The best we can offer
The only beauty we sinful souls have:
To use science to build our art
And art to praise our Christ,
For in this mystery
Of Solo Deo Gloria
His grace makes us
More than we are.
Give us this day. . .
Between my teeth this bread is crushed
And by my deeds Your body broken.
Give us this day. . .
Bread of Life, each passing day
How I need,
How I feast:
How You bear the pain,
Our Daily Bread.
Though water is mighty
I must drink blood:
Water alone cannot cleanse me.
So fill me with this wine that I
May be intoxicated.
Fill my veins with Your death-drops—
The water and the blood—
So joined to You
I may live.
Blood on these guilty hands;
Blood upon these guilty lips.
I am of unclean lips,
But this blood does cleanse them.
Cleansed first by water
Then by blood—
Nothing shall this stain remove:
This stain is the sign of salvation.
All time collapses into a single moment.
As we gather we are transported
To be with all the saints who've gone before
And all who will come after us—
Scattered across time and space,
Yet one body
Partaking of one loaf,
One cup,
Giving thanks eternally.
As we commune,
As we consume,
God consummates the covenant.
In that one perfect moment:
Before the foundation of the world
At the center of time
And yet to come,
Timeless grace breaks into time.
By this grace we glimpse the Lamb
Slaughtered and worthy
Once for all.
We sit in that upper room
And at the wedding feast.
To table or to rail we're led,
Or sit and wait until we're fed
A bland and tasteless wafer thing,
Or pinched-off piece of homemade bread.
Is this a meal? Fit for a king?
A chalice shared, with too sweet wine,
Or tiny glass of grape juice: sign.
But thanked-for—something greater still:
A foretaste of the feast divine,
An appetizer, if you will.
Like grape or wheat we come from mud,
But “this my body, this my blood.”—
Our common bond through time and space.
We share the wedding feast of God!
Regardless of the day or place.
Where the words of Christ are spoken,
Bread is shared, the wine is poured,
There the Presence of the Lord is,
God the Christ, th'incarnate Word.
Where the Blood of our Redeemer,
Too the Body of our Lord:
All his saints fore'er assembled
Round the sacred banquet board.
If your children ask a bread-loaf
Would you give to them a stone?
How much more our heav'nly Father
Gives to those who are his own.
Jesus taught us how to pray thus:
“Father, give our daily bread.”
Who would dare deny his children
Access to the table spread?
O! great myst'ry, who can know it?
Christ is here in loaf and cup.
God all elements created,
Yet in them is lifted up.
Rightly then let us discern here
Christ's true Presence as we eat:
Christ is present in each other
As in gift of wine and wheat.
In that fellowship around the table
When the presider invokes the saints of past and present
I always think of those from the future as well,
For this is a moment outside of time.
This morning I look upon the elders,
There is Paula, blind and mostly deaf,
Her friend assists her,
But she is the one holding the wine,
Speaking the words,
"The blood of Christ,"
Attesting to their power.
Sue also offers the cup.
(I'm not sure if her husband is here today
Or still recovering from his recent injuries)
She is seated in her wheelchair,
Evidence that the polio vaccine
Is not that old an invention,
And evidence of God's strength shown not only in weakness,
But in strong convictions and outspokeness.
As Eric holds the bread
I cannot help but think
That among those unseen saints around this table
Julia sees with joy
Their daughter in a newly-blended family,
Testifying to the Spirit of adoption
That unites us all.
In this moment out of time
I catch a glimpse of that future...
No longer do we see in a glass darkly,
But face to face,
And clearly we hear those gracious words.
Because of the body broken for us
There are no more broken bodies,
No more death, or pain, or sorrow.
There is but one family,
Where we all are brothers and sisters
And children well-beloved.
First by Water, then by Fire
The Chosen World is purified;
Born of Spirit hovering, brooding;
Clothed in Breath and Wind.
Water, Fire, each such cleansing
Leaves behind the Seed which lives
Despite the Air and by the Air.
This same Seed contaminating
Bears the only hope of Life
For it bears the hope of Death:
Then the world is new-created,
Purged by Spirit, Purged by Blood.
(How may other worlds there be
That Breath-less never will submit
To flowing Fountain, to fiery Flame,
To sanctifying Death?)
First by Blood, then by Breath
The Chosen World is sanctified,
And finds in Death the Choosing Parent,
And never needs to die.
When I consider your heavens,
The work of your fingers,
The galaxies spun out in space,
The countless suns winking in and out,
Your creation from a single thought,
Gently shaped, your handiwork,
The moon and stars that you have ordained:
What is man that you are mindful of him?
What are we, that you should deign to come among us?
The son of man, that you should become to save us?
Yet you have made us a little lower than God,
And you made God as low as man
To bring us to yourself.
Your have crowned us with glory and honor
And let us glimpse your creation.
O Lord, how excellent your Name
In all the earth
And all the farthest reaches of the heavens—
How excellent your Name, O Lord!
