Saturday, November 15, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Fourth and Walnut
One more church calendar day with the book of Wisdom, a deutero-canonical book that many of us haven’t read. Thanks to the lectionary, I’m fascinated by the stories told here by the unnamed Hellenistic Jew in Alexandria, Egypt. Sometimes his language is stilted, other times poetic, always he explores a tangent on wisdom in Hebrew history that I welcome.
All creation, in its several kinds, was being made over anew,
serving its natural laws,
that your children might be preserved unharmed.
The cloud overshadowed their camp;
and out of what had before been water, dry land was seen emerging:
Out of the Red Sea an unimpeded road,
and a grassy plain out of the mighty flood.
Over this crossed the whole nation sheltered by your hand.
Standing safe on the other side of the sea, held close in the hands of Yahweh, watching as the sea rearranged itself over the bodies of their pursuers and the Pharaoh, the author sits at his desk in Egypt and imagines the celebration.
They beheld stupendous wonders, and now
they ranged about like horses
and bounded about like lambs,
praising you, O Lord
their deliverer!
Moses’ sister Miriam leads the congregation-turned-choir in a spontaneous song of praise.
I will sing unto the Lord,
For he has triumphed gloriously
The horse and rider hurled into the sea!
The community-of-slaves-soon-to-be-called-Israelites had its problems, but the negativity of some balanced out with the hope and faith of many others. The contained deserted geography of their forty wandering years prevented escape, and they became not only dependent on, but grateful for each other. I imagine our neighbors, the “residents” of 166 apartments, struggling to survive together and becoming by necessity a community.
How about your neighborhood; can you imagine? It’s reasonable in our culture to make choices about our friends and spend time with them. But in the church we are thrown together with everyone, whether we are drawn to them or not. We still have the option of choice when it comes to the time we spend there and who we spend it with, but that privilege of choosing is addictive. We think we can be in charge of our lives. But by thinking that way, think of what we’re missing!
And he led them forth laden with silver and gold,
   with not a weakling among their tribes.
Remember the marvels the Lord has done!
For he remembered his holy word
   to his servant Abraham.
And he led forth his people with joy;
   with shouts of joy, his chosen ones.
To get up in the air with the psalmist (Psalm 105) and see the Big Picture, see what God hath wrought, so to speak, and what God is wroughing right now – imagining that is better than white bread with lots of butter, better than reading the best book, and in an epiphanal instant I see what Thomas Merton saw in the spring of 1958 at the corner of 4th and Walnut in Louisville:
I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness … This sense of deliberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy that I almost laughed out loud!
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race! If only everybody could realize this! But there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun!
 
This inexhaustible eternal sunshine is right here for all of us. We have been Made For This. Jesus says so, but he also knows us better than we know ourselves.
Jesus told his disciples a parable
about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary …
Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones
who call out to him day and night?
Will he be slow to answer them?
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
 ((Wisdom 18, Psalm 105, 2 Thessalonians 2, Luke 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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