The ancients thought that to know someone’s name was to have power over them. That is beautifully illustrated in the wonderful story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32. When Jacob refuses to let the man go unless he is first blessed, the man asks him his name. “Jacob,” he replies – and is promptly given a new name, Israel (one who strives with God). Yet when Jacob in turn asks the name of the man with whom he has been wrestling all night, the man refuses, saying “Why do you ask?” Here the power relationships are quite clear: the man (angel? God?) has power enough to rename Jacob, but will not let a human have power over him.
This all sounds a bit quaint. Yet there’s a sense of vulnerability when a stranger knows one’s name. Just try walking up to someone who has not met you and calling him or her by name! There will be a look of confusion, possibly fear, followed by “How did you know my name?” and likely a request for yours. Names have power.
Sunday will be the Feast of The Holy Name of Jesus, as the church calls January 1. (The church’s new year began the first Sunday of Advent, remember?) It’s a Christian celebration based on an old Jewish tradition: the circumcision and naming of baby boys eight days after birth. Blessedly, we no longer use the old name for the day (the Circumcision of Christ).
Names have meaning as well as power. Jesus was a common name at the time Christ was born, just like Jesus (hay-ZOOS) is among Hispanic families today. It is equivalent to the Jewish name Joshua (or Yeshua), meaning “The Lord saves.” Not a bad choice for someone who was going to be the world’s salvation! That salvation appears to be in the background in both Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the birth of Jesus, where it is overshadowed by the appearances of Magi and angels.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians gives the significance of the name of Jesus, at which every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Many commentators believe that Paul was quoting an early Christian hymn, which itself quoted Isaiah 45:23. Just the name will evoke humility and a confession of praise. This Name has power over us; we do not have power over it.
The power of the Name shows up in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter heals a man crippled from birth by invoking the Name (3:6) and gets arrested for his trouble. Paul casts out spirits using the Name (16:18). Only believers could use the Name’s power, however; when “some itinerant Jewish exorcists” used it, the man they were trying to exorcise overpowered them all and sent them packing, “naked and wounded” (19:16).
Some Christians still use the name of Jesus, repeated quietly over and over, as a form of contemplative prayer. It seeps down into the heart until every stroke beats “Jesus.” Others bow their heads at every mention of Jesus. Both of these are quintessentially Anglican actions, embodying what we believe.
Yes, it may seem odd to have a day dedicated to a name when everyone else is celebrating the New Year. But that Name is above all other names. It has power to heal, power to transform, power to make us into the people whom God knows us to be. When we know the Name of Jesus, we don’t have power over him; he has power over us. Would that everyone knew that Name!
[Feast of the Holy Name: Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 8; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21.]
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Word Became Flesh
Christmas falls on a Sunday this year. There will almost certainly be people at the Christmas Day service, even if they were in church on Christmas Eve the night before. So I will get to preach on the prologue to the Gospel of John on Christmas itself, rather than the first Sunday after Christmas. The latter works well enough – Luke’s more familiar narrative always shows up Christmas Eve, and the Sunday after that can be a time to step back and reflect on what it all means, which is what John’s prologue does. But how does one reflect in the midst of the event itself? When people are expecting to hear about a sweet baby in a manger, will they be willing to go back to the beginning of time?
En archē ēn ho logos, John writes. In the beginning was the Word. This was the first Greek I ever translated, way back in high school, and it still resonates with all of the echoes of the years since. John isn’t speaking about just any beginning. It was the beginning, even though that definite article never appears. The Word was there, right from the start, there with God. Everything was made through the Word, because when God spoke that Word, things happened. When God spoke “Light!” light happened. And the light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
At the time the evangelist John was writing, there seemed to be some confusion about John the Baptist. Was he the light? We know from Paul’s letters that disciples of the Baptizer were about, and the evangelist takes pains to clarify that he was not the one. John witnessed to the One, but he wasn’t it. Even the family into whom the Word was born was confused. Only through the will of God did clarity come, not through any human power.
Kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskēnōsen en hēmin. And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. All of the fullness and permanence of God emptied to become a fragile human. The Greek word for “dwelled” literally means to live in a tent – showing just how impermanent the Word became in human form. This is truly the mystery of the Incarnation.
