Songstories 42 - Two litanies for the scrutinies (and lament)

Scrutiny at St. Peter's, Fallbrook CA (from web)

Since we're in the middle of our celebration of the three scrutinies this Lent, I thought I'd write about a couple of attempts to write music for them.

In my previous job, in the early 1990s, we were looking for a better way to sing the scrutiny prayers than the "tired" intercessory formula that usually redounded to a form of the general intercessions, making them indistinguishable both in content and form, and consequently in execution, from those prayers. When trying to think about crafting a litany for the scrutinies it struck me that American blues music seemed like a genre to explore. The melody of "Litany of Deliverance" is pentatonic and sounds familiar, like chant or folk music. The harmonic structure of the music, though, is familiar in a  different way, and from a different environment.



The texts of the scrutiny litany embody the two-fold purpose of the rite, that is, to uncover and heal whatever holds the back from completely embracing the gospel and the cross in their life, and also to reveal and strengthen in them the gifts they have been given to build up the body of Christ in the world. Both parts, "purification and enlightenment," as it were, are integral to the rite. So the invocations have both kinds of petitions - "From fear and isolation, deliver us, O God," on the one hand, and on the other, "Bring vision to our blindness/Teach us to see as you see - deliver us, O God." In the final analysis, the issue for this litany might be that response, "Deliver us, O God," in that it might not let the "enlightenment" petitions shine as much as they should. Still, when it's possible to do this litany with the energy and conviction that it is possible to evoke with a good cantor and musicians animating an assembly, "Litany of Deliverance" works pretty well.

After a few more years of experience and learning in my parishes and with Forum, I took a different tack and came up with another idea. My second attempt at this tried to address that problem (the response) and the accompaniment issue, because, let's face it, not every ensemble can pull off that blues thing so well, and without it, "Litany of Deliverance" might not have enough oomph to lift it above any other tedious chant. So in the next incarnation of a scrutiny litany, I made the invocations more robust, with a chant melody that was adaptable to different line lengths and rhythms, and added some different possibilities of prayer forms so that churches and their RCIA and music directors could fashion their own invocations. These included invocations in these forms:

• "Deliver them from anger and hatred...Deliver them from the idolatry of power..."
• "In a world unsafe for the stranger...In a world unsafe for peacemakers..."
• "Strengthen them in compassion and love...Strengthen them in devotion and solidarity..."

These invocations allow the community to pray against sin whether it is a weakness in the individual or systemic in society and civilization, while being very explicit about the virtues and activities in which these elect are asking to be strengthened. While I provide a couple dozen invocations, the form is friendly to others being added without much need to fuss with rhythm and meter.




The other assembly-friendly function of the newer litany is that the responses are always cued by the cantor, who sings the response before the assembly, and then twice leads the assembly into a new key a minor third higher with an easy sung figure. This allows the litany to build in intensity as the pitch rises throughout the performance. I got this idea from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, where the rising melody of a simple chant appears in "Secret Songs," sung by a boy soprano (and others) in the last movement of the piece.

I also opted to use a chanted "Kyrie eleison" as a response in this, because once we understand what is implied in those words we see that it is an appropriate response to "Deliver them from..." and "Strengthen them in..." petitions, because the thrust of its meaning is the confession of Christ as Lord of the universe, and thus able to answer both prayers in perfectly gentle strength. I wrote about this at length in a post on those words, so if you would like to read more about "Kyrie eleison," you can find that blog post here.

That's what I have to say about this installment of SongStories, about these two litanies published in 1991 and 2006. Thanks for reading.

Litany of Deliverance (from Stony Landscapes)
Litany for the Scrutinies (from Today)

Rejoice! The Second Scrutiny! (A4L)

I haven't thought of something about Sunday that I haven’t already said, though I still may before the week is up. Still, I like to put up a list of the music we’re doing week by week, so here we go. This weekend is characterized by images of light and darkness, vision and blindness, and the limits of human sight versus the wide scope of divine “vision.” For the record, I have pretty substantial blog posts about these readings from previous years (these are clickable links to the posts):


• Believing is seeing (1) - the Man Born Blind
• Believing is seeing (2) - the dark night of a liturgical soul
• Believing is seeing (3) - turning can take a while
• How were your eyes opened?
• John 9:9 and the co-creation of light




I mean, that seems like a lot to have written about the same readings, so I’m cutting myself some slack for not having a startling new insight for this year.

