A Psalm for the Cycle of Death (Good Friday) and Transformed Life (Resurrection Sunday)

Last week on Good Friday, the day of Jesus' Crucifixion, I found Psalm 137 appointed for prayer in one of my prayer books. It is a difficult psalm to pray under ordinary circumstances. It is bold and violent, audacious in its fist-waving at the "enemies" . . . and even a bit toward God.

I tried to stay with it for as long as I could, and found myself praying the psalm in light of the Death - Resurrection rhythm that seems to be inscribed upon all things. We live . . . something within us dies . . . some form of new life emerges where we thought there was only death. And the patterns continues. It seems to never end. Every day is full of small deaths, ways great and small of letting go of that which has died. It seems to me that we live much of our lives in a kind of "Holy Saturday" time, between the deaths of "Good Friday" and the transformed life of "Resurrection Sunday."

So using Psalm 137, this is what I ended up praying about that in-between time. Perhaps as you read these words, you would also open Psalm 137 from the Hebrew Psalter . . . so that you are praying not about the Babylonians, but about the death of your own dreams, ideas, or postures toward life.


Psalm 137 Psalm-Prayer
for Good Friday 2013


The dream has died
a long death
and I sit empty, angry, despairing
grieving the loss
alone, looking for a next step
remembering the way I thought it would be
remembering the plan that never came to pass

I’ve laid aside the instruments
with which I planned the party
the celebration when You did
(what I wanted You to do)
what never came to be

The death of the dream taunted me
mocked my sadness
shamed my inability to sing “happy songs.”

What can I sing when the dream has died?
All I have are laments
the song of a place
I do not want to be

Yet, this is my truth
This is who I am
where I am

The dream has died a Friday death
and now I wait
a long Saturday
for life
the liminal space
that is my own transformation

And for this in-between time
faithfulness
(I pray)
to be here,
and now,
fully
not forgetting You
as I wait
stay open
for the next thing

I’m tempted, here,
to curse those
through whom the dream was dashed
to strike out at those
through whom this death came
in my anger and disgust

Yet Your Project is beyond
and somehow includes this death
though I cannot see it now

Somehow this death of my dream
is woven into Your life for the world

I cannot see it now
and I cannot yet rejoice
But I will stand in faithfulness
I will wait
with all the openness I can muster

And I pray for the eyes to see
when this death
becomes life.

The Experience of Resurrection

Easter, the Day, came and went a couple of days ago.

Easter, the Resurrection Experience, goes on.

As Sunday approached and I thought about the different worship expressions that would happen around Christendom on Easter, I was struck that in many ways, the Church has made the act of Resurrection something to believe in or something to be happy about.

I became aware that for me, the Resurrection is not something to believe in as a doctrine or as something that would form the basis of a creedal statement. Resurrection invites my awareness of the new life that God is birthing in all times and in every place, including within me . . . and it invites my participation in this new life of God’s birthing.

Awareness and participation are different kinds of belief. They are lived experiences, lived beliefs. They are beliefs that get worked into the fabric of our living. They are not agreements to doctrinal positions or proud assertions of what is and is not true. Awareness and participation invite us into life-as-it-is.

And life-as-it-is includes death and resurrection. This is the order of the world God created. Death (Good Friday) is the threshold to new life (Resurrection Sunday). All my daily dyings, great and small, lead to life. I am not invited to believe that . . . in the same way that I’m not invited to believe that gravity is holding me in my chair at this moment. I am invited, though, to live into it, or to live with it. I am to live into this reality of Resurrection.

Notice the Resurrection in Jesus, . . . but also notice Resurrection in the world around you . . . and then, notice it in yourself. Become aware of it.

Then participate in it. Participate in Resurrection as if it were written into the DNA of the universe, as if all things were moving not toward death, but toward Resurrection life.

Easter, the Day, came and went a couple of days ago.

Easter, the Resurrection Experience, goes on.

Studying Scripture, Missing the Point

Many well-meaning Christians miss Jesus because they only look where they expect him to be.

That is pretty much how it was during Jesus' lifetime, when the most religious people around completely missed him. They knew the Scriptures, as least from a particular vantage point, but they could not see Jesus as the One to whom the Scriptures pointed.

