From the Letter to the Hebrews:
Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Hebrews 4:16 (NRSV) – May 10, 2013.)
I have an inch-long scar on the palm of my left hand; if I look closely, I can still see the pin-prick scars on either side of it which represent where the sutures that closed the wound were placed. The scar is just below my left pinky finger, which doesn’t work quite so well as my right pinky because underneath the scar the tendon was cut and had to be reconstructed. I’ve had this scar and this less-than-functional finger since I was not quite nine years old. It is a reminder of the need for boldness.
The summer of 1960 was spent like many summers of my childhood visiting my paternal grandparents (if you’ve been reading these blog posts, you know that they had disinherited my father, but even so they still entertained their grandchildren). My cousins Bob (two years older) and Randy (a year younger) were also there. Bob and I decided to go scavenging in the city dump (then within walking distance of the town). We had to climb up a large, sandy hill at the edge of the landfill and then go down its other side to get to “the good stuff.”
When we got to its summit, Bob – brasher, bolder, older, heedless of danger – ran down the sandy slope into the bowels of dump. I, more timidly, afraid I might fall, picked my way down the slope and, sure enough, my footing gave way; I fell backwards and to the side, extending my hand to brace my fall. Under the sand, I found a broken bottle. That put an end to the expedition, angered my cousin, and ruined my summer. (I took off my t-shirt, wound it around my bleeding hand, and walked back to our grandparents’ home. Bob, accepting the fact that something was seriously wrong, ran ahead and prepared our grandmother, who got in the car, met me on the road, and took me to the emergency room.)
If I had simply done as Bob had done and boldly ran down the slope, my momentum would have carried me to the bottom. It was my timidity in trying (and failing) to carefully pick my way that was my undoing. Timidity leads to failure; temerity may not always lead to success, but timidity almost never does.
I think this is what the author of Hebrews is saying, too. If we timidly approach the throne of God, we’ll never get there. There will be obstacles (sandy hillsides and broken glass, for example) that we will not be able to overcome. If we approach with boldness, our spiritual momentum will carry us past those obstacles. We may (being human, we will) make some mistakes along the way, but as Martin Luther said, “Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.”
I love this verse, and whenever I hear it, I think of that stupid, timid boy who got hurt in the landfall; if I’d just headed down that slope boldly, how different that summer would have been! The city dump may not be an appropriate analogy for the throne of grace for some folks, but it works for me.
====================
A request to my readers: I’m trying to build the readership of this blog and I’d very much appreciate your help in doing so. If you find something here that is of value, please share it with others. If you are on Facebook, “like” the posts on your page so others can see them. If you are following me on Twitter, please “retweet” the notices of these meditations. If you have a blog of your own, please include mine in your links (a favor I will gladly reciprocate). Many thanks!
====================
Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
It’s sort of the basic existential question, isn’t it? I mean it strikes me as equivalent to asking such questions as “What is the meaning of life? Who am I? What is my purpose? Is there a god, and, if so, what is God’s nature?” These are the questions that, in my life, occupy the “wee hours,” the dark times. I never seem to ask these questions when it’s bright and sunny, when it feels like “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” It’s when things aren’t right that these questions arise.
Note: Today, my verse for contemplation isn’t from the Daily Office Lectionary. It’s from the sanctoral lectionary for the commemoration of Julian of Norwich. Today is the 23rd anniversary of my ordination to the Sacred Order of Deacons; we used the lessons for Julian’s feast. So, I took the personal prerogative of reading those lessons this morning.
There are a lot of people today who claim to be religious but do not bridle their tongues. Just spend a few hours searching the internet. Limit yourself even to Facebook. Plenty of “religious” people saying lots of, shall we say, non-religious things. I won’t say their religion is worthless, but I do wonder how much they actually value their religion and what it teaches.
Recently, I sat down with a fellow clergy person, a cleric about my own age who is also a parent. We were talking about our kids and how there are times when, as mothers and fathers, we simply have to let go and let our children live their own lives and make their own mistakes. He made the interesting comment that, until he was parent to a maturing teenager, he hadn’t really understood what helplessness is. “As parents, ” he said, “we are essentially helpless.” This, he suggested, gives us a clue to understanding God.
It’s Good Shepherd Sunday . . . the Fourth Sunday of the Easter Season is always Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year, regardless of which of the three years of the Lectionary cycle we are in, we hear some lessons which mention shepherds or lambs, and we recite the 23rd Psalm as the Gradual, and we sing every “Shepherd hymn” in the hymnal. I’ve been preaching Good Shepherd sermons for 25 years, so I pretty much thought this was going to be one of those Sundays when I could just “wing it” and preach extemporaneously. 
Reading this on a morning when parts of Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, are “locked down,” when the entire city of Boston and its environs are under a “shelter in place” order as police engage in a massive manhunt for one of the two suspected perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing (the other having been killed already) is a bit strange. 
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. (KJV)
Many are familiar with the phrase “the writing on the wall,” but few know that it has a biblical origin. Here, today, is the beginning of the story from which it comes. Belshazaar, son of Nebuchadnezzar, has thrown a party. He orders booty from the Jerusalem Temple, sacred vessels of silver and gold, used as drinking vessels. While he and his friends are partying, the hand appears as related above and writes on the wall.
In the 1989 movie Romero starring Raul Julia as the martyred Archbishop of El Salvador, there is a scene in which Father Manuel Morantes (played by actor Tony Plana) paraphrases these words of the elder John: “How can we love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters whom we do see?” It is clear from the setting that what Father Morantes means by “love” is not merely romantic emotion; it is not starry-eyed sentimentalism; it is not impractical idealism. What Father Morantes means, and what I believe the elder means in this letter, is hard and gritty, down-to-earth, hands-on, practical caring about and caring for others.
