SongStories 4 - Psalm 22 for Passion Sunday

Sunday, we will be using my newish (2005, published 2007) setting of Psalm 22. Psalm 22, you will remember, is the psalm of lament which begins, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It is sung all three years of the lectionary on Passion Sunday, and while the psalm is used once or twice on other Sundays in the cycle, it's only used on Passion (Palm) Sunday with this unique refrain. Mark's passion narrative, the earliest of the four accounts, indicates that Jesus is silent throughout his entire ordeal except for crying out the first line of this psalm, which the gospel preserves in his native tongue: eloi, eloi, lema sabacthani? Gone are the "seven last words" added in other accounts; there is just this cry of abandonment and anguish. To the religious ear, however, attuned to the language of the psalms of lament, the terrifying phrase is pregnant with the rest of the psalm's prayer, which begins in accusation and terror, but ends in confidence and praise.

The usual form of the "song (cantus) between the readings" is responsorial in the Catholic Church. That means that a "responsory" is chosen, a sentence from the psalm or another scripture around which we hear the rest of the psalm text, in effect, proclaiming God's word together in a way that allows reflection and digestion of the text. The Introduction to the Lectionary allows for several ways for this to happen:

As a rule the responsorial psalm should be sung. There are two established ways of singing the psalm after the first reading: responsorially and directly. In responsorial singing, which, as far as possible, is to be given preference, the psalmist, or cantor of the psalm, sings the psalm verse and the whole congregation joins in by singing the response. In direct singing of the psalm there is no intervening response by the community; either the psalmist, or cantor of the psalm, sings the psalm alone as the community listens or else all sing it together.

The "problem" that arises in Psalm 22 especially has been articulated well by Michael Joncas in various keynotes and workshops. The responsorial form depends on the meaning the of the psalm being enriched by repetition of the refrain. Psalm 22, being a psalm of lament, develops in a particular way. The lament psalm has a particular form of its own: it begins with a complaint or a cry out to God; it details the problem of the psalmist or community; it gives reasons why God should help; it remembers that God has helped Israel or the psalmist in the past; it ends in praise and confidence, often with a vow to give thanks and praise in the temple. As you can see, there is a development of thought within the form of the psalm itself.

Here is a SoundCloud comparison of my two settings of Psalm 22, the first from Cries of the Spirit, Volume 2 (and originally on You Alone), which I wrote in 1971 or so, and the second excerpt from the version being discussed in this article, from 2004.




While the responsorial form works well almost all of the time, in the case of Psalm 22, we hit the obvious snag. The refrain, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me" works well enough at the beginning of the psalm ("all who see me scoff at me..." "...a pack of criminals is closing in upon me...") but by the end, the psalmist is singing "You who fear the Lord, praise him! O house of Israel, bless the Lord! I will proclaim your name in the vast assembly!", and the vast assembly is still singing, usually in a mournful tone, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me." The integrity of the literary and prayer form of the psalm has been ignored, and the result is a confusion of rhetoric that may be jarring and not especially helpful to the liturgical use of Scripture.

What I've tried to do in this new setting of Psalm 22 is follow the lead of the (late) great Bernard Huijbers in the musical forms he has used over the years (in "Song of All Seed," for instance), and rather than using a single responsorial phrase, I use a repeated phrase at the end of each stanza as the responsory. For instance:

Cantor: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
All: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Cantor: All who see me scoff at me. With parted lips, they mock me.
They wag their heads: He relied on God,
let God rescue him if he loves him!
All: Let God rescue him if he loves him!

This continues through all four strophes appointed for the psalm this day, ending with an ostinato, introduced by the cantor, on the text, "You who fear the Lord, praise him, praise him!" While the choir and assembly continue the ostinato, the cantor sings the closing verses of the psalm.

The cantors at St. Anne work really hard at proclaiming the psalm well, and over the last several years the experience of singing the psalm this way has encouraged me about its form. They also put some of my doubts to rest about the work itself, doubts which creep up in the intervening 364 days between liturgical uses about the musicality, the strangeness, and the usual self-doubt caused by my inability to play a keyboard reduction of it without sounding like each of my fingers is thinking independently and rebelliously. When I'm able to turn the whole thing over to the choir, assembly, cantor, and ensemble in the context of worship, all that fades away, and what is left is what seems to me to be a really good attempt to do justice both to the ancient form of the psalm of lament and to the liturgical preference for responsorial singing of the cantus between the readings.

We were able to record this setting on our 2006 GIA collection Today. You can check out the printed music, if you're feeling brave for next year, by clicking on this link.

Off we go into Holy Week. In ten days or so, it will be a happy memory. But there are miles to go before we nap next Monday. Time to start that journey.

Anniversary. My half-life as a music director

Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi? (Ps. 116:3, the responsorial psalm for Holy Thursday)

Holy Thursday will be a kind of an anniversary for me. Events that happened 30 years ago on Holy Thursday started me off in my career as a music director.

