Holy, Holy, Holy
God of Love and Majesty
The Whole Universe speaks of your glory
O God most high!
-United Church of Christ Book of Worship
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
-Allen Ginsberg, Footnote to Howl, selected
What’s holy? What’s not? What do you find acceptable and bless? What is unacceptable, to be forsaken? Maybe you learned, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Perhaps you had a grandparent who was regarded as a “saint,” somehow pure in her speech and actions. And, then, maybe there was someone in your family commonly referred to as the “black sheep,” corrupting everything they touched. “Stay away from them,” you might have heard whenever she came around.. You learn your lesson well as you come to believe that a dividing line runs through the center of your life. On the one side there is the good and pure and on the other the bad and impure. Dividing things up like this can keep us out of trouble. That’s helpful. But have you noticed that as you draw the boundaries life itself becomes divided and you often feel divided against yourself, often judging and beating up on yourself for being less than your idea of perfect and pure? Jesus has a parable of transformation that goes right to the heart of the matter. It reads:
“To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like (something rotten) leaven, which a woman took and concealed in 50 pounds of flour until it was all leavened.”
The first thing you can do with this saying of Jesus is forget what you know about it. Usually, this parable has been taken to mean something like “greatness comes from small beginnings.” Certainly you’ve been surprised when some small kindness blossoms into an outcome beyond your imagining. That seems to be in the nature of things. This parable of the leaven, though, goes in another direction. It takes what you believe about pure and impure, holy and unholy and tosses it on its head and then turns it inside out.
On its Head
In Jesus' time, it was believed that leaven corrupted the purity of sacred life. Leaven was corrupt, rotten, unacceptable for sacred use. It made whatever it touched to be unclean. In a divided world, sacred and secular, the holy unleavened bread was used for the sacred feasts while leavened bread was for the unholy every day. So, scandalous Jesus,envisioning a universe of “all things new,” says that as the leaven spreads through and corrupts the whole batch of dough - that is the kingdom of God. Boundaries collapse. As Ginsberg writes, The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy! Everything is holy, the pure, the impure. This is good as far as it goes. Though finally this is not a parable about purity. It is an invitation to be leavened, to be the liveliness that spreads through life as it is. Time to turn this parable inside out.
Inside Out
Christian Contemplative author Jerry May liked to tell a story recounting the visit of Korean Zen Master Sueng Sahn to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Soen-sa nim, as he was called, gave a talk on Chinese Chan Master Yunmen’s famous koan:
A monk asked Yunmen, What is Buddha?
Yunmen replied: Dried shit-stick
Jerry’s 11 year old son, who had accompanied him to the talk, started giggling. Everytime Soen-sa nim said ‘shit’ he laughed a little harder. It was hard to sit through the whole lecture. Soon members of the audience were also stifling giggles. After the talk, Jerry and his son stepped into the night air and the boy couldn’t contain himself. He gave himself over to the laughter, rolling on the ground; “He said shit in church. He said shit in church.” Ha! Ha! Ha!
If we set up holy, we will find unholy. If we have pure, we will find impure. That's our way. However...,
The leaven fills everything. The whole universe speak of God’s glory. He said ‘shit’ in church. Ha! Ha! Ha!
I remember the first time I saw maggots. A squirrel had died and was beneath the canoe rack at the summer camp of my youth, YMCA Camp Daniel Boone. Poking at it with a stick, it seemed to move. In the shadows, the flesh seemed to crawl. I pulled the squirrel out into the sun. The sun glistened on their bodies, a writhing mass of worms. My tears surprised me. Never had I seen something quite so beautiful.
Jesus. The teaching is upside down. The poor will inherit the kingdom of heaven. The last will be first. Losing your life, you will save it. In a blink of an eye, pure and impure disappear. Acceptable and unacceptable become simple categories through which we cut up our lives, seeking to make them more manageable. What does the kingdom of heaven remind me of? Ha! Ha! Ha! He said ‘shit’ in church.
Questions:
1. Name something that you believe to be corrupting.
2. What repulses you?
3. Has ugliness ever surprised you with its beauty?
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