How does one describe this mystery? Luke does it with archangel visits and angelic choirs singing to terrified shepherds. Matthew does it with dreams and star-drawn magi from a far-off land. John walks straight into the mystery and emerges on the other side with simple words that belie the depth of what he has heard. The Word became flesh. That’s a spine-tingling and eye-watering statement. It’s more than baby’s breath or royal gifts. It’s who we are as Christians.
The Word became flesh and dwelled among us, full of grace and truth. There’s enough grace for all of the world’s sins, more truth than every lie, more light than the darkness can overcome. Those few who come to church on Christmas morning will be the lucky ones. That day we will all be witnesses to the light, witnesses to the mystery of our salvation.
[Christmas Day: John1:1-14.]
En archē ēn ho logos, John writes. In the beginning was the Word. This was the first Greek I ever translated, way back in high school, and it still resonates with all of the echoes of the years since. John isn’t speaking about just any beginning. It was the beginning, even though that definite article never appears. The Word was there, right from the start, there with God. Everything was made through the Word, because when God spoke that Word, things happened. When God spoke “Light!” light happened. And the light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
At the time the evangelist John was writing, there seemed to be some confusion about John the Baptist. Was he the light? We know from Paul’s letters that disciples of the Baptizer were about, and the evangelist takes pains to clarify that he was not the one. John witnessed to the One, but he wasn’t it. Even the family into whom the Word was born was confused. Only through the will of God did clarity come, not through any human power.
Kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskēnōsen en hēmin. And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. All of the fullness and permanence of God emptied to become a fragile human. The Greek word for “dwelled” literally means to live in a tent – showing just how impermanent the Word became in human form. This is truly the mystery of the Incarnation.
How does one describe this mystery? Luke does it with archangel visits and angelic choirs singing to terrified shepherds. Matthew does it with dreams and star-drawn magi from a far-off land. John walks straight into the mystery and emerges on the other side with simple words that belie the depth of what he has heard. The Word became flesh. That’s a spine-tingling and eye-watering statement. It’s more than baby’s breath or royal gifts. It’s who we are as Christians.
The Word became flesh and dwelled among us, full of grace and truth. There’s enough grace for all of the world’s sins, more truth than every lie, more light than the darkness can overcome. Those few who come to church on Christmas morning will be the lucky ones. That day we will all be witnesses to the light, witnesses to the mystery of our salvation.
[Christmas Day: John1:1-14.]
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Virgin Birth
Years ago I took a course from a Catholic woman theologian, a rare breed. Think about what it must be like as a female theologian in a male-dominated church! During the course, she made a comment that has stayed with me: the feminine ideal that the male hierarchy holds up to Roman Catholic women is an impossibility: a virgin mother, Mary. It was an illuminating statement that revealed much about the current state of Catholicism.
It is not enough that the Bible records one virgin birth, that of Jesus. Roman doctrine interprets Mary’s statement in Luke that she “has not known a man” as a declaration of lifelong celibacy. The various references in Scripture to Jesus’ brothers and sisters are then said to mean cousins. The end result is the Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, a model no mother can follow.
But enough Protestant rant. What about that first virgin birth, that of Jesus? It, at least, is attested by Scripture. Yet is the idea of the miraculous conception of Jesus at all tenable anymore? Should it be taken literally? Metaphorically?
Luke doesn’t seem to hint that his story should be taken at anything but face value. Commentators have worked hard to show that it was pasted together from various sources, or that it has pagan antecedents, or that it is really “just a story” invented to make Jesus more exalted. One gets the distinct impression that they have already made up their minds about its veracity, and then proceed from their assumption that it can’t possibly be true.
Yet what if it is true? To the people around him, Jesus Christ was unlike any other person they had ever encountered. Something extraordinary had come into the world with his birth, something so beyond human comprehension that human language was not up to describing it. Like John, the author of the book of Revelation, Luke had to put into words an idea that could not be bound by words, the Word of God himself. Luke wanted to be sure that we knew that this child to be born was divine as well as human, and he expressed that in the best way he could.