I worked for about ten years starting in late 1974 for a commercial travel agency in Phoenix. I had started there just as a filing clerk, trying to get their huge collection of brochures organized and updated. (Anyone who knows me at all will find this more than mildly humorous, as it has been probably since I left that company since I filed anything, anywhere.) Over the years, I sort of worked my way up as the agency expanded, from being in charge of hotel reservations and learning those machines, to learning SABRE and the airline reservations system, then going to international tariff school in London, Miami, and San Francisco with PanAm to learn international ticketing, to finally being a manager of the corporate operations of the agency. The agency was successful, and my salary grew in proportion. Things were good, at least financially speaking.

On weekends, I continued to be a musician at two and sometimes three local parishes. I was the choir director at the cathedral in Phoenix (Ss. Simon and Jude) for the main choir mass on Sunday morning, and also did a service at 9:00 a.m. at St. Augustine Catholic Church on what was then the far west side of the city, on 71st Avenue below Indian School Road. It was the best of both worlds for me; the St. Augustine parish mass was with a smallish group of about 12-15 friends with whom I had been making music for years, and at the Cathedral I got to do a mix of the more traditional music, while gradually bringing more contemporary and original pieces into their repertoire as well. St. Augustine was a multi-purpose building with a growing community; Ss. Simon and Jude was an established church with a decent organ and some resonance, and they let me put a piano in. 

I had, over the previous year or two, approached a couple of pastors about the possibility of full time work at one or the other of these churches. Both seemed reluctant to put out the kind of salary that would have been required, so I decided to leave things as they were, and go on with the 9-5 and be a weekend warrior, making an additional small stipend for doing those two services.

Christ the Servant shrine,
west wall, St. Anne, Barrington

On Holy Thursday, 1983, I was leaving work at the travel agency to get to Ss. Simon and Jude for the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. I had begun to get my things together, when one of the vice-presidents asked me to come into his office. After I had sat down, he nervously and sweatily told me that the shape of management at the agency was changing, and that they were making a new start. My services would no longer be required. He handed me a check equal to two months severance pay, and told me to clean out my desk.

Needless to say, I was shocked. What else happened that weekend, I don't remember. I'm sure that services went on as usual, and that we did the music in the way we had prepared it. I'm sure that my family and friends told me that things would be all right. Two months salary seemed like it would help, but it seemed like a very short time until there would be nothing, and I had no idea about where to turn for work. My wife and I had two children, ages 3 and 1, and one due that October.

Daniel Consiglio in about 1988 or so

Less than two weeks after Easter, I got a phone call from Daniel (now Fr. Cyprian) Consiglio. Daniel was the young music director at St. Jerome Church in north Phoenix, a celebrated and vibrant community that had a Sunday evening youth mass that was widely noticed and admired. The associate pastor of St. Jerome was (Father) Dale Fushek, later to become the founder of Life Teen, and longtime pastor of St. Timothy's Church in Mesa. Daniel told me that he had decided to leave music ministry and pursue his "other" musical career, and that Fr. Dale was also leaving to finish working on an MA in liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. Knowing the parish would need someone to keep things going and help them grow, they had talked it over and thought they'd ask me if I'd be interested in a full-time job in music ministry.

It was like a gift from heaven. After an interview with the pastor, I was hired as the music and liturgy director at St. Jerome. I stayed there in that position until I resigned and took the job here at St. Anne's in Barrington, Illinois, in February of 1994. St. Jerome was a great gift to me, and I met many people in my years there whom I still count as my friends. Many of the songs I've written that are used around the country were first written for and used in that community, including "I Myself Am the Bread of Life," "Canticle of the Turning," and "Jerusalem, My Destiny." My son Joel and daughter Claire went through an RCIA as children, and were initiated at the Easter Vigil there.


So, I think of Holy Thursday as a kind of anniversary for me. This feast is rich in its symbols of covenant, liberation, and service, and commingled with all those things, I see it as an anniversary of my own call to serve the community and the church through the exercise of my charism in music and liturgy preparation. This, then, will be my thirtieth anniversary.

Rats. I should have gotten a cake.

To all of you who will be celebrating the Triduum next week, beginning with the Solemn Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, I wish a joyful and holy three days. I hope that whatever happens to me isn't as dramatic as the events of 1983: but after all is said and done, even that didn't turn out so badly. Thank God. It is a great calling that we have received in our baptism, and a wonderful gift of untold value and mysterious depth that is ours in the Eucharist of Jesus. Let us celebrate it with joy, and bring our gratitude and wonder as gift for all members of our communities, that we may serve the Lord with gladness all our days.

SongStories 3: Precious Blood (1995)

Part of my task as liturgist and musician is to connect the stories of Christians today to the story of the paschal mystery of God as it is made visible in the passion, death, resurrection, ascension, of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit into the Church. This is not always an easy task. We tend to want to romanticize and therefore isolate the death of Jesus in a way that is dangerous for us. If Jesus is safely dead and risen at a particular historical time, we can mourn him on Good Friday and sing “alleluia” on Easter and it never has to have anything to do with us. Something tells me that “Were You There” was some folk artist’s attempt to connect all those loose ends in a metaphor of presence that is transcendent and ahistorical, but instead, I think Christians sing it as a nostalgia piece, “feeling sorry for Jesus,” as it were, and not connecting with the kenosis of the Church in, for instance, our century.

