Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Jeremiah’s Psalm. The verses come from chapter 31, part of what is referred to as the “Book of Comfort”. (Chapter 31-33)
In total, the Book of Jeremiah is full of woe. It was written as a message to the Jews in Babylonian exile, blaming their faithlessness for their current predicament. The prophet admonishes the people, calling them to return to the Lord and allow themselves to be made new according to God’s design.
Jeremiah is notable for its complementary tactics of confronting the people with their sorrows while comforting them with God’s mercy.
Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, proclaim it on distant isles, and say: He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together, he guards them as a shepherd his flock.
Jeremiah forces his listeners to acknowledge that their destruction is deserved. They have shifted their trust from God’s Promise to a political power that devolved into greed, militarism, and the illusion of self-sufficiency. Once that acknowledgement is accomplished, repentance and renewal are possible.
Our passage today describes that possibility:
The LORD shall ransom Jacob, he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror. Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion, they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings: The grain, the wine, and the oil, the sheep and the oxen.
Believing that scripture speaks to our experiences as well as to their own times, we may discover stark parallels between our world and that of Jeremiah. As we pray with this psalm, let’s ask to see where we have shifted from God’s hope for Creation. Where do we feel a sense of loss, confusion, desperation or anger? Where have we lost truth, compassion, and reverence for the life we share with all the human community?
As my small community watches the evening news, we audibly mourn the sorry state to which our world has come. We encourage one another to moral and political responsibility to change the forces that have led to this collapse.
This cycle of acknowledgement and grace-filled action can allow us to return, as did Jeremiah’s community, to God’s dream for Creation:
I will turn their mourning into joy, I will console and gladden them after their sorrows.
Poetry: What Babylon Was Built About – Judson Crews (1917- 2010) American poet
Music: I Will Restore – Maranatha Music
What was lost in battle What was taken unlawful Where the enemy has planted his seed And where health is ailing And where strength is falling I will restore to you all of this and more I will restore to you all of this and more
I will restore I will restore I will restore to you all of this and more
I will restore I will restore I will restore to you all of this and more I will restore to you all of this and more
Where your heart is breaking And where dreams are forsaken When it seems what was promised; will not be given to you And where peace is confusion And reality an illusion I will restore I will restore I will restore to you all of this and more
From 2016: Today, in Mercy, we pray to be childlike. As life seasons us, it also sometimes hardens us with an impermeability that prevents continued spiritual growth. We pray for the gifts of trust, hope and faith to return our hearts to the openness of a child that we may respond joyfully to the Holy Spirit.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 36, a praise hymn of David after a frightening encounter with an enemy.
I could have used this psalm last week. Someone immensely dear to me was hospitalized with suspicion of Covid 19. The fear, for him and for all who love him, was pretty overwhelming.
I did manage a prayer of abandonment before the negative diagnosis was returned about 36 hours later. But I’m rather sure that, like most of my attempts at abandonment, it was somewhat half-hearted. I really wanted my own will and hoped God’s Will was in alignment. Blessedly, it was.
But I would like to deepen in true trust and abandonment to God’s care for me and for all of us.
Psalm 36 gives us a chance to examine David’s prayer of abandonment, which drawing on a long history of God’s wisdom and favor, deeply trusts himself to God.
In our prayer today, we might recall God’s faithful care throughout our lives and release into God’s hands any worries we carry. Let us simply receive that infinite, refreshing fountain of grace pouring over all Creation.
Poetry: Fountains in the seaby Marin Sorescu, translated by Seamus Heaney
Sorescu was a Romanian poet and playwright and one of the most popular figures to emerge from Romanian literary culture since the 1960s. He died in 1996, the year he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature
Seamus Heaney, who died in 2013, was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Fountains in the sea
Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.
Cunning life keeps asking for more and then a drop more.
Our ankles are weighted with lead, we delve under the wave.
We bend to our spades, we survive the force of the gusher.
