Category Archives: Psalms

another unarmed black teen killed by police #mikebrown

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No older than some of the dear students with whom I spent the last week at choir camp in the NC mountains, the unarmed Mike Brown was shot and killed yesterday in a St. Louis suburb.

I read the news when I checked twitter from my bed this morning.  I had to do some sleuthing to even find the story on the internets–this death hardly makes it to CNN.com (only under “Mike Brown,” not his Christian name, “Michael Brown”).

Feeling sick with yet another death on our hands, having chosen unadvisedly to look at twitter before praying Morning Prayer, the Holy Spirit butted into my heart anyway.

A scrap of music (performed in the link by Leichester Chorale) fell into my mind as I my stomach knotted up and I searched for more information on my tiny screen.  I’d first heard it exactly a year ago on my arrival at choir camp.  The sweet young voices of faithful young people gathered and blended, crying for peace–an end to violence and death–knowing that only God can bring such relief.

Even a year later, their voices still minister to me: pulling up the curtain on ugliness, glimpsing death and deep-seated hatred, what should pop into my mind as my heart breaks but the God’s word set to beautiful music, sung and prayed by dear devoted young people with courage and faith?

A voice cries out in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the LORD.

Selective Memory

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More and more, I’m realizing that the things I remember and the things I forget aren’t just coincidences.

A few weeks ago, Psalm 23 was one of the readings assigned by the Revised Common Lectionary–the schedule of Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel readings that most all Lutheran, Anglican, and Roman Catholic churches use to plan their Sunday services.  The 23rd psalm was one of the first bits of Scripture I memorized; it’s long-since become so familiar to me as to sometimes feel calloused–overused.  I no longer turn to it for comfort or for inspiration, I’ve let it grow cold and unfamiliar in my mind and heart the last decade.

Saying it with a hospital patient this week, I stumbled in the middle, suddenly unable to recall the next verse; I skipped on to the next bit I could recall, and we finished strong, but I wondered what the little phrase was that I’d forgotten.  I looked it up.

It was verse 3: “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” (KJV)

More than believing that I’m not alone in the valley of the shadow of death, or that goodness and mercy shall follow me, I wonder that God binds up and brings back our souls to health.  God promises to restore our souls, to upright the fallen, spilled, perhaps broken, vase of our lives, and to put it back where it belongs (we may not even know or remember where it belongs, exactly, but I suspect that if we ever get there–“restored”–we’ll know).

How I Became Episcopalian, Part 2

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There’s an Episcopalian joke I like to tell: some parishioners went to their rector and said, “Father, we want to do a Bible study.  What book should we start with?”  Their rector, taken aback, but quite pleased, suggested they start with the Psalms; he showed them where it was, near the middle of the Bible, and told them to come back in six weeks and tell him what they’d learned.  Six weeks passed, and they came back to his office, rather upset.  “Father!” They exclaimed, “The Bible has stolen its material from the Book of Common Prayer!”

Last week one day, the Daily Office Lectionary assigned Philippians 4:1-9; a passage with 3 or 4 separate highlighter marks in my trusty hard-backed NIV Bible from high school.

The passage epitomizes why I became Episcopalian.  As I read, or listen to, these words, I hear memory verses in verses 4, 5, 6, and 8—sentences I committed to memory as an elementary or high school student:
“4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

In verse 4 I hear the lyric to a children’s song I learned more than twenty years ago at home.

Verse 7 is the common blessing offered during Ordinary Time at the end of a Eucharist service:
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

When verse 8 is read, I hear part of a prayer said during the service in the Book of Common Prayer called, “Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child”—a service I relish offering at hospitals when I visit the newest members of my congregation.

The psalms have become the same kind of patchwork quilt for me—snippets and echoes of other Scripture passages pop up in the psalms all the time, and in turn, the psalms are woven throughout our Book of Common Prayer.
The little red (or black) book that guides Christians of the Anglican tradition in their prayer, worship, and study with God is a puree of Scripture, set to rhythm and mashed up to show through its very being how the God of the Old and New Testaments is made man in Jesus Christ.

Why I Don’t Worship Thor, or a Sermon on the Feast of Cornelius the Centurion

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Today we celebrate the feast of Cornelius the Centurion, lauded as the first Gentile (non-Jewish) Christian of the newly-minted church in Acts.  His story is recounted in Acts 10, but I want to imagine this afternoon what might have happened if he hadn’t been converted.  In the Gospels and in Acts itself, there is some disagreement about how non-Jews are supposed to figure in to God’s plan for redemption.  Looking backwards, as we in the 21st century do, through the New and Old Testaments, we can see with our clear hindsight God’s love for all people (Naaman in 2 Kings 5, Isaiah 56:6-8, etc); in the moment, it seems like it wasn’t always quite so clear–even the Apostle Peter struggles with the answer (Acts 11).  Often this struggle is interpreted as exclusivity, the Hebrews are made out to be an uppity people.