This specific kind of timelessness is seen in the singing of the Reproaches in the Good Friday liturgy. At this point in my life, I believe that I can make an argument for using them. But for many, many years I refused to do so, on two grounds. First, their apparent anti-Semitism. 

"My people (assumed implication: the Jews), what have I done unto you, or in what have I offended you? Answer me! I brought you out of Egypt, and you have handed me over to be killed (&c)"

Second, there is what I would call the historicization of the crucifixion that places it only in a certain time and place, and therefore is an object, something to be rued and keened for, and then left as a catharsis. But I don't see that as the point at all now. I still think it's a dangerous text, and should be homiletically explored along with the passion as the concretization in a specific time and place of an event that has happened throughout time, into the present, and always will happen until we keep our baptismal promises. This is not completely germane to what I want to write about today, but it's worth considering. The music and liturgy of Good Friday aren't for feeling sorry for Jesus, but are meant to put right in front of us what happens when we persist in prejudice, racial profiling, shunning and excommunication, pursuit of power, and the use of violence and threats of violence to perpetuate a kind of "civilization." God shows us in Jesus, the innocent victim of human violence, the damage we do every minute of every day in every year on every continent. And God raises Jesus from death to prove that the way of Jesus is the way of life. More specifically about this on another day, but it does lead us to a song I wanted to tell you about.

This song of mine was written in the early 1990s after some catalyzing events in Africa and Central America. I was connected to these events only by baptism, in the solidarity of faith, which to some might seem a minimal connection, but to me, they were profound events. They roiled in my Christian subconscious, a dozen modern martyrdoms in two separate events, and eventually they rose to the surface as a song called “Precious Blood.” This song was first recorded by the amazing chanteuse Pamela Warrick-Smith on a GIA CD called One Heart, that featured the musical talents of herself, Donna Peña, and my wife Terry Donohoo, in 1995. Later, we re-recorded it on a CD of music primarily for Holy Week and Easter called This Very Morning in 1998.

These were the events: in November of 1989, at the Central American University in El Salvador, a Jesuit institution, Salvadoran death squads backed  by the U. S. government and trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia kidnapped and murdered Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the Jesuit house and university president, along with five Jesuit colleagues, their housekeeper, and her daughter. The whole story can be read here. More here. Ellacuría was a prominent teacher of liberation philosophy, and was also known for his writing in support of liberation theology. It struck me in my sorrow that “El Salvador” is a nation named after “the savior,” and its capital, San Salvador, is as well. This eventually figured into the lyrics of the song:

My brother’s gone to be with the Savior

And the Lord shall walk on his lake of tears.

My brother’s gone to be with the Savior,

And his blood shall sing for a thousand years.

Three years later, in October of 1992, five sisters of a small Illinois congregation, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, were working in Gardnersville, Liberia, among the poor. Though the nation had been teetering on the brink of civil war and full of unrest, the sisters had gone back there to continue their witness to Christ among the poor, seeing to their health care and education. Sometime in the middle of that month, the five women disappeared.

The weekend of All Saints Day, Terry, Gary and I happened to be in Springfield, Illinois, providing music for a diocesan conference there before a busy week that would take us to Hawaii and Rhode Island. The Saturday of that conference, as I recall it, was All Saints Day, and it was on that day it was announced that the bodies of the five sisters had been discovered, and that in fact they had been murdered while on their mission. Gary and I had worked several times with a sister who was a prominent member of that little community which has its motherhouse in Red Bud, Illinois, right in the diocese of Springfield. Many people at the conference had known one or another of the women, and there was shock and sorrow at the news. But that evening, at the convention Eucharist, the celebration rose to a special intensity as the awareness dawned on all that five new martyrs, chosen from among their friends, were part of the chorus of heavenly witnesses taking part in the banquet of the Messiah with us. 

“Liberia,” the country in which they gave their lives, is a Latin word that means “land of freedom.” Yet another amazing irony in the story, and it might have actually been the thread that wove the two stories together for me. When I came to write the lyric, I used the name of the country in translation as part of the text, with an image of creation about to occur over the chaos of grief:

My sister’s gone to the land of freedom,

And the spirit hovers above her tears.

My sister’s gone to the land of freedom,

And her blood shall sing for a thousand years.

Precious blood of the martyrs!

We praise the precious blood.

One fine morning the poor will find freedom in that flood.

Every wound be a mouth

To sing the great refrain:

“There shall be no chain upon the children of God!”

I took the “every wound be a mouth” idea from St. Romanus, an early martyr from Palestine,  who, according to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,

...When condemned, he was scourged, put to the rack, and his body torn with hooks. While thus cruelly mangled, he turned to the governor and thanked him for having opened for him so many mouths with which to preach Christianity; "for," he said, "every wound, is a mouth to sing the praises of the Lord." He was soon after slain by being strangled.

