Monday, July 14, 2025
Memorial of Saint Kateri (after St. Catherine of Siena) Tekakwitha, Virgin
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Beginnings
A new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
At the age of 110, Joseph has left the scene, buried back in Canaan alongside his father and mother. Now, slavery has overtaken the Canaanites who came to Egypt during a famine and found their brother Joseph now in charge of their lives, when before they had been in charge of his. They threw him into a well as later Jeremiah would be thrown into a well, where we sometimes wish to be thrown ourselves to lose track of our everyday sight and look beyond the well’s wall of bricks, waiting to see into the eyes of God.
Deep
I leaned over far into
The well of God
And spoke
And I wonder
Is the echo that returns the voice of God
Or me
Or both? – Clarence Heller
All morning yesterday in Bloomington I pondered what my friend Pastor Steve Cone had to say about the Bible. Theology professor first and pastor second, Steve is reversing that in his present role, each day balancing study and service. In his Sunday School class he speaks as a professor and challenges his students; in the pulpit he seems more gentle.
Gregory the Great said that we look to Scripture and describe a fact, but then the fact reveals a mystery. When we settle for understanding the fact, we miss that we are standing under Something which commands our attention and our awe but will not be tamed in the cage of our comprehension.
In his book Theology from the Great Tradition, Steve writes that the two authors of the Bible, God and various men, have different authorial intentions. The mind of Christ does not equal the mind of Paul. It is also true, according to N. T. Wright in the book Steve’s class is reading, that we have the Bible God wants us to have.
Wrestling with the authors and with the Author – knowing what we can know, imagining what we can imagine, and above all listening in divine silence to what we can just discern beyond the horizon of our sight – that is what we are made to do. Steve called this the “joy of the journey.” Our DNA is 1% different from the DNA of a chimpanzee, and that 1% cries out to explore what we do not know rather than settle for being contained by what we do. God is always in the wings.
We were rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare; the snare was broken and we were freed. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea with a patient step, laughing, crying, sleeping beside a fire and then dancing at a wedding the next day. But every day Jesus felt the weight of glory and knew his disciples would feel it when he was gone. That is what he prepared them for.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
The torrent would have swept over us, those raging waters. Blessed be the Lord who does not leave us.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
Pharaoh commanded, “Throw into the river every boy that is born of the Hebrews.”
Just think of the beginnings of one story, the story of Moses, who was born as a baby doomed to immediate death by drowning.
But think also of the rest of the story, which we know from flannel boards and Hollywood, but from much more than those – from the books of the Torah. For the next month of readings, listen, ponder, pray, and be still. Watch while Moses finds his way.
(Exodus 1, Psalm 124, Matthew 5, Matthew 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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