Even so, it's not like I don't expect to have my eyes opened this Sunday, because this Sunday at St. Anne we are delighted to have a group from Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos de Guatemala coming to the parish to lead most of the music at the masses. NPH is a wonderful organization with orphanages throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, supporting 3,300 children in nine countries, and another 1800 with scholarships, meals, and health care. This group visiting the Midwest is made up of mostly older (teen) children who bring their musical talent to schools and parishes to spread the word about NPH and return the love that they have experienced in their homeland. Please click on the link above, and see more about the work of NPH in the hemisphere, and consider making them a part of your Lenten almsgiving.

This is some of the music we’re singing this Sunday, with some links to the iTunes versions if they exist:





Gathering: Be Thou My Vision This is the arrangement I did about 25 years ago, the title song for our CD Vision. It often works out that this Sunday falls around St. Patrick’s day, so the Irish flavor of the hymn does a kind of double cultural duty in these parts, where there’s a strong Irish influence in the church. The references to the high tower and the high king of heaven evoke memories of Ireland and its history while we sing the song, even as I have mixed feelings about the images of monarchy and the military that pervade the song. Sigh.


Psalm 23: My Shepherd Is the Lord (Gelineau-GIA)
Gospel Response: Open My Eyes (Manibusan, OCP)

Scrutiny: Litany for the Scrutinies (Today, GIA) and Psalm 116: I Will Walk in the Presence of God. The Litany for the Scrutinies I recorded and published with GIA in 2006 had been in use in my parish and others and on Forum institutes for years, both in adapted scrutinies and also as part of liturgies of lamentation. By adapting the language to the dynamics of purification (“deliver them from...”) and enlightenment (“strengthen them in...”), the litany became really appropriate for the scrutiny and, as chant, accessible to virtually any parish.


Communion: Christ, Be Our Light (Farrell)

Following the example of the Lord himself, sometimes this blog needs a day to go off by itself and rest for a while. Happy Wednesday to all! And rejoice - Lent is half over.

Christ at Jacob's Well and Emmaus

He Qi "Road to Emmaus"

I hope this will be short. I think, over the two-plus years that I've written in this blog I've spilled a lot of electrons on the subject of the Samaritan woman story, but guess what? Something struck me Sunday when I was listening to the gospel again (and again and again.) Maybe I'm not the first person to notice it, but it was the first time that I noticed it: the parallels between the story in John 4 of Jesus and the Samaritan woman and Luke's account of the Emmaus road.

This may simply be the result of having spent some time trying to interiorize the exegesis the James Alison has done on the Emmaus story in his book and Christianity course, The Forgiving Victim. Thus, it may be that what is similar is my hearing the Samaritan woman story (which you already know is political and ethnic, rather than personal) and Alison's reading of the Emmaus story, which is important in his exposition of scripture, that is, that we Christians need to interpret scripture through the key of the victim Jesus, much as the Jews interpreted Torah through the key of the "meek" Moses.  In any case, the political interpretation (in the light of Acts 8) is not necessary to see these parallelisms, but it helps. For what it's worth, after those disclaimers, this is the parallelism I saw:

John 4	Luke 24
Location: Samaria, outside the boundaries of Judea. Jesus and disciples “on the road.”	Location: On the way home, leaving Jerusalem for Emmaus. (Jesus and) disciples “on the road.”
Danger from sectarian violence.	Danger from relationship to the crucified one, an “enemy of Caesar.”
Jesus starts the conversation. “Give me a drink.”	Jesus starts the conversation. “What are you talking (having such a heated discussion)  about?”
Her unfulfilled hopes. “Give me this water, sir, so I don’t have to keep coming back here.”	Their unfulfilled hopes. “We had hoped that he would be the one to set Israel free!”
Jesus takes the woman’s story, and reinterprets it for her. “He told me everything I’ve ever done.”	Jesus takes the story Clopas and friend tell, and reinterprets it for them. “Jesus then explained everything written about himself in the Scriptures, beginning with the Law of Moses and the Books of the Prophets.”
Apostles bring food. Jesus refuses it. “I’ve already eaten something better.”	Apostles offer food. Jesus disappears.
Woman runs to the village, “Come and see!”	Clopas and his companion return to Jerusalem to tell the disciples their story. They exchange appearance stories. “We have seen the Lord!”
Villagers (Samaria?) come to faith. “This is truly the Savior of the word.”	Apostles come to faith.  “…They knew he was the Lord when he broke the bread.” (CEV)

What might account for these similarities? Well, certainly the fact that both narratives are post-resurrection accounts of the meaning of Jesus in the context of "gospels." These books were not written while Jesus was alive, but half a century or more after his death, and after the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem, and at a time when the imminence of the return of Jesus was starting to be doubted, at least by those who thought it was imminent. Some aspects of the meaning of Jesus's proclamation of the reign of God and how that reign was visible in his life could certainly have emerged similarly in different communities and times.

