April 25 -- Life's Volcanoes

This week's lectionary texts: Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, and John 10:22-30.


At the time of this writing, the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland is continuing to wreck havoc on airline travel to and from a number of European nations. Sending ash several miles into the sky, the volcanic eruption has forced the cancellation of tens of thousands of flights, and stranded hundreds of thousands of people. Everyone hopes that the volcano will soon calm down enough to allow for normal air travel to resume, but experts simply don’t know when the intriguingly named Efjafjallajokull will stop erupting (indeed, in 1821, the volcano began erupting for nearly two years!).

Events like the eruption of this volcano in Iceland remind us that our globalized world has become deeply interconnected – we have become incredibly reliant on easy and swift travel, and the loss of the convenience to which we are accustomed has thrown the whole world for a loop.

Furthermore, we are forced to realize that, at the end of the day, we are not in control. We can plan and plan all we want – and, to be sure, there is nothing wrong with making plans to try to achieve our hopes and dreams. But there will be inevitably be unexpected hiccups, fortuitous coincidences, terrible tragedies, beautiful surprises. We can’t make the volcano in Iceland stop erupting any more than we can ensure that our lives will go exactly according to plan – things just don’t work that way.

But even when we grant that life is unpredictable – in ways both bad and good – we can be confident in the continuity and steadfastness of one thing: God’s deep and abiding love for every one of us. This week’s lectionary texts explain that in the midst of uncertainty, we can rely on God to be our shepherd, to bring us through life’s unexpected joys and pains, and to even bring life out of death.

Psalm 23 is almost certainly the most famous of the 150 psalms. In beautiful, poetic language, the psalmist reflects upon the loving care that God had given him. As he writes,

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters;

he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths

for his name’s sake.” (Psalm 23:1-3)

The psalmist trusts God – trusts that God will lead him to safety. He furthers, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). The psalmist has known pain and trod dangerous paths – but he recognizes that God only wants the best for him. He closes with a powerful reflection on God’s provision: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long” (Psalm 23:6)

Meanwhile, in Revelation, we read of an eschatological vision in which God has utterly delivered God’s people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). Angels and elders and strange creatures: all are worshiping and blessing God. John then writes about what he is told regarding God’s people in this new eschatological reality:

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

the sun will not strike them,

nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16-17)

God is revealed once again to be a God of delightful contradiction and paradox, for Jesus, the Lamb of God, has become the shepherd, just as he embodies divinity and humanity, leadership and servanthood, power and humility.

In the gospel of John, we read this week that Jesus took seriously his role as shepherd of his people. Accosted by those who wanted to know definitively whether or not he was the Messiah, Jesus explained that he had told them – they simply did not believe. As he went on, he added, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).

We are promised, indeed, that God has great plans for us through Christ. We are not assured that our lives will be easy – after all, Revelation states the God will “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes,” implying that none of us will make it through this messy and beautiful life without enduring struggles and pains. But Christ has promised to take care of us – he will never let go of us. Understanding that we are known intimately and loved dearly by Christ can help carry us through the unexpected moments in our lives, even when we can’t imagine what is coming next.

In Acts, we read about a woman called Tabitha, a disciple of Christ “devoted to good works and acts of charity” (Acts 9:36). Tabitha grows ill and dies, and soon after, Peter is called to come to her home. After meeting with her grieving friends, Peter sends them out of the room, turns to Tabitha, and commands, “Tabitha, get up” (Acts 9:40). Incredibly, she does – she has been restored to life through God’s power.

We may pray for miracles like the one of the resurrection of Tabitha in our own lives – for a friend or family member to beat their illness, for our finances to be fixed, for a volcano to suddenly stop erupting. Sometimes, these prayers are answered in the way that we hope for – but sometimes they are not. And it can be difficult to understand why things happen the way they do, whether for better or for worse. Scripture can prove unsatisfying when we are in the midst of challenges we never expected and aren’t sure how to face.

But in our lives – so challenging, so full of beauty and uncertainty – let us remember this Easter season that our God is one who has promised to always care for us, to love us with a love that we cannot even imagine. Goodness and mercy are ours, says the psalmist, no matter the difficult or unknown roads we must travel. In this sometimes confusing, sometimes breathtaking universe, let us look to God as our rock, our strength, our shepherd, and our constant.

