Among the readings for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost are Colossians 1:15-28 and Luke 10:38-42
It must have been fall when Mary Oliver wrote her poem “In Blackwater Woods.” Listen to its opening lines:
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment…
The poem gives voice to a bittersweet melancholic aching over the beauty of the moment that soon will dissolve into the change and loss of a season. And the poem ends:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
That’s a poem I brought to a graveside in June, when Sherry’s family gathered in the College cemetery for the interment of her ashes. Mary Oliver, writing from the pain of her own deep loss in the death of her life partner Molly, has given us words that go to the heart of being mortal—words that recognize the pain of a family standing at the brink of a grave.
I’m judging that Oliver’s poem is a good place to start, as we consider the little family of Mary and Martha today. Each woman deals with her own mortality in a rather classical way. I wonder what happens when we see their story through the lens of that poem, and watch each of them holding something against her bones, knowing that her life depends on it, and then must let it go.
I celebrated the eucharist at Williamstown Commons on Wednesday, and read this Gospel there. In the circle were ten women and two men. I asked if they saw themselves as Martha, or as Mary. I got no takers, either time.
I wondered if this had something to do with where they are in life now, so I regrouped and asked, “What if we went back twenty years? Were any of you Martha when you were younger?’ That drew a smile from one lady.
Linda, from the activities staff, came in from the sidelines and tried her hand at it: “If Jesus came to your house, would you cook for him or wait on him?”
“Both!” answered Ruth.
Whereupon I, proper Anglican that I try to be, pounced on that moment of synthesis and agreed, “Yes, Jesus does need us to be both, doesn’t he? Both the activist and the contemplative are in us. We’re called to cook for him, and we’re called to sit with him.” (I didn’t think Linda had gone contemplative enough when she suggested that Mary had waited on Jesus: she had waited with him, in him, for him.)
So yes, this little story helps feed theology for two thousand years of teaching that we are saved, not by our good works, nor by our formulas and practices of faith: we are saved by God’s grace working through both faith and works, God’s goodness leavening the lump of both our believing and our serving, God’s Spirit shaping and reshaping us from the inside out and from the outside in.
The good news in this little story is that when our lives are completed, we aren’t going to be judged by how good we’ve been, either at cooking meals for Jesus or at developing our prayer life with Jesus. We’re shown in our second lesson today how we stand before God, and that is in the rich glory of a mystery, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory. We’re given the grace to stand before God, neither defining ourselves as Christian activists nor certified as Anglican contemplatives, but persuaded that Jesus Christ is in us and we are in him.
We stand in this mystery here at this table of new life, and we stand in this mystery at home in our kitchens, in our living rooms, at our workplaces, and in the great outdoors, in nursing homes, at graveside, at all times and in all places. What is expected of us, as we stand in this mystery, is that we be aware of what is being given to us, that we be alert to what is being asked of us, that we recognize the Spirit of God.
In our Gospel today, Mary’s doing fine at that, but Martha needs some coaching. The help she wants isn’t the help she needs. What she’s holding against her bones, believing that her life depends on it, is her work at the stove. It’s not all drudgery. This is part of her mortal life that she loves, feeding people, and she’s good at it. Her nature is to do. She’s at home in a culture of doing, and I’ll bet a whole lot of people around her depended on all that she did.
If I put myself in her sandals, I might need to admit that what I’m holding against my bones is my reputation as an in-charge competent person, and perhaps my high standards and demanding self-expectation. Don’t tell me I have to let go of my abilities and my standards! That’s not the help I want. I want someone to help me in-keeping-with my abilities and standards and expectation. Do I have to let go of those?
It would seem so, because Jesus is offering something more valuable, and more demanding, not what I want, but what I need.
And if I try to slip into the sandals of Mary, I’m receiving what I need as I sit with Jesus, who opens me to be all that I am, invites me into a culture of being that will keep renewing me all my days-- but the purity and intensity of these moments cannot last. What I’m hearing I will continue to hold against my bones, knowing that my life depends on it, but what I’m hearing calls me to active love, fruitful service, and, yes, to my sister, who has a proper claim on me. To act on what I know, it’s soon time for me to let go of this tutorial with the Teacher, and to get on with life in service to this larger life that he gives.
There is need of only one thing, we hear him say. Not contemplation, not action, but hearing the call, receiving the gift, recognizing the Spirit, exercising the freedom to choose, loving God in all and above all.
(Mary Oliver’s poem appears in her “New and Selected Poems, Volume Two,” Beacon Press, 2004.)
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Praying for our Nation
This sermon refers to scripture appointed for Independence Day: Deuteronomy 10:17-21; Hebrews 11:8-16; Matthew 5:43-48. Limited reference is made to the readings for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost: II Kings 5:1-14; Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
The American Book of Common Prayer declares that July 4th, Independence Day, is a major holy day with its own collect and appointed Bible readings. We can assume that the English Book of Common Prayer does not see this day in that same glorious light.
When a major holy day falls on a Sunday, its observance is moved to the next available weekday. Sunday, being a little Easter, always trumps a major holy day. So to hear the Prayer Book’s message about this day, we’re going to use its collect as our post-Communion prayer. And I’m going to draw on its Bible readings, ones that we have not heard today-- not that we haven’t heard enough already, but because these others may help us answer a question I’m about to ask you: On this Independence Day, what do we pray for our nation?
First, from the Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, comes this command to welcome immigrants: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords… who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt… Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.”
There, by the way, is the significance of those seventy disciples sent out by Jesus: they are the fledgling Church. Seventy people in the family of Isaac and Jacob were the seed planted in the sands of Egypt, becoming over many generations the enslaved Hebrew people who would shed their chains and settle in Canaan. Seventy disciples in the circle of Jesus were the seeds planted in the towns and villages of Israel, pioneers of the kingdom of God, curing the sick, breaking the demonic.
And few in number were our colonial patriots in this country who overthrew the tyranny of empire that sucked them dry; but these few became, through wave after wave of immigrants, as numerous as the stars in heaven.
And so, a first prayer for our nation now is that we not become short-sighted, mean-spirited, or fearful in our welcome of the stranger. As we draft immigration law, that we hear God’s command to love the stranger. In our parents or ancestors, we were once strangers. Let’s pray that we don’t forget that now.
Second, from the Letter to the Hebrews, appointed for July 4th, champions of faith are held high, leaders who “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them,” people of character ready to sacrifice now for the sake of those who would come after them. Just the opposite of our cocaine-brain sucking dry the profits of the present, mortgaging the future for what can be enjoyed now.
And so, a second prayer for our nation is that we continue to choose to be free. A great American philosopher, William James, said that, “Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or on being.” Worthy of our freedom to do and be is the New Testament’s motto, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
Third, from the portion of Matthew’s Gospel for Independence Day, “you have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, turn that around and win him over, not by disdain and violence, but by love… and so show yourselves children of the Most High.”
A third prayer for our nation is that we learn to stop breeding enemies, to be sparing in our labeling anyone as enemy, to remember that the God to whom we pray is an impartial God whose favor and judgment, just like sunshine and rain, fall equally on both sides of every boundary we draw.
The American Book of Common Prayer declares that July 4th, Independence Day, is a major holy day with its own collect and appointed Bible readings. We can assume that the English Book of Common Prayer does not see this day in that same glorious light.
When a major holy day falls on a Sunday, its observance is moved to the next available weekday. Sunday, being a little Easter, always trumps a major holy day. So to hear the Prayer Book’s message about this day, we’re going to use its collect as our post-Communion prayer. And I’m going to draw on its Bible readings, ones that we have not heard today-- not that we haven’t heard enough already, but because these others may help us answer a question I’m about to ask you: On this Independence Day, what do we pray for our nation?