Our bodies fountain with sweat in the deeps of the sea,
Our forehead aches and holds like a sunken prow.
We are out of breath, divining the heart of the geyser,
Constellations are bobbing like corks above on the swell.
Earth is a waterwheel, the buckets go up and go down,
But to keep the whole aqueous architecture standing its ground
We must make a ring with our bodies and dance out a round
On the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water.
Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.
Come rain, come thunder, come deluged dams washed away,
Our thirst is unquenchable. A cloud in the water’s a siren.
We become two shades, deliquescent, drowning in song.
My love, under the tall sky of hope
Our love and our love alone
Keeps dowsing for water.
Sinking the well of each other, digging together.
Each one the other’s phantom limb in the sea.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 63, a perfect prayer for the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalen, who longed for and loved God with all her heart.
My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Psalm 63, in the verses quoted today, is a love song. The psalmist longs for God, body and soul. Experience has taught her that without God her whole being is a desert.
O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
And so she fixes her eyes on God, her heart on God. She looks for God’s Presence in the sanctuary of her life, in the temple of her soul.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory, For your kindness is a greater good than life; my lips shall glorify you.
The psalmist promises to bless God – to be grateful and attentive to God’s affectionate grace in all the circumstances of her life:
Thus will I bless you while I live; lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name. As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied, and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.
In her serene and confident prayer, she is like the fragile hatchling, protected under her Divine Mother’s wing. She clings to God’s merciful hand, no doubt kissing it in a prayer of grateful love.
You are my help, and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy. My soul clings fast to you; your right hand upholds me.
Poetry:The Living Flame Of Love – St. John of the Cross Some find John of the Cross’s poetry challenging, if not shocking because, as well as being deeply mystical, it is often clearly erotic. But we are both mystical and erotic human beings made so by God in Whom Love has infinite dimensions. John channeled all his mystical erotic power into his profound love for God. His poems may help us to open that holy power to God as well.
Songs of the soul in the intimate communication of loving union with God.
O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!
O sweet cautery,
O delightful wound!
O gentle hand! O delicate touch
that tastes of eternal life
and pays every debt!
In killing you changed death to life.
O lamps of fire!
in whose splendors
the deep caverns of feeling,
once obscure and blind,
now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
both warmth and light to their Beloved.
How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone;
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart with love.
Music: Living Flame of Love – John Michael Talbot
Oh, Living Flame of Love Tenderly wound my soul To its deepest inner heart Without oppression!
Come consumate our love Tear through the veil of our union If it be your will, come and rend The veil of the temple!
Oh, lamps of fire In deep caverns of feeling Once obscured and blind Are now leading In the warmth and the passion Of your love (x2)
Yet gently Your hand does wound As You rend through the veil of my temple Come and take this life that I give So that I might come to live in this our dying
Oh, Living Flame of Love Tenderly wound my soul To its deepest inner heart Without oppression!
Return from Babylon by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 85. In Judaism, it is called “a psalm of returned exiles” as it reflects the experience of the Jews returning to their ravished land after the Babylonian exile. Things are a mess, and they have to start all over again to rebuild their Abrahamic nation.
But they pray as if it is already accomplished.
Despite their suffering and captivity, the people have not lost hope in the promise of Yahweh. They expect its fulfillment and call on God to make it happen.
You have favored, O LORD, your land; you have brought back the captives of Jacob. You have forgiven the guilt of your people; you have covered all their sins. You have withdrawn all your wrath; you have revoked your burning anger.
This is the power and beauty of a pure and faithful heart. It is free to “believe” God into action. We find this prayerful power expressed over and over in the Psalms. It is answered by God’s almighty and active desire for our good.
The Psalms mediate to us the great promise keeper whose resolve guarantees that the world is not a closed system. Creation, instead, is a world very much in process, sure to come to full shalom. Despair is the fate of a world “without god,” where there are no new gifts to be given. The Psalms refuse that world, knowing that God is not yet finished. Consequently, the Psalms can gather all the great words of the covenant and apply them to the future …
Walter Bruggemann
During these pandemic times, don’t prayer and promises like these speak to our hearts?
