Sermon for the people of God at St. Mark Hope and Peace preached, 2018-03-04, Lent IIIB
Preaching text: John 2: 13-21
There is a lot going on in this passage. Much of it makes little sense to us, not being first century Jews, and not having direct access to the practices, sacrifices, and pieties of first century Jews.
Unlike us, Jesus was an observant Jew from a family of observant Jews,. We learn from Luke that Jesus’ family went to Jerusalem every year for the Passover [Luke 2:41], and Jesus appears to continue this tradition into his adulthood.
Jesus has come to the Temple before. But this time is different – this time Jesus notices what’s happening in the outer courts in a way that he hasn’t before.
He notices people selling animals to be sacrificed, sheep and cattle for wealthier people, doves for the poor.
He notices money changers, who are exchanging pilgrims’ money into the coinage necessary to pay the annual temple tax – which, bizarrely, is the Tyrian shekel.
It was important that the temple tax be paid with silver, and Tyre – a Northern city just outside of Jewish territory – had an independent mint that made coins that were 90-95% pure silver, the purest silver around.
Unfortunately, the Tyrian coins were engraved with an image of Melkart, the city-god of Tyre, which, since we’ve just had a refresher on the ten commandments, is obviously in violation of them – it’s a graven image, and it’s an image of a God other than the One God of Israel.
When we approach the world as peacemakers, we are called to observe the world attentively, looking for gaps in justice, places where the grace of God is needed. When Jesus comes to the Temple, he finds these places easily.
I should tell you there is some debate about what exactly upsets Jesus about this scene. I suspect that there are some details we have lost – there may have been dishonesty or corruption, since those are common where there is commerce. Perhaps people we being overcharged for sacrificial animals. Certainly the use of pagan currency to pay a tax for God’s house is offensive.
The text tells us that Jesus accuses the dove-sellers of “making my Father’s house a marketplace,” and the disciples see in Jesus a person consumed with zeal for God’s house.
They are quoting Psalm 69. It is zeal for your house that has consumed me, the Psalmist writes. The insults of those who insult YOU have fallen on ME. [Psalm 69:9]
The use of currency with a pagan God’s image is certainly an insult to God, and Jesus takes that insult personally. He is deeply angered at the misuse of God’s house, overcome by the distance of the marketplace-Temple of his day from the house of prayer for all peoples envisioned by Isaiah.
This is not what the house of God is supposed to look like.
Jesus’ zeal for God’s house is a vision of what the Temple should look like – a place where all can offer prayers and sacrifice, rich and poor alike, where no one makes a profit off other people’s piety, and a place where only God is God – not money, not the marketplace and not Melkart.
Jesus sees the house of God in a world where Israel is free from her Roman yoke, where no Roman coins of any kind are used in Jerusalem, where it’s possible to give one’s offering with pure silver, unadulterated by copper, unmarred by images of idols.
And struck by the contrast between that imagined world and the real world, consumed with zeal, Jesus searches around him and uses what he finds – fraying ropes binding sacrificial animals in place, dirty reeds that were animal bedding or straw that was their food – to create a “whip of cords.”
Jesus makes a whip and then uses the whip to make one of the most important tools of non-violent protest: a spectacle.
Jesus is an active agent – he makes a whip and drives out animals, he pours out coins and overturns tables.
It’s messy and chaotic, goes against custom and law and authority. It gets people upset and paints a picture of the upside down world promised in the Magnificat, where the poor are fed and the rich go hungry. [Luke 2:46-55] Jesus literally upsets the tables to symbolically upset the status quo and paint a vivid picture of God’s transformation of the world. The marketplace world and its marketplace values will have to go if there is to be room for God in God’s house.
So to recap, Jesus’ seminar in nonviolence has so far covered these steps:
First, look at the world with attention, and notice the specifics of what’s happening around you.
Second, compare that world with God’s vision of the world as it should be
Third, look around again and find the tools that are handy to
Fourth, Create a ruckus
That ruckus should be created with purpose, of course, designed to symbolize or signify the new order we imagine.
For us, the question might be, “What will this look like on the evening news?”
What are the optics?
What will people see?
A whip, the chaos of animals milling about, coins poured out.
