Author: kenwoodley3

By Ken Woodley

What a difficult story to swallow: Jesus has just gone to the district of Tyre and Sidon where he encounters a Canaanite woman who begs for mercy and the healing of her daughter.
Unusually, for him, Jesus says nothing, according to the Gospel of Matthew.
His silence is so disconcerting that the disciples grow irritated with the woman’s continued pleas and ask Jesus to send her away.
What is more disturbing, however, is that Jesus seems to agree with them. When he finally does answer, he says this:
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
In other words, if your daughter cannot breathe because someone is kneeling on her neck, what is that to me? Bullets in the back? Sorry, man. You’re in the wrong tribe.
The woman’s anguished begging for Jesus to heal her daughter is—seemingly—dismissed outright because of who she is and where she lives.
There are several explanations for this uncharacteristic behavior by Jesus: He’s simply exhausted. He’s had a bad day. He’s testing the understanding of his disciples or the faith of the woman.
The first explanation might be true but Jesus had to fully expect being approached by those seeking his blessing and healing. Especially because he was in an area he did not routinely visit.
If his silence and then grudging, seemingly cold-hearted reply are merely a test, it seems to me that the disciples fail but the Canaanite woman passes with flying colors.
“Lord, help me,” she persists, prompting another apparently callous response from Jesus:
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
The woman’s test of faith—or the disciples’—got harder and harder, but she was up to the challenge, even if the disciples weren’t.
Actually, I suspect Jesus knew the woman wasn’t going to take ‘No’ for an answer. Nor, I believe, did Jesus want her to walk away without her child being healed.
If Jesus was waiting for one of the disciples to challenge his refusal because it ran contrary to his core teaching about loving your neighbor as yourself, Jesus was going to be disappointed. But the woman’s response would not fill him with the least little bit of chagrin.
“Yes, Lord, but even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ tables,” she boldly replies.
Jesus then proclaims her great faith and, just like that, the woman’s daughter is healed.
One can only imagine the startled reaction of the disciples.
Contrary to their expectations, Jesus was telling them that this woman and her child are also God’s children.
Just like George Floyd and Jacob Blake. Like you and me, with them.
The disciples clearly didn’t think so. They had come into the region of Tyre and Sidon with stereotypes and prejudices firmly in place. They had looked at the woman and thought, “She’s not one of us.” She looked different. They had listened to her speak and thought, “She’s not one of us.” She spoke differently. Clearly, the disciples looked at her and listened to her and thought, “She’s one of them.”
Jesus directly challenged that point of view by the end of the Gospel lesson. But, in a real sense, Jesus is trying to get our attention, too.
We are all so blessed that God doesn’t look into the world and divide people into “us” and “them.”
Grace would not be grace if it came with premiums, restrictions based on race, membership guidelines on ethnicity and special zip codes for its delivery—you know, only to those who live on the right side of the tracks and in the best neighborhoods.
The truth is what Jesus taught: We are all children of God and there is a seat for all of us around the Lord’s table.
Ultimately, if that woman and her child are dogs, then we are, too.
The knee is on your neck and mine. The bullets are in the backs of us all.

By Ken Woodley

Oh, how often have I seen the wind.
Just like Peter.
Especially during this pandemic. Sometimes it feels like my anxieties have anxieties.
Jesus, remember, had been working hard, teaching the people that they are the light of the world, that they are blessed and sons and daughters of God, no matter how worthless or powerless they feel to do anything about their own lives or the world around them, with or without COVID-19.
When he finished for the day, Jesus pointed the crowd back toward their homes and neighborhoods—their daily lives—and told the disciples to travel by boat across the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus sent them on their way, explaining that he was going up one of the mountains embroidering the sea and pray. “I’ll meet you on the other side,” he told the disciples.
The boat, however, began being battered by the waves. A storm came out of nowhere—which does still happen rather frequently because of the surrounding weather conditions in Galilee.
The boat was far from land, the Gospel of Matthew tells us, “and the wind was against them.”
Oh, how often has the wind felt like it was against me.
But always, somehow, I feel the spirit of Jesus walking across the water toward me, over the water and through the wind.
The wind of my fears.
The wind of the world whispering dread and doom.
The wind whispering and then howling that love will never overcome hate, that every sword will never be turned into a plowshare, that there will also be one sword left to defeat the last person standing, plowshare in hand, believing in the Gospel of Jesus that God is love.
But always Jesus walks through all of the winds that are whispering and howling, and over the battering waves that make me afraid that all is lost and that my boat will sink.
Jesus keeps coming through the surrounding storms that make me certain that I will never, ever get to the other side of whatever fear and doubt I happen to be trying to cross in my boat at the time.
I am so like Peter, the most human of the disciples. Impulsive. Out there. Let me be the one!!! But so susceptible to my human foibles.
“Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water,” Peter shouts after Jesus pointedly tells the disciples to “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid (and there’s that fearful word—afraid).
Peter is desperate to conquer his fear by walking over the storming waves he’s afraid will drown them. And, Jesus says, sure, come right ahead.
Just as Jesus tells each of us to leave our fears behind and walk on, over and away from them.
But, Peter is Peter. Peter is human. Peter is you and I.
Peter gets half way to Jesus and then he “sees the wind” and begins to drown.
Peter gives so much power to what he fears that he actually sees the wind. Gives shape and form to something that is invisible.
Just like all of us do from time to time. We believe that what we fear is so strong, stronger than we are, stronger than Jesus.
And so we begin to drown in our fear.
But Jesus is still there, always there, reaching out his hand, lifting us up and away from our fears until, just when we think it could never happen, we reach the other side and hear a voice:
Don’t see the wind, Jesus tells us. Instead, let the wind see you, and who stands by your side, no matter what storms life blows your way.