I find myself wondering what the world will be like when we finally “return” – come out of our “Covid exile” – what it will be like to see and hug the family, friends and community we love and miss right now, or to fully mourn those we have lost – what it will be like to resume our soul’s unworried dance with Creation and Time.
As we imagine that world, how might we hope for it to be more reflective of God’s dream for us than the world we closed down last March, than the “Babylon” we are experiencing? How will our prayers and actions for merciful justice “believe” God’s promises into reality for all God’s People?
Will you not instead give us life; and shall not your people rejoice in you? Show us, O LORD, your kindness, and grant us your salvation.
I picture some ancient Jewish woman or man standing amidst the rubble of the ruined Temple. How deep did that person have to reach to find the faith and hope to move God?
I picture us standing in a very sick and dysfunctional world. Can we reach that deep ourselves by praying in the childlike, confident spirit of the Psalms:
Lord, show us your mercy and love.
Poetry: Antidotes to Fear of Death – by Rebecca Elson, a gifted Canadian–American astronomer and writer. Elson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 29. With treatment, it went into remission, and in 1996 she married the Italian artist Angelo di Cintio. However, the cancer returned soon afterwards. Elson died of the disease in Cambridge in May 1999, at the age of 39.
A volume of wide-ranging poetry and essays she wrote from her teens until shortly before her death was published posthumously as A Responsibility to Awe in 2001 in the United Kingdom, and in 2002 in the United States.
Antidotes to the Fear of Death
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
Music: Going Home– based on Antonin Dvořák’s Largo from New World Symphony, lyrics by William Arms Fisher, sung here by Alex Boyé with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Monday, July 18, 2016: Today, in Mercy, we pray to do as the prophet Micah says. As our intense political season begins, we pray that our leaders – and we citizens – may do right, show real goodness, and find the courage to be humble. May we have the insight to shun a democracy built on values opposite to these. May God bless and inspire all who would lead us and may God bless and heal our country.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we will pray with Psalm 95, our Alleluia Verse. Today’s Responsorial is Psalm 50, which we have reflected on twice recently.
The verse from Psalm 95 is an often repeated one, and presents us with a clear ultimatum:
But how do we do that? How do we hear God’s voice? How do we avoid a hardened heart?
When I was a little girl, I loved to read the stories of the saints. I was particularly impressed by the life of the brave St. Joan of Arc, not only because she got to ride a horse, but because she heard heavenly voices. I thought it was very nice of God to tell Joan exactly what to do to be holy.
I waited a few years, probably from age six to nine, for God – or at least St. Michael, my parish patron – to speak to me. You know, just in case God had anything important for me to do, like take a small army over to New Jersey or something like that.
When I was 9 or 10, I fell in love with Jimmy Danvers and put my saint books in my bottom drawer. I still listened for God, but started not to expect an audible conversation.
What I failed to realize at that young age was that the conversation had already begun. I thought about God, prayed and tried to be a pretty good person. I went to Mass every day since 5th grade. I began to serve others in the way I thought Jesus would want to do it. With the help of my parents and teachers, I had made the choice to invite God’s heart into my heart.
Finally, I came to understand that God was speaking to me, and to everyone else, all the time. My job was to keep my heart’s ear open, softened, by my choices for Love.
Prayer is the communication of the soul with God. God is love, and love is goodness giving itself away. It is a fullness of being that does not want to remain enclosed in itself, but rather to share itself with others.
Saint Edith Stein
When we do this, each day brings us deeper and deeper into the Silent Word Who breathes forth the story of our lives. That sacred breath takes as many forms as there are creatures. Joan of Arc was one holy form. So am I. So are you.
Literature: from Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
Charles VII: Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king, not you!
Joan: They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it. But if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.