Sometime after that conference, I began to realize that these two incidents were calling me to remember them in a song. I knew it was risky business trying to bring such fresh and raw woundedness to a song, or to imagine that any words or music could put a dent in the horror or injustice that was suffered by any of these twelve people. Furthermore, they were, in a way, just sacraments of the thousands who had died under repressive right-wing regimes in Central and South America and Africa while Reagan and Bush 1 were running foreign policy. The song that came out of my reflection is called “Precious Blood,” and I am proud and humbled that it has been sung by the Adorers and by Jesuit houses in celebrating the memory of their slain brothers and sisters.

As for the rest of the desaparecidos and us Christians whose governments are partly responsible for their death, I wrote verses for them and us as well. Our newly elected Pope Francis is undergoing some scrutiny because of political events in his homeland, Argentina, in the years of the junta that overthrew Juan Perón in the early 1970s. While these charges may be mistaken or slanderous, these were complicated, dangerous times, and we Christians were both the murderers and the murdered, priests and lay people together, as we are today when our nations take part in wars, legal or shadow. I shall leave you with the last two verses of “Precious Blood,” and recommend the souls of the martyrs to your prayers.

O you who dreamed of a world of plenty,

Though from earth’s bright roads you may disappear,

Your dream lives on, O, the land remembers,

And your blood shall sing for a thousand years.

And you who dine at the Savior’s table,

Keep in mind the lash, the cross and spear,

For Christ was killed ‘cause he ate in freedom,

But his blood shall sing for a thousand years.

Precious blood of the martyrs!

We praise the precious blood.

One fine morning the poor will find freedom in that flood.

Every wound be a mouth

To sing the great refrain:

“There shall be no chain upon the children of God!”

The Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador and their housekeepers:

Rev. Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J.

Julia Elba

Celina Elba

Rev. Amando López, SJ

Rev. Segundo Montes, SJ

Rev. Joaquín López y López, SJ

Rev. Ignacio “Nacho” Martín-Baró, SJ

The Adorers of the Blood of Christ, killed in Liberia:

Sr. Barbara Ann Muttra, ASC

Sr. Shirley Kolmer, ASC

Sr. Joel Kolmer, ASC

Sr. Agnes Mueller, ASC

Sr. Kathleen McGuire, ASC

Download Precious Blood - This Very Morning on iTunes.

Do you believe this? (Lent 5A)

I'm tired of hearing the raising of Lazarus over-spiritualized. I don't think it is primarily a spiritual gospel. Lazarus wasn't spiritually dead. If Jesus had just been preaching about life, then nobody would have had to kill him. Nobody wants to kill our priests when they preach. (Well, I have my moments, but that's another story.) Jesus raised Lazarus, and suddenly the leaders wanted him dead. I don't think it was his preaching that caused that. This gospel stands as a summons to all of us, a voice outside of our tombs, calling us to life now. What does it mean that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? What is life? The question haunts through the whole story. "Whoever believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Whose side am I on? Lots of people are taking life away these days. Death is a threat hanging over most of the planet on a daily basis: hunger, thirst, disease, war, neglect. Am I a life-giver or a death dealer? Or am I just watching? That's what a scrutiny is for. Whose side am I on?

The liturgy of the word that introduces the Third Scrutiny is the amazing pericope  Ezekiel, the prophecy over the dry bones. Then we hear about Lazarus being called back to life by his tardy friend Jesus. In all of these gospels about the signs, of which this is the last, John is interested in faith. But faith in whom? Faith in what? And the Church is interested in the faith of the elect. But faith in whom? Faith for what?

As I mentioned yesterday, the dry bones story is one of the most vivid in Scripture. Ezekiel is summoned to a killing field, the plain below Mount Megiddo (Har-megido, according to some, the origin of the word Armageddon, which appears in the book of Revelation.) In the years preceding the ministry of Ezekiel, a huge battle between the forces of the Judean king Josiah and Egypt took place there, and the army of Judah, along with its king, were destroyed. To Ezekiel, in his dream, it appeared that there was a field of sun-bleached bones as far as the eye could see. These bones bore mute witness to the destruction of Judah as a state and a people, and, in a sense, as a religious community, as there was no army now to deter Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon from seizing Judah as a vassal state. Carrying off its people, including Ezekiel, into exile, many would be tempted beyond their endurance to be absorbed into Babylonian society and worship their gods.

Here in the shadow of Har-megido, among the woeful remains of his nation's young dead, the Spirit of God asks Ezekiel, Can these bones live again? Ezekiel knows there is only one way that can happen: if the Lord's creating breath, the ruah of God, were to enter the bones, they would indeed live. It was, after all, the breath of God that gave things life in the first place; to the ancient Hebrew, there was only one kind of breath, and that was God's breath. If you had it, you lived. If you didn't have it, you were dead. Literally, not figuratively. "I will open your graves and have your rise from them," says the voice of the Lord over the dry bones of Judah, "I will put my ruah (breath, spirit) into you that you may live."

