A Song of Humility

(based on Hosea 6.1–6)

1 Come, let us return to the Lord ♦
    who has torn us and will heal us.
2 God has stricken us ♦
    and will bind up our wounds.
3 After two days, he will revive us, ♦
    and on the third day will raise us up,
    that we may live in his presence.
4 Let us strive to know the Lord; ♦
    his appearing is as sure as the sunrise.
5 He will come to us like the showers, ♦
    like the spring rains that water the earth.
6 ‘O Ephraim, how shall I deal with you? ♦
    How shall I deal with you, O Judah?
7 ‘Your love for me is like the morning mist, ♦
    like the dew that goes early away.
8 ‘Therefore, I have hewn them by the prophets, ♦
    and my judgement goes forth as the light.
9 ‘For loyalty is my desire and not sacrifice, ♦
    and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.’

-- From the Church of England

The Still, Small Voice

Open, Lord, my inward ear,
  And bid my heart rejoice;
Bid my quiet spirit hear
  The comfort of thy voice:

Never in the whirlwind found,
  Or where earthquakes rock the place, —
Still and silent is the sound,
  The whisper, of thy grace.

From the world of sin and noise
  And hurry I withdraw;
For the small and inward voice
  I wait with humble awe:
Silent am I now and still,
  Would not in thy presence move:
To my waiting soul reveal
  The secret of thy love!

--Charles Wesley, Anglican priest, poet, hymn writer, and founder of Methodism

Scriptural reference: 1 Kings 19:1-15a (Proper 7, Year C of the RCL, track 1)

Jeremiah

call me Jeremiah

Jeremiah said the Lord

call me and I'll show you

great and mighty

things you have not seen

--words from Jeremiah 33:3, from the album Zero Church by Maggie and Suzzy Roche, 2001

A Song of Jonah (Canticle I)

I called to you, O God, out of my distress, and you answered me;
     out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas,
     and the flood surrounded me;
          all your waves and billows passed over me.
Then I said, "I am driven away from your sight;
     how shall I ever look again upon your holy temple?"
The waters closed in over me, the deep was round about me;
     weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots
          of the mountains.
I went down to the land beneath the earth,
     yet you brought up my life from the depths, O God. 
As my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, O God,
     and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
With the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you;
     what I have vowed I will pay, for deliverance belongs to the Lord!

-- Jonah 2:2-7, 9, from Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick or Dying; Burial of a Child

Losers

If I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.

If I pass the burial spot of Nero
I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!”—
I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
I who have done so many stunts not worth doing.

I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
“Neither of us died very early, did we?”

And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar—
When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
“You ate grass; I have eaten crow—
Who is better off now or next year?”

Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,
There too I could sit down and stop for awhile.
I think I could tell their headstones:
“God, let me remember all good losers.”

I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,
“Come on, you … Do you want to live forever?”

--Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), from "Playthings of the Wind," in Smoke and Steel, 1922.

Jonah

A purple whale
Proudly sweeps his tail
Towards Nineveh;
Glassy green Surges between
A mile of roaring sea.

“O town of gold,
Of splendour multifold,
Lucre and lust,
Leviathan’s eye
Can surely spy
Thy doom of death and dust.”

On curving sands
Vengeful Jonah stands.
“Yet forty days,
Then down, down,
Tumbles the town
In flaming ruin ablaze.”

With swift lament
Those Ninevites repent.
They cry in tears,
“Our hearts fail!”
The whale, the whale!
Our sins prick us like spears.”

Jonah is vexed;
He cries, “What next? what next?”
And shakes his fist.
“Stupid city,
The shame, the pity,
The glorious crash I’ve missed.”

Away goes Jonah grumbling,
Murmuring and mumbling;
Off ploughs the purple whale,
With disappointed tail.

--Robert Graves (1895-1985), from Faeries and Fusiliers, 1918.

Reading 1, Revised Common Lectionary B

The Book of Isaiah, pt. 1

Isaiah awoke angry.
Lapping at Isaiah’s ears black birdsong no it was anger.
God had filled Isaiah’s ears with stingers.
Once God and Isaiah were friends.
God and Isaiah used to converse nightly, Isaiah would rush into the garden.
They conversed under the Branch, night streamed down.
From the sole of the foot to the head God would make Isaiah ring.
Isaiah had loved God and now his love was turned to pain.
Isaiah wanted a name for the pain, he called it sin.
Now Isaiah was a man who believed he was a nation.
Isaiah called the nation Judah and the sin Judah’s condition.
Inside Isaiah God saw the worldsheet burning.
Isaiah and God saw things differently, I can only tell you their actions.
Isaiah addressed the nation.
Man’s brittleness! cried Isaiah.
The nation stirred in its husk and slept again.
Two slabs of bloody meat lay folded on its eyes like wings.
Like a hard glossy painting the nation slept.
Who can invent a new fear? 
Yet I have invented sin, thought Isaiah, running his hand over the knobs.
And then, because of a great attraction between them—
which Isaiah fought (for and against) for the rest of his life— 
God shattered Isaiah’s indifference.
God washed Isaiah’s hair in fire.
God took the stay.
From beneath its meat wings the nation listened.
You, said Isaiah.
No answer.
I cannot hear you, Isaiah spoke again under the Branch.
Light bleached open the night camera.
God arrived.
God smashed Isaiah like glass through every socket of his nation.
Liar! said God.
Isaiah put his hands on his coat, he put his hand on his face.
Isaiah is a small man, said Isaiah, but no liar.
God paused.
And so that was their contract.
Brittle on both sides, no lying.
Isaiah’s wife came to the doorway, the doorposts had moved.
What’s that sound? said Isaiah’s wife.
The fear of the Lord, said Isaiah.
He grinned in the dark, she went back inside.

-- Anne Carson (1950- ), from Glass, Irony, and God, 1995.