First, from the Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, comes this command to welcome immigrants: “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords… who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt… Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.”
There, by the way, is the significance of those seventy disciples sent out by Jesus: they are the fledgling Church. Seventy people in the family of Isaac and Jacob were the seed planted in the sands of Egypt, becoming over many generations the enslaved Hebrew people who would shed their chains and settle in Canaan. Seventy disciples in the circle of Jesus were the seeds planted in the towns and villages of Israel, pioneers of the kingdom of God, curing the sick, breaking the demonic.
And few in number were our colonial patriots in this country who overthrew the tyranny of empire that sucked them dry; but these few became, through wave after wave of immigrants, as numerous as the stars in heaven.
And so, a first prayer for our nation now is that we not become short-sighted, mean-spirited, or fearful in our welcome of the stranger. As we draft immigration law, that we hear God’s command to love the stranger. In our parents or ancestors, we were once strangers. Let’s pray that we don’t forget that now.
Second, from the Letter to the Hebrews, appointed for July 4th, champions of faith are held high, leaders who “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them,” people of character ready to sacrifice now for the sake of those who would come after them. Just the opposite of our cocaine-brain sucking dry the profits of the present, mortgaging the future for what can be enjoyed now.
And so, a second prayer for our nation is that we continue to choose to be free. A great American philosopher, William James, said that, “Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or on being.” Worthy of our freedom to do and be is the New Testament’s motto, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
Third, from the portion of Matthew’s Gospel for Independence Day, “you have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, turn that around and win him over, not by disdain and violence, but by love… and so show yourselves children of the Most High.”
A third prayer for our nation is that we learn to stop breeding enemies, to be sparing in our labeling anyone as enemy, to remember that the God to whom we pray is an impartial God whose favor and judgment, just like sunshine and rain, fall equally on both sides of every boundary we draw.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
A Memorial Homily For Sherry
Monday afternoon, the day after Sherry’s death, her family sat down with me to consider what we would do today at this service. I had with me the usual resources I bring to such a moment: a hymnal, a prayer book, a volume of suggested readings. Into the room came Nicole, holding a slim clothbound journal. “I found this on Sherry’s shelf,” she said, “It seems to contain some of her favorite quotations.”
This was as if Sherry were still helping us.
In monasteries and convents, such a book is called a liber scintillarum, a book of sparks. Each person in the community might keep one to record words that have spoken with power and clarity, quotations not to be forgotten, discoveries fresh from experience. This was Sherry’s book of sparks. From it came the scripture portions we’ve heard this morning.
What ignites one person’s spirit may not set the next person’s soul on fire. That’s not the purpose of such a book. It’s to keep one’s own feet to the fire, to remember what it was that kindled the heart and mind and will. Even the book’s owner may not know what patterns emerge in these keepings of private contemplation, not meant for the public eye.
But as I handled those pages, as I glanced from entry to entry, I couldn’t help wondering, “How did these ideas, these visions, spark Sherry to be who she was and do what she did?”
And what I specifically had in mind was how she embraced her own experience, these past three months, so positively and courageously and without complaint. How did she do that? Just asking that question made me realize that Sherry had been doing exactly that over many years, not in this season only. To be in awe of how she handled these recent months is to remember one of her traits we most admired.
As we have heard eloquently today, there was so much to admire. Sherry was gifted at making friends, and keeping friends. And more, inspiring friendships around her, wherever she was. Her deep openness to her friends anointed each day of this recent ordeal with the oil of lovingkindness.
Death has come so soon to one so full of sparks. This may feel to be beyond understanding and, perhaps, beyond acceptance. For me, it does not help to assign this to the will of God. I believe we saw the grace of God in how swiftly and peacefully her circle was drawn whole, once it was clear that therapies were not working. And I am certain we saw the grace of God in her sweet courage, in how she treated us, how to the very end she kept drawing people in, how she soared on wings like an eagle.
And I am sure that we have seen, in the strength and tenderness and attentiveness of Bud and Erik and Cam and Nicole and Ethan and Elise, what grace can look like in action.
Our scriptures—Sherry’s scriptures—tell us today that action is what matters. She is in the book of sparks that each of us has collected in these years of our loving her. And I believe she has told each and every person here (and so many beyond, who cannot attend today) that each of us is bound into the great volume, the magnum opus, of her love.
I notice that, at the start of Sherry’s verses from the Book of Isaiah, stars appear in the night sky. God is said to bring out the starry host one by one, calling each by name.
To us, Sherry is a star.
It’s said that the minerals of our bones come from the far-flung dust of stars, one more testimony that nothing in our experience can be lost or wasted. Today we celebrate what rich life we have within us, among us, by the sparks of our friend, Sherry. Our tribute to her will grow as we keep finding ways to inspire friendship, keep treasuring old friends, keep introducing new friends in the making, keep relishing the stories that mustn’t be forgotten, keep including, keep drawing-in, keep sending sparks into the universe.
June 18, 2010
St. John's Parish, Williamstown, Massachusetts
This was as if Sherry were still helping us.
In monasteries and convents, such a book is called a liber scintillarum, a book of sparks. Each person in the community might keep one to record words that have spoken with power and clarity, quotations not to be forgotten, discoveries fresh from experience. This was Sherry’s book of sparks. From it came the scripture portions we’ve heard this morning.
What ignites one person’s spirit may not set the next person’s soul on fire. That’s not the purpose of such a book. It’s to keep one’s own feet to the fire, to remember what it was that kindled the heart and mind and will. Even the book’s owner may not know what patterns emerge in these keepings of private contemplation, not meant for the public eye.
But as I handled those pages, as I glanced from entry to entry, I couldn’t help wondering, “How did these ideas, these visions, spark Sherry to be who she was and do what she did?”
And what I specifically had in mind was how she embraced her own experience, these past three months, so positively and courageously and without complaint. How did she do that? Just asking that question made me realize that Sherry had been doing exactly that over many years, not in this season only. To be in awe of how she handled these recent months is to remember one of her traits we most admired.
As we have heard eloquently today, there was so much to admire. Sherry was gifted at making friends, and keeping friends. And more, inspiring friendships around her, wherever she was. Her deep openness to her friends anointed each day of this recent ordeal with the oil of lovingkindness.
Death has come so soon to one so full of sparks. This may feel to be beyond understanding and, perhaps, beyond acceptance. For me, it does not help to assign this to the will of God. I believe we saw the grace of God in how swiftly and peacefully her circle was drawn whole, once it was clear that therapies were not working. And I am certain we saw the grace of God in her sweet courage, in how she treated us, how to the very end she kept drawing people in, how she soared on wings like an eagle.
And I am sure that we have seen, in the strength and tenderness and attentiveness of Bud and Erik and Cam and Nicole and Ethan and Elise, what grace can look like in action.
Our scriptures—Sherry’s scriptures—tell us today that action is what matters. She is in the book of sparks that each of us has collected in these years of our loving her. And I believe she has told each and every person here (and so many beyond, who cannot attend today) that each of us is bound into the great volume, the magnum opus, of her love.
I notice that, at the start of Sherry’s verses from the Book of Isaiah, stars appear in the night sky. God is said to bring out the starry host one by one, calling each by name.
To us, Sherry is a star.
It’s said that the minerals of our bones come from the far-flung dust of stars, one more testimony that nothing in our experience can be lost or wasted. Today we celebrate what rich life we have within us, among us, by the sparks of our friend, Sherry. Our tribute to her will grow as we keep finding ways to inspire friendship, keep treasuring old friends, keep introducing new friends in the making, keep relishing the stories that mustn’t be forgotten, keep including, keep drawing-in, keep sending sparks into the universe.