The virgin birth is not an incidental matter; where one comes down on that reveals a lot about what one believes about the divinity of Christ. But getting all wrapped up in the virgin birth takes us away from the main thrust of the story. The angel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary follows on the heels of a similar prophecy about Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer. When John’s father, Zechariah, doubts Gabriel, he is struck dumb. When Mary doubts, she gets a fuller explanation. It’s a good thing Gabriel lets her keep her tongue. She still has to say, “Yes.”
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” is what Mary actually says. “Here am I.” That’s the response of Abraham, of Moses, of Isaiah, of all the great ones who have been given a commission from God that they think they can’t possibly fulfill. “Here am I.” It’s a statement of submission to God’s will, a statement of trust in something incomprehensible. It is not an agreement to submit to all authority, as is sometimes placed on women through Mary.
Mary can be a model for all of us – but not a model of mere submission or virginity. Instead, she is the God-bearer, the Theotokos of the Greek Church, one who shows us all how to say “yes” to God and thus bear God within us. We do that neither literally nor metaphorically, but in a way that is beyond words. Only after saying “Here am I” do we begin to get a glimpse of that power, that light, that love which can be born within us, just as it was within Mary so long ago.
[Advent 4: Luke 1:26-38.]
It is not enough that the Bible records one virgin birth, that of Jesus. Roman doctrine interprets Mary’s statement in Luke that she “has not known a man” as a declaration of lifelong celibacy. The various references in Scripture to Jesus’ brothers and sisters are then said to mean cousins. The end result is the Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, a model no mother can follow.
But enough Protestant rant. What about that first virgin birth, that of Jesus? It, at least, is attested by Scripture. Yet is the idea of the miraculous conception of Jesus at all tenable anymore? Should it be taken literally? Metaphorically?
Luke doesn’t seem to hint that his story should be taken at anything but face value. Commentators have worked hard to show that it was pasted together from various sources, or that it has pagan antecedents, or that it is really “just a story” invented to make Jesus more exalted. One gets the distinct impression that they have already made up their minds about its veracity, and then proceed from their assumption that it can’t possibly be true.
Yet what if it is true? To the people around him, Jesus Christ was unlike any other person they had ever encountered. Something extraordinary had come into the world with his birth, something so beyond human comprehension that human language was not up to describing it. Like John, the author of the book of Revelation, Luke had to put into words an idea that could not be bound by words, the Word of God himself. Luke wanted to be sure that we knew that this child to be born was divine as well as human, and he expressed that in the best way he could.
The virgin birth is not an incidental matter; where one comes down on that reveals a lot about what one believes about the divinity of Christ. But getting all wrapped up in the virgin birth takes us away from the main thrust of the story. The angel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary follows on the heels of a similar prophecy about Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer. When John’s father, Zechariah, doubts Gabriel, he is struck dumb. When Mary doubts, she gets a fuller explanation. It’s a good thing Gabriel lets her keep her tongue. She still has to say, “Yes.”
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” is what Mary actually says. “Here am I.” That’s the response of Abraham, of Moses, of Isaiah, of all the great ones who have been given a commission from God that they think they can’t possibly fulfill. “Here am I.” It’s a statement of submission to God’s will, a statement of trust in something incomprehensible. It is not an agreement to submit to all authority, as is sometimes placed on women through Mary.
Mary can be a model for all of us – but not a model of mere submission or virginity. Instead, she is the God-bearer, the Theotokos of the Greek Church, one who shows us all how to say “yes” to God and thus bear God within us. We do that neither literally nor metaphorically, but in a way that is beyond words. Only after saying “Here am I” do we begin to get a glimpse of that power, that light, that love which can be born within us, just as it was within Mary so long ago.
[Advent 4: Luke 1:26-38.]
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Hold Fast That Which is Good
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” I Thessalonians 5:21
That appears in my father’s handwriting at the end of an inscription in A Lutheran Prayer Book edited by John W. Doberstein. The rest of the inscription says, “Presented to John Charles Horn on his Confirmation at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pa, April 3, 1966 William M. Horn, Pastor.” The passage from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians follows; it was my confirmation verse. The same verse shows up in its more modern form in this Sunday’s lessons.
