Scripture for the Second Sunday in Advent includes Baruch 5:1-9; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6
If we’re going to find the potential of revelation in a birth in a barnyard, we need Advent to be a training season, not a shopping season. A training season for perceiving what lies beneath the surface and beyond the obvious; because the stunning beauty of Christmas, the lasting blessing of the holy nativity, lies in the puzzling truth that things are often not what they seem. Insight, foresight, and hindsight are needed to shape our welcome of the Christ who is born in such unpromising surroundings as a feeding trough in a barn behind an inn with no vacancies. Cloaked in humility and paradox is the gift of the Christ child.
“’What fresh hell is this?’… Or something very much like that was Joseph’s response to the decree mandating a trip to Bethlehem in the final days of Mary’s pregnancy. Burden heaped upon burden. In years to come songs would sweeten that trek to the little town of Bethlehem, but just then Joseph could barely manage the weight of Caesar’s decree and his wife’s condition. From where he stood, Joseph’s predicament was a study in hopelessness.”
That’s how Sam Portaro opens his Advent meditation in the most recent issue of “Vestry Papers.” Part of getting the hang of the good news of God in Jesus Christ is realizing that despite all the glam and glitter of our cultural Christmas, the bona fide story underwriting the nativity is about some really hard waiting required of Mary and Joseph—putting up with government tax reform, coping with the indignities of overland travel, not to mention surviving nine months of Jesus robing himself in human flesh, some of this time for Mary jostling bareback on a donkey. The holy family is uprooted. This required trip to Bethlehem isn’t a sweet return to the hometown for the holidays. Nor will Joseph and Mary return to wherever they were living: they will be homeless, and when they leave Bethlehem it will be as refugees escaping a maniac king intent on eliminating them.
Merry Christmas.
Here’s Sam Portaro again: “Advent’s characteristic waiting is not the anticipatory expectation of envisioned gift—like the child’s wishful waiting for Santa, or even the pregnant mother’s and expectant father’s apprehensions of birth—but a more difficult waiting, a waiting with no tangible outcome accessible to us, exactly the kind of waiting demanded of us just now: waiting for that which we cannot yet see. Or even imagine.
“We’ve no idea what the future holds for us... We forget (to our peril) that neither Mary nor Joseph could’ve anticipated the fullness of their child’s life, much less its enduring power in our own lives. Any and all suggestions to the contrary have been read backward into the story, many centuries after those at the heart of the story had lived and died. None of the apostles could ever have imagined the church as we experience it; none lived to see even an approximation of it. The human aspirations and apprehensions met in Bethlehem’s manger were overlooked by all those present and many who followed for centuries after, for their hopes and fears were founded upon models of messiah and kingship Jesus steadfastly refused. None could’ve imagined what God was accomplishing—would accomplish— much less how and in whom.
“This isn’t to say that we’re to despair, but rather that true leadership… is unafraid of truth and steadfast in trust. When we let go our own fantasies of a… future conforming to our own desires and designs, we open a space ready to receive God’s surprise, the life promised us. We’ve no idea what awaits us but in the darkness of that scary not knowing, the light of Advent shines. We take our places with Joseph and Mary at the center of that fresh hell—that wearying trip, compounded by advanced pregnancy, to comply with an onerous imperial order of census and taxation, to a city lacking adequate provision for them—to find ourselves at a stable, staring into the face of a baby whose future is as tenuous and as unknown as every child’s.
“That’s what we’re called to, what we come to in this and every Advent. A new life is being born and though we’ll not live to see it fully grown, we hold fast to the assurance of that “God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20) And we rejoice to be here.”
Even if here and now is a balancing act between counting our blessings and lamenting our losses.
Even if here is a place where young people die out of sequence with their elders, leaving their children and their parents in grief.
Even though here is just a few days away from tumbling over the fiscal cliff.
Even though here is a warming planet with rising oceans.
Even though here is a globe of fractured relationships between neighbors, a Holy Land riven by unholy bitterness, a world that still has too many maniac kings and too many disputed borders.
“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction… and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting….” So sings Baruch, scribe to the prophet Jeremiah and author of an apocryphal book that we get to hear, thanks to our new lectionary.
Righteousness is his theme, as it is in all these readings today. Not self-righteousness that believes God loves only those who live on my side of the border, my side of the aisle in congress, my religion, my kind of people. Righteousness is right and healthy relationship centered in love for God and love for neighbor as for self. Righteousness is depending not so much on our own ability to make things right, but on God being at work in our world to make it right (as Paul puts it to the Philippians, “the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion…”). God needs us to help that completion happen, but as servants and not masters, servants trusted to determine what is best (says Paul) by spiritual powers of love and insight.
A harvest of righteousness, that’s the point of it all, says St. Paul. And we can take that to mean that our Advent training sharpens our focus on piling presents under other people’s trees, like those 23 children we’re providing for through the Giving Tree. There’s a harvest of right priorities.
Another will be our Christmas offering to support three forms of outreach that mirror the story of the first Christmas. Remembering that the holy family were refugees, we will support emergency relief for Syrian refugees. Remembering how shelter, food, and post-natal care are needs we see at Bethlehem, we will care for struggling families here in North Berkshire. And remembering how livestock are front and center in the Christmas story, we will send funds to Heifer Project International.
And yes, you and I will find many quiet private ways to help make rough places smooth and crooked places straight, not just now in December, but often, knowing that the Word will be made flesh over and again as we help God produce a harvest of right relationship, healthy relationship, right priorities that come through Jesus Christ.
Advent training isn’t big on wish lists for Santa, or shopping lists for Santa’s helpers. But goals are in order, goals for a righteous harvest. How about intelligent, fair, honest cooperation across the aisle in Congress? Insistence that our federal budget not be balanced at the expense of the poor? How about courage in the White House and State Department to get Israel and the State of Palestine to sit down for serious negotiations while there is still time? And gun control—remember gun control? What a yet longer list you and I can name, goals for a harvest of righteousness, all worthy of a new year of healthy activism.
Advent training teaches us creative, assertive, active waiting. Unlike our cultural Christmas, we are not counting down to a moment of gratification. We are in Christ building up a capacity to perceive what lies beneath the surface and beyond the obvious, to recognize the promised presence and power and purpose of God in unpromising surroundings. And to participate with God in the Incarnation.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Birthing a Community of Encouragement
Scripture for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost includes I Samuel 1:4-20; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8
How do these readings lend themselves to what we’re about today, holy baptism?
You may have caught the baptismal images in our second reading: “hearts sprinkled clean… bodies washed with pure water… the confession of our hope… “ and, central to what baptism is about, the faithfulness of the one who promises.
It’s no casual thing that the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reaches into his toolkit of baptismal language. He is making his appeal for the new way by which all people , not just a favored few, have access to God. This new way replaces an old system of prohibitive laws with the new creation that God has initiated in Jesus Christ whose love fulfills God’s vision and desire for humanity. This new way replaces the old system of blood sacrifice that made the great temple of Jerusalem a factory manufacturing divine approval in exchange for fees. The writer replaces this old system with his vision of open access to God through a true heart that seeks the full assurance of faith, an open conscience that keeps moving towards love and good deeds, and the encouraging community that meets together to inspire (he says provoke) one another to readiness. This new way, the writer says, is opened to us in baptism. Today, we will claim it for Alexandria Rockwell.
Our first lesson is a real corker for a baptismal Sunday, isn’t it? It comes from a time when polygamy was still thought to be the ticket to the good life. Hannah was well loved and cared for, but her husband Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah, irritates Hannah by constantly showing new photos of her most recent baby… while Hannah is said to be unable to bear children.
She dares believe otherwise. She presents herself in the temple and promises God to dedicate the child that comes from her womb—somewhat like promising to send him to seminary. She is passionate about this, and the old priest Eli, watching from a distance, mistakes her emotional expression for drunkenness. Here’s a case study in terrible pastoral care. As if to make up for this, Eli does what he can by saying the Amen to her prayer. So does God, reports the writer; God says “So be it!” and Samuel is born, Samuel among the first great prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Which is itself a case of terrible theology—bargaining with God—but this story is what it is.
It is a story of a miraculous birth. The Christian Church has long retold the story as a forerunner to the Incarnation, God’s Word becoming flesh through the womb of Mary. However you process stories of miraculous births, understand that in this baptism we’re witnessing the result of a miracle today. Let me quickly add, that’s not meant to be a comment about Alexandria’s conception, but about her delivery.