June 18, 2010
St. John's Parish, Williamstown, Massachusetts
No Turning Back
Scripture for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost includes Galatians 5:1, 13-25, and Luke 9:51-62
To read a Gospel is like paging through a family scrapbook. Today, we point to a snapshot of Jesus and his disciples as they head to Jerusalem for his final days, the stormy days of his arrest and crucifixion. Along the way, they entered a Samaritan village. Though they were ethnic cousins, Jews and Samaritans did not get along.
Let me tweak something I just said. To read a Gospel, we should imagine the earliest apostles and the children of those apostles poring over the family scrapbook, and listen-in on what they might have said.
“Do you remember that day? It was your father Andrew and his brother Peter who ran on ahead to arrange rooms at the inn, but the Samaritans slammed the door in their faces. ‘You’re going to Jerusalem, that whore of a city? Then you’re the wrong kind—be off with you!’ Isn’t that what they said?”
“Oh, and what an explosion came next! James and John, those sons of thunder, witnessed it all and threatened to command lightning to strike ‘em all dead, those hard-hearted Samaritans…”
“Yes, and the air was blue when the Master let ‘em have it, the two boneheads! No wonder his words aren’t kept, this time—he was really disappointed in those two loudmouths. It wasn’t a pretty scene. Old Simon here says he was there, and the Master was just as sharp with them as he was with those money-changers in the Temple, whittled them down right to their knees, took them down a peg or two.”
Palestine was an occupied territory of the Roman Empire, something of a military state with soldiers common on the streets. So perhaps it’s idealistic to picture the disciples as pacifists. Just don’t ask me to give up my understanding of Jesus as peacemaker, and in keeping with that I see him patiently—sometimes impatiently—coaching his companions in non-violence. He can’t let James and John have their thunderstorm without it soaking the whole of his public ministry.
He knows there are storm clouds ahead, gathering over violent Jerusalem. The sky will turn black on Good Friday before the sun’s rising on the third day reveals his empty tomb. And this is as it must be, that he will take upon himself the animosity and violence that even his disciples would visit upon others, showing themselves still slaves to the old evils.
St. Paul tells us today, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Powerful words—seditious words-- in a land under military occupation. Powerful words in a religious culture yoked to laws that tell people what they must not do, laws that prohibit but do not empower, laws that evoke fear rather than inspire love.
“Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Commentators say that in this first verse of the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians, Paul presents the core of his Gospel. And it is a revolutionary modern message: that people may choose, in the face of oppression, to exercise their conscience and resist evil, to insist on a way of life that bears the fruit of the Spirit of God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “There is no law against such things,” he says (and I wonder if his apostolic tongue wasn’t in his cheek). These are the powers within the reach of everyone.
Or maybe not everyone. The Gospel scrapbook today has three more snapshots. In each, Jesus is in conversation with a different person. First is the fellow who approached him on the road, gushing, “I will follow you wherever you go.” The Master picks up the truth, that here’s someone running away from home, someone who needs kinds of security that aren’t part of the missionary call. Jesus doesn’t say no, but makes it clear that the benefits package may disappoint him. There will be lots of people like this first fellow, ready to greet Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, hoping for some excitement, ready to shout Hosanna-- but that’s it.
Second is someone Jesus approaches, saying, “Follow me.” This person replies, “I like the idea of following you, but it’s going to have to wait.” Why? Because he must first bury his father. Has his father died? Or is this man saying, “Maybe in a year or two --you know, my parents are elderly and I’m obligated to take care of them until they die.”
Jesus won’t wait. We know why, with his warm front about to collide with that cold front in Jerusalem, Jesus sees how few are the days left in his public ministry. His words sound harsh, but the context of his own impending death gives our Lord a unique voice when he says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; your call is to go and proclaim the reign of God. That kingdom is about to break in upon all the ordinary processes of living and dying, when my death opens the gates of eternal life to all who will choose to live fully now by the Spirit that I give them.” But this second person seems fixed on what might be called obligations of biology, and isn’t receiving on the level of spirit.
Third, not unlike the second, promises (like the first) that he will follow, but right now has a to-do list at home. Does he mean only say farewell to his family, or does he also mean paint the front porch and while he’s at it fix the gutters?
“If you’re plowing a furrow and you look back, it will go crooked,” suggests Jesus.
Not a one of these three would-be followers shows even enough promise to follow, let alone lead. But step across from chapter nine in Luke to chapter ten, as we’ll do next Sunday, and we’ll see that Jesus has recruited seventy-two disciples beyond the twelve, and will send them out ahead of him to the towns he will visit en route to Jerusalem.
So why these three stories of apparent failure? If they are stories of failure, perhaps they illustrate the conventional wisdom that, while everyone may choose, in the face of life’s oppressiveness, to exercise conscience and resist evil, to insist on a way of life that bears the fruit of the Spirit of God-- nonetheless, a person must choose. No one can do it for me. Nor can I inherit it. I must choose.
Now, what if these are not three vignettes of failure, but snapshots of the moments when each person resisted grace because it felt scary? Can you relate to that? Who among us has not resisted grace, pushed away an invitation to change?
We aren’t told what became of these three. We assume that each headed home. Along the way, were there changes of heart? Did these three come to terms with their call, catch up with Jesus, and join the seventy-two? Were their resistance snapshots kept to humanize the story of the Jesus movement? Did apostles find their own experience in the shrinking-back of these three? Did some say, “I had moments like that…”? Did some say, “That was me…”?
Or did these three come to terms with their call precisely by returning to their homes, one to face whatever he might have been running away from, one to be a caregiver to his father, and one to paint that front porch? Our lesson from Galatians today does say, “through love become slaves to one another.” Doesn’t such love start at home?
But it wouldn’t be enough that such love remain at home. The Jesus movement is not primarily about increasing satisfaction at home, not about improving quality of life for me and mine. It is, as Paul observes, about implementing the great love, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And on that day when the twelve entered a village of the Samaritans, their Master intended to teach them how all-embracing a word “neighbor” must be. All told, it turned into a rather scary lesson. Our three would-be recruits pick up on exactly that fear that will always be evoked by the Christ who calls us to exceed biology and culture and religion by recognizing and choosing the way of the Spirit, whose fruits alone satisfy, and whose truth alone sets free.
To read a Gospel is like paging through a family scrapbook. Today, we point to a snapshot of Jesus and his disciples as they head to Jerusalem for his final days, the stormy days of his arrest and crucifixion. Along the way, they entered a Samaritan village. Though they were ethnic cousins, Jews and Samaritans did not get along.
Let me tweak something I just said. To read a Gospel, we should imagine the earliest apostles and the children of those apostles poring over the family scrapbook, and listen-in on what they might have said.
“Do you remember that day? It was your father Andrew and his brother Peter who ran on ahead to arrange rooms at the inn, but the Samaritans slammed the door in their faces. ‘You’re going to Jerusalem, that whore of a city? Then you’re the wrong kind—be off with you!’ Isn’t that what they said?”
“Oh, and what an explosion came next! James and John, those sons of thunder, witnessed it all and threatened to command lightning to strike ‘em all dead, those hard-hearted Samaritans…”
“Yes, and the air was blue when the Master let ‘em have it, the two boneheads! No wonder his words aren’t kept, this time—he was really disappointed in those two loudmouths. It wasn’t a pretty scene. Old Simon here says he was there, and the Master was just as sharp with them as he was with those money-changers in the Temple, whittled them down right to their knees, took them down a peg or two.”