Alison wants us to see that seeing the events of "Holy Week" through Jesus eyes gives us the correct way to interpret all of scripture, i.e., the Law and the prophets. Jesus is able to take the very texts that had led the disciples to imagine a new world order before it had crumbled at the death of Jesus and help them to see that indeed the new order was already here but they had misunderstood it before. The key to understanding, somehow, is the breaking of the bread, with all of the nuances that would have come with that after their having spent a couple of years doing that with him two or three times a day. God is not a participant in the power-broking and death-dealing kingdom of Caesar, is not in rivalry with other gods, but reveals in Jesus that life is gently triumphant, and that agape and mutual service is a way out of the destructive, self-made hell that hatred and rivalry have made of civilization.

If I apply Alison's hermeneutic to the Samaritan woman story, a similar story of resurrection life for the world emerges. The separation between enemies (e.g., Samaritan and Jew) disappears. The weariness of life, symbolized by the 6 husbands, is transformed by the meeting of number 7 at the well into a joyful proclamation of freedom, total immersion of the thirsty heart in living water. The meaning of life is discovered as alienation is transformed into apostleship and connection. God is not a participant in our religious and ethnic rivalry, the infighting of our race, but loves us anyway and always, inviting us to live together in a new kingdom or empire, the household of abba, a place and time of mutual respect and loving-kindness.

This is just the seed of an idea, if there is an idea there at all. But I'm grateful for my exposure to Alison and his insights about the Emmaus story, which for one Sunday at least, helped me to see the Samaritan woman story in a new light, maybe the light of the world.

Revisiting the Lord's Prayer

Continuing my personal perspective on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as they appear in the scriptural texts of the first week of Lent, I want to move on to how it is that Jesus instructs his disciples to pray. After the exhortation from the Sermon on the Mount about praying in private on Ash Wednesday, and Jesus's long desert retreat described so tersely on the first Sunday of Lent in the gospel of Mark, the next time prayer explicitly appears is in the liturgy of Tuesday in the first week of Lent. The gospel is set off by the famous passage from Isaiah 55, which in the context of today's scriptures seems to be saying, in God's words, "My word goes out and does what I say it will do. You might try doing the same thing!" Of course, that takes Isaiah out of context, but the liturgy routinely does that. And then the psalm uses some verses from Psalm 34 to make the case that God hears the cries of the poor, of those who cry out to him with broken hearts. This all prepares us to hear another passage from the Sermon on the Mount, this one about not multiplying words, and then Jesus's exhortation to pray this way:

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name,

thy Kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

The Lord's prayer is so familiar to us that its meaning is easily lost in that familiarity, and so I'm grateful for footnotes in bibles and books that lend chapters to the words and verses from a time, language, and culture so utterly unfamiliar to us. Taking the time to hear the Lord's prayer anew, and spend a little effort peeling away at the layers of familiarity and looking under the words can give us a new appreciation for the text.

A few weeks ago, Terry and I spent a day at a local church experiencing a day-long seminar with the renowned pastor and inspirational evangelist Brian McLaren. He began the day with what I felt was a unique prayer. He led us through the Lord's prayer, chanted on a single note, rising in pitch up the scale from do to sol diatonically and then back to do. He invited us to add harmony as we did the a cappella chanting. As the group warmed to what was happening, the prayer got more expansive, deep and beautiful, as we sang it, and then repeated it, and sang it again at the end of the session.

Brian spent some time exegetizing the petitions of the prayer in a simple but meaningful way. Most of this would not have been news to anyone who has done some bible study, and perhaps some was necessarily simplified, because there aren't any simple ways to translate, or understand what has been translated, in the lines we most often say as "lead us not into temptation" and "deliver us from evil." The meaning of "trespasses" is debated too, and the prayer means different things depending on how you translate the words, of course. But if we come at it from the perspective of Jesus's listeners and first disciples, Jewish peasants living in a conquered nation in a faith tradition mediated by a privileged temple cult, we can get a handle on at least one possible consistent meaning that emerges from the text. This was Brian's paraphrased translation:

Our Father, 

above us and all around us,

May your unspeakable Name be revered.

Here to earth, may your kingdom come.

Here on earth, may your will be done as it is in heaven.

Give us today our bread for today.

And forgive us our wrongs as we forgive those who wrong us.

Lead us away from the time of trial.

But liberate us from the evil.

For the kingdom is yours and yours alone,

And the power is yours and yours alone,

And the glory is yours and yours alone.

Amen.

