Get up, Jonah...

As some of you know, every Thursday I share a "congregational update" with my church called "prayers and programs" - P and P for short - and this morning I wrote:

As many of you know, I find the wisdom and insights of Eugene Peterson very helpful.  For those who are Internet savvy, you might want to listen to part on an interview with Peterson here (http://youtu.be/gIedwUvXZDg). This morning I was finishing up his reflection on the importance of "praying the Psalms."  Earlier he had observed that using the Psalms can help us pray our way into the reality of our lives:  we can pray our sins (Psalm 51), we can pray our fears (Psalm 23), our hatred (Psalm 137) as well as our doubts (Psalm 73), our death (Psalm 90) and our praise (Psalm 150.)  I particularly was moved by his words re: praying our tears.

Tears are a biological gift of God. They are a physical means for expressing emotional and spiritual experience. But it is hard to know what to do with them. If we indulge our tears, we cultivate self-pity. If we suppress our tears, we lose touch with our feelings. But if we pray our tears we enter into sadnesses that integrate our sorrows with our Lord's sorrows and discover both the source of and the relief from our sadness.  Consider Psalm 56: 8 - You have kept track of my every toss and turn, O Lord, through the sleepless nights; each tear entered into your ledger and each ache written in your book.

With the fullness of the winter holidays rushing down upon us - from Thanksgiving to Christmas - many of us will encounter sadness and maybe even tears.  For some there is loneliness.  For others a sense of regret.  And for still others an awareness that all the public "happiness" talk does not do justice to our deepest reality.  What's more, our ever growing obsession with materialism fuels our emptiness with an addiction that never satisfies.  So, as preparation for Advent - in addition to the Advent Wreath workshop we'll be doing this Sunday after worship - maybe this is the season to start praying the Psalms?

I also offered a few website suggestions to help explore what it means to pray the Psalms.  Now I don't know about you, but praying the Psalms for Advent as a congregation seems to make more and more sense to me.  You see, I have been deeply touched by the OWS movement over the past 2 months. Their gentle and non-ideological witness against greed has awakened something in me that has been waiting for a LONG time.  And in ways that offer an important invitation to the church, I hear them urging us towards our best selves.

Shane Claiborne put it like this recently in the Huffington Post: One of the constant threads of Scripture is "Give us this day our daily bread." Nothing more, nothing less. Underneath this admonition is the assumption that the more we store up for tomorrow the less people will have for today. And in a world where 1% of the world owns half the world's stuff, we are beginning to realize that there is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed. Lots of folks are beginning to say, "Maybe God has a different dream for the world than the Wall Street dream."

Maybe God's dream is for us to live simply so that others may simply live. Maybe God's dream is for the bankers to empty their banks and barns so folks have enough food for today.  Woody Guthrie may be right. If Jesus came to Wall Street preaching the same message that he preached in Galilee... he might land himself on a cross again.  

He also said in a recent Christian Century interview:  What an opportunity to create conversation! Jesus' own parable in Luke 12 is relevant to the entire effort. Why build bigger and bigger barns? Occupy Wall Street may not come up with solutions, but at least it is asking the right questions in a nonviolent setting. I don't believe that love can be forced, but I believe it can be provoked. I don't believe that generosity can be forced, but it can be provoked. Occupy Wall Street is provoking generosity.

I'm hoping that Christians will see this as an opportunity to proclaim that God's heart is big enough for the 100 percent. It matters to God that some people are sagging with food while others need $3 for a mosquito net. It also matters to God that many of the oppressors are, in spite of their money, desperately lonely and suffering. God cares for both and can set both free.I believe we're building something new, proclaiming something else as possible. God wants to see us systemically dismantle disparity.

I suspect he is right - and the Psalms for Advent seem to me to be a powerful way to reflect on the counter-cultural calling of Christ for this generation. Reflection, of course, must always be grounded in action, too. One of the great insights of liberation theology is the commitment to live a spirituality based on action, reflection and prayer. One of the acts for me is to go and stand in solidarity with OWS during Advent. I'm going to be sharing ways of helping my congregation move towards a simpler Christmas, too.  And in the mix it seems like praying the Psalms together each week - and then sharing our insights and experiences at the start of Sunday worship - could be a key ingredient.

(Dig the way Bruce Cockburn puts it in "Get Up, Jonah" - damn but I don't love me this song in a powerful way!)

Tomorrow is Sabbath time - bringing the compost to the garden, playing some music in a nursing home and listening to my colleague Carlton work his jazz magic with some dancers - and the on to Christ the King.