Scripture for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany includes Exodus 24:12-18; II Peter 1:16-21; and Matthew 17:1-9
Poets have the opening words in this sermon today. First, Wendell Berry, who now lives in a milder climate than ours but, as you’ll see, knows the lay of our land:
Through the weeks of deep snow
we walked above the ground
on fallen sky, as though we did
not come of root and leaf, as though
we had only air and weather
for our difficult home.
But now
as March warms, and the rivulets
run like birdsong on the slopes,
and the branches of light sing in the hills,
slowly we return to earth.
“We walked above the ground on fallen sky…” That makes me think of an elderly person I visited, who couldn’t seem to retrieve the word “snow” and kept speaking about “the white, the white…”
Emily Dickinson is the second poet I bring with me today:
A Light exists in Spring
Not present in the Year
At any other period—
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows upon the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope you know
It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay—
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
You will have understood already that it is the dazzling white light, and the suddenly bright cloud in Matthew’s story of the Transfiguration that deserve to be approached by verse.
But if I were to write a poem about light while it is still winter, I would write about something that might surprise you, and that is the danger of being suddenly blinded by glare on winter-wet roads. That happened to me on Cole Avenue one day in early February. I’d just turned in from North Hoosac Road, and as I ascended the rise of the bridge I saw it start, as if a massive paintball had exploded onto the pavement, radiating in all directions. As I came down the decline, brilliant impenetrable blinding light washed everything everywhere and for about four or five seconds I was traveling witless, unable to see if the road was clear for me to proceed, equally clueless if it was safe to pull over. All I could do was keep moving, slow down, and trust. Then, as if all that radiance had been sucked down a drain, it disappeared, like the Wicked Witch of the West.
This gives me a new way to appreciate the experience of Peter, James, and John. I now believe they were terrified, helpless, then relieved. And I can imagine how that felt.
My few moments of winter danger draw me into this Gospel in a fresh way. When I hear that Moses and Elijah appeared to them, iconic representatives of the Jewish law and the Hebrew prophets, what I hear now isn’t the stock commentary, that these two old-timers summed up all that Jesus would fulfill. Rather, I hear Moses and Elijah summing up the risks, the dangers, inherent in leading people and representing the future.
Elie Wiesel helps us appreciate Moses. Having gotten all those Hebrew slaves out from under Pharoah’s tyranny, having led them out of Egypt into Canaan, having witnessed at every turn one hair-raising miracle after another, each uplift gave way to letdown, as Wiesel puts it: “This people he had chosen never gave him anything but worries. There was no pleasing, no satisfying them. Forever complaining, grumbling, protesting, missing the stability—however precarious, even miserable—of the past… Moses’ chosen people showed no faith, no joy in being partic ipants in the making of history… Poor Moses, who had dreamed of inspiring them, elevating them, transforming slaves into leaders, fashioning a community of free and sovereign men and women. Here was his dream—broken, shattered. His people, unchanged, were still absorbed in their sordid intrigues and in-fighting. They had seen God at work and had learned nothing. They had witnessed events of cosmic importance and had remained unaffected. They were already doubting God’s presence in their midst. They were already doubting their purpose, their very memory.
“And when God said to Moses, ‘Your people have sinned’—Moses replied with a sudden display of humor: ‘When they observe Your Law, they are Your children, but when they violate it, they are mine?’
“In spite of his disappointments, in spite of his ordeals and the lack of gratitude he encountered, Moses never lost his faith in his people.” But it sure can be a risky thing, downright dangerous, to lead people and to represent the future.
Elijah knows it, too. Do you remember the time when he alone faced 450 prophets of Baal who were in the employ of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel? A blinding light figures in that story, too: in a life-or-death contest, lightning came down from heaven to consume the offering Elijah laid on his altar, while the altar prepared by the prophets of Baal was a non-starter. Then Elijah is said to have single-handedly slaughtered every one of those 450 false prophets. No wonder he became a fugitive, wanted dead or alive. He is remembered for appearing in a flash and disappearing just as fast. It is a risky and dangerous thing to lead people and to represent the future.
What kind of conversation is going on within this trinity of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah? Are the old-timers witnessing to Jesus, encouraging him by reminders of the divine energy that made them able to endure? Are they coaching him as he faces the certain dangers before him, hazards that will mark his Lenten journey to Jerusalem, and Gethsemane, and Golgotha, and the garden tomb?
And is Jesus getting in some pointed questions of his own, such as, “Moses, you led God’s people to a land of milk and honey which they took by the edge of the sword, colonizing Canaan in the name of Israel’s God. Violence begets violence, and here we are with the sharp blade of Rome’s emperor at our throats. How am I to build God’s kingdom that is not of this world?”
Though neither of these ancient worthies had much to teach him about the beating of swords into ploughshares, they must have talked long into that night of the steady faithfulness of God shining brighter than the sun, the moon, the stars. They must have made that night glow retelling the ancient truth that God empowers whomever God calls, God’s ample grace exceeding all the risks, all the dangers.
The content of this conversation is the new creation God is building, reordering, in this world by the life and death of Jesus and the resulting transfiguration even of death. Imagine the letdown when Peter, James, and John finally find their tongues…
A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.
“Lord, it’s so good to be here!” So dazed, he has no idea where “here” is…
“We’ll make three shrines to capture this moment, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…” What do men do when they’re overwhelmed, but retreat to their workbenches and build something?
Their true place, their honest task, will be found in just a moment, right after a bright cloud has overshadowed them and from that cloud a voice has been heard, “This is my Son, marked by my love, bright with my delight. Listen to him.” They fall to the ground, or, in Berry’s language, return to earth. There they feel the touch of Jesus and hear him say, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
Let this Gospel shape your resolve to keep a holy Lent. You who come from root and leaf, not just air and weather, understand the touch of ashes crossing your forehead as your being marked by God’s love. Look for light in the gift of these Lenten days and nights, to find your true place, your honest task—to listen to the Christ who is worthy to be trusted, whose touch and word we need, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
Wendell Berry's and Emily Dickinson's poems appear in "Earth Prayers from Around the World", HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. Elie Wiesel's characterization of Moses is found in his "Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends", Summit Books, 1976.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Turn the Other Cheek
Scripture for the 7th Sunday after the Epiphany includes Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; I Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48
On these late Epiphany Sundays we’re hearing Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, piecemeal, not all at once. Our Lord’s social vision is deeply challenging, and hearing it in installments may give us all we can handle at one sitting.
Hearing verses from Leviticus, the law book of Israel, helps us gauge how novel Jesus’s teachings were—and were not. To borrow language from St. Paul, Jesus is both laying a fresh foundation—I find his insistence on loving our enemies boldly revolutionary, don’t you?—while he’s also building on the ancient foundation of enlightened Jewish law. We hear an example of ancient inspiration in the command not to harvest all the square footage of a field: leave some for the poor. Like loving your enemies, not claiming every square foot you’ve got coming to you might be called unnatural. But this shows how law can breed in us finer instincts and a higher nature.
Today’s portion of his sermon shows Jesus tearing down an ancient keystone that he declares unworthy of any further obedience, and that is the standard of retributive justice, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Once upon a time, that had been a step up the evolutionary ladder from wild unrestrained revenge. But here, two thousand years ago, Jesus declares it uninspiring, not suited to undergirding his social vision, inadequate to describe and advance the Kingdom of God.
Notice how Jesus reaches into the gutter of ordinary violence to find inspiring standards for human behavior. And if I’m not mistaken, he implies—without saying it, but it’s there between the lines—it may be pillars of society, and it may be the emperor’s soldiers, who are the worst evildoers. Any thug can strike you on the cheek, but Jesus’s hearers would instantly recognize the heavy hand of the wealthy who would sue a poor farmer, unashamed to sue the pants off him (or, in this case, to take his coat), and the even heavier hand of the emperor’s finest, soldiers who ran roughshod over people in the street. Those armored keepers of the Pax Romana were authorized to press ordinary people into carrying soldiers’ packs and commandeered supplies one mile, and they surely weren’t above making that two miles.
“Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”
Mary Gaitskill has a fiction piece in the last New Yorker, a chilling tale of a now responsible citizen who as a teenager cultivated fantasies of domination, twisting him to try what he was thinking. Stealing a pistol from his friend’s home, he hitchhiked one day and was picked up by a woman who fitted his fantasies (older than he’d wanted, forty or so, but still good-looking). Adrenaline rushing his system, he pulled out the pistol and threatened to shoot this woman if she didn’t drive him to a certain place. Instead, she instantly pulled over, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Go ahead. I’m ready.” Pointing to her forehead, she ordered him, “Put it right there.” Opening her jacket, she directed him, “Or there. Come on, honey. Go for it.”