Photo credit here.

September 28--Hitting a Rock with a Stick

Text focus for this week:

Exodus 17:1-7 and Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

(Additional lectionary texts for this week:

Philippians 2:1-13 and Matthew 21:23-32)

My mother has a black and white photograph hanging in the hallway of a three year old girl holding a two foot long stick. The girl’s eyes are wide with anticipation as she prepares to whack the brightly decorated papier mache llama hanging just to her side. She has been told there is a special treasure inside that piñata and that if she just hits it hard enough with her stick, then streams of candy—butterscotch and peppermints and Hershey kisses—will flow down like river. She really wants that candy.

The three year old girl hits the piñata really hard, harder than she has ever hit anything in her life. She swings that long stick so hard, in fact, that she loses her balance and skids onto the concrete floor, scraping her hands and her knees.

No candy flows down from that pretty piñata. The only things she has to show for her valiant efforts are bruised up limbs and a deflated dream.

“There was never any candy in that stupid llama!” she screams at her parents in her distress. “You tricked me and now everyone is laughing at me. I wish I could just go home. I wish I had never come here at all!”

She stomps over to the corner and refuses to speak to anyone. Not to her mother, who tries to convince her there really is candy in that llama. Not to her father, who chastises her for acting like a baby. Not to her best friend, Susan, who brings her the stick and begs her to try again. This candy-loving, stick-whacking three year old has given up hope and refuses to pretend otherwise.


The ancient Israelite community we encounter in our text from Exodus this week has also given up hope, but on a much more spectacular scale than our piñata-challenged three year old. The ancient Israelites are literally wandering from one place to another in the wilderness between Egypt and the land of Canaan, never quite sure where they will end up next. They live “paycheck to paycheck,” which for them means gathering up frost-like flakes that fall on the ground each morning and a handful of quail each night. It is not much—not butterscotch or chocolate or even milk and honey—but it is enough to sustain them from one day to the next.

The industrious ones among them fear their luck may run out and want to save for the future. Maybe the manna won’t come the next morning! Maybe the quail won’t come the next night! But when they try to save the manna and the quail, it just turns to worms overnight. Day-to-day living is the only option in this barren desert.

The social climbers among them crave the stability of food and drink from their former lives in Egypt. Slavery is better, they say, than this uncertain existence. But the decision to leave has already been made, and they have no choice but to press ahead.

And so the ancient Israelites arrive at a new camp on a new day—sustained but worried, pushing forward but second-guessing—and realize there is no water for them to drink. And it starts all over again. “There never was any land of milk and honey calling us out of Egypt!” they lash out at Moses. “You tricked us and now we will die and our children and our farm animals with us. We wish we could just go back to Egypt. We wish we’d never come here at all!”


What do you do if you’re Moses, the reluctant leader of this rag-tag alliance? What do you do if you’re the parent of a three-year old who has never seen candy spill from a piñata? What do you do if you’re stuck in a day-to-day existence and don’t know how you’re going to pay next month’s rent?

“I will stand in front of you on a rock at Mount Sinai,” the Holy One offers to Moses. “I will stand with you in front of that papier mache llama,” says the parent to the small child. “I will stand with you as you go to that temp agency,” says our God to the laid-off social worker. “Hit that rock with the stick, and water will come out of it so that the people can drink.” Hit that rock with the stick and streams out of the rock will cause water to flow down like rivers.

Hit that rock with a stick, says our God to everyone who wonders how we’re going to survive in these uncertain times. Keep on hitting it, even though you’re blindfolded, even though others second-guess you, even though you second-guess yourself. I have led you out of your slavery, and I have given you manna and quail, and I will give you more than enough water, as if from the deep ocean. I have done it before, and I will do it again. And I will stand with you, even until the end of the age.

We don’t know when that papier mache piñata will finally break, we don’t know when that rent check will finally come, we don’t know when that stream will finally flow, but God is still with us, and we are still with God. May we trust it in plenty and in want, in certainty and in doubt. Amen.

P.S. Kelsey Rice Bogdan has graciously exited her role as MBS Blogger and passed on the duties to me! I'm Gusti Newquist, a June 2008 graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Presbyterian minister-to-be. I served as the MBS seminary intern from October 2005-May 2006 and am delighted to be back with MBS in this capacity.