Scripture for the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany includes Sirach 15:15-20; I Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
What a set of readings for us to bite into today! And I use that figure of speech remembering Eugene Peterson’s words that I read to you, last Sunday:
“Christians feed on scripture. Holy scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn to study or use scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love… healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of God, feet washed in company with the Son… Come to the Table and eat this book, for every word in the book is intended to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness to our souls and bodies.”
Every word? There’s a tall claim. Seems to me there was a bitter taste when I kissed the Gospel page today… Might we not get indigestion from some of these words? Every word intended for our good? What helps us make that claim is to affirm that some words—some teachings—draw us into holy argument and sharp reaction. And yes, this too qualifies as the “something in us” that scripture is intended to do in order to give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness. A holy argument qualifies, and while Jewish religious instruction has made that affirmation for millennia, Christians may still need to learn that an honest tussle with the Bible may glorify God (and serve humanity).
Speaking of words, each of our first and second readings highlights a key word. In that little portion from the Book of Sirach, it’s “choose”: he’s saying that our choice to obey God’s commandments is as dramatically clear-cut as choosing to stretch out your hand to grasp fire… or water. By the time we are done looking at Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount today, we may disagree as to how clear-cut a choice obedience is… but we may also like these metaphors of fire and water precisely because they are not easily grasped—nor is either best gotten by a grasping hand.
In the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we hear another key word: growth. He finds a pastoral way to urge them to grow up. At the moment, they’re acting like infants—but he treats them as “infants in Christ.” He cannot serve them the Word of God to eat, not the full message of the Kingdom of God, not the complete Gospel of grace—and yet that’s exactly his responsibility as an apostle, so he urges them to leave aside their immature jealousies and quarrels and grow up. Paul says they’re fighting among themselves because they are “people of the flesh”, whereas he knows they are also spiritual people.
But the Spirit unites, and they are divided. Divided into camps, cliques, you might even say (in a premature sort of way) denominations. Paul dismisses this partisanship, calling it “merely human”—and pointless, since all the pathways leading them to the table of new life ultimately are transcended by the fulfilling Christ in whom they are one. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians create a classroom in which he, the teacher, guides the growth of the church he had planted. We all get to sit in his classroom, and among the rich lessons we take away from his Corinthian letters is that peerless 13th chapter in the first letter, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal… And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
Growing up into that vision is also the purpose of the Gospel writer Matthew, who presents Jesus’s stunning Sermon on the Mount. We’re going to look at a portion of that today, and next Sunday. And we’re going to keep handy those key words we’ve heard already this morning, choice and growth. We’re going to need them, because the overarching theme running through all these readings is obedience, the divine call to obey the commands of God; and in the absence of choice and growth, obedience would be a cold and loveless affair.
What are the commands of God? Well, isn’t that the Final Jeopardy question? In the Hebrew Bible, they are those ten commandments that Moses conveys from God to Israel—and as worthy a set of laws as they are, they were a hard sell from the start. Infidelity set in early, as our primal ancestors chose not to listen. Their hearts turned away and they did not hear God. Somewhere way back in the origins of language, the word “obey” is built on the same root as “hear”. The voices you choose to hear will influence how, who, and what you obey. The messages you choose to accept as true and worthy will have their impact on your growth.
The long shelf life of the ten commandments is a witness to their being found to have true and worthy influence. And then there’s what happened next: how the Torah, the divine teachings of Israel, came to assert not just ten key demands, but some six hundred detailed requirements, as more and more aspects of Israel’s life came under regulation. These hundreds of rules, still enshrined in the Torah, include many that have had their say, had their day, but are increasingly over time not found to have true and worthy influence. How do our themes of choice and growth apply to them?
By contrast to systems with cumbersome legal baggage, Paul’s sweet hymn to love makes you feel what a gift it is to be simple, a gift to be free, a gift to come down where we ought to be—and when we’ve come down in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight: not fearing that we might be breaking some law that would put us on the wrong side of divine judgment, not needing a set of laws and rules to protect us from fault (or protect us from God), but choosing to grow towards God, to hear, to obey out of trust and love, not fear.
Last Sunday, we heard Jesus say he has come not to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill it. How? Look at what he does in today’s portion of his sermon on the mount. “You have heard it said in the time-honored Torah which has been read to you each sabbath… but I say to you, now, in the present moment…”
The rabbis, steeped in reasoned argument and debate, would readily call to task a colleague with a sharply different point of view. That rabbinic style shapes Matthew’s recounting of our Lord’s sermon. And the astonishing thing to catch is that Jesus is doing so much more than announcing a new improved interpretation of the Law of Moses: no, he is relocating authority from the written text to himself, or more exactly to God present in his life, his teaching, his death, his resurrection. How does Jesus fulfill the Law? Completing it, he transcends it; he stands upon it, as if upon the shoulders of Moses and the prophets—think of the story of the Transfiguration, which we’ll hear in just another couple of Sundays, when he stands on the mountaintop with Moses and Elijah.
Following this pattern-- You have heard it said… but I tell you-- Jesus deepens, broadens, heightens the law. (O love, how deep, how broad, how high, how passing thought and fantasy, that God the Son of God should take our mortal form for mortals’ sake…) He chooses six examples of What Was, but Now…
And with each, he follows this path: He reaffirms the law, then he radicalizes the law by going to its very root (radix is the Latin word for root), then he offers an application, a situational use, for that law. He fulfills by going to the root, radicalizing—just the opposite of the religious hypocrites he chastises, later in Matthew.
“You have heard it said… You shall not murder. But I say to you that if you let anger rule your heart, if you let that anger rule your choices and you insult a person, then you will be subject to judgment and deserve punishment by the council. If you wipe your feet on the dignity of a person and call him Fool, you have chosen to step into the hell of fire.”
Has he caught their attention? Has he caught ours? Now, what if what he’s trying to catch is the legalistic mind that makes its way by threat and intimidation and fear? That’s what one respected commentator says: in these six examples, Jesus is engaging in such overkill that he means to parody the legalist who commands obedience out of fear of punishment. Being thrown into prison, having to pay the full fine, plucking out your offending eye, cutting off your straying hand, all these disproportionate penalties… What if things are not as they seem, because for sure they already don’t sound one little bit like the grace and pardon and compassion and generosity that we want to grow into in Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not based on our getting what we deserve! What if in this sermon Jesus means to wake us up to the futility of snap judgment, the damage of harsh human judgmentalism, the influence of old inherited values now needing a paradigm shift-- making us eternally grateful that God is our judge, because what Jesus has shown us in himself shows us God, shows us the true and worthy goals of God that we are free to choose to hear and obey, shows us the undeserved grace that is the signature trait of God.
Don’t expect the Sermon on the Mount to behave itself nicely. It won’t. As right as Eugene Peterson is in saying that “every word in the book is intended to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness to our souls and bodies,” the fact is that the making of any one of the four Gospels is a little like making a sausage: there are chunks that defy careful definition, though the end product is wonderful and so worth the steps it takes to appreciate the whole.
Appreciating Matthew’s Gospel requires remembering that the Kingdom of God has come in Jesus Christ, who calls us to an obedience that he calls perfection, wholeness: not getting it all right, but taking it all in, embracing all, loving all. Obeying his commands requires an accurate vision of what matters most. Matthew gives us that in chapter 22, when a lawyer asks Jesus, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest? He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
But how? How to love? This same Jesus who calls us to the wholeness of the Kingdom of God also stands with us in our struggle with How, for the old age continues, we live in the tension between the pure standards of his kingdom that has come and the conflicting demands of obedient love here and now. We are people of the flesh as well as the spirit, sometimes infants still, choosing sometimes poorly, growing sometimes slowly.
So to us he declares in this sermon six most important thing about love. We have heard five of them today:
Love shows no hostility.
Love is not predatory.
The stability and sacred purposes of marriage are essential.
Love is unconditionally truthful.
Love does not retaliate.
And, as we shall see next week:
Love extends to the enemy.
Stay tuned.
(The Eugene Peterson quotations are from his “Eat This Book: A Conversation with the Art of Spiritual Reading.”)
Monday, February 17, 2014
You Are Salt, You Are Light
Scripture for the 5th Sunday after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 58:1-12; I Corinthians 2:1-16; Matthew 5:13-20
A fascinating part of the Super Bowl for me is the commercials. I want to know what’s worth spending a million dollars a second, or however astronomically much that airtime costs. But certainly they have become part of the performance! In the opening seconds of one of these frothy concoctions, I expect to experience something very familiar but very surprising, a quick roller coaster ride that cleverly engages my imagination and gets a reaction, whether that’s a laugh, a groan, a smile—or maybe an action, like reaching for a Bud (which for me would be a raging success, since I don’t drink beer), or upgrading to an Audi (which isn’t going to happen) or putting yogurt on the shopping list (the likeliest action for me).
