What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord;
  I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
  I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
  remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
  cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice, correct oppression;
  defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
                Isaiah 1: 11, 16-17

Mark this, then, you who forget God,
   lest I rend, and there be none to deliver!
He who brings thanksgiving as his sacrifice honors me;
   to him who orders his way aright
   I will show the salvation of God!
                  Psalm 50 [49]: 22-23

                    .                     .                       .                        .                        .                      .          

Somehow, until today, I had not connected the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel with Elijah’s fantastic defeat of the prophets of Ba’al. But, of course, that was Mount Carmel. I owe the link to the Office of Readings for today: the readings for feast days are always rich and instructive. Occasionally, as was the case today, there is also overlap with the Mass readings. Psalm 50 [49] occurs in both (though only in abbreviated form in the Mass), weaving together Elijah’s famous duel with the opening gambit of the book of Isaiah.

I must admit that I overlook, sometimes, the scolding and threatening verses in the Psalms and the prophets. My reading of the Lord’s victory at Mount Carmel focuses on God’s prevenient grace; God is a God who rushes to save, who waits for the prodigal son and runs out to meet him; God is a God who is ‘abounding in steadfast love.’ We are called not only to rely on God’s love, however, but to display it, to share it, to live it constantly and fully, always and everywhere. That obligates us, as Isaiah reminds us, to the powerless and all those in need. It also demands that we forgive, as the Lord’s prayer (and Matthew 18) show so clearly. Not only that, though. God’s love draws us further up and further in, as CS Lewis described it, and the only way forward is in holiness: ‘to [the one] who orders [her] way aright I will show the salvation of God.’

To do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God–so simple, all-inclusive, and difficult. It really does require our attention all the time: love, forgiveness, thanksgiving, humility and discernment…to see where the Lord is leading, to respond to our neighbors (spouses, children, colleagues, students, teachers, friends) in love and humility, to forgive when it hurts, and to thank God anyway. Not an easy task, and one at which we are all bound to fail at one time or another. (Ok, so I admit I fail often.)

That’s why we depend on grace: for the strength to carry on, and to raise us up when we have fallen.

Have mercy on me, O God,
 according to thy steadfast love;
according to thy abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
 and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in thy sight,
so that thou art justified in thy sentence,
and blameless in thy judgment.

.                       .                      .                      .                       .                          .                           .

Anytime I read Psalm 51 (50LXX), I immediately hear it, and see myself in a very small room-cum-chapel so full of incense it looked like a smoky bar. I probably found more peace there, in that tiny room, than anywhere else on campus during the years I studied at the seminary. My Greek teacher, as it happen, was also a priest in the Orthodox church (OCA). Every morning, he would sing morning prayer with a handful of students to whom the practice appealed. And so it was that the child of a Roman Catholic first learned to cross herself from right to left, careful to press the first two fingers of the right hand against the thumb, to symbolize the Trinity.

Something happened there, in that chapel, that would forever alter me. As much as it was connected to the chant and the incense (I am a huge fan of the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei), it was shaped by my regular reflection on this Psalm. Each day, morning prayer began with this psalm–quite a different invitatory than those I find in my breviary. I found it humbling and refreshing to begin with two reminders: that I needed God, and that what God desired from me was to admit it.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
   righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness with spring up from the ground,
  and righteousness will look down from the sky.
Yea, the Lord will give what is good,
  and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him,
  and make his footsteps a way.
                                     Psalm 85.10-13

                          .                     .                     .                      .                     .

This is one of my favorite images from the Psalms. The Psalms have been my refuge since my youth, truly. I have no idea how I might have survived adolescence without having recourse to the songs of exile and lament that often voiced my own anxiety and sense of not-belonging. Among my favorites, though, this Psalm is a relative late-comer and reflects a slightly different perspective on the Psalms. Different, I say, not more mature. It may well be that I have grown up (by God’s grace) since I pleaded with God to ‘have mercy on me, because I am lonely and weak…’ (the Good News Bible’s rendering of Psalm 25.16), but I know full well that I am as prone to stumbling as the next person.

My fondness for the image centers on the love that is integral to peace and justice in the Psalmist’s description. I imagine faithfulness and righteousness gazing at one another in intimate love: something intrinsic to each draws it to another. The unity of God’s love and righteousness draws from creation a faithfulness that displays recognition of its source and destiny. And it isn’t just in the abstract, either. I cannot read the final verse without seeing John the Baptist making the way for Jesus. In Jesus steadfast love and faithfulness meet, the creation responds appropriately to the Creator.

