Tuesday in Holy Week: The Word

Lessons: Psalm 6, 12, Jeremiah 15:10-21; Philippines 3:15-21; John 12:20-26
Eucharist: John 12:20-36

One of the joys of my childhood was going on my own to stay with my maternal Grandmother for an extended period each summer. Being one of four children, this was my time to be singular. Every visit, I was the main focus of her energy and care. We loved lamb chops and dinner rolls from the Piggly Wiggly. I would be taken on road trips as she did marketing surveys of various chain stores in rural NC. Who knew that so many towns built their County Court House in the middle of a round-about?

When I first arrived, there would be a Bible pointed out by my bedside. "Read some of this each night before you go to sleep." I knew Genesis and a bit of Matthew almost by heart before I finished High School. It never dawned on me to begin anywhere else. Having spent many of my years in a daily mass parish, I now look back and realize this Bible reading is the Baptist form of daily mass. The difference was you do the Bible reading alone with no comment on what you read.

I would be well into college when a priest suggested a way to pray was to read a psalm, a bit of Mark, and sit in silence as a way to let prayer grow deeper. "If nothing comes into the silence, fine. Return each day and eventually something will come. Wait patiently for that day and do not judge yourself." How did he know I was a master at self-judgement?

Today in Holy Week we are invited to think on the Word of God and its activity in us. Scripture is marked by a sense that the Word of God means to enter us, shape us, create some sense of God's way within.

"Because the needy are oppressed and the poor cry out in misery, I will rise up," says the Lord, "and give them the help they long for."
The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined from ore and purified seven times in the fire. Psalm 12:5-6.

The psalmist has been meditating on those who overlook God and God's ways and how they effect others. I noticed in the psalm that you cannot understand the quality of the effect of listening for God as an isolated activity. In Psalm 12 the verse before the comment on the value of God's Word, must be seen in relationship to the verse before. There is some value in living justly in God that brings about our purification. And it is this continuing effort to live justly that brings us to a purer life, a life continually open to insight and growth.

Jeremiah, the reluctant prophet, speaks of how the Word penetrated him, that he digested the Word and this effected his outlook, his heart/mind.
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. Jeremiah 15:16.

In this Holy Week we are invited to recall the breadth of God's care. We are invited to notice that there is a broad hunger to know God's intent for our lives. Before the advent of St. Paul, the gentile world was hungering for a deeper relationship to God than secular philosophy. The Greeks were often well schooled in philosophy. We are invited to notice the gift of God's word in human flesh, in Jesus. This embodiment of the Word lived in public view has much power to aid in deep living. They, we, are invited into this depth.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip...and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."
And Jesus says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me..." John 12:20-12, 24-25.

It would take me years, and still it takes me time, to notice this dying away is the illusion of myself. It is not the deepest me but the coverings that shade my eyes from truth. Sometimes it is my pride that must die a bit; sometimes it is my shame, an ancient friend of childhood; sometimes it is a bias I have carried too long. The point becomes more clear as Jesus goes on.

"Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light."
John 12:20-12, 35-36.

In my Grandmother's house, as the day became night, I would lift the Bible and dutifully read God's Word. Little did I know how it invited me into a Light that shines through time and alters me slowly. Little did I know there was a voice of a Greek in me wanting to see Jesus.