Wednesday, March 8, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Magnificent drop in the bucket
Must good be repaid with evil?
Every lectionary text today describes victory of evil over good. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is thrown into a cistern and left to die. David is fleeing from Saul, in spite of David’s love for his king. And Jesus is about to be handed over to those who are determined to kill him.
Save me, O Lord, in your kindness. Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me.
Jeremiah did not die, nor did Joseph. David was not captured, and later became king when Saul was killed. Jesus? He was crucified and then three days later his dead body was resurrected. Just as Jesus died, he called out the words of Psalm 31 from the cross.
Into your hands I commend my spirit.
His death didn’t last. Satan did not get the last word. And ever since then, Paul and the rest of us are assured, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (Isaiah 25, 1 Corinthians 15).
Oh yes, we get sick and die. We are in awful accidents and die. Murders in cities everywhere, and war. We like guns. Some of us seem to worship guns.
Killing is a mostly male habit, and always has been. In the Christian Century, editor Peter Marty asked us to “elect more women leaders.” But nothing has helped so far, and there have been thousands of years, at least, since Cain killed Abel.
Must good be repaid with evil?
So, to sum up. The answer to Jeremiah’s question is a resounding “NO!” And that comes from God, not from leaders whether male or female. This presents an opening for hope. Actually it’s a huge yawning doorway. Actually death is dead and hope springs eternal. Perhaps we forget because hope shows up in small ways, while death is big and brutal. And there’s that infamously cynical, incorrect quote: Nothing’s certain except death and taxes.
We’re just a drop in the bucket, and that’s meaningless. But we say, “No, wait a minute. If you have a bucket, those raindrops fill it up very fast. Being a drop in the bucket is magnificent.” The problem is we cannot see the bucket. Our work is helping people see that there is a bucket. There are all these people all over the world who are creating this bucket of hope. And so our drops are incredibly significant.
That was a quote from Frances Moore Lappe, author of the famous Diet for a Small Planet in 1971 and this year’s Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect against Dangerous Lies. She carries hope wherever she goes. Many others do the same thing. But again, this human-carried hope is the shadow of the broad sunshine of God’s hope. Too bright for me to stare into, but forever warming every step on every path of every one of us.
(Jeremiah 18, Psalm 31, John 8, Matthew 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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