Day 37 - Thursday, March 30
Title: JESUS SPEAKS OF A FUTURE WITHOUT HIS PHYSICAL PRESENCE
Scripture: John 16:17–33
At this some of his disciples remarked to each other, “What is this that he tells us now, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again, in a little while you will see me’ and ‘for I am going away to the Father’? What is the ‘little while’ that he talks about?” they were saying. “We simply do not know what he means!”

Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him what he meant, so he said to them, “Are you trying to find out from each other what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will not see me, and again, in a little while you will see me’? I tell you truly that you are going to be both sad and sorry while the world is glad. Yes, you will be deeply distressed, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman gives birth to a child, she certainly knows pain when her time comes. Yet as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers her agony for joy that a man has been born into the world. Now you are going through pain, but I shall see you again and your hearts will thrill with joy—the joy that no one can take away from you—and on that day you will not ask me any questions.

“I assure you that whatever you ask the Father he will give you in my name. Up to now you have asked nothing in my name; ask now, and you will receive, that your joy may be overflowing.

 “I have been speaking to you in parables—but the time is coming to give up parables and tell you plainly about the Father. When that time comes, you will make your requests to him in my own name, for I need make no promise to plead to the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. Yes, I did come from the Father and I came into the world. Now I leave the world behind and return to the Father.”

“Now you are speaking plainly,” cried the disciples, “and are not using parables. Now we know that everything is known to you—no more questions are needed. This makes us sure that you did come from God.”

“So you believe in me now?” replied Jesus. “The time is coming, indeed, it has already come, when you will be scattered, every one of you going home and leaving me alone. Yet I am not really alone for the Father is with me. I have told you all this so that you may find your peace in me. You will find trouble in the world—but, never lose heart, I have conquered the world!”

Poetry & Poet: 
“The Name of God”
by Anya Silver

Like a baker, swaddling the juice and heft of apples
     in pastry,
I want my mouth to cradle the delicious name of God.

Kissing the Torah, I breathe the dust that has lain on
     the name of God,
imagine ink on my indrawn breath.

I will dream myself into the body of a bee. I will enter
     the honeycomb
and sip the scent of blackberry in the golden
     name of God.

I will open the windows of my house so the
     name of God
     can write itself

on my walls with pigment of breeze and pollen,
     with stylus tipped in light.

If my heart were an amber room, I would inscribe the
     name of God
over its doorways, and once a year I would flame it down
to spicy smoke and oil.

When I was a girl, I drank from the chalice and felt
     the wine’s heat travel
down my bones, each pressed grape’s drop alit with
     the secret name of God.

And later, full of grief, I let a woman press hard
     against my spine and felt
life rushing again through my body, releasing the
     clenched-up name of God.

I want the name of God to frost over my sight, to loop
     the tides to my ears.
How can I be frightened with those vowels
     in my lungs, flaring like paper lanterns?

FRAILTY AND HOPE

At its beginning, Lent reminded me of the frailty of my body: “remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” Now, a little past its halfway point, Lent reminds me of the frailty of my devotion: the fast I have relaxed, the prayers I have neglected, and the service to my neighbors I have failed to carry out.

In this frailty, I am forced to confront how difficult it can be for me to embrace the words of Christ. In our Scripture reading today, Jesus warns the disciples of the suffering they shall endure when His earthly ministry is over, but also promises them incomparable joy at His return. There is a part of me that chafes at these words. Even as I believe that Christ’s return will heal all pain, I struggle to feel consoled in the midst of the hurts and sorrows of everyday life. It turns out that my capacity to hope is often as frail as my devotion.  

When I read Anya Silver’s “The Name of God,” however, I feel my hope strengthen. The poem is bursting with the joy of the presence of God. Each exuberant couplet gives us a new, deeply physical image for addressing God by name. The poem opens: “Like a baker, swaddling the juice and heft of apples in pastry, / I want my mouth to cradle the delicious name of God.” The joy in God’s name is not just a pleasant sentiment, but something which, like a perfect dessert, is immediate, pleasing, and life-giving.

Human suffering also has a quiet but significant presence in the poem. It ends: “I want the name of God to frost over my sight, to loop the tides to my ears. / How can I be frightened with those vowels in my lungs, flaring like paper lanterns?” The repeated invocation of God’s name pleases the senses, but also banishes fear.

Anya Silver wrote as a poet deeply aware of human fear and suffering of the kind I can only imagine. In 2004, she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, which ultimately took her life in 2018. Much of her verse would go on to explore her illness and God’s presence throughout it. In 2010 she told Macon Magazine that “when I felt at my lowest, my weakest, my most needy, is when I felt the sustaining presence of the divine the most.”

Unlike my initial response to today’s reading, Silver’s poem abounds with confidence in the promises of God. It does so, not by minimizing the extent of human suffering, but by exulting in the presence of God. Where my own frail hope reduces the presence of God to a remedy for my own pain, the speaker in Silver’s poem begins by delighting in the mystery and sweetness of God’s presence, signified by his name. Here we see human desire pointed towards its true object and, as a result, its frailty is made strong: How can it now be frightened?

Prayer:
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen
   –– Collect for Lent V, Book of Common Prayer, 2019

Jonathan Diaz
Ph.D. Student, Baylor University
Alumnus of Biola University

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