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, for the boy. He felt power draining out of him, lost his nerve. “Get out of my car,” the driver said to her dangerous passenger, “You’re wasting my time.”
There’s more to that story, more than I need to tell you. You may find it surprising that I’ve told you what I have—and I have because I can’t help seeing it as a powerful variation on the expected passive stereotype of what it means to turn the other cheek. In this story, the author creates a turning of the cheek that saves a woman’s life. Though she is left a victim of assault, she has wielded authority in a potent compliance that resists an evildoer by disarming his mind. In a moment of life or death, this woman chose life.
No, I’m not forgetting that Jesus commanded his disciples not to resist an evildoer. But I’m sure that he did not have in mind this woman’s dilemma. I expect he was asking his disciples to reject the insurgency of the Zealots, the super-patriots who would turn every struck cheek and commandeered cloak and forced second mile into an assassinated Roman soldier or a murdered Jewish collaborator. You may recall that Zealots appeared in the crowds around Jesus, even in the circle of his disciples were one or two who had, or still had, the Zealot in them. Jesus put them on notice that zeal which becomes hatred, zeal which becomes violence, cannot advance the Kingdom of God.
Every day for weeks now, we have watched tens and hundreds of thousands of zealous people demonstrating in the public squares of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya, walking along the razor-edge, on one side their peaceful protest, on the other military and police response.
Images from Egypt show persevering demonstrators bandaged from yesterday’s wounds, ready again to run the same risk, turning the other cheek, day after day. This turning is not passive: it is powerful, a matter of life and death, and its results are changing the very course of history.
And we hold our breath, praying that what results from this courageous confrontation makes for peace and not a swapping of one tyranny for another.
We might do well to take from Jesus’s prompting to not resist an evildoer the message that in the present whirlpools of social upheaval we should suspend judgment that could label certain parties and factions as evil. It will take all emerging parties and factions to create a democracy in Egypt. In as long-settled a democracy as our own, we struggle to love our political opponents and social adversaries, but we know it is the right struggle to reach across congressional aisles and to hold our elected leaders to look beyond their own narrow partisan interests and make responsible decisions for the common good of us all.
And what Jesus holds us to is spoken in that breathtaking call, “Be perfect, as your God is perfect.” If ever a word needs opening-up, it’s that English word “perfect”. The Greek word it wants to translate is better heard in the phrase “all-embracing”. Be all-embracing, as your God is all-embracing.
There is the social vision of Jesus. It describes how he calls both church and state to be, though I believe the reign of God he advances cannot be contained in either church or state. The reign of God embraces all, requires all to practice a revolutionary love of enemies, opponents, and adversaries. To resist the evil of treating people as evil. To perfect an embrace that turns the other cheek with courage and potency that reaches the mind, and changes it.
Mary Gaitskill’s story “The Other Place” appears in the February 14th-21st , 2011 issue of the New Yorker
On these late Epiphany Sundays we’re hearing Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, piecemeal, not all at once. Our Lord’s social vision is deeply challenging, and hearing it in installments may give us all we can handle at one sitting.
Hearing verses from Leviticus, the law book of Israel, helps us gauge how novel Jesus’s teachings were—and were not. To borrow language from St. Paul, Jesus is both laying a fresh foundation—I find his insistence on loving our enemies boldly revolutionary, don’t you?—while he’s also building on the ancient foundation of enlightened Jewish law. We hear an example of ancient inspiration in the command not to harvest all the square footage of a field: leave some for the poor. Like loving your enemies, not claiming every square foot you’ve got coming to you might be called unnatural. But this shows how law can breed in us finer instincts and a higher nature.
Today’s portion of his sermon shows Jesus tearing down an ancient keystone that he declares unworthy of any further obedience, and that is the standard of retributive justice, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Once upon a time, that had been a step up the evolutionary ladder from wild unrestrained revenge. But here, two thousand years ago, Jesus declares it uninspiring, not suited to undergirding his social vision, inadequate to describe and advance the Kingdom of God.
Notice how Jesus reaches into the gutter of ordinary violence to find inspiring standards for human behavior. And if I’m not mistaken, he implies—without saying it, but it’s there between the lines—it may be pillars of society, and it may be the emperor’s soldiers, who are the worst evildoers. Any thug can strike you on the cheek, but Jesus’s hearers would instantly recognize the heavy hand of the wealthy who would sue a poor farmer, unashamed to sue the pants off him (or, in this case, to take his coat), and the even heavier hand of the emperor’s finest, soldiers who ran roughshod over people in the street. Those armored keepers of the Pax Romana were authorized to press ordinary people into carrying soldiers’ packs and commandeered supplies one mile, and they surely weren’t above making that two miles.
“Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”
Mary Gaitskill has a fiction piece in the last New Yorker, a chilling tale of a now responsible citizen who as a teenager cultivated fantasies of domination, twisting him to try what he was thinking. Stealing a pistol from his friend’s home, he hitchhiked one day and was picked up by a woman who fitted his fantasies (older than he’d wanted, forty or so, but still good-looking). Adrenaline rushing his system, he pulled out the pistol and threatened to shoot this woman if she didn’t drive him to a certain place. Instead, she instantly pulled over, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “Go ahead. I’m ready.” Pointing to her forehead, she ordered him, “Put it right there.” Opening her jacket, she directed him, “Or there. Come on, honey. Go for it.”
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, for the boy. He felt power draining out of him, lost his nerve. “Get out of my car,” the driver said to her dangerous passenger, “You’re wasting my time.”
There’s more to that story, more than I need to tell you. You may find it surprising that I’ve told you what I have—and I have because I can’t help seeing it as a powerful variation on the expected passive stereotype of what it means to turn the other cheek. In this story, the author creates a turning of the cheek that saves a woman’s life. Though she is left a victim of assault, she has wielded authority in a potent compliance that resists an evildoer by disarming his mind. In a moment of life or death, this woman chose life.
No, I’m not forgetting that Jesus commanded his disciples not to resist an evildoer. But I’m sure that he did not have in mind this woman’s dilemma. I expect he was asking his disciples to reject the insurgency of the Zealots, the super-patriots who would turn every struck cheek and commandeered cloak and forced second mile into an assassinated Roman soldier or a murdered Jewish collaborator. You may recall that Zealots appeared in the crowds around Jesus, even in the circle of his disciples were one or two who had, or still had, the Zealot in them. Jesus put them on notice that zeal which becomes hatred, zeal which becomes violence, cannot advance the Kingdom of God.
Every day for weeks now, we have watched tens and hundreds of thousands of zealous people demonstrating in the public squares of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya, walking along the razor-edge, on one side their peaceful protest, on the other military and police response.
Images from Egypt show persevering demonstrators bandaged from yesterday’s wounds, ready again to run the same risk, turning the other cheek, day after day. This turning is not passive: it is powerful, a matter of life and death, and its results are changing the very course of history.
And we hold our breath, praying that what results from this courageous confrontation makes for peace and not a swapping of one tyranny for another.
We might do well to take from Jesus’s prompting to not resist an evildoer the message that in the present whirlpools of social upheaval we should suspend judgment that could label certain parties and factions as evil. It will take all emerging parties and factions to create a democracy in Egypt. In as long-settled a democracy as our own, we struggle to love our political opponents and social adversaries, but we know it is the right struggle to reach across congressional aisles and to hold our elected leaders to look beyond their own narrow partisan interests and make responsible decisions for the common good of us all.
And what Jesus holds us to is spoken in that breathtaking call, “Be perfect, as your God is perfect.” If ever a word needs opening-up, it’s that English word “perfect”. The Greek word it wants to translate is better heard in the phrase “all-embracing”. Be all-embracing, as your God is all-embracing.
There is the social vision of Jesus. It describes how he calls both church and state to be, though I believe the reign of God he advances cannot be contained in either church or state. The reign of God embraces all, requires all to practice a revolutionary love of enemies, opponents, and adversaries. To resist the evil of treating people as evil. To perfect an embrace that turns the other cheek with courage and potency that reaches the mind, and changes it.
Mary Gaitskill’s story “The Other Place” appears in the February 14th-21st , 2011 issue of the New Yorker
A Rector's Annual Report
Nearing the point of twenty-five years as Rector, I find that looking ahead draws me to see several key questions we need to raise, consider with openness to the wisdom of God, and answer.
We have a remarkable staff, talented, open-hearted, adventurous, and committed to the mission of St. John’s that brings them face to face with an ever-changing procession of people belonging to the parish, to our wider communities, and from beyond. Each person in that daily procession through our various portals (glass doors, red doors, e-mail, telephone, snail-mail) carries a need, a gift, a hope, an opportunity.