For all my romantic portrayal of the scene, I could have done worse than to read the Gospels. In Jesus the Lord has given what is good: Himself. And the fruit of His coming still grows, by the grace of the Spirit. But that’s another story.

Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee:
in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.
Acts 3

. . .

Just in case I had forgotten that today is a holy day of obligation, I received a text message from my sons’ school earlier in the week, reminding me that there would be Mass in the school hall on this feast. Indeed. And so, as it was also the first time Thomas, my 8-year-old, would be receiving communion at school, I went.

This perhaps explains my rendition of this bit of Acts: it is from the song that taught me this story when I was a child. On hearing Peter’s words, the man ‘went walking and leaping and praising God.’ Now I look at the story differently. The man who used to beg at the city gates has to find a new occupation. Healing means change, sometimes big and radical change; sometimes the healing, however miraculous, is not the whole story of restoration.

But that isn’t what I was thinking about today during Mass. No, today in Mass I was reflecting that these are the stories that pass on this peculiar faith, the church’s faith, handed down from generation to generation. My mother handed it down to me (both at home and at church, and I am certain that she taught me the song based on Acts 3), and I am, with the help of my children’s school and our parish church, handing it down to my children. Sometimes I think I don’t do a very good job. I can’t understand how all that the Bible says about God is true. Heaven remains a concept too big and elusive for me to get my mind around it. Anticipating the questions my children would ask about where Nana (my mother) went when she died last summer, I froze. Where, exactly, would that be? And how, exactly, is it that ‘she’ is ‘with God’ or ‘in heaven’ when her body was there, in the funeral home? It all seems pretty far-fetched and utterly inexplicable. The answers that might do for my children would not do for me.

Somewhere along the way, though, I realised that the kind of answers that might satisfy the children shouldn’t satisfy me. It is, as I often say in teaching my theology students, a mystery. The fact that I can’t imagine it, that it all seems implausible, is not troublesome but appropriate. Wasn’t it Augustine who said that if we understood, what we understood was not God? My failure to comprehend, to answer the ‘how’ questions satisfactorily, is a difficulty, not a doubt. I should not expect to comprehend.

Standing now at the beautiful gate, having risen from the pallet and left the crutch behind, we–the healed man and I–have to learn a new way of being in the world. The healing, the realisation, is only the beginning, the first small step into the abundant life promised and offered to us by Jesus.

…But they would not listen, they were more stubborn than their ancestors had been who had no faith in the Lord their God. They despised his laws and the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the warnings he had given them. They pursued emptiness, and themselves became empty through copying the nations round them although the Lord had ordered them not to act as they did.

       2 Kings 17.14-15

Will you utterly reject us, O God,
  and no longer march with our armies?
Give us help against the foe:
  for the help of man is vain.

      Psalm 59.12-13

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother, “Let me take the splinter out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.’
      Matthew 7.1-5

Emptiness.

The RSV translates emptiness as ‘false idols’ that make ‘false’ those who worshipped them. But I prefer the Jerusalem Bible’s rendering, though the RSV may be more faithful to the Hebrew. We are so used to Old Testament references to ‘false idols.’ We remember the golden calf and the unfaithfulness of the people, who turn aside to false gods. That language applies to ancient Israel, we think. We–I at least–tend not to see how it applies to us.

But we know emptiness. We know what it is to be spent, to be worn out and alone. We know about pursuing what does not really satisfy us. This language speaks to the deepest recesses of my soul in its most tired moments. I must admit that I tend to do precisely what the Hebrews did in the time of the kings: I pursue emptiness. Sometimes my emptiness is vanity, sometimes popularity or importance. Why can I not be the indispensable one or the lucky one? When I set my heart on being liked or being valued in the little circles, I am often disappointed. Empty.

The gospel reading for today reminds me what I ought to do. I find fault with others for not regarding me as they ought. But do I really see so clearly? Perhaps not. I have mistaken the covenant that gives life for the idols that drain my soul. I can neither fill myself nor clear my vision, and there is only one thing left to do. With the Psalmist I must plead with God, ‘Give me help against the foe: for the help of man is vain.’ I will call upon the Lord in the day of trouble–even such petty, insignificant and selfish trouble–and he will answer me.

Let me see clearly and love rightly and give praise to the God who saves.