It is possible, after all, to live underneath a framework of holiness and piety - completely unaware that you are doing so - that blinds you to the presence of Jesus in your midst.

This is one story from John 5:


“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

“I do not accept glory from human beings, but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

“But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” (Jn. 5:39 - 47)


Jesus: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

I rarely find a Christian who has seriously studied the Scriptures, and who also knows and discerns the Scriptures. In contemporary Christianity, most of what we think of as “studying the Scriptures” is applying a certain mindset or predisposition to the Scriptures, one which most always brings us to the conclusions we have looked for.

Such Scripture “study” is not open to inquiry. Neither is it truly open to whatever the text might say, in all its complexity (or simplicity). It reads with a particular aim, to find certain “truths” affirmed.

This kind of reading does not submit itself to Scripture; rather, the Scriptures always submit to the preconceptions of the reader/studier.

I believe this is the kind of “study” Jesus refers to in this passage . . . the kind of reading that could study, study, study a passage, so that all persons call you, “Bible Scholar!” but still leave you missing the point.

It occurs to me that the forms of Bible reading common in contemplative spirituality do not emphasize correct doctrine. They do not hinge on a person coming out of their Bible reading with a certain orthodox understanding. They do emphasize, however, surrendering to the Word, opening to it and living into it as fully as possible.

Lectio divina – praying with Scripture – listens reverently to the text without preconceived notions of what you will find there. It simply listens openly to whatever the word of God for you might be.

Praying with Scripture in the Ignatian tradition, where one puts himself or herself in the biblical scene, interacting with Jesus via the imagination, is also approached in a spirit of openness and receptivity. You go where the Spirit of God leads you in your imagination. You find yourself in the text and interact within the biblical drama as a participant, even utilizing your senses to participate in the life of Jesus.

Neither method utilizes a filter . . . “this is wrong!” . . . or, “you shouldn’t be thinking that!”

I hear people resist both of these methods because, “I’m not sure I’ll get something that’s not heresy.” Or, “I want to know that I’m not going to be led astray.” So in our concern to get something “orthodox” (which again is usually judged according to our preconceived theological systems), we miss the word God speaks to us.

In the same way that the most religious persons of Jesus’ day missed him, so it is possible for us to think of ourselves as Jesus-literate, when we, too, have utterly missed him.

For the Lenten Fence-sitters

We've been into Lent less than a week, and I haven't yet made a conscious "I'm-giving-up-blank-for Lent" decision. I thought about giving up Fleetwood Mac for these weeks, but backed off that . . . or Hopkins' poetry, but that didn't work for me, either.

I am, though, finding meaning in some reading . . . some material that is providing material for meditation and reflection.

I'll list below a few of the things available that I've found helpful through the years.

**Journey to the Center, by Thomas Keating.

**Show Me the Way, by Henri Nouwen.

**Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent, by Richard Rohr.

**Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. Authors of the short articles include folks like Merton, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, Amy Carmichael, Kathleen Norris, Wendell Berry and many more.

**This year I'm following some postings at www.atheismforlent.net. It draws on the thought and work of ikon (Peter Rollins) in Belfast. The postings at the site actually come from ikonNYC. If you follow ikon and Rollins, you'll appreciate the site. If you don't follow ikon and Rollins, check it out.

**I've written some meditations around the daily scripture texts, trying to approach the texts as spiritual story and wisdom. I've called it Scattered Seeds, and it is available online at http://www.chapelwood.org/Event_Display.cfm?Event_ID=1617.

**I'm also writing a short piece each day, posted at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.

That should be enough to keep you engaged. Don't do everything. Choose something to follow, find your own rhythm, and then follow it through.

A Wendell Berry Poem about Liberty

We Who Prayed and Wept

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
sent Thy necessity.


[Wendell Berry, The Gift of Gravity: Selected Poems 1968 - 2000 (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1980, 1982, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002),41.]