By Ken Woodley

“Jesus put before the crowds another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’”


Neither of us saw it coming.

It just happened.

A heart-on collision.

There were so many broken pieces

that I couldn’t tell where mine ended

and yours began.

Your headlight was in my backseat.

My steering wheel spun on your left axle.

We put ourselves back together again the best we could

but I’m not sure we did it flawlessly

you said with my voice

as your heart beat inside me

that day in Galilee

by the sea,

or the foothills of Virginia,

and the word love so far beyond the tip

of our tongue

that it spoke in the air we breathed,

sending us out into the world together

to see what might happen next.

By Ken Woodley

“Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea”

—Matthew 13:1


My desert feelings can’t remember the flat line of their own horizons

and my valleys of shadow recall nothing

the darkness ever said to them.

I awake to an inexplicable altitude

and the music of the last voice I heard

before I woke up

echoing off vertical feelings that cover me

like the sunshine after it has lifted mist.

“Going up?”

The answer surrounds me, like the smell of coffee.

I yawn and stretch into the passing shapes of clouds

that seem to know just where they are going.

My peaks are everywhere.

At the end of a day’s climb

I stand upon the ridge of all that I have ever known.

The air is thin and bright.

I breathe as deeply as I can,

only to exhale in surprise.

A harmony beyond the sky has filled the deepest,

the everest part of me

and no matter where I look

I know the melody will go on forever

if only this afternoon

I can remember to memorize the tune God has just sung to me

and bring the mountaintop home.

Again last night I was certain that I never could

but tomorrow—once more—I believe I shall

remember one more note at least and this:

No matter what happens next

every note of the melody remembers every note of me,

even those that I have never heard,

the ones I must believe in enough to discover for myself

and then sing to my deserts and my valleys.

By Ken Woodley

The weight is so heavy.
Too burdensome.
I don’t see how I can go any further.
No way.
It has been so hard for so long.
Years and years, it seems, so another single step feels impossible.
The valley of this shadow seems to stretch forever and the slopes that surround me look and feel too steep.
Each time I try to climb up and out of this, I slip and slide and stumble and fall. I am cut and bleeding and still this burden refuses to fall from my shoulders, fall away from my heart, or from my soul. Its weeds are everywhere and there are days when I cannot see my flowers. Can’t even smell them.
Today is one of those days.
The weeds of this burden blind me to even a single petal of one solitary flower.
And all around me are people on the same journey.
Carrying their own burdens that are too burdensome.
They don’t see how they can go any further.
No way.
It has been so hard for them, too, for so long.
Years and years, it seems, even if it has been a few days, weeks or months, so another step feels impossible to them.
The valley of the shadow surrounding them seems to stretch forever and the slopes surrounding them look and feel too steep.
Weeds surround them. Their flowers are nowhere to be seen. They can’t even smell them.
All of us have stumbled and fallen and the weeds seem certain to take every one of our blossoms away.
But, on our bruised and bleeding knees we pray.
Unable to gaze skyward any longer, we look down and see our bent and humbled shadow in prayer.
Prayer is all we have left, hopeless words searching for hope.
And that—yes, that—is when we see the second shadow.
A second shadow beside us.
Beside every one of us.
The shadow of someone carrying a yoke across his shoulders.
This shadow of the man and his yoke look just like the shadow of a cross, a crucified man somehow journeying right by our side.
Has he been there all along?
Did we mistake our burden for his?
Or his burden for ours?
None of that matters, we realize, as the flowers of this moment bloom, the sudden petals painting even the weeds into some kind of rainbow pasture where we rest and feel our burdens lifted. Our heads are anointed with oil.
In a moment, we shall all journey on.
Our burden won’t be gone but it will feel lighter because we do not carry it alone.
Jesus knows all about crosses.
That is why he can help us carry our own.

