grace that consoles me, even in my hour of despair?

Is it possible the psalmist is asking the wrong question? Is it possible he has seen an anaconda when all he was really looking at was a pair of red corduroys that fell off the laundry line?  I think one of the most important skills is the ability to actually see what we are looking at, and not to be distracted by our own expectations, our own blindness. We must see what is really there, and not what we expected to see. (Of course, that makes me wonder why I keep seeing anacondas… but that is a question for my therapist.)

I have eyes…

why can’t I see?

"Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;

Your walls are continually before Me.”

--Isaiah 49:16

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.

How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

Friday 26 June 2015

“…the life I live is not my own; Christ is living in me…”  Galatians 2:19

“…I will make you a light to the nations
that my salvation shall reach to the ends of the earth…”  Isaiah 49:6

          Today the US Supreme Court decided in favor of a right to same-sex marriage.  And this decision, whether one approves or disapproves, is a clear signal of our nation’s further move from what was once considered a “Christian nation” toward a more and more secular nation divorced from any spiritual or faith-based influences.  Again, one may approve or disapprove of such a movement; in fact individual Christians, Jews and Muslims, members of all faiths, may sincerely disagree on the importance and societal value of this movement. But, it seems pretty clear that today we no longer live in a “Christian nation.”  And I think, as a Christian we will find very shortly that we are no longer at home in this nation, in our homeland, but instead we are in exile (whether spiritual, political or societal –I don’t know, perhaps all three). 

            Last night (Thursday) in our theology class we were studying the Hebrew prophets (mainly Isaiah and Jeremiah) and our professor offered us a series of passages from Isaiah as an example of the prophet’s style and theology.  When he came to 49:1-6 and introduced it by discussing the scholarly tradition that this passage was probably written by a second writer during the Babylonian captivity and at some point attributed to Isaiah, I became very curious about the image of Israel as a “light to the nations.” I began to wonder why would this image come to mind while a people is in exile?  Why a light to the nations and not just the Jews? Why that transition would occur in exile –during captivity.

            The professor emphasized the change in theology implied by the image, from we are the chosen people to we are a light to the nations, that all people may come to God; He’s not just for the Jews anymore.

   And I still wondered why they would come to this idea in exile? And then he went on to elaborate that some think that it was possibly in exile (in captivity) that the Jews actually gained their identity.

   And still I wondered why this change in teaching and why during captivity?

   Then I began to wonder: is it because of the captivity, because in captivity, in exile, in defeat they had to grapple with: Why? Why did this happen to us? To God’s chosen people and why would a good and loving God who made a covenant with us let this happen to us? This seems terrible! Horrible! Evil! But then someone (Isaiah or Duetero-Isaiah) had the flash of inspiration OR the Holy Spirit inspired him (or his redactors) to see that if God is good and God is love or loves us in a special covenantal way then there must be some good in this; some good in the exile and captivity and defeat and destruction of the temple, etc etc.  And not just some good (i.e. –we might as well look on the bright side) but…If we are God’s people and He loves us and this happened to us there must be a good in this that we can’t or don’t see, there must be a good intended by this that we can’t see—and that good, Isaiah somehow realized, was to become the “light to the nations…”

  The Jews were to become “…so marred…beyond human semblance…despised and rejected… a [people] of suffering and acquainted  with infirmities…” (52:13-53:3) not as a sign that God rejected them or was punishing them but as a sign to the world, a light to the nations.  Dispersed so that they could finally discover what it was God really wanted of them: a home –not in a temple—but within them, within each one of them, within the “lowly and afflicted…” (66:2) and that they could in their suffering (and perhaps only through their suffering) become truly a light to the world –a lamp not hidden behind temple walls or hidden in a bushel, but put where it can be seen –every day by any and every one. They were to become truly chosen people, but it didn’t look like what anyone expected. With no temple save their own humble and contrite hearts, they were each and every one being called to become the dwelling place of the Lord.   The land was finally truly theirs –the Holy Land was finally theirs and the covenant complete –because the Holy Land was right beneath their feet always and everywhere, wherever they stood all they could do was go from one piece of Holy ground to the next.

  And so we Christians now, (once again?), are being called to go through the refining fire of exile and captivity, that we too may finally become (once again?) truly a light to the world.  And it seems to me that our light will glow through the way we live our exile; how we live this exile will determine how bright our light glows because the glow will in fact be not ours, but a reflection of God’s love dwelling in us—and the love we reflect to the world will be reflected not in acts of confrontation and political activism, but in the love we show, the love we feel for the world, the love we will toward the world. 

  Do we act with love and compassion when we meet difficulties and feel oppressed? Or do we meet these moments with clenched teeth and forced smiles –pretended tenderness?  If so, then we won’t reflect much of God’s love. But if we meet our exile with gentleness, with sincere and tender compassion; if we are open and vulnerable and willing to embrace even our oppressors, then we will reflect God’s love more brightly and maybe through us, through our exile we will become a light that shines His glory to all the nations –drawing people to Him.  We shall see.  It won’t be easy; for many this exile in our own land will be terribly hard and bitter, as if they are being led out of Jerusalem through a hole in the wall, bound and chained, a hook through their lip, dragged away to see their home no more.  The world will never again be the same, they fear... I too suspect that the world will never again be the same, not in my lifetime… But I'm not sad about that. I know God is good, therefore out of this sea change, this fearful exile, good is coming…somehow, someday, someway…

and I know this, because the life we live now is not our own… therefore when people ask me how I think we should react to this national transformation, I can only say: do not be afraid, He is with you always. Let go of your need to prove anything, let go of your need to be right,  speak the truth with humility and compassion and be vulnerable; you may be a stranger living in a strange land, but don't be afraid --let God make of you a light for the nations, a light that will reach to the ends of the earth.