Key questions for staff and for all parish leaders is, How do we discern our part in response to people’s hopes-requests-offerings so that our response strengthens their faith, their practice, and their ministry? How do we avoid the disservice of over-performing that causes people to depend too much on us, not enough on God and themselves and the supportive community? And how do we avoid the opposite risk of under-serving the people God gives us, the people to whom we’re not yet listening, the people of whom we aren’t aware, the people to whom we don’t know how to respond?
That cluster of questions leads to another. Who are the “we” who respond? Twenty-five years ago, St. John’s still had an organized (though ageing) pastoral care team and a “prayer chain.” Though the Women of St. John’s (at one time a source of volunteer service) had disbanded, the parish culture and economy still yielded enough volunteerism to quickly rally for a funeral reception or to provide meals when a family needed them.
If volunteerism used to be given in cup-fulls or baskets-full, it sometimes seems that it’s by spoonfuls that it’s available now. Let’s avoid a spirit of complaint about this. We’re blessed by parish leaders serving in youth ministry, bringing communion as lay eucharistic visitors, leading evening prayer or leading Bingo at Sweet Brook Care Center, sitting on the Vestry and various committees, singing in choirs, overseeing parish life as wardens, and taking important initiatives in the congregation and in our wider communities. But how do we build our capacity for response to the needs and hopes and opportunities that people bring to us?
And how shall we build that capacity among all our generations, in particular young adults? That question tips this discussion towards information technology. In 2010, we made real strides, utilizing Constant Contact to develop e-mail communication, starting a process for envisioning IT needs in our future, and launching a handsome new Website, a big step forward and outward—though, in a glass-half-full-half-empty way, we’re bumping into limitations that we’ll need to address in a future overhaul, right about the time our children tell us we must replace those ancient pictures of them from 2009! A key question is how to keep moving the parish into social networking. Age is giving me wisdom to know that our younger parish leaders are the teachers we need to show us virtual portals to throw open.
In the face of all that’s new, in2010 we re-discovered the appeal of two age-old church activities—eating and singing—which, when combined in our Singing Suppers, have filled the upper room monthly on Friday evenings, mixing all our generations while building our appreciation for music old and new, music as our elders like it (out of the Hymnal) and music as our kids like it in Worship Outside the Box. A key question: How shall we support and develop this model (and others) for deepening parish community through what might be called ultimately informal “liturgy?”
I’ve saved for next-to-last the subject of our buildings. We saw great progress in 2010—or should I say that we’re all eager to see the results of that progress, and soon?—with the completion of extensive structural repair in the lower room and the near-completion of its renovation, along with re-situated and renovated adjacent bathrooms, and, just to their north, a room which we’ll use temporarily as a robing room until, in time, it may become part of a new church kitchen.
Think of that! The question, of course, is how do we get there? And by how circuitous a route, as we weigh the relative priority of major maintenance projects that seem to cut in line, like deteriorating front steps. Our key questions will be when and how to put our shoulders to the wheel of raising funds to continue our campaign to bring these buildings into the 21st-century.
The text on the cover of these reports urges us, “…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…” (I Peter 2:5) Building a community is why we’re here. A final key question we have to answer is how do we understand and build membership in St. John’s Parish? We recognize membership by participation: people join us by their choices, and we respond to them in what might be called a dance of inclusion. While that model respects the integrity of the seeker, doesn’t it make us sound passive? We’re fortunate that people keep appearing, but rather than waiting for the dance to begin in the sanctuary when newcomers find their way in, let’s picture the dance beginning out in the wider community when one of us invites a friend or neighbor to come with us to a service, a concert, or a Singing Supper.
However it is that a person steps into the dance of this congregation, we understand that vital signs matter more than formal credentials. But how do we honor Anglican tradition that values the sacramental act of being formally confirmed or received into membership in this branch of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church? In an age fascinated by spiritual wings, how do we give witness to the value of religious roots? In an age when denominational identity is felt to be less important than vital signs, how do we present the case for being confirmed or received at the hands of the Bishop?
He comes for that purpose on Sunday, May 22nd. His visitations are not frequent, about once every other year. Might it encourage you in your faith and practice and ministry to confirm your faith, be formally welcomed into the Episcopal Church, renew your baptismal vows in his presence? If that feels like a key question for you to answer, I’d like to know it.
I am grateful to and for so many people, what they do, and who they are, within this congregation. I’ve alluded to them, in this report, but not by name—there are just too many to attempt that. I’ll make one exception. In each of the years I’ve prepared a report like this, I’ve expressed my gratitude to Diana, my wife, and I’m not about to stop. The words of a great psalm tell me why. She restoreth my soul. She maketh me to slow down and enjoy those green pastures. She is with me to comfort me, and causes my cup to run over. I am very fortunate.
In this report, I’ve named key questions that I believe we must answer. Did you hear one that draws you to help us consider it? I’d like to know. Will you tell me, or any of our Vestry members, if there is one of these key questions for which you’ve got energy, care, and calling? As I see it, these questions point us to our work in these next several years.
1. How do leaders respond to people, to truly strengthen them?
2. Across our generations, but especially with young adults, how do we build our capacity to respond and lead?
3. How do we keep moving St. John’s into effective social networking?
4. How do we support and develop models of building community?
5. When and how do we resume our campaign to renew our buildings?
6. How do we vitalize membership?
We have a remarkable staff, talented, open-hearted, adventurous, and committed to the mission of St. John’s that brings them face to face with an ever-changing procession of people belonging to the parish, to our wider communities, and from beyond. Each person in that daily procession through our various portals (glass doors, red doors, e-mail, telephone, snail-mail) carries a need, a gift, a hope, an opportunity.
Key questions for staff and for all parish leaders is, How do we discern our part in response to people’s hopes-requests-offerings so that our response strengthens their faith, their practice, and their ministry? How do we avoid the disservice of over-performing that causes people to depend too much on us, not enough on God and themselves and the supportive community? And how do we avoid the opposite risk of under-serving the people God gives us, the people to whom we’re not yet listening, the people of whom we aren’t aware, the people to whom we don’t know how to respond?
That cluster of questions leads to another. Who are the “we” who respond? Twenty-five years ago, St. John’s still had an organized (though ageing) pastoral care team and a “prayer chain.” Though the Women of St. John’s (at one time a source of volunteer service) had disbanded, the parish culture and economy still yielded enough volunteerism to quickly rally for a funeral reception or to provide meals when a family needed them.
If volunteerism used to be given in cup-fulls or baskets-full, it sometimes seems that it’s by spoonfuls that it’s available now. Let’s avoid a spirit of complaint about this. We’re blessed by parish leaders serving in youth ministry, bringing communion as lay eucharistic visitors, leading evening prayer or leading Bingo at Sweet Brook Care Center, sitting on the Vestry and various committees, singing in choirs, overseeing parish life as wardens, and taking important initiatives in the congregation and in our wider communities. But how do we build our capacity for response to the needs and hopes and opportunities that people bring to us?
And how shall we build that capacity among all our generations, in particular young adults? That question tips this discussion towards information technology. In 2010, we made real strides, utilizing Constant Contact to develop e-mail communication, starting a process for envisioning IT needs in our future, and launching a handsome new Website, a big step forward and outward—though, in a glass-half-full-half-empty way, we’re bumping into limitations that we’ll need to address in a future overhaul, right about the time our children tell us we must replace those ancient pictures of them from 2009! A key question is how to keep moving the parish into social networking. Age is giving me wisdom to know that our younger parish leaders are the teachers we need to show us virtual portals to throw open.
In the face of all that’s new, in2010 we re-discovered the appeal of two age-old church activities—eating and singing—which, when combined in our Singing Suppers, have filled the upper room monthly on Friday evenings, mixing all our generations while building our appreciation for music old and new, music as our elders like it (out of the Hymnal) and music as our kids like it in Worship Outside the Box. A key question: How shall we support and develop this model (and others) for deepening parish community through what might be called ultimately informal “liturgy?”
I’ve saved for next-to-last the subject of our buildings. We saw great progress in 2010—or should I say that we’re all eager to see the results of that progress, and soon?—with the completion of extensive structural repair in the lower room and the near-completion of its renovation, along with re-situated and renovated adjacent bathrooms, and, just to their north, a room which we’ll use temporarily as a robing room until, in time, it may become part of a new church kitchen.
Think of that! The question, of course, is how do we get there? And by how circuitous a route, as we weigh the relative priority of major maintenance projects that seem to cut in line, like deteriorating front steps. Our key questions will be when and how to put our shoulders to the wheel of raising funds to continue our campaign to bring these buildings into the 21st-century.