I caught just part of the Super Bowl, last Sunday night. Two commercials held my attention. One was for Radio Shack, the one where the characters and cultural icons of the 80’s sweep through the store, stripping the place of old products no longer serving the future, and announcing a new inventory, a clean sweep. Since I seldom go to Radio Shack and haven’t an electronic bone in my body, I didn’t feel like I had a horse in that race—though I can imagine using a similar concept in a commercial for the Church, aiming it at people who are pretty sure there’s nothing here for them.
The other I really liked, even if I don’t eat Cheerios. Sweet-faced Gracie is hearing her Dad explain that the three of them are about to become four, because a baby is coming. With each reference to a family member, Dad slides a cheerio to the center of the table; then Gracie slides one more, and announces that a puppy is coming, too. The surprise kind of skips a generation: it’s Dad’s and Mom’s eyebrows that get raised, not Gracie’s—she’s a step ahead. She knows the story, and she’s writing the script. She knows something is being asked of her, and she drives her bargain.
Commercials tell us various things. Starting with the message, You are a consumer. Now consume this. Take in this message and let it work on you, either in the next 30 seconds (grab a Bud) or in the next 30 months (buy an Audi). You are somehow part of the little world of this commercial, stay tuned and discover how our message relates to you and your desires, your appetites, your self-image, your priorities.
Well, here is a commercial on behalf of our sponsor today: “Christians feed on scripture. Holy scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn to study or use scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of God, feet washed in company with the Son… Come to the Table and eat this book, for every word in the book is intended to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness to our souls and bodies.”
That’s from Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book: A Conversation with the Art of Spiritual Reading.
So, let’s return to that Gospel. It’s only fair that Jesus, having asked his disciples who they think he is, should tell them what he thinks they are.
Salt and light. He could have said to them, “You are self-actualized self-differentiated agents of generativity evolved to a high enough degree of awareness and insight that I may be able to use you…” But he doesn’t. He says, You are salt. You are light.”
He could, as a not far-fetched alternative, have said to them, “You are smelly fishermen, oily tax collectors, and generally low life Galilean peasants who haven’t a clue what God is up to and if you ever intend to rise from your sorry state you’d better catch every pithy saying I toss your way, figure out what I mean, and shape up.”
But he doesn’t. He says, You are salt. You are light. And by the terms of the Gospel, he’s saying that to you and me, to us.
I wonder what we can hear in these two mighty metaphors. For one thing, they tell us what Jesus requires of us: not that we try harder and harder to be salt and light, but that we trust him at his word that we are salt and light. His disciple Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, our second reading today, speaks of what God has revealed to us through the Spirit, the Spirit that searches everything and is deeply at home in what is truly human. What is revealed to us is how God has set in motion a new reality, a new creation in Jesus whose word we accept and whose power we trust.
That power is already at work in us—salt and light—and he calls us not to more and more self-exertion but to learn how to demonstrate his Spirit and his power. Which is not a matter of lofty words in theology or of mad-man cleverness in advertising, not a matter of successful organizational planning, and not a matter of filling our calendars with more and more commitments that prevent us from ever committing our hearts to anyone (or discovering what the truest desires of our hearts are).
He called Paul to have no more elaborate mission plan than knowing among the Corinthian Christians nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, recognizing him in every person, hearing his wisdom in and above the many philosophies and value systems competing with one another for airtime in that world that was the context of the early Church. Read commentaries on Paul’s letters to Corinth and see how easily the Church divides in a welter of conflicting views and opinions, how essential it is that disciples base their faith not on human wisdom but on the power of God. And this required of Paul that he approach the Corinthians “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,” performing the mission entrusted to all disciples by being salt and light.
Of these two metaphors, light needs little explanation two thousand years later. Even with electricity and headlights penetrating the night, we readily get it, that a sleepless sufferer longs for sunrise, that a profound choice presents itself, between cursing the darkness and lighting that one small lamp that will drive the darkness from a room.
But salt? In Hebrew culture, eating together was called “sharing salt”. The food on that table may have been preserved with salt. Salt was precious enough that it was an object for ritual sacrifice, and a symbol representing loyalty and covenant faithfulness and ritual purity.
I think of a recent New Yorker cover: a pudgey French chef standing in the doorway of his café, earmuffs in place and a wooly scarf around the neck of his white uniform, in his left hand a little bowl of salt, while with his right he pinches and sprinkles just a little salt on that icy sidewalk… it’s not all about money these days: salt still carries its own preciousness.
Neither salt nor light is inert. By their nature, the one is salty and the other shines: Jesus picks images of how faith by its nature expresses itself in works, discipleship in mission, learning by doing, glorifying God by allowing God to ignite us, putting our salt on the table to be used, our lit lamps on the table to help us all see each other clearly.
Matthew places this little teaching portion of chapter five in his Gospel right after the beatitudes in our Lord’s sermon on the mount. There’s something clearly chosen about his pairing salt and light, the one representing chemical reaction permeating matter, the other presenting electromagnetic radiation—both express a fully embracing presence, full engagement, the comprehensive indwelling of the Word made flesh, the pattern of all mission in the world.
Both express how Jesus will fulfill the law and the prophets: through the salt and light of his disciples, his friends, his allies. “I have come not to abolish but to fufill.”
Nonetheless, Matthew records the risk inherent in our discipleship: that our salt may become so mixed with other elements that it loses its chemical grip and has nothing more to give. Are these words of judgment directed at believers who lost their missionary zeal and sat on their laurels? Could be, but I’d hope for something better from Jesus: words of understanding that we all will need, when our salt must mingle with grief and loss, when we face periods in life when depression claims the energy we once had and yearn to have again, or illness sidelines us, family dynamics become draining, disillusionment hits in our workplace—or loss of a workplace— and flattens our peaks and fills our valleys.
Lighting a lamp and then hiding it under a basket: another image of the risk of discipleship, not to mention a fire hazard to all in the house. But the bucketed flame works as an image both of too private a discipleship that lacks the oxygen of community, and too institutional a discipleship that can squelch the Spirit who plunges into what is truly human.
It may seem as if these altogether human circumstances threaten to abolish salt and light in us. But remember that his promise is to fulfill. His powerful good news is not, “You have potential to be salt and light, if you will just keep trying harder and harder,” but, “You are salt and light.”
So, in seasons when our salt gets mingled and our light bucketed, it’s time to practice a more sheer trust, time to do that walking in weakness that Paul speaks about, time to do whatever connects us to the Spirit and power of God, to share salt with others, and share light.
A fascinating part of the Super Bowl for me is the commercials. I want to know what’s worth spending a million dollars a second, or however astronomically much that airtime costs. But certainly they have become part of the performance! In the opening seconds of one of these frothy concoctions, I expect to experience something very familiar but very surprising, a quick roller coaster ride that cleverly engages my imagination and gets a reaction, whether that’s a laugh, a groan, a smile—or maybe an action, like reaching for a Bud (which for me would be a raging success, since I don’t drink beer), or upgrading to an Audi (which isn’t going to happen) or putting yogurt on the shopping list (the likeliest action for me).
I caught just part of the Super Bowl, last Sunday night. Two commercials held my attention. One was for Radio Shack, the one where the characters and cultural icons of the 80’s sweep through the store, stripping the place of old products no longer serving the future, and announcing a new inventory, a clean sweep. Since I seldom go to Radio Shack and haven’t an electronic bone in my body, I didn’t feel like I had a horse in that race—though I can imagine using a similar concept in a commercial for the Church, aiming it at people who are pretty sure there’s nothing here for them.
The other I really liked, even if I don’t eat Cheerios. Sweet-faced Gracie is hearing her Dad explain that the three of them are about to become four, because a baby is coming. With each reference to a family member, Dad slides a cheerio to the center of the table; then Gracie slides one more, and announces that a puppy is coming, too. The surprise kind of skips a generation: it’s Dad’s and Mom’s eyebrows that get raised, not Gracie’s—she’s a step ahead. She knows the story, and she’s writing the script. She knows something is being asked of her, and she drives her bargain.
Commercials tell us various things. Starting with the message, You are a consumer. Now consume this. Take in this message and let it work on you, either in the next 30 seconds (grab a Bud) or in the next 30 months (buy an Audi). You are somehow part of the little world of this commercial, stay tuned and discover how our message relates to you and your desires, your appetites, your self-image, your priorities.
Well, here is a commercial on behalf of our sponsor today: “Christians feed on scripture. Holy scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn to study or use scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of God, feet washed in company with the Son… Come to the Table and eat this book, for every word in the book is intended to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness to our souls and bodies.”
That’s from Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book: A Conversation with the Art of Spiritual Reading.
So, let’s return to that Gospel. It’s only fair that Jesus, having asked his disciples who they think he is, should tell them what he thinks they are.
Salt and light. He could have said to them, “You are self-actualized self-differentiated agents of generativity evolved to a high enough degree of awareness and insight that I may be able to use you…” But he doesn’t. He says, You are salt. You are light.”