Palestine was an occupied territory of the Roman Empire, something of a military state with soldiers common on the streets. So perhaps it’s idealistic to picture the disciples as pacifists. Just don’t ask me to give up my understanding of Jesus as peacemaker, and in keeping with that I see him patiently—sometimes impatiently—coaching his companions in non-violence. He can’t let James and John have their thunderstorm without it soaking the whole of his public ministry.
He knows there are storm clouds ahead, gathering over violent Jerusalem. The sky will turn black on Good Friday before the sun’s rising on the third day reveals his empty tomb. And this is as it must be, that he will take upon himself the animosity and violence that even his disciples would visit upon others, showing themselves still slaves to the old evils.
St. Paul tells us today, “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Powerful words—seditious words-- in a land under military occupation. Powerful words in a religious culture yoked to laws that tell people what they must not do, laws that prohibit but do not empower, laws that evoke fear rather than inspire love.
“Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Commentators say that in this first verse of the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians, Paul presents the core of his Gospel. And it is a revolutionary modern message: that people may choose, in the face of oppression, to exercise their conscience and resist evil, to insist on a way of life that bears the fruit of the Spirit of God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. “There is no law against such things,” he says (and I wonder if his apostolic tongue wasn’t in his cheek). These are the powers within the reach of everyone.
Or maybe not everyone. The Gospel scrapbook today has three more snapshots. In each, Jesus is in conversation with a different person. First is the fellow who approached him on the road, gushing, “I will follow you wherever you go.” The Master picks up the truth, that here’s someone running away from home, someone who needs kinds of security that aren’t part of the missionary call. Jesus doesn’t say no, but makes it clear that the benefits package may disappoint him. There will be lots of people like this first fellow, ready to greet Jesus at the gates of Jerusalem, hoping for some excitement, ready to shout Hosanna-- but that’s it.
Second is someone Jesus approaches, saying, “Follow me.” This person replies, “I like the idea of following you, but it’s going to have to wait.” Why? Because he must first bury his father. Has his father died? Or is this man saying, “Maybe in a year or two --you know, my parents are elderly and I’m obligated to take care of them until they die.”
Jesus won’t wait. We know why, with his warm front about to collide with that cold front in Jerusalem, Jesus sees how few are the days left in his public ministry. His words sound harsh, but the context of his own impending death gives our Lord a unique voice when he says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; your call is to go and proclaim the reign of God. That kingdom is about to break in upon all the ordinary processes of living and dying, when my death opens the gates of eternal life to all who will choose to live fully now by the Spirit that I give them.” But this second person seems fixed on what might be called obligations of biology, and isn’t receiving on the level of spirit.
Third, not unlike the second, promises (like the first) that he will follow, but right now has a to-do list at home. Does he mean only say farewell to his family, or does he also mean paint the front porch and while he’s at it fix the gutters?
“If you’re plowing a furrow and you look back, it will go crooked,” suggests Jesus.
Not a one of these three would-be followers shows even enough promise to follow, let alone lead. But step across from chapter nine in Luke to chapter ten, as we’ll do next Sunday, and we’ll see that Jesus has recruited seventy-two disciples beyond the twelve, and will send them out ahead of him to the towns he will visit en route to Jerusalem.
So why these three stories of apparent failure? If they are stories of failure, perhaps they illustrate the conventional wisdom that, while everyone may choose, in the face of life’s oppressiveness, to exercise conscience and resist evil, to insist on a way of life that bears the fruit of the Spirit of God-- nonetheless, a person must choose. No one can do it for me. Nor can I inherit it. I must choose.
Now, what if these are not three vignettes of failure, but snapshots of the moments when each person resisted grace because it felt scary? Can you relate to that? Who among us has not resisted grace, pushed away an invitation to change?
We aren’t told what became of these three. We assume that each headed home. Along the way, were there changes of heart? Did these three come to terms with their call, catch up with Jesus, and join the seventy-two? Were their resistance snapshots kept to humanize the story of the Jesus movement? Did apostles find their own experience in the shrinking-back of these three? Did some say, “I had moments like that…”? Did some say, “That was me…”?
Or did these three come to terms with their call precisely by returning to their homes, one to face whatever he might have been running away from, one to be a caregiver to his father, and one to paint that front porch? Our lesson from Galatians today does say, “through love become slaves to one another.” Doesn’t such love start at home?
But it wouldn’t be enough that such love remain at home. The Jesus movement is not primarily about increasing satisfaction at home, not about improving quality of life for me and mine. It is, as Paul observes, about implementing the great love, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And on that day when the twelve entered a village of the Samaritans, their Master intended to teach them how all-embracing a word “neighbor” must be. All told, it turned into a rather scary lesson. Our three would-be recruits pick up on exactly that fear that will always be evoked by the Christ who calls us to exceed biology and culture and religion by recognizing and choosing the way of the Spirit, whose fruits alone satisfy, and whose truth alone sets free.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Crazy Thing about Demons
Bible readings for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost include Galatians 3:23-29 and Luke 8:26-39
Am I the only one who thinks it’s wickedly funny that this should be our Gospel, on the day we complete the church school year?
Do you think this story causes our church school teachers to smile, when they think of their little herds running down the church school hallway?
Could this story possibly explain occasional episodes when behavior runs amok? No, couldn’t be…
It is an amazing story, isn’t it? For one thing, St. Luke tells other stories where the disciples keep wondering who Jesus really is… is he God’s special agent, the Messiah, or isn’t he? But here, the demons know exactly who he is.
Do we believe in demons? Two thousand years ago, the time of this story, people understood the world to be populated with many invisible powers: demons, spirits, nymphs, centaurs, and angels, all of them in charge of things people couldn’t understand yet. Demons, they thought, were the cause of mental illness. To ward them off, people wore charms and performed rituals that we today would call pretty crazy.
Because people thought you could catch a demon from someone who had a demon, the fellow we hear about today was forced to leave his family home and go live in a cemetery. People had the idea that that’s where demons and spirits ought to live. And no one ever went there, except when they had to, like to bury someone who had died. And that was kind of crazy, wasn’t it?
Please don’t get me wrong in what I’m about to say. Jesus is not Superman. But I watched a Superman move the other night, and in one way they remind me of each other: Just like Superman, Jesus knows precisely who needs him. As if having radar, cries for help are heard, noticed just in time to save a life. Jesus doesn’t change his clothes in a phone booth, but off he goes to help this suffering man, even though it’s to a cemetery (and I expect his disciples were none too happy in being made to go along, for I imagine them to be superstitious, themselves).
“What is your name?” Jesus asks him. Did you notice that when the answer comes, it’s not a name at all? “Mob… I am called Mob.” Or, in another translation, “Legion… my name is Legion.”
A legion was a big company of Roman soldiers, five or six thousand strong.
You know, in all our Gospel stories, words count. Details and names mean things. Here, this poor tormented man, kicked out by his people, hasn’t any sense of identity left. No name. Just a nickname, a label, like “crazy person”.
Mobs are big batches of crazy people. We can all think of examples, from lynching mobs to shopping mobs.
Before the World Cup games in South Africa, at an exhibition match, people started stampeding. That was a mob—people panicking either to get in or to get out, losing all manners, breaking rules, breaking bones as well.
And that other nickname, Legion. What if St. Luke wanted the people hearing this story to imagine that the struggle going on in this man was as if he had five thousand soldiers fighting inside himself? What a powerful image!
And what if St. Luke was being very clever, weaving in a story within the story? Could he be saying that this struggling man was like our Lord’s homeland, possessed by the demonic Roman army that controlled daily life for everybody in those days, driving everyone crazy by taking away all their freedoms? Is Luke showing us how truly powerful God is, sending Jesus to bravely face down the truly bad guys? This poor troubled man they called Legion wasn’t the bad guy—but the Roman legionnaires, they are remembered in the New Testament as being violent and greedy and arrogant.