The text on the cover of these reports urges us, “…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…” (I Peter 2:5) Building a community is why we’re here. A final key question we have to answer is how do we understand and build membership in St. John’s Parish? We recognize membership by participation: people join us by their choices, and we respond to them in what might be called a dance of inclusion. While that model respects the integrity of the seeker, doesn’t it make us sound passive? We’re fortunate that people keep appearing, but rather than waiting for the dance to begin in the sanctuary when newcomers find their way in, let’s picture the dance beginning out in the wider community when one of us invites a friend or neighbor to come with us to a service, a concert, or a Singing Supper.
However it is that a person steps into the dance of this congregation, we understand that vital signs matter more than formal credentials. But how do we honor Anglican tradition that values the sacramental act of being formally confirmed or received into membership in this branch of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church? In an age fascinated by spiritual wings, how do we give witness to the value of religious roots? In an age when denominational identity is felt to be less important than vital signs, how do we present the case for being confirmed or received at the hands of the Bishop?
He comes for that purpose on Sunday, May 22nd. His visitations are not frequent, about once every other year. Might it encourage you in your faith and practice and ministry to confirm your faith, be formally welcomed into the Episcopal Church, renew your baptismal vows in his presence? If that feels like a key question for you to answer, I’d like to know it.
I am grateful to and for so many people, what they do, and who they are, within this congregation. I’ve alluded to them, in this report, but not by name—there are just too many to attempt that. I’ll make one exception. In each of the years I’ve prepared a report like this, I’ve expressed my gratitude to Diana, my wife, and I’m not about to stop. The words of a great psalm tell me why. She restoreth my soul. She maketh me to slow down and enjoy those green pastures. She is with me to comfort me, and causes my cup to run over. I am very fortunate.
In this report, I’ve named key questions that I believe we must answer. Did you hear one that draws you to help us consider it? I’d like to know. Will you tell me, or any of our Vestry members, if there is one of these key questions for which you’ve got energy, care, and calling? As I see it, these questions point us to our work in these next several years.
1. How do leaders respond to people, to truly strengthen them?
2. Across our generations, but especially with young adults, how do we build our capacity to respond and lead?
3. How do we keep moving St. John’s into effective social networking?
4. How do we support and develop models of building community?
5. When and how do we resume our campaign to renew our buildings?
6. How do we vitalize membership?
Friday, February 4, 2011
Where's the Evidence?
Scripture for the 4th Sunday after the Epiphany includes Micah 6:1-8, I Corinthians 1:18-31, and Matthew 5:1-12
I wonder why Jesus went up that mountain.
Because it was there? If that means for the thrill of it, I don’t think so. This wasn’t Mount Rainier. It wasn’t Mount Greylock. It wasn’t even Pine Cobble. I may be wrong, but I think we’re talking Stone Hill.
Was it to purposely thin the ranks? When he saw the crowds, did he judge that it was time to cull out the sensation-seekers, the circus crowd, the gawkers and the hawkers? Is Jesus asking, “Let’s see who’s willing to exert themselves?”
Perhaps he needed some critical distance. If what he saw was a crowd that would engulf him, how could he address them? “Maybe,” said someone at the Sweetwood eucharist last Monday, “up that mountain was a natural amphitheater where he could be seen and heard.”
Once there, he sat down (the ancient posture for preaching and teaching, one that levels speaker and audience, unlike a pulpit) and “his disciples came to him.” When he spoke, he “taught them.” The disciples appear to be his audience.
But wait: what became of that crowd? He’s talking to them, too, above the heads of that team of leaders.
This reminds me of the President giving the State of the Union address. There, fanned out in front of him, were modern equivalents of former fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots (some of them not necessarily former). The President appeared to be talking to them, but we too were his audience. At times, President Obama utilized his up-close audience, like that moment when he looked out across the chamber at all those mixed couples practicing bipartisan cohabitation and, speaking at the same moment to them and to us, said something to the effect that we need Congress to exert more than experimental seating plans in order to truly work together for the nation’s good.
I believe simultaneous communication not unlike that is going on in this Gospel. Jesus has arrayed in front of him his cabinet, his joint chiefs, and while he teaches them he speaks also to the crowds.
I’ll use Eugene Peterson’s “The Message” to help us listen in.
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are— no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. God is food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment when care flows from a full heart, you find yourselves cared for.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
“You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.”
And in each case, at each teaching, he’s able to point to his disciples as evidence of what he means. Now, what follows is not by Eugene Peterson. I’ll take the rap for this. I’m imagining Jesus presenting his disciples as evidence of what he means. Scattered among the Beatitudes I hear asides like these.
“I’m sending these little ones into the world like lambs among wolves, to heal the sick and feed the hungry and raise the dead—they live at the end of the rope where it has to be less of them and more of God.”
“Each of these salty souls has left what is familiar: parents, home, career. You know them: it’s a small world around the Sea of Galilee, these are your neighbors, though they’re not at the corner tavern so much these days. How do they look to you? They’ve had to let go of a lot, but ask them how they balance their losses and their gains.”
“Radically equal, leveled by love, these agents of mine are learning to set a table for all, poor and rich, influential and marginal, female and male, old and young. And God is the menu. Soon they’ll show you! How many are you? Four thousand? Five thousand? Keep your eyes on these twelve…”
Mountains were known as holy places, front lines of encounter with God. Jesus has gone up this one to shape a new culture, one that appreciates how things are not always as they seem, how in fact God sets our expectations upside-down and inside-out, causes us to reconsider old assumptions and see with fresh eyes evidence that is all around us.
In that first century, God’s evidence included twelve disciples who may have thought they were the inner audience as God’s own anointed servant Jesus addresses the state of the union between the earthly and the heavenly. But they are actually Jesus’s Exhibit A, imperfect incarnations, examples, evidence of his meaning before a much wider audience.
In this twenty-first century, we the baptized are just as needed if the world is to see evidence of what Jesus means.
On the mountainside, a metaphor of the Church’s calling: to be gathered at the feet of Jesus, listening; and simultaneously to be proof to the world, letting his Word become flesh in us, allowing ourselves to be recognizable evidence of what he means.
I wonder why Jesus went up that mountain.
Because it was there? If that means for the thrill of it, I don’t think so. This wasn’t Mount Rainier. It wasn’t Mount Greylock. It wasn’t even Pine Cobble. I may be wrong, but I think we’re talking Stone Hill.
Was it to purposely thin the ranks? When he saw the crowds, did he judge that it was time to cull out the sensation-seekers, the circus crowd, the gawkers and the hawkers? Is Jesus asking, “Let’s see who’s willing to exert themselves?”
Perhaps he needed some critical distance. If what he saw was a crowd that would engulf him, how could he address them? “Maybe,” said someone at the Sweetwood eucharist last Monday, “up that mountain was a natural amphitheater where he could be seen and heard.”
Once there, he sat down (the ancient posture for preaching and teaching, one that levels speaker and audience, unlike a pulpit) and “his disciples came to him.” When he spoke, he “taught them.” The disciples appear to be his audience.
But wait: what became of that crowd? He’s talking to them, too, above the heads of that team of leaders.
This reminds me of the President giving the State of the Union address. There, fanned out in front of him, were modern equivalents of former fishermen, tax collectors, and zealots (some of them not necessarily former). The President appeared to be talking to them, but we too were his audience. At times, President Obama utilized his up-close audience, like that moment when he looked out across the chamber at all those mixed couples practicing bipartisan cohabitation and, speaking at the same moment to them and to us, said something to the effect that we need Congress to exert more than experimental seating plans in order to truly work together for the nation’s good.
I believe simultaneous communication not unlike that is going on in this Gospel. Jesus has arrayed in front of him his cabinet, his joint chiefs, and while he teaches them he speaks also to the crowds.
I’ll use Eugene Peterson’s “The Message” to help us listen in.
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule.
“You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
“You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are— no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. God is food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
“You’re blessed when you care. At the moment when care flows from a full heart, you find yourselves cared for.
“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
“You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.”
And in each case, at each teaching, he’s able to point to his disciples as evidence of what he means. Now, what follows is not by Eugene Peterson. I’ll take the rap for this. I’m imagining Jesus presenting his disciples as evidence of what he means. Scattered among the Beatitudes I hear asides like these.
“I’m sending these little ones into the world like lambs among wolves, to heal the sick and feed the hungry and raise the dead—they live at the end of the rope where it has to be less of them and more of God.”
“Each of these salty souls has left what is familiar: parents, home, career. You know them: it’s a small world around the Sea of Galilee, these are your neighbors, though they’re not at the corner tavern so much these days. How do they look to you? They’ve had to let go of a lot, but ask them how they balance their losses and their gains.”