He could, as a not far-fetched alternative, have said to them, “You are smelly fishermen, oily tax collectors, and generally low life Galilean peasants who haven’t a clue what God is up to and if you ever intend to rise from your sorry state you’d better catch every pithy saying I toss your way, figure out what I mean, and shape up.”
But he doesn’t. He says, You are salt. You are light. And by the terms of the Gospel, he’s saying that to you and me, to us.
I wonder what we can hear in these two mighty metaphors. For one thing, they tell us what Jesus requires of us: not that we try harder and harder to be salt and light, but that we trust him at his word that we are salt and light. His disciple Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, our second reading today, speaks of what God has revealed to us through the Spirit, the Spirit that searches everything and is deeply at home in what is truly human. What is revealed to us is how God has set in motion a new reality, a new creation in Jesus whose word we accept and whose power we trust.
That power is already at work in us—salt and light—and he calls us not to more and more self-exertion but to learn how to demonstrate his Spirit and his power. Which is not a matter of lofty words in theology or of mad-man cleverness in advertising, not a matter of successful organizational planning, and not a matter of filling our calendars with more and more commitments that prevent us from ever committing our hearts to anyone (or discovering what the truest desires of our hearts are).
He called Paul to have no more elaborate mission plan than knowing among the Corinthian Christians nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, recognizing him in every person, hearing his wisdom in and above the many philosophies and value systems competing with one another for airtime in that world that was the context of the early Church. Read commentaries on Paul’s letters to Corinth and see how easily the Church divides in a welter of conflicting views and opinions, how essential it is that disciples base their faith not on human wisdom but on the power of God. And this required of Paul that he approach the Corinthians “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling,” performing the mission entrusted to all disciples by being salt and light.
Of these two metaphors, light needs little explanation two thousand years later. Even with electricity and headlights penetrating the night, we readily get it, that a sleepless sufferer longs for sunrise, that a profound choice presents itself, between cursing the darkness and lighting that one small lamp that will drive the darkness from a room.
But salt? In Hebrew culture, eating together was called “sharing salt”. The food on that table may have been preserved with salt. Salt was precious enough that it was an object for ritual sacrifice, and a symbol representing loyalty and covenant faithfulness and ritual purity.
I think of a recent New Yorker cover: a pudgey French chef standing in the doorway of his café, earmuffs in place and a wooly scarf around the neck of his white uniform, in his left hand a little bowl of salt, while with his right he pinches and sprinkles just a little salt on that icy sidewalk… it’s not all about money these days: salt still carries its own preciousness.
Neither salt nor light is inert. By their nature, the one is salty and the other shines: Jesus picks images of how faith by its nature expresses itself in works, discipleship in mission, learning by doing, glorifying God by allowing God to ignite us, putting our salt on the table to be used, our lit lamps on the table to help us all see each other clearly.
Matthew places this little teaching portion of chapter five in his Gospel right after the beatitudes in our Lord’s sermon on the mount. There’s something clearly chosen about his pairing salt and light, the one representing chemical reaction permeating matter, the other presenting electromagnetic radiation—both express a fully embracing presence, full engagement, the comprehensive indwelling of the Word made flesh, the pattern of all mission in the world.
Both express how Jesus will fulfill the law and the prophets: through the salt and light of his disciples, his friends, his allies. “I have come not to abolish but to fufill.”
Nonetheless, Matthew records the risk inherent in our discipleship: that our salt may become so mixed with other elements that it loses its chemical grip and has nothing more to give. Are these words of judgment directed at believers who lost their missionary zeal and sat on their laurels? Could be, but I’d hope for something better from Jesus: words of understanding that we all will need, when our salt must mingle with grief and loss, when we face periods in life when depression claims the energy we once had and yearn to have again, or illness sidelines us, family dynamics become draining, disillusionment hits in our workplace—or loss of a workplace— and flattens our peaks and fills our valleys.
Lighting a lamp and then hiding it under a basket: another image of the risk of discipleship, not to mention a fire hazard to all in the house. But the bucketed flame works as an image both of too private a discipleship that lacks the oxygen of community, and too institutional a discipleship that can squelch the Spirit who plunges into what is truly human.
It may seem as if these altogether human circumstances threaten to abolish salt and light in us. But remember that his promise is to fulfill. His powerful good news is not, “You have potential to be salt and light, if you will just keep trying harder and harder,” but, “You are salt and light.”
So, in seasons when our salt gets mingled and our light bucketed, it’s time to practice a more sheer trust, time to do that walking in weakness that Paul speaks about, time to do whatever connects us to the Spirit and power of God, to share salt with others, and share light.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
What I Love About St. John's
At a recent training session for the Berkshire Organizing Project, we participants were asked, “What do you love about your congregation?”
I found that easy to answer. I love—and am grateful for—this parish’s appetite for experimentation, flexibility, and personal challenge.
In worship, we try to balance the preciousness of old hymns by adding varieties of style and message encountered in learning new songs. We treasure The Book of Common Prayer as a strong and dependable compass, and we also welcome fresh worship texts from additional sources. Worship Outside the Box (our “alternative” service aimed at families and children) teaches skills and develops talents important to the whole congregation. And when the Christmas Pageant hasn’t quite enough children to carry off the customary version, swiftly a homegrown, witty, intergenerational alternative pageant is crafted.
From time to time, we gather for a worship forum, a chance to hear how certain experiments do—and don’t—work for us. And always in that order: first, what we appreciate about a change (or a stability), then what we may struggle with in that change (or stability). What this approach teaches is the twofold importance of truthful self-expression and of hearing what matters to others. So each person may grow clearer in balancing what-matters-to-me with what-matters-to-my-neighbor.
Open to personal challenge, St. John’s supports its candidates for confirmation and reception by asking members to adopt the same Confirmation Covenant that the candidates are asked to embrace—last spring, seventy parishioners signed on. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is held high not only in ceremony but in opportunities for adults, teens, and children to discover, celebrate, and strengthen what matters most in their faith and practice, and be nudged beyond old comfort zones into a more centered, grounded, grateful, and generous love for God and world and neighbor and self.
I love and celebrate this parish’s generous openness to sharing these sheltering buildings of ours with the wider community. We’re a congregation committed also to sharing our financial resources beyond the agenda of self-preservation, and this passion we have for making a difference locally and globally feels like the breath of God bringing oxygen to our cells.
I love seeing and hearing parish leaders’ openness to guidance, gained sometimes from debate around the table, sometimes in the silence we’re smart enough to keep together, and often by insight gained through steady attentive gatherings of God’s people.
I would be diminished in all these lovings, if it weren’t for the love I rise to, and go home to at the end of each day, the love I am so fortunate to have in Diana.
I love our parish staff: each of them practices a beautiful openness to people, and a real flair for his or her portions of the one ministry of Jesus Christ. Together, we enjoy an openness that lets us complement one another’s work for the good of the whole community.
With our 120th Annual Meeting today, I’m reminded that such a meeting ought to feel like a love fest. One way we make this true is by devoting a good portion of the meeting to consider two of our mission frontiers, and learn what’s happening there. Another is to thank God for the lives of members and friends who have stepped from this life to larger life in the past year.
And another is to celebrate the leadership of parishioners retiring from office. This year, that will include two of our Wardens, Steve King and Polly Macpherson; our Treasurer, Jim Kolesar; Vestry members Charles Bonenti and Celia Twomey, Parish Librarian Judy Buhner, Diocesan Convention Delegate Laurie Glover, and Sweet Brook Ministry Coordinator Roberta Patten. They all have loved us through their service to this congregation, through the exercise of their unique constellations of talents and abilities, and through their openness to the responsibilities of leadership, and the grace of God.
I found that easy to answer. I love—and am grateful for—this parish’s appetite for experimentation, flexibility, and personal challenge.
In worship, we try to balance the preciousness of old hymns by adding varieties of style and message encountered in learning new songs. We treasure The Book of Common Prayer as a strong and dependable compass, and we also welcome fresh worship texts from additional sources. Worship Outside the Box (our “alternative” service aimed at families and children) teaches skills and develops talents important to the whole congregation. And when the Christmas Pageant hasn’t quite enough children to carry off the customary version, swiftly a homegrown, witty, intergenerational alternative pageant is crafted.
From time to time, we gather for a worship forum, a chance to hear how certain experiments do—and don’t—work for us. And always in that order: first, what we appreciate about a change (or a stability), then what we may struggle with in that change (or stability). What this approach teaches is the twofold importance of truthful self-expression and of hearing what matters to others. So each person may grow clearer in balancing what-matters-to-me with what-matters-to-my-neighbor.
Open to personal challenge, St. John’s supports its candidates for confirmation and reception by asking members to adopt the same Confirmation Covenant that the candidates are asked to embrace—last spring, seventy parishioners signed on. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is held high not only in ceremony but in opportunities for adults, teens, and children to discover, celebrate, and strengthen what matters most in their faith and practice, and be nudged beyond old comfort zones into a more centered, grounded, grateful, and generous love for God and world and neighbor and self.
