They hear your voice: Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2018

There is a eucharistic hymn that we sing a lot at my local parish, "Lord, who at your first Eucharist did pray" (William H. Turton). (We use UNDE ET MEMORES.) I don't love it, but I'm happy to have a text based on John 17 that we're singing. In theory. In practice I hate singing it because of one particular stanza.

The problem for me is stanza 3. Quoted from memory, it reads (Worship 4, 954)

We pray for those who wander from your fold
O bring them back, Good Shepherd of the sheep
Back to the faith which saints believed of old
Back to the church which still that faith does keep... Refrain.

In my current local context, and given the other verses which speak of church unity, it seems to suggest praying for Christian members of other churches who have "wandered" from the fold and church of Rome. This understanding of other Christians is mistaken, hurtful, and counterproductive for contemporary ecumenical dialogue. I don't yet know exactly what William Turton, who was an Anglo-Catholic, I believe (part of the Oxford Movement), meant by this verse, but that isn't relevant in the present pastoral context.

In honor of the Week of Christian Unity that begins today, I decided to adapt stanza 3 this week. Surprisingly, my son Thomas (now 11), enthusiastically asked to help me. It turns out that he has a good sensibility for hymn texts, and he easily understood the theological principle at stake. So we spent some time Sunday rewriting the text.

Stanza three (in the version above) extends the John 17 core of the hymn by drawing from the imagery of John 10, Christ the gate (not often remembered, and I didn't attempt to resuscitate it here) and the Good Shepherd. We stayed with this image and worked outward from John 10:14-16 (NRSV): "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." In addition to these verses, we drew on language from John 17. Here's the result:

We long for those who rest in other folds;
They hear your voice, Good Shepherd of the sheep.
Expand in faith each church your love enfolds,
Who gather by your call your word to keep.
Thus may we all one bread, one body be
In this blest sacrament of unity.

Realistically, I don't expect anyone but me (and maybe Thomas) to start singing this stanza, but if anyone wants to, I'm sharing it CC-BY-NC 4.0. Credit Kimberly and Thomas Belcher.

Blessed Week of Christian Unity. May we refuse to stop walking until we find ourselves one flock with one Shepherd.

The Canaanite woman is all of us

Jesus and the woman of Canaan, Codex Egberti, Fol 35v. Wikimedia Commons.

My dear churchy friends.

If you think the story of the Canaanite woman of Matthew 15 is likely to scandalize your congregation, you need to have more conversations with people marginalized from your church. Women. Black people. Foreigners ("who join themselves to the Lord", as it says in Isaiah today). Jews. Divorced people. Gay and lesbian people. Christians from other churches who worship with you every week and never receive communion. Their parents, spouses, children, and friends. These people aren't scandalized by the Canaanite woman or shocked by Jesus's response in this gospel. They recognize those dismissive words and feel emboldened when she demands the scraps from the table of God's people. Yes. If I keep speaking, someday, they will see. This Sunday's readings are for the marginalized, not for the scandalized.

Today I was reminded instead, in the homily, that there are people, that each of us knows someone, who find it difficult to maintain faith because God seems not to hear their prayers. Even, perhaps, the apostles, that is, God's church, seems to send them away!

It was a good attempt. I know the homilist had to work hard to get to that point, to feel and to say these things. I love him for the effort. But it wasn't enough today.

It's not enough because I have been, I am, the Canaanite woman. I've been marginalized and asked to leave by my own faith community. My children's needs have been dismissed as unimportant. I too have been told I'm asking too much, too soon. Today, it was her voice I needed to hear, and not the voice of the apostles.

The Canaanite woman says:
I hear you, those whose voices are ignored, whose priorities are considered not important. You people who go to God today seeking healing for a loved one who is sick, or a reprieve from violence, or a windfall that will pay one of the bills that comes due tomorrow. It seems today that God has not heard you, that the church has not heard you. But I have heard you -- I, the Canaanite woman, the foreigner, the Gentile, the dog, the woman of great faith.

This woman reminds us that Jesus was not only God, but also a human being! Like every human being, he learned by listening to others. This gospel is not a scandal, but a treasure: it reveals that the Wisdom of God humbled himself (Phil. 2) even to take correction, even from a Gentile woman! From her, not from him, we hear the truth that the other readings today are careful to lift up: that the prayers and offerings of foreigners will be accepted in the house of God, that all the nations will praise God, that God will have mercy upon all peoples. Jesus, confronted with the woman's reminder of this truth, demonstrates metanoia.

To you Canaanite women, those who have been unheard and disdained, we know you have been dismissed by those who claimed to speak for God. Don't just perservere: preach! Clamor. Cry out! The church needs you.

To you who are ministers for Christ: listen! The church must be awakened to the knowledge that God is speaking today through the woman, the Gentile, the foreigner. Like the apostles, like even Jesus, if only this once, we must humble ourselves to hear the truths we've ignored, and respond, fiat, let it be so.

