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A New Name

“Every day my conscience makes confession relying on the hope of Your mercy as more to be trusted than its own innocence.”

― Augustine of Hippo

Scripture: Genesis 32.27

And he said to [Jacob], “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”

Reflection: A New Name
The Park Forum

It is easy to develop a moralistic view of confession—as if one is bringing a list of moral missteps that ought be followed by pledges of piety. Prayer, in this rhythm, is reduced to a series of transactions that leaves little room for wonder, grace, and inner transformation.

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that the prayers of Scripture stretch deeper and wider than mere confession:

Most psalms presuppose complete certainty of the forgiveness of sins. That may surprise us. But even in the New Testament the same thing is true. Christian prayer is diminished and endangered when it revolves exclusively around the forgiveness of sins. There is such a thing as confidently leaving sin behind for the sake of Jesus Christ.

The reality of “leaving sin behind for the sake of Jesus Christ” brings striking balance to the prayers of the Psalms. For each Psalm of confession there is another Psalm proclaiming righteousness.

Recalibrating our own prayer life to this balance of confession and celebration is not just a matter of changing our language—but allowing Christ to heal and restore our hearts and minds.

In Jacob’s case, when asked his name, he was being asked a deeper question. Originally his name meant “one who grasps,” but after he deceived his brother Esau his family gave him the name of “the one who usurps.” The connotation was, one who deceives in order to overpower. Jacobs’s name become his greatest pain.

The request for Jacob to say his name was not for the sake of acquaintance. Jacob was asked to confess his deepest pain to the face of God. Here he would find healing, hope, restoration—and, most importantly, a new name.

Bonhoeffer concludes:

To have faith as a Christian means that, through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, the Christian has become entirely innocent and righteous in God’s eyes—that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And to pray as a Christian means to hold fast to this innocence and righteousness in which Christians share, and for which they appeal to God’s Word and give God thanks.

Prayer: The Refrain

I will bear witness that the Lord is righteous; I will praise the Name of the Lord Most High.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 32 (Listen – 4:40)
Mark 3 (Listen – 3:41)

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Reason to Flee

Human goodness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.

― Anne Frank

Scripture: Genesis 31.21

[Jacob] fled with all that he had and arose and crossed the Euphrates, and set his face toward the hill country of Gilead.

Reflection: Reason to Flee
The Park Forum

Typically those fleeing their homeland have long-since abandoned the cost/benefit way of making decisions. Life has become so dark—death’s imminence pressing against them for so long—that a risk/risk decision is made.

Refugees run toward places of hope. Jacob risked everything to reach Gilead—a place which God yearns to be overflowing with those delivered from death. Such places are revered in prophecy and poetry alike. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the poet Emma Lazarus wrote in 1883. She gave voice to the place that refugees pray exists.

It is easy to think of refugees as weak and poor—they offer little short-term economic benefit—but their spirit is remarkable. On July 15, 1944, Anne Frank—whose father had tried to overcome American anti-refugee sentiment and policy multiple times as Hitler’s army marched toward his family—would write:

It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

The 15 year old would die in a concentration camp seven months later.

As Christians we give ourselves to caring for refugees not only because we read of so many in Scripture (Moses, David, John, et. al.), but because Christ was one himself. Pursued by the rulers of his day, Christ’s family became like the 65 million refugees today that risk everything to find a place of hope and mercy.

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,” Lazarus wrote of the beacon of liberty on America’s shore, “A mighty woman with a torch, whose fame /  is the imprisoned lightening, and her name / Mother of Exiles…”

Prayer: The Request for Presence

“Look upon your covenant; the dark places of the earth are haunts of violence.” — Psalm 74:19

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 31 (Listen – 7:47)
Mark 2 (Listen – 3:55)

For more, read Jesus, the Refugee and Stories of the Oppressed

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The Sense of the Ineffable

We must go back to where we stand in awe before sheer being, facing the marvel of the moment.

― Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture: Genesis 28.12

And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!

