Consider, examine, test, and recognize. . .
Tuesday Morning Prayer -- Attentiveness
Luke 12:24-25
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God
feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a
single hour to your span of life?
2 Corinthians 13:5
Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that
Jesus Christ is in you?
The Morning Prayer staff asked me to pick the scripture texts we would hear this morning as
we continue reflecting on fruitful ways to engage in the practice of study, or as our guide book,
On Our Way, also calls it, “attentiveness” and “mindfulness.” Because this book urges us to study
several important texts, including the scriptures, yes, but also the text that is the world and the
book that is your own heart, I chose those two brief texts in Luke 12 and 2 Corinthians 13.
I chose them because they use some of the Bible’s words for “study.” “Consider” (translated
from a verb that means to fix one’s mind on something), “examine” (from a verb that means to
put on trial), and “test” (from a verb that means to seek proof, or as we say today, engage in
critical thinking).
So, “Consider the ravens.” “Examine and test yourselves.” For a community of scholars and
academics, these are a couple of particularly worthy objects of study—ravens, and our own
mysterious, capricious, broken, cheating, compassionate hearts.
Between the time I chose those scripture texts and this morning, I’ve wondered if perhaps I
picked them too quickly. I could have chosen a different “consider” text in Luke (12:27), the one
Emily Dickinson loved because it was the only commandment in the Bible she could keep—
“Consider the lilies.” Or I could have chosen Matthew’s version (6:26) of the saying I did select:
“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them.”
But no, I mindlessly chose Luke over Matthew, which leaves me obliged to study not birds in
general, but rather, “Consider the ravens, and how God feeds them.” So, I’ve had to think about
the diet of ravens. Do you know what ravens eat? Unlike the birds that frequent my birdfeeders at
home, ravens are not seed-eating, sap-sucking, nectar-slurping vegans. Nor do they gracefully
swipe mosquitoes out of mid-air like swallows or marlins. Ravens feast on carrion—road-kill.
And now I have to study that, which means I have to ponder what God has to do with making
sure that enough squirrels, raccoons and deer have mortal encounters with Toyotas and Jeep
Cherokees so that ravens and crows can eat and feed their babies. And I really don’t much want to
think about that, because it soon enough means asking all those questions Job directed at God
back when Job’s whole family, all ten of his children, ended up as road-kill. WHAT KIND OF
SHOW ARE YOU RUNNING, GOD?
Whether you think there’s a satisfying answer to that question depends on how you read Job,
so there’s a whole lot of studying we might do together—wrapping our brains around not only the
scriptures and the voice from the whirlwind that answered Job, but also the whole creation that
the word of God both made and describes, this unspeakably beautiful, vast, intricate, but cold,
dangerous, death-dealing universe.
Yet somehow, the more deeply you probe the cosmos, and the longer and harder you study it,
the closer you come, with the eyes of faith, to seeing God the Creator in every fiber of its
magnificent, endless, sometimes bizarre fabric.
Most days, it’s not so hard to see God’s handiwork in lilies, orchids, hummingbirds, sunsets,
and in the poetry that swells up in lovers’ hearts, sentiments almost too profound to put into
words.
It’s much harder when someone you love becomes road-kill in this mysterious, buzzing place
that sometimes slips into chaos. But here, fellow-students, fellow-considerers, examiners, and
testers, is the gospel. In precisely those moments, oddly enough, we see God most clearly and
close-up—the God, that is, whom we find revealed in the crucified one, the Christ, the very one
who bade us consider both the lilies and ravens.
In that place, and in that moment, we find the God who joins us even in our dying, who would
rather die than stay in the sin-counting business, who gives his own life that we might live. And
having seen God there, in the crucified one, we’re invited to make one more examination, and one
more discovery.
“Test yourselves,” wrote Paul. “Do you not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you?”
You who have died with Christ in baptism and shared in the meal of his body and blood, as
you move about out there on the highways and byways where people fall victim to machines—
political, mechanical, demonic, and self-made—or plain, old “natural causes,” and ravens gather,
ready to pick at the remains, precisely there you are Christ in that place, the real presence of the
crucified one from whom no one, not even the sparrows, get separated when they fall. For when
we fall—and we do fall—we fall together, into his arms, his crucified embrace. . .
. . .the embrace which is right here, in flesh and blood for you to see and touch, and in which
you know yourself held, now and always. . .as you pay attention, study, consider, and examine.
Frederick Niedner
Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso, IN 7 Sep ‘10
Attentiveness, 7 Sep 10.rtf