“Radically equal, leveled by love, these agents of mine are learning to set a table for all, poor and rich, influential and marginal, female and male, old and young. And God is the menu. Soon they’ll show you! How many are you? Four thousand? Five thousand? Keep your eyes on these twelve…”
Mountains were known as holy places, front lines of encounter with God. Jesus has gone up this one to shape a new culture, one that appreciates how things are not always as they seem, how in fact God sets our expectations upside-down and inside-out, causes us to reconsider old assumptions and see with fresh eyes evidence that is all around us.
In that first century, God’s evidence included twelve disciples who may have thought they were the inner audience as God’s own anointed servant Jesus addresses the state of the union between the earthly and the heavenly. But they are actually Jesus’s Exhibit A, imperfect incarnations, examples, evidence of his meaning before a much wider audience.
In this twenty-first century, we the baptized are just as needed if the world is to see evidence of what Jesus means.
On the mountainside, a metaphor of the Church’s calling: to be gathered at the feet of Jesus, listening; and simultaneously to be proof to the world, letting his Word become flesh in us, allowing ourselves to be recognizable evidence of what he means.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Aiming Higher
Scripture for the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 49:1-7; I Corinthians 1:1-9; and John 1:29-42
Did you watch President Obama’s address at the memorial for the victims in Tucson?
Without seeing what came before and after that address, without context, it was hard for me to appreciate the crowd’s energy level. It sounded more like a rally than a memorial service. And when our President arrived at that podium, his sober expression only sharpened the contrast with that wired crowd. I guess that’s what you get when 27,000 Arizonans gather in one place, and that place is a sports stadium.
As a colleague said to me last week, it’s an old saying from the world of architects, “The room always wins.”
Or maybe that electricity is what you get when those 27,000 Arizonans are upset. Angry that their city, their state, should gain this notoriety and draw such attention from around the world. Indignant that these good people—a nine-year-old charmer, a judge’s judge, two sweet old ladies, a retired construction worker and pastor, a bright young congressional intern—should lose their lives, and many more should be injured, including a fearless, dynamic member of Congress.
And irritated that the State of the Union is so troubled that this United States representative couldn’t do her job of listening to her people without an eruption of violence that simply doesn’t belong in a civil society.
Not that we have one. But we want one. And who wouldn’t agree with the imperative President Obama gave us, that we must create a civil society, and it is up to us to do it. And who would argue with his motivating us by asking that we create an America that nine-year-old Christina and Judge Roll and Gabe Zimmerman and all the other victims would be proud of?
No arguments came out of that address, nor should they have; he did a masterful job of honoring the fallen, recognizing their families’ pain, transcending the vitriol, and prescribing healing.
But there are arguments that must be had, before that civilizing can be won.
Few in Washington want to advance this argument, but we need gun control legislation at the federal level. Gun control is considered the most toxic political issue of our time. What is more truly toxic and lethal is the availability of assault weapons, the availability of automatic ammunition magazines that achieve rapid-fire unrelieved slaughter, and our unwillingness to figure out how to keep handguns out of the hands of people known to be in trouble with the law, and people known to be mentally unstable. There needs to be an argument made that these restrictions can be made at the federal level without eroding a constitutional right to bear arms, or a state’s right to regulate.
Arguments need to be had about treatment of people with mental illness. We must make treatment available and affordable and effective, and make our social treatment of people with mental illness more humane. And we must debate the role of law to mandate treatment and to monitor that mandate.
And we’ve got to discipline all our arguments so that we debate principles and have dialogue about issues, not attack or incite people who stand on the opposite side of our arguments, issues, and principles.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I speak with power and claim to understand mysteries, and if I am so confident that I say to a mountain ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but don’t have love, I’m nothing.”
Without love, we are nothing.
That scripture is not appointed for today, but it is needed for today.
And in the Gospel we have today, one detail may be full of God. John the Gospel-writer is going to great lengths to explain the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptizer. Enough attention, enough air time is given to this to suggest that the first-century Church had divisions and partisan spirit in it. Perhaps for a time, perhaps for quite some time, followers of John and disciples of Jesus did not see eye to eye, did not recognize the necessity or the opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.
Here, two disciples of John the Baptizer hear him admire and elevate Jesus. “One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother… He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “ …You are to be called Peter.”
There’s the detail I mean. Andrew and Peter, two who play big parts in the public ministry of Jesus and the apostolic foundation of the Church, they first were disciples of John the Baptizer. At least Andrew was, and it was through him that Peter entered the orbit of Jesus.
The Jesus movement builds on the John-the-Baptist movement. John’s message of repentance and ethical behavior is where Jesus’s Gospel starts but does not stop: Jesus proclaims Good News based not on what people must do, but on what God does and who God is. John tells people what they should do. Jesus inspires people to be all that God gives them to be. John brings people to accept that they are freed from their sins; Jesus invites and summons and sings his love-song to people, causing them to comprehend, to reach for and grasp, all that God frees them for.
Andrew and Peter and countless others who will be celebrated and remembered for how they lived positive, creative, generative lives in destructive dangerous times—right across the centuries to The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—they show us lives built on forgiveness and responsible ethics, and the need to aim higher, the awareness that more is needed for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.
In his address, President Obama helped us see ourselves as good people. He told us of our courage as he honored Daniel Hernandez, the young intern who cradled Gabby Giffords after she was shot, running to her, not away; and Bill Badger and Roger Salzgeber and Patricia Maisch, the spunky seniors who helped disarm Jared Loughner.
The President affirmed our readiness to embrace challenge as he described this trait in young Christina and her role-model, Gabby.
He deftly wove the textures and colors of our rich tapestry of national identity, as he honored what was shown to be bright and beautiful about each of the victims of this savage attack by one disturbed young man who seems to have felt no stake in the society he would destroy.
Now more is needed: more than the courage of the few, our own courage and appetite for challenge are needed, and will be ignited as we, like Andrew and Peter and Martin, open ourselves to the call of Christ and the work of the Spirit, to see and speak and serve truth.
Like Andrew and Peter and Martin, we must aim higher.
A ten-year-old boy in Tucson said, “Gabby has opened her eyes. Now we have to open ours.”
Did you watch President Obama’s address at the memorial for the victims in Tucson?
Without seeing what came before and after that address, without context, it was hard for me to appreciate the crowd’s energy level. It sounded more like a rally than a memorial service. And when our President arrived at that podium, his sober expression only sharpened the contrast with that wired crowd. I guess that’s what you get when 27,000 Arizonans gather in one place, and that place is a sports stadium.
As a colleague said to me last week, it’s an old saying from the world of architects, “The room always wins.”
Or maybe that electricity is what you get when those 27,000 Arizonans are upset. Angry that their city, their state, should gain this notoriety and draw such attention from around the world. Indignant that these good people—a nine-year-old charmer, a judge’s judge, two sweet old ladies, a retired construction worker and pastor, a bright young congressional intern—should lose their lives, and many more should be injured, including a fearless, dynamic member of Congress.
And irritated that the State of the Union is so troubled that this United States representative couldn’t do her job of listening to her people without an eruption of violence that simply doesn’t belong in a civil society.
Not that we have one. But we want one. And who wouldn’t agree with the imperative President Obama gave us, that we must create a civil society, and it is up to us to do it. And who would argue with his motivating us by asking that we create an America that nine-year-old Christina and Judge Roll and Gabe Zimmerman and all the other victims would be proud of?
No arguments came out of that address, nor should they have; he did a masterful job of honoring the fallen, recognizing their families’ pain, transcending the vitriol, and prescribing healing.
But there are arguments that must be had, before that civilizing can be won.
Few in Washington want to advance this argument, but we need gun control legislation at the federal level. Gun control is considered the most toxic political issue of our time. What is more truly toxic and lethal is the availability of assault weapons, the availability of automatic ammunition magazines that achieve rapid-fire unrelieved slaughter, and our unwillingness to figure out how to keep handguns out of the hands of people known to be in trouble with the law, and people known to be mentally unstable. There needs to be an argument made that these restrictions can be made at the federal level without eroding a constitutional right to bear arms, or a state’s right to regulate.
Arguments need to be had about treatment of people with mental illness. We must make treatment available and affordable and effective, and make our social treatment of people with mental illness more humane. And we must debate the role of law to mandate treatment and to monitor that mandate.
And we’ve got to discipline all our arguments so that we debate principles and have dialogue about issues, not attack or incite people who stand on the opposite side of our arguments, issues, and principles.
