Written on May 30, 2008

[For the June 8, 2008 lectionary: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26]

"EIGHT WORDS" by Larry Patten

Last night, I fixed dinner. After mushrooms and garlic simmered, a quarter-cup of Madeira wine was added. The recipe then instructed, “cook two minutes or until liquid evaporates.”

In cooking, sometimes the term “reduced” might be used instead of “evaporate.” The reduction, the evaporation, will deepen the flavors.

If you reduced the key events of a day into a single, descriptive list of words, what would be included? As you think about your day, “reducing” the activities to solitary words, choose your words carefully.

How about this list:

Invite

Eat

Teach

Listen

Engage

Encourage

Confront

Heal

Hold it. Take a few extra seconds and study those words again. You probably read them quickly, but please, read once more.

I asked you to read for a second time to honor the effort it took to identify those eight words. In my first effort, every word had “ing” suffixed on the end. “Inviting” instead of “invite” and so forth. At the outset, selecting just one word for each activity was a challenge. And then, looking at my initial list, I questioned if I’d chosen the best form of the word. Since I’m grammar-challenged, I had to look up what adding “ing” does . . . it turns a verb into a noun. And, hey, it also made the word longer!

So I reduced inviting to invite. The noun returns to the simpler, feistier verb form. My best days are verb oriented. Action oriented.

How ‘bout you?

However, those eight verbs were not part of any day I experienced. Instead, according to Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26, they were part of a day in the life of Jesus. In those sparse fourteen verses, the Nazarene was extraordinarily verb oriented.

If you read those fourteen verses, maybe you’ll disagree with me. Maybe you’ll discern more or less action. Even more likely, if you reduced the fourteen verses to singular words, you’d identify different words. Differing interpretations will be revealed in reduction. How you read the Bible will always be unlike me.

And yet, whatever is the same or dissimilar on our reduced Gospel lists, and with whatever list we make based on our own day of activities, pay attention to the verbs.

To the action.

Instead of dynamic, transformative verbs like Jesus’ encourage or confront, a recent daily list for me would include: write, nap, mow. Yup, Jesus’ verbs sure seem more impressive than mine. Dull Larry.

But wait. My list—or your list—shouldn’t be too casually discarded in the trash bins of self-criticism and woe-is-me.

Reading Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 can be intimidating. It starts with that “invite.” Jesus says to a tax collector, “Follow me,” and a new disciple was born. Someone left an old way for a new path. Invite! Then the verses conclude with renewed life, a hand and a hope touched a child who some said was dead. And yet, “the girl got up.” Heal!

When I first read Matthew for this week’s essay, wondering what I might discover within it, one thing was obvious. These verses, with Jesus’ (at least) eight actions, represent why the phrase AND YET remains essential to my understanding of faith. I believe, every day, and in every way, there are endless encounters between the human and the Holy. There are precious, unpredictable moments where “something” occurs and the activity—conversation or sunset or image on a web page or the wag of a dog’s tail or the look of a patient in the hospital or the silence before dawn or something your kid just said—reveals there is more to come. Reveals there is the whisper or shout of new or different or bewildering. The unexpected. The Holy.

I’d love to know what choices you made to “reduce” Matthew’s verses down to solitary words. Maybe your words were a mix of nouns and verbs. Maybe you slipped in an adjective. Maybe you “cheated” and snuck in a hyphenated word. But they all revealed you, and your sense of our gospel-faith. Perhaps even your sense of how scripture opens us to God’s newness.

And I hope, if not this day, on some days, you recall and review your actions. Take a day to examine yesterday. Maybe my mow didn’t seem as dynamic as Jesus’ teach . . . but please let me resist comparison envy. For me, sometimes mow—while I battle the weeds called our front yard—means I talk with my across-the-street neighbor. He’s Sikh, a different faith tradition than me. And oh, the conversations—the Holy and human moments—we’ve had that I’ve treasured. All because of a verb—mow—was included in my day. I mow, and yet . . .

What’s on your list? What events deepened your day? Where was the Holy a verb?

in Peace,

Larry