I love and celebrate this parish’s generous openness to sharing these sheltering buildings of ours with the wider community. We’re a congregation committed also to sharing our financial resources beyond the agenda of self-preservation, and this passion we have for making a difference locally and globally feels like the breath of God bringing oxygen to our cells.
I love seeing and hearing parish leaders’ openness to guidance, gained sometimes from debate around the table, sometimes in the silence we’re smart enough to keep together, and often by insight gained through steady attentive gatherings of God’s people.
I would be diminished in all these lovings, if it weren’t for the love I rise to, and go home to at the end of each day, the love I am so fortunate to have in Diana.
I love our parish staff: each of them practices a beautiful openness to people, and a real flair for his or her portions of the one ministry of Jesus Christ. Together, we enjoy an openness that lets us complement one another’s work for the good of the whole community.
With our 120th Annual Meeting today, I’m reminded that such a meeting ought to feel like a love fest. One way we make this true is by devoting a good portion of the meeting to consider two of our mission frontiers, and learn what’s happening there. Another is to thank God for the lives of members and friends who have stepped from this life to larger life in the past year.
And another is to celebrate the leadership of parishioners retiring from office. This year, that will include two of our Wardens, Steve King and Polly Macpherson; our Treasurer, Jim Kolesar; Vestry members Charles Bonenti and Celia Twomey, Parish Librarian Judy Buhner, Diocesan Convention Delegate Laurie Glover, and Sweet Brook Ministry Coordinator Roberta Patten. They all have loved us through their service to this congregation, through the exercise of their unique constellations of talents and abilities, and through their openness to the responsibilities of leadership, and the grace of God.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
What Does He See in Them/Us?
Scripture for the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 9:1-4; I Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
What was it about those four fellows that drew Jesus to them?
I’m guessing that the simple fact that they are named so prominently in three of the Gospels and the Book of Acts tells us that Peter and Andrew, James and John, were still forces to be reckoned with in the early Church. Remember that their primacy is also shown in their being with Jesus at certain crucial pivotal times, including the Transfiguration. These guys were not bench warmers. They were starters.
And it’s remembered that they were two pairs of brothers. Why do you suppose that detail was remembered? It’s not as if filial loyalty is the top priority in the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed: Remember how he dismissed his own nuclear family when they tried to persuade him to take better care of himself, give up his itinerant preaching, and come home to work in the family carpentry business? He asked them sharply, “Who is my mother, my brothers, my sisters? Those who do the will of my Father are my brothers, my sisters, my mother.” It’s not self-evident that coming packaged as a pair of siblings would give these fellows a tip in the admissions process.
Though maybe these two pairs were known in their younger days, in their first career, as duos. Like, “Don’t mess with Peter or Andrew: cross one and you’ve got both on your case…” or, “James and John, they’re the umbilical brothers; you never see one without the other, they’re tight…”
But this family thing is tricky, isn’t it? I brought communion to Steve and Mary King on Friday, and Mary asked, “Does anyone care how Zebedee feels about this head-hunting?” Good question! So much for Social Security—without his boys, how will Zebedee ever manage? As I said, filial loyalty does not appear to top the charts in the Kingdom of God. The reign of justice, mercy, and grace is not necessarily built on traditional family values.
What is it built on? It is built on courage. The back-story to the calling of the first disciples is the arrest of John the Baptizer. This watershed moment sounds pivotal to the public ministry of Jesus. The Gospel writers remember John the Baptist’s departing words, “I must decrease so that he (Jesus) may increase.” John has confronted the corrosive amorality of King Herod’s household, and all its ripple effects upon wider society, characterized by the greed of tax collectors, the unwarranted violence of soldiers, and the hoarding instincts of the citizenry (all were evils John tried to wash clean from the fabric of society, ensuring that painted on his backside was an unmistakable set of concentric circles).
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Those are the exact words that in Matthew’s Gospel capture the essence of John the Baptist’s preaching. Now they are the opening words of the public ministry of Jesus, and he may well be referring to the lasting importance of John, indelibly linking his own ministry with that of his fore-runner. It fits the high regard we hear our Lord holding for John that he should be taken to mean, “In that man John, a prophet and I tell you more than a prophet, God’s kingdom has come as near to you as the wind on your face.”
To become one of the disciples of Jesus will require the same courage, the same readiness for confrontation, rejection of the status quo, appetite for changing this world into a new creation. It will require willingness to stand vulnerable to the elements—not so much the engulfing sea and threatening storm as vulnerability to the elements of social disapproval and the requirements of obedience and the central struggle of faith, which is to trust all throughout the hard and bumpy ride of change.
But we aren’t done wringing out answers to that opening question, What does Jesus see in these guys?
Fishermen. Workers holding the tools of their labor, nets and oars and sails. Workers standing in the vehicles of their labor, those creaky rough-hewn perhaps leaky boats. He sees workers who know intimately how the prosperity or the poverty of their households and their hometowns depends on their hard work, their smart work, their serving the most basic needs for security in the people around them.
He sees workers who know how to read and interpret the signs, the seasons, the sea, the sky: people who truly occupy God’s creation with care and awe, recognizing and treasuring the interdependence they have with the natural order and so are positioned to midwife a new creation.
Do you suppose first-century fishermen had the reputation for blarney that we expect of them today? If so, Jesus saw in them people who could tell a good story, people others would listen to and draw an audience.
Meanwhile, back at the Kings’, Steve commented that we don’t find the fishermen turning Jesus down, but there are stories of some who refused to be nominated, like the rich young man who seemed all set to sign on until Jesus required him to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. To the fishermen, he had promised to make them fishers of people. Evidently, the young investor didn’t recognize that Jesus was promising to make him an investor in people. I’m guessing this poor fellow never heard the promise or imagined what the transformation might mean. In the verbs of that exchange, he heard “sell” and “give”, but never got to “come” and “follow”, even though he was sure he wanted those very changes in his life. He will visit us in another Gospel on another Sunday, so we’ll let him wait until that sermon, and let’s return to these fishermen.
Does the story of their calling speak to you? Is it that recruiting fishermen is a persuasive way of declaring that Christian discipleship is not rocket science, not vocation reserved for a few or confined to the gifted? Isn’t it the fisherman thing that causes us to lose our excuses for resisting discipleship—like, we don’t know what we have to offer Jesus, don’t yet have the training, the experience, or the understanding we think is required?
So, deal with it. And if you’d like some company dealing with it, consider signing up for the Foundations experience, to be offered at a parish church near you in about two or three weeks’ time. You may find that it offers some of that grace we prayed for earlier today, grace to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ. Grace each of us needs to recognize God in the world, and to live more fully into the vows of our baptism and the values, the puzzling values, of the Kingdom of God.
What was it about those four fellows that drew Jesus to them?
I’m guessing that the simple fact that they are named so prominently in three of the Gospels and the Book of Acts tells us that Peter and Andrew, James and John, were still forces to be reckoned with in the early Church. Remember that their primacy is also shown in their being with Jesus at certain crucial pivotal times, including the Transfiguration. These guys were not bench warmers. They were starters.
And it’s remembered that they were two pairs of brothers. Why do you suppose that detail was remembered? It’s not as if filial loyalty is the top priority in the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed: Remember how he dismissed his own nuclear family when they tried to persuade him to take better care of himself, give up his itinerant preaching, and come home to work in the family carpentry business? He asked them sharply, “Who is my mother, my brothers, my sisters? Those who do the will of my Father are my brothers, my sisters, my mother.” It’s not self-evident that coming packaged as a pair of siblings would give these fellows a tip in the admissions process.
Though maybe these two pairs were known in their younger days, in their first career, as duos. Like, “Don’t mess with Peter or Andrew: cross one and you’ve got both on your case…” or, “James and John, they’re the umbilical brothers; you never see one without the other, they’re tight…”
But this family thing is tricky, isn’t it? I brought communion to Steve and Mary King on Friday, and Mary asked, “Does anyone care how Zebedee feels about this head-hunting?” Good question! So much for Social Security—without his boys, how will Zebedee ever manage? As I said, filial loyalty does not appear to top the charts in the Kingdom of God. The reign of justice, mercy, and grace is not necessarily built on traditional family values.
What is it built on? It is built on courage. The back-story to the calling of the first disciples is the arrest of John the Baptizer. This watershed moment sounds pivotal to the public ministry of Jesus. The Gospel writers remember John the Baptist’s departing words, “I must decrease so that he (Jesus) may increase.” John has confronted the corrosive amorality of King Herod’s household, and all its ripple effects upon wider society, characterized by the greed of tax collectors, the unwarranted violence of soldiers, and the hoarding instincts of the citizenry (all were evils John tried to wash clean from the fabric of society, ensuring that painted on his backside was an unmistakable set of concentric circles).
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Those are the exact words that in Matthew’s Gospel capture the essence of John the Baptist’s preaching. Now they are the opening words of the public ministry of Jesus, and he may well be referring to the lasting importance of John, indelibly linking his own ministry with that of his fore-runner. It fits the high regard we hear our Lord holding for John that he should be taken to mean, “In that man John, a prophet and I tell you more than a prophet, God’s kingdom has come as near to you as the wind on your face.”