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I speak with power and claim to understand mysteries, and if I am so confident that I say to a mountain ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but don’t have love, I’m nothing.”
Without love, we are nothing.
That scripture is not appointed for today, but it is needed for today.
And in the Gospel we have today, one detail may be full of God. John the Gospel-writer is going to great lengths to explain the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptizer. Enough attention, enough air time is given to this to suggest that the first-century Church had divisions and partisan spirit in it. Perhaps for a time, perhaps for quite some time, followers of John and disciples of Jesus did not see eye to eye, did not recognize the necessity or the opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.
Here, two disciples of John the Baptizer hear him admire and elevate Jesus. “One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother… He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “ …You are to be called Peter.”
There’s the detail I mean. Andrew and Peter, two who play big parts in the public ministry of Jesus and the apostolic foundation of the Church, they first were disciples of John the Baptizer. At least Andrew was, and it was through him that Peter entered the orbit of Jesus.
The Jesus movement builds on the John-the-Baptist movement. John’s message of repentance and ethical behavior is where Jesus’s Gospel starts but does not stop: Jesus proclaims Good News based not on what people must do, but on what God does and who God is. John tells people what they should do. Jesus inspires people to be all that God gives them to be. John brings people to accept that they are freed from their sins; Jesus invites and summons and sings his love-song to people, causing them to comprehend, to reach for and grasp, all that God frees them for.
Andrew and Peter and countless others who will be celebrated and remembered for how they lived positive, creative, generative lives in destructive dangerous times—right across the centuries to The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—they show us lives built on forgiveness and responsible ethics, and the need to aim higher, the awareness that more is needed for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.
In his address, President Obama helped us see ourselves as good people. He told us of our courage as he honored Daniel Hernandez, the young intern who cradled Gabby Giffords after she was shot, running to her, not away; and Bill Badger and Roger Salzgeber and Patricia Maisch, the spunky seniors who helped disarm Jared Loughner.
The President affirmed our readiness to embrace challenge as he described this trait in young Christina and her role-model, Gabby.
He deftly wove the textures and colors of our rich tapestry of national identity, as he honored what was shown to be bright and beautiful about each of the victims of this savage attack by one disturbed young man who seems to have felt no stake in the society he would destroy.
Now more is needed: more than the courage of the few, our own courage and appetite for challenge are needed, and will be ignited as we, like Andrew and Peter and Martin, open ourselves to the call of Christ and the work of the Spirit, to see and speak and serve truth.
Like Andrew and Peter and Martin, we must aim higher.
A ten-year-old boy in Tucson said, “Gabby has opened her eyes. Now we have to open ours.”
Flow On, Jordan
Scripture for the first Sunday after the Epiphany includes Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; and Matthew 3:13-17
I have never seen the Jordan River, but my trusty “Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible” tells me that the Jordan Valley, down which the river runs, lies in a deep rift in the earth’s crust which is part of the same line of weakness that, much farther south, shows itself in the Great African Rift cutting deep into East Africa.
Let’s put that in our tool kit for understanding the baptism of Jesus. It happens right where the earth is weak, in a depression that cuts across international boundaries, linking peoples and cultures of many lands.
Of course, we know that the Jordan River figures in Israel’s history, from the primitive times of Father Abraham to the bloody conquest of Canaan, where the river was the last obstacle to be surmounted before the Israelites crossed over into what they called the promised land, Moses dying on one side, God not permitting him to set foot across the Jordan, passing on that leadership to Joshua. In subsequent generations, in one military campaign after another, the Jordan River will be a strong line of defense.
America has the Potomac, and the Mississippi, Old Man River. In Israel, the psalmist sang, “There is a river, whose streams make glad the city of God…”
And for our toolkit today, the Jordan figures in the miracles of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Remember how Elijah, before his ascension to heaven, took off his cloak and struck the water with it, causing the river to divide, allowing him and Elisha to cross on dry ground (a reprise of the Passover, when another body of water flowed into the oral history of Israel).
When Naaman, commander of the army of neighboring Syria, at odds with Israel, sought out Elisha for his healing power, it was to the Jordan that the prophet sent him to bathe. To be cured of his leprosy, the enemy had to swallow his nationalistic pride, sputtering all the way about how, back home in Damascus, they had the Pharpar, a river sparkling clear, not like the dirty muddy waters of the Jordan.
So look where it happens, the baptism of Jesus. It was there at the Jordan where John the Baptizer emerged from the wilderness like Elijah, and, like Elisha, prescribed a cure—but for moral illness, not physical—calling all sorts and conditions of people to come and bathe in the muddy waters of the Jordan, and confess their greed, their violence, their toxic values, their missed opportunities, their misplaced passions…
And there, on the fault line traversing the Indian and African Plates, at that symbolic place still soaked in the bloody encounters of Israelites and Canaanites, there on holy ground and holy water with a great cloud of patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets swirling in the collective memory of these crowds pressing in to claim the healing, to be slapped by the ethical challenge, of John…
There is where Jesus receives his first and forever mission, to bring forth justice to the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring prisoners out of their dungeons, to declare new things.
“The voice of the LORD is upon the waters,” we heard the psalmist sing.
Not far from the Sea of Galilee is Nazareth, Jesus’s home. Fed by the Jordan, that little sea and the cities all around it would be where the early months of Jesus’s public ministry took place. The watershed moment in his career, if it wasn’t the baptism we celebrate today, was at Caesarea Philippi when he confronted his disciples with the question, “Who do men say that I am?” And yet more to the quick, “And you, who do you say I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah sent from God!” And all this happened at the most eastern source of the Jordan. And down the east side of that valley he walked, teaching, healing, freeing, disturbing, revealing the equality and the dignity of all people.
For the last time he crossed the Jordan at Jericho, and from there embarked on the final chapter of his public mission in Jerusalem, the mission he received from John, from God, that day, knee-deep in the silty Jordan. To roil the waters of unexamined privilege until they give way to justice. To calm the waters of chaos, until they rise to swallow him. And then to wait until God is pleased to give new voice to the Word from deep within the belly of the grave, and then to rise to new life in us who are baptized into his Name.
For our tool-kit to understand his baptism: notice the great leveling that goes on between John and Jesus as they face off in the Jordan. John insists, “I need to be baptized by you! And do you come to me? This all feels wrong.” And Jesus insists, “It must be this way now, trust me.” Jesus will not let John keep a hierarchical world. All things are being made new; even John, as full of light as he is, must think new thoughts, must move beyond his old categories that could keep him from growing.
The New Testament remembers John for having summoned people to a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of their sins. John’s insistence that he isn’t qualified to baptize Jesus—or is it that Jesus doesn’t qualify as a sinner?—either way, misses the point of the new creation that God is about.
As the breaking of a mother’s water is the sign of new birth, what is breaking open here in the Jordan is radical human equality. John was already midwifing that birth. All sorts and conditions of people were drawn to that river, compelled by John’s vision of justice being theirs to accomplish (“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”) He was wakening in them a power to transform a brutal and selfish world, first freeing them from their failures, then freeing them for their responsibilities.
Jesus receives this baptism at John’s hands. As he comes up from the water, there is given to him a vision of the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and alighting on him. He hears a voice, yet the message is for us: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In two ways the message is for us. We need to hear God say who Jesus is. And we need to hear God say who we are, because of who Jesus is. We need to hear God singing this lovesong over every person we meet. We need to hear God singing this lovesong to us, one by one. “You are my daughter, my son, beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
In the new creation in Jesus, God puts us on a surer foundation, more secure even than the freeing power of forgiveness of sin. God puts you, God sees you, God declares you God’s own, beloved, a source and a recipient and an agent of God’s pleasure.
You may or may not find in today’s Gospel all that I am claiming. You will find it in the baptismal covenant that unites us to God in Christ. In our collect we prayed for grace to keep that covenant.
Such keeping requires, for sure, the keeping of vows. Required, also, is keeping close the moral commitment and the divine mercy of John the Baptist’s vision.
But first and forever, keeping the covenant of our baptismal standing with God requires that we dare to hear God’s passionate favor spoken to us, person by person, and to hear that Word being formed over each person we meet, leveling us in radical human equality in keeping with Jesus Christ.
I have never seen the Jordan River, but my trusty “Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible” tells me that the Jordan Valley, down which the river runs, lies in a deep rift in the earth’s crust which is part of the same line of weakness that, much farther south, shows itself in the Great African Rift cutting deep into East Africa.
Let’s put that in our tool kit for understanding the baptism of Jesus. It happens right where the earth is weak, in a depression that cuts across international boundaries, linking peoples and cultures of many lands.