Two months early, in fullblown medical-surgical crisis, late one night in Burlington, Vermont, just before the changing shifts at Fletcher Allen Hospital would have dispersed the top-flight emergency obstetric team whose members were still on duty when the ambulance arrived. It would be days before baby Alexandria was out of crisis, and more days before Rockwell was. The slenderest of threads brought this baby to life, and this mother to recovery. Their double-header miracle is forever woven into the warp and weft of their family tapestry, and the success stories of that remarkable hospital. It took these communities of encouragement to help create a miracle, and by their presence this family helps God deepen the encouragement of this community… for look at them now!
“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” the disciples exclaim to Jesus, as they admire the architecture and edifice of the great temple in Jerusalem. For these Galilean peasants and fishermen, this was the pinnacle of the big city tour. Our Lord is not impressed. He is not looking on the outward form, the way people tend to attach their admiration. He has looked behind the curtains of the Emerald City, and found fraud and deception, greed and dishonesty. He is also given by Mark the Gospel writer foresight to see the imperial Roman army’s devastation of the temple, burning it, demolishing it, about forty years off in the future. Nothing material lasts forever. All mortal institutions in time will lose their packaging, and this will be hastened if they have lost their vision, their mission, their call.
Jesus leaves us in no doubt about this. The church that has no other use for the word “building” than to mean the shell within which its people huddle against the world, will not be building broad bridges of outreach to the world, will not be helping build the new creation, and will not keep its architecture for long. A finer design is needed.
God calls the church to build and keep building a community of encouragement and inspiration, not just for its own good but to benefit human society and all our environment locally, nationally, globally. I notice a strong verb in the closing words of our Gospel: rather than building, birthing of a new order is said to be the context in which we will find God, whose will is to be done on earth as in heaven.
That’s the verb for a baptismal Sunday: birthing. If we are to help midwife God’s new creation, we need the baptismal toolkit: hearts sprinkled clean… bodies washed with pure water… the confession of our hope… “ and, central to what baptism is about, the faithfulness of God, who promises open access, constant presence, foresightful grace, the compassion of Jesus Christ, the guidance of Lady Wisdom, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
These powers we seek and claim today for Alexandria and for ourselves:
a true heart that seeks the full assurance of faith, an open conscience that keeps moving towards love and good deeds, and the encouraging community that meets together to inspire, provoke, one another to readiness.
How do these readings lend themselves to what we’re about today, holy baptism?
You may have caught the baptismal images in our second reading: “hearts sprinkled clean… bodies washed with pure water… the confession of our hope… “ and, central to what baptism is about, the faithfulness of the one who promises.
It’s no casual thing that the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reaches into his toolkit of baptismal language. He is making his appeal for the new way by which all people , not just a favored few, have access to God. This new way replaces an old system of prohibitive laws with the new creation that God has initiated in Jesus Christ whose love fulfills God’s vision and desire for humanity. This new way replaces the old system of blood sacrifice that made the great temple of Jerusalem a factory manufacturing divine approval in exchange for fees. The writer replaces this old system with his vision of open access to God through a true heart that seeks the full assurance of faith, an open conscience that keeps moving towards love and good deeds, and the encouraging community that meets together to inspire (he says provoke) one another to readiness. This new way, the writer says, is opened to us in baptism. Today, we will claim it for Alexandria Rockwell.
Our first lesson is a real corker for a baptismal Sunday, isn’t it? It comes from a time when polygamy was still thought to be the ticket to the good life. Hannah was well loved and cared for, but her husband Elkanah’s other wife, Peninnah, irritates Hannah by constantly showing new photos of her most recent baby… while Hannah is said to be unable to bear children.
She dares believe otherwise. She presents herself in the temple and promises God to dedicate the child that comes from her womb—somewhat like promising to send him to seminary. She is passionate about this, and the old priest Eli, watching from a distance, mistakes her emotional expression for drunkenness. Here’s a case study in terrible pastoral care. As if to make up for this, Eli does what he can by saying the Amen to her prayer. So does God, reports the writer; God says “So be it!” and Samuel is born, Samuel among the first great prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Which is itself a case of terrible theology—bargaining with God—but this story is what it is.
It is a story of a miraculous birth. The Christian Church has long retold the story as a forerunner to the Incarnation, God’s Word becoming flesh through the womb of Mary. However you process stories of miraculous births, understand that in this baptism we’re witnessing the result of a miracle today. Let me quickly add, that’s not meant to be a comment about Alexandria’s conception, but about her delivery.
Two months early, in fullblown medical-surgical crisis, late one night in Burlington, Vermont, just before the changing shifts at Fletcher Allen Hospital would have dispersed the top-flight emergency obstetric team whose members were still on duty when the ambulance arrived. It would be days before baby Alexandria was out of crisis, and more days before Rockwell was. The slenderest of threads brought this baby to life, and this mother to recovery. Their double-header miracle is forever woven into the warp and weft of their family tapestry, and the success stories of that remarkable hospital. It took these communities of encouragement to help create a miracle, and by their presence this family helps God deepen the encouragement of this community… for look at them now!
“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” the disciples exclaim to Jesus, as they admire the architecture and edifice of the great temple in Jerusalem. For these Galilean peasants and fishermen, this was the pinnacle of the big city tour. Our Lord is not impressed. He is not looking on the outward form, the way people tend to attach their admiration. He has looked behind the curtains of the Emerald City, and found fraud and deception, greed and dishonesty. He is also given by Mark the Gospel writer foresight to see the imperial Roman army’s devastation of the temple, burning it, demolishing it, about forty years off in the future. Nothing material lasts forever. All mortal institutions in time will lose their packaging, and this will be hastened if they have lost their vision, their mission, their call.
Jesus leaves us in no doubt about this. The church that has no other use for the word “building” than to mean the shell within which its people huddle against the world, will not be building broad bridges of outreach to the world, will not be helping build the new creation, and will not keep its architecture for long. A finer design is needed.
God calls the church to build and keep building a community of encouragement and inspiration, not just for its own good but to benefit human society and all our environment locally, nationally, globally. I notice a strong verb in the closing words of our Gospel: rather than building, birthing of a new order is said to be the context in which we will find God, whose will is to be done on earth as in heaven.
That’s the verb for a baptismal Sunday: birthing. If we are to help midwife God’s new creation, we need the baptismal toolkit: hearts sprinkled clean… bodies washed with pure water… the confession of our hope… “ and, central to what baptism is about, the faithfulness of God, who promises open access, constant presence, foresightful grace, the compassion of Jesus Christ, the guidance of Lady Wisdom, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
These powers we seek and claim today for Alexandria and for ourselves:
a true heart that seeks the full assurance of faith, an open conscience that keeps moving towards love and good deeds, and the encouraging community that meets together to inspire, provoke, one another to readiness.
Once for All
Scripture for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost includes I Kings 17:8-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
Within the hour, the Veterans Day National Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery will start, precisely at 11:00 a.m., with a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Then, inside the Memorial Amphitheater, a parade of colors by veterans' organizations will follow, and remarks from dignitaries. The ceremony is intended to honor and thank all who served in the United States Armed Forces.
There is a short phrase in our second lesson today which cuts to the chase of the Christian Gospel. It is the phrase, “once for all.” Those three words could be the title of all the collected theological writings of the ages. They sum up the heart of the good news. They are the pulsing of God’s love and the foundation for the Christian hope.
Before we try to unpack what these words mean to us, I can’t help wondering if they weren’t on the lips of most of the men and women who entered military service, whether voluntarily or drafted. What helped them wrench themselves away from their daily lives at home and work and farm and factory was the hope that their sacrifices would rid the world of tyrants and treachery, once and for all.
History tells us that war, however heroically fought, cannot fulfill the hope of “once for all.” It is the Prince of Peace, the humble servant anointed by God, the holy one who has no army, no flag, no currency, and no boundaries, he is the one who fulfills the promise of these words of hope for which humanity has always yearned.
Once, in the fullness of time, the relentless abundant love which created the universe crossed the membrane of heaven and earth, broke the barrier between the “kairos” of eternity and the “chronos” of clock time, set the loom for a new weaving of spirit and flesh—and did all this hidden under cover of what could have disqualified the whole mission.
There was no more unsettled a place than Palestine, then as now. There was no tighter a vise grip on human freedoms than the Roman imperial presence in occupied lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Trade was causing exchange of cultures, but it was a time of sharp aversion to foreigners and things foreign. It was a time when a woman wasn’t counted to be even three-fifths of a man, yet a womb (and the womb of a very young woman not yet defined by marriage) would be the chosen doorway to an entirely new creation.
Once, there and then, at what the Letter to the Hebrews calls the end of the age, God’s relentless long-hidden gracious purpose was revealed. Not in the violent mode of eliminating the old, but in an organic peaceable evolutionary way of birthing the new, a power of transformation was released into this world, available not just to some, but to all… a tiny word we are still struggling to comprehend and practice.
