Later in the day, news from the surgeon was good and bad.  It was hard to hear.  There were lots of tears.  I prayed for them all through my tears, and I held onto a string of prayer beads.  Afterward, I thought about a quote from Frederick Buechner, “Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless.”  So what does that say about God, since God is love?  Pain and suffering make you wonder what God can and cannot do.

My ministry today was mainly praying through tears.  I trust that God puts all of our tears in his bottle. (Ps 56.8)

Later, during worship, I offered a prayer that borrows imagery from our recent snowfall:

You blanket the earth with snow, God.  Your snow covers the ground, rests on tree limbs.  The beauty of snow reminds us of your beauty.  The sight of it awakens praise in us.  We thank you for the loveliness of your creation, for the beauty of each season.

Yet what we see is only a sliver of all that you have made.  You have set stars and galaxies in motion.  The whole universe, immensely old, is full of your handiwork, with you yourself older still.  Before all things, before all time, you are God.

The thing about you, God, that most astonishes us is that you know us.  You know each of us, even though we are so tiny and vulnerable compared to the vastness of all that you have made.  You know us, you care about us, you watch over us, you stay with us. This is the mind boggling thing, your knowledge of us.

You know when we sit, when we stand, when we lie down.  You know our thinking even before it appears in our minds.  All the days set out for us are written in your book before they even come to pass.  When we are perplexed, at our wit’s end, you know it. When we are in physical pain, you know it.  When we are scared, you know it.  When we are dancing for joy, you know it.  Our laughter, our tears, our smiles are all known to you.

Come to us afresh today, O God, with your beauty, your love, and your great strength. Fill our limbs and our lives with your healing presence.  Let us rest easily in your knowledge of us, your care for each of us.

There are echoes of Psalm 139 in this prayer, as well as 1 Corinthians 8:3, “If someone loves God, then they are known by God.” The latter was part of the morning scripture that the senior pastor preached on.

Abraham was 99 years old when he circumcised the flesh of his foreskin, and his son Ishmael was 13 years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised. That same day Abraham and his son Ishmael were circumcised. All the men of his household, those born in his household and those purchased with silver from foreigners, were circumcised with him.

Genesis 17.24-27 CEB

I imagine a conversation among Abraham’s men over this little development in their lives.

Eliezer:  “The master is going to circumcise us tomorrow.”

Asher:  “What is circumcision?”

Eliezer:  “He will take a knife and cut off that flap of skin on your penis.”

Asher:  “What!?  That will hurt.”

Eliezer:  “I know.”

Asher:  “Knife and penis do not belong together.”

Eliezer:  “True.”

Asher:  “Why is he going to do this?”

Eliezer:  “He had another of his visions.”

Asher:  “I wish God would stop talking to him.”

The benefit of circumcision as a symbol of the covenant is that it was a permanent mark in the body itself — like a tattoo, although that can be removed with some effort.  The disadvantage is that one half of all Jews could not take part in the ritual that made you a Jew.  So circumcision contributed to a segregation of the sexes in Judaism, which continued on in Christianity (in spite of Galatians 3.28).  Even today, at the Western Wall of Temple Mount in Jerusalem, men pray on the left, and women on the right.  I have prayed at that wall.  Men get the larger share of the wall, no doubt because we had to endure the knife and penis thing.

The point was to fit the human form inside a circle and a square

Ancient thinkers had long invested the circle and the square with symbolic powers. The circle represented the cosmic and the divine; the square, the earthly and the secular. Anyone proposing that a man could be made to fit inside both shapes was making a metaphysical proposition: The human body wasn’t just designed according to the principles that governed the world; it was the world, in miniature. This was the theory of the microcosm, and Leonardo hitched himself to it early in his career. “By the ancients,” he wrote around 1492, “man was termed a lesser world, and certainly the use of this name is well bestowed, because …his body is an analogue for the world.”

But what should this microcosmic man look like? Vitruvius hadn’t provided illustrations. Artists in medieval Europe, loosely echoing Vitruvius, had come up with visions of their ideal man: Christ on the cross, representing both the human and the divine. But until the late 1400s, nobody had tried to work out exactly how a man with Vitruvian proportions might be inscribed inside a circle and a square. This was the challenge that prompted Leonardo to draw Vitruvian Man.

Vitruvius was a Roman architect who proposed the idea.  Leonardo wasn’t the first to try.

I drew a picture of myself, naked, in the pose above.  I call it Flabuvian Man.  But it is too scary to look at, so I won’t post it.

I supported Obama in ’08.  His voice was reassuring during the debates with McCain.  With the economy in free fall, that was a scary time.  On his record, I approve his attempt to move the US toward universal health care.  Access to quality medical care is so important.  I was discouraged, though, when he rejected the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.  That is a lost (or delayed) chance to put thousands of men and women to work building it, helping families have breadwinners again.  My feelings on other things he has done are similarly mixed, but my opinion of him is generally positive.

After reading Dreams From My Father, I understand better what motivates President Obama.  With a few reservations, I am still inclined to support him again in the fall.  He will be the most experienced candidate running, and he will remain a counterweight to conservatives in Congress.  As a political agnostic, I am fine with divided government.

In Capernaum there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. When he heard that Jesus was coming from Judea to Galilee, he went out to meet him and asked Jesus if he would come and heal his son, for his son was about to die. Jesus said to him, “Unless you see miraculous signs and wonders, you won’t believe.”  The royal official said to him, “Lord, come before my son dies.” Jesus replied, “Go home. Your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and set out for his home.

John 4:46-50 CEB

This man comes to you, Jesus, on the road to Capernaum.  The sun says it’s past noon.  His son is sick, near death.  Desperate, he asks for your help.  You respond with a complaint.  You’re annoyed, tired of people wanting signs and wonders.  Demands, demands, all the time.  But the man is desperate because a son he loves is dying.  You missed that detail, his desperation.  After your whining vanished in the air, was there a long awkward silence?  Did you regret saying it?  I have regretted saying the wrong thing.  Did your face flush red with embarrassment when you saw his eyes fill with tears?  He is desperate.  He pleads with you once again — he must ask again! — and at last you tell him his son will live.  It’s like when the Syrophonecian woman came to you, desperate for her daughter, and you brought out a book of riddles and played word games with her.  I am asking, Jesus, because at times your compassion is strangely absent.

Inside the church, the altar flowers and candle added warmth and color to the day.  The ordination itself took place at the end of the service, with our friend answering examination questions and kneeling down to receive prayer and the laying on of hands.  After my recent doubts about ordination, today’s ceremony reminded me of the value of this ritual.