My father was a very perceptive man. I do not know what my siblings’ confirmation verses were, but he chose mine wisely. Already as a young teenager I must have been showing signs that I would be questioning, wondering, forming the analytical mind of a scientist. Dad did not worry about those doubts; he knew himself and his own growing up well enough to realize that at some point children need to question what they have been given, so that they can take it back as their own. It was his prayer for me that in testing everything I would learn to discern the good, and hold to it tightly.
The small book with his inscription was a great aid in learning to discern the good. As I look at it now, with its tattered cover and well-thumbed pages, I realize how extraordinary a book it is. It is indeed a Lutheran prayer book, with a daily office for morning and evening, a year-long lectionary geared to the liturgical seasons that takes one through the breadth of the Bible, and a collection of prayers for various occasions. It prepared me for the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer even though I did not know it at the time. It led me into a world where prayer and Bible reading are daily rituals, a world where I still dwell. Its daily selections from Luther’s Small Catechism created a deeply-rooted theology that continues to nourish my faith. In short, it prepared me for what I do now: teach and preach the Word of God.
Did my dad know all that when he gave me the book? Perhaps. Once, when I was in botany graduate school, I remarked that I might someday be a pastor. He thought that I would be a good one. I didn’t ask him why; the comment itself was precious enough without details.
I use a different prayer book now, one that is Anglican rather than Lutheran. Yet I still hold fast that which is good, good enough for Paul, good enough for my father, good enough for anyone who wants to walk toward light, toward truth, toward God.
[Advent 3: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24.]
That appears in my father’s handwriting at the end of an inscription in A Lutheran Prayer Book edited by John W. Doberstein. The rest of the inscription says, “Presented to John Charles Horn on his Confirmation at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pa, April 3, 1966 William M. Horn, Pastor.” The passage from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians follows; it was my confirmation verse. The same verse shows up in its more modern form in this Sunday’s lessons.
My father was a very perceptive man. I do not know what my siblings’ confirmation verses were, but he chose mine wisely. Already as a young teenager I must have been showing signs that I would be questioning, wondering, forming the analytical mind of a scientist. Dad did not worry about those doubts; he knew himself and his own growing up well enough to realize that at some point children need to question what they have been given, so that they can take it back as their own. It was his prayer for me that in testing everything I would learn to discern the good, and hold to it tightly.
The small book with his inscription was a great aid in learning to discern the good. As I look at it now, with its tattered cover and well-thumbed pages, I realize how extraordinary a book it is. It is indeed a Lutheran prayer book, with a daily office for morning and evening, a year-long lectionary geared to the liturgical seasons that takes one through the breadth of the Bible, and a collection of prayers for various occasions. It prepared me for the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer even though I did not know it at the time. It led me into a world where prayer and Bible reading are daily rituals, a world where I still dwell. Its daily selections from Luther’s Small Catechism created a deeply-rooted theology that continues to nourish my faith. In short, it prepared me for what I do now: teach and preach the Word of God.
Did my dad know all that when he gave me the book? Perhaps. Once, when I was in botany graduate school, I remarked that I might someday be a pastor. He thought that I would be a good one. I didn’t ask him why; the comment itself was precious enough without details.
I use a different prayer book now, one that is Anglican rather than Lutheran. Yet I still hold fast that which is good, good enough for Paul, good enough for my father, good enough for anyone who wants to walk toward light, toward truth, toward God.
[Advent 3: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24.]
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The Beginning of the Good News
Mark is in a hurry. No sooner does he slap a title on his Gospel than he’s off and running. Yet even that title makes one stop and think. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Beginning? Good news? Is he resetting the clock? Making a fresh start? Will this good news be a second chance, an enduring new hope?
As soon as Mark teases us with his title, he points to Jesus as the fulfillment, not the repudiation, of what was written in the past. The words of Israel’s prophets are coming to pass. John the Baptizer is the predicted voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. In his enthusiasm, Mark says that everyone comes out to see John, but when one is talking about the beginning of a new world, some hyperbole is understandable.
John’s a queer character indeed, and it is easy for us to get caught up in his dress and diet, missing his message. He points forward, toward the more powerful one coming after him who will baptize not with water but with a mysterious Holy Spirit. That one, of course, is the Christ, already named in the first verse. The new era is here.