Maybe so: maybe this is a story on two levels. We learn to hear the Gospels on more than one level. But we’ve still got the simple story to appreciate. And we haven’t gotten to those pigs yet.
Pigs weren’t big in Israel. The dietary rules of Israel prevented the eating of pork. But that doesn’t mean that Wilbur the pig would live a long cushy life without ever having to become supper. It means that by and large people looked down on pig farmers (who might likelier be foreigners than Jews), and didn’t want pig farms near their backyards (which, come to think of it, I’m not sure I would either). It means that a lot of people believed they’d be better off without pigs, period. And that attitude may help explain the unfortunate fate of all those piggies in the story.
“Demons and pigs go together,” they might have said, “Good riddance to them all!”
But you and I would call that worse than crazy. We would call that cruel. Not to mention what it must have been like for those pig farmers to lose their herd, and their livelihood.
If you’re down on pigs, like many of the first hearers of this story, you wouldn’t find the story troubling. But how do we feel about Jesus allowing this to happen? Actually he made it happen, the story says.
If you’re asked that question by a five-year-old, you might answer, “Hmm… I don’t know how to resolve that. Do you?” Perhaps, being a five-year-old, she will.
Was Jesus showing everybody how crazy and destructive our customs and attitudes can be?
It seems to me that he wanted to heal not just this one tormented man, but the whole troubled society that bought-in to the powers of magic and believed more in the powers of demons than they believed in the power of God. But make no mistake: this story shows those demons getting deep-sixed…evicted… gone.
But I guess we’ll put this story down without being satisfied why those pigs had to lose their lives in the bargain.
No wonder, though, that the city fathers didn’t give Jesus the key to the city. They asked him please to leave. Their economy was bad enough without this new crisis in pork futures.
Notice how the man, when he has been healed, wants to become one of Jesus’s disciples.
“I’ve got a better idea,” says Jesus. “Go home, back to your own town, and tell the story of how much God has done for you. The more you do that, the deeper you’ll be healed.”
That man is remembered for being the first apostle to the Greeks. His hometown was one of several settled mostly by Greeks. If it hadn’t been for him, people outside the homeland and culture of Israel might never have even heard about Jesus and the loving power of God at work in Jesus.
And wouldn’t that have been crazy?
Am I the only one who thinks it’s wickedly funny that this should be our Gospel, on the day we complete the church school year?
Do you think this story causes our church school teachers to smile, when they think of their little herds running down the church school hallway?
Could this story possibly explain occasional episodes when behavior runs amok? No, couldn’t be…
It is an amazing story, isn’t it? For one thing, St. Luke tells other stories where the disciples keep wondering who Jesus really is… is he God’s special agent, the Messiah, or isn’t he? But here, the demons know exactly who he is.
Do we believe in demons? Two thousand years ago, the time of this story, people understood the world to be populated with many invisible powers: demons, spirits, nymphs, centaurs, and angels, all of them in charge of things people couldn’t understand yet. Demons, they thought, were the cause of mental illness. To ward them off, people wore charms and performed rituals that we today would call pretty crazy.
Because people thought you could catch a demon from someone who had a demon, the fellow we hear about today was forced to leave his family home and go live in a cemetery. People had the idea that that’s where demons and spirits ought to live. And no one ever went there, except when they had to, like to bury someone who had died. And that was kind of crazy, wasn’t it?
Please don’t get me wrong in what I’m about to say. Jesus is not Superman. But I watched a Superman move the other night, and in one way they remind me of each other: Just like Superman, Jesus knows precisely who needs him. As if having radar, cries for help are heard, noticed just in time to save a life. Jesus doesn’t change his clothes in a phone booth, but off he goes to help this suffering man, even though it’s to a cemetery (and I expect his disciples were none too happy in being made to go along, for I imagine them to be superstitious, themselves).
“What is your name?” Jesus asks him. Did you notice that when the answer comes, it’s not a name at all? “Mob… I am called Mob.” Or, in another translation, “Legion… my name is Legion.”
A legion was a big company of Roman soldiers, five or six thousand strong.
You know, in all our Gospel stories, words count. Details and names mean things. Here, this poor tormented man, kicked out by his people, hasn’t any sense of identity left. No name. Just a nickname, a label, like “crazy person”.
Mobs are big batches of crazy people. We can all think of examples, from lynching mobs to shopping mobs.
Before the World Cup games in South Africa, at an exhibition match, people started stampeding. That was a mob—people panicking either to get in or to get out, losing all manners, breaking rules, breaking bones as well.
And that other nickname, Legion. What if St. Luke wanted the people hearing this story to imagine that the struggle going on in this man was as if he had five thousand soldiers fighting inside himself? What a powerful image!
And what if St. Luke was being very clever, weaving in a story within the story? Could he be saying that this struggling man was like our Lord’s homeland, possessed by the demonic Roman army that controlled daily life for everybody in those days, driving everyone crazy by taking away all their freedoms? Is Luke showing us how truly powerful God is, sending Jesus to bravely face down the truly bad guys? This poor troubled man they called Legion wasn’t the bad guy—but the Roman legionnaires, they are remembered in the New Testament as being violent and greedy and arrogant.
Maybe so: maybe this is a story on two levels. We learn to hear the Gospels on more than one level. But we’ve still got the simple story to appreciate. And we haven’t gotten to those pigs yet.
Pigs weren’t big in Israel. The dietary rules of Israel prevented the eating of pork. But that doesn’t mean that Wilbur the pig would live a long cushy life without ever having to become supper. It means that by and large people looked down on pig farmers (who might likelier be foreigners than Jews), and didn’t want pig farms near their backyards (which, come to think of it, I’m not sure I would either). It means that a lot of people believed they’d be better off without pigs, period. And that attitude may help explain the unfortunate fate of all those piggies in the story.
“Demons and pigs go together,” they might have said, “Good riddance to them all!”
But you and I would call that worse than crazy. We would call that cruel. Not to mention what it must have been like for those pig farmers to lose their herd, and their livelihood.
If you’re down on pigs, like many of the first hearers of this story, you wouldn’t find the story troubling. But how do we feel about Jesus allowing this to happen? Actually he made it happen, the story says.
If you’re asked that question by a five-year-old, you might answer, “Hmm… I don’t know how to resolve that. Do you?” Perhaps, being a five-year-old, she will.
Was Jesus showing everybody how crazy and destructive our customs and attitudes can be?
It seems to me that he wanted to heal not just this one tormented man, but the whole troubled society that bought-in to the powers of magic and believed more in the powers of demons than they believed in the power of God. But make no mistake: this story shows those demons getting deep-sixed…evicted… gone.
But I guess we’ll put this story down without being satisfied why those pigs had to lose their lives in the bargain.
No wonder, though, that the city fathers didn’t give Jesus the key to the city. They asked him please to leave. Their economy was bad enough without this new crisis in pork futures.
Notice how the man, when he has been healed, wants to become one of Jesus’s disciples.
“I’ve got a better idea,” says Jesus. “Go home, back to your own town, and tell the story of how much God has done for you. The more you do that, the deeper you’ll be healed.”
That man is remembered for being the first apostle to the Greeks. His hometown was one of several settled mostly by Greeks. If it hadn’t been for him, people outside the homeland and culture of Israel might never have even heard about Jesus and the loving power of God at work in Jesus.
