For example, to imagine what a "living stone" might be (1 Peter 2.4-5), Pauley refers to the stones of the cathedral in Phoenix. Because of the climate, the stones still bear the marks of their quarrying a century ago and thus "live" in the story they tell. The "heart of stone" in Ezekiel 11 cues memories for Pauley of times when he has been hard-hearted, and he observes that every one of those times, he was responding to a perceived attack on his sense of self and his place in the world. To react harshly was a natural reaction, "almost a reflex," Pauley writes, but Ezekiel gives hope that God can soften our hearts; a threat to our place in the world might be mitigated simply by remembering our place in God. Pauley, noting that God can't be contained in a temple built of stone, suggests that to dwell in the house of the Lord forever is a mindset; again, I like the idea that God's love is a place. [That idea is foundational to the wonderful Port William novels of Wendell Berry. See my article Love as a Place (09/2009).]
Pauley shows us the metaphors behind Romans 12, do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit. Zeal stems from a word for boiling, and ardent from a word for burning. Paul isn't telling us just to be cheerleaders: Pauley points out that both words are about transfers of energy that transform their subjects, as water becomes steam and wood turns to ash.
Our reluctance to ask for help comes up several times in Pauley's meditations. Pleas for help are plentiful in Scripture, but with the apostles' panic in the storm-toseed boat, Pauley wonders if Jesus snaps, "Where is your faith?" not because they woke him up in their terror but because they had waited until they were out of other options. The story of the woman who stoops to touch just the hem of Jesus's robe reminds Pauley of an ex-Marine who kept apologizing to his church for needing help: Jesus's tender response to the woman is a model for how we can offer help "with no strings attached." Pauley tells us that beneficiaries often report feeling worse after they receive help, because they feel themselves to be weak. "Recognizing our weakness can be liberating," Pauley writes, and "we can borrow strength."
Responding to 1 Cor. 1.22, Pauley writes about his favorite part of baptism, when he gets to "seal" the person "as Christ's own forever." He thinks of it as a "first installment" of joy to come. Around the time I read that, I attended a cozy evening service for Ascension at which the Rector invited our comments. A woman "of a certain age" whose illness has kept her away from church got very emotional as she seemed to realize on the spot that her life has been "an ascension from one stage to the next." She assured us that she's not at the last stage, yet.
I personally identified with aspects of his life. Living alone, Stokes doesn't expect to form a traditional family. He takes comfort from the observation that John the Baptist, childless and alone so often, left such a legacy. He observes the effect on him of the rare visitors to his apartment, "how I felt when each person was in the space -- how the house felt, how each of them added a layer of significance to each square foor of a relatively small apartment." In Mt 10/12-13, Jesus seems to imagine "peace" as a "substance ... that can move ... from people to homes and back again," and Stokes resolves to put more into "bestowing spiritual fruit" through hospitality.
Stokes reads how Abraham was sitting at the mouth of his tent when angels approached, and writes how he has always wanted to sit on a front porch to call out to neighbors passing by -- an image I've always liked, too. Stokes challenges us to sit outside our homes and be open to meeting some angels.
Stokes and I both finish fries left on friends' plates at restaurants, though we'd never ask for the first bites. But the first bite is what God commands the Hebrews to give up to the temple. Like Stokes, I thought that was a discipline of self-denial, but Stokes draws attention to Dt. 26.11: "Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house." I'll remember that the next time someone disparages the Hebrew Scriptures for harsh legalism and exclusivity.
I appreciate a couple of insights to scripture that Stokes derives from childhood experiences that we have in common. Stokes remembers delivering the message I like you for friends who trusted him to represent them well to the girls they liked. I'll think of that when I read Paul's odd word to the Corinthians, "You are my letter." Reading about "the weight of glory" in 2 Cor 4.17, Stokes wonders, "Isn't weight supposed to be a bad thing?" Then he remembers how he loved to lug his heavy scooter up the hill to ride it back down. A weight can be a privilege.
Stokes explores a tension in the way we Americans read scripture. We tend to turn passages about property and poverty into teachings about our personal spirituality. He knows it's wrong for him to go the other way, as he tends to see economics and politics in parables such as the one about the unjust judge that's all about prayer, the gospel writer tells us. Stokes admits, "I run the risk of removing the dimension of personal piety from my interpretations altogether in favor of making everything immediatley practical and political." But neither will he ignore the other kinds of questions just because they're "on the surface." He wonders as I do, in this time when all churches are in decline according to the metrics of attendance and pledging, if this time might be an opportunity for the metrics Paul applied to the churches he started in Corinth and elsewhere, "collectivism, love, earnestness, energy, and generosity."
A couple other observations counteract our tendencies to confuse knowing about Jesus with believing in Jesus, and to judge others. Peter, he said, knew about Jesus when he denied him three times. When Jesus commissions Peter three times to "feed my sheep" and knows this time Peter will follow through to martyrdom, not because of the knowledge of Jesus, but love. Then, in Luke 22.31-32, it's Satan who sifts us like chaff from wheat, as he does in Job, where he "demanded a chance to reveal Job, the poster boy for wheat, for the chaff that he really was deep down." That urge that comes with phrases like "tough love" and "upholding standards" is an urge that Satan uses. Unlike Satan, Jesus "overwrites our denial with affirmation and recommissions us to strengthen our siblings."
[I reflected on the shadow side of standards in Standards v. Specifications (04/2015)]
Reading how unknowable are God's thoughts in Psalm 139, Stokes speculates how the experience of incarnation might have changed God's thinking from the Old Testament times.
I'm adding to my wish list Stokes's book Prayers for the People: Things We Didn't Know We Could Say to God, in which he has composed collects for everyday crises: engaging in small talk, for going into a Target, and for asymmetrical friendships.
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