The air has regained that crisp quality too long smothered in summer’s humidity.  The trees take on the tart colors of apple, champagne and lime while farmers markets switch to fall fare.  Restaurants dust off yummy pumpkin and spice recipes and encourage the change of season with harvest decoration.  Everywhere, the slightest smell of nutmeg and cinnamin welcome us…

Oh, and someone is screaming at a football game in the next room:

Autumn has arrived!

Some folk suffer from reverse seasonal affective disorder.  We tend to be the sun sensitive, the pollen allergic or the football fanatic.  While others mourn the shorter days and cooler air, we light candles and dig out those comfy sweaters running out to sit and soak in the moonlight free of mosquitoes.

I know.  I know.  Some of you sun worshipers think we have lost it.   What of soaking in vitamin D and beach books?  These are beneficial and fun things, but sometimes it’s also healthful and enjoyable to see life from a new perspective.

As we roll through the seasons of our faith, we may grow from hearing things from another voice, from seeing those basic assumptions turned up side down.  We may find ourselves reveling in seasons we had not yet fully experienced.  A new attitude may allow us a fresh perspective.  I had that experience this week as I read a J. Clinton McCann’s (Eden Seminary, Saint Louis) commentary on that scriptural classic, The 23rd Psalm.

Remember the story of the man trying to ease pre-flight nerves through reciting the psalm was asked by the other passengers to stop?  Apparently, they associated his recital with death.  It is a popular funeral reading.  However, that isn’t the only way to understand the lyrics. 

While reading Dr. McCann, I received a new reading from our Christian brothers and sisters struggling in communist countries.  They see the psalm as a political proclamation!  Yes, in places that promise the state is the ultimate, and the state will care for you, it is a radical thought to meditate on “The LORD is my shepherd” (not anyone else, not even the state).  It may not occur to a Christian in the United States to read this psalm as a political tract, but the situation our sisters and brothers are in dictates such insight. 

Also, in many places, this same, familiar scripture is a powerful tool in spiritual and political warfare, mental illness treatment and exorcism.  Its influence is atomic as a testimony to The Almighty’s ability and desire for the care and deliverance of his people.  We’ve domesticated it, pinning these powerful words into graveside services and last rites.

If you read it again, carefully, you may see some extremely dark and dangerous imagery.  For one, it attests that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  Does not sound like a vacation spot.  Do we not, however, exist in a world determined to extinguish Christ’s gift of abundant life?

As people living in a liberated and blessed country, the presence of “a kingdom of death” (as described by Douglas John Hall) may not present itself as boldly as in other places. 

Consider where we find ourselves for just a moment.  We are immersed in advertising. It is pervasive -- something like an extraordinarily well-financed educational curriculum -- and in which we virtually "have to be a consumer," it is not surprising that our society is characterized by what Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, once called "infectious greed.” (This wording is borrowed from Merton and others.)

As good North American people, we think we achieve a living; we earn life.  Yet, this Psalm attests that life is a gift.  The response to this gift, the basics of life (green pasture and still, drinkable water), safety and security (rod and staff, comfort), is not dehumanizing, suffocating greed.  Instead, it is boundless, divine gratitude.

This intense gratitude may even mean that we are free to do without, or at least free to be content with enough. Like the Israelites we followed this through the desert this summer, we are free to trust God to provide again without human hoarding.  This gift grants us identity beyond “consumer”. We are freed for joyful obedience.

No longer compelled to consume, we are set free to share, quite literally, for God's sake -- to share our food, our drink, our sources of security, and to share even with the enemies who are with us at the table God prepares (verse 5).
 

That is a strange combination of opposites: to eat in the presence of our enemies—even at the table set by God.

With this juxtaposition before us, we approach the autumn season and are surrounded by the signs of death and the end of productivity, we know there still is life.  Spring comes, and it all starts again. 

Life seems to move in seasons; cycles come and go, drawing circles around time.  If our security is in the temporal world we see; if our trust is in self-creation promised by consumerism, then our hope is equally fleeting and empty. 

What if we can have life in all seasons?  What if we already do?  In Chattanooga, we are blessed to live in a place where the seasons are   beautifully showcased.  Spring rains wake up bluebell flowers.  Summer finds us at the river shore.  Fall colors are brushed across Signal before winter white reflects the muted sun.

Through all seasons, there is life.  God’s gift is present by the still waters, on lush pasture and as much so through death’s shadowy valley on the way to a banquet prepared by Christ.  Life is God’s gift, not our work.

I am blessed to be with you in this season.  White Oak is a place for people in all seasons, and it is life giving to experience your ministry.

Pastor Amy

Saintly Sound Bites

Speaking of seeing things in a new light:
“Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.”
Elizabeth Bowen

And what if we were in the Southern Hemisphere?  Easter would be a fall holiday!
“A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?”
Hugh Mackay