How do we learn the language of God? From the beginning, God has sent messengers. Men like Jonah and Isaiah and Job and John the Baptist all point the way to God. Sometimes the messengers really are straight from heaven. Abraham’s visitors (as seen in this art by Lieferin), the ladder to heaven that Jacob sees, the messenger who comes to Samson’s mother are some, and of course Gabriel’s visit to Mary is an obvious angel messenger.
Very often the people in the Bible don’t like what the messengers have to say. In fact, Jesus sums up the response of most of us in the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matthew 21:33-41, Mark 12:1-12, or Luke 20:9-19). Taylor sums up the message of this story by saying, “We are God’s sharecroppers…We are expected to represent God’s interests, being as generous with each other as God is with us. We are not owners. We were never meant to be…[however] the harvest will take your breath away.”
Messengers from God very often demand change or warn that it is coming. We however, long for an easier way. We ask “for protection, for prosperity, for a God who will operate within the domestic boundaries we have set for ourselves, without doing anything to frighten us unnecessarily. We want to be chosen. We want to be saved, only gently, please, by gradual degrees, so that we can see where we are going…No one in his or her right mind asks to be attacked, frightened, wounded. And yet that is how it comes sometimes, the presence and blessing of God…the answer to all our prayers.” (Taylor)
She goes on to say, “In this dance, it is not God’s job to keep bad things from happening…God’s job is to stay present in them and to keep on being God…Sometimes the voice seems to come straight from heaven and sometimes it comes through the voices of strangers and friends.” Sometimes it comes in other ways, too.
Last week I watched the Jim Henson movie Dark Crystal. It was not at all what I expected from Jim Henson (no Muppets), but it was a moving metaphor for the need to embrace the scars or ‘dark side’ of our lives. According to the story, once there was one race on Thra, but when the Crystal was damaged, two races emerged. The Skeksis, dark and evil, are in control of the castle and the Crystal. Far away the Mystics, peaceful and gentle, live. The leader of the Mystics raises a Gefling, last of a race destroyed by the Skeksis. There is a prophecy that a Gefling will restore the Crystal and end the reign of the Skeksis. As the story moves toward its climax, Jen, the Gefling discovers that there is one other Gefling. Together they bring the Crystal shard to the castle. The Mystics are also moving toward the castle. We come to realize that the two races are really one people. When Jen returns the shard to the Crystal, it is transformed from a dark to bright crystal and the Mystics and Skeksis reunite as beings of light. To me, the movie was a metaphor for embracing the parts of ourselves that we often try to hide or deny. Only when we accept our “scars”, as the Dragon does, can they glow and give us strength and confidence.
In St. George and the Dragon*, George is given books by the Dragon who says “Read between the lines and you will be surprised at what you find.” Then as always, the Dragon has a story about the ways God is revealed to us.
“[God is meeting with the Review Board committee of angels and archangels about creation.] ‘I feel,’ said God, ‘that it is time for me to speak more directly to my children on earth. Until now I have spoken to them by means of a flood, fire, rainbows and, of course, a quiet whisper in the heart of certain chosen ones. But I feel that they need to hear more directly from me.’ … [The angels ask why a new method is needed and great discussion arises. Until...] “The static stillness around the conference table was broken by the voice of one angel. ‘My Lord God, why not come to earth in the form of writing?’…‘Marvelous idea,’ shouted God, ‘marvelous…I shall come as word.!’… ‘But Lord God,’ said the bass-voiced angel, ‘which alphabet will you be?...You cannot discriminate and still be God.’ [God considers this and then God makes an announcement.] ‘I have decided-upon careful consideration of your suggestions and objections-I have decided to come into the world as ink!...Then I can reside in the letters of all alphabets…the possibilities are unlimited.’…God did indeed come into the world as ink. And the people of earth recognized the Divine Presence in the Hebrew letters of the Torah, in the Sanskrit…the Chinese characters…the Arabic letters…”
God’s messengers are everywhere. Messengers can be the people we meet, the books we read, the movies we watch, or they can be the scars we are working on transforming through these Easter season mediations. What messengers have you heard recently?
Next week, our journey of transformation comes up to the reality of ‘judgment’. See you then. The parable of the Tenants reminds us. “When the owner of the vineyard comes…‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’” Are we good sharecroppers or greedy wretches?
*quotes from Gospel Medicine by Barbara Brown Taylor and St. George and the Dragon and the Quest for the Holy Grail by Edward Hays.