That is just what Jesus is up to in today's gospel. Spreading God's breath around to someone who really needed it. I always sort of shake my head when homilists make a big deal about one of the last lines in this gospel: "Untie him, and let him go free," as though the bystanders were able to do some huge service to Lazarus by removing the graveclothes. I mean, HELLO! He was DEAD. I'm sure the inconvenience of being bound hand and foot came in a distant second on Lazarus's list of problems the preceding day, which read something like this:

MY PROBLEMS, by Lazarus of Bethany
1. I'm dead and buried, and starting to decompose.

I mean, yes, for crying out loud, untie him and let him go free. But the lead on the nightly news was surely: LOCAL MAN LIVES AFTER BEING DEAD FOUR DAYS. Somewhere on page 7, it was buried in column 4, "Friends untie, free Lazarus."

My friend, Tom Conry, once preached on this gospel, and he quoted a passage from Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" that is so completely apropos of today's gospel that I feel the need to quote it again. Ilych is dying, and no one will acknowledge the truth of that:

What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result. He however knew that do what they would nothing would come of it, only still more agonizing suffering and death. This deception tortured him — their not wishing to admit what they all knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him concerning his terrible condition, and wishing and forcing him to participate in that lie. Those lies... were a terrible agony for Ivan Ilych. And strangely enough, many times when they were going through their antics over him he had been within a hairbreadth of calling out to them: "Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying. Then at least stop lying about it!" (Chapter 7. See the whole story online here.)

The connection between death and the need to lie, to ourselves and to each other, is at the heart of today's gospel. Conry opens up the gospel passage in the light of our ancient and modern dalliances with slavery and death thus:

...I think that the image of a man four days dead struggling out of his bandages is meant to provoke in us the shout of Ivan Illyitch; the knowledge of our own death, and not only ours, but the certain death of all those who love us, those who hate us, and those who will never know our names. The story means to make us cry out: ‘Stop your foolish lies! You know as well as I know that we are dying, and so at least stop lying!” Because to see Lazarus is to acknowledge our mortality... To admit that we are all dying is to admit that every human being is completely and radically equal in importance, and that our lives are brief and precious in the sight of the one who has made us and summoned us to this table.

"Stop the lying" has been the cry of Jesus from the beginning: "Turn away from sin, and believe the good news." To believe (that is, to lovingly, actively, live in) the truth that God is the God of life, who has nothing to do with death, and who has shown us in Christ that not even the grave separates us from the love of our brother, to believe this is to be free, is to begin to live resurrection life. It is a great paradox that it is this miracle of raising the dead man to life that starts the machinery in motion that will lead to Jesus's trial and crucifixion. Jesus has made a brief career out of calling, preaching to, healing, and dining with the untouchables. He has run into trouble with religious (tribal) power over this. He has called new disciples, and encouraged them to speak and do as he does. This event is the last straw, the "assault upon the order" that enrages the powers of Jerusalem to the point that they call the meeting that will lead to his arrest.

It's not that this is any news to us. People who take the side of life, the side that God has demonstrated in the resurrection of Jesus that God is on, are always crushed by the powers of the world. We've heard their names in our own lifetimes: Martin Luther King, Stephen Biko, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, Oscar Romero, John Paul II (though he survived the attempt on his life), and many others. Many everyday Catholics, too, who have stood up to the forces of death, without force, have been silenced by authorities. The forces of death and slavery and addiction need the threat of death to keep people doing what they want. If someone offers life, if someone says, "Wait a minute: God wants more for you than this - God wants you to have abundant life, here and now," so that people start thinking that maybe the fleshpots of their slavery are too little a patrimony for the children of God, then those people become a threat to Pharaoh, to the Sadducees, to the plantation owners, the straw bosses, the fashioners of apartheid, to the juntas of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and their advisors from Washington, the enemies of life and freedom for everyone in every time and place. Someone has to tell the Lazarus story and say, "They're lying." Someone has to keep saying, "God is on the side of life. Do you believe this?"

Who is Jesus? Brother to all, healer, reconciler of differences, forger of communal bonds, forgiver, table-partner, foot-washer, son of this God. Sender of the Spirit. "Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

This is what scrutinies are for. We've got to figure it out, decide. As long as we don't, the forces of death are having their way.

I will open your graves, and have you rise from them (Lent 5A)

Yesterday's first reading from Ezekiel 37, a clipping from the wondrous vision of dry bones at har-Megiddo (the plain of Megiddo, later known as Armageddon), always fills me with wonder, dread, and hope. Wonder because the vision itself is so stunning as a literary device; the sun-bleached bones of the youngest and strongest of the slaughtered army of Israel’s king Josiah, the prophet set down amidst the ruin and ordered to prophesy to the bones, the clatter and slurp of the bones rising and becoming a nation again when the spirit-breath of Y-hw-h enter into them, it’s an unforgettable vision even at the distance of two and a half millennia. Dread, because the sense of loss is so staggering, the finality of death and the frailty of life are made so clear. Hope, because God’s promise is so clearly and permanently stated, right in the face of our complete powerlessness before death’s power and our own folly: “I will open your graves and have you rise from them. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.”