This may give us a good jumping-off point to talk about the meanings of the individual lines.

John Dominic Crossan, in his highly readable and (by me) recommended little book on the Our Father entitled The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer, tells us a couple of things about the first lines. First of all, it's the very way that God is addressed that should arrest our attention. Naming God in some way will always imply a relationship, but by calling God "Our Father" we name a relationship not just with God but with everyone who prays the prayer. Crossan goes to some length about the use of "Father," and, understanding that we hear gender bias in the word, prefers to spend some time demonstrating from historical documents that what is behind the name "Father" is not gender but the role of the father in the household of Mediterranean peasants, that is, to be the keeper of the household, the one who sees that it is justly run. By doing so, he opens up the possibility, indeed, he documents the reality, of women contemporary to Jesus and the early church who did the same, owned property, oversaw the commerce of the family, and so on. By concentrating on this aspect of the meaning of "father," we are able to see the intention of thus naming God: God is head of a household, and what God wants is the mutual care and harmony among the children. The oft-repeated folk wisdom that abba, the word behind the Greek word for father, was unique to Jesus is not really true; Abba was a word frequently used in first and second century Judaism by rabbis to speak of God.

"In heaven" is literally "in the heavens," that is, metaphorically, "who dwells beyond us, yet we are present to one another." The next phrase McLaren translates to mean "may all (people) hallow your name," though many see the passive voice in the phrase to be a circumlocution in which it is God who is the agent; that is, "make your name blessed by all." As for me, I'm not certain at all whether it is the unknowable or "unspeakable" name of God that is to be "hallowed," but rather the name "our Father," which, for this God, is unique and requires a response on earth as in heaven. Crossan's book cited above puts it this way: "It simply means that heaven is in great shape – earth is where the problems are." But "hallowed by thy name" may also wonderfully refer to the liberating name of God that was spoken to Moses, unknowable, but active in the world on behalf of slaves and the beaten-down; active, however, with in a different kind of "kingdom," one that builds upon the justice that arises from the love that brothers and sisters of "our Father" show to one another. The prayer reflects Jesus, the prophet of the reign of God: this world matters, the world belongs to God, and God is going to make it right with our collaboration with distributive justice.

"Give us this day our daily bread" - the word "daily" here is an unusual word that can have the meaning of "every day," but, especially in the context of this prayer and its expectation of eschatological fulfillment now, may also mean "tomorrow's." In other words (again remember the audience of Mediterranean peasants, most of whom live in a subsistence economy), "give us today tomorrow's bread," or "take away the worry and stress we feel about feeding ourselves and our children beyond this meal. I think this translation is more cogent, don't you?

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." The word for "trespass" here is the same as the word for "debt." Indeed, some English translations of the Lord's prayer have translated the phrase with the word as "debt" as long as we can remember. In the context described already, in a social environment where one of the greatest fears was debt that led to servitude, a prayer for jubilee release from debt (nodding again to the Exodus and the Torah) seems to me a genuinely reasonable alternative way to understand the phrase. However the phrase is translated, it harkens back to the foundational image of God as householder in which we are all children of the family, and asks for us to be released from debts "as we release the debts of those indebted to us." In fact, another reading of the phrase is, "Forgive us our debts (trespasses) as we have forgiven those indebted to us." This, while earnestly hoped for, may be even harder to say out loud!

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." This phrase is perhaps the most difficult to parse. It may be seen eschatologically, for late first century Christians, to refer to the "great tribulation" mentioned in apocalyptic literature. In other words, it prays "Don't bring us to the choice between you and death, to a choice beyond our strength, but keep us away from every kind of destructive force." Crossan goes a step further, and sees it as a prayer to be delivered from a decision that Jesus himself had to make: Do not bring us to the place where we might be tempted to use violence to against others; deliver us from that perilous choice of betraying our choice for peace and justice by doing violence to those who disagree. While I tend to agree with Crossan, I think both ways of seeing the final phrase of the Lord's prayer open up the meaning beyond the rather domesticated meaning of "temptation" we often imagine.

On a website called "readthespirit.com", I discovered this meditative prayer based on some of Crossan's insights, and while it doesn't lend itself to public prayer very well, maybe you will find it useful to contemplate:

God, I’m suddenly seeing our world in new ways! We’ve somehow made this world, Your Household, into such an unjust place! I’m only waking up to this, today, and it’s making me turn back to prayer. 

It’s because I’m losing my home. What a devastating shock! I never imagined this could happen! Now, I’m suddenly so painfully aware that, in your world, every family should have a safe shelter. I never saw it this clearly before, but you’re the God who created a world in which every family should be able to have a safe home somewhere. 