The prophet Elijah arose like a fire,
his word flaring like a torch.
How glorious you were in your miracles, Elijah…
designated in the prophecies of doom
to allay God’s wrath before the fury breaks,
to turn the hearts of fathers towards their children,
and to restore the tribes of Jacob.

Ecclesiasticus 48

Jesus said to his disciples…you should pray like this:
‘Our Father in heaven…
And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us…’
Yes, if you forgive others their failings, your heavenly Father will forgive you yours, but if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you either.

Matthew 6

. . .

The list of Elijah’s miracles is much longer than what I have quoted above, of course. How could the writer not include Elijah’s amazing display of God’s power in the face of the prophets of Ba’al? Or his raising a widow’s son from the dead? Elijah’s miracles are impressive, to be sure. But the list culminates with what seems to be the purpose of all these miracles: to restore the tribes of Jacob, by the miracle of turning the fathers’ hearts back to their children. This is a miracle? Are not the hearts of the fathers turned naturally toward their children?

No. The hearts of the fathers, and of the children, too, are turned away. It seems to me that the hearts of the fathers being turned away signals the breakdown of human community as God intended it to be. All our hearts are turned the wrong direction–away from God, and away from those closest to us, those whom we are expected naturally and instinctively to love. But we fail: it takes a miracle to turn our hearts in the right direction. We need to be re-oriented to give and receive love as we should.

This helps, I think, with what seem to be the harsh words following the Lord’s prayer in Matthew’s gospel: if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven, and that means, well, the ‘doom’ prophesied in Elijah’s day. We need a miracle to allay that wrath. Fortunately, God seems well-disposed to offering just that sort of miracle. And so we have Jesus to mediate and the Spirit to inspire and to strengthen. And that is very good news indeed.

Answer me, O Lord, answer me,
that this people may know that you are God
and are winning back their hearts.
1 Kings 18

. . .

The whole passage is worth reading, if you haven’t already heard it or read it today, verses 20-39. It is one of my very favourite narratives from the Old Testament. (Yes, I was taught to refer to the first 66 books as the ‘Hebrew Bible’ and I do in academic settings. But this is the Mass reading for today.) As a teenager, I enjoyed the show of power: the Lord vs. the prophets of Ba’al. Elijah is heroic, the display of God’s attention towards God’s people is amazing, and one wonders how the people ever doubted after that.

But that’s not all there is to it, obviously. One of the most memorable sermons I have heard in the past several years examined the difference in the characters of the deities being entreated. On the one hand, there is a god who asks people to mutilate themselves, to inflict self-harm. Pleading with Ba’al involved the shedding of people’s blood. On the other hand, there is a god–God, the Lord is Israel–who gives freely, who asks nothing of the kind. We learn elsewhere in the scripture, especially from the psalms, that the main thing this Lord asks of the people is to trust him: ‘call on me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you, and you will honor me.’

The character of the God of Israel is more interesting even than that, though. What, exactly, was it that the Lord did that made it necessary for him to win back their hearts? The passage doesn’t say, and the general plot of the Old Testament involves God saving and forgiving his people. Once again, here, God makes the first move, trying to win back the hearts of his people purely out of love. It is they who must repent, not the Lord. Like the Father who runs down the road to meet his wayward son, God goes out to bring his people back to himself.

So it is: the grace of God, running out to meet us, winning back our hearts. And all we have to do is receive him, to give in.

‘His office let another take.’ (Acts 1: 20)

* * *

Today we remember the ‘calling’ of the apostle Matthias, who took Judas’ place with the eleven following the Ascension. Normally, I would not reckon that drawing lots was a good way to choose a church leader. How do we know it was the Spirit choosing? How do we know?

I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about that question. My theology students ask it, often, and in a variety of different ways. I wonder about it myself: I have a daughter with Down Syndrome and have walked a pretty crooked and uneven road. How do I know that God has anything to do with any of this muddle? I wonder how what I believe is of any real help–how does Jesus help the mother who lost a son a couple of weeks ago in a cold, swollen, and muddy river? How do we know that Jesus is still around? How do we know that the Spirit still works through actions as random as drawing lots?

Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference. And today I don’t have any answers. I just have this bizarre story about the apostles drawing lots. All my teaching about God doesn’t seem to have gotten me very far: I still don’t get it. At the end of the day I am just as short of theodicy as anyone else.

I guess some days are like that. Might as well just say so.