Once. Surgically certain, clearly confident is this short word that means: what has happened in Jesus Christ meets and exceeds all the requirements of God and of humanity to be the foundation for reconciling all alienation. Given, not earned or negotiated, is the power to build on that foundation. No more is needed to fix the foundation or to obtain the power, than what is given in abundant love and received by honest trust. The building, that’s for us to do. The building of unity, the reconciling of opposing sides, that is what we are given to do—and the greatest giving is the power God has already released to do it.
How to do that building? There is a saying by an ancient Christian sage—I did a quick Google search but couldn’t find the source, which won’t prevent me from using it—“The desire to please God pleases God.” The desire to build with God is the beginning to building with God. The desire to reconcile is how reconciliation is built.
What a critical need this is, in post-election America! And if I may put a Veterans’ Day spin on this urgency: the men and women who have generously given military service to this nation did not make the sacrifices they made so that two political parties can refuse reconciliation and paralyze this nation.
Our desire for reconciliation and cooperation is how these outcomes will be built. We may doubt we have much sway over these things—the widow in today’s Gospel is here to tell us otherwise: do what you can with what you have, she tells us. Using our voices to put our own elected representatives on notice that we want unity of purpose is the might we have.
That phrase “once for all” is meant to bring relief to anyone who longs for a fresh start. We don’t have to know how to make things right, how to invent the right approach, how to turn the past around to a better future. We need to allow our longing to open us to welcome the relentless abundant love which is given and is for us to receive and build upon. It is as dependable as that jug of oil in the hands of Elijah. And, as we were taught last Sunday, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves is all of a piece, wound like the strands of a rope, woven as warp and weft. So the building that is ours to do in our own fresh starts is not done in isolation, but in community.
And communities, congregations, nations need, now and again, fresh starts. As Christians, we believe there is grace in the gift given, once for all, to keep building on foundations that God provides, broad and roomy enough for all.
Within the hour, the Veterans Day National Ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery will start, precisely at 11:00 a.m., with a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Then, inside the Memorial Amphitheater, a parade of colors by veterans' organizations will follow, and remarks from dignitaries. The ceremony is intended to honor and thank all who served in the United States Armed Forces.
There is a short phrase in our second lesson today which cuts to the chase of the Christian Gospel. It is the phrase, “once for all.” Those three words could be the title of all the collected theological writings of the ages. They sum up the heart of the good news. They are the pulsing of God’s love and the foundation for the Christian hope.
Before we try to unpack what these words mean to us, I can’t help wondering if they weren’t on the lips of most of the men and women who entered military service, whether voluntarily or drafted. What helped them wrench themselves away from their daily lives at home and work and farm and factory was the hope that their sacrifices would rid the world of tyrants and treachery, once and for all.
History tells us that war, however heroically fought, cannot fulfill the hope of “once for all.” It is the Prince of Peace, the humble servant anointed by God, the holy one who has no army, no flag, no currency, and no boundaries, he is the one who fulfills the promise of these words of hope for which humanity has always yearned.
Once, in the fullness of time, the relentless abundant love which created the universe crossed the membrane of heaven and earth, broke the barrier between the “kairos” of eternity and the “chronos” of clock time, set the loom for a new weaving of spirit and flesh—and did all this hidden under cover of what could have disqualified the whole mission.
There was no more unsettled a place than Palestine, then as now. There was no tighter a vise grip on human freedoms than the Roman imperial presence in occupied lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Trade was causing exchange of cultures, but it was a time of sharp aversion to foreigners and things foreign. It was a time when a woman wasn’t counted to be even three-fifths of a man, yet a womb (and the womb of a very young woman not yet defined by marriage) would be the chosen doorway to an entirely new creation.
Once, there and then, at what the Letter to the Hebrews calls the end of the age, God’s relentless long-hidden gracious purpose was revealed. Not in the violent mode of eliminating the old, but in an organic peaceable evolutionary way of birthing the new, a power of transformation was released into this world, available not just to some, but to all… a tiny word we are still struggling to comprehend and practice.
Once. Surgically certain, clearly confident is this short word that means: what has happened in Jesus Christ meets and exceeds all the requirements of God and of humanity to be the foundation for reconciling all alienation. Given, not earned or negotiated, is the power to build on that foundation. No more is needed to fix the foundation or to obtain the power, than what is given in abundant love and received by honest trust. The building, that’s for us to do. The building of unity, the reconciling of opposing sides, that is what we are given to do—and the greatest giving is the power God has already released to do it.
How to do that building? There is a saying by an ancient Christian sage—I did a quick Google search but couldn’t find the source, which won’t prevent me from using it—“The desire to please God pleases God.” The desire to build with God is the beginning to building with God. The desire to reconcile is how reconciliation is built.
What a critical need this is, in post-election America! And if I may put a Veterans’ Day spin on this urgency: the men and women who have generously given military service to this nation did not make the sacrifices they made so that two political parties can refuse reconciliation and paralyze this nation.
Our desire for reconciliation and cooperation is how these outcomes will be built. We may doubt we have much sway over these things—the widow in today’s Gospel is here to tell us otherwise: do what you can with what you have, she tells us. Using our voices to put our own elected representatives on notice that we want unity of purpose is the might we have.
That phrase “once for all” is meant to bring relief to anyone who longs for a fresh start. We don’t have to know how to make things right, how to invent the right approach, how to turn the past around to a better future. We need to allow our longing to open us to welcome the relentless abundant love which is given and is for us to receive and build upon. It is as dependable as that jug of oil in the hands of Elijah. And, as we were taught last Sunday, loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves is all of a piece, wound like the strands of a rope, woven as warp and weft. So the building that is ours to do in our own fresh starts is not done in isolation, but in community.
And communities, congregations, nations need, now and again, fresh starts. As Christians, we believe there is grace in the gift given, once for all, to keep building on foundations that God provides, broad and roomy enough for all.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Signs of Change
Scripture for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost includes Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Hebrews 9:11-14, and Mark 12:28-34
The ancient words of Deuteronomy tell us that Jesus’s reply to the scribe was not his own invention. The primacy of loving God wholly is expressed in the Shema Israel, the Jewish call to worship, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Notice that Jesus adds “and with all your mind.”
The words we heard from Deuteronomy today constitute the opening of every worshiping assembly of Jews on the Sabbath day. The closing words of the lesson call for every Jewish home to have, nailed to the door post, a fragment of God’s word, a phrase from the holy Torah, mounted in a mezuzah, a small decorated holder of metal or clay or wood, present to remind residents and guests alike that in this household the Lord God is to be loved wholly, first, foremost, in all things and above all things. The ground on which that house sits is holy ground. The table fellowship of that home, the cycling of generations through its rooms, the joys and sorrows shared there, all constitute a holy heritage.
Nailed to the doors of oceanfront houses along the New York and New Jersey coastline today are notices in two colors. One designates that the house is condemned and to be torn down. The other says that the house can be repaired and, in time, reoccupied. We know what these notices look like, from just over a year ago when another storm did not skirt, but sliced right through here, and 225 mobile homes in The Spruces were tagged on their doors.
One use of the doorpost bears witness to an ancient faith and a timeless truth: that God is with God’s people. The other posting drives a final nail in the coffin for many people whose households are gone, whose holy ground is torn open, and whose trust in the providence of God faces a sore trial. They too are God’s people, these residents who no longer reside, who are no longer surrounded by what is familiar, but stand with the clothes on their back and, if they are fortunate, their loved ones hand in hand. The promise is made no less to them, that God is with God’s people. But to claim that promise, the homeless cannot look to what is seen; they must look to what is unseen. They will find God present, not in secure surroundings and abundance (which are the subjects of the table graces we pray and the prayers we usually raise on Thanksgiving Day); they will find God present in people who validate the second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God is present to battered residents along the mid-Atlantic seaboard in the firm confidence of first responders, the quiet labor of shelter volunteers, the steady progress of linesmen and tree removal crews, through whose efforts relief is felt, shock subsides, and victims dare recall who and whose they are.
For the victims of this superstorm, nothing will ever be the same again. And those are the words that came to mind when I first realized how threatened mighty New York City would be. I watched the film clips of the Hudson and East Rivers overflowing the Battery and I thought that for this great city, nothing could ever be the same again. Urban planning for coastal cities; zoning, development, and rebuilding along beachfronts; and, for us here, building on flood plains and along riverways, all need rethinking. Not motivated by scientific theory and the politics that have sprouted in armed camps around global warming, but motivated by actual storms, experienced events that cannot be argued away from the planning tables. Explain it as we will, we are stepping across into a new sense of normal.