And wouldn’t that have been crazy?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Upstaging a Dinner Party
Readings appointed for this 3rd Sunday after Pentecost are I Kings 21:1-21a; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3
Talk about being upstaged! Here’s a Pharisee—a very proper fellow, a man with pretty rigid standards, a host who would insist on certain manners at his table—who has Jesus as his guest.
If you were this Pharisee, how would you want the evening to go? That could depend on who else is reclining at the table with you, and while St. Luke doesn’t tell us who else was invited, we can be sure they’d all be men. The woman we hear about was not an invited guest. She was a walk-in.
But back to the guest list. At some social events Jesus attended, we’re told that his disciples were invited also, but not this time. I’d guess, though, that there were other Pharisees present, and what they were staging at this meal was an opportunity to Meet the Messiah. (That’s what I imagined got said behind the scenes, behind people’s backs, as this host invited his guests, poking each in the ribs and chuckling, “At least he thinks he’s the Messiah! Let’s hear what he has to say for himself.”
One other thing we know about these men gathered around this low table: each would be reclining on a cushion, perhaps side-saddle, legs out to one side, or legs stretched out full, feet bare because sandals have been left at the door.
And all of a sudden there is a woman in the room. She stands behind Jesus at his feet. She is crying.
You are the Pharisee. How is your dinner party going? What do you do?
We’re told that the first thing this host did was to judge the character of this woman. The words may be Luke’s, but he’s conveying the judgment of the host when he says that she is “a woman in the city, who was a sinner.” This woman had a reputation.
And she is fearless. She knows she’s not welcome there, but there is where she must be because there is where he is, Jesus, and she is a woman on a mission: to love him, because he has loved her. We’re told no details, but she must have been among the women mentioned by Luke at the close of his story, women who, having been used and abused by men and their society, had met healing at the touch of Jesus. This woman was one of many pioneers of the new life that is found when Jesus Christ is trusted to set us right with God, when we are (in St. Paul’s language) justified not by how good we try to be, but by how good we let him be for us and in us and through us.
Her story is told in two places, here in Luke and, with some variations, late in Matthew’s Gospel. As the early Church came to tell and appreciate the story, this woman’s mission was to anoint him for his burial, says Matthew. That’s the sense they made of this story, at least as an allegory. But there’s something more inspiring that’s happening, and we see it in the moment when she upstages the Pharisee.
She has brought with her an alabaster jar of ointment. Doesn’t that sound expensive? Can you imagine one of the guests muttering, “Wonder how she got the money for that?”?
She bends over Jesus’s feet, bathing them with her tears. At the Last Supper, Jesus would wash the feet of his disciples and they would balk at that because it was the role of a servant to wash the dusty feet of guests. This woman does that for Jesus with immense intimacy.
And she uses her hair to dry his feet. When I read this Gospel during the week, I found myself thinking of the human hair being used in the booms to absorb the oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico. No more, I’m told: it’s too labor-intensive to do the job now. But for a while, didn’t it feel like a humanizing of that vast tragedy? Some small part of me might play some small role in making right something so wrong… Something like that is going on here.
And it’s not what our Pharisee had in mind. The upstaging is even greater when this gate-crashing woman kisses Jesus’s feet and anoints them with her oil. Talk about making a statement! Anointing had meaning: she could be claiming the right of family to anoint the body of a loved one for burial. She could be claiming the role of a prophet to anoint a king for Israel.
Or she could be a crazy person, and I’ll guess that was the opinion almost all the way around that table. What’s a host to do?
First, he judges the woman as someone to be dismissed. Then he judges Jesus, grumbling under his breath, “Some prophet! He can’t even read the character of a sinner like this one…”
And here is where the story starts to inspire. Jesus draws a breath, turns to his host, calls him by name: “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
“Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” Hear the dishonesty in his calling Jesus Teacher. Hear the arrogance (or is it fear?) in the single word, Speak.
His fear is well-founded. Jesus proceeds to tell perhaps the shortest of his many parables, short sayings with sharp edges.
Is Simon a man of wealth, that Jesus catches him with a parable involving money and debt? What the parable is about is forgiveness, and its power lies in how easy it is to imagine relief and gratitude when Mr. Creditor cancels the debts of two people who owe him, one having a debt of $3,000 forgiven… and then to imagine the impact of Mr. Creditor’s erasing a debt of ten times that amount for the other debtor, $30,000. A denarius was a day’s wage, so my figures are in today’s terms, at minimum wage.
They say a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Two debtors in this parable: two people dominate that room in which it’s told. One is a tight-minded button-down host, the other an effusive expressive uninvited guest.
From where Jesus is coming from, they ‘re both sinners. By the terms of the parable, they’re both candidates for forgiveness. This woman off the street has opened every level of her being to the healing and mercy of God in Jesus. By the terms of the parable, she has already tasted the sweet freedom of $30,000 (so to speak) of grace, unearned and undeserved.
By the terms of the parable, you might say that our self-important host is showing about one-tenth her receptiveness, her honesty, her intensity when it comes to wanting a new life, a change of heart, a revolution at the center of the soul. And that percentage may be giving him more credit than he deserves.
But that’s exactly where Jesus comes from. There’s heaven, his throwing-open the embrace of God to everyone. For heaven’s sake, he preaches a whole short sermon to self-important Simon, hoping to introduce him to an entirely new way to define himself, to understand himself, to be justified, to live his life.
This is not how Simon the Pharisee expected his dinner party to go, is it?
That sharp little parable slices open the inspiration the Spirit has for us in this story. Isn’t it there in that verse, “The person who has been forgiven little loves little…”?
There’s the lens for seeing this story of two human beings. One is stiff, cold, proper, judgmental-- and those adjectives are the terms of his bondage. Pressed by Jesus to decipher the meaning of his parable, the best this man can do is to “suppose” that the bigger debtor was also the likelier to let gratitude breed love. “You have judged rightly,” replies Jesus with, I think, a touch of sarcasm.
And at this point, Jesus takes his gloves off and pummels the man, as if making him the main course at his own banquet, scolding him for stingey hospitality, using every one of the woman’s actions to critique the Pharisee’s chosen frozen attitude and behavior. Ouch!
And the other human being in this story is so much his opposite. It took guts for her to step into that force-field of control, none of which she owned, and there find her freedom to weep and wipe and kiss and anoint, violating rule after rule that would matter to all the men at that table, except one.
At the eucharist at Williamstown Commons last Wednesday, I asked the residents which of these two people they’d prefer to spend the day with. Yes, they chose her, the uninvited guest, the enthusiast, the one with a past who knows how to treasure the present, the deeply open one, the richly forgiven extravagant lover, one who cuts to the chase and gets things done.
That this story has been told, these two thousand years, tells us that we have the choices sketched in the story:
To define ourselves, to be justified, as the Pharisee…
To open ourselves, to welcome new life at the center of the soul, and then act upon that, to the point of risk and sacrifice, as the woman off the street…
To forgive, like Jesus, like God the creditor, to whom we owe more than we can repay… God, who by grace frees us from this realm of debt and obligation, into a
relationship of love, an adventure always just begun.
Talk about being upstaged! Here’s a Pharisee—a very proper fellow, a man with pretty rigid standards, a host who would insist on certain manners at his table—who has Jesus as his guest.
If you were this Pharisee, how would you want the evening to go? That could depend on who else is reclining at the table with you, and while St. Luke doesn’t tell us who else was invited, we can be sure they’d all be men. The woman we hear about was not an invited guest. She was a walk-in.
But back to the guest list. At some social events Jesus attended, we’re told that his disciples were invited also, but not this time. I’d guess, though, that there were other Pharisees present, and what they were staging at this meal was an opportunity to Meet the Messiah. (That’s what I imagined got said behind the scenes, behind people’s backs, as this host invited his guests, poking each in the ribs and chuckling, “At least he thinks he’s the Messiah! Let’s hear what he has to say for himself.”