This morning I was more thinking about just how dead we can be while we’re still walking around and dangerous to each other, and how we need new breath in us as we lay in this killing field, and how only God’s intervention can save us. And sometimes it can be pretty easy to pray “O God, let the people of eastern Africa rise from their graves,” or “Let the nation of Afghanistan rise from its grave,” or “Let people who are addicted to drugs rise from the grave of their addiction,” or whatever our cause du jour might be. And I don’t mean for this to be a political salvo, because we’re all guilty, but this year I feel that somebody ought to just say it: we Americans are the ones who are dead. We deal in death all over the world. We spend more money on weaponry than on anything else in the national budget, and sell the arms to just about anyone. No, we’re not alone in our obsession with promoting fear, threats, stand-offs, brinksmanship, embargoes, sanctions, shock-and-awe. But we seem to be the most blasé about being arms merchants and Christians. We are dead, and the name of our death is War. 

Vietnam war memorial, Washington DC

And then the word of God picks us up by the hair on a Sunday morning and carries us on the wind and drops us in the middle of our own killing fields. Standing here in the dry wind, we are overwhelmed by the weight of the death around us. This is a life-forsaken wasteland. There is really only death here, death that has been purchased with trillions of dollars, provided a living economy for millions of us who are living, made a safe place for us to worship on Sunday and think pious thoughts about Lazarus and Ezekiel. Not only does the death seem permanent and ubiquitous, it enables the charade of our own life, letting us feed like maggots on the death of others. And the wind begins to speak to us, “Prophet, can these bones live?”

It’s a trick question, because to answer it in the affirmative is to make it necessary for me to waken. To answer in the negative is to say that my faith is a counterfeit, a sham.

“Prophet, can these bones live?” I answer obliquely, (and this is the place where I think my faith really is, coward that I am), “Only you know the answer to that.” Cripes. I know the answer to that, I’ve been taught it, taught, read it, sung it, prayed it, counted on it for six decades. Of course the bones can live, only don’t make me open my mouth about it. I’ve already tried to say that we only have the right to pray “Have mercy on us!” while we worship the God of life and kill our brothers and sisters at the same time, and it’s as though we say these things and nothing comes out of our mouths but silence, as though the sound stays inside our shouts, and the effort is for nothing. “Prophesy to the bones!” the wind demands.

Is there any way out of this for us? Is the breath of God, roiling the gut and convulsing the lungs of the Messiah, crying out to us here in the darkness, telling us to get the hell out of the festering stench of this desert sarcophagus? Death itself enables the comfort of this place! It’s worse than the choice between water and thirst, or between sight and blindness, or between starvation meals and fleshpots of slavery. If God does the hard work, if the Spirit is ready to put new and authentic life back into us, why is it so hard to get up out of the tomb? How did this death get to feel like life?

It’s not that I don’t want to move. I don’t know what I need. Maybe it’s to make some little leap, or maybe I need a push, or to be carried out of my sleep by the hair to some killing field. I wonder what Ezekiel thought. He is thought to have died in exile himself in ancient Babylon. His tomb is thought, by some, to be at Keffil. Near Baghdad.

(Other posts on 3/4/5 Lent Year A and the Scrutinies here)

He reached down and touched the pain (Lent, 5C)

One of my favorite singer-songwriters is Greg Brown, who is married to another amazing singer-songwriter, Iris Dement. The one and only time I have been privileged to see Greg sing, he floored me with a song that his wife wrote, which he has not recorded. The song is called "He Reached Down," and it reveals the depths at which their upbringing, he the son of a preacher, she in a Pentecostal family, has shaped their consciousness and art into a stunning intuitiveness about the core of the gospel. In "He Reached Down," Dement grasps the motif of kenosis in three gospel narratives: the parable of the good Samaritan, the story of the woman caught in adultery, and the parable of final judgment in the end time found in Matthew 25. Since the story of the woman is the gospel for today, just take a look at how she frames the narrative, using "he reached down" as a refrain that describes, as the gospel does, the kenosis of God:

And then the Scribes in the Pharisees
Brought the adultress in for Jesus to see.
"Lord, she’s sinned, now the law says she must be stoned."
"If there’s a one of you that’s without sin,"
Said, "you can cast the first stone in."
One by one they left, leaving Jesus and the woman alone

(Chorus) Well he reached down, he reached down
He got right there on the ground
He reached down, he reached down
And he touched the pain.

"Well, no accusers are left that I see
And woman, neither do I condemn thee."
He reached down, he reached down
And he touched the pain.

When I first heard Greg sing this, I could not get over the simplicity and clarity with which the heart of this passage came through. But after listening to the verse about the Samaritan and this one, I was stunned by the turn at the end of the final verse, which to me was a homily all in itself.

In the Book of Life a story is told
About a traveler at the end of life’s road
He’s at the gates of the Kingdom and the Master says “Come on in”
For I was hungry and you gave me meat
I was cold you put shoes on my feet
When I was in prison there was you who come to see about me

Well you reached down, you reached down
You got right there on the ground
You reached down, you reached down
And you touched my pain. 

When you did it to the least of these
He said you were doin’ it unto me
You reached down, you reached down
And you touched my pain.

