Just Plain Spiritual

As I have mentioned before, endlessly and boringly, I'm reading through the bible again. Well, listening. Reading it conks me right out. Just so you can know how holy I am, I wake up and fall pretty rapidly into praying through my long lists. I lie there, eyes shut, back aching, trying to remember every single person or cirucmstance that needs praying for, and all the troubles and cares of life, and I start to freak out. Who wouldn't. Prayer never makes me feel calmer, it's all about me freaking out and trying to convince God to freak out with me. So then, when the mental anguish reaches a nice rosy fever pitch, I pull myself together and push play on the bible. And while it plays, I drink a whole pot of tea and delete blog spam. With this many times through–who knows, I'm not keeping count, unlike Matt, who likes me to know all the time how many times he's been through it–there are lots and lots of passages that are familiar and comforting, just as there are lots and lots that I know are coming and begin to dread. Like, for example, I know that Moses is about to sin and lose his temper in the wilderness and I really wish I could just skip right over it, because it's so heart breaking.

Anyway, as I noted last week, God's providence and love has extended to the very surprising symmetry of where I am in the old and new testaments. The laws about a fair trial were going on while Jesus was being unfairly tried, for just one instance. This weekend, Sunday morning in fact, again everything fell together in a charming and interesting way. First of all, it was Sunday, and I live next to the church, don't you know, and so when I wake up, the first thing my eye sees is the brick corner of the church with a sort of forlorn pipe sticking out at a strange angle. The church, it's our job. It's what we do. Sunday is the day we work, cough, if we work at all. Just kidding, we work other days too. So I flip open the Internet and push play and there's Oholiab and Bezalel, laboring away on the tabernacle and tent. They are skilled in all craftsmanship and the working of gold and scarlet and blue fine twined linen. They work filigree and masterfully craft with accacia wood overlayed with gold. They are filled with the Spirit of God for all this work. They were chosen specially. They work with care and not with haste until “all the work was completed”. That always leaps out at me. All the work being completed. I don't know that I've ever really experienced that. At least not recently.

Anyway, the nice man who reads the bible plows forward through the psalm and into Luke. And there, Jesus is invited to dinner by the Pharisee, Simon, who seems like he's hoping for some kind of spectacle. He's not interested in Jesus as a person. Like so many of us, he's more curious about what he can get out of him, in this case not for good. But his attitude is not much better than mine on an average day. Come on, Jesus, deliver the goods. I need this and this and this and this, and, on some level, you owe me something, whatever it is. For Simon it's a party trick. Maybe he'll heal someone or say something outrageous and my party will be remembered forever. Well, the party is remembered for ever, but not because of Simon. Midway through the meal a woman comes in and throws herself down at Jesus' feet and weeps and anoints his feet with ointment, or perfume, something beautiful smelling and expensive. And she keeps at it, using her hair as a towel. And, we discover, his feet haven't been washed at all before this, so they are assuredly grimy and disgusting. Simon is grossed out by the spectacle. It didn't turn out the way he planned. The pseudo dignity of the party is spoiled by this notoriously immoral person coming in and crying all over Jesus. You know the kind of person.

Except that it's the Temple. Jesus is the temple. He is the full complete presence of God, sitting there in Simon's dining room. And he's not beautifully adorned, he's not covered in gold filigree, but he is perfectly made, he is the image of Very God, and this woman loves him. Not for what he's going to give her. She's just wanting to be there, in his presence, and worship him, as if she were standing in the courts of the Lord, praising him.

And this all before me rousting myself out of bed and shoving the little girls into tights and rebuttoning Romulus' shirt and trying to find Matt's collar, and seriously contemplating changing my own clothes for the third time, and then not being able to find my own shoes, all so I can race next door and get the coffee on and figure out what the Sunday school lesson is and then run all over because all the acolytes are missing and a myriad of other small tasks. What is that line from that hymn? May all our work be praise? There is a center meeting point, I hope, between the anointing of Jesus' body, the church, the caring for it and working for it and striving for it to be beautiful and good, and the collapsing on the floor in praise and worship before the Lord. The two go together, I think. It seems that they should. Very often I leave the second one alone and don't bother with it, trying to make things go, trying to twist the rough twine into some kind of fine linen. The plain unadorned body of Jesus isn't fancy enough. But occassionaly they come together. The work is praise.