How easy it is
To take the most mystical
For granted—
(To stare into the stars and forget
The vast implications,
The frightening and awesome grandeur
Of the universe and our place in it;
To go, instead, about out lives
Not even noticing the sky, or that
We cannot see it anyway
Because of the unnatural lights
That illumine our nights;
How easy to ignore these lights
And all the science and skill and thought
That allowed them to exist and
Blind us from the stars.)
We take as commonplace, as ordinary,
The wondrous things that shape our lives.
How easy to lose the sense of mystery at the Feast
When it is celebrated often;
To lose the sense of wonder at love
When it grows year upon year.
Instead, the awe is replaced by
The simple beauty of acceptance:
The gentle comfort of knowing
That day by day
We are face to face with the incomprehensible;
That day by day
Our lives are ever tinged with the eternal;
That thus
We are ever made worthy of the Mystery.
Who was and is and is to come.
At the beginning of time all time is future;
At the end of time all time is past;
At any point all time is now.
One cannot distinguish past-present-future
Except by perception.
Outside of the universe, beyond, before all time, you are;
Before I was, you are;
In a specific moment, you are
Taking on flesh and blood and frailty
And stuck in time.
Beyond all hope and forever you will be
In all the universe, and in each of us.
Height and depth and breadth.
From above you descended,
Reaching down to your creation,
Drawing us up to you.
Coming to our plain
You experienced the narrowness of humanity,
You broadened our concern for one another.
You felt the confines of space,
The limits of the physical world,
The reality of decay and death.
You fill us with your presence
From our deepest recesses
To outermost thought and feeling.
Mind, body, spirit.
The Word made flesh
Dwelt among us in this world
Which the Word of your mind
Speaks into existence,
Which your Spirit broods over.
In your image I stand now:
My body hungers and thirsts for you,
In you it finds direction
To move forward, outward, higher.
My mind considers past and present,
Meditates upon your Word,
Awaits the future hope of your promise.
My spirit knows not how to pray
But lets your Spirit intercede
With sighs my body cannot sigh,
With words my mind cannot comprehend.
Time, space, and Trinity.
Mind controlling body,
Both subject to your Spirit.
Space co-exists in time,
Both subject to your Kingdom.
We in your image,
You born in ours,
Yet you remain the Mystery.
You told Abraham
He would have a heritage
And children to inherit it.
But years passed,
There were no children.
You spoke to him again,
He raised the question.
You promised him an heir,
Not a slave,
A son.
He believed.
Yet he was not patient.
When Sarah faced facts
She offered a surrogate.
As our first father before him
Abraham did not listen to you:
He listened to his wife,
He listened to his own desires,
He listed to clear reason.
Ishmael's birth caused trouble then
And ever since.
Years passed.
You spoke again:
Not only Abraham's son,
But Sarah's, too.
They laughed—
Laughed in disbelief
Then laughed for joy.
Years passed.
You spoke again:
You told him to throw it all away.
Twenty-five years of waiting,
A fractured family,
Devastated lives,
For what?
The child of promise,
The child of Abraham's old age,
The child of Sarah's laughter—
Their only son,
The son they loved—
Take this one,
Now old enough to speak,
Old enough to wonder why—
Give him back.
The later law would condemn
Those who sacrificed children.
But you asked the impossible,
The outrageous,
Even the immoral.
"Take your son,
Your only son."
Of all the harsh demands you've placed upon your people
Could any be harsher than this?
Abraham by now had learned
Trying to figure it out on his own
Would only make matters worse.
Abraham believed.
"God will provide," he told his son.
God had provided Isaac.
As another faithful sufferer said,
God gives, and God takes away.
Abraham took knife in hand—
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
You spoke again!
Though Isaac his descendent are numbered,
Children of faith,
Children of the one who believed—
And it was counted as righteousness.
I claim this heritage,
I claim reliance in your Providence.
Yet would I dare destroy what you have given?
Lord, I believe,
Help my unbelief.
You ask as much of every parent:
To return their children to you
Through death and burial
In the dark waters.
You asked no less of yourself:
You gave your Son,
Your only Son,
To forever stay Abraham's hand.
This dark night
I find it hard to concentrate.
My mind is on many things:
The joy of a beautiful spring evening,
The difficulty of caring for an aging dog,
The stress and accomplishment of work,
The delight of laughing with an attractive man,
The grief upon my mother's recent death.
This dark night
I sat at church and heard the familiar lessons:
The suffering servant,
The great high priest,
The King betrayed and executed.
We read aloud the psalm:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We were reproached and replied:
Lord, have mercy.
Yet with words
Or in silence:
I find it hard to concentrate.
This dark night
I drive home, and behold!
The fireflies are out
Illuminating the woods.
This dark night,
Though the church is bare
In the shadows flowers wait.
The one day in Christendom when there is no Eucharist:
Yet the sacristry holds supplies for tomorrow night's festival.
This dark night
I find it hard to concentrate—
Because I know what comes next.
—Good Friday, 2011