There is a lot written about today's gospel. It appears at beginning of the eighth chapter of John in the New Testament, but in none of the oldest manuscripts that we have of John. In one case (that I know of) it appears in an ancient manuscript of the gospel of Luke. Since it does appear in some important later manuscripts, including the Vulgate, it is considered a part of the canon. There are textual reasons (in chapter 8) that lead scholars to understand why a scribe might have inserted this story into John here. But other internal reasons, notably that the "to trap him" ploy, seen throughout the synoptics but only appearing here in the entire gospel of St. John, lead them to infer that this is a much later addition to the gospel.

But it is a great story. And in the context of this late Lenten Sunday, provides a lot to reflect on. In year A, when there are scrutinies, this is the Sunday when the raising of Lazarus is proclaimed. Jesus confronts death in death's backyard, setting the wheels in motion that will lead to his arrest a few miles away shortly afterward. And what strikes me most about this reading about the adulteress is the mortal danger that she is in. In the Lazarus story, Christ goes to the tomb. In the story of the woman taken in adultery, death comes to him. And as it will in the passion narrative, it comes in the form of capital punishment.

William Blake, "The Woman Taken in Adultery"

The image in this narrative is all too familiar because of the internet and growing awareness of sharia law and the way that it is carried out in fundamentalist Muslim areas. The brutality of stoning isn't something we have to read about in history books. It is a form of capital punishment. In the law, both the man and woman are to be thus executed for the crime, but in John's story, the man has apparently escaped. At least, he's not important to the explicit narrative. Bruce Malina, in his masterful work Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, makes the point that like the rest of the last six of the ten commandments, the command against adultery is in place to hold together the social bonds of the community. Since family groups lived together, bound by intermarriage and the honor that children brought to the mixed families, adultery, theft, false oaths and other social breaches not only caused damage to the community in themselves, but also often created feuds and retaliation. Removing the cause, in this case, the offenders by their execution, stopped the retaliation in its tracks and "restored honor" to the community.

John Shea takes a different tack in his The Relentless Widow, the year C entry into his series on the "Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers." John's insight is always so very provocative. I love what he says about today's scripture, even though I can't find a trace of support for it in the usual places (like the Jerome Biblical Commentary). He picks up on Jesus writing twice on the ground with his finger when the woman is brought to him, and sees in the story an echo of the story of the giving of the law to Moses. The first time, Moses brought the commandments, written with God's finger, and sees the people worshipping the golden calf (committing "adultery," as it were, against the covenant) and he destroys the tablets. He goes back up to God, asking for retribution against the people, but God makes a new set of commandments and sends him back down to them. They will not get to see the promised land, and they are severely punished for their infidelity, but they are not killed en masse. So, yes, the accusers of the woman do cite the law of Moses, so, along with the writing with the finger (Ex. 31:17) of God, there is some internal evidence for this kind of an interpretation. And it is a very attractive one, especially as a contrast, because the woman's accusers see that infidelity (adultery) is something that the whole people is guilty of, and yet they have not been made to paid for it with their lives. The oldest see it first, and the situation is defused. With all the slaughter in the urtext, though, it seems a stretch to me to see this Gospel narrative as derived from the Exodus one, except by the starkest contrast, and in the slimmest of applications.

The thing I appreciate about this story from a literary point of view, is something that (if we didn't know better from internal evidence) fits with the arc of the Johannine narrative. It is the great arc of self-emptying that the Logos traces, from John's hymnic overture in chapter one in which "the logos became flesh, and pitched a tent in our midst," through the bending down of Jesus to wash the feet of the disciples at the last Supper, to the moment at which, in a single instant, he breathes his last and "hands over the spirit" from the cross. In that great downward arc, reversed in the resurrection and yet with the Spirit of Jesus remaining in the world to animate the mission of the church, I believe the "reaching down" of Jesus in this story keeps that momentum, as he, with great risk to his own safety, takes the side of the condemned woman, and stoops to write with his finger in the sand. As with the mud paste in the eyes of the blind man, one can't help but conjure Genesis here, and the thought that something new is being created from dust and tears.

What shines out of this gospel for me after hearing the first two readings and singing the psalm today is this: the past doesn't matter. Nothing in the past matters. Even our experience of God's rescue the past is nothing compared to what is happening now. 

First reading:

Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Psalm 126:

Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
they shall come back rejoicing,
carrying their sheaves.

Second reading:

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
but straining forward to what lies ahead,
I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

And then, this glorious gospel story, with the woman whose past is very much in the present, with the breeze still bearing away the rancid reek of her mortal terror, brought to Jesus for a judgment which he, like the God he serves, refuses to give. Or rather, as John 8 says a bit later, "You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone. And even if I should judge, my judgment is valid, because I am not alone, but it is I and the Father who sent me. (8:15-16) 

So Jesus pronounces judgment, and the judgment is life for the sinner. I could not help but wonder, as I prepared for this Sunday's music and liturgy reading over these scriptures, whether Jesus might not have had a wink in his eye when he said to the woman, "Go your way, and do not sin any more." If anyone ever knew that this was a tall order, it was he. It may be, however, that the "sin" he had in mind wasn't primarily the sin of which she had been accused and nearly executed, but rather the sin she had so graphically seen visited upon her in its savagery. Maybe he was saying, "Remember how this feels. Whatever happens, don't be like your accusers."

