Today I’ve been noodling on the Psalter reading for this coming Sunday: Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19. It’s a blessing for a king, probably offered on either the occasion or commemoration of a coronation. The psalm blesses the king up one side and down the other, calling him to be a defender of the poor, a deliverer of the needy, and a crusher of the oppressed. There’s lots of nature imagery: sun, moon, rain upon mown grass. (Mown grass? How did they mow grass back then? Maybe it’s a cows and bears thing.) The king, the land, the people, and God’s own being are bound together in an ecosystem of blessing and prosperity.
Sounds splendid.
Having spent all my life in a country with a democratic form of government, it’s kind of hard to wrap my brain around the idea of having a king. That’s part of what makes reading the Bible tricky sometimes; with all the royal imagery, it’s somewhat challenging to capture and convey what’s at the core of these kingly depictions, for folks who don’t have the experience of living under a monarchy.
But I can completely relate to the desire to have a wise, visionary, justice-defending, rain-on-mown-grass kind of person running things. I don’t mean only at the leaders-of-the-world sort of scale. I’m also talking about at the level of my own life, and the running of the kingdom that is my own personal ecosystem. There are plenty of days where I find myself wishing that someone would just come along and take care of everything.
As a forward-thinking, independent chick, it occasioned a fair measure of cognitive dissonance when I first began to get in touch with the powerful desire for someone else to take care of things (you know, shelter, food, that kind of stuff). I’ve gotten over the dissonance, but not the desire.
More than ten years ago, I moved out of a salaried position as a pastor and into what we call, in the United Methodist Church, an extension ministry position. I became the Artist in Residence at a Catholic retreat center, where I remained for some years, and then formed my own corporation last year, which serves as an umbrella for the various pieces of my ministry. It is a fabulous fit; I love my vocation, and I have an unusual degree of freedom in ministry. It also means that I live without the forms of institutional security that I had when I worked for a congregation. I raise my own income. I take care of my own housing. I pay for my own health insurance. The tradeoff is totally, completely worth it, and I am utterly fortunate and grateful to have an amazing community of family and friends, including my wondrous sweetheart Gary, who have helped sustain this ministry in various ways, and there would be a safety net if the need ever arose. But there are days…
I remember reading Mary Gordon’s novel Spending some years ago. It’s about an artist who, to her surprise and considerable delight, acquires a patron. I thought, Ooohh, yeah, that sounds great. (She winds up with lots of other tasty benefits in addition to the financial support; these, along with our contemporary scarcity of individual patrons, provided apt cause for Gordon to subtitle her book A Utopian Divertimento.) I wouldn’t wish myself back to the era when patronage of artists was at its height—it wasn’t exactly the best of times for women in religious leadership—but I wouldn’t mind seeing a resurgence (a renaissance, shall we say?) of folks with a commitment to supporting individual artists, and in a fashion that didn’t largely revolve around contributing in a government-sanctioned, tax-deductible kind of way—but that’s another blog entirely.
The thing about reading this passage in the context of lectio divina, however, is that it challenges me not just to acknowledge the pining-for-a-patron longing that I carry but to go even beyond that. In the space of lectio, this psalm beckons me to ponder and pray with the question, How might God be calling me to be the deliverer I am longing for? How is God inviting me to be a defender of the poor, a deliverer of the needy, a person who cultivates a flourishing ecosystem not only within but also beyond myself? How can I be a rain-on-mown-grass kind of gal? (And is there a way I can be a patron for others?)
The designers of the lectionary likely chose this psalm for Advent because it resonates with—some would say foretells, but that’s another blog, too—the kingly qualities of Jesus whose birth we remember and anticipate in this season. The thing about the royal Jesus is that he turned people’s notions of a savior entirely upside down. What they were looking for in a messiah, they didn’t get. But oh, what they got…
I’ll be thinking about that, next time I get all hungry for a personal messiah. Best to keep one’s imagination open to what deliverance could really look like, and where it might come from.
Christ just might be needing to work it out through us.
May you have a rain-on-mown-grass kind of Advent.
An Illuminated Joy
