Theology for Breakfast: "Forward Day by Day" Aug-Sep-Oct 2022

Every morning I read the day's meditation on scripture in Forward Day by Day, and I've culled highlights every quarter going back to 2013.

August For August, Patricia Marks, deacon and retired professor in Valdosta GA, made the choice to write exclusively about the gospel readings. The strongest statement of her main theme came in her final message, a response to John 8.47, where Jesus tells the Pharisees why they "do not hear" the word of God. The Pharisees hang up on words and miss "the joy of those who have been healed, fed, and awestruck" by Jesus. She's reminded of her aunt, deaf from birth, who took in everything about a person at sight: she could design and sew a dress without measuring or patterns. Marks tells us that the aunt heard "more deeply than words."

In earlier meditations, Marks tells how words are more than letters (Jn. 6.63 My words are spirit and life), and how a teacher has to see beyond / beneath the surfaces that students present. I especially appreciated her story of a wise-guy in her class who slouched in her office doorway asking for permission to drop the course. She told him he was talented and told him to reconsider. He came back minutes later, crying, as no teacher had ever believed in him.

Marks also tells about walking the Labyrinth, an activity that animates some Episcopalians, not me. But Marks tells us it takes "patience," a word that comes from a word for "suffer." As she wanders slowly through the twists and turns of the labyrinth, she keeps her mind focused on the center, in plain view. Nice metaphor for religious life. Just don't make me walk it!

SeptemberThe writer for September was Lynn Jordal Martin. She works in a "major news organization." We share the pleasure of mentoring Education for Ministry. In her meditations for September, I found help with some unpleasant feelings.

Anxiety: A line from Joan Didion strikes hard: "Life changes in the instant. An ordinary instant." Martin imagines a birth or death, "a surprise in the mail or a knock at the door." All of those things have disrupted my life before. Martin reminds us how Jesus prays so often, "at meals, after healings, and at times of big decisions." Prayer didn't insulate him from pain, and won't insulate us, but prayer gave him the courage to go forward. Martin's text for this meditation, by the way, is Psalm 37, the subject of a recent sermon by our associate rector Fr. Daron Vroon, who drew from its few verses all the advice we need in life.

Discouragement: Feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of "this tricky time," Martin suddenly connected to the day's reading in Esther, chapter 2, when the young Jewish woman determines to help her people, at the risk of losing the Persian King's favor and possibly her life. The prayer came to Martin: "You put me here in the present -- You must know I am meant to be here." We may still feel afraid, she tells us, but we can go on "confident and secure," even "eager to see what God has in mind" for us.

Foolish: Martin takes comfort from Psalm 69.6, O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you. For her own folly, Martin gives the example of how she sometimes frets for weeks over some looming event that turns out to be pure joy. She also knows the folly of impulsive buying or eating. The comfort in the Psalm is that God knows all this and loves us anyway.

Martin offers some new angles on angels and donkeys.

• Jesus chose to ride a donkey into Jerusalem as a sign that he was fulfilling Zechariah 9.9. But Martin found other reasons for that choice at a ranch for rescue donkeys. A cross of dark fur runs down a donkey's spine and across its shoulders. Also, "donkeys are not flashy animals, but they are more sure-footed than horses. They are famous for forming strong friendships with other creatures. They can be very affectionate and can even [herd and protect] sheep and goats." Riding a donkey, Jesus offered a sign of peace.
• Images of angels are easy to find in our popular culture, and Martin writes that she never paid much attention until someone pointed out that the word "angel" means "messenger of God." She took to praying for the "good sense" to recognize God's messages from other people in her life, and to be God's messenger to others.

October Mallard W. Benton shares some details of his life that overlap with mine: retired, he now "writes and volunteers in the Atlanta area." He was involved with EfM, and he has been a teacher (of Boy Scouts, in his case). Unlike me, he has been a husband, father, and grandfather. I appreciate what he brings to Scripture from his family experience.