Music: Holy Ground – John Michael Talbot
Verse 1 This is holy ground We’re standing on holy ground For the Lord is present And where He is is holy This is holy ground We’re standing on holy ground For the Lord is present And where He is is holy
Verse 2 These are holy hands He’s given us holy hands He works through these hands And so these hands are holy These are holy hands He’s given us holy hands He works through these hands And so these hands are holy
Verse 3 These are holy lips He’s given us holy lips He speaks through these lips And so these lips are holy These are holy lips He’s given us holy lips He speaks through these lips And so these lips are holy
Today, in Mercy, we pray with a tiny mustard seed. Like this seed, any small act of kindness, courage or faith multiplies and yields a harvest greater than seems possible. A holy life is made of such small seeds… given daily with loving intention. We pray today for a vibrant and firmly rooted faith that, like the mature tree, offers a haven for others on the journey.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 86, “a prayer of David”. Today’s verses provide a bridge between our first and second readings, as is usually the case on Sundays.
The thread holding all three passages together is the topic of prayer.
Both the first reading and psalm display a particular type of prayer, which I think of as a “Butter God Up” prayer. Both the Wisdom writer and psalmist tell God how good God is, presumably hoping that God will be good to them:
There is no god besides you who have the care of all, that you need show you have not unjustly condemned…. …. But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency, and with much lenience you govern us .
Wisdom 12
You, O LORD, are good and forgiving, abounding in kindness to all who call upon you. Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer and attend to the sound of my pleading.
Psalm 86
There’s nothing wrong with the human psychology here. I used it on my parents a few times when I was young:
Mom, Dad, you’ve always trusted me. Would it be OK if I go to the shore overnight with my friends?
In other words, “You are good, so bless me.” It’s an innocent prayer that pleads for the Provider’s benevolence and mercy on our petition
But Paul, in our second reading, teaches another, deeper way of prayer:
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
This deeper prayer arises out of a complete confidence and abandonment to God’s Mercy. Convinced that God loves us and wills our good, our prayer becomes an underlying, often wordless, relationship with God.
And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.
Poetry: Primary Wonder – Denise Levertov
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng's clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
Music: Bow Thine Ear, O Lord – by William Byrd, sung here by The Cambridge Singers with John Rutter The loss of Jerusalem is an inspiration for William Byrd (1539-1623) in his setting of Bow thine ear, O Lord.
Bow thine ear, O Lord, and hear us: Let thine anger cease from us. Sion is wasted and brought low, Jerusalem desolate and void.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 10. It is known in Latin by its first mournful line:
Ut quid Domine recessisti
Lord, why are You standing so far from me?
The image that comes to my mind is of two people at a large social gathering. One is not speaking to the other because of a profound disagreement. But the other is desperately sorry and wants to be forgiven and restored. Still, the first person remains distant, off in the room’s far corner, and seems to ignore any imploring glances.
In Psalm 10, Israel is that imploring person. They lament all the discord around them and wonder why their powerful Friend seems to ignore them, failing to help.
I know that I have talked to God about this feeling hundreds of times. What about you?
I continually ask the age-old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Are you not paying attention, Lord? Did you accidentally fire the “Bad Things Gun” in the wrong direction, or do you just not care?
Why do You seem not to notice or care?
But the psalmist eventually stills herself at the center of these spinning questions. In that stillness, she rests in utter dependency on God. We creatures do not see through the mystery of good and evil, but God does. When we accept that, and look for God in the circumstances, peace settles in.
You do see, for you behold misery and sorrow, taking them in your hands. On you the unfortunate one depends; of the fatherless you are the helper.
Psalm 10, for all its heart-wrenching mournfulness, is really a psalm of exultant victory. Within its prayer, the vulnerable one is transformed to comprehend the secret. God favors them and assures their deliverance by faith.
If for some reason, we might feel that God is on the other side of the room ignoring us, let us not turn away. Walk over and tug God’s sleeve with your prayer. Lift the burdens from your shoulders into God’s open arms.
