Wordtreasure

The Power of Myth and Metaphor

Romans 5:12-19

Death does not hinge on human sin.
Literally.
Paul knows this.

Death and extinction long preceded
the arrival of humans and their sins.
Paul’s audience in the Roman church knows this.

Evolutionary biology is beside the point.
Paul creates a poetic paradigm
to make a point about faith.

His model has an elegant design—
a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The “first man” Adam has life,

but disobedience leads to death
for himself, for Eve,
for all humankind.

God counters this
with an equal but opposite solution.
The powerful obedience of Jesus

(his faithful death on the cross)
enables the faithful to cancel out
the deadly destiny of sin

and have a new identity and destiny
of righteousness and life
through Jesus Christ.

First Sunday in Lent
February 26, 2023

The Politics of No

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

No, we are not bewhiskered woodsmen posing
with a fabled misery whip 12-feet long
emerging from the sepia history of real men

or frugal, gaunt survivalists riding out
the Great Depression or the khaki war machine
fighting to the death against the Axis powers

or fearless astronauts landing on the moon.
As the swaggering first citizens of a unipolar world,
we are soft from indolent years of privileged ease.

We are soft without a great enemy to fight
so we look within and fight among ourselves.
We harden into corpulence and intellectual sloth

as nimbler nations strive to take us down,
not by the savagery of war, but with whispered lies
designed to divide us into two contending camps

dueling to the death of the great American experiment
of broad-shouldered accomplishment of big things.
No, my friend, we are not that nation anymore.

Ash Wednesday
February 22, 2023

Lifting the Veil

Exodus 24:12-18

To the east, news-crawler clouds scrape the mountains,
hiding the higher elevations. A kaleidoscope of rain,
wind, and fog turns and turns again
its swirl of gunmetal gray over the lowlands.

A friend of mine comes from the Great Plains
to the Kent Valley at the beginning of the forty days
of gloom. He wonders: is the air like this always
with these speed-of-a-slug cloud-rags, and the rains?

Today, on day forty-one, the veil is lifted
when cold north winds chase the gray
and set the Cascade Range in clear relief
against the blue, and he is blown away
when Mt. Rainier brandishes its swaggering pride
four thousand meters above the countryside.

Last Sunday After the Epiphany
February 19, 2023

The Growth of St. John’s Church

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

The first to speak is the garden soil.
Our hopes depend on fertile land.
Without the soil, we cannot grow.

Land alone is bereft of life.
What we need is healthy seed.
Without the seed, we cannot grow.

Soil and seed are well and good,
but absent rain what’s our gain?
Without the rain, we cannot grow.

The genial sun laughs out loud.
Garden delight depends on light.
Without the sun, we cannot grow.

Surrender your ego for the common good.
Work as one to get it done.
The Holy Spirit gives the growth.

NOTE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Snohomish, Washington

Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany
February 12, 2023

For the Faces I Will Never See

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:14-16

Long stretches of handling the hooks*
with rhythmic certainty
seamlessly moving forward on a row
occasionally looking up at a movie
seen before many times
(knowing which scene is coming)
sometimes losing track
of the sequencing cadence
or noticing the row does not look right,
counting, counting, ripping out,
saying a word not safe for work,
re-reading instructions
then back on track,
finishing the main pattern
and refining the border—
the final step—until
done at last!

For the faces I will never see,
you bundled newborns in other arms,
my love goes out to you.
I imagine my yarn
chucked against your chin,
but that is where my story ends.
Wear it well
and pay it forward
for children of your own
if you can.

*Crochet

Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
February 5, 2023

Ontological Argument

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Assuming that God’s existence
might be proved through logic,
would you and I believe
in such an elegant God?

Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
January 29, 2023

Ambassadors for Christ

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Cold morning. I opened the red door
to the sanctuary and slipped into the back row.
No one turned around to look at me.
I learned it was the first Sunday after the Epiphany

as my downcast eyes were focused on the church bulletin
handed to me in the narthex. Let the service begin
I thought to myself. I was church shopping and this
was my first stop, with two others on the list.

I wasn’t nervous until we came to the Peace.
No introductions—it wasn’t the time or place,
but the people near were friendly all the same.
To be honest, I was most reluctant to say my name.

I could be moving on, never to return.
After the last “Alleluia,” I had a fresh concern.
Coffee hour was next—should I stay or go?
I am still here. That was nine years ago.

What happened? I stood alone with my coffee
when she approached and said, Hi, I’m Cathy.
Are you a visitor? I was relieved someone cared
enough to say hello. No longer was I wary

as I was welcomed by others on the floor.
This was exactly what I was looking for:
to find a friendly home on the first visit;
to find a church in communion with the Holy Spirit.

Third Sunday After the Epiphany
January 22, 2023

Life and Death in the Back Yard

Isaiah 49:1-7

The neighbor’s cat with the pure black fur
noticed my movement in the kitchen
and fixed his stare at me.
I eased forward to get a better view
of our small, oval-shaped lawn
through the sliding glass door.

The tan corpse of a baby rabbit
was less than a foot away
from his extended paws perfectly aligned,
and the diminutive Lion King,
head turned to the left with eyes locked on me,
was announcing to the whole world,
“Look what I did!”

Hunger had nothing to do with it.
We feed that cat when the neighbors leave town.
It was pure sport.
I opened the sliding door and yelled “Yah!”
and the cat high-tailed it over the south fence.
Maybe you’ll be a coyote biscuit someday,
I thought.
I hope you enjoy that experience.