That’s a phrase used in relief and recovery circles. FEMA officials taught us that on average it takes eighteen months for disaster survivors to reach a new sense of normal, a redefined set of standards, hopes and goals that takes everything into account, including sudden recent change. What is true of the individual in recovery may have its parallel in society: When traumatic change deals us a blow, first we need rescue to safety; then healing of heart, soul, mind, and body so we rightly see our choices; then good counsel so we make the best choices we can, taking into account a changed and changing world.
That theme of a changing world is heard in our readings today. The Torah, sampled in our Deuteronomy reading, an ancient system of commandments, statutes, and ordinances, conveys timeless truth such as the primacy of love, love for God first to nurture and inspire love for neighbor. But the Torah bred also an elaborate system of burnt offerings and blood sacrifice, and aren’t we glad we’ve evolved beyond that? As our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, it was the coming of Christ that made that sacrificial system redundant. Language of purification and images of blood sacrifice have shaped this first-century description of Jesus Christ’s mission, and the good news that his generous self-giving, his servant love, has nailed on the doorpost of the old religious factory of burnt offerings a sign that says, “Closed by the Owner: Unsafe for Human Nature.”
Martin Luther would have to reach for hammer and nails fifteen hundred years later in the Protestant Reformation, for similar house-cleaning. The theses he posted on that famous door in Wittenberg didn’t amount to a Condemned sign, definitely more a “needs repair” verdict. But he presents the truth that a friend recently told me, “Jesus Christ periodically needs rescuing from the hands of the Church.”
Because the Church is not the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is what matters most to Jesus, as we hear in Mark’s Gospel. That kingdom is a reordering of life to be in harmony with a whole-hearted love for God and a whole-hearted love for neighbor, caring for others as well as we care for ourselves. While the Church is called to facilitate these great loves, the Church is at best their midwife, helping them be born into a world that deeply needs them.
Which is why I am so grateful to be part of a congregation that gives generously to the world, around the corner and around the globe. St. John’s is, as well, a community that understands how the great whole-hearted loves for God and for neighbors nurture each other, give birth to new life, interact, intertwine. And I thank God that in this remarkable parish, we practice the sharing of what we have, what we do, and who we are not primarily as obligation, but as opportunity to grow spiritually. We take to heart the call to make our welcome warm to people we don’t yet know, as warm as the welcome we have received from God who knows us perfectly.
We understand that the church works for the good of the world. And, given what has happened across the eastern third or more of the United States in the past week, the church across the nation has fresh opportunity to participate in relief, recovery, and preparedness for the future. We open Raile’s Bowl today for gifts that will go in equal proportion to the American Red Cross and Episcopal Relief and Development. We’ll also be watching for what the Dioceses of Long Island and New Jersey are doing in terms of relief work, and may direct some of our giving to these frontline networks whose bishops (Larry Provenzano in Long Island, George Councell in New Jersey) were priests in this Diocese before their election, and are well-known to many of us.
Your gift will be matched from the mission funds of this parish, until we reach $1,000 in gifts. That we can do this multiplication is its own evidence that here we understand that the church works for the world.
I want to close with words from Bishop Councell in New Jersey, posted this week on the doorpost of that diocese’s Website: “Sometimes people look at a natural disaster and ask the question, ‘Where was God?’ I believe that a better question to raise is, ‘Where was the Church?’ The Church is us. In this most difficult moment for so many in our Diocese, state and region, may all see the Church of Jesus Christ at work through us, giving loving service and living hope to all.”
The ancient words of Deuteronomy tell us that Jesus’s reply to the scribe was not his own invention. The primacy of loving God wholly is expressed in the Shema Israel, the Jewish call to worship, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Notice that Jesus adds “and with all your mind.”
The words we heard from Deuteronomy today constitute the opening of every worshiping assembly of Jews on the Sabbath day. The closing words of the lesson call for every Jewish home to have, nailed to the door post, a fragment of God’s word, a phrase from the holy Torah, mounted in a mezuzah, a small decorated holder of metal or clay or wood, present to remind residents and guests alike that in this household the Lord God is to be loved wholly, first, foremost, in all things and above all things. The ground on which that house sits is holy ground. The table fellowship of that home, the cycling of generations through its rooms, the joys and sorrows shared there, all constitute a holy heritage.
Nailed to the doors of oceanfront houses along the New York and New Jersey coastline today are notices in two colors. One designates that the house is condemned and to be torn down. The other says that the house can be repaired and, in time, reoccupied. We know what these notices look like, from just over a year ago when another storm did not skirt, but sliced right through here, and 225 mobile homes in The Spruces were tagged on their doors.
One use of the doorpost bears witness to an ancient faith and a timeless truth: that God is with God’s people. The other posting drives a final nail in the coffin for many people whose households are gone, whose holy ground is torn open, and whose trust in the providence of God faces a sore trial. They too are God’s people, these residents who no longer reside, who are no longer surrounded by what is familiar, but stand with the clothes on their back and, if they are fortunate, their loved ones hand in hand. The promise is made no less to them, that God is with God’s people. But to claim that promise, the homeless cannot look to what is seen; they must look to what is unseen. They will find God present, not in secure surroundings and abundance (which are the subjects of the table graces we pray and the prayers we usually raise on Thanksgiving Day); they will find God present in people who validate the second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God is present to battered residents along the mid-Atlantic seaboard in the firm confidence of first responders, the quiet labor of shelter volunteers, the steady progress of linesmen and tree removal crews, through whose efforts relief is felt, shock subsides, and victims dare recall who and whose they are.
For the victims of this superstorm, nothing will ever be the same again. And those are the words that came to mind when I first realized how threatened mighty New York City would be. I watched the film clips of the Hudson and East Rivers overflowing the Battery and I thought that for this great city, nothing could ever be the same again. Urban planning for coastal cities; zoning, development, and rebuilding along beachfronts; and, for us here, building on flood plains and along riverways, all need rethinking. Not motivated by scientific theory and the politics that have sprouted in armed camps around global warming, but motivated by actual storms, experienced events that cannot be argued away from the planning tables. Explain it as we will, we are stepping across into a new sense of normal.
That’s a phrase used in relief and recovery circles. FEMA officials taught us that on average it takes eighteen months for disaster survivors to reach a new sense of normal, a redefined set of standards, hopes and goals that takes everything into account, including sudden recent change. What is true of the individual in recovery may have its parallel in society: When traumatic change deals us a blow, first we need rescue to safety; then healing of heart, soul, mind, and body so we rightly see our choices; then good counsel so we make the best choices we can, taking into account a changed and changing world.
That theme of a changing world is heard in our readings today. The Torah, sampled in our Deuteronomy reading, an ancient system of commandments, statutes, and ordinances, conveys timeless truth such as the primacy of love, love for God first to nurture and inspire love for neighbor. But the Torah bred also an elaborate system of burnt offerings and blood sacrifice, and aren’t we glad we’ve evolved beyond that? As our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, it was the coming of Christ that made that sacrificial system redundant. Language of purification and images of blood sacrifice have shaped this first-century description of Jesus Christ’s mission, and the good news that his generous self-giving, his servant love, has nailed on the doorpost of the old religious factory of burnt offerings a sign that says, “Closed by the Owner: Unsafe for Human Nature.”
Martin Luther would have to reach for hammer and nails fifteen hundred years later in the Protestant Reformation, for similar house-cleaning. The theses he posted on that famous door in Wittenberg didn’t amount to a Condemned sign, definitely more a “needs repair” verdict. But he presents the truth that a friend recently told me, “Jesus Christ periodically needs rescuing from the hands of the Church.”
Because the Church is not the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is what matters most to Jesus, as we hear in Mark’s Gospel. That kingdom is a reordering of life to be in harmony with a whole-hearted love for God and a whole-hearted love for neighbor, caring for others as well as we care for ourselves. While the Church is called to facilitate these great loves, the Church is at best their midwife, helping them be born into a world that deeply needs them.
Which is why I am so grateful to be part of a congregation that gives generously to the world, around the corner and around the globe. St. John’s is, as well, a community that understands how the great whole-hearted loves for God and for neighbors nurture each other, give birth to new life, interact, intertwine. And I thank God that in this remarkable parish, we practice the sharing of what we have, what we do, and who we are not primarily as obligation, but as opportunity to grow spiritually. We take to heart the call to make our welcome warm to people we don’t yet know, as warm as the welcome we have received from God who knows us perfectly.
We understand that the church works for the good of the world. And, given what has happened across the eastern third or more of the United States in the past week, the church across the nation has fresh opportunity to participate in relief, recovery, and preparedness for the future. We open Raile’s Bowl today for gifts that will go in equal proportion to the American Red Cross and Episcopal Relief and Development. We’ll also be watching for what the Dioceses of Long Island and New Jersey are doing in terms of relief work, and may direct some of our giving to these frontline networks whose bishops (Larry Provenzano in Long Island, George Councell in New Jersey) were priests in this Diocese before their election, and are well-known to many of us.
Your gift will be matched from the mission funds of this parish, until we reach $1,000 in gifts. That we can do this multiplication is its own evidence that here we understand that the church works for the world.
I want to close with words from Bishop Councell in New Jersey, posted this week on the doorpost of that diocese’s Website: “Sometimes people look at a natural disaster and ask the question, ‘Where was God?’ I believe that a better question to raise is, ‘Where was the Church?’ The Church is us. In this most difficult moment for so many in our Diocese, state and region, may all see the Church of Jesus Christ at work through us, giving loving service and living hope to all.”
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
That All May See
Scripture for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost includes Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52
All these Gospel stories we hear resemble pearls on a string. We slide them off, one by one, to notice each one’s particular shape and color and weight and size, but they belong together. And they belong to us. Together, we appreciate them better. I mean that in two ways: taken in context, paying attention to how a stories fit the larger scheme of the Gospel, there’s more to value in any one story. Heard and appraised together in community, we hear how they address the believer (and the skeptic), the community of faith (and the wider world).
So on the far side of today’s portion, the future, the very next scene in Mark is Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the story of Palm Sunday, the drama of what happens to Jesus when he completes his public ministry of speaking truth to power, and what happens then when God turns the table on Jesus’s executioners and proves his love to be stronger than death.
And on the near side of today’s passage, what just passed, we recall last Sunday’s pathetic pitch by James and John, sons of Zebedee (Sons of Thunder as they are remembered), who asked Jesus to let them sit with him in glory, his left-hand and right-hand men ruling the kingdom of God… his very own Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
That was a request Jesus could not fulfill. It just didn’t fit his mission, which is God’s will getting done on earth as it is in heaven. The best he could make of this embarrassing moment in the company of the twelve disciples was to hold it up as a good example of how leadership is not to be exercised in the community of faith. Whoever would be great must be servant of all.
And here today we have Mark’s final example of how Jesus fulfilled that leadership model. Servant of all means stopping dead in your tracks to let someone else’s life matter more to you than whatever you had your mind set on in that moment. Jesus had set his mind on Jerusalem, on the final outcome of his mission, only to notice the insistent voice of someone calling out to him from the crowd. And what Jesus hears when he calls this man over to him is a request that he can fulfill, because it is spot-on his own vision. He expressed that himself back at the start of his public ministry, when at his very first appearance, at his hometown congregation in Nazareth, he read from the prophet Isaiah in a way that everyone knew meant he would fulfill the words on the scroll, for he was himself the Word made flesh. Here is what he read.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In the course of his two-to-three year journey through cities, villages, and wilderness, Jesus is remembered as having two characteristic passions. One I have already mentioned, his speaking truth to power, fearlessly rattling the cages of sacred cows and secular authorities, to assert the rights of the poor and the discarded, to teach a standard of justice that continues to our day inspiring relief and advocacy for undocumented workers, drawing marginalized people to the very center of the community’s life, applying the community’s resources to the healing of people in body, mind, and spirit.
How he does those things shows us his second characteristic passion: He fulfills his mission person by person, one to one and one by one. Members of Congress provide constituent services. Millennia before, we see Jesus developing this into an art form, and not just for people from his native Galilee and his covenant people Israel; he gives his love away to anyone who wants it.
What happens when he does? Today’s story tells us. On the face of it, this is the report of a physical healing. Jesus restores a certain power this man had lost, the ability to see. This is a power we take for granted until our having it is threatened by injury or disease.
His blindness had cost him a livelihood: he was a beggar. Is it a chorus from the crowd or some of the disciples who try to hush him, sternly ordering him to be quiet (in one translation)? Whoever that was, in their world beggars had no rights: they were at the far margin of society, not its center. But suddenly he is at the center, there with Jesus, who has asked for him.
Is it our stereotype that we expect a blind person to slowly, deliberately, cautiously inch his way along? This man throws off his cloak, springs to his feet, and comes confidently to where Jesus stands.
Doesn’t Jesus know what this man wants? But no: he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” The man is a beggar: he may want money. If so, he may be out of luck. Jesus wasn’t known for carrying a wallet, you remember. Besides, the chemistry of this encounter requires the seeker to name exactly what he seeks. “Rabbi, I want to see.” Feel how these words come from this man’s deepest, most vulnerable place within him. It is from this interior font that his power of trust rises: “Your faith has saved and healed you.”
Instantly, his constantly dark night is torn open by sunlight, color, contrast, comprehension of how all things fit together, work together, make a fuller sense of themselves. We’re not told how this immediate illumination doesn’t blind him all over again, but the gift proves his resilience. And he responds not by thanking the doctor and going home, but by following Jesus on the way… on the way to his confrontation with untrustworthy powers of church and state, and with the treachery of one of his own disciples… all of which this liberated beggar may have gotten to see and perhaps comprehend from a front row seat.
Now, the story works its way on another level. There is seeing with the eyes, and there is seeing with recognition, seeing with imagination, seeing with the conscience, seeing with insight, seeing truth, seeing one’s duty, seeing how seemingly conflicting parts make up a dynamic whole, seeing the choices before us for what they really are, seeing God where God may be, seeing Jesus in the face of a discarded person, seeing the movement of the Spirit. Any of these could be what we would answer Jesus when he asks, “What can I do for you?”
And all of those ways of seeing play their part in our learning to serve. Without these dimensions of spiritual sight, our efforts to serve may be aimless, we may be flying blind.
I am not suggesting metaphorizing this story to be less than it is. I’m wondering what it came to mean to the early Church, that our ancestors kept telling it, relishing it, feeling that it applied to them, that it came together in their own experience. Together with the community of faith then and now, let’s make sure this story is appreciated for all it can be.
And that brings me to what all this has to do with Lucy and Sofia, whom we will baptize in just a few moments.
It is the responsibility of all of us in this room today—parents, Godparents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and very much congregation—to see, to see our duty and to see our opportunities, to ensure that these girls meet Jesus Christ and come to know him in his two characteristic passions. One is how he fulfills his mission person by person, one to one and one by one. The other is how he speaks truth to power.
Sofia and Lucy are about to experience Christ in the first of those two ways. His cross is soon to be signed on their foreheads. His Spirit is going to dwell within them. They will become members of his body, the church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God-- who does not wait for them to see how all this works, but takes the first step towards each of them, immersing each of them in love that is not earned but freely given.
And given so that each in time may have formed within her a faith, a hope, and a caring that express themselves in the servant love that Jesus calls great, the passion that shows itself person to person, that all the world may see.
All these Gospel stories we hear resemble pearls on a string. We slide them off, one by one, to notice each one’s particular shape and color and weight and size, but they belong together. And they belong to us. Together, we appreciate them better. I mean that in two ways: taken in context, paying attention to how a stories fit the larger scheme of the Gospel, there’s more to value in any one story. Heard and appraised together in community, we hear how they address the believer (and the skeptic), the community of faith (and the wider world).
So on the far side of today’s portion, the future, the very next scene in Mark is Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the story of Palm Sunday, the drama of what happens to Jesus when he completes his public ministry of speaking truth to power, and what happens then when God turns the table on Jesus’s executioners and proves his love to be stronger than death.
And on the near side of today’s passage, what just passed, we recall last Sunday’s pathetic pitch by James and John, sons of Zebedee (Sons of Thunder as they are remembered), who asked Jesus to let them sit with him in glory, his left-hand and right-hand men ruling the kingdom of God… his very own Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
That was a request Jesus could not fulfill. It just didn’t fit his mission, which is God’s will getting done on earth as it is in heaven. The best he could make of this embarrassing moment in the company of the twelve disciples was to hold it up as a good example of how leadership is not to be exercised in the community of faith. Whoever would be great must be servant of all.
And here today we have Mark’s final example of how Jesus fulfilled that leadership model. Servant of all means stopping dead in your tracks to let someone else’s life matter more to you than whatever you had your mind set on in that moment. Jesus had set his mind on Jerusalem, on the final outcome of his mission, only to notice the insistent voice of someone calling out to him from the crowd. And what Jesus hears when he calls this man over to him is a request that he can fulfill, because it is spot-on his own vision. He expressed that himself back at the start of his public ministry, when at his very first appearance, at his hometown congregation in Nazareth, he read from the prophet Isaiah in a way that everyone knew meant he would fulfill the words on the scroll, for he was himself the Word made flesh. Here is what he read.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In the course of his two-to-three year journey through cities, villages, and wilderness, Jesus is remembered as having two characteristic passions. One I have already mentioned, his speaking truth to power, fearlessly rattling the cages of sacred cows and secular authorities, to assert the rights of the poor and the discarded, to teach a standard of justice that continues to our day inspiring relief and advocacy for undocumented workers, drawing marginalized people to the very center of the community’s life, applying the community’s resources to the healing of people in body, mind, and spirit.
How he does those things shows us his second characteristic passion: He fulfills his mission person by person, one to one and one by one. Members of Congress provide constituent services. Millennia before, we see Jesus developing this into an art form, and not just for people from his native Galilee and his covenant people Israel; he gives his love away to anyone who wants it.
What happens when he does? Today’s story tells us. On the face of it, this is the report of a physical healing. Jesus restores a certain power this man had lost, the ability to see. This is a power we take for granted until our having it is threatened by injury or disease.
His blindness had cost him a livelihood: he was a beggar. Is it a chorus from the crowd or some of the disciples who try to hush him, sternly ordering him to be quiet (in one translation)? Whoever that was, in their world beggars had no rights: they were at the far margin of society, not its center. But suddenly he is at the center, there with Jesus, who has asked for him.
Is it our stereotype that we expect a blind person to slowly, deliberately, cautiously inch his way along? This man throws off his cloak, springs to his feet, and comes confidently to where Jesus stands.
Doesn’t Jesus know what this man wants? But no: he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” The man is a beggar: he may want money. If so, he may be out of luck. Jesus wasn’t known for carrying a wallet, you remember. Besides, the chemistry of this encounter requires the seeker to name exactly what he seeks. “Rabbi, I want to see.” Feel how these words come from this man’s deepest, most vulnerable place within him. It is from this interior font that his power of trust rises: “Your faith has saved and healed you.”
Instantly, his constantly dark night is torn open by sunlight, color, contrast, comprehension of how all things fit together, work together, make a fuller sense of themselves. We’re not told how this immediate illumination doesn’t blind him all over again, but the gift proves his resilience. And he responds not by thanking the doctor and going home, but by following Jesus on the way… on the way to his confrontation with untrustworthy powers of church and state, and with the treachery of one of his own disciples… all of which this liberated beggar may have gotten to see and perhaps comprehend from a front row seat.
Now, the story works its way on another level. There is seeing with the eyes, and there is seeing with recognition, seeing with imagination, seeing with the conscience, seeing with insight, seeing truth, seeing one’s duty, seeing how seemingly conflicting parts make up a dynamic whole, seeing the choices before us for what they really are, seeing God where God may be, seeing Jesus in the face of a discarded person, seeing the movement of the Spirit. Any of these could be what we would answer Jesus when he asks, “What can I do for you?”
And all of those ways of seeing play their part in our learning to serve. Without these dimensions of spiritual sight, our efforts to serve may be aimless, we may be flying blind.
I am not suggesting metaphorizing this story to be less than it is. I’m wondering what it came to mean to the early Church, that our ancestors kept telling it, relishing it, feeling that it applied to them, that it came together in their own experience. Together with the community of faith then and now, let’s make sure this story is appreciated for all it can be.
And that brings me to what all this has to do with Lucy and Sofia, whom we will baptize in just a few moments.
It is the responsibility of all of us in this room today—parents, Godparents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and very much congregation—to see, to see our duty and to see our opportunities, to ensure that these girls meet Jesus Christ and come to know him in his two characteristic passions. One is how he fulfills his mission person by person, one to one and one by one. The other is how he speaks truth to power.
Sofia and Lucy are about to experience Christ in the first of those two ways. His cross is soon to be signed on their foreheads. His Spirit is going to dwell within them. They will become members of his body, the church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God-- who does not wait for them to see how all this works, but takes the first step towards each of them, immersing each of them in love that is not earned but freely given.
And given so that each in time may have formed within her a faith, a hope, and a caring that express themselves in the servant love that Jesus calls great, the passion that shows itself person to person, that all the world may see.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
At the Holy Creative Center
Scripture for the 21st Sunday after Pentecost includes Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
In Mark’s Gospel we have two men seeking high office. One sees himself to the left of center, while the other places himself to the right. Neither says persuasively why he should be elevated to such a position of power, but they both expect it to be glorious and good for the kingdom of God if they are. And they picture that what they’ll be doing is a lot of is sitting in glory, in great authority, in places of honor, thrones, oval offices.
I wonder what today’s Bible readings could say to us, as we step into late fall 2012.
In his reply to James and John, whose nickname was Sons of Thunder, Jesus tells them that it’s not enough to want to win an election. It’s imperative to know what it is they’re asking for. Why do they want to sit with him in glory? What would they do with the authority they’re eager to wield? Wield it for what purposes?
And wherever do they get the notion that they will like it when they have gained such power as Jesus can give them? “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
How glibly they respond, “Oh, yes! Our whole lives, we’ve been preparing for this. Our family, advisors, and handlers all tell us it’s our destiny. We are James and John, sons of Zebedee, and we approve this message.”
It’s no accident that we’re also given today the voice of Job, a study in contrast to James and John. This portion comes near the end of Job’s long struggle with the unjustness of God, who has allowed many lifetimes’ worth of misfortune to befall this one good man. And Job has refused to relinquish his self-esteem, despite the clumsy coaching of his friends who assume he is somehow to blame for his own tragic losses, and the prompting of his overwhelmed wife who urges him to give up, to curse God and die.
If James and John could have stood in Job’s sandals and heard the Lord God of hosts speak of the infinite gulf between divine knowledge and the partial knowings that limit even the best mortal human being as he rises up and asks why things are as they are… why, James and John might, like Job, have ratcheted down their self-righteous expectation to get what they wanted.
After much more of this dramatic dressing-down by God, this sharp reminding of who is central to the universe and who is not, this putting Job in his place, when God has had the last word, the Book of Job will end with Job abasing himself before the Almighty. “I had heard of you,” he says to God, “by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
That is not an ending designed to please the modern hearer. We might want to consign it to the dustbin of unnecessarily dour piety. But it would be a shame to miss this point: God has honored Job’s longing for a day in court. God has climbed into the dock, to answer Job’s charge that God is profoundly unjust. For what other person in all the Hebrew Bible has God gone face to face? For Moses… and now for Job.
This ending tells us that for Job this is enough. He will not win this campaign debate by argument. He will not put down the Creator God who is central to the universe. He will not go farther down the hazardous road of making God his adversary when, in fact, God is the very ground for Job’s famous cry of hope, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth… then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.” (Job 19:25-27)
Job’s ending is a beginning of recognition that it is time for Job to shed the mighty chip he has had on his shoulder—understandably—since suffering so many losses. That feisty spirit has brought him as far as it can: face to face with the Inscrutable One who here reveals the desire to be known, the Magnum Mysterium who desires relationship.
We are given Job today to remind us of the virtues of humility, honesty, and repentance; and the roles these human powers play in creating responsible leadership.
James and John do not have these virtues, not yet. Notice how patient, how unrattled, how calmly Jesus responds to these two hot-headed, likely well-intentioned, disciples. None of the high-blown oratory of God’s challenge to Job, no trace of indignation, no rapping of knuckles. Jesus is pointblank but gentle: “You two just don’t get it, do you?” Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Do you suppose he means to evoke the same meaning of self-sacrificing servant love that he indelibly attaches to the cup of wine that he will share with them at the last supper? “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins…”
And by holding up to them his own baptism by John the Baptist, when he through whom the worlds were made stood in line with hundreds of ordinary men and women to be immersed in the silty Jordan River, wasn’t that a public sign that he is one with us, bound to us, on our side (as Job would say); and wasn’t it precisely then that he was anointed, empowered, for his brief public ministry that forever would be remembered not for any lording over us, but for his serving us to make us servants of his?
Coming at the height (or is it the depth?) of a presidential campaign, these readings invite us to realize that every candidate for high office is a human being, just a human being. No candidate can be the center of our universe, nor even the center of our nation.
That center is a holy place, a crucible of creative leadership from which can come unification, progress, transformation—if the center is acknowledged to belong, not to a party or a president, but a nation, a diverse commonwealth of us, the people. Treated like a sanctuary, a place for repentance, reconciliation, honest amendment of life, and encounter with the transcendent, the center holds promise. The center is a place of grace.
No leader is the center of power and authority. A candidate who thinks he is will, once seated, find out otherwise. We place a leader near the center so that he or she will draw to the table all who are willing to work for the common good.
For either candidate to do that for us as president, he will, like Job, have to shed any major chip he has shouldered, repent of the role he and his party have played in desecrating the holy center, the creative center, of the people; and, in humility, demonstrate what it takes to respect and serve and lead from as near as he can get to that place of demanding and delicate balance.
For either candidate to do that for us as president, he will, like James and John, have to forego dreams of glory, in exchange for knowing certainly what he is asking of us, and what is required of him to become great—as a servant.
In a season when passions run high, these readings remind us that at the center of the Christian’s universe is the passion of Jesus Christ—his life, his death, his victory over death—and this passion beats with the pulse of new life. However we plan to vote on November 6th, whether to the left or the right of center, all Christians are centered in Christ, and we’ll do well to lay all our passions at the foot of his great passion, his indelible servant love for all people.
In Mark’s Gospel we have two men seeking high office. One sees himself to the left of center, while the other places himself to the right. Neither says persuasively why he should be elevated to such a position of power, but they both expect it to be glorious and good for the kingdom of God if they are. And they picture that what they’ll be doing is a lot of is sitting in glory, in great authority, in places of honor, thrones, oval offices.
I wonder what today’s Bible readings could say to us, as we step into late fall 2012.
In his reply to James and John, whose nickname was Sons of Thunder, Jesus tells them that it’s not enough to want to win an election. It’s imperative to know what it is they’re asking for. Why do they want to sit with him in glory? What would they do with the authority they’re eager to wield? Wield it for what purposes?
And wherever do they get the notion that they will like it when they have gained such power as Jesus can give them? “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
How glibly they respond, “Oh, yes! Our whole lives, we’ve been preparing for this. Our family, advisors, and handlers all tell us it’s our destiny. We are James and John, sons of Zebedee, and we approve this message.”
It’s no accident that we’re also given today the voice of Job, a study in contrast to James and John. This portion comes near the end of Job’s long struggle with the unjustness of God, who has allowed many lifetimes’ worth of misfortune to befall this one good man. And Job has refused to relinquish his self-esteem, despite the clumsy coaching of his friends who assume he is somehow to blame for his own tragic losses, and the prompting of his overwhelmed wife who urges him to give up, to curse God and die.
If James and John could have stood in Job’s sandals and heard the Lord God of hosts speak of the infinite gulf between divine knowledge and the partial knowings that limit even the best mortal human being as he rises up and asks why things are as they are… why, James and John might, like Job, have ratcheted down their self-righteous expectation to get what they wanted.
After much more of this dramatic dressing-down by God, this sharp reminding of who is central to the universe and who is not, this putting Job in his place, when God has had the last word, the Book of Job will end with Job abasing himself before the Almighty. “I had heard of you,” he says to God, “by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
That is not an ending designed to please the modern hearer. We might want to consign it to the dustbin of unnecessarily dour piety. But it would be a shame to miss this point: God has honored Job’s longing for a day in court. God has climbed into the dock, to answer Job’s charge that God is profoundly unjust. For what other person in all the Hebrew Bible has God gone face to face? For Moses… and now for Job.
This ending tells us that for Job this is enough. He will not win this campaign debate by argument. He will not put down the Creator God who is central to the universe. He will not go farther down the hazardous road of making God his adversary when, in fact, God is the very ground for Job’s famous cry of hope, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth… then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.” (Job 19:25-27)
Job’s ending is a beginning of recognition that it is time for Job to shed the mighty chip he has had on his shoulder—understandably—since suffering so many losses. That feisty spirit has brought him as far as it can: face to face with the Inscrutable One who here reveals the desire to be known, the Magnum Mysterium who desires relationship.
We are given Job today to remind us of the virtues of humility, honesty, and repentance; and the roles these human powers play in creating responsible leadership.
James and John do not have these virtues, not yet. Notice how patient, how unrattled, how calmly Jesus responds to these two hot-headed, likely well-intentioned, disciples. None of the high-blown oratory of God’s challenge to Job, no trace of indignation, no rapping of knuckles. Jesus is pointblank but gentle: “You two just don’t get it, do you?” Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Do you suppose he means to evoke the same meaning of self-sacrificing servant love that he indelibly attaches to the cup of wine that he will share with them at the last supper? “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins…”
And by holding up to them his own baptism by John the Baptist, when he through whom the worlds were made stood in line with hundreds of ordinary men and women to be immersed in the silty Jordan River, wasn’t that a public sign that he is one with us, bound to us, on our side (as Job would say); and wasn’t it precisely then that he was anointed, empowered, for his brief public ministry that forever would be remembered not for any lording over us, but for his serving us to make us servants of his?
Coming at the height (or is it the depth?) of a presidential campaign, these readings invite us to realize that every candidate for high office is a human being, just a human being. No candidate can be the center of our universe, nor even the center of our nation.
That center is a holy place, a crucible of creative leadership from which can come unification, progress, transformation—if the center is acknowledged to belong, not to a party or a president, but a nation, a diverse commonwealth of us, the people. Treated like a sanctuary, a place for repentance, reconciliation, honest amendment of life, and encounter with the transcendent, the center holds promise. The center is a place of grace.
No leader is the center of power and authority. A candidate who thinks he is will, once seated, find out otherwise. We place a leader near the center so that he or she will draw to the table all who are willing to work for the common good.
For either candidate to do that for us as president, he will, like Job, have to shed any major chip he has shouldered, repent of the role he and his party have played in desecrating the holy center, the creative center, of the people; and, in humility, demonstrate what it takes to respect and serve and lead from as near as he can get to that place of demanding and delicate balance.
For either candidate to do that for us as president, he will, like James and John, have to forego dreams of glory, in exchange for knowing certainly what he is asking of us, and what is required of him to become great—as a servant.
In a season when passions run high, these readings remind us that at the center of the Christian’s universe is the passion of Jesus Christ—his life, his death, his victory over death—and this passion beats with the pulse of new life. However we plan to vote on November 6th, whether to the left or the right of center, all Christians are centered in Christ, and we’ll do well to lay all our passions at the foot of his great passion, his indelible servant love for all people.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Eyes, Feet, Hands for God
Scripture for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost includes Esther 7:1-6, 9-10, 9:20-22; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50
Ah, yes. The amputation metaphors. “This collection of sayings is very difficult for Christians to hear,” writes one commentator. Do you think? Not to mention what non-Christians might make of it…
A Christian friend of mine made a perfect response to these verses. She lives with aphasia; speech is hard for her. Her response to these verses: Arrrghh! Seems entirely reasonable to me.
The commentator adds, Jesus’s audience would have had no difficulty recognizing the fact that he was speaking metaphorically and not literally. Which still leaves us challenged to figure out what Jesus is saying to us about our own discipleship.
His metaphors of body parts include sensory organs of perception and limbs of ambulation and outreach.
First, eyes. How often do we express disillusionment in words like, “Now I’ve seen it all!”? Jesus trains disciples to see by faith, to witness the worst with eyes that have seen the best-- evidence of resurrection-- and will keep looking for grace in every encounter. A popular blessing challenges us to see Jesus in every face we see.
Second, feet. A common word associated with faith is “walk”, as in walking the walk. By contrast, we often feel we’re walking in circles and running out of steam and, as James says today, wandering from the truth. By contrast, running the race that is set before us-- looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith-- has global positioning built into it, and walking the way of the cross is all about finding it to be the way of life. Pilgrimage is not aimless, both because it has a destination and because the journey itself is every bit as important as the arrival.
Then, hands. What our hands reach for is determined by where and how our hearts are attached. Think of Michelangelo’s Sistine fresco, the outstretched hand of God impelled by love to create, the receptive hand of Adam showing more than a need for A hand—the need for THE hand that establishes covenant relationship.
So if all this is the positive message, why the negative language, why the verbal extremism? Violence in the language of this part of Mark’s Gospel is thought to be the symptom of sharp disputes going on when Mark wrote this first of the four Gospels. Last Sunday, we heard about the disciples disputing among themselves who was greatest: that was a foretaste of human arguments that would persist in the early Church, magnified mightily by the wicked persecutions waged by the Roman empire, and preachers like Mark (modeling their approach on their bold assertive teacher Jesus) didn’t hesitate to employ a shock factor to rein-in erring church leaders.
Salt and fire are puzzling images, aren’t they? In that day, they’d have been understood as being all about preserving food, preventing decay and poisoning and waste and hunger. These chemical tools are good, as the Gospel says, but as chemical tools they involve reaction and change. We may think that agents of preservation represent the status quo, but in fact they represent change, transformation. In Mark’s hands salt and fire become emblematic of how everyone gets tested in life, and we’re probably meant to be reminded of psalms and other Hebrew scriptures that speak of God refining God’s people to reveal their integrity and prepare them to be agents of God’s own demanding love. The Bible is the many-centuried witness to the puzzling truth that those who are closest to the heart of God are also likeliest to be tested. Think of Jesus. Think of the Jews.