To become one of the disciples of Jesus will require the same courage, the same readiness for confrontation, rejection of the status quo, appetite for changing this world into a new creation. It will require willingness to stand vulnerable to the elements—not so much the engulfing sea and threatening storm as vulnerability to the elements of social disapproval and the requirements of obedience and the central struggle of faith, which is to trust all throughout the hard and bumpy ride of change.
But we aren’t done wringing out answers to that opening question, What does Jesus see in these guys?
Fishermen. Workers holding the tools of their labor, nets and oars and sails. Workers standing in the vehicles of their labor, those creaky rough-hewn perhaps leaky boats. He sees workers who know intimately how the prosperity or the poverty of their households and their hometowns depends on their hard work, their smart work, their serving the most basic needs for security in the people around them.
He sees workers who know how to read and interpret the signs, the seasons, the sea, the sky: people who truly occupy God’s creation with care and awe, recognizing and treasuring the interdependence they have with the natural order and so are positioned to midwife a new creation.
Do you suppose first-century fishermen had the reputation for blarney that we expect of them today? If so, Jesus saw in them people who could tell a good story, people others would listen to and draw an audience.
Meanwhile, back at the Kings’, Steve commented that we don’t find the fishermen turning Jesus down, but there are stories of some who refused to be nominated, like the rich young man who seemed all set to sign on until Jesus required him to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. To the fishermen, he had promised to make them fishers of people. Evidently, the young investor didn’t recognize that Jesus was promising to make him an investor in people. I’m guessing this poor fellow never heard the promise or imagined what the transformation might mean. In the verbs of that exchange, he heard “sell” and “give”, but never got to “come” and “follow”, even though he was sure he wanted those very changes in his life. He will visit us in another Gospel on another Sunday, so we’ll let him wait until that sermon, and let’s return to these fishermen.
Does the story of their calling speak to you? Is it that recruiting fishermen is a persuasive way of declaring that Christian discipleship is not rocket science, not vocation reserved for a few or confined to the gifted? Isn’t it the fisherman thing that causes us to lose our excuses for resisting discipleship—like, we don’t know what we have to offer Jesus, don’t yet have the training, the experience, or the understanding we think is required?
So, deal with it. And if you’d like some company dealing with it, consider signing up for the Foundations experience, to be offered at a parish church near you in about two or three weeks’ time. You may find that it offers some of that grace we prayed for earlier today, grace to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ. Grace each of us needs to recognize God in the world, and to live more fully into the vows of our baptism and the values, the puzzling values, of the Kingdom of God.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Archangels Approaching
Scripture for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 49:1-7; I Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42
One of my favorite authors is local writer Andrea Barrett. She uses a snippet from Ralph Waldo Emerson as an epigraph, whetting our appetite for her newest collection of fiction, “Archangel”:
“We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolators of the old.”
“We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.” What an optimistic view of loss paving the way for renewal—but I guess that’s Ralph Waldo Emerson for you.
His words give me a way to visit a timely subject today. For how many years, no, decades, have churchgoers been accustomed to marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, starting always on January 18th (the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter) and ending on January 25th (the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul)?
And have you noticed that there hasn’t been an ecumenical observance of that week, these past several years? With the demise of the Williamstown Ecumenical Association, and the on-again/off-again nature of the North Berkshire Clergy Association, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity seems to have fallen off the map in North Berkshire.
“We cannot part with our friends…” The ecumenical movement that caught hold in the late 19th century, giving rise to the World Council of Churches, encouraged by the 2nd Vatican Council under Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s and the various parallel conversations between churches (like those between Episcopalians and Lutherans) all taught us that we can be church in all our splendid isolations—but to be the Church requires what is truly splendid: that we celebrate the unity we have in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and commit ourselves to discovering and displaying and demonstrating new dimensions of unity that will reveal our Lord Jesus Christ to the world. That’s the language of the apostle Paul heard earlier this morning, and his promise, “He will strengthen you to the end… you (who) were called into the fellowship of… Jesus Christ our Lord,” was most certainly addressed to the united Body of Christ that transcends denominational divisions.
Parallelling the ecumenical movement since some point in the 20th century has been the interfaith movement, less an organized affair, more a growing appetite for dialogue over difficult questions, life and death questions. I think it’s no accident that the human race should recognize the need for such dialogue in the century of world wars, cold wars, regional wars, guerrilla wars, congressional wars.
My purpose in this sermon requires us to move from considering the past to noticing what’s happening in the present. What’s happening now?
Even before the Williamstown Ecumenical Association dissolved, “Take and Eat”, a program birthed by the Roman Catholic community to augment Meals on Wheels by providing home-delivered meals on weekends, drew us into an ecumenical orbit of practical ministry as St. John’s joined the ranks of churches tackling this need. Compounding the ecumenical engagement for us has been our lack of a functional church kitchen, requiring our cooks to borrow the kitchens of neighboring churches.
It didn’t take long after the demise of the Williamstown Ecumenical Association for the Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative to be formed. Their flagship project is the Friendship Center on Eagle Street, where each week hundreds of people benefit from that food pantry; in fact, hundreds of families are keeping food on their tables because of that program.
The Interfaith Action Initiative also adopted a project started nearly 30 years ago by the Williamstown Ecumenical group, a voucher system for transient people and residents facing basic needs for food, shelter, and transportation, expanding the program to cover the North County.
2013 saw the birthing of a movement called the Berkshire Organizing Project. In the fall, St. John’s Vestry approved our becoming a sponsoring parish, one of nine congregations and denominational organizations to do so. Month by month, training is being offered to introduce community organizing to more and more people, then developing skills that will help volunteers listen creatively to the needs of our communities, and develop the voices needed to advocate for and with the growing numbers of our neighbors having a hard time making ends meet. The Berkshire Organizing Project welcomes congregations of all faiths, and we’ll hear more about this project at our Annual Meeting on February 2nd.
Higher Ground, our local organization providing relief and advocacy for Spruces residents whose homes were lost or damaged in Tropical Storm Irene, has the markings of ecumenism and interfaith identity. Like these other initiatives, Higher Ground demonstrates the effective power of compassion and commitment at the grass roots in our communities.
Something else is happening locally. We’ve welcomed new pastors of two neighboring congregations, Dan Randall at New Hope United Methodist, and Mark Longhurst at First Congregational. Soon after their arrivals, each made his way here to worship with us—Mark with his wife Faith and their son Ian one Sunday at 10:00, and Dan has attended several 8:00 services. This is basic bridge-building of a kind that Williams College Chaplain Rick Spalding excels at, and that our retired Methodist clergy friends have shown us how to do.
So on that Sunday in early December when I laid claim to a final vacation day, I decided it was time to reciprocate, so I worshiped with the Methodists. What a pleasure it was to sit in that congregation and worship! That was just days after welcoming Mark Longhurst back, this time to officiate with me at the blessing of the marriage of Anne Short (his parishioner) and Leigh (ours). It seemed fitting to ask Mark to help me administer communion at that service, which allowed the denominational mix behind the altar rail to match the mix at the rail.
Another experience of ecumenical teamwork at the altar rail occurred at the 4:00 service on Christmas Eve, when our attendance is always at high tide and darned if I could find an Episcopal priest who was free to assist. The Rev. Gary Dickson, retired Methodist pastor, agreed to don his stole and help us out.
These instances of sacramental sharing are definitely not ecclesiastical rocket science, but I’ve got to say that they’re still rare and therefore special. My past training prompted me to think I should inform the Bishop that we were about to take these steps—until I realized that with this Bishop of ours, he would simply have said, “Good move!”
This sermon has sketched a number of good moves by a lot of people, a growing number of people, many of whom are in this room today. I’ve got to say it’s a much more exciting ecumenical and interfaith scene now than in the past. Perhaps we were idolaters, enshrining the ecumenical experience in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, focusing efforts not so much where they were most needed as where they were easiest.
We’ve let some angels go, and, sure enough, archangels are coming in.
One of my favorite authors is local writer Andrea Barrett. She uses a snippet from Ralph Waldo Emerson as an epigraph, whetting our appetite for her newest collection of fiction, “Archangel”:
“We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolators of the old.”
“We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in.” What an optimistic view of loss paving the way for renewal—but I guess that’s Ralph Waldo Emerson for you.
His words give me a way to visit a timely subject today. For how many years, no, decades, have churchgoers been accustomed to marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, starting always on January 18th (the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter) and ending on January 25th (the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul)?
And have you noticed that there hasn’t been an ecumenical observance of that week, these past several years? With the demise of the Williamstown Ecumenical Association, and the on-again/off-again nature of the North Berkshire Clergy Association, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity seems to have fallen off the map in North Berkshire.