"He reached down and touched the pain." God is reaching down, and we keep pushing God back up. God enters into our mess, pronouncing a judgment of mercy, and we push God back into heaven, and use God as an excuse for brutality. God reaches down to be one with us and make us one, and we push God back into heaven and use God as an excuse for exclusion, shunning, and excommunication. God reaches down to demonstrate the life-giving possibilities of loving self-abandonment, and we push God back into heaven so that we can worship riches and possession as divine attributes. God reaches down to suffer with us, we push God back up to heaven and sedate ourselves. We protest our patrimony of divine election, and God makes "children of Abraham" and brothers of Christ out of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist—even atheist—stones.

"I am doing something new…Do you not perceive it?" Forgiveness of the past, opting for a new future without judgment and mortal revenge. Not substituting violent retribution for the forgiveness and equality of the dominion of God. Let's not think too small as we reflect on this gospel. Let's not over-spiritualize it. Real people are face-to-face with real death, no less than in the story of Lazarus, and it's death being inflicted by religious people over religious law. God's judgment is on that. The discernment of kenosis is mercy. How do we know if an action is divine? The answer is fairly straightforward. The action has nothing to do with death. It has nothing to do with preserving a past that chains, isolates, or condemns another person. It reveals a God who seeks worship less than solidarity, heaven less than earth, revenge less than restoration, power less than the "reaching-down" posture self-emptying love. "I am doing something new." Let's stop worshiping the old god. 

By the time Jesus finishes with what he has to say to those who are still in the Temple area listening (8:59), they're picking up stones again. They've forgotten about the woman. They've passed another death sentence which, to their confusion, will also be commuted to another day.

The Last Taboo (Lent 5A)

The Easter Sequence, one of the three sequences not suppressed when the new missal came out in the late 1960s, is a beautiful, dense poem. In one particular strophe, especially, words push and tumble against each other, imitating the combat alluded to in the text: 

Mors et vita duello
Conflixere mirando
Dux vitae mortuus
Regnat vivus.

“Death and life clashed in an astonishing duel - Life’s leader was killed, and is reigning, alive.” 

Jesus, in his trek through Galilee and Judea, has been preaching and living the reign of God. His intuition is that God’s existence and self-revelation demands a re-imagination of the universe, a new awareness that all persons are beloved children of one abba, and therefore brothers and sisters to one another without borders. God’s holiness is not only mediated through channels of rite and order, but is freely available. Imagining God as abba leads him to proclaim that forgiveness is present and providence is for all persons, without reference to money or status. 

Imagining God as abba has been a conscious choice that precludes imagination of God as a king, general, or judge like those of this world, whose often corrupt ways are frequently parodied in the parables. His practice of eating and drinking with the ritually impure and socially untouchable, the leper, the prostitute, the collaborating tax collectors, as well as with those of unquestioned ritual purity, underlines his egalitarian view of humanity and further distances him from those whose livelihood and power depends upon the observance of purity laws and the collections of tribute to the occupying power. 

Lazarus, by Vincent van Gogh

Sunday’s gospel pericope for those who celebrate the third Scrutiny on Lent 5 brings us to the edge of the final taboo, past blindness and sickness, past sin and bad reputation, past kosher laws and Sabbath restriction: the final verdict of humanity, the place of utter corruption and human oblivion. The story of Lazarus brings Jesus, and the discipleship community with him, to the world of the dead. It’s enough to give Jesus a stomach ache, gut-wrenching grief for the state of humanity since God pronounced the harsh death sentence for human disobedience in the Genesis garden. On this day, Jesus will demonstrate that the reign of death is over, that God’s forgiveness is complete. Soon, the death sentence of Eden would be revoked completely, and creation begun anew. 

Life begins with metanoia, the turning-around required to face the reign of God. It is the turning by which we move from allegiance to the reign of Caesar and the kings like him, toward Christ and the reign of God. It is the turning from accumulation to kenosis, from force of power to agape, in Isak Dinesen’s mystical phrase, “the supreme triumph of unconditional surrender.” As Jesus put it, “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains nothing more than a grain of wheat.” Still, death does in fact await everyone. People still use death as a threat to enslave others, to get their own way, to take what belongs to another person, or tribe, or nation. We still delude ourselves that death can be staved off with more stuff, money, sex, and power. Jesus, the resurrection and life, is somehow the way out of this downward spiral into the violence, oblivion, terror, and waste that is death. Life, life here in this world, matters. What lies beyond is a gift, unknowable, unseen. Life without the Way, that is, life without Christ’s vision of a God who makes of every other person a brother or sister and not a rival or enemy, is nothing but death, disguised, prolonged, pain-making. 

That is the church's prayer in the third scrutiny: show us the Way, give us life, deliver us from death and all its glittering, flag-waving, bible-thumping masquerades.

(Other posts on Lent 3/4/5 Year A and the Scrutinies here.)