Biblical time is a curious thing. It can be very long or very short. “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day,” wrote the author of the second letter of Peter. When God is waiting for us, time stretches out. “The Lord…is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Our waiting for God can also seem to take forever. “We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is home.” Clearly righteousness is not very much at home on the earth we now inhabit.
How do we reconcile God’s time and our time? How do we reconcile Mark’s conviction that a new world has begun in Jesus Christ when everything seems just the same as it always has been? That’s the paradox of the Christian life. It is the central characteristic of the kingdom of God, already here yet still to come. It confronts us every Advent.
Peter’s letter gives us a remarkable clue to our place in this paradox. “What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness,” he wrote, “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” Waiting for and hastening the day of God! We are not passive observers of God’s time. We are active participants. In this new creation, what we do has an effect on time.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that what we do changes our perception of time. If we work for the coming of the Kingdom, that place where righteousness is home, then years may seem like days. If we turn away from God, days may feel like years. Yet the patience of God lasts even longer, as God waits for us to repent and turn back.
Advent, the time of paradox, is also a time to be mindful of how we live. “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by God at peace, without spot or blemish.” Like Lent, Advent is inwardly focused, though not so penitential. Advent is God’s time, conflating a birth two thousand years ago with the present age and a future yet to come. It is indeed a new beginning, predicted in the past, still unfolding. Let it be for us a time of joyful waiting.
[Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8.]
As soon as Mark teases us with his title, he points to Jesus as the fulfillment, not the repudiation, of what was written in the past. The words of Israel’s prophets are coming to pass. John the Baptizer is the predicted voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. In his enthusiasm, Mark says that everyone comes out to see John, but when one is talking about the beginning of a new world, some hyperbole is understandable.
John’s a queer character indeed, and it is easy for us to get caught up in his dress and diet, missing his message. He points forward, toward the more powerful one coming after him who will baptize not with water but with a mysterious Holy Spirit. That one, of course, is the Christ, already named in the first verse. The new era is here.
Biblical time is a curious thing. It can be very long or very short. “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day,” wrote the author of the second letter of Peter. When God is waiting for us, time stretches out. “The Lord…is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Our waiting for God can also seem to take forever. “We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is home.” Clearly righteousness is not very much at home on the earth we now inhabit.
How do we reconcile God’s time and our time? How do we reconcile Mark’s conviction that a new world has begun in Jesus Christ when everything seems just the same as it always has been? That’s the paradox of the Christian life. It is the central characteristic of the kingdom of God, already here yet still to come. It confronts us every Advent.
Peter’s letter gives us a remarkable clue to our place in this paradox. “What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness,” he wrote, “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?” Waiting for and hastening the day of God! We are not passive observers of God’s time. We are active participants. In this new creation, what we do has an effect on time.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that what we do changes our perception of time. If we work for the coming of the Kingdom, that place where righteousness is home, then years may seem like days. If we turn away from God, days may feel like years. Yet the patience of God lasts even longer, as God waits for us to repent and turn back.
Advent, the time of paradox, is also a time to be mindful of how we live. “Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by God at peace, without spot or blemish.” Like Lent, Advent is inwardly focused, though not so penitential. Advent is God’s time, conflating a birth two thousand years ago with the present age and a future yet to come. It is indeed a new beginning, predicted in the past, still unfolding. Let it be for us a time of joyful waiting.
[Advent 2: Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8.]
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Keep Awake
My grandfather had a remarkable ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time. No doubt his age helped. He was already in his late sixties when I was born. By the time I was old enough to remember him, he seemed ancient.
When I was in my teens, I went to my first church convention. My grandfather was there, too, for he never missed one. He sat in the row in front of us, and routinely fell asleep at the beginning of every speech. When the applause at the end startled him awake, he would sit up straight and say, “Marvelous speaker. Just marvelous!” I still think of him with envy when I attend conventions.
For those whose worries keep them awake at night, sleep is a great gift. But there are those who choose not to sleep. The ancient monks of Egypt were famous for their all-night prayer vigils. They chose sleeplessness because they took literally the admonition of Jesus to “keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” They didn’t want to be caught napping when Jesus returned in his glory.