By Ken Woodley


I throw myself into the water,

just where Jesus tells me to,

his voice reaching out through the darkness from the shore

where small flames begin to flicker into fire,

and I swim around the fishing boat on my back

looking up at all of the sudden stars

that twinkle like happy eyes

a very long way away

that still seem right beside me

and I open my own eyes wider

to catch all of their light

and twinkle back,

hoping they will feel that I am

right beside them, too.

And this was my catch:

light,

not fish,

so much light

that my net could not contain it.

All of the light went shining off in every direction

toward everyone else fishing in the darkness

for a reason to keep sailing upon this often stormy sea.

Just as their light has often found me

and led me on

to this very moment

where I understand that light

is not meant to be caught, scaled and sold in the marketplace.

This passage through the darkness is meant for sharing.

Meant for a holy and loving communion with others,

Jesus explains when I stand

warming my water-dripping shivers by his fire

on the shore,

his eyes twinkling like two happy stars

right beside me

as he gives me a roasted fish to eat for breakfast

and a loaf of bread that he has broken for me

and for you

as we embrace in this shimmering pool of light.

By Ken Woodley

And so I sing

a broken song

of fragment notes

and shattered melody

splintered on a wooden cross

and smashed

beyond repair.

And yet I sing

this broken song

because this broken song

sings the broken song of me,

my broken song of shattered notes

and fragment melody,

splintered on a wooden cross,

smashed beyond repair,

about a sun that’s rising

into a broken day

from the fragment dreams

of a shattered night

that had no hope of dawn

because there were too many

hammers

and too many

nails.

Until

there were none at all

and the broken sun

kept rising

into my broken song

and yours

and we shone

through every fragment note

and shine through all

the shattered melodies

no longer splintered

on a wooden cross,

nor smashed beyond repair.

Now even the broken darkness sings

the persistent song

of a rising sun

that warms our wondrous scars

and paints them on the sky.

By Ken Woodley


My long and desperate sleep is over.

No more subterranean dreams about constellations.

Darkness slowly unravels and the stars see me shining

as if the sky is carefully untying its ribbons and bows

to stand naked and present beside me.

Everything has been turned inside out.

I open my eyes to speak.

I open my mouth to see.

I am neither worm nor angel:

just me,

stretching toward a higher place inside me and beginning to rise

on a breeze that feels like a hurricane holding its breath.

Anything could happen next.

All or nothing.

I am a fluttering brushstroke of seasons,

a water-colored apostrophe in search of the sentence,

or just one word,

to explain

how I got these stained-glass wings

and why I feel the pattern of your

fingerprints dusted all over them.

The one thing I do know is this:

Your touch is the only way I fly.

By Ken Woodley


Under
brutal
interrogation,
the sun
relentlessly refuses
an alibi
for shining
in a blue sky
on everyone and everything,
infuriating the raining power,
which washes its hands
of the whole matter,
allowing a small mob
of thunder and lightning
to pass judgment.
So they crucify
the sun,
nailing its light
to a darkness
they believe eternal,
but the stars
bleed small pools of shining
and the moon
digs in its heels,
shouting for all the world to hear:
“I am not the light.
There is something out there
so wondrous, pure and bright
that I cannot possibly
refuse to reflect
its message and meaning.
You can shine, too, unless
you turn yourself off.”
And then literally the very next day—
no apocryphal myth, I assure you—
the sun actually rises,
I mean, straight up,
just as promised,
absolute dawn
despite hammers and nails and thorns
and our own Judas clouds
that sometimes cover
the whole
thing
up.

By Ken Woodley

Bethlehem Translation

With a sheepish
grin
God remembered
that
LOVE
wasn’t
in our vocabulary
yet.
So a shepherd
came
in that darkness,
reaching
for our scattered
hands
and silent
hearts.


Against The Odds

A polar light
bears
witness
to the snowbound
tracks of spring’s
small revolution
against the tyranny
of the sky’s misunderstanding
of the colors of its reflection
in our eyes
as our hands hold
this one
small
candled
hope.


Sing The Sudden Same

All notes
of the universe.
In unison.
Chorusing for us.
No need to refrain
from this love within
us all
in different voices
identical
for each other.