I checked the tiny rabbit.
Yes, it was dead.
We don’t have a pet cemetery on our property,
so I chucked the corpse over the back fence
into the nine-acre greenbelt behind the house.
It was an inglorious end
to a life that never really got started.

After that, I took down the empty birdfeeder
hanging from the arch over the gate
to fill it up with songbird seeds from Ace Hardware.
Nancy had been bugging me for a week,
“You need to feed the birds,”
and I would reply,
“These creatures lived for millions of years
without our help. They can fend for themselves.”
“Yes, but I like to look at them.”

I turned the feeder upside down
and pounded on the base
to shake loose the crud on the bottom.
Then I filled it to the brim with seeds
and rehung it from the arch.

Song sparrows were the first to attack the feeder
and the last to leave.
Others were the dark-eyed junco,
spotted towhee, northern flicker, house finch,
and surprise! the black-capped chickadee.
The goldfinch made a rare appearance.
Tiny birds suddenly popped out of the blackberries
at breakneck speed to the arched gate,
hop-hopping to the feeder for a snack,
then flit away into the thicket.

I was like a songbird god
summoning my peoples to a rich buffet,
from the east, the west, the north, and the south—
Bring my sons from far away,
and my daughters from the ends of the earth.

Second Sunday After the Epiphany
January 15, 2023

[tanka]

The voice of the Lord makes the oak trees writhe
and strips the forests bare.

Psalm 29:8

in the rib cage
of bare branches,
the setting sun
hovers
like a heart

First Sunday after the Epiphany
January 8, 2023

Open My Mind

Ephesians 3:1-12

Open my mind to the stranger who differs from me.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of ignorance and fear.
Allow me to live in a world where knowledge is free.
Give me a mind, O Lord, that is always clear.

Open my mind to the stranger of another race.
Let me see him as a friend and not the other.
Allow him to be the gracious guest in my space.
As host, I am pleased to do my best for a brother.

Empty my mind, O Lord, of conventional bias.
Open my mind to unconventional love.
Give me the courage to resist the spitefully pious.
Allow me to assert that love is simply love.

Open my mind to the stranger from a foreign land.
Let me share the warmth of our country’s sun.
If he wants to be my neighbor, I’ll lend a hand.
Our nation’s motto is “Out of many, one.”

Give me the strength, O Lord, not to wait
for a thousand tomorrows to live in brotherly love.
Empty my mind, O Lord, of the ruin of hate.
Open my mind, O Lord, to the rule of love.

The Epiphany
January 6, 2023

The Naming of Jesus

Luke 2:15-21

“What happened to the name Immanuel?”
The most precocious student in my class
reminded me of the passage from Isaiah
that we studied just two weeks before
on the fourth and final Sunday of Advent.
She opened her Bible and read this line:

The young woman is with child and shall
bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
On this day, we discussed the naming of Jesus
as told in Luke’s Gospel story
where the angel Gabriel comes to Mary
and tells her to name her child Jesus.

Then she threw me another knuckleball.
“Matthew has a different story,” she said.
“The angel of the Lord appears to Joseph
in a dream. There is nothing about Mary.
The angel says, Name him Jesus.
Which of these two stories is true?

Is it possible both stories are true?”
My lesson plan lay in ruins.
Was she destined to be the village agnostic
or the leader of the next Great Awakening?
There was a pause. Then she asked again,
“What happened to the name Immanuel?”

The Holy Name
January 1, 2023

We All Start at Zero

Luke 2:1-14

The practiced hands of the good-humored doctor
pull the infant out of the warm duskiness
of an amniotic ocean into the unfamiliar glare
of delivery room lights. It is a rough business,
coming into the world, but every person
in the room is pulling for the startled new arrival
to survive, grow, thrive, and come of age.

In this instant, we align ourselves with God
to affirm the wholesome generative forces of the world.
We all start at zero. Look at the face
of the newborn child. Where is the theological construct
of original sin? Do you see it? No?
The swaddled baby is laid on the mother’s chest
and begins to learn the ambivalent ways of humankind.

Christmas Day
December 25, 2022

Turning the Blank Pages

Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

It was all good for the first three and a half minutes.
He led the orchestral intro from the bench,
waving his arms and bobbing his head
while I turned the pages.
No one was paying attention to me.
Then the orchestra fell silent.
Hr. v. B. launched into his solo part
and I swung open the next page…to nothing.
It was page after blank page
with just the occasional hieroglyphic note
that meant something to him
but nothing to me.

I panicked.
How was I to know
when one blank page ended
and another blank page began?
He took delight in my troubles,
but was kind enough to give me
a surreptitious nod
whenever we came to the end of emptiness.

The concert was a success.
No man was a better friend than Beethoven
when he was in a jolly mood.
I cherish the memory of his howls of laughter
at our convivial dinner after the concert!

Time brings an end to all living things.
Beethoven is gone now.
My own health is fragile.
That night in Vienna when I turned pages
for a generational genius—
unsure of what was coming next,
but surrounded by music most sublime
and encouraged by his bemused glance
at just the right moments—
was a key life lesson.
When we wake up in the morning
or start a new year,
we don’t have a score to follow.
We put our trust in the Master at the keyboard
giving us celestial music and surreptitious nods
as we turn the blank pages of our lives.

Hr. v. B. = Herr van Beethoven

NOTE: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was first performed on April 5, 1803. Beethoven’s pupil Ignaz von Seyfried was the page turner.

Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 18, 2022