I’m not asking for special favors. I don’t even want that big old house back. I don’t know what we were thinking when we bought such a huge place, anyway. I can survive even the loss of that home. I can move in with others. Millions of people are doing it around the world. Maybe billions. 

I’m seeing our world in new ways, God. And, now, my prayer is getting down to the real heart of the matter: I need to feed my family today. I’m a hard worker. But I’m suddenly aware that not everyone in this world can even hope to get enough to survive another day. We all need to feed our families today, God. 

And, tomorrow? I need to hope that tomorrow it’s possible to survive this crushing debt that my family faces. There are probably millions like me, praying this same way today. Maybe billions are praying this: Food for today, freedom from crushing debt tomorrow.
I’m seeing our world in new ways, God. I understand the anger so many are feeling. I understand the temptation to turn these prayers for justice into something dangerous—into violence, even into war to protect what we think belongs to us. Don’t let me go there, God. Don’t let me contribute to the violence even in small ways. 

I’m seeing the world in new ways, God. It’s Your Household. In Your Household, I don’t need more than others. I just need enough for myself and my family. We can’t do all this alone. But, because you are the head of this great Household, we know that there is enough—if we pray together in Your Spirit and we summon Your Household to be what it should be. 

I’m seeing our world in new ways, God. And I’m praying in new ways, too.

(© 2010 readthespirit.com)

So, after all that, I'm including this link to a short slideshow I created as a prayer for a presentation I gave. It is my paraphrase of the prayer after Crossan, McLaren, and other readings. At the presentation, I used the idea that Brian McLaren had to which I referred at the beginning of this blog post, and had our intrepid little band of Catholics change it up and down the five-note scale twice. No one ventured into harmony, though maybe next week we might try it. For this video, I just used a clip from Terry's interpretation of "The Deer's Cry," which is available on her GIA recording, Family Resemblance.  

Have a joyful Lent, everyone!

Agape as flowing water

If I ever get a chance to preach on this Sunday, I’m taking it. I don’t think that, in a lectionary packed with the riches of creation, there’s a Sunday with a denser set of images, tumbling over one another and leaving us thirsty for more revelation. I’ve written about the Third Sunday of Lent three times before, concentrating on the gospel, the story of the Samaritan woman. And that aspect of the story is amazing, what it reveals to us about the divine lover, the “seventh husband,” and the racial, national, and religious reconciliation suggested by the “marriage” of a Jew and a Samaritan at the well of Jacob. I've written about more on how Romans 5 affected me, and that’s really where I want to go this year again, but referring it back to the Exodus story, to John 4, and ultimately to the paschal mystery of God.



Six years ago, I was involved with a book discussion at our local Presbyterian church on Marcus Borg’s and John Dominic Crossan’s work, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, about which I’ve spoken to you before. We got into a discussion about atonement theory. Crossan and Borg posit an atonement theology that does not demand that we imagine God making Christ suffer a terrible death to appease his wrath, and I have to say that I find that comforting, though I would go further than Crossan and Borg do (I can do that, because I don’t have any academic credentials to protect.) A challenge was put to this theory by a citation of Romans 5, which just happens to be the 2nd reading for this 3rd Sunday of Lent as we celebrate it at St. Anne’s and wherever there are catechumens in the community, with the readings from Lectionary Year A.


What would be, to an ancient desert civilization like Israel’s, a more cogent, stirring symbol of the possibilities life has to offer than a spring bubbling out of desert rock, or a well that never runs dry? As a child born in Ohio and growing up in Arizona, I tried, year after year in grade school, to have a vegetable garden in our back yard. It may have grown out of one of those famous get-rich-quick schemes kids find in their magazines: I know that one or two years I tried to make some money selling flower and vegetable seeds door-to-door, encouraged in my entrepreneurship by Superman, Green Lantern, or the kids in “Boys’ Life.” I’m also sure that people in the neighborhoods must have thought I was nuts. Nevertheless, I dutifully and self-motivatedly cleared a 12x12 patch in a corner of our backyard that got at least a modicum of shade from the back fence and a mulberry tree, and tried to make things grow back there. No matter how hard I tried (and God knows it’s just as well: I’m sure I watered the plants with asbestos-laden runoff from our evaporative cooler), the patch of ground turned into a sun-baked clutch of clay, and any intrepid legumes or grasses (I actually managed to strangle up a few stalks of popcorn once) looked scraggly and tired from their struggle with a forced overdose of solar energy.