Of course, we know that the Jordan River figures in Israel’s history, from the primitive times of Father Abraham to the bloody conquest of Canaan, where the river was the last obstacle to be surmounted before the Israelites crossed over into what they called the promised land, Moses dying on one side, God not permitting him to set foot across the Jordan, passing on that leadership to Joshua. In subsequent generations, in one military campaign after another, the Jordan River will be a strong line of defense.
America has the Potomac, and the Mississippi, Old Man River. In Israel, the psalmist sang, “There is a river, whose streams make glad the city of God…”
And for our toolkit today, the Jordan figures in the miracles of the prophets Elijah and Elisha. Remember how Elijah, before his ascension to heaven, took off his cloak and struck the water with it, causing the river to divide, allowing him and Elisha to cross on dry ground (a reprise of the Passover, when another body of water flowed into the oral history of Israel).
When Naaman, commander of the army of neighboring Syria, at odds with Israel, sought out Elisha for his healing power, it was to the Jordan that the prophet sent him to bathe. To be cured of his leprosy, the enemy had to swallow his nationalistic pride, sputtering all the way about how, back home in Damascus, they had the Pharpar, a river sparkling clear, not like the dirty muddy waters of the Jordan.
So look where it happens, the baptism of Jesus. It was there at the Jordan where John the Baptizer emerged from the wilderness like Elijah, and, like Elisha, prescribed a cure—but for moral illness, not physical—calling all sorts and conditions of people to come and bathe in the muddy waters of the Jordan, and confess their greed, their violence, their toxic values, their missed opportunities, their misplaced passions…
And there, on the fault line traversing the Indian and African Plates, at that symbolic place still soaked in the bloody encounters of Israelites and Canaanites, there on holy ground and holy water with a great cloud of patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets swirling in the collective memory of these crowds pressing in to claim the healing, to be slapped by the ethical challenge, of John…
There is where Jesus receives his first and forever mission, to bring forth justice to the nations, to open eyes that are blind, to bring prisoners out of their dungeons, to declare new things.
“The voice of the LORD is upon the waters,” we heard the psalmist sing.
Not far from the Sea of Galilee is Nazareth, Jesus’s home. Fed by the Jordan, that little sea and the cities all around it would be where the early months of Jesus’s public ministry took place. The watershed moment in his career, if it wasn’t the baptism we celebrate today, was at Caesarea Philippi when he confronted his disciples with the question, “Who do men say that I am?” And yet more to the quick, “And you, who do you say I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah sent from God!” And all this happened at the most eastern source of the Jordan. And down the east side of that valley he walked, teaching, healing, freeing, disturbing, revealing the equality and the dignity of all people.
For the last time he crossed the Jordan at Jericho, and from there embarked on the final chapter of his public mission in Jerusalem, the mission he received from John, from God, that day, knee-deep in the silty Jordan. To roil the waters of unexamined privilege until they give way to justice. To calm the waters of chaos, until they rise to swallow him. And then to wait until God is pleased to give new voice to the Word from deep within the belly of the grave, and then to rise to new life in us who are baptized into his Name.
For our tool-kit to understand his baptism: notice the great leveling that goes on between John and Jesus as they face off in the Jordan. John insists, “I need to be baptized by you! And do you come to me? This all feels wrong.” And Jesus insists, “It must be this way now, trust me.” Jesus will not let John keep a hierarchical world. All things are being made new; even John, as full of light as he is, must think new thoughts, must move beyond his old categories that could keep him from growing.
The New Testament remembers John for having summoned people to a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of their sins. John’s insistence that he isn’t qualified to baptize Jesus—or is it that Jesus doesn’t qualify as a sinner?—either way, misses the point of the new creation that God is about.
As the breaking of a mother’s water is the sign of new birth, what is breaking open here in the Jordan is radical human equality. John was already midwifing that birth. All sorts and conditions of people were drawn to that river, compelled by John’s vision of justice being theirs to accomplish (“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”) He was wakening in them a power to transform a brutal and selfish world, first freeing them from their failures, then freeing them for their responsibilities.
Jesus receives this baptism at John’s hands. As he comes up from the water, there is given to him a vision of the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and alighting on him. He hears a voice, yet the message is for us: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In two ways the message is for us. We need to hear God say who Jesus is. And we need to hear God say who we are, because of who Jesus is. We need to hear God singing this lovesong over every person we meet. We need to hear God singing this lovesong to us, one by one. “You are my daughter, my son, beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
In the new creation in Jesus, God puts us on a surer foundation, more secure even than the freeing power of forgiveness of sin. God puts you, God sees you, God declares you God’s own, beloved, a source and a recipient and an agent of God’s pleasure.
You may or may not find in today’s Gospel all that I am claiming. You will find it in the baptismal covenant that unites us to God in Christ. In our collect we prayed for grace to keep that covenant.
Such keeping requires, for sure, the keeping of vows. Required, also, is keeping close the moral commitment and the divine mercy of John the Baptist’s vision.
But first and forever, keeping the covenant of our baptismal standing with God requires that we dare to hear God’s passionate favor spoken to us, person by person, and to hear that Word being formed over each person we meet, leveling us in radical human equality in keeping with Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Make Way for Wonder
Scripture read on the 2nd Sunday after Christmas Day includes Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a); Luke 2:41-52
In the children’s service on Christmas Eve, the shape of what happens is predictable. The words of the Bible lessons, the carols, the step by step setting of the Crèche, all are familiar. And roomy enough to contain an occasional surprise, a moment when the expected moves over to make room for wonder.
You who were here that evening may have noticed any number of such moments, but the one that made me stop in my tracks and simply watch it happen was when the three kings were set, with their camel, in that middle window.
We know better than to place them at the Crèche, that night. We’re Episcopalians, and we know that if we don’t take them the long way ‘round, we won’t have Epiphany, and we like our seasons.
This parish custom of moving the magi from place to place, from one window to another, sometimes to the piano top, until they reach Bethlehem on the twelfth day and their mission is realized, this custom has its risks.
Not unlike their real journey, there are slippery slopes along the way. Specifically, that second window from the front, where the sill tips down towards the aisle, not unlike the slope of a sand dune—but minus the traction.
I believe it was there, one Christmas in the 90’s, that the camel fell. Not the one we have now (a hardy breed made of resin), but the original plaster one that came with the set, brought from Italy in the 1920’s. With a great crash he fell, and when we went (with sadness) to sweep up the pieces, we found that the impact had broken away all that was camel from an older figure at the core of the camel, and behold, that was a kneeling angel.
You didn’t need to squint and imagine it was an angel: it was a very convincing angel that hadn’t come out of the mold quite right, and instead of being tossed in the trash it was built upon, slipped into the camel mold as its base. It was a Depression-era camel, nothing wasted.
Well, I tell you all that to set the stage for this Christmas Eve. I don’t recall who set the first wise man in place that night—just that it was our soft king, the one Paula Consolini made to replace yet one more casualty of a Christmas past. Then a second king was brought, and the camel (the new technologically improved camel) was made to fit an increasingly crowded window-sill, in light of the candle that had to be navigated around.
I was watching the progress at that window because the next move was going to be mine, to lead a prayer for peace. I counted magi and got to two, then my eyes were drawn to the font, where I saw the journey of the third.
He was in David’s hands, David who is blind and who, holding that third king, could feel every fold in his robe, the gold bands at his biceps, the braids of his hair and that jeweled crown, and, clutched against his chest, the golden jar of myrrh. David had the king in much the same grip, and by his busy fingers he knew, I expect, more about this figure than you or I will ever know.
Up that west aisle he came, step by step, squeezing by the folks in folding chairs, guided by his father behind him, his father with a hand on each of his son’s shoulders, talking him along each step of the way, coaching him through a careful perfect landing in the tightest of spots, the royal entourage tucked in just as tight as being seated in coach.
I don’t know how many of that Christmas Eve multitude saw what was happening. I knew it was the most important action I was likely to see that night, so I just watched it happen. Perhaps some thought something was wrong—but something was very right.
In that respect, this surprising moment shared some features of St. Luke’s story of Jesus in the Temple, as a teenager. This scene is caught in that same middle window on the west aisle, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s image of Jesus in dialogue with the elders. See how his arm is raised, making a rhetorical point.
Yes, we have fast-forwarded twelve years from Bethlehem in the twinkling of a Sunday. Mary and Joseph have brought their son to the big city for the festival of Passover, and now they’re heading home to Nazareth. In caravan as a large group of travelers, Joseph and Mary hadn’t had a sighting of Jesus for the better part of a day, but they trusted him and assumed he was farther back (or ahead) with family and friends in that caravan.