We are all the Canaanite woman, but we are also all human and so in need of conversion, of hearing the truth that cannot be seen from the place where we live. It is only all together that we can become the true Body of Christ.

-----

Having recently decided to leave the PrayTell blog, I'm resurrecting my personal blog. In honor of the Canaanite (or possibly the Syrophoenician) nameless woman, I've decided to give it a new name.

New camera and trip to the apple farm

DSC_0410
Originally uploaded by kim belcher

For my birthday, Matt got me a Nikon 90. This weekend (a bit early) I tested it out. I took a bunch of pictures of the kids on Friday on a trip to the playground and a Mexican place. Saturday we went out to the apple-and-pumpkin farm and did a corn maze together. I took loads of photos and uploaded some of them to flickr. Check them out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tideflying/

Elevation

Today, after I had climbed the hill of three crosses, I got out of the rut and readied myself to follow Holy Spirit Trail.

Now look at you, trying to analyze my allegory. What is the hill of three crosses? What rut? What do I mean by Holy Spirit Trail?

No, see?



I stopped half way up to take a photo of the bushes near Holy Spirit Trail. They are called Burning Bushes. You can see the reason why; they are already turning red here in central Minnesota, although when I used to live in Illinois I think it happened in late October.



At the top of Holy Spirit Trail there are two radio towers and a water tower (though perhaps if my eyes were more spiritual it would have looked like a font). There is a parking lot that looks like it was just built and has never had anyone park in it.



There are two picnic tables looking equally unused.



I stood on that one to get a couple photos of the northwestern parts of Monticello:




When I did, I noticed this trail. It looked less taken.



I followed it. Wouldn't you?



But not too far. The best kind of path is the one that you still don't know where it ends.



So pretty soon I turned around and descended Holy Spirit Trail, crossed the road and its rut, and went home to have lunch. Tonight Thomas told me that the hill of three crosses reminds him of God because God died on a cross. You can see it from a distance in the 6th image above. Does it remind you of God too?

This is the church which I assume I have to thank for having had a Holy Spirit Trail to climb:



You can see that as I turned the clouds broke open and the light finally came through. And that is all.

---

You think you're clever, don't you? I can see you there, thinking this is something sophisticated -- that this post is a subtle critique of our cultural patterns that want to distinguish literal from metaphorical, bodily from spiritual... something like that. There must be more to it than a walk and a bunch of pictures.

But really, don't you think you're overanalyzing the whole thing?

Here comes the flood!

In other news, I'm getting ready to teach another semester here at St John's. Next week I'll be preparing my newest version of "The Biblical Tradition," our introductory course on the Bible. I might need this cartoon!

Here's my textbook list if you're curious.

Thomas's first real RPG

Thomas opened his presents from Matt and I today. Two of them were a set of 6-sided dice and a book to play his very first real RPG. When he's opening presents, he's often unexcited about them. He's too busy thinking about the presents to actually appreciate or enjoy what any one of them actually is. (One reason we had a no-present party this year.)

By the afternoon, though, after his (awesome) party at Space Aliens, he was ready to sit down with Eric and me to play Faery's Tale. I had read over the sample stories and decided to use "Jack and the Beanstalk" since Thomas is familiar with the Kellogg version and so would have a better sense of what to expect and thus what he could do to overcome the challenges. Prepping the adventure was basically effortless, as you just make up challenge ratings on the fly for the things the players suggest (and Thomas is too young to be critical).

He had no trouble with character creation, although he was a little mystified with the results ("why do I have 5 spirit? what if I want 10 spirit?"). He loved the opening gambit of the adventure, when I asked each player what their character did yesterday and used their answers to set up their meeting. In the middle of their first conversation, when they had gotten to know each other a bit, I had Thomas's pixie overhear Jack's mother crying from the front of the house.

Thomas eagerly flew up the beanstalk to rescue Jack before even waiting to hear the end of what Jack's mother had to say, almost leaving his new friend behind. Luckily, Eric had chosen to play a Pooka, so he could change into a bee to follow along.

The funniest part of the adventure was certainly when they had freed Jack from his cage. By the script, the giant wakes up at this point and gives chase. When I said they heard the giant in the hallway, Thomas's eyes were like saucers. He was totally in the narrative. He looked at Eric. "My character says, 'Ok, guys, time to get out of here!'" Eric said.

"Ok," Thomas agreed. "Bye, Jack!"

Eric and I burst out laughing. "I think maybe we should take him with us!" Eric replied.

They did manage to get Jack out, and Thomas immediately said, "Let's play again!"

It took me about 10 minutes to prepare another fairy tale adventure. We're supposed to play after dinner.

Four

Happy birthday, Thomas.