March 5: On Obedience
♫ Music:
Day 9 - Thursday, March 5
Rung #4: ON OBEDIENCE
Scripture: 1 Samuel 15:22; John 14:21-24
Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. [And Jesus said to His disciples], He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.
Poetry:
Prayer
by Galway Kinnell
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
ON OBEDIENCE
Obedience to God is hard — very hard. It’s easier to do things that make us feel better about ourselves than do what God’s told us to. And the Scriptures make clear what, and how, we should obey. “He has shown you,” Micah 6:8 tell us. It’s simpler than we like to admit. But our tendency to do things other than obey is proportionate to our perceived ability to fix things ourselves.
Saul, the first king of Israel, in a moment of decision about obedience, chose poorly. Obedience was to wait (on a prophet of God who, perhaps, tended to be late to meetings); Saul was in a hurry. So he began the ritual sacrifice in worship. Worship is not bad. Worship done in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, is. And when the prophet Samuel arrived, he reminded Saul that even kings must submit to God’s authority. “To obey is better than sacrifice,” Samuel told him (1 Samuel 55:22). Jesus took it further. He said obedience is a measure of real love to God. A corollary: If I’m not treating my wife with respect, including her in my decisions, honoring her worth as a person — the flowers, cards, texts with heart emojis, don’t help. Apart from obedience to God, all the externals are empty, offensive. What’s exciting about this passage is the promise Jesus gives about doing the right thing. He says obedience is love, and then tells his disciples the reward for it is intimacy. Jesus says He will disclose Himself to those who obey (John 14:21). It’s a stunning invitation, but a skeptical disciple asks, essentially, why so nice to us and not to everyone else? Jesus says this is for anyone (v. 23).
Parker Palmer, in To Know As We Are Known: Education as Spiritual Journey, says we’re wired for that. We want to know the One who made us, the One who is the author of who we are. And He wants to know us (always has). So when we connect — knowing Him, as He knows us — we find peace. God is with us, in us, disclosing Himself to us as we live a life of obedience and disclosure of ourselves to Him.
Yet we come back to the cold reality: this is hard. Henri Nouwen, in The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God Through Prayer, Wisdom and Silence, says “many of us have adapted ourselves too well to the general mood of lethargy” in obeying God. To really obey, Nouwen says, is a choice: one beyond our feelings. It is discipline, choosing to make time to know God daily in prayer, in silence, in solitude. Today’s music echoes with a tone that penetrates our souls; it is high and low, a plaintive cry for God, yet confident of Him. The sandals in the artwork remind us of our presence in the complex and profound beauty of things. It is there, among those things that we come with toes exposed to the sun, and obey.
Prayer
Jesus, I bow my heart, my life. I obey you, and I confess that doing so is harder than I ever thought. I choose to do what you’ve told me to do, in your Word; I know, in my spirit, it’s the right thing. Please forgive my frantic activity to do things other than obey. I’d hoped they were enough. They aren’t. And I’m ashamed now of their misguided energy. Thank you for loving me. And thank you for disclosing yourself to me, letting me know You. I bring this prayer in faith, grateful that You hear and delight in me, not because I’m worthy but because you are good — so good.
Amen
Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Professor of Media & Journalism
Department of Media, Journalism and Public Relations
School of Fine Arts & Communication
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
To learn more about the themes of this year’s Lent Project, please go to:
https://ccca.biola.edu/lent/2020/#day-feb-25
About the Art:
Karamat (“Mercy” in Indonesian)
David Hooker
2009
2 of a 7 piece series
Installation of photo blankets
36” x 54” each
From the Charis: Boundary Crossings Exhibition
Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity
Karamat means “mercy” in the Indonesian language. These two works portray offerings, typically presented and placed on the ground by the Balinese Hindus to appease the gods of the earth. For the production of this art series, the artist had blankets printed with photographs he took of his feet throughout Indonesia, chronicling his journey to try to understand a different culture and its values, practices, and beliefs. Roughly the size of Muslim prayer rugs and displayed on the floor of the gallery, the works hover between the sacred and the profane, the eternal and the temporal, faith and futility, hope and despair. They seem to ask: What good is obedience if the object of your faith is void?