But they were wrong, and they quickly acted to right that wrong by searching for him until they found him. When they did, it was not quickly clear to them that something was very right. This was unclear to them as they saw him sitting with the older men who taught the laws and interpreted the holy writings of the Jewish people.
Child, why have you treated us like this? They ask him, as soon as they catch a private moment with him. Didn’t you know we’d be worried sick looking for you?
Mother, father, why would you worry, and where else would you look but here in my Father’s house? His voice is guiding me, I can hear him. I am in his hands, as always—I feel them on my shoulders.
Now, the joke is on me. I chose this Gospel for today among three that are provided in our new common lectionary of readings. The other two are about the three kings, and when I saw the option of this Gospel I thought, “This would be new and fresh, hearing this story on the Sunday nearest the Epiphany,” as if magi, camel, and star were feeling dated, shopworn, and stale. I wasn’t expecting to talk about the arrival of the kings.
So instead we have the arrival of Jesus where he belongs, in the Temple where he will have a lifelong argument with the powers of religion that will not see or speak truth.
We are not told what questions Jesus and his elders were debating, this day in the Temple when his parents find him, but it’s not far-fetched to imagine that those distinguished teachers were defending the dignity of the Temple, while Jesus was defending the dignity of human nature made in the likeness of God. That those teachers were describing the superiority of properly educated, correctly believing, and righteously behaving religious people… while Jesus was describing the mission of God in lovingkindness restoring all people to unity with himself.
Joseph and Mary were familiar enough with formal education to sense what was wrong, seeing their son seated not at the feet of his elders, but among the teachers. Three days had passed in anguish for Mary and Joseph, choking back panic as they couldn’t find him. Those same three days had fired the mind and heart of the teenager from Nazareth who couldn’t get enough of this encounter, listening, questioning, answering, inching his way in from the edges and up from the floor and onto the benches of open debate, fingering timeless issues of law and justice, mercy and faithfulness, showing in those three days how he knew those matters more intimately than venerable worthies three, four, five times his age.
We’re left with the impression that his parents could not explain the intensely clear vision of their son. But in a world where the apple does not fall far from the tree, it could be that Mary and Joseph could not explain, either, the refusal of religious teachers to see and speak truth. Instinctively they must have felt danger mounting, relieved (for now) by they return to Nazareth and a semblance of normalcy, giving them time to treasure and puzzle-over these things, especially their son’s intuitive grasp (as if God had his ear) and their child’s courage (as if he had, on each shoulder, the guiding touch of a father’s or a mother’s hand).
Questions for the new year:
What coaching, what guidance, will you welcome?
Will you listen for the whisperings of God, or have you ruled them out?
Will you move with or against the pressures of wisdom and love?
In the children’s service on Christmas Eve, the shape of what happens is predictable. The words of the Bible lessons, the carols, the step by step setting of the Crèche, all are familiar. And roomy enough to contain an occasional surprise, a moment when the expected moves over to make room for wonder.
You who were here that evening may have noticed any number of such moments, but the one that made me stop in my tracks and simply watch it happen was when the three kings were set, with their camel, in that middle window.
We know better than to place them at the Crèche, that night. We’re Episcopalians, and we know that if we don’t take them the long way ‘round, we won’t have Epiphany, and we like our seasons.
This parish custom of moving the magi from place to place, from one window to another, sometimes to the piano top, until they reach Bethlehem on the twelfth day and their mission is realized, this custom has its risks.
Not unlike their real journey, there are slippery slopes along the way. Specifically, that second window from the front, where the sill tips down towards the aisle, not unlike the slope of a sand dune—but minus the traction.
I believe it was there, one Christmas in the 90’s, that the camel fell. Not the one we have now (a hardy breed made of resin), but the original plaster one that came with the set, brought from Italy in the 1920’s. With a great crash he fell, and when we went (with sadness) to sweep up the pieces, we found that the impact had broken away all that was camel from an older figure at the core of the camel, and behold, that was a kneeling angel.
You didn’t need to squint and imagine it was an angel: it was a very convincing angel that hadn’t come out of the mold quite right, and instead of being tossed in the trash it was built upon, slipped into the camel mold as its base. It was a Depression-era camel, nothing wasted.
Well, I tell you all that to set the stage for this Christmas Eve. I don’t recall who set the first wise man in place that night—just that it was our soft king, the one Paula Consolini made to replace yet one more casualty of a Christmas past. Then a second king was brought, and the camel (the new technologically improved camel) was made to fit an increasingly crowded window-sill, in light of the candle that had to be navigated around.
I was watching the progress at that window because the next move was going to be mine, to lead a prayer for peace. I counted magi and got to two, then my eyes were drawn to the font, where I saw the journey of the third.
He was in David’s hands, David who is blind and who, holding that third king, could feel every fold in his robe, the gold bands at his biceps, the braids of his hair and that jeweled crown, and, clutched against his chest, the golden jar of myrrh. David had the king in much the same grip, and by his busy fingers he knew, I expect, more about this figure than you or I will ever know.
Up that west aisle he came, step by step, squeezing by the folks in folding chairs, guided by his father behind him, his father with a hand on each of his son’s shoulders, talking him along each step of the way, coaching him through a careful perfect landing in the tightest of spots, the royal entourage tucked in just as tight as being seated in coach.
I don’t know how many of that Christmas Eve multitude saw what was happening. I knew it was the most important action I was likely to see that night, so I just watched it happen. Perhaps some thought something was wrong—but something was very right.
In that respect, this surprising moment shared some features of St. Luke’s story of Jesus in the Temple, as a teenager. This scene is caught in that same middle window on the west aisle, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s image of Jesus in dialogue with the elders. See how his arm is raised, making a rhetorical point.
Yes, we have fast-forwarded twelve years from Bethlehem in the twinkling of a Sunday. Mary and Joseph have brought their son to the big city for the festival of Passover, and now they’re heading home to Nazareth. In caravan as a large group of travelers, Joseph and Mary hadn’t had a sighting of Jesus for the better part of a day, but they trusted him and assumed he was farther back (or ahead) with family and friends in that caravan.
But they were wrong, and they quickly acted to right that wrong by searching for him until they found him. When they did, it was not quickly clear to them that something was very right. This was unclear to them as they saw him sitting with the older men who taught the laws and interpreted the holy writings of the Jewish people.
Child, why have you treated us like this? They ask him, as soon as they catch a private moment with him. Didn’t you know we’d be worried sick looking for you?
Mother, father, why would you worry, and where else would you look but here in my Father’s house? His voice is guiding me, I can hear him. I am in his hands, as always—I feel them on my shoulders.
Now, the joke is on me. I chose this Gospel for today among three that are provided in our new common lectionary of readings. The other two are about the three kings, and when I saw the option of this Gospel I thought, “This would be new and fresh, hearing this story on the Sunday nearest the Epiphany,” as if magi, camel, and star were feeling dated, shopworn, and stale. I wasn’t expecting to talk about the arrival of the kings.
So instead we have the arrival of Jesus where he belongs, in the Temple where he will have a lifelong argument with the powers of religion that will not see or speak truth.
We are not told what questions Jesus and his elders were debating, this day in the Temple when his parents find him, but it’s not far-fetched to imagine that those distinguished teachers were defending the dignity of the Temple, while Jesus was defending the dignity of human nature made in the likeness of God. That those teachers were describing the superiority of properly educated, correctly believing, and righteously behaving religious people… while Jesus was describing the mission of God in lovingkindness restoring all people to unity with himself.
Joseph and Mary were familiar enough with formal education to sense what was wrong, seeing their son seated not at the feet of his elders, but among the teachers. Three days had passed in anguish for Mary and Joseph, choking back panic as they couldn’t find him. Those same three days had fired the mind and heart of the teenager from Nazareth who couldn’t get enough of this encounter, listening, questioning, answering, inching his way in from the edges and up from the floor and onto the benches of open debate, fingering timeless issues of law and justice, mercy and faithfulness, showing in those three days how he knew those matters more intimately than venerable worthies three, four, five times his age.
We’re left with the impression that his parents could not explain the intensely clear vision of their son. But in a world where the apple does not fall far from the tree, it could be that Mary and Joseph could not explain, either, the refusal of religious teachers to see and speak truth. Instinctively they must have felt danger mounting, relieved (for now) by they return to Nazareth and a semblance of normalcy, giving them time to treasure and puzzle-over these things, especially their son’s intuitive grasp (as if God had his ear) and their child’s courage (as if he had, on each shoulder, the guiding touch of a father’s or a mother’s hand).
Questions for the new year:
What coaching, what guidance, will you welcome?
Will you listen for the whisperings of God, or have you ruled them out?
Will you move with or against the pressures of wisdom and love?
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