This Sunday begins a new church year, and paradoxically we begin the year by contemplating the end of all time. In church logic that makes sense. Soon we will move toward the coming of Christ at Christmas, but first we reflect on the Second Coming of Christ, the time when the resurrected Jesus will return to make all things new. The renewal part sounds great, but we are also told that Christ comes as judge, to show us where we have fallen short.
Some rightly look forward to the day of judgment – those who have been wronged, or cheated, or oppressed. The prophet writing in Isaiah’s name was one. He knew the “awesome deeds” God had done in the past. He wanted God to do them again, so that the adversaries of Israel might tremble. He wanted things to be put right. At the same time, he knew how much Israel itself had sinned, and so prayed for God’s mercy. He realized that God’s judgment falls on everyone, not just those on whom we would like to see it fall.
That’s the part we tend to forget. We want God to step in and make things right by changing someone else. Maybe God could start with Congress, so that there is no longer gridlock in Washington. After that God could move on to our enemies. We forget our own complicity in saying “no new taxes” and “don’t touch Social Security.” We want God to defeat our enemies without considering what we might have done to make them hate us in the first place. We dream about what will happen when God comes, overlooking the fact that we are asleep when we dream.
That’s why Jesus says “Keep awake.” He did not mean that we should be sleepless, in Seattle or anywhere else. In a sense, he meant that the Christian is never off duty. We go about the ordinary business of living, but always with the awareness that at any time we may be called to account by God for what we have done.
Yes, I do envy my grandfather’s ability to fall asleep anywhere. Maybe that will come as I age. Yet if I live as Jesus commands, mindful of how he desires me to live and leaving the rest to God – well, I just might sleep a lot better at the end of the day.
[Advent 1: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37. With a new year and a different Gospel, I’m using a different volume in The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Mark by R.T. France.]
When I was in my teens, I went to my first church convention. My grandfather was there, too, for he never missed one. He sat in the row in front of us, and routinely fell asleep at the beginning of every speech. When the applause at the end startled him awake, he would sit up straight and say, “Marvelous speaker. Just marvelous!” I still think of him with envy when I attend conventions.
For those whose worries keep them awake at night, sleep is a great gift. But there are those who choose not to sleep. The ancient monks of Egypt were famous for their all-night prayer vigils. They chose sleeplessness because they took literally the admonition of Jesus to “keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.” They didn’t want to be caught napping when Jesus returned in his glory.
This Sunday begins a new church year, and paradoxically we begin the year by contemplating the end of all time. In church logic that makes sense. Soon we will move toward the coming of Christ at Christmas, but first we reflect on the Second Coming of Christ, the time when the resurrected Jesus will return to make all things new. The renewal part sounds great, but we are also told that Christ comes as judge, to show us where we have fallen short.
Some rightly look forward to the day of judgment – those who have been wronged, or cheated, or oppressed. The prophet writing in Isaiah’s name was one. He knew the “awesome deeds” God had done in the past. He wanted God to do them again, so that the adversaries of Israel might tremble. He wanted things to be put right. At the same time, he knew how much Israel itself had sinned, and so prayed for God’s mercy. He realized that God’s judgment falls on everyone, not just those on whom we would like to see it fall.
That’s the part we tend to forget. We want God to step in and make things right by changing someone else. Maybe God could start with Congress, so that there is no longer gridlock in Washington. After that God could move on to our enemies. We forget our own complicity in saying “no new taxes” and “don’t touch Social Security.” We want God to defeat our enemies without considering what we might have done to make them hate us in the first place. We dream about what will happen when God comes, overlooking the fact that we are asleep when we dream.
That’s why Jesus says “Keep awake.” He did not mean that we should be sleepless, in Seattle or anywhere else. In a sense, he meant that the Christian is never off duty. We go about the ordinary business of living, but always with the awareness that at any time we may be called to account by God for what we have done.
Yes, I do envy my grandfather’s ability to fall asleep anywhere. Maybe that will come as I age. Yet if I live as Jesus commands, mindful of how he desires me to live and leaving the rest to God – well, I just might sleep a lot better at the end of the day.
[Advent 1: Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37. With a new year and a different Gospel, I’m using a different volume in The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Mark by R.T. France.]