But what if it wasn’t that the Jews thought of themselves as a prestigious club, but they instead desired to be “tolerant” and “accepting” of other religions?  What if, having married a Norwegian, I was expected to start worshiping Thor because that was just the culture of my husband’s people?  To start carrying on about this Jesus character would just be rather Mediterranean of me…  Or to put it more accessibly, how many times do I change my outfit before going out to dinner with someone new?  How long do I spend fretting over what to bring to a party?  I spend my time trying to impress others, trying to control what others think (of me), trying to make myself defensible against any imaginable criticism.  These are all idols–attempts to create security in the wrong place, to control our environment.  We know well that we’re not safe from any possible danger, or ever in total possession of the world around us.  Us humans are actually all the same.

And this message that Cornelius heard is not just for Jews, or Romans, or Americans, but for all people.  There is one God, and anyone (no matter how they identify themselves), who loves God and loves those who serve God, who remembers that she is not in charge of the world–that person belongs to God, she knows and follows God (Isaiah 56:6-8).

The Gospel passage assigned to the feast of Cornelius is a challenging one (Luke 13:22-29)–if we purport to know God, we are to “strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (v. 24).  Though a deep connection with the living God made known and close in Jesus Christ is the only true security humans can enjoy, it is not an easy relationship to forge.  It is the relationship that completely changes you, you become someone new and different because of God.  This is not just a cultural opinion, or a Jewish way of understanding the world and humanity; this is the root of our existence.

Let God put a new song in your mouth–words of praise for the way you are being remade, that many may hear and see what is happening to you, they may recognize the work of the living God, and they may put their trust, too, in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Cornelius (rephrase of Ps. 40:3).

Visceral Reactions to Music (and other things)

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Sunday mornings are rough.  Getting the kids up, fed, dressed, hair-combed, and out the door (or, if you don’t have kids, doing the same thing for yourself, after your Saturday night…).  When you get to church, don’t you just want to park it in a seat?  Why do these cruel Episcopalians and Roman Catholics (and others) make you stand, and then sit, and then kneel, and then stand again, and then kneel again?  Add in crossing yourself and bowing–if you’re the CrossFit type–and it’s practically a full-fledged work out before noon on a weekend!

Firday night, I visited our girls’ choir rehearsal.  It’s been almost 15 years since I attended one of my junior high choir rehearsals, but when the choirmaster gave the command to prepare to sing and poised his fingers above the keys, my spine involuntarily straightened and my lungs filled with air–and then I reminded my body that I wasn’t part of the choir.  I’ve been out of a choir longer than I’d ever been in one, and yet, dear Mr. Johns, our music teacher, had so drilled into his students–at least me!–the importance of posture in singing, that when my body was put in the same kind of environment again (not in a physical sense, as we were in the cathedral and not an old high school great room; but in a psychological–and spiritual–sense), it still responded the same way.

Early Friday morning, I’d taught a Men’s Bible Study (the new priest gets invited to visit everywhere, without regard for gender!) on the Psalms.  Explaining the five-book structure of the psalms, we turned to the end of 72:

18 Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel,
Who only does wondrous things!
19 And blessed be His glorious name forever!
And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.
Amen and Amen.

20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.

When I started reading verse 18, my right hand had an insatiable urge to reach up to my forehead.  What I mean to say is that I had said and heard “Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel” at the beginning of the song of Zechariah (Luke 1:68) so many times (it’s used at the service of Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer) that my body, and a piece of my mind, forgot that wasn’t the same environment–in Morning Prayer, when we begin to say Zechariah’s song together, we cross ourselves, because it is a New Testament canticle (song/psalm).  My body is learning the same involuntary response to God’s Word that it learned in response to the prepare-to-start-singing command from junior high.

Episcopalian (or Roman Catholic, or other) gymnastics trains our bodies, minds, and souls to have a particular response when holy things happen–when holy words are said, when we ask the Holy Spirit to come into us afresh, when we admit that we’re sinners dependent on God’s mercy.  These actions, which are the most important things we do all week, train us to recognize those moments and to respond to them appropriately–with reverence, with fear, with joy, with attention.