In this age of environmental crisis, when the effects of global climate change are threatening to disrupt billions of people around the earth, we are familiar with the mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” It’s a good thing to do, a responsible practice to adopt.
But it is not new.
For most of human history, the wastefulness we routinely practice was unthinkable. Our ancestors did not enjoy our material abundance. People would sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to make use of something a second or third time – to use it until it was used up.
In the Middle Ages, parchment, which was made from sheep (or calf, or goat) skin, was hard to come by. It was expensive. Producing it was highly labor and resource intensive (especially for the sheep). Therefore, re-using the parchment made sense, even if it was difficult to do.
That’s where we get palimpsests. A palimpsest is a writing that is done over an older document, after the text of the original document has been erased to allow reuse of the parchment.
In medieval monasteries, monks washed and scraped away the existing text on a parchment so they could inscribe a new text on it. Try though they might, even the most conscientious monk could not completely obliterate the traces of the original text. Scholars have examined these twice-used parchments to read the original, obscured text hidden beneath the newer text. In one case, a 5th century copy of the Bible was discovered under a 12th century collection of sermons. (Talk about burying treasure under a pile of sand!)
I think we are living palimpsests. The first thing written on us was put there by God’s hand. God, in love, created us and called us ‘very good.’ God created us for relationship with God, with one another and with all creation. That’s our deepest reality.
Some stuff has been written over that original text. Messages of fear and hatred, of condemnation, and rejection have been written over the original words of blessing that mark us as God’s own. Many have been scrawled there by others; some of the stains were put there by our own hand.
When God looks at us, God is not fooled by the later writings. God sees the original inscription marking you as God’s precious child.
If you ever wondered why God came among us in Christ, why he lived and died and rose again, it was for this reason: to remove all the stains and labels you have acquired that obscure God’s words of love that spoke you into existence and which mark you as God’s own.
Prayer: Grant me vision to see myself and others as you see us – as your blessed creation. By your grace, wash away all the graffiti that hides the love story you have written on my heart.