Candlelight vigil, arms linked in solidarity. Rainbow flag, rainbow facepaint. People sitting in the road, blocking traffic.
Water cannons, pepper spray, dogs attacking protesters. A bloody execution.
Wait, what?
Part of the strategy of nonviolence is to turn violence on itself. Nonviolence anticipates retaliation and welcomes it. We know that authorities will escalate unreasonably, will demonstrate the irrationality and wickedness that are at the core of oppressive power structures.
In his letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. writes, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” And again, “The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
Direct action is a dramatization that creates a crisis – as, for instance, a rabbi driving out animals and overturning tables, disrupting business as usual so that folks are forced to confront the flaws in the sacrificial infrastructure and cannot help but notice the person at the center of this chaos.
Matthew (21:12-13), Mark (11:15-19), and Luke (19:45-48) tell us this protest in the Temple came at the end of Jesus’ life, that it was the immediate cause of the crucifixion.
Jesus will scold the soldiers who arrest him in the Garden, reminding them of how he preached openly in the Temple (Matthew 26:55//Mark 14 48-49//Luke 52-53). We could mention also this open demonstration, designed to attract attention. Nonviolence takes place in the light of day, in the middle of the city, in the place that has (unfortunately) become a marketplace, filled with people.
Attracting the attention of the authorities isn’t safe. But it’s not supposed to be safe.
Back in John’s story, “the Jews” – religious authorities, presumably – question Jesus about the whole temple/marketplace/tables/doves thing – asking, confusingly, for a “sign,” as if Jesus protest itself wasn’t a clear sign, like they want “The Temple Is Not Marketplace!” painted on posterboard for this to be a legitimate protest. Like they want him to produce written permission from the high priest to cause a disturbance, or, like the religious leaders whom Dr. King is writing to, they’re wondering why Jesus doesn’t try to negotiate first, why he’s resorted to “unwise and untimely” direction action.
And typically, Jesus doesn’t exactly answer their question, saying, “Destroy this temple, an in three days I will raise it up.”
Like everything in John’s Gospel, this saying has layers of meaning. There’s the literal temple, still standing in Jesus’ time but forever destroyed by the time John is writing. And there is, as the narrative tells us, the temple of Jesus’ body, and the promise that Jesus will be killed, and that in three days Jesus will be raised again.
Even in John’s Gospel, then, when several years separate this event from the crucifixion, the logic is the same. Jesus does this sign – this act of civil disobedience – and signals the incoming of God’s kingdom. Throughout his ministry, Jesus gives signs – in his healing, in his teaching, in his table fellowship and in his body – of the change that’s coming.
Jesus is here d̳a̳r̳i̳n̳g̳ the authorities to kill him. “I’d like to see you try.”
And eventually they do try, and they succeed, except:
Jesus’ violent death provides an opening for an even more spectacular sign, an even clearer image of the new world that God is ushering in.
In the new world, peace is triumphant over violence, the temple is torn down and built up, the rich starve and the hungry eat, marketplaces become houses of prayer, and greed and hatred don’t have the final word,
Jesus’ ruckus in the temple, tables turned and money poured out, animals running amok, is a spectacular image of the upside-down logic of God’s kingdom, the kingdom promised through the prophets, the Kingdom testified to by Jesus’ mother when she sang the Magnificat.
And we are called to do likewise. To take that magnificent, Magnificat image, of God scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts just as Jesus scatters coins on the Temple floor, and to look around at the world we live in, and compare them.
When we see places where they don’t line up, where the world we have doesn’t match the world God wants for us, we’re to use the tools and images available to us to create a picture of the world flipped on its head, the marketplace brought down and the Temple lifted up – a picture so compelling that it turns heads and turns hearts, just as God is turning the world upside down.
The hymn of the day – which for the record I did not pick out – is #723, Canticle of the Turning.
++
Works consulted:
Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, on Google Books
Alexis-Baker, Andy. "Violence, Nonviolence and the Temple Incident in John 2:13-15." Biblical Interpretation, vol. 20, no. 1-2, 2012, pp. 73-96. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1163/156851511X595549.
and of course:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Showing posts with label season: Lent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label season: Lent. Show all posts
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
[midrash] temptations in the wilderness
[let's just all agree to headcanon Jesus as a trans girl, ok? I'll go first.]
[content notes: intentional food deprivation, suicidal ideation]
[inspired by bestie's version of the temptation story and her reflections on Jesus' baptism]
Temptations in the Wilderness
Matthew 3:13-4:11
Her cousin greets her with a grin and a peace sign, like he has a thousand times before.
Her stomach flutters -- less from the presence of so many bodies as from the knowledge of what's inside them -- the oppressive intent of repentance, the turning, turning, that's tugging her too. The crowd's fervor tugs at her, pulls her where she wouldn't go, or wouldn't go yet.
A press of hands all around, John's smiling refusal to baptize her, an argument they've had many times before, half-joking, about worthiness and precedence, elder cousin and younger kinswoman, greater and lesser, first and last, and then Jesus kneels and John kneel, and John dunks Jesus like they're kids again, rough hands on her shoulders.
Dripping wet, she emerges from the river, and the skies open.
This is what God looks like like, a reflection of her own soul, diving from heaven into the waters, fearless, landing on her sodden robes and becoming enveloping light, saying, "You are my beloved child. I'm so pleased with you."
belovedchild
She wades out of the water, teases John, says something under her breath about needing some time alone, and John nods and tells her, "Go into the wilderness. It's what I do," but God is already pulling her there, no longer visible or audible, but a tug on her heart like the strongest winds. Like riptide.
She spends a lot of time in prayer.
Some things she can see clearly -- a long, narrow road. Many secrets. Friends, close as her breath, and betrayal. And God's kingdom, all around --in the stillness of the wilderness, she remembers children, and lepers, widows, and sinners, each of them in their way perfectly reflecting God. And the grains of the earth and the birds of the air, and all the things that are given for human consumption, and all the work that people do, building and crafting and weaving, and it is all an image of God.
Then she'll walk for awhile, pulled by that invisible wind, and she sees nothing at all.
She hears John's voice, calling for repentance, and she thinks yes, yes, he's right. And remembers the fate of prophets, and would stop to weep, but she's tugged further along.
belovedchild
Pieces of it are already in her hand -- she can feel herself reaching out, touching stopped ears and broken limbs, can feel the place whence the power comes -- she could do it now, she's ready now, and her muscles are tense with anticipation.
She could stop storms in their paths, multiply bread and feed every starving child. She could do it now.
But it's not time yet, says the wind, blowing stronger, whipping her robes around her until they're the enemy, preventing her from taking another step.
And yet she stumbles further.
She thinks perhaps she knows how it should end, but all she can see there is darkness, and death, and she is nowhere near sure she's strong enough.
belovedchild
She sits and thinks about death and Rome and desire, and all the good she would do if there were only time, and if only people listened.
Whenever she's visited John, since she was child fresh out of Egypt until this last time at the Jordan, John has explained that people won't listen. John, with a voice that could fell trees and ignite nations. People won't listen, and so she will fail.
She walks further into the wilderness, away from failure and from success, into the heart of the mystery that whispers belovedchild and gives her glimpses of a world where grown-ups sit at God's feet like children, learning, playing.
The shape of her body is strange and growing stranger. Muscled, weak, tired, restless. She walks, she doesn't know how far, and the wind blows up around her. At night she lies down, but doesn't sleep. She listens, and the desert tells nothing.
She thinks maybe she can recognize this body as her own, for the first time.
God saw her in the Jordan, and God was pleased with what God saw.
If she saw God doveshaped and lovely, maybe God, too, saw her as she really is.
Her feet hurt, and then become calloused, and then she loses them altogether, has no sense of them belonging to her. Then her hands, and her voice, and her beard and her hair and her eyes and her ears. There is still something that's her (belovedchild) but it's shapeless and starving.
Feed me.
She longs for braided bread and fresh fish, but there is nothing but dust and stones.
Hungry.
If she ate a stone (like an infant, innocent) or two or three or three thousand, she would feel full. If she changed the rocks to bread, she would be full. She can feel the shape of it (in that part of her that isn't hand or foot or voice or even thought, but Power), silt and sediment becoming wheat and oil. It would be easy. It would be nothing.
And she would be full and forget what hunger means.
She must remember hunger, must remember starvation, hollow agony, and the feeling that she would do anything, anything, to stifle that pain for a moment. She would cheat, or steal. She might murder, and she wouldn't even know when the Sabbath was to care if she broke it.
Remember hunger.
But that will be later. Now, starving, she holds the hunger at bay and reaches into the tug of the desert winds, so wild now she has no choice but to follow, and the wind takes her up and far away from her life, and it seems to her that she is in Jerusalem, although she may just be on a cliff, overlooking desolation.
Either way, she is ready to jump.
It ends in death, why not end it now?
Of course it ends in death, and in Jerusalem, and at the Temple, where, unseen and unnoticed, a woman could preach Good News forever and be ignored. Why not begin it the way it must end?
And if you are God's child, then God wouldn't let you die.
A child hiding in the Temple, testing her parents, waiting to see if they'll come back.
If they really loved you.
If God means for you not to die, then God will rescue you.
Jump.
(But God probably wants you to die.)
Jump.
Death, and flight, and the sensation of falling, and the possibility of rising, and surrender to the forces of nature, wind and gravity, and the forces of darkness, oblivion and destruction -- if she just stops holding on --
Jump.
belovedchild
There is no second vision, no intervention. God descended once and wrapped her in light, and if she holds her mind just so, she can remember beyond the physical senses (dove, warmth, whisper) what it felt like to know that she was God's.
Is God's.
She steps away from the cliff.
And walks higher.
(Whenever she looks down, for the rest of her life, she'll think about jumping
but she never will.)
She sits down, as if to rest, or teach, and the world goes gray, then clarifies into a vision, golden at the edges -- the farthest valleys that she can see from this pinnacle, where vineyards grow, and goatherds tend their flocks, and she can taste:
sweet wine, tangy cheese, salted fish, mother's bread (so, so, so hungry, still). There are friends at either side and a cup that overflows with joy, the fatted calf has been slain, and there is feasting without end. This is the taste of God, but pleasure is not God, and she makes herself swallow and taste the desert grit that fills her mouth.
"Repent! Repent and return to the God who brought you up out of Egypt, the God who sets before you the ways of life and death. Listen, sinners! There is still time to turn again to God. Hear what God demands of you -- that you do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God. That you love your neighbor as yourself..." This is John's voice, but it is also her voice, and the voice of every prophet. It is the voice of Law, and also the voice of Love, and it sounds like God, but it is not God, so she closes her mouth and stops preaching, and listens to the uncanny winds.
She holds a child in her arms, and in the distance an ephemeral spouse does chores. This is her family, and every family -- it is Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, her parents and her siblings, Mary and Martha and Lazarus growing old together, building a life. She nurtures a child, and teaches it, feeds it and clothes it and when it grows old, it will care for her. This feels like God, but it is not God. She lets go of the child, and feels the ache and cold and strangeness of her body, sitting on a mountain, learning the posture of a teacher.
The Temple smells of livestock and blood sacrifice, and under that finest resins, and smoke without end. When they no longer bring animals, they bring praises and incense and oils wrought at great cost, and their labor and their joy, their sacrifice and their worship, are pleasing to God. This is the scent of God, but it is not God. The desert smells ancient, and cold.
She opens her eyes and sees a ladder dangling in front of her. She can see the throne that is hers, covered in glitter, draped silks so fine they are like water and covered in mirrored gems that reflect glory upon glory, the throne she dreamed of when she played at being a princess as a child. If she climbs the ladder and sits in that throne, then everyone to the furthest reaches of the valleys that surround her pinnacle will obey her softest command: "Share," or "Heal," or, "Love." The light that comes from that throne refracts into rainbows, -- and this looks like God. Wherever she looks, this looks like God.
belovedchild
This looks like the heavens opened up, and a voice calling her home, to the place where she belongs, where she will be clothed in finest robes and honored like an eldest daughter, where she will be God's princess child and where her siblings and children will gather, uncountably numerous, to feast with her and to worship her Parent. No one will be lonely, and no one will know what hunger means. Home.
belovedchild
A God who comes to her tenderly, who tastes of love and deepest sacrifice, who feels like her mother, and a little like herself, the God who named her, and who summoned her into the wilderness -- the God of love and family and pleasure and joy, who demands worship and evokes awe, the God who summons her home to Galilee, where it all begins.
[content notes: intentional food deprivation, suicidal ideation]
[inspired by bestie's version of the temptation story and her reflections on Jesus' baptism]
Temptations in the Wilderness
Matthew 3:13-4:11
Her cousin greets her with a grin and a peace sign, like he has a thousand times before.
Her stomach flutters -- less from the presence of so many bodies as from the knowledge of what's inside them -- the oppressive intent of repentance, the turning, turning, that's tugging her too. The crowd's fervor tugs at her, pulls her where she wouldn't go, or wouldn't go yet.
A press of hands all around, John's smiling refusal to baptize her, an argument they've had many times before, half-joking, about worthiness and precedence, elder cousin and younger kinswoman, greater and lesser, first and last, and then Jesus kneels and John kneel, and John dunks Jesus like they're kids again, rough hands on her shoulders.
Dripping wet, she emerges from the river, and the skies open.
This is what God looks like like, a reflection of her own soul, diving from heaven into the waters, fearless, landing on her sodden robes and becoming enveloping light, saying, "You are my beloved child. I'm so pleased with you."
belovedchild
She wades out of the water, teases John, says something under her breath about needing some time alone, and John nods and tells her, "Go into the wilderness. It's what I do," but God is already pulling her there, no longer visible or audible, but a tug on her heart like the strongest winds. Like riptide.
She spends a lot of time in prayer.
Some things she can see clearly -- a long, narrow road. Many secrets. Friends, close as her breath, and betrayal. And God's kingdom, all around --in the stillness of the wilderness, she remembers children, and lepers, widows, and sinners, each of them in their way perfectly reflecting God. And the grains of the earth and the birds of the air, and all the things that are given for human consumption, and all the work that people do, building and crafting and weaving, and it is all an image of God.
Then she'll walk for awhile, pulled by that invisible wind, and she sees nothing at all.
She hears John's voice, calling for repentance, and she thinks yes, yes, he's right. And remembers the fate of prophets, and would stop to weep, but she's tugged further along.
belovedchild
Pieces of it are already in her hand -- she can feel herself reaching out, touching stopped ears and broken limbs, can feel the place whence the power comes -- she could do it now, she's ready now, and her muscles are tense with anticipation.
She could stop storms in their paths, multiply bread and feed every starving child. She could do it now.
But it's not time yet, says the wind, blowing stronger, whipping her robes around her until they're the enemy, preventing her from taking another step.
And yet she stumbles further.
She thinks perhaps she knows how it should end, but all she can see there is darkness, and death, and she is nowhere near sure she's strong enough.
belovedchild
She sits and thinks about death and Rome and desire, and all the good she would do if there were only time, and if only people listened.
Whenever she's visited John, since she was child fresh out of Egypt until this last time at the Jordan, John has explained that people won't listen. John, with a voice that could fell trees and ignite nations. People won't listen, and so she will fail.
She walks further into the wilderness, away from failure and from success, into the heart of the mystery that whispers belovedchild and gives her glimpses of a world where grown-ups sit at God's feet like children, learning, playing.
The shape of her body is strange and growing stranger. Muscled, weak, tired, restless. She walks, she doesn't know how far, and the wind blows up around her. At night she lies down, but doesn't sleep. She listens, and the desert tells nothing.
She thinks maybe she can recognize this body as her own, for the first time.
God saw her in the Jordan, and God was pleased with what God saw.
If she saw God doveshaped and lovely, maybe God, too, saw her as she really is.
Her feet hurt, and then become calloused, and then she loses them altogether, has no sense of them belonging to her. Then her hands, and her voice, and her beard and her hair and her eyes and her ears. There is still something that's her (belovedchild) but it's shapeless and starving.
Feed me.
She longs for braided bread and fresh fish, but there is nothing but dust and stones.
Hungry.
If she ate a stone (like an infant, innocent) or two or three or three thousand, she would feel full. If she changed the rocks to bread, she would be full. She can feel the shape of it (in that part of her that isn't hand or foot or voice or even thought, but Power), silt and sediment becoming wheat and oil. It would be easy. It would be nothing.
And she would be full and forget what hunger means.
She must remember hunger, must remember starvation, hollow agony, and the feeling that she would do anything, anything, to stifle that pain for a moment. She would cheat, or steal. She might murder, and she wouldn't even know when the Sabbath was to care if she broke it.
Remember hunger.
But that will be later. Now, starving, she holds the hunger at bay and reaches into the tug of the desert winds, so wild now she has no choice but to follow, and the wind takes her up and far away from her life, and it seems to her that she is in Jerusalem, although she may just be on a cliff, overlooking desolation.
Either way, she is ready to jump.
It ends in death, why not end it now?
Of course it ends in death, and in Jerusalem, and at the Temple, where, unseen and unnoticed, a woman could preach Good News forever and be ignored. Why not begin it the way it must end?
And if you are God's child, then God wouldn't let you die.
A child hiding in the Temple, testing her parents, waiting to see if they'll come back.
If they really loved you.
If God means for you not to die, then God will rescue you.
Jump.
(But God probably wants you to die.)
Jump.
Death, and flight, and the sensation of falling, and the possibility of rising, and surrender to the forces of nature, wind and gravity, and the forces of darkness, oblivion and destruction -- if she just stops holding on --
Jump.
belovedchild
There is no second vision, no intervention. God descended once and wrapped her in light, and if she holds her mind just so, she can remember beyond the physical senses (dove, warmth, whisper) what it felt like to know that she was God's.
Is God's.
She steps away from the cliff.
And walks higher.
(Whenever she looks down, for the rest of her life, she'll think about jumping
but she never will.)
She sits down, as if to rest, or teach, and the world goes gray, then clarifies into a vision, golden at the edges -- the farthest valleys that she can see from this pinnacle, where vineyards grow, and goatherds tend their flocks, and she can taste:
sweet wine, tangy cheese, salted fish, mother's bread (so, so, so hungry, still). There are friends at either side and a cup that overflows with joy, the fatted calf has been slain, and there is feasting without end. This is the taste of God, but pleasure is not God, and she makes herself swallow and taste the desert grit that fills her mouth.
"Repent! Repent and return to the God who brought you up out of Egypt, the God who sets before you the ways of life and death. Listen, sinners! There is still time to turn again to God. Hear what God demands of you -- that you do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God. That you love your neighbor as yourself..." This is John's voice, but it is also her voice, and the voice of every prophet. It is the voice of Law, and also the voice of Love, and it sounds like God, but it is not God, so she closes her mouth and stops preaching, and listens to the uncanny winds.
She holds a child in her arms, and in the distance an ephemeral spouse does chores. This is her family, and every family -- it is Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, her parents and her siblings, Mary and Martha and Lazarus growing old together, building a life. She nurtures a child, and teaches it, feeds it and clothes it and when it grows old, it will care for her. This feels like God, but it is not God. She lets go of the child, and feels the ache and cold and strangeness of her body, sitting on a mountain, learning the posture of a teacher.
The Temple smells of livestock and blood sacrifice, and under that finest resins, and smoke without end. When they no longer bring animals, they bring praises and incense and oils wrought at great cost, and their labor and their joy, their sacrifice and their worship, are pleasing to God. This is the scent of God, but it is not God. The desert smells ancient, and cold.
She opens her eyes and sees a ladder dangling in front of her. She can see the throne that is hers, covered in glitter, draped silks so fine they are like water and covered in mirrored gems that reflect glory upon glory, the throne she dreamed of when she played at being a princess as a child. If she climbs the ladder and sits in that throne, then everyone to the furthest reaches of the valleys that surround her pinnacle will obey her softest command: "Share," or "Heal," or, "Love." The light that comes from that throne refracts into rainbows, -- and this looks like God. Wherever she looks, this looks like God.
belovedchild
This looks like the heavens opened up, and a voice calling her home, to the place where she belongs, where she will be clothed in finest robes and honored like an eldest daughter, where she will be God's princess child and where her siblings and children will gather, uncountably numerous, to feast with her and to worship her Parent. No one will be lonely, and no one will know what hunger means. Home.
belovedchild
A God who comes to her tenderly, who tastes of love and deepest sacrifice, who feels like her mother, and a little like herself, the God who named her, and who summoned her into the wilderness -- the God of love and family and pleasure and joy, who demands worship and evokes awe, the God who summons her home to Galilee, where it all begins.
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