One of my favorite Benton meditations comes from a bit of Scripture that's translated differently in my Bible. For Hosea 11.4, my Oxford Study RSV has the Lord leading his people as pack animals with "cords of compassion," easing the yokes on their jaws, bending down and feeding them. That's nice, but does not delight the way Benton's translation does:

I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

That's awww-inspiring. Benton picks up on the picking up part, recalling how his little grandson would react when Mom or Dad picked him up and "nuzzled" him: "He'd broadcast his most loving sounds along with some of his biggest smiles...and his small feet would arch and reach." Benton asks if we react to God's love this same way -- a viscerally joyful response so different from the internal intellectual response expected of our age and dignity. I'd like that.

He meditates a few times on the value of routines. Benton tells how he used to be "busy as a bee" in the early morning to get through his to-do list before anyone else showed up to work. He's riffing off Sirach 11.3, The bee is small among flying creatures, but what it produces is the best of sweet things. For Benton, "seemingly insignificant patterns of behavior can yield the sweetest of rewards." Responding to Psalm 56.10, In God the Lord, whose word I praise,...I trust and will not be afraid, he tells how his morning discipline of praying the Daily Office from the Episcopal Prayer book "surrounds" him "in words of praise." (I can identify: see my poem At 63).

Looking back over generations of his family, he finds "patterns of faith and life" in a history that includes instances of success among times of "slavery, poverty, and medical distress." He's responding to Psalm 131.2 I do not occupy myself with great matters when he writes of his family's history:

There doesn't seem to have been the space, most times, to occupy themselves with "great matters" though things that were hard seemed to have been the regular pattern of many lives. What becomes clearer and clearer to me as I research these lives is that the Lord walks with us through very difficult times with seemingly no end to the troubles we're facing.

In this idea, Benton anticipates a reading in Sirach 38.32 assigned for the last day of October. Sirach describes various craftsmen at their work with livestock, wood, iron, and clay, concluding that they haven't the time to reflect on great things as Sirach's scholarly students do, but their prayer is in the practice of their trade.

A few times, Benton recommends that we look at a bit of Scripture from a different perspective. The "injustice" of Luke 8.18 (to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away) disappears when you look at the clause that leads into it: Pay attention to how you listen. He writes:

Perhaps a key instruction here is about our growth and our potential for growth in Christ if we are invested in expanding our understanding. Maybe, just maybe, with better listening, we're equipping ourselves to carry forth what we're hearing and learning, better positioning ourselves to live the evangelism that we're being called to do.

In this way, those who listen better may "walk alongside Christ as he shares with those who may not have listened as well at first." Benton helps me to appreciate Psalm 119, very long, very disjointed, focused with tedious regularity on "the Law." The Oxford Bible tells us that in Hebrew, it's an alphabetical acrostic, one stanza for each letter, and probably a class assignment for psalmists-in-training. Benton suggests that we read these lines with Jesus in mind, as he embodies the law. That brings these verses to new life.

Responding to Psalm 139, Benton deals with a problem I share. The psalm begins, Lord, you have searched me out and known me, and the other verses tell how there is no escaping God, high or low, dark or light. Verse 18 launches into a series of statements of hatred for enemies of the Lord. It's in that context that Benton cites the line, Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and known my restless thoughts. Benton writes that he tries to conceal dark thoughts "even in the age of social media, with everyone knowing everything." But God knows his thoughts. "What do we do with that?" Benton asks, "Clean them up? Change them before we act on them? Pray about why we're having such thoughts? Or just let them ride?" He continues, "I have so far not had the discipline to shut down wicked thoughts, even while I am generally able to prevent them from being actualized through my mouth."

I second that. Those thoughts are poison to my mood, even to my physical well-being -- elevating my heart-rate and interfering with my concentration on where I'm going. Like him, I'll ask God's help to "flush" those thoughts.