"The pivot of hope," Walter Brueggemann

On reading 1 Samuel 16:1-13 on Maundy Thursday, Walter Brueggeman writes:


This day of dread and betrayal and denial
causes a pause in our busyness.

Who would have thought that you would take
this eighth son of Jesse
to become the pivot of hope in our ancient memory?

Who would have thought that you would take
this uncredentialed
Galilean rabbi
to become the pivot of newness in the world?

Who would have thought that you--
God of gods and Lord of lords--
would fasten on such small, innocuous agents
whom the world scorns
to turn creation toward your newness?

As we are dazzled,
give us the freedom to restate our lives in modest, uncredentialed, vulnerable places.

We ask for freedom and courage to move out from our nicely arranged patterns of security into dangerous places of newness where we fear to go.

Cross us by the cross, that we may be Easter marked. Amen.

A Blessing for Ash Wednesday from Jan L. Richardson

So let the ashes come
as beginning
and not as end;
as the first sign
but not the final.
Let them rest upon you
as invocation and invitation,
and let them take you
the way that ashes know
to go.

May they mark you
with the memory of fire
and of the life
that came before the burning:
the life that rises and returns
and finds its way again.

See what shimmers
amid their darkness,
what endures
within their dust.
See how they draw us
toward the mystery
that will consume
but not destroy,
that will blossom
from the blazing,
that will scorch us
with its joy.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord's face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.

Amen.

This is my body, this is my blood.

I have been known to write about women in ministry. This poem, the epigraph of a piece I'm citing in a paper and hadn't noticed before, just brought me to my knees. I am blessed to be just weeks away from my church officially claiming me as one among its eligible for ordination. For my Roman Catholic and Orthodox sisters, I weep.

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,
After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,
"This is my body, this is my blood"?

Well that she said it to him then,
For dry old men,
brocaded robes belying barrenness,
Ordain that she not say it for him now.

-- Frances Croake Frank