And our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today, the eccentric Book of Esther, gets us doing just that: thinking of the Jews. We need some commentary. “The underlying question of the book,” says one commentator, “ (is) the question of destruction or survival for Jews under persecution…”, a religious question. But nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Prayer is noticeably absent. “The spirit of vengeance is considerably more prominent than the spirit of devotion.”
But what a story it tells! We get its denouement today wildly out of the blue. A bit of background: “Esther, a beautiful Jewish maiden living in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire, was selected for the king’s harem, and so delighted King Ahasuerus… that he made her his queen. Then Haman, the prime minister, influenced the king to issue an edict authorizing the annihilation of all Jews in the Empire. In this emergency Esther was able to persuade Ahasuerus to proclaim a second edict reversing the situation, thus saving the lives of her people, and accomplishing the annihilation of their enemies. The rejoicing following this victory, the two days of feasting and gladness on the fourteenth and fifteenth (days of the Hebrew month) Adar, was then fixed by Queen Esther as an annual celebration, the festival of Purim.”
Mordecai, the fellow who escaped the fate that befell Haman, was Esther’s cousin and guardian. Though Haman had set him up to seem a traitor, at the last minute Mordecai is discovered by the king as the one whose intervention at just the right moment had thwarted an assassination attempt on the king by one of his top officials. Suddenly, in a true uh-oh moment, Haman’s eagerness to do away with Mordecai appears to the king to be damning evidence. And the tables turn. This is an exciting story of court intrigue, and it’s no wonder that it’s retold annually.
But it’s pretty clear that the story’s origins are not Jewish. Its non-religious character, and the Persian names of the characters in the story, combined with the fact that nowhere in Jewish law is observance of Purim required, all suggest that here we have an example of the profound principle Jesus believes: that whoever is not against us is for us. This Jewish festival of deliverance is rooted in a non-Jewish drama taken over by Jews from their Persian neighbors.
This is delicious, and well worth noticing. I wonder if this isn’t a witness to the wisdom of recognizing how interdependent we all are, in the experience of being human—how we need one another’s best stories.
When your religion motivates you to give a cup of water to a thirsty person, when your faith prompts you to help a person wrapped in anxiety find freedom, when your piety frees you to pray for the suffering and sing songs of praise with the cheerful, then you are tapping into a universal love that will teach you about the divine. And it is then, with the humility and the intensity of beginners, that disciples of Yahweh who is revealed by the law and the prophets, disciples of Jesus incarnating Abba Father and Lady Wisdom, disciples of Allah whose ways are expressed by the Prophet in the Koran, disciples of Lord Buddha emulated in mindfulness, and who knows who else, will discover the salt and fire of being for, not against one another.
May that day keep coming. Remember that the journey there is as important as the arrival—but may the day noticeably arrive, in our lifetime, in that of our children, and may we help it happen by bearing the holy fruits of peace and understanding.
Dorothea Ward Harvey’s article on the Book of Esther is found in Volume 2 of The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon Press, 1962).
Ah, yes. The amputation metaphors. “This collection of sayings is very difficult for Christians to hear,” writes one commentator. Do you think? Not to mention what non-Christians might make of it…
A Christian friend of mine made a perfect response to these verses. She lives with aphasia; speech is hard for her. Her response to these verses: Arrrghh! Seems entirely reasonable to me.
The commentator adds, Jesus’s audience would have had no difficulty recognizing the fact that he was speaking metaphorically and not literally. Which still leaves us challenged to figure out what Jesus is saying to us about our own discipleship.
His metaphors of body parts include sensory organs of perception and limbs of ambulation and outreach.
First, eyes. How often do we express disillusionment in words like, “Now I’ve seen it all!”? Jesus trains disciples to see by faith, to witness the worst with eyes that have seen the best-- evidence of resurrection-- and will keep looking for grace in every encounter. A popular blessing challenges us to see Jesus in every face we see.
Second, feet. A common word associated with faith is “walk”, as in walking the walk. By contrast, we often feel we’re walking in circles and running out of steam and, as James says today, wandering from the truth. By contrast, running the race that is set before us-- looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith-- has global positioning built into it, and walking the way of the cross is all about finding it to be the way of life. Pilgrimage is not aimless, both because it has a destination and because the journey itself is every bit as important as the arrival.
Then, hands. What our hands reach for is determined by where and how our hearts are attached. Think of Michelangelo’s Sistine fresco, the outstretched hand of God impelled by love to create, the receptive hand of Adam showing more than a need for A hand—the need for THE hand that establishes covenant relationship.
So if all this is the positive message, why the negative language, why the verbal extremism? Violence in the language of this part of Mark’s Gospel is thought to be the symptom of sharp disputes going on when Mark wrote this first of the four Gospels. Last Sunday, we heard about the disciples disputing among themselves who was greatest: that was a foretaste of human arguments that would persist in the early Church, magnified mightily by the wicked persecutions waged by the Roman empire, and preachers like Mark (modeling their approach on their bold assertive teacher Jesus) didn’t hesitate to employ a shock factor to rein-in erring church leaders.
Salt and fire are puzzling images, aren’t they? In that day, they’d have been understood as being all about preserving food, preventing decay and poisoning and waste and hunger. These chemical tools are good, as the Gospel says, but as chemical tools they involve reaction and change. We may think that agents of preservation represent the status quo, but in fact they represent change, transformation. In Mark’s hands salt and fire become emblematic of how everyone gets tested in life, and we’re probably meant to be reminded of psalms and other Hebrew scriptures that speak of God refining God’s people to reveal their integrity and prepare them to be agents of God’s own demanding love. The Bible is the many-centuried witness to the puzzling truth that those who are closest to the heart of God are also likeliest to be tested. Think of Jesus. Think of the Jews.
And our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today, the eccentric Book of Esther, gets us doing just that: thinking of the Jews. We need some commentary. “The underlying question of the book,” says one commentator, “ (is) the question of destruction or survival for Jews under persecution…”, a religious question. But nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Prayer is noticeably absent. “The spirit of vengeance is considerably more prominent than the spirit of devotion.”
But what a story it tells! We get its denouement today wildly out of the blue. A bit of background: “Esther, a beautiful Jewish maiden living in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire, was selected for the king’s harem, and so delighted King Ahasuerus… that he made her his queen. Then Haman, the prime minister, influenced the king to issue an edict authorizing the annihilation of all Jews in the Empire. In this emergency Esther was able to persuade Ahasuerus to proclaim a second edict reversing the situation, thus saving the lives of her people, and accomplishing the annihilation of their enemies. The rejoicing following this victory, the two days of feasting and gladness on the fourteenth and fifteenth (days of the Hebrew month) Adar, was then fixed by Queen Esther as an annual celebration, the festival of Purim.”
Mordecai, the fellow who escaped the fate that befell Haman, was Esther’s cousin and guardian. Though Haman had set him up to seem a traitor, at the last minute Mordecai is discovered by the king as the one whose intervention at just the right moment had thwarted an assassination attempt on the king by one of his top officials. Suddenly, in a true uh-oh moment, Haman’s eagerness to do away with Mordecai appears to the king to be damning evidence. And the tables turn. This is an exciting story of court intrigue, and it’s no wonder that it’s retold annually.
But it’s pretty clear that the story’s origins are not Jewish. Its non-religious character, and the Persian names of the characters in the story, combined with the fact that nowhere in Jewish law is observance of Purim required, all suggest that here we have an example of the profound principle Jesus believes: that whoever is not against us is for us. This Jewish festival of deliverance is rooted in a non-Jewish drama taken over by Jews from their Persian neighbors.
This is delicious, and well worth noticing. I wonder if this isn’t a witness to the wisdom of recognizing how interdependent we all are, in the experience of being human—how we need one another’s best stories.
When your religion motivates you to give a cup of water to a thirsty person, when your faith prompts you to help a person wrapped in anxiety find freedom, when your piety frees you to pray for the suffering and sing songs of praise with the cheerful, then you are tapping into a universal love that will teach you about the divine. And it is then, with the humility and the intensity of beginners, that disciples of Yahweh who is revealed by the law and the prophets, disciples of Jesus incarnating Abba Father and Lady Wisdom, disciples of Allah whose ways are expressed by the Prophet in the Koran, disciples of Lord Buddha emulated in mindfulness, and who knows who else, will discover the salt and fire of being for, not against one another.
May that day keep coming. Remember that the journey there is as important as the arrival—but may the day noticeably arrive, in our lifetime, in that of our children, and may we help it happen by bearing the holy fruits of peace and understanding.
Dorothea Ward Harvey’s article on the Book of Esther is found in Volume 2 of The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon Press, 1962).
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