You listen, LORD, to the needs of the poor; you strengthen their heart and incline your ear.
Poetry: another excerpt from Burnt Norton – T.S. Eliot
IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
the black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.
Music:D’où vient cela – Claudin de Sermisy – written in, and sung here, in French by a German choir. This melody was originally a popular love chanson, reworked in the 16th century to be Psalm 10. I could find only the French and German translations (below). For those, like me, who understand neither, the music itself is sufficiently beautiful.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Isaiah 38 as our Responsorial Psalm.
Although the verses are under Isaiah, they are actually the words of Hezekiah, a king of Israel during Isaiah’s time. Our first reading relates the story of Hezekiah’s mortal illness and the prophetic role Isaiah plays in his recovery.
Our psalm reemphasizes the power and mercy of God who delivers Hezekiah from death. Hezekiah’s vibrant images reveal the depth of his desperation:
Once I said, “In the noontime of life I must depart! To the gates of the nether world I shall be consigned for the rest of my years.”
We all know what the prayer for deliverance feels like. It rises from the depths of our souls and repeats itself in a constant, “Please…”. We can think of nothing else but the favor we are praying for. We linger in our begging, sometimes for years.
Hezekiah stretches into the full extent of his pain with these striking metaphors:
My dwelling, like a shepherd’s tent, is struck down and borne away from me; You have folded up my life, like a weaver who severs the last thread.
Deliverance is that condition in which we, having lost all personal power to effect change, must be carried by another hand to life and well-being. If we can do that in faith, our prayer will be answered.
When it is, by either a merciful “Yes” or “No”, we will understand. It will be as if we have fallen from hanging by our fingernails into the enveloping caress of a feathered bed.
Those live whom the LORD protects; yours is the life of my spirit. You have given me healing and life.
Poetry: For Deliverance from a Fever by Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672), the most prominent of early English poets of North America and first writer in England’s North American colonies to be published. She is the first Puritan figure in American Literature.
When sorrows had begirt me round,
And pains within and out,
When in my flesh no part was found,
Then didst Thou rid me out.
My burning flesh in sweat did boil,
My aching head did break,
From side to side for ease I toil,
So faint I could not speak.
Beclouded was my soul with fear
Of Thy displeasure sore,
Nor could I read my evidence
Which oft I read before.
“Hide not Thy face from me!" I cried,
"From burnings keep my soul.
Thou know'st my heart, and hast me tried;
I on Thy mercies roll."
“O heal my soul," Thou know'st I said,
"Though flesh consume to nought,
What though in dust it shall be laid,
To glory t' shall be brought."
Thou heard'st, Thy rod Thou didst remove
And spared my body frail
Thou show'st to me Thy tender love,
My heart no more might quail.
O, praises to my mighty God,
Praise to my Lord, I say,
Who hath redeemed my soul from pit,
Praises to Him for aye.
Music: You Will Redeem It All – Travis Cottrell
You were there at the
loss of all the innocence
You were there at the
dawn of all the shame
You were there, felt the
weight of all the helplessness
put Yourself into the agony and pain
Nothing is hidden from Your eyes
You flood the darkness with Your light
I have this hope
as an anchor for my soul
You will redeem it all, redeem it all
Out of the dust into something glorious
You will redeem it all, redeem it all
You are here in the middle of my circumstance
You are here bringing purpose out of pain
You are here restoring every broken path
Speaking life, You raise me once again
Nothing is hidden from Your eyes
Out of the ashes I will rise
Hallelujah in the waiting
Hallelujah even then
Hallelujah for the healing
You will make a way again
Hallelujah in the waiting
Hallelujah even then
Hallelujah for the healing
You will make a way again
Hallelujah my Redeemer
You redeem me by Your blood
Hallelujah! What a Savior
You turn evil back for good
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Hallelujah! My Redeemer!
My Redeemer!
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 102, one of the seven penitential psalms. It is introduced as “the prayer of the afflicted”.
Yet, I find our verses today full of hope. They look with confidence to a better future.