“We cannot part with our friends…” The ecumenical movement that caught hold in the late 19th century, giving rise to the World Council of Churches, encouraged by the 2nd Vatican Council under Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s and the various parallel conversations between churches (like those between Episcopalians and Lutherans) all taught us that we can be church in all our splendid isolations—but to be the Church requires what is truly splendid: that we celebrate the unity we have in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and commit ourselves to discovering and displaying and demonstrating new dimensions of unity that will reveal our Lord Jesus Christ to the world. That’s the language of the apostle Paul heard earlier this morning, and his promise, “He will strengthen you to the end… you (who) were called into the fellowship of… Jesus Christ our Lord,” was most certainly addressed to the united Body of Christ that transcends denominational divisions.
Parallelling the ecumenical movement since some point in the 20th century has been the interfaith movement, less an organized affair, more a growing appetite for dialogue over difficult questions, life and death questions. I think it’s no accident that the human race should recognize the need for such dialogue in the century of world wars, cold wars, regional wars, guerrilla wars, congressional wars.
My purpose in this sermon requires us to move from considering the past to noticing what’s happening in the present. What’s happening now?
Even before the Williamstown Ecumenical Association dissolved, “Take and Eat”, a program birthed by the Roman Catholic community to augment Meals on Wheels by providing home-delivered meals on weekends, drew us into an ecumenical orbit of practical ministry as St. John’s joined the ranks of churches tackling this need. Compounding the ecumenical engagement for us has been our lack of a functional church kitchen, requiring our cooks to borrow the kitchens of neighboring churches.
It didn’t take long after the demise of the Williamstown Ecumenical Association for the Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative to be formed. Their flagship project is the Friendship Center on Eagle Street, where each week hundreds of people benefit from that food pantry; in fact, hundreds of families are keeping food on their tables because of that program.
The Interfaith Action Initiative also adopted a project started nearly 30 years ago by the Williamstown Ecumenical group, a voucher system for transient people and residents facing basic needs for food, shelter, and transportation, expanding the program to cover the North County.
2013 saw the birthing of a movement called the Berkshire Organizing Project. In the fall, St. John’s Vestry approved our becoming a sponsoring parish, one of nine congregations and denominational organizations to do so. Month by month, training is being offered to introduce community organizing to more and more people, then developing skills that will help volunteers listen creatively to the needs of our communities, and develop the voices needed to advocate for and with the growing numbers of our neighbors having a hard time making ends meet. The Berkshire Organizing Project welcomes congregations of all faiths, and we’ll hear more about this project at our Annual Meeting on February 2nd.
Higher Ground, our local organization providing relief and advocacy for Spruces residents whose homes were lost or damaged in Tropical Storm Irene, has the markings of ecumenism and interfaith identity. Like these other initiatives, Higher Ground demonstrates the effective power of compassion and commitment at the grass roots in our communities.
Something else is happening locally. We’ve welcomed new pastors of two neighboring congregations, Dan Randall at New Hope United Methodist, and Mark Longhurst at First Congregational. Soon after their arrivals, each made his way here to worship with us—Mark with his wife Faith and their son Ian one Sunday at 10:00, and Dan has attended several 8:00 services. This is basic bridge-building of a kind that Williams College Chaplain Rick Spalding excels at, and that our retired Methodist clergy friends have shown us how to do.
So on that Sunday in early December when I laid claim to a final vacation day, I decided it was time to reciprocate, so I worshiped with the Methodists. What a pleasure it was to sit in that congregation and worship! That was just days after welcoming Mark Longhurst back, this time to officiate with me at the blessing of the marriage of Anne Short (his parishioner) and Leigh (ours). It seemed fitting to ask Mark to help me administer communion at that service, which allowed the denominational mix behind the altar rail to match the mix at the rail.
Another experience of ecumenical teamwork at the altar rail occurred at the 4:00 service on Christmas Eve, when our attendance is always at high tide and darned if I could find an Episcopal priest who was free to assist. The Rev. Gary Dickson, retired Methodist pastor, agreed to don his stole and help us out.
These instances of sacramental sharing are definitely not ecclesiastical rocket science, but I’ve got to say that they’re still rare and therefore special. My past training prompted me to think I should inform the Bishop that we were about to take these steps—until I realized that with this Bishop of ours, he would simply have said, “Good move!”
This sermon has sketched a number of good moves by a lot of people, a growing number of people, many of whom are in this room today. I’ve got to say it’s a much more exciting ecumenical and interfaith scene now than in the past. Perhaps we were idolaters, enshrining the ecumenical experience in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, focusing efforts not so much where they were most needed as where they were easiest.
We’ve let some angels go, and, sure enough, archangels are coming in.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Who Do You Say I Am?
Scripture for the first week after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17
The crèche has been packed away, having done its job reminding us that in the redeemed order of the new creation accomplished in Jesus Christ, shepherds and farmhands proclaim the good news with eloquence and authority equal to kings and angels. The crèche, unlike most religious art in the western tradition, insists that this new creation is not just for human beings: cows and donkeys, sheep and camels, not to mention a rat and a zebra, have as honored a place at the manger as “homo sapiens”—perhaps a gentle suggestion that “sapientia”, wisdom, requires the human race to learn reverence for all creation. That message would surely fit Francis of Assisi, who gets the credit for making the crèche a popular fixture of Christmas.
And the Giving Tree is put away, having done its job of channeling great generosity, ensuring that for twenty North County children, Christmas was brighter than it would have been. And the wreaths are down, having reminded us to draw circles that embrace all.
Only the poinsettias remain, to remind us how we deck our halls at Christmas. If evergreens proclaim the importance of what’s locally grown, poinsettias are all about imports and immigration. We’ve welcomed them because they’re so colorful, a perfect antidote to the dour color scheme of a New England winter. Their Latin name locates them among the two thousand species of euphorbias, plants producing milky latex used over the ages to produce healing potions. Most euphorbias originated in Africa but the poinsettias made their way here from Mexico, where the Aztec nation valued them for their dye. It’s good that we keep our poinsettias well into the Epiphany season, which is all about universal proclamation of the new creation.
If there’s a central question for the Church during Epiphany, it’s the one Jesus asked his disciples to answer: Who do you say I am? As if jumping to the bottom line, our collect answers this question: at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, God proclaimed him beloved Son and Anointed One. To anyone whose religious thought has been shaped by the Hebrew Bible, the words of our collect mean that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited helper come from God, very God of very God, to fulfill the promises reported by prophets like Isaiah.
But what kind of Messiah is he? By nature, man at war with man will want a messiah who can marshal the troops and whomp the enemy into submission. It is to save mankind from its own violent streak that prophets like Isaiah proclaimed a servant Messiah. Emmanuel, God-with-us, will not lead like a demagogue at the microphone or a military strategist in the situation room.
Rather, the divine helper is shaped by delight and upheld by spirit: delight because the helper fulfills what human beings are meant to be: image-bearers of the divine, demonstrators of the likeness of God. The Messiah truly gets it, and so has unique capacity and desire to give. Shaped by the delight of the Creator, the Messiah is upheld by the Spirit that moved over the waters of creation, and moves over the waters of the Jordan to release the movement of the new creation.
If this Messiah is not popular demagogue or military strategist, what he is is forecast by the Hebrew prophets and reported by apostles and evangelists of the New Testament: a light to the nations, a direct connection with the heart of God, opener of blind eyes, guide to freedom for the captive, doer of good, healer of the oppressed, host setting a table for all, achiever of forgiveness, the one who turns the tables on death.
The Creator God summons servant Jesus to this messiahship—but to do justice to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we need to find a way to say this that avoids the impression that this is two unrelated parties agreeing on a brand new agenda. This Jesus, shaped by divine delight and upheld by divine spirit, is true God from true God, of one being with the Father, and the vision that impels both the anointing God and the anointed Jesus is the ancient timeless vision of the world set right, the competing components of creation reconciled, the unity of purpose between Creator and creatures restored, the ancient wrong made right. “To fulfill all righteousness,” Jesus tells his cousin John the Baptizer.
The library of memoirs, sermons, and letters that we call the New Testament presents the early Church’s answer to the questions, Who is Jesus Christ? What is God up to in Jesus? And, What is asked of us who have been attracted to God in Jesus Christ?
En route to answering these questions, the New Testament asks how and when does the fully human Jesus become the divine being, Jesus the Christ?
We could say that this was the theological handiwork of the Church in later ages, like those infamous ecumenical councils of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries—about which one great Church father, Gregory Nazianzus, wrote, “My inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils. On the contrary, it usually increases them.”
While we later Christians have gone on reciting the creeds hammered out at such councils, many of us prefer to examine the evidence ourselves, the evidence of the New Testament.
When we do, we see three moments in the Christian gospels when the story line declares that Jesus the Christ became God—“was Godded”, to use a word coined by Church historian Philip Jenkins.
One is the resurrection on Easter Day. This is St. Paul’s answer, found in the opening words of his Letter to the Romans: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship…”
Paul’s letters are the earliest, the oldest of the New Testament writings, so his answer—that Jesus Christ is Godded at Easter, stands as the Church’s first answer.