One other thing we know about these men gathered around this low table: each would be reclining on a cushion, perhaps side-saddle, legs out to one side, or legs stretched out full, feet bare because sandals have been left at the door.
And all of a sudden there is a woman in the room. She stands behind Jesus at his feet. She is crying.
You are the Pharisee. How is your dinner party going? What do you do?
We’re told that the first thing this host did was to judge the character of this woman. The words may be Luke’s, but he’s conveying the judgment of the host when he says that she is “a woman in the city, who was a sinner.” This woman had a reputation.
And she is fearless. She knows she’s not welcome there, but there is where she must be because there is where he is, Jesus, and she is a woman on a mission: to love him, because he has loved her. We’re told no details, but she must have been among the women mentioned by Luke at the close of his story, women who, having been used and abused by men and their society, had met healing at the touch of Jesus. This woman was one of many pioneers of the new life that is found when Jesus Christ is trusted to set us right with God, when we are (in St. Paul’s language) justified not by how good we try to be, but by how good we let him be for us and in us and through us.
Her story is told in two places, here in Luke and, with some variations, late in Matthew’s Gospel. As the early Church came to tell and appreciate the story, this woman’s mission was to anoint him for his burial, says Matthew. That’s the sense they made of this story, at least as an allegory. But there’s something more inspiring that’s happening, and we see it in the moment when she upstages the Pharisee.
She has brought with her an alabaster jar of ointment. Doesn’t that sound expensive? Can you imagine one of the guests muttering, “Wonder how she got the money for that?”?
She bends over Jesus’s feet, bathing them with her tears. At the Last Supper, Jesus would wash the feet of his disciples and they would balk at that because it was the role of a servant to wash the dusty feet of guests. This woman does that for Jesus with immense intimacy.
And she uses her hair to dry his feet. When I read this Gospel during the week, I found myself thinking of the human hair being used in the booms to absorb the oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico. No more, I’m told: it’s too labor-intensive to do the job now. But for a while, didn’t it feel like a humanizing of that vast tragedy? Some small part of me might play some small role in making right something so wrong… Something like that is going on here.
And it’s not what our Pharisee had in mind. The upstaging is even greater when this gate-crashing woman kisses Jesus’s feet and anoints them with her oil. Talk about making a statement! Anointing had meaning: she could be claiming the right of family to anoint the body of a loved one for burial. She could be claiming the role of a prophet to anoint a king for Israel.
Or she could be a crazy person, and I’ll guess that was the opinion almost all the way around that table. What’s a host to do?
First, he judges the woman as someone to be dismissed. Then he judges Jesus, grumbling under his breath, “Some prophet! He can’t even read the character of a sinner like this one…”
And here is where the story starts to inspire. Jesus draws a breath, turns to his host, calls him by name: “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
“Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” Hear the dishonesty in his calling Jesus Teacher. Hear the arrogance (or is it fear?) in the single word, Speak.
His fear is well-founded. Jesus proceeds to tell perhaps the shortest of his many parables, short sayings with sharp edges.
Is Simon a man of wealth, that Jesus catches him with a parable involving money and debt? What the parable is about is forgiveness, and its power lies in how easy it is to imagine relief and gratitude when Mr. Creditor cancels the debts of two people who owe him, one having a debt of $3,000 forgiven… and then to imagine the impact of Mr. Creditor’s erasing a debt of ten times that amount for the other debtor, $30,000. A denarius was a day’s wage, so my figures are in today’s terms, at minimum wage.
They say a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. Two debtors in this parable: two people dominate that room in which it’s told. One is a tight-minded button-down host, the other an effusive expressive uninvited guest.
From where Jesus is coming from, they ‘re both sinners. By the terms of the parable, they’re both candidates for forgiveness. This woman off the street has opened every level of her being to the healing and mercy of God in Jesus. By the terms of the parable, she has already tasted the sweet freedom of $30,000 (so to speak) of grace, unearned and undeserved.
By the terms of the parable, you might say that our self-important host is showing about one-tenth her receptiveness, her honesty, her intensity when it comes to wanting a new life, a change of heart, a revolution at the center of the soul. And that percentage may be giving him more credit than he deserves.
But that’s exactly where Jesus comes from. There’s heaven, his throwing-open the embrace of God to everyone. For heaven’s sake, he preaches a whole short sermon to self-important Simon, hoping to introduce him to an entirely new way to define himself, to understand himself, to be justified, to live his life.
This is not how Simon the Pharisee expected his dinner party to go, is it?
That sharp little parable slices open the inspiration the Spirit has for us in this story. Isn’t it there in that verse, “The person who has been forgiven little loves little…”?
There’s the lens for seeing this story of two human beings. One is stiff, cold, proper, judgmental-- and those adjectives are the terms of his bondage. Pressed by Jesus to decipher the meaning of his parable, the best this man can do is to “suppose” that the bigger debtor was also the likelier to let gratitude breed love. “You have judged rightly,” replies Jesus with, I think, a touch of sarcasm.
And at this point, Jesus takes his gloves off and pummels the man, as if making him the main course at his own banquet, scolding him for stingey hospitality, using every one of the woman’s actions to critique the Pharisee’s chosen frozen attitude and behavior. Ouch!
And the other human being in this story is so much his opposite. It took guts for her to step into that force-field of control, none of which she owned, and there find her freedom to weep and wipe and kiss and anoint, violating rule after rule that would matter to all the men at that table, except one.
At the eucharist at Williamstown Commons last Wednesday, I asked the residents which of these two people they’d prefer to spend the day with. Yes, they chose her, the uninvited guest, the enthusiast, the one with a past who knows how to treasure the present, the deeply open one, the richly forgiven extravagant lover, one who cuts to the chase and gets things done.
That this story has been told, these two thousand years, tells us that we have the choices sketched in the story:
To define ourselves, to be justified, as the Pharisee…
To open ourselves, to welcome new life at the center of the soul, and then act upon that, to the point of risk and sacrifice, as the woman off the street…
To forgive, like Jesus, like God the creditor, to whom we owe more than we can repay… God, who by grace frees us from this realm of debt and obligation, into a
relationship of love, an adventure always just begun.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Processions
Scripture appointed for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost includes Galatians 1:11-24 and Luke 7:11-17
Later this morning, a formal procession will make its way across this campus. Some of you will march in it. Many of us will watch, our attention riveted by the music of a marching band, by the sheer energy of so many vital young adults in their gowns and caps, and by the otherworldliness of antique academic costumes.
There is a procession in our Gospel today. Unlike the one we’ll soon see, this is not a happy procession—not as we first meet it. This is a funeral procession for a fellow who has been survived by his mother, a widow, a woman at least twice bereaved. And he was her only son, her one remaining provider, her social security in her old age.
Let’s not miss the other procession in this story. It’s got all the energy and bright purpose absent from the funeral ceremony. This is the entourage of Jesus, his disciples and a large crowd who went with him from one memorable healing to the next.
At the town gates, these two processions meet.
Don’t they make a strange contrast to the formalities we’ll enjoy this morning? A procession of grief, and a parading crowd journeying in mission. Well, some parallels to Commencement, bittersweet with a touch of loss (even grief) as, with one hand, seniors receive their diplomas and let go the familiar shape of daily life in this purple valley. And now they’re ready for something more, eager to get on with their mission in life.
