J. K. Rowling
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Stations
I know where the Raven went…
“Give us the father’s son,” we cried
and so the Son of the Father died.
The Lion of Judah picked up his cross
and went to his death like a man.
The Lamb of God picked up his cross
and went to his death as a man.
The Son of God picked up his cross and went to his death
as Adam did once, but this once, once for all.
So Lion and Lamb and God and Man lay down
(Is this the Peaceable Kingdom come at last?)
and stretched out his hands for the nails.
Not since Noah’s day has wood upheld
such a menagerie.
The raven was sent out and stayed away
unlike the dove who, flighty, like the wind,
came back to Noah twice, but then, the third time,
spurned his offered hand.
Perhaps she joined the raven then,
and circled with him overhead
until they saw the stretched out pierced hands
that waited for them both
upheld by different wood, upon a leafless tree,
while higher still above an eagle watched them all
with its keen eyes, then spiraled out of sight
of those below.
No leafy gift to bear back to the ark,
no cheery rainbow armistice with God,
but thorns and spear and rough cut wood
and women crying underneath this tree,
and gasping breath, and thunder overhead.
The raven and the dove were sent away
in hope of finding hope, and so they have.
God's grace and mercy fruited on that tree
and bear us up like eagle's wings, while
His breath breathes us in and out
with love and life.
He gives to us for us to give away.
“It is finished!”
So You say.
It has hardly begun.
In The Episcopal Church, the Feast of the Transfiguration occurs on August 6th. But the Last Sunday after Epiphany, the one I learned to call Quinquegesima when I was a little girl, is when most of us hear the story of the Transfiguration.
Depending on the year, and on whether we are using the lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer or are using the Revised Common Lectionary, we may also hear the story of how the face of Moses glowed after he spoke to the Lord on Mount Sinai. Or we may hear the story of the horses and chariot of fire taking Elijah away. Or perhaps we hear the story of Elijah waiting for the Lord, Who comes to him not in the earthquake or the whirlwind, but (as we used to hear) in "a still small voice." And then we hear how Jesus, too, went up a mountain to pray and spoke with Moses and Elijah and how he and his clothes glowed, while the voice of God spoke from a cloud. These are all stories of awe, about as far as we can get from a little baby sleeping in a manger.
The story of the Transfiguration is amazing and wonderful, and if we aren't careful sounds an awful lot like a science fiction story with an alien spaceship preparing to beam someone up - an image which got stuck in my head years ago, like an irritating tune that you can't stop humming. So when talking with the kids about the Transfiguration one year, I wanted to start with the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) story for the day. I can't recall if we were using the Prayer Book lectionary or the Revised Common Lectionary. But I think the story we heard that year was of Moses asking if he could see God, and of God's response that Moses could hide when God walked by, and then Moses could see God's back.
I started by asking the children why pirates wear eye patches. The answers were pretty impressive: "Because a shark bit the eye off!" "Because the eye was hurt in a battle!"
I said that I wasn't sure about the sharks, and of course some pirates were wounded in fights, but there was another explanation, too. I said that at one time sailors had to figure out where they were by looking at the sky. Sometimes they had to look right at the sun. Doing a lot of that damaged their eyesight, so eventually they wound up wearing eye patches.
Then I asked the kids if they knew what a solar eclipse is. (Some of the older kids did.) I said that the moon comes between the earth and the Sun, and we can see parts of the Sun that are usually hidden. But looking at the Sun can hurt our eyes, like those old pirates hurt their eyes, so we are not supposed to look at the Sun during an eclipse, ever. It is dangerous.
During the time of Moses, people believed that - just like it is dangerous to look directly at the Sun - it is also dangerous to look at God. Not because God is mean, but because God is so holy and powerful. Looking directly at the face of God would be like staring at the Sun. That's why Moses had to hide when God went by, and then he could look at his back.