Then read the Gospels of Mark and John (which have no Christmas stories), and it makes sense to see the baptism of Jesus as the moment when he acquires divinity. This became the Church’s second answer, which gained popularity in the late first and second centuries.
And, as we know, being fresh off Christmas, if you turn to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, you get the Church’s third (and, in terms of New Testament development, its newest) answer: Jesus comes into this world fully Godded at his birth. This became the orthodox answer, over time.
I say, let’s be grateful for a religion of diverse answers. Let’s take encouragement from the New Testament’s examples of how the Church wrestles with questions. And let’s recognize that while the Church’s answers are meant to guide us, it is for each of us to answer who we believe he is, what difference this makes in our lives, and what this belief asks of us.
Notice how John needs persuading to contribute his part. “I need you to wash the grit from my eyes, the dust from my lips, the mud from my feet. I, who cannot see as you see, or speak as you speak, or know with confidence how to put one foot before the other, I need you to anoint me for your service.”
“Trust me,” replies Jesus. “ What you see, what you say, what you stand for—I need all this to embrace fully what the world needs, what the new creation requires. The fullness of God will make of our offerings together what is called for.
I wonder if the Church invites us to revisit annually this exchange between John and Jesus so as to find ourselves in the conversation between them. We protest that we of little faith (or of real faith but not much self-confidence, and perhaps with limited attention spans), we haven’t much to offer Jesus.
Jesus begs to differ. But rather than argue with us, he’s apt to ask us the foundational questions: Who do you say I am? How will you represent me in your daily life? Will you trust me, and yourself, and those others whom I also need, to work together for the sake of the world, to advance the new creation?
These Epiphany questions will occupy us for several weeks now, in a season marked by proclamation and mission. Getting clear what the Christmas Gospel is, and how to carry it, proclaim it, embody it as people who know the Word made flesh and intend to allow that incarnation to keep happening in us, and through us in this world.
Philip Jenkins’s book is “Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years” (Harper Collins, 2010) was helpful in the preparation of this sermon, and is the source of the two quotations.
The crèche has been packed away, having done its job reminding us that in the redeemed order of the new creation accomplished in Jesus Christ, shepherds and farmhands proclaim the good news with eloquence and authority equal to kings and angels. The crèche, unlike most religious art in the western tradition, insists that this new creation is not just for human beings: cows and donkeys, sheep and camels, not to mention a rat and a zebra, have as honored a place at the manger as “homo sapiens”—perhaps a gentle suggestion that “sapientia”, wisdom, requires the human race to learn reverence for all creation. That message would surely fit Francis of Assisi, who gets the credit for making the crèche a popular fixture of Christmas.
And the Giving Tree is put away, having done its job of channeling great generosity, ensuring that for twenty North County children, Christmas was brighter than it would have been. And the wreaths are down, having reminded us to draw circles that embrace all.
Only the poinsettias remain, to remind us how we deck our halls at Christmas. If evergreens proclaim the importance of what’s locally grown, poinsettias are all about imports and immigration. We’ve welcomed them because they’re so colorful, a perfect antidote to the dour color scheme of a New England winter. Their Latin name locates them among the two thousand species of euphorbias, plants producing milky latex used over the ages to produce healing potions. Most euphorbias originated in Africa but the poinsettias made their way here from Mexico, where the Aztec nation valued them for their dye. It’s good that we keep our poinsettias well into the Epiphany season, which is all about universal proclamation of the new creation.
If there’s a central question for the Church during Epiphany, it’s the one Jesus asked his disciples to answer: Who do you say I am? As if jumping to the bottom line, our collect answers this question: at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, God proclaimed him beloved Son and Anointed One. To anyone whose religious thought has been shaped by the Hebrew Bible, the words of our collect mean that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited helper come from God, very God of very God, to fulfill the promises reported by prophets like Isaiah.
But what kind of Messiah is he? By nature, man at war with man will want a messiah who can marshal the troops and whomp the enemy into submission. It is to save mankind from its own violent streak that prophets like Isaiah proclaimed a servant Messiah. Emmanuel, God-with-us, will not lead like a demagogue at the microphone or a military strategist in the situation room.
Rather, the divine helper is shaped by delight and upheld by spirit: delight because the helper fulfills what human beings are meant to be: image-bearers of the divine, demonstrators of the likeness of God. The Messiah truly gets it, and so has unique capacity and desire to give. Shaped by the delight of the Creator, the Messiah is upheld by the Spirit that moved over the waters of creation, and moves over the waters of the Jordan to release the movement of the new creation.
If this Messiah is not popular demagogue or military strategist, what he is is forecast by the Hebrew prophets and reported by apostles and evangelists of the New Testament: a light to the nations, a direct connection with the heart of God, opener of blind eyes, guide to freedom for the captive, doer of good, healer of the oppressed, host setting a table for all, achiever of forgiveness, the one who turns the tables on death.
The Creator God summons servant Jesus to this messiahship—but to do justice to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we need to find a way to say this that avoids the impression that this is two unrelated parties agreeing on a brand new agenda. This Jesus, shaped by divine delight and upheld by divine spirit, is true God from true God, of one being with the Father, and the vision that impels both the anointing God and the anointed Jesus is the ancient timeless vision of the world set right, the competing components of creation reconciled, the unity of purpose between Creator and creatures restored, the ancient wrong made right. “To fulfill all righteousness,” Jesus tells his cousin John the Baptizer.
The library of memoirs, sermons, and letters that we call the New Testament presents the early Church’s answer to the questions, Who is Jesus Christ? What is God up to in Jesus? And, What is asked of us who have been attracted to God in Jesus Christ?
En route to answering these questions, the New Testament asks how and when does the fully human Jesus become the divine being, Jesus the Christ?
We could say that this was the theological handiwork of the Church in later ages, like those infamous ecumenical councils of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries—about which one great Church father, Gregory Nazianzus, wrote, “My inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils. On the contrary, it usually increases them.”
While we later Christians have gone on reciting the creeds hammered out at such councils, many of us prefer to examine the evidence ourselves, the evidence of the New Testament.
When we do, we see three moments in the Christian gospels when the story line declares that Jesus the Christ became God—“was Godded”, to use a word coined by Church historian Philip Jenkins.
One is the resurrection on Easter Day. This is St. Paul’s answer, found in the opening words of his Letter to the Romans: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship…”
Paul’s letters are the earliest, the oldest of the New Testament writings, so his answer—that Jesus Christ is Godded at Easter, stands as the Church’s first answer.
Then read the Gospels of Mark and John (which have no Christmas stories), and it makes sense to see the baptism of Jesus as the moment when he acquires divinity. This became the Church’s second answer, which gained popularity in the late first and second centuries.
And, as we know, being fresh off Christmas, if you turn to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, you get the Church’s third (and, in terms of New Testament development, its newest) answer: Jesus comes into this world fully Godded at his birth. This became the orthodox answer, over time.
I say, let’s be grateful for a religion of diverse answers. Let’s take encouragement from the New Testament’s examples of how the Church wrestles with questions. And let’s recognize that while the Church’s answers are meant to guide us, it is for each of us to answer who we believe he is, what difference this makes in our lives, and what this belief asks of us.
Notice how John needs persuading to contribute his part. “I need you to wash the grit from my eyes, the dust from my lips, the mud from my feet. I, who cannot see as you see, or speak as you speak, or know with confidence how to put one foot before the other, I need you to anoint me for your service.”
“Trust me,” replies Jesus. “ What you see, what you say, what you stand for—I need all this to embrace fully what the world needs, what the new creation requires. The fullness of God will make of our offerings together what is called for.
I wonder if the Church invites us to revisit annually this exchange between John and Jesus so as to find ourselves in the conversation between them. We protest that we of little faith (or of real faith but not much self-confidence, and perhaps with limited attention spans), we haven’t much to offer Jesus.
Jesus begs to differ. But rather than argue with us, he’s apt to ask us the foundational questions: Who do you say I am? How will you represent me in your daily life? Will you trust me, and yourself, and those others whom I also need, to work together for the sake of the world, to advance the new creation?
These Epiphany questions will occupy us for several weeks now, in a season marked by proclamation and mission. Getting clear what the Christmas Gospel is, and how to carry it, proclaim it, embody it as people who know the Word made flesh and intend to allow that incarnation to keep happening in us, and through us in this world.
Philip Jenkins’s book is “Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years” (Harper Collins, 2010) was helpful in the preparation of this sermon, and is the source of the two quotations.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Getting It, Giving It
Scripture for the 2nd Sunday after Christmas includes Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:1-12
Those three Wise Ones are meant to capture our imaginations. Just as our soloists this morning come to us from the little band of talented parishioners who gather on first and third Sundays for Worship Outside the Box, so the three Wise Ones came from outside the box of first-century Israel. They were meant—and are forever meant—to cause fresh thinking and creative wondering… like, what is God up to? and where is God up to it?
