Today’s find: Arise

The challenge, the goad, came near the very end of the concert.

It was a delight to welcome one of my favorite Christian singer-songwriters, David Kauffman, back to his hometown last evening. And even more of a delight to encounter the set-list he’d prepared for us – jam-packed with many of the very songs that have informed my spiritual journey over the past 20-plus years.

I was equally pleased to have my Sweetie by my side, the two of us listening to David perform in the sanctuary where we had spoken our wedding vows just a little over 44 years ago. “Good For The Soul Music”, David calls his craft, and it’s a well-chosen moniker. Gerri and I both have been blessed to have songs such as “Be Still”…and “Speak Into The Moments”…and “Behold” accompany us in our quiet, contemplative moments through the years – to provide recurring reminders to invite God into the up-and-down situations that mark our days.

Behold…how some songs never get old: David Kauffman in concert at St. Peter Church in Kirkwood.

Of course, like any true prophet, David also encourages you to move forward on the spiritual path. Nostalgia is fine in small doses. But God’s work is never done. God is always striving to make all things new. Striving, through us, to make all things new. And that was the point of one of the new songs David played for us last night, “True Love Arise.” It was written, he said, as part of his role at a recent conference focused on strategies to take our society beyond polarization.

It’s a new song, but one with ancient roots. I was thinking about that as I reflected on this week’s gospel passage. In it, we find Jesus traveling north, into the region of Tyre and Sidon – that is, beyond his comfort zone. We find him encountering a stranger, a Canaanite woman. And we find him being deliberately provocative.

…the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”

I wonder though: toward whom is Jesus being provocative? At first glance, he appears to be tweaking the stranger, insulting her even. But if Jesus didn’t intend to minister to her, then why go north at all? Why not just stay home, in Galilee…where he and the disciples would have been nice and comfortable, among their own kind?

You see, I suspect Jesus had a lesson in mind for the disciples as much as for the Canaanite woman. He wanted to stretch their notion regarding the boundaries set around the Kingdom of heaven. He understood their preference for camaraderie and nostalgia, and wanted to challenge it a bit. As one commentator* notes about this gospel passage:

The human inclination to exclude is as natural as it is boring. What is exciting is the ability to push the boundaries, as the woman does, and to push ourselves beyond the boundaries, as Jesus does, because when human action cooperates with and even compels the divine, the result is a mercy that is truly stunning.

Or as David Kauffman might put it, this is the space in which we are most likely to find “True Love Arise.”

And a new song can be pretty compelling, too!

*Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, Ponder Contemplative Bible Study – Year A

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS