Stolen

A poem in response to the painting, “Wagon Wheel” by Michele Wood in the I Lay My Stitches Down series on display in the Covenant Fine Arts Center at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI in April 2104.  In the painting, a slave woman is morning as a white man takes her daughter forcibly.  The white man's shadow has horns like a devil.

Stolen, stolen!

My baby’s been stolen.

She don’t belong to you.

She aint come from insite you.

She aint suck from yo teet.

You aint woke with her sick at night

Burning hot as blazes

Hot as the pot in the fire.

She my life.  She my blood.

She mine, mine, mine.

Stolen, stolen?

Why you wailin woman?

She don’t belong to you no ways.

You aint bought her at market.

You aint put meat on her plate.

You aint put clothes on her back. 

You stood waiting at market

Burning hot as blazes

Hot as the pot in the fire.

She my stock.  She my goods.

She mine, mine, mine.

Stolen, stolen.

He don’t belong to hisself.

He aint chose his own way.

He aint thought bout what he do.

He go to church and say his prayers

And do my will.

He work and work and work,

But I there all the time

Burning hot as blazes

Hot as the pot in the fire.

He my life.  He my blood.

He mine, mine, mine.

Ending the Cover-Ups (2 Samuel 11)

Read 2 Samuel 11.

I wanted to preach a nice, fairly traditional sermon on temptation and how to avoid it.  That is a fair and relatively easy application of this text.  But I couldn’t do it.  I sat down at my computer to write, and I ended up just surfing the web or playing games.  For two days, I tried to write the nice sermon about avoiding temptation - the expected sermon when dealing with this passage, but I just couldn’t get the words to come out.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, I started digging into the passage again.  I went online and read every sermon or article I could find on this passage.  Danielle Shroyer, a pastor from Texas, knew the way to my heart when she asked: “Anybody brave enough to preach this one squarely?”

  What?  A controversial sermon on a difficult topic?  I never do those. OK, I’m in.

The David and Bathsheba story is famous because it deals with the big three: money, sex, and power.  It’s famous because it describes the messy fall of a hero.  It reads like a soap opera, and that’s why we like it.    

But this story isn’t just about the massive failure of one man and its many consequences - although that is the outline of the story.  If David and Bathsheba were simply about adultery, then - as Tim Elliot said at lunch on Thursday - this sermon could have one simple point: “Don’t do it.”  

This story is more complex and more painful than that.  We are not allowed to stand at a distance as people not concerned with this story - not when we really hear it.  This story is about the misconduct of a leader and the cover-up that followed.  And that, unfortunately, is something we know a lot about.  Just consider this very brief inventory of high profile abuse and cover-up in the past few years.

Retro Poem #2: Initiator

Because you chose me,
   I choose you.
Because you first loved me,
   I now love you.
Because you have always been faithful to me,
   I want to be faithful to you.
Because you rejoice in me,
   I rejoice in you.
Because you long for me,
   I long for you.
Because you will not turn from me,
   I will not turn from you.
Because you remain in me,
   I remain in you.
Because you are patient with me,
   I will be patient with you.
Because you will not force your will on me,
   I will not force my will will on you.
Because you suffer with me,
   I suffer with you.
Because you initiate,
   I respond.

(Written in 2001)