Down in the gullies, you make springs to rise

Have you ever had one of those palm-to-forehead moments?

It was the last Sunday of March and I was preaching at that morning’s service. Literally, two minutes before the bells began ringing, I picked up the bulletin to glance through the order of worship. Opening hymn, check. Psalm, check. Gospel reading, check.

Except that the Gospel reading printed in that week’s bulletin did not match the sermon I would soon be preaching from, at all.

As a super, super part-time staff person at a local Episcopal church, my job is to show up once a month and preach. There’s generally a fair amount of hanging out that happens on those Sundays as well, sometimes over lunch or a book club conversation; always, there remains a good deal of text and email threads, phone dates and Zoom meetings in-between.

It is nothing short of a gift.

While I hope to someday care for a parish of my own, I recognize that this is where I’ve landed for now. And so far in this “for now,” looking up lectionary passages ahead of time to figure out the appointed readings hasn’t proven too difficult.

Except for this day, when I’d mistakenly camped out in the readings for the Feast of the Annunciation instead of the Fourth Sunday in Lent. And, except for two Sundays before that, when we’d switched around the preaching schedule, and I’d missed an email stating that we’d be going with the Alternate Gospel Reading instead.

Have you ever felt like the “excepts” are starting to take over?

It happens once, and we make our apologies. It happens a second time, and we begin to wonder if a not-so-pleasant pattern is emerging.

In truth, I was terribly embarrassed – not only in the moment, but long after the fact, when that moment of realization, of failure, of mistake, kept returning to me.

I know better. I can do better. I’ve done better in the past.

And sometimes, we get it wrong. Sometimes, we mess up. Sometimes, we need to utter our apologies, not just once or twice, but seventy times seven times.

Sometimes also, (always), grace appears, sweeping across the lands of our lives like wildfire, time and time again.

Even in a mistaken morning of preaching, I don’t doubt the passage of a teenage girl ripe with a Holy Spirit kind of inception was exactly what my little community needed to hear. And when, right before my friend and rector, Christopher, pivoted to read the newly-minted Gospel passage – the one that wasn’t printed in the bulletin – and I then offered my apologies from the pulpit, baring real truth, that was exactly what my little community needed to hear as well.

Too often, we neglect to name when we get it wrong, when we mess up. We don’t want to look bad. We don’t want to appear incompetent.

But we can tell the truth. We can offer forgiveness, of ourselves and others. And we can learn from our mistakes, even if (even when) we get it wrong again.

In a way, it reminds me of an ancient tradition, celebrated by ancient sects of the Christian Church on the night of Pentecost. In an evening service called the “Kneeling Prayer,” three sets of long poetical prayers written by Basil the Great are read. Together, the priest and the people make full prostrations, foreheads touching the floor.

To them, the prayers serve to petition those who are in hell, bound, perhaps, by the tragedy of life’s circumstances.

Down in the gullies, you make springs to rise; waters shall flow between the mountains. They shall give drink to the beasts of the field; wild asses will seek them to quench their thirst. The birds of the sky shall abide by them; from among the rocks, they will raise their song. From your lofty halls you refresh the hills; the earth shall be fed with the fruit of your works.
—the Kneeling Prayer

For me, I imagine the rising of those waters, flowing down to the bottom of the valley, feeding everything along its way. I may not be making full prostrations to my wooden floors, but I am saying I’m sorry. I am recognizing this new life. And I am rising and being brought to new life.

Perhaps like you, I too am leaning into a newness of the Spirit, one grace-filled step into Pentecost at a time.