In fact, the whole Christmas story asks these curious questions. The holiest of moments isn’t inside a church or a temple, but in a barn, where everyone’s attention is fixed not on an altar or a pulpit, but on a crude wooden manger where the cattle come to feed—and oops, there’s a baby there (try explaining that to the cows, though we like to think they already get it).
And the voices heard commenting on the meaning of all this don’t belong to priests and bishops, but to shepherds and farmhands. Aren’t they a surprising choice to be the preachers of the Christmas Good News? Not in the least, because their sermon starts with the breaking news that God has a passionate thing going for the poor, prefers building a team of leaders from among the poor because the rich just don’t seem to get it. Or give it.
And getting and giving is right at the heart of the Christmas story and its next chapter, the Epiphany story. With the arrival of the Wise Ones on January 6 (so we’re just one day ahead of ourselves, but how can we not celebrate the Epiphany today?), the twelve days of Christmas end, and the several weeks of Epiphany season, between now and Lent, train us to take the Christmas Gospel with us wherever we go.
The name Epiphany sounds like it’s from another time, another place, and yes: it’s a Greek word that means manifesting, showing, realizing. In cartoon language, the light bulb goes on in the little thought cloud above our heads. Aha!, you could say in a moment of epiphany. “I get it now!”. But by the nature of what God is up to, “I get it now” needs to be shown by “I’ll give it now.” Let me say what I mean.
If there’s any Epiphany symbol that outshines the Wise Ones, it’s that star, the one that guides them on their journey. Midway through the twelve days of Christmas, we hear the elegant mystical Prologue of John’s Gospel, reminding us how John speaks of the coming of Jesus, not as Luke and Matthew do, with their stories of Bethlehem, but as a cosmic event, the Word becoming flesh, the light that illuminates every person piercing the world’s darkness. This way of describing Christmas makes the same point as the stories told by Luke and Matthew: what God is up to is worldwide, global, universal: God’s kingdom of justice and peace coming on earth as it is in heaven.
What does that take? You and me and countless millions and billions of people getting it, and giving it. Getting what God gives in Jesus, the gift described so well in the Letter to the Ephesians today: God’s gift to each and all of us is “a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for all who believe.”
Get that spirit, and you will give that spirit. Face into that light and you will reflect that light. Where? Wherever we take the Christmas Gospel—but more than that, wherever we admit we don’t know how to take the Christmas Gospel, where the darkness is gathered, the suffering deep, the hostility high, the grief piercing. Places like that may terrify us, and put us hand in hand with those shepherds (and Joseph, and Mary, and the Wise Ones) who heard the coaching of the angels, “Do not be afraid, even here, especially here, God is up to his old work in new ways, redeeming people from hands too strong for them (to quote the prophet Jeremiah), with consolations to lead them.”
I feel a twinge of loss as I picture Tim packing up this crèche, come Tuesday morning. I’ll miss the message it sends, that just as that barnyard in Bethlehem is a gateway into what God is doing in the workaday world of farmers and shepherds, so our altar is a gate that swings open to the world, offering everyone a place to get it, preparing us to go out there and give it.
And just as the crèche draws us into a cosmos bright not just with constellations but with ranks of angels reminding us that we are never alone, that the grace of God is always at work around us and for us, so this altar readies us for epiphanies, showings, shinings of gratitude that will come to us in the seven days before we gather here again. Old Jeremiah the prophet says that wherever God’s people recognize what God is up to, “they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord… as when young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry.”
Nailed to the doorframe of each Jewish home is an ornament (it may be made of metal or wood or fired clay, earthy stuff) called a mezuzah. It is a little case containing a piece of parchment on which has been inscribed the verses of Torah that include the prayer “Shema Yisrael,” “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One, and you shall love the LORD your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The mezuzah is mounted at an angle, pointing towards the room about to be entered, as if to say that God and the Torah are about to enter that room with you.
We need something like the mezuzah, tilted toward the world, mounted on our church doorframe and at our front door at home, to remind us, as we go out, that God’s sanctuary is found not just in places like this, but also wherever the Word is made flesh in attempts at justice, mercy, lovingkindness, and peace-making; wherever God sets up a work bench to build out of human society a truer community, a worthier commonwealth. God may need a hand doing this, and can use whatever radiant hope and consoling love we can offer to the holy encounters that God is up to in this precious world, this challenged earth, this shimmering cosmos.
Those three Wise Ones are meant to capture our imaginations. Just as our soloists this morning come to us from the little band of talented parishioners who gather on first and third Sundays for Worship Outside the Box, so the three Wise Ones came from outside the box of first-century Israel. They were meant—and are forever meant—to cause fresh thinking and creative wondering… like, what is God up to? and where is God up to it?
In fact, the whole Christmas story asks these curious questions. The holiest of moments isn’t inside a church or a temple, but in a barn, where everyone’s attention is fixed not on an altar or a pulpit, but on a crude wooden manger where the cattle come to feed—and oops, there’s a baby there (try explaining that to the cows, though we like to think they already get it).
And the voices heard commenting on the meaning of all this don’t belong to priests and bishops, but to shepherds and farmhands. Aren’t they a surprising choice to be the preachers of the Christmas Good News? Not in the least, because their sermon starts with the breaking news that God has a passionate thing going for the poor, prefers building a team of leaders from among the poor because the rich just don’t seem to get it. Or give it.
And getting and giving is right at the heart of the Christmas story and its next chapter, the Epiphany story. With the arrival of the Wise Ones on January 6 (so we’re just one day ahead of ourselves, but how can we not celebrate the Epiphany today?), the twelve days of Christmas end, and the several weeks of Epiphany season, between now and Lent, train us to take the Christmas Gospel with us wherever we go.
The name Epiphany sounds like it’s from another time, another place, and yes: it’s a Greek word that means manifesting, showing, realizing. In cartoon language, the light bulb goes on in the little thought cloud above our heads. Aha!, you could say in a moment of epiphany. “I get it now!”. But by the nature of what God is up to, “I get it now” needs to be shown by “I’ll give it now.” Let me say what I mean.
If there’s any Epiphany symbol that outshines the Wise Ones, it’s that star, the one that guides them on their journey. Midway through the twelve days of Christmas, we hear the elegant mystical Prologue of John’s Gospel, reminding us how John speaks of the coming of Jesus, not as Luke and Matthew do, with their stories of Bethlehem, but as a cosmic event, the Word becoming flesh, the light that illuminates every person piercing the world’s darkness. This way of describing Christmas makes the same point as the stories told by Luke and Matthew: what God is up to is worldwide, global, universal: God’s kingdom of justice and peace coming on earth as it is in heaven.
What does that take? You and me and countless millions and billions of people getting it, and giving it. Getting what God gives in Jesus, the gift described so well in the Letter to the Ephesians today: God’s gift to each and all of us is “a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know him, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which he has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for all who believe.”
Get that spirit, and you will give that spirit. Face into that light and you will reflect that light. Where? Wherever we take the Christmas Gospel—but more than that, wherever we admit we don’t know how to take the Christmas Gospel, where the darkness is gathered, the suffering deep, the hostility high, the grief piercing. Places like that may terrify us, and put us hand in hand with those shepherds (and Joseph, and Mary, and the Wise Ones) who heard the coaching of the angels, “Do not be afraid, even here, especially here, God is up to his old work in new ways, redeeming people from hands too strong for them (to quote the prophet Jeremiah), with consolations to lead them.”
I feel a twinge of loss as I picture Tim packing up this crèche, come Tuesday morning. I’ll miss the message it sends, that just as that barnyard in Bethlehem is a gateway into what God is doing in the workaday world of farmers and shepherds, so our altar is a gate that swings open to the world, offering everyone a place to get it, preparing us to go out there and give it.
And just as the crèche draws us into a cosmos bright not just with constellations but with ranks of angels reminding us that we are never alone, that the grace of God is always at work around us and for us, so this altar readies us for epiphanies, showings, shinings of gratitude that will come to us in the seven days before we gather here again. Old Jeremiah the prophet says that wherever God’s people recognize what God is up to, “they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord… as when young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry.”
Nailed to the doorframe of each Jewish home is an ornament (it may be made of metal or wood or fired clay, earthy stuff) called a mezuzah. It is a little case containing a piece of parchment on which has been inscribed the verses of Torah that include the prayer “Shema Yisrael,” “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One, and you shall love the LORD your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The mezuzah is mounted at an angle, pointing towards the room about to be entered, as if to say that God and the Torah are about to enter that room with you.
We need something like the mezuzah, tilted toward the world, mounted on our church doorframe and at our front door at home, to remind us, as we go out, that God’s sanctuary is found not just in places like this, but also wherever the Word is made flesh in attempts at justice, mercy, lovingkindness, and peace-making; wherever God sets up a work bench to build out of human society a truer community, a worthier commonwealth. God may need a hand doing this, and can use whatever radiant hope and consoling love we can offer to the holy encounters that God is up to in this precious world, this challenged earth, this shimmering cosmos.
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