One…Two…Three…

Is God the giver of rules
  or the Presence of the Spirit?
Now God is Spirit
  and wherever the Spirit is
    there is our freedom
And all of us with faces unveiled
  are like mirrors reflecting
    the glory of God
We are being transformed
  into the image we reflect
    in ever-brightening glory
This is the working
  of the Spirit of God
If we but listen to and trust
  in this inner voice
We will act not in violence
  but from kindness
    and the freedom of grace…so
Seek and share Presence
  Be thankful and grow forth to
    act, be kind, and pray

Reflection

Recently as we were meeting for lunch my friend Clay pointed out the scripture verses contained in this poem, perhaps in part because he was going to be preaching on them but also, I think, because they may contain the center of the faith experience. The (broken) lines 2-5 above are from the end of the third chapter of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians – the Three and Two of the poem’s title. The One of the poem’s title is from the Shema (Hebrew for listen) – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One…” Clay may have meant the center of Christian faith or Judeo-Christian faith, but I think also it could mean anything that humans call faith.

In preparation for writing One…Two…Three… I looked at 2Cor 3/17-18 in four different translations, from David Bently Hart’s painfully literal translation to Eugene Peterson’s broadly conceptual one. Often different translations can bring out subtle differences, but for these verses the different translations are remarkably similar. The only significant exception to this was in The Message where Peterson offers a Pause. That pause is the question in the poem’s first line, “Is God the giver of rules or the Presence of the Spirit?.” I think Peterson included it as an alternative way of getting at Paul’s main point in his second letter to Corinth which was the nature of leadership in communities that are following Jesus. That nature begins with listening as in praying the Shema (done twice daily by practicing Jews) and as in beginning with an open-heartedness to God and each other. Unfortunately, at least for the Corinthians (though perhaps not for us), Paul’s negative example of leadership earlier in chapter 3, verses 1-16, has to do with Moses , when his face was veiled or not, and when he was speaking to God or the people. The Corinthian church of Paul’s time was mostly not Jewish and not familiar with the Moses’ stories in which Moses spoke with God and then told the people. Paul’s positive point, however, is that now because of the Christ all of us can listen to God. Unfortunately for most of church history, at least since the time of  the Emperor Constantine, the church’s model has been the Moses model – God speaks to the leaders, and the leaders speak to us.

Lines 6 and 7 are a very brief distillation of a recent week’s daily meditations on listening from Richard Rohr. Line 8 is a haiku that I want to become my own Shema though I should confess that I have trouble praying it even once daily.

I encourage you to read the poem, One…Two…Three…, again and to feel free to forget this reflection.