Monday, November 14, 2011
Healing Service
This coming Sunday we will have a healing service at our church. There will be a special litany in place of the Prayers of the People, and all will be invited to come to the side altar after receiving communion for prayers and the laying on of hands. When we did this last spring, our retired priest was at the healing station. Afterwards he told me that I need to be there next time. So this Sunday he will preside and preach, and I will be at the side altar. No doubt it will be a trial for me to have someone else in charge, but at least that’s a good trial, one that I should experience from time to time.
The side altar is the church’s original one of ancient wood, replaced many years ago by an elegant marble-faced high altar. In front of it is a four-foot-wide kneeler that I found in storage. It is where I pray Noonday Prayer with a thurible of incense smoking on a nearby windowsill. As I kneel I pray for all whom I have encountered that day, and think of the generations of people and priests who have worshipped there before me. It is little wonder that the retired priest felt so much power at that healing station last spring.
Prayers for healing I’m familiar with from childhood. It’s the physicality of the healing service, the typically Anglican embodiment of our words in laying on hands, that is new to me. We sure didn’t lay on hands in the Lutheran church of my youth! Faith was more cerebral, with well-ordered arguments and well-crafted words, than anything so personal as placing hands on someone else’s head. Only at confirmation did that happen, which undoubtedly made the rite more powerful. (There was power enough that it was my father who confirmed me, a man whose chief form of personal contact was a welcoming handshake backed by a beaming face.)
I haven’t decided whether I will anoint with healing oil on Sunday. Those raised in the Roman Catholic Church might worry that I am giving them last rites, and the staunch Protestants will have no idea what the oil is about. I used to be in the latter category. I suspect that the Reformation threw out anointing as a reaction to all things Romish, in this case not returning to Scripture to recover the original healing use of oil. Or perhaps it disappeared because it was recommended in the letter of James, an epistle that Luther despised. For whatever reason, I had to get used to having a little container of bishop-blessed healing oil as one of my priestly possessions.
In praying for others I will also experience healing myself. God’s power can’t help but affect the channel through which it flows. That will be good. This has been a hard series of weeks, with diocesan work taking me away from home and funerals of beloved people in the parish. For someone as cognitively oriented as I am, sorrow flows underground, unseen, where it is reached only by the penetrating love of God in Jesus Christ. Yes, I think this will be a good Sunday to have a healing service at our church.
The side altar is the church’s original one of ancient wood, replaced many years ago by an elegant marble-faced high altar. In front of it is a four-foot-wide kneeler that I found in storage. It is where I pray Noonday Prayer with a thurible of incense smoking on a nearby windowsill. As I kneel I pray for all whom I have encountered that day, and think of the generations of people and priests who have worshipped there before me. It is little wonder that the retired priest felt so much power at that healing station last spring.
Prayers for healing I’m familiar with from childhood. It’s the physicality of the healing service, the typically Anglican embodiment of our words in laying on hands, that is new to me. We sure didn’t lay on hands in the Lutheran church of my youth! Faith was more cerebral, with well-ordered arguments and well-crafted words, than anything so personal as placing hands on someone else’s head. Only at confirmation did that happen, which undoubtedly made the rite more powerful. (There was power enough that it was my father who confirmed me, a man whose chief form of personal contact was a welcoming handshake backed by a beaming face.)
I haven’t decided whether I will anoint with healing oil on Sunday. Those raised in the Roman Catholic Church might worry that I am giving them last rites, and the staunch Protestants will have no idea what the oil is about. I used to be in the latter category. I suspect that the Reformation threw out anointing as a reaction to all things Romish, in this case not returning to Scripture to recover the original healing use of oil. Or perhaps it disappeared because it was recommended in the letter of James, an epistle that Luther despised. For whatever reason, I had to get used to having a little container of bishop-blessed healing oil as one of my priestly possessions.
In praying for others I will also experience healing myself. God’s power can’t help but affect the channel through which it flows. That will be good. This has been a hard series of weeks, with diocesan work taking me away from home and funerals of beloved people in the parish. For someone as cognitively oriented as I am, sorrow flows underground, unseen, where it is reached only by the penetrating love of God in Jesus Christ. Yes, I think this will be a good Sunday to have a healing service at our church.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Guidance for the Journey
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
This is one