Even allowing for the expertise of ages of desert farming, life in Israel must have been a crapshoot in those years. And the memory of flooded wadis, stories of water gushing from rock, and the storied oases of their ancestors must have offered some dreamy hope and solace to their quotidian labors. Enter these two stories, from Exodus and John 4, drawing on all the promise and longing of fresh, free, abundant water for desert dwellers.




Amid these two stories of abundance, refreshment, and the imaginative easing of the burden of life, Paul’s letter to Romans describes the love of God as so abundant that it must be seen as agape, the pouring-out of self with no hope or care for recovery, payback, or even gratitude. While we were still sinners Christ died for us, Paul says. When we were desert rock, Christ was water. When we were locked in an arid quest for impotent gods who just made us thirstier with their empty promises, there was our divine lover with a promise of bubbling water that would make of our thirst a distant memory. And more than that, the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. God doesn’t even keep that to self, but the water bubbles up from within us. We’ve been made a source of life and hope for others as well. To me, this is yet another biblical reminder that it is God first and foremost whose nature is described by Jesus as the one who lives the “perfect” life to which he calls us in the Sermon on the Mount: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. Rather than leave us in the wrath that is of our own making, the result of our skewed desire, jealousy, and covetous violence, God intervenes in Jesus to show us a way out of our self-made hell. 



Two echoes will reverberate from the story of water from the rock and “living water” that will flow through Christ into the Christian and thus into the world forever. John will later describe, after the death of Jesus in which, John says, he “handed over the spirit” to the disciples at the foot of cross, that “blood and water” flowed from his right side when pierced by the Roman lance. This “blood and water” has been the source of theological and medical speculation, as though John were only writing some kind of autopsy report. But John, who never wastes a detail, is describing the last of Jesus being poured out in agape, and is bringing our imagination back to the spring of water that is the source of life, and perhaps, mixed with blood and pouring from the body of the Lord, describing the blessed birth of the new world pouring from the womb of Christ. Later, in the book of Revelation, describing the new Jerusalem that is the site of the marriage of the Church and the Lamb, “John” describes the river of life “flowing out of the throne of God and the Lamb,” a river that Ezekiel had seen flowing out of “the right side of the temple,” a fresh, deepening torrent marking the boundaries of the chosen. 



This Sunday’s readings describe an abundant agape that dissipates the tiresome and idolatrous images of a bloodthirsty god demanding the death of his son to assuage his anger and revulsion over some insult of mortals. It’s only because of our need to build revenge into our image of god and call it justice, our addictive craving for the justification of war and violence and the accumulation of power that we have settled for the lesser gods who have demanded blood sacrifice, crusade, jihad, and inquisition. There, at the well, is the image of the invisible God, thirsty, chatty, and with an amazing offer of a well that never runs dry. With the Samaritan woman, and all the desert people who lived and died before and after her, I want to say, with all my heart, “Give me this living water, sir, so I don’t have to keep coming back to this old well.”


For archiving sake, other posts on the first scrutiny and the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year A:

The Mystery of Sin (1) - Where's Your Samaria
Of Wells, Women, and Song (2014)
The Element of Surprise (2015)
Scrutinies: The Mystery of Sin and Grace (2014 - archive of all scrutiny posts thru last year)

Thanks for reading.

Fasting and almsgiving - a quick lesson from the Lenten lectionary

A lot of Catholics (and others) attended services on Ash Wednesday. When they did, they heard the proclamation of a fast proclaimed in the book of the prophet Joel, and then heard Jesus, in a passage from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, speak about how fasting, prayer, and almsgiving by good Jews (and, by Matthew's time, Christians) should be characterized by an interior disposition of generous love. Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving are not for the glorification of the individual, but are oriented toward the Other, as gestures of trust and desire for a particular God. This God is one who is concerned that we be concerned for every other person as an equal, a brother or sister. Our job is not to be holier-than-thou, but to be concerned-for-thy-welfare. The disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving reorient us outward.

If you've read my little book, Change Our Hearts: Daily Meditations for Lent, you know that its premise and format is to see the Lenten lectionary, day-by-day, as a primer for discovering more deeply the meaning of being a Christian, in order to receive the Easter sacraments or renew our baptismal vows more authentically at Easter. In other words, Change Our Hearts views the Lenten period through the lens of the baptismal promises, which are a mirror of the kingdom proclamation of Jesus: repent, that is, turn away from the way of life that you live in Caesar's world, and believe in the good news, that is, there's another way to go about your life with a real God who loves you and who wants a better world than Caesar does. "Repent and believe the good news" is the biblical predecessor of "Do you reject sin? Do you believe in God?"