About the Artist:
David J. P. Hooker lives and works in the greater Chicago area where he is an artist and Professor of Art at Wheaton College. He received an M.F.A. in Ceramics from Kent State University and a B.A. in English from Furman University. His artistic practice explores objects, places, history, and memory through contemplative actions, hoping to find ways to better connect and understand the world we live in. Recently he was awarded the Dunhuang Ceramic Residency and spent two summers as an artist-in-residence in Lanzhou, China.
More about David and his work can be found on his website: www.davidjphooker.com
About the Music:
“The Call (from Five Mystical Songs)” from the album O Radiant Dawn
The Lyrics:
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.
About the LyrIcist:
George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh-born English poet, orator, and Anglican priest. Herbert’s poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets and he is recognized as “a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist.” He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and was primarily raised in England. He received his education at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1609. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the University's Public Orator and attracted the attention of King James I. Herbert served in the Parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625. After the death of King James I, Herbert gave up his secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of St Andrew's Church in Salisbury. Throughout his life, Herbert wrote Christian poetry with a precision of language and a masterful use of imagery. Some of Herbert’s poems have been turned into hymns and are still in use today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert
About the Composer:
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces, and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies. He was strongly influenced by Tudor music and English folk-song. Williams was born to a wealthy family with strong moral views and a progressive social outlook. Throughout his life he sought to be of service to his fellow citizens and believed in making music as available as possible to everyone. He went on composing through his seventies and eighties, producing his last symphony months before his death at the age of eighty-five. His works have continued to be a staple of the British concert repertoire, and all his major compositions and many of the minor ones have been recorded. His orchestral works include such popular favorites as The Lark Ascending, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, The Wasps Overture and the English Folk Song Suite.
https://rvwsociety.com/short-biography/
About the Performers:
The international award-winning British vocal ensemble Apollo5 delights audiences with versatile and engaging concert performances by singing a repertoire ranging from Renaissance, classical, and contemporary choral music to folk, jazz, and pop. Frequently performing in London, they have sung in venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Kings Place, and the Barbican. Apollo5 sings throughout the UK, and has enjoyed giving performances in many European countries, the USA, and Asia. Apollo5 is part of the Voces8 Foundation, a vocal music education charity that brings the power of music to communities around the world. Apollo5 has released albums with Voces8 Records, including their new album O Radiant Dawn, which charted in the top 10 of the UK classical charts.
http://apollo5.co.uk/
About the Poet:
Galway Kinnell (1927–2014) was an award-winning American poet best known for poetry that connects the experiences of daily life to much larger poetic, spiritual, and cultural forces. Often focusing on the claims of nature and society on the individual, Kinnell’s poems explore psychological states in free verse. He received his MA degree from the University of Rochester. During the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States greatly included him and he joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) to work on voter registration and workplace integration in Louisiana. Kinnell draws upon both his involvement with the civil rights movement and his experiences protesting against the Vietnam War in his book-long poem The Book of Nightmares. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1982 collection, Selected Poems and split the National Book Award for Poetry with Charles Wright. From 1989 to 1993 he was Poet Laureate for the state of Vermont. Kinnell studied at Princeton University and graduated in 1948. Kinnell was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University and a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/galway-kinnell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galway_Kinnell
About the Devotion Writer:
Dr. Michael A. Longinow
Professor of Media & Journalism
Department of Media, Journalism, and Public Relations
School of Fine Arts and Communication
Biola University
Michael Longinow is the former chair of Biola's Department of Journalism and the advisor of Biola’s The Chimes student newspaper. Longinow attended Wheaton College, earning a BA in Political Science, and completed a PhD at the University of Kentucky. He has not only been an educator but has also worked as a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He was a founding adviser member of the Association of Christian Collegiate Media (ACCM) and now serves as its national executive director. Longinow is a frequent workshop presenter and panelist at national conventions and has written chapters for five books dealing with journalism, history, media and religion, and the popular culture of American evangelicalism. Longinow lives in Riverside, California, with his wife Robin and their three children, Ben, Matt, and Sarah.