“Dark Sayings Brightly Uttered”
Psalm 78:1-7
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
11/9/14
In the thirteenth chapter of his version of The Old, Old Story, Matthew clusters
together six parables. These parables serve as Matthew’s introduction to Jesus’
most memorable method of teaching. Well into the chapter, Matthew makes this
editorial comment: “Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without
a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken
through the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will
proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.’” (Mt.
13:34-35)
As we have just been reminded, the prophet to whom Matthew refers is the writer of Psalm 78. Verses
two and three of that psalm yawn before us like a crevice in a glacier. To go
down in such an abyss is not merely to descend a certain distance below the
surface. It is to go back in time. Scientists bore holes deep into glaciers around
the world to extract, exegete, and then tell the stories preserved in the ice.
There is deep, deep memory in the creation, memory that constitutes the “dark
sayings from of old,” “the things hidden from the foundation of the world.”
That same dark and hidden memory lies within us. It forms
and defines us. It also confounds and humbles us. The memory to which the psalmist refers is not the same as the ability
to catalog events and recite information. The memory of which the psalmist speaks predates the consciousness of
any created mind. As I’ve mentioned before, Karl Jung called this deep memory
the unconscious, the place from which
dreams arise. I would say that it is also the place from which faith and
inspiration arise.
I understand that this can begin to sound kind of “out
there.” So I offer this provocative little story from Richard Rohr’s book, Immortal Diamond. Rohr cannot verify the
claim, but the story came to him as an actual account. Regardless of fact, it tells
truth. This story is a parable, a bright new utterance of a dark saying from of old.
“A young couple [put] their newborn in the nursery for the
night. Their four-year-old son said to them, ‘I want to talk to the baby!’ They
said, ‘Yes, you can talk to him from now on.’ But he pressed further. ‘I want
to talk to him now and by myself.’ Surprised and curious, they let the young
boy into the nursery and cupped their ears to the door, wondering what he might
be saying. This is what they reportedly heard their boy say to his baby
brother, ‘Quick, tell me where you came from. Quick, tell me who made you? I am
beginning to forget!”1
This story illustrates our struggle with a memory that we
have not only forgotten, but a memory that we have forgotten that we have
forgotten.
On the island of Iona, ancient Celts discovered and
developed a Christian discipline that allowed them to bore into that
twice-forgotten memory. Their brand of Christian spirituality did not find
broad appeal in the world because it will not become a tool of violent power. As
a way of enlightenment and peace, Celtic Christianity follows Jesus along a path
of memory restoration. In his book Christ
of the Celts, Philip Newell says that Celtic spirituality lifts up the two
creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 to claim that our foundational memory lies
in humankind’s creation in the image of God. “Everything else that is said
about us in the scriptures,” says Newell, “needs to be read in light of this
starting point. The image of God is at the core of our being. And…it has not
been destroyed.”2
The point of our faith tradition, the point of any faith
tradition worth its salt, is to arrange an inviting and disciplined approach to re-membering our truest, our deepest,
our eternally God-imaged selves. As Christians, we practice a discipline that
is so much bigger, so much more gracious, and so much more exciting than some well-argued
case for believing certain things and behaving certain ways. Christian
spirituality is an attempt to rediscover our most ancient and defining memory –
and to live, gratefully, that truth.
In one of the apocryphal gospels, Jesus says, “‘I am the
memory of fullness.’”3 Jesus is the bright utterance of THE dark saying from of old. All too loudly
and violently, the Church has made the Christian faith a means to an
individualistic end. But more and more I think our tradition invites us to seek
the memory from which we have come, to journey both inward and outward, here
and now, in Love for self, neighbor, and earth, and, thus, for God.
Love is the very heart and soul behind the commandments of
which the psalmist speaks. In spite of that, the Law became a list of requirements
for trying to please and satisfy a humanesque God prone to anger and
retribution. But when The Memory of Fullness
condenses the Law into the great commandment of Love for God and neighbor,
he calls to us to a path of healed and healing memory. To live according to the discipline of Love is to bore deep into
the timeless memory we may have forgotten, but which does not forget us. To
Love as we are loved is to embark on a journey of restoration. To Love as we
are loved is to embrace and engage the creative power of resurrection itself.
I constantly hear bright new utterances of dark sayings from of old in the writings
of Wendell Berry. I consider him a
prophet, a teller of parables, parables that have the power to restore our
memory, our identity, and our will to love. In the following Sabbath poem,
entitled only XI, Berry tells a kind
of Celtic parable that reveals love of life, connection to the earth,
fearlessness in the face of death, and an awareness of the eternal in the midst
of the mundane, the work of a single shepherd. May you find yourself in this
parable, and may you hear an invitation to re-member yourself to your own belonging
and purpose.
"XI."
Though he was ill and in pain,
in disobedience to the instruction he
would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed,
dressed, and went to the barn.
The bare branches of winter had emerged
through the last leaf-colors of fall,
the loveliest of all, browns and yellows
delicate and nameless in the gray light
and the sifting rain. He put feed
in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs,
sent the dog for them, and she
brought them. They came eager
to their feed, and he who felt
their hunger was by their feeding
eased. From no place in the time
of present places, within no boundary
nameable in human thought,
they had gathered once again,
the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog
with all the known and the unknown
round about to the heavens' limit.
Was this his stubbornness or bravado?
No. Only an ordinary act
of profoundest intimacy in a day
that might have been better. Still
the world persisted in its beauty,
he in his gratitude, and for this
he had most earnestly prayed.4
in disobedience to the instruction he
would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed,
dressed, and went to the barn.
The bare branches of winter had emerged
through the last leaf-colors of fall,
the loveliest of all, browns and yellows
delicate and nameless in the gray light
and the sifting rain. He put feed
in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs,
sent the dog for them, and she
brought them. They came eager
to their feed, and he who felt
their hunger was by their feeding
eased. From no place in the time
of present places, within no boundary
nameable in human thought,
they had gathered once again,
the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog
with all the known and the unknown
round about to the heavens' limit.
Was this his stubbornness or bravado?
No. Only an ordinary act
of profoundest intimacy in a day
that might have been better. Still
the world persisted in its beauty,
he in his gratitude, and for this
he had most earnestly prayed.4
1Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our
True Self, Jossey-Bass, 2013, p. 10.
2J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing
of Creation, Jossey-Bass, 2008, p. 3.
3Ibid,. p. 7.
4Wendell Berry, “XI.”, from Leavings,
Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2010, pp. 121-122.
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