Looking back over the first week of the Lenten lectionary, much of that time is devoted to parsing the meaning of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The Friday and Saturday after Ash Wednesday, in fact, both explore the subject of fasting from a biblical perspective, and the Tuesday after Ash Wednesday looks at the only prayer Jesus taught his disciples. I want to look at that prayer again later this week (or soon, anyway) but to point out just a couple of things about the link between fasting and almsgiving that I think the church is making in the lectionary, the strange path down which it appears to lead us.

Why do I say strange? Well, in the gospel on both of those days (check those readings on the USCCB website, here), while Isaiah is talking about true fasting, Jesus and his disciples are noticeably not fasting. In one, the accusation is made that they are not fasting in such a way that they are noticed by their religious leaders. In the other, they are eating and drinking with unrespectable "sinners," the collaborator tax-gatherers, including the one named Levi.

On those two days, we hear all of Isaiah 58, one of the most profound and clearest expressions of the meaning of true religion and of divine disappointment in the yield of formal worship. In the words of the prophet, God repudiates fasting and worship as rituals that do not yield broken (that is, opened-up) hearts in people. Instead, God makes clear that

...This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.

And apparently all the excuses about Sabbath worship didn't wash well with the prophet either. All of us who put traveling soccer and basketball, professional sports, and the demands of commerce ahead of the spirit of Sabbath, that is, a day of worship and honor set aside for a God who frees from slavery to the timetables and commerce of the wealthy and powerful, would do well to heed Isaiah 58 as well:

If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
If you call the sabbath a delight,
and the LORD’s holy day honorable;
If you honor it by not following your ways,
seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice—
Then you shall delight in the LORD...

Apocalypse Now

On the first Monday of Lent, which in antiquity was the first day of Lent, before Ash Wednesday was invented to get "40 days" of Lent in a more literal way, the gospel of the day is the apocalyptic parable of the Son of Man judging the world at the end of time. Remember that the Son of Man is a mysterious character introduced to us in the book of Daniel, written just a couple of centuries before the time of Jesus, in which a human being ("son of man" is a Aramaism that just means "a human being") is sent by God to set things right in a world distressed by famine, brutality, and desecration, the "abomination of desolation." In the parable, the dividing line between the blessed and the lost, who look for all the world as interchangeable as sheep and goats, is not any kind of orthodoxy, piety, or feeling about the world. The dividing line is what we did on behalf of the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and imprisoned. And, apparently, it doesn't matter whether we did it knowingly or not, just that we did it. Everyone, saved and lost alike, is surprised by the verdict. "When did we see you?" is the universal question. The answer is "It doesn't matter. When you did it, you did it for me."

The answer to the question, "when is Jesus returning?" then, seems to be "Now."  When is the apocalypse? Seems like it's going on now, and we are participants in it. In the Gentle Reign of God, in the empire of the servant, human beings like us are righting the wrongs of Caesar's war economy by fasting from self and attending to the needs of the other. It is "almsgiving" as the peaceful work of justice, rather than as the feel-good occasional practice of "charity" toward the needy, though I know those words could easily be interchanged. Fasting and almsgiving reorient us away from ourselves toward the other, who is the Other. "Whenever you did it for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me."

So from the perspective of the earliest days of the Lent in the lectionary, it seems to me, fasting and sacrifice are less tied to ritual practice and self-help motivations than they are as means to discovering and giving ourselves over to an awareness of the needs of the other, and, out of our own substance, who we are and what we have, whether it's a little or a lot, alleviate the suffering of the other and render the world a little more equal because Our Father wants it that way. Everyone gets enough. Fasting and sacrifice are an experience of ecstasy, "standing-outside" of ourselves, and experience the Other by giving ourselves over to the other. Authentic fasting, at least in the prophetic and gospel tradition, is not at the service of law, but follows the economy of love. It responds to the experience of God's love by imitating God, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, forgiving debt, forsaking violence, and dining with the marginalized.

Which brings us to prayer, I think, and why Jesus taught his disciples to pray in a particular way. That's what I want to write about next time. Happy Lenting.

The element of surprise (A3L)

First, let me be among the first to let the poor Hebrews off the hook for Massah and Meribah in the freaking desert. Why is it that we Christians, even homilists, tend to be so judgmental about a people who have been wandering in a desert, and are thirsty and complain about unkept promises for a land flowing with milk and honey? Don’t you think it would get a little old being thirsty all the time, not knowing where the water for your next scotch and water was coming from? Forty years. We criticize them for not remembering all the things God did for them bringing them out of Egypt — news flash — some of them might not even have been ALIVE for the fire and water show. I mean, yes, people are stubborn and ungrateful. That’s the human condition. Put them in the desert for forty years, they’re going to get cranky. Cut them some slack. 



