Lenten Daily Reflection 2020-03-18
Psalm 119
97 Oh, how I love your law! *
all the day long it is in my mind.
98 Your commandment has made me wiser than my enemies, *
and it is always with me.
99 I have more understanding than all my teachers, *
for your decrees are my study.
100 I am wiser than the elders, *
because I observe your commandments.
101 I restrain my feet from every evil way, *
that I may keep your word.
102 I do not shrink from your judgments, *
because you yourself have taught me.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste! *
they are sweeter than honey to my mouth.
104 Through your commandments I gain understanding; *
therefore I hate every lying way.
105 Your word is a lantern to my feet *
and a light upon my path.
Lenten reflection on Psalm 119:97-105
Janet Kaplan
Dearest all,
The anonymous writer of today’s psalm, the longest one in the Bible, has much to teach us about the nature of prayer. The psalmist writes in supplication to God and in praise of God, oftentimes in the very same verse. The psalmist addresses, seemingly at once, God (the “you” of the psalm) and the law (in Hebrew, torah, which can refer to the five books of Moses in the Old Testament or the torah given to Moses by God in the wilderness). The writer of Psalm 119 boasts more insight than all the teachers, more wisdom than any enemy, more understanding than the elders—and then seems to grow humble enough to write that God’s torah, God’s word, “is a lamp for my feet.” Such duality! Or is it?
We’re in a world that seems utterly topsy-turvy. The news grows more dire, we’re asked to “self-quarantine” or to practice “social distancing,” to avoid all means of transportation except for our own cars, if we own them, or to go only where our feet can convey us. We’ve gone from not partaking of the holy wine or of one another’s precious hands during the Lord’s prayer, to having a shuttered church…. Or is it shuttered? I suppose that depends on what we mean by “church.”
I’m not going to lie. My life feels so upside-down right now that if Deacon John had assigned me a section from the book of Job, I’d have written it in a heartbeat. On the one hand, on-campus classes were cancelled for the rest of the semester, which means that I don’t have to schlep to work but can teach online from home. On the other hand, just two days after this news came, one of the four family elders in my care had a stroke and is now in the hospital being treated for that—and for bacterial pneumonia, too. Now, of course, I have plenty of time to visit her in the hospital and to visit her sister, my other aunt, who’s been homebound for nearly a year.
The emergency room was as packed as ever with the desperately ill. Frantic nurses and attendants, all of them gloved and masked, monitored, took vitals, changed bedpans, whisked the direst into isolation, wheeled new patients in on stretchers…. No one wanted to be there, and yet somehow there we were, together in the messy, precarious, dangerous heart of God’s world. Two days later, with a room finally assigned to my beloved 89-year-old Aunt Rhoda and enough testing to make the diagnoses, and with her resting comfortably enough to complain about the food, I took my exhausted self home. I decided to take the local R train most of the way from Queens to Brooklyn, hoping to avoid the Friday evening rush-hour crowds. The subways were emptier than I've ever seen them during a rush hour, with maybe one or two people per long bench in the car I happened to enter. Suddenly, a man with a guitar and an amp began playing--Beatles, Jim Croce, Bob Marley. And then “How Great Thou Art.” How Great Thou Art!--with magically gorgeous strumming, singing and even whistling. In a moment, we were all stunned out of our fear and self-protecting corners, just listening, tapping out the rhythms, humming, singing along, smiling together.
When I got home I did what every hospital staff and visitor was advised to do: I stripped down, threw all my clothes into a laundry bag, showered, got warm, ate a good dinner, and went to bed early. I hugged my guy, our cats hopped onto the bed to welcome me home kitten-style, and I fell asleep. Am I afraid that I might have caught something unthinkable? Kinda… Is the coronavirus horrible? Absolutely awful. But at this moment I feel utterly grateful for my life and its blessings. After all, in this one little life, I’ve gone from wretched alienation from God to the unshakable experience of God’s presence and grace through Christ. I have an at-home silent meditation practice of Centering Prayer. I’m loved and, more often than not, I know it. Through the most miraculous miracle of all, God is steadily opening my heart to return that love, and more. And I have a church, our church: from the Greek, kyriakos, “belonging to the Lord” and ekklēsía, community, “church.”
Duality. Good and evil. Life and death. Right-side up. Topsy-turvy. The whole story. Job never stopped praising God. Jesus gave his life for us. When we wish one another peace on Sundays, we’re offering God’s peace, or, in Hebrew, shalom—a word that means peace and, also, wholeness.
I suppose that all of this is to say that I miss each and every one of you—even (especially!) those of you I haven’t met yet. And yet we are together, even now, where we always were, one in Christ.
Shalom,
Janet