A Poem about Change and the Spiritual Life

The storms lumbered
across the landscape
shifted your shape
as they beat
upon your house

Those who followed
who knew you
and embraced you
looked for you
in the usual places

They could not find you

you were not where
they last
set you down

you were not where
they last
saw you

you were not where
they last
loved you

Where the storm
blew you
they had never gone

They could only look
in all the usual places

This life is brutal
and expensive
when you are invisible
to those
who love you

The cost of this life
is appallingly high
and the road is littered
with those
who don’t make it
to the end



[Jerry Webber, June 16, 2012]

The High Cost of Spiritual Health

I grew up in the day of $.29/gallon gasoline. "Gas wars" in my small, Oklahoma town would drive the price down to 19 cents, or even 18 cents. It was not uncommon to sit in the backseat of my mom's huge 4-door Chevy as she pulled into the local Kerr-McGee filling station and hear the attendant ask, "Fill-er' up, ma'am?"

She would either say, "Yes, please," or, "No, just $2 worth today."

So later, in the 1970's, when I attended conferences with my Baptist student group, the sermon that I still remember, the one that made a deep, deep dent on my heart, was the white Southern Baptist preacher who began a sermon by saying, "I'll take $5 worth of God, please. Not enough to love my black neighbor, and not enough to change my heart. I'd like to buy $5 worth of God. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of God to make me love the outcasts or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $5 worth of God, please."

I've reflected lately on the high cost of life with God . . . the enormous cost of growing up . . . the astronomical cost of the spiritual life.

You can track it in the Gospels . . . disciples are asked to sacrifice jobs to follow him . . . the loyalty of Jesus-followers shifts from family and social circles to the emerging inner framework of the kingdom of God . . . Jesus invited men and women to lay down what they have and what they think they know, in order to take on a different way of seeing the world and being in the world.

The price tag is high, and not everyone is willing to go there. In the Gospels, some turn away sad, because they have lots of stuff, and they are not willing to let it go.

This is dicey stuff. On an intentional spiritual path, we change. The way we see and think and feel changes. Much that has been unconscious, underneath the surface of our lives, comes to consciousness. We begin to see our own interior landscape, the motivations and drives that have governed us. We see how we have manipulated people for our own ends, and we notice how self-interested our actions in the world have been.

We notice that for much of life we have been sleep-walking, just going through the motions, blindly accepting what society and popular culture has said was important.

We see the hidden emotional weapons we've kept stored away inside, the weapons we have used on others. Loyalties and allegiances we've never before questioned are seen in a new light over time. That which has been invisible -- and thus, unnoticed -- slowly becomes visible to us.

These growing awarenesses obviously have a huge impact on us. They also have a huge impact on the people around us. In their eyes, we are changing, becoming different people. They can no longer count on us to be in the same place we were when they last saw us. Since we are slowly discovering new landscapes within ourselves, these people don't always know where to find us. We are not where we were when they last put us down. We don't seem stable -- and maybe we're not at this point -- and it feels like we've left or departed. "I don't feel like I know you any more," is one way some express it.

It's a huge shift of equilibrium. The old rules and roles that we had been locked into don't hold us any more. And if persons around us are not exploring for themselves -- if they need us to be like we've always been -- the tension can be almost unbearable.

I don't think I'm overstating this. Do you see how high the cost can be? It threatens division and separation, the division Jesus spoke of that is sword-separating family members and friends (Matt. 10:34 - 39). It is not that anyone goes out looking for separation, but that growth -- any kind of growth -- puts you at odds with others.

I've been on both ends of this . . . resisting the changes within persons around me . . . and having others resist my own change. These are powerful resistances, and they signal the astronomical cost of growing up.

I have no easy suggestions for getting around the cost or the difficulties. In fact, I don't think we're to get around this cost by gathering coupons or looking for sale items. We must each live into these realities in different ways, in ways that are true to God and our most authentic self.

For instance, I know how deeply I hurt and offended persons close to me during some of my own spiritual evolution. My stance toward others during some seasons of my life was not salted well with charity and generosity, but rather hardness and stubbornness. I hurt a lot of people. I didn't necessarily navigate those days well . . . but perhaps I did the best I could with the tools I had available to me then. I have different tools now, so maybe I would do it differently . . . but I can't relive those days based on the place I stand now in life.

Jesus knew the cost was high. He knew it philosophically, and he knew it experientially. That's why he said, "Consider the cost . . ."

And for those of you who have dared to ask for more than $5.00 worth of God . . . you, too, know that the cost is high.