Reflection: The Sense of the Ineffable
By Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it.

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference to everywhere to mystery beyond all things.

Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attachment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery.

Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.

Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish you ability to revere, and the universe becomes a marketplace for you.

*Abridged from Who Is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Prayer: The Refrain

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 4:6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 28 (Listen – 3:17)
Matthew 27 (Listen – 8:45)

 

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Blessings in Modern Times

My grandmother blessed me for two reasons: because I was the oldest and because it was her way of saying good-bye forever.

― André Aciman

Scripture: Genesis 27.36

Then he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”

Reflection: Blessings in Modern Times
The Park Forum

On snowy mornings I would often catch a ride to high school with my best friend. As we exited his mother’s minivan in front of the school she would recite the Aaronic blessing over us. I remember feeling awkward that I was riding to school instead of walking and even more awkward that a priestly blessing had been recited over me just before 8am swimming.

These semi-frequent exchanges had faded from my memory, thankfully, along with most adolescent embarrassments, until I came across André Aciman’s account of being blessed by his grandmother inside a terminal at JFK:

My father asks the attendant for a few moments, then turns to his mother: “I want you to bless him,” he says, indicating me. This is a first. I had no idea that my father believes in religious practices, much less that he would ask her to bless me in public. But it is clear to me now that, without saying anything to me, the two of them know that we’ll never meet again.

She asks me to come closer and, in front of all the young people my age… she places her right hand on my head and begins to mutter a prayer in both Hebrew and Ladino. I wished she hadn’t done that.

I want it over and done with, but she is dragging out the prayer as if she means every word of it. I am so embarrassed. Everyone is staring at us. I roll my eyes, hoping they’ll notice. I even smile in an effort to scoff the whole thing away, to show I’m merely putting up with the old lady’s antics.

Embarrassment aside, I was struck by Aciman’s explanation of a blessing’s effect:

What grants blessings their peculiar power is that they are usually given by people who are either very old or on the point of dying—in other words people who are no longer tied to the things of this world and who already have a foot elsewhere.

I didn’t understand the Aaronic blessing until I had children of my own. It has become my heart’s cry for them. In a way, I have come to see blessings in much the same way as Aciman—though he is not religious—they are for those who “have a foot elsewhere” and have decided that nothing else they have to give is of value in comparison.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him. — Psalm 62:6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 27 (Listen – 6:27)
Matthew 26 (Listen – 10:01)

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The Sojourner’s Trust

Do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it.

― Annie Keary

Scripture: Genesis 26.3

Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.

Reflection: The Sojourner’s Trust
By Elisabeth Elliot

What do we really want in life? Sometimes I have the chance to ask this question of high school or college students. I am surprised at how few have a ready answer. Oh, they could come up with quite a long list of things, but is there one thing above all others that they desire?

“One thing have I asked of the Lord,” said David, “this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” To the rich young man who wanted eternal life Jesus said, “One thing you lack… go sell everything.” In the parable of the sower Jesus tells us that the seed which is choked by thorns has fallen into a heart clogged with the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desire for other things.

The apostle Paul said, “One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace. Response is what matters. Remember that our forefathers were all guided by the pillar of cloud, all passed through the sea, all ate and drank the same spiritual food and drink, but God was not pleased with most of them.

Their response was all wrong. Bitter about the portions allowed they indulged in idolatry, gluttony, and sexual sin. The same almighty God apportioned their experiences. All events serve his will. Some responded in faith, most did not.

God came down and lived in this same world, as a man. He showed us how to live in this world, subject to its vicissitudes and necessities, that we might be changed—not into an angel or a storybook princess, not wafted into another world, but changed into saints in this world. The secret is Christ in me, not a different set of circumstances.

*Abridged from The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter, March/April 1995.

Prayer: The Refrain

“How sweet are your words to my taste!* they are sweeter than honey to my mouth.” — Psalm 119:103

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 26 (Listen – 4:31)
Matthew 25 (Listen – 6:04)