What if we named places the same way that they did during biblical times? Moses named a location in this week’s passage Massah and Meribah—which respectively mean “test” and “quarrel”—because that is exactly what his people were doing in that place. They threw verbal hands and they tested God.

So what if we did that? Like if Moses ventured out to Chicago’s Navy Pier with our family this morning and saw St. Patrick’s Day revelers stumbling out to various booze cruises, might he have dubbed that place Poor Drunken Decisions? Granted, he might have looked at our family exploring pandemic-era Windy City and dubbed wherever we went Poor Sober Decisions by our actions (we changed flights last night to head home tomorrow rather than several days later as originally planned).

But it seems incredibly harsh to name a place by the terrible thing that happened there. It is true that sometimes the place was named for something wonderful that happened. Jacob gave the name Bethel or “House of God” to a place in which he had an incredible encounter with the Divine. Yet I am stuck thinking about Moses making some future Geography Bee contestant answer “Test and Quarrel.” It forces me to ponder on the places in my life that might have been dubbed Apathy or Cowardice. I don’t like to dwell in those cities, but I do need to remember that they could exist. Moses heavy-handed naming was meant to be a reminder. We need to remember that we’re fallible.

It’s a bit of insufferable cliche, but the most diehard fans of a musical act will cite the most obscure songs as their favorites. Sure, they like the hits, but they prefer Track 9 from their underrated sophomore album or the unreleased track that the band only plays during sound checks. Anyone can know an artist by the hits, but you really don’t know them until you love the deep cuts (Sometimes this is true. Have you heard U2’s “Acrobat”? It’s an unbelievable song. My absolute favorite Coldplay song is “Till Kingdom Come,” which is a hidden track on X&Y. Okay, I’m going to stop).

The Bible is a bit of a different beast than an artist’s discography. It’s the work of many different artists over thousands of years so it is not a one to one comparison. Yet it’s true that too many people know the hits, but not the deep cuts. And the Apocrypha is deeper than the deep cuts. It’s not in the Protestant biblical canon. Still it is someone’s response to an encounter with God. It’s connected, but Protestant churches don’t hold it at the same level. It’s like when Bono and The Edge composed that Broadway Spider-Man musical. That may not be a fair comparison, because Turn off the Dark was apparently crazy (but I guess you could say the same about Bel and the Dragon).

Yet you should still pay attention to the Apocrypha, because like with an artist’s b-sides, outtakes, or side projects, you might find a gem. Each week the Revised Common Lectionary often includes a reading from the Apocrypha as an alternative reading. I don’t normally pay attention to those apocryphal readings and have never considered one for Weekly Lectionary.

The lamp in my childhood bedroom looked like balloons. I cannot remember if someone was holding the balloons; whether it was a clown or a child or if the balloons were hanging by themselves. My memory of what the lamp looked like is fading. But I can close my eyes and see the light that it gave off. A warm reddish-orange glow.

When one is a small child, those bedside lamps are like a security blanket. It pushes away the mysterious and foreboding darkness. The light chases monsters. It is a reminder that your room is still your room no matter how many shadows make it look otherwise. And in a way, the light can be a beacon left there by the grownups in your life. Mom and Dad turned the lamp on and the light was like their lingering presence through the night.

As I got older, I didn’t need the lamp as much. It eventually became a light by which to read books before I went to bed. Eventually the dark did not scare me that much anymore and I would turn off the light to sleep. The lamp had done what it needed to do. It had shown me that the world was not as scary as I had thought and in a way that light had turned from something in a balloon lamp by my bed to something inside of me.

Psalm 40 is a passage of the Bible that I and many others cannot read without hearing Bono singing in our head. In a way, we probably should hear more psalms in our head like that. Not necessarily with U2’s frontman belting it out, but with music that amplifies the anguish and joy that make up this brutally honest book of common prayers. Yet—because of U2—the words that I most commonly associate with the 40th Psalm do not appear in the passage at all:

How long to sing this song?

And it creates a tension within the psalm itself. “I waited patiently for the Lord” and yet how long to sing that song. Patience is not wearing thin, but it feels like there are centuries, even millennia worth of waiting building up behind it. God pulls us out of the pit, yet “How long?” has this element of wondering how many times we are going to fall down into that pit. A new song will be sung, but how long will we sing it?

I don’t remember this happening. But I hear the story every time our family is at the beach, so I can almost see it in my head. When I was not much older than a baby, Dad was playing with me out in the ocean. An enormous wave swelled out of the water. My dad saw it and braced for it; holding me as tightly as he could. It wasn’t enough. The wave wrenched me from my father’s arms. Acting quickly, Dad dove forward in hopes of finding me somewhere. And he found me; very likely saving my life.

There was this time that both sides of my family were over at my grandparents’ house for a party. I could not have been more than five or six years old. Everyone was playing in the pool. Somehow, I got into my little mind that I was going to push Pop, my dad’s uncle, into the water. It took all the strength I had in my tiny body, but I got my great uncle over the edge. And I went with him. I don’t know if I couldn’t swim at that point or if I was just as surprised as Pop was. All I remember is the blue. Everywhere. And a pair of arms reaching down and pulling me out.

I remember that my socks were completely wet. And that felt really weird. I remember seeing my mom out in the sanctuary. I remember my dad talking about the commitment I had made. There was lots of white; white robes on me and Dad, white baptismal, white washcloth that went over my nose and mouth when I went under water, and those wet, white socks. I was around seven and I had a seven year old’s understanding of what was going on, which is perfectly fine. I think God honors that; probably prefers it sometimes to the way we muck up our relationship with Him. I remember the red carpet of the sanctuary and people saying they were proud of me afterwards. I think that struck me as kind of funny since it was what God wanted me to do anyway. I think I was a practical seven year old.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. - John 1:10-11

I know that the gospel writer is talking about a time and a place. And as beautifully written as the Prologue is, there is a bit of unnecessary shade-throwing to that statement: the world did not know, his own people did not accept him. There seems to be this suggestion that, reader, you and I would have known better.

I don’t know if we would. I am actually fairly sure that we would not have known him either.

It’s one of those essential questions of pop theology: What if Jesus came back today? What would he look like? What would he do? Would Christians follow him or revile him? Granted, when you are talking about “Christians” you are talking about a wide swath of individuals who hold vastly different beliefs. So it is hard to say what his theoretical followers would do if Immanuel showed up in 2020. Those of us in the United States probably wouldn’t notice for awhile because I get the sense that he wouldn’t show up here.