Of course, the point of the story is the answer to that eternal question: “Is God with us, or not?” Answer, yes. But I think it’s worth remembering that God must have been with us in the thirsty times too. Why wait to give the water? Why this day, and not yesterday for instance? Why “forty years” in the desert, and not four days? Why “three days” before resurrection? I don’t know.



Then I think, why do we have to put the people in the story down, even though it’s just a story, to make ourselves look better? Six million Jews died in the Shoah for being Jews. Their heritage and faith meant something to them. How many Christians are willing to die (not kill!) for their faith?



****



I was thinking about the movie Crash when I musing on the gospel about the Samaritan woman, and remembering all the ethnic and religious rancor that is the back-story in the latter, the issues between Samaritans and Jews. It had gone way past prejudice long before Jesus to antagonism and loathing. Crash was a movie about prejudice, all kinds of prejudice. (There are two movies called Crash, I’m talking about the one with Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, and Julia Roberts from 2005, not the bizarre Cronenberg fetishism flick from 1996). What was so intriguing about it was that you saw prejudice from all kinds of points of view: not just white people being prejudiced against blacks or hispanics or Arabs, but blacks against whites, rich against poor, poor against rich, all kinds of levels. All the while, you’re passing judgment on everyone about how prejudiced they are; in a way, the prejudice should make a thinking person squirm in their seat. But the genius of the film (it won Oscars both for Best Picture and Best Screenplay) was that in a masterful climactic scene, it tears off the mask of the watcher’s respectability, and reveals the watcher’s prejudice as well. In this, it was much like the parabolic storytelling of Jesus, particularly in the Good Samaritan in the gospel of Luke.


This made me go back over a conversation with my internet group of pastoral musicians a few years ago. A member from a city in the east wrote about an incident at a local Catholic school that was preparing a prayer service in Arabic which was translated into English, part of "foreign languages week" at this particular institution. The student who prepared the prayer was an American Catholic youth of western European (Irish-German) descent. S/he ended the prayer, in English, using the phrase “in the name of Allah” for God. 



The headmaster, within a minute, descended on the classroom and went ballistic about “praying to other gods” in a Catholic school. What were they thinking they were doing? He was afraid of losing his job if the Chancery found out. I wonder how “foreign languages week” felt as a means of affirming the variety of groups within the school, including Hindus and Moslems, at this point?



Within minutes, however, the cooler heads of this internet group already submitted many examples of the use of Allah as a name for God in Christian, even Catholic, prayer in the Middle East. The Trisagion, the Good Friday prayer during the veneration of the cross, in Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian Christian traditions is, “"Quduson Allah, (Holy God),  Quduson Elqawi (Holy Mighty One) Quduson Ulladhi (Holy Immortal One)”. Ten to twelve million Arab Christians today have been calling God ‘Allah’ in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over nineteen centuries. And yet a scholar in a school in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world goes ballistic, without a second of research, and reveals, what? I guess a Catholic prejudice against the name of the Muslim God, to whom at least we pay a lip service of unity by claiming an Abrahamic connection.


Anyway, I was surprised too. I felt bad for everyone in the story, but mostly for the student who wrote the prayer, did what s/he was supposed to do, prayed out of Catholic tradition, and was still embarrassed in front of everyone by the headmaster. Sigh.



****



Water from a rock. A God named Allah. An enemy who asks for a drink, and finds a pail-order bride. When we were still sinners, Christ loved us.



God is a surprise. When I think all is lost and my life has been a series of bets against a rigged machine, may I have the grace to wait three more days before giving up.

"How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jn 4:9)



“Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it 
for the people to drink.”  (Ex. 17:6)

My song “Mystery” is out of print and not available any longer. But I thought some of you might enjoy listening to it anyway. I loved this song. From about 1986 or so: at least my answer to the theodicy question was in the form of a question! ☺



What we're singing at St. Anne's this week:

Entrance: Lead Us to the Water, by Tom Kendzia
Psalm 95: Harden Not Your Hearts by Rory Cooney
Gospel response: I Long for You, O Lord by Michael Balhoff, Gary Daigle, and Darryl Ducote We sing a short antiphon during the gospel proclamation to interact with the story of the Samaritan woman.
Scrutiny: Litany for the Scrutinies  by Rory Cooney, followed by an antiphon from Psalm 116, "I Will Walk in the Presence of God"
Gifts: As a Doe by Tom Kendzia
Communion: Turn to the Living God by Lori True
Closing: Healing River Fred Hillerman etal

More about the Woman at the Well story on Lent 3A, from 2014. Also, the original, from 2013.