You, O LORD, abide forever, and your name through all generations. You will arise and have mercy on Zion, for it is time to pity her.
That last line, “for it is time to pity her”, is particularly touching as the psalmist nudges God to move forward with healing. Don’t we pray like that sometimes?
Dear God, I’ve had all I can take! Please fix this — now!
Lord, I’ve learned my lesson. Please relent and rescue me.
Jesus, please let this trial be over and let us survive.
Lord, it is time for this to be over!
The bedrock of this prayer is the psalmist’s deep trust that God will act as God has promised:
The nations shall revere your name, O LORD, and all the kings of the earth your glory, When the LORD has rebuilt Zion and appeared in his glory; When he has regarded the prayer of the destitute, and not despised their prayer.
You may find your heart filled with a prayer like this today. Surely, our whole human community voices a longing for the pandemic sufferings to be over. Or there may be other afflictions you carry that are testing the limits of your endurance.
Psalm 94 holds out encouragement and hope. Reach for it and let it strengthen you.
But you are forever the same, Lord,
without beginning or end,
infinite in your compassion,
fathomless in your love.
You rebuild the desolate city;
you bring the exiles back home.
You grant the poor your abundance;
you guide the nations toward peace.
You hear the cry of the destitute
and the sobbing of the oppressed.
You soothe the pain of the captive;
you set the prisoner free.
Come to me too in your mercy
and set my soul at peace.
from A Book of Psalms by Stephen Mitchell
Poetry: from Burnt Norton – T.S. Eliot
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
July 15, 2020
From 2016:
Today, in Mercy, on this feast of St. Bonaventure, we pray for God to be revealed across our battered globe. God does not hide from us. We hide God in our sinful choices. May we, no matter our religion or politics, find the means to confront terrorism, war and domination by uniting in the God who made and loves us all.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 94, a ruthless, stinging condemnation of greed, sinful arrogance, and hypocrisy. This morning’s prayer is not a comfortable one.
If you don’t think twice, you might feel like you’re reading today’s newspaper.
Set between Isaiah’s blistering condemnation of an “impious nation”, and Jesus’s expressed preference for the humble and innocent, this psalm scalds those who “trample” the widows, the stranger, the fatherless …
As I pray with the psalm’s uncompromising judgements, flashing before me are:
the faces of refugee families.
children in cages.
desperate parents pushed into buses to return to the terror they fled.
the Black and Brown faces of people consigned to our social and economic margins
the helpless eyes of those unfavored by a skewed justice system
Your people, O LORD, they trample down, your inheritance they afflict. Widow and stranger they slay, the fatherless they murder.
My prayer is soaked with angry frustration at the unabated moral torpitude and social injustice of many with political power. When will they answer for their soulless actions and inactions!
And they say, “The LORD sees not; the God of Jacob perceives not.” Understand, you senseless ones among the people; and, you fools, when will you be wise?
I take some solace in the promise of these final lines, stilling longing for a glimmer of the justice it describes:
For the LORD will not cast off his people, nor abandon his inheritance; But judgment shall again be with justice, and all the upright of heart shall follow it.
May that day come soon, dear God, for all Creation and for all your beloveds suffering under the willful injustice, selfishness, indifference, or complicity of others.
Poetry: Let America Be America Again – Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again
Music: All Who Love and Serve Your City – Eric Routley
All who love and serve your city, all who bear its daily stress, all who cry for peace and justice, all who curse and all who bless, In your day of loss and sorrow, in your day of helpless strife, honor, peace, and love retreating, seek the Lord, who is your life.
In your day of wrath and plenty, wasted work and wasted play, call to mind the word of Jesus, “I must work while it is day.” For all days are days of judgment, and the Lord is waiting still, drawing near a world that spurns him, offering peace from Calvary’s hill. Risen Lord! shall yet the city be the city of despair? Come today, our Judge, our Glory; be its name, “The Lord is there!”
Lavish Mercy 