For sure, those two Gospel companies must be making very different sounds as they move. Jesus’s companions buzz with the thrill of a dramatic healing they witnessed, days ago, and speculate eagerly about what comes next, what lies ahead. Have some of them brought musical instruments—a flute, some pipes, a drum? Are they singing the great processional psalms of Israel? Who knows? But they are not a quiet bunch.
Not until that moment when the two movements meet, the one full of life, the other of death. For sure, that second procession is different from the first. Can you hear wailing? Perhaps nothing else, except the weeping, the scraping of sandals against the stones and dust of their via dolorosa, all this weight of mortality silencing the parade of life, as these apostles in training catch their breath and, wide-eyed, take in silently this encounter of their Master as he meets their enemy, death.
But he is not doing what they might have expected. Some religious leaders they knew would, under their breath, explain how such a sad loss must have been caused by someone’s sin, either the young man’s or his mother’s. Jesus looks right at her and speaks to her weeping.
Some guardians of religion would have known to cross to the other side and not be tainted by contact with the dead. Jesus touches the bier.
And what preacher at a funeral does not expect the dead to remain dead? But Jesus pierces the veil and calls this young man to rise. At a similar moment, Martha of Bethany will object, “Lord, we know that some day he will rise, at the appointed time when all will rise from their graves; but now?”
And he will reply, “Now. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever knows me will know life the way I do, and will know death the way I do.”
And with that all their mortal silence ended. It is said that it started with the dead man, who sat up and began to speak. Then his mother, receiving him from Jesus, raised her voice to heaven. All this made their spines tingle, but only as long as it took to free their voices to glorify God. And from there the whole town was ignited.
By comparison, our commencement ceremony today will be far more predictable, won’t it? The route is known, the order of service is printed, even what will be said, in general, we might predict. Though you never know, do you? We must always be open to surprise.
Speaking of which, let’s consider our first reading before we end.
From the way St. Paul tells his story today, his whole career as an apostle was a surprise. He had gone to all the right schools to prepare him to be a leader in Judaism. But when that trajectory turned violent in his persecution of the Jesus movement within Judaism, he met the first big surprise of his life: Jesus, the risen Jesus. The Cliff Notes version of this story makes it sound as if he was converted on the spot, but a finer reading suggests that it took whole seasons to make an apostle of him, that long stretch when Christians nursed back to health their wounded mortal enemy, Saul, now Paul. His own illness became his seminary, training him to speak his Gospel to the weeping, to touch the very bier of what people fear, to free with the word of life all who are in the grip of death.
Then came his second big surprise: As he was drawn by God well beyond the borders of his homeland, into Arabia, to Damascus, persuading Gentiles that they were precious to God, the God he had formerly believed to love only Israel, as he became a global apostle he was scolded not only by the leaders of Judaism but also by Christian apostles equally outraged by his marching to a different drumbeat than theirs.
Jesus, at the head of his movement, sets the pace and the direction of the procession of his people in the world. We do not earn our place in this procession: we receive it as surprising gift. This procession we call Church is like that parade of life we meet in Luke today: a movement of very ordinary people energized by the vitality of Jesus Christ, given the extraordinary grace to know him, to know life as he knows it, to know death as he knows it, and then sent on mission to act on that knowledge.
It is not only our cherished seniors who are called into procession on this Lord’s Day. We are all called into formation by the risen Lord of life.
Later this morning, a formal procession will make its way across this campus. Some of you will march in it. Many of us will watch, our attention riveted by the music of a marching band, by the sheer energy of so many vital young adults in their gowns and caps, and by the otherworldliness of antique academic costumes.
There is a procession in our Gospel today. Unlike the one we’ll soon see, this is not a happy procession—not as we first meet it. This is a funeral procession for a fellow who has been survived by his mother, a widow, a woman at least twice bereaved. And he was her only son, her one remaining provider, her social security in her old age.
Let’s not miss the other procession in this story. It’s got all the energy and bright purpose absent from the funeral ceremony. This is the entourage of Jesus, his disciples and a large crowd who went with him from one memorable healing to the next.
At the town gates, these two processions meet.
Don’t they make a strange contrast to the formalities we’ll enjoy this morning? A procession of grief, and a parading crowd journeying in mission. Well, some parallels to Commencement, bittersweet with a touch of loss (even grief) as, with one hand, seniors receive their diplomas and let go the familiar shape of daily life in this purple valley. And now they’re ready for something more, eager to get on with their mission in life.
For sure, those two Gospel companies must be making very different sounds as they move. Jesus’s companions buzz with the thrill of a dramatic healing they witnessed, days ago, and speculate eagerly about what comes next, what lies ahead. Have some of them brought musical instruments—a flute, some pipes, a drum? Are they singing the great processional psalms of Israel? Who knows? But they are not a quiet bunch.
Not until that moment when the two movements meet, the one full of life, the other of death. For sure, that second procession is different from the first. Can you hear wailing? Perhaps nothing else, except the weeping, the scraping of sandals against the stones and dust of their via dolorosa, all this weight of mortality silencing the parade of life, as these apostles in training catch their breath and, wide-eyed, take in silently this encounter of their Master as he meets their enemy, death.
But he is not doing what they might have expected. Some religious leaders they knew would, under their breath, explain how such a sad loss must have been caused by someone’s sin, either the young man’s or his mother’s. Jesus looks right at her and speaks to her weeping.
Some guardians of religion would have known to cross to the other side and not be tainted by contact with the dead. Jesus touches the bier.
And what preacher at a funeral does not expect the dead to remain dead? But Jesus pierces the veil and calls this young man to rise. At a similar moment, Martha of Bethany will object, “Lord, we know that some day he will rise, at the appointed time when all will rise from their graves; but now?”
And he will reply, “Now. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever knows me will know life the way I do, and will know death the way I do.”
And with that all their mortal silence ended. It is said that it started with the dead man, who sat up and began to speak. Then his mother, receiving him from Jesus, raised her voice to heaven. All this made their spines tingle, but only as long as it took to free their voices to glorify God. And from there the whole town was ignited.
By comparison, our commencement ceremony today will be far more predictable, won’t it? The route is known, the order of service is printed, even what will be said, in general, we might predict. Though you never know, do you? We must always be open to surprise.
Speaking of which, let’s consider our first reading before we end.
From the way St. Paul tells his story today, his whole career as an apostle was a surprise. He had gone to all the right schools to prepare him to be a leader in Judaism. But when that trajectory turned violent in his persecution of the Jesus movement within Judaism, he met the first big surprise of his life: Jesus, the risen Jesus. The Cliff Notes version of this story makes it sound as if he was converted on the spot, but a finer reading suggests that it took whole seasons to make an apostle of him, that long stretch when Christians nursed back to health their wounded mortal enemy, Saul, now Paul. His own illness became his seminary, training him to speak his Gospel to the weeping, to touch the very bier of what people fear, to free with the word of life all who are in the grip of death.
Then came his second big surprise: As he was drawn by God well beyond the borders of his homeland, into Arabia, to Damascus, persuading Gentiles that they were precious to God, the God he had formerly believed to love only Israel, as he became a global apostle he was scolded not only by the leaders of Judaism but also by Christian apostles equally outraged by his marching to a different drumbeat than theirs.
Jesus, at the head of his movement, sets the pace and the direction of the procession of his people in the world. We do not earn our place in this procession: we receive it as surprising gift. This procession we call Church is like that parade of life we meet in Luke today: a movement of very ordinary people energized by the vitality of Jesus Christ, given the extraordinary grace to know him, to know life as he knows it, to know death as he knows it, and then sent on mission to act on that knowledge.
It is not only our cherished seniors who are called into procession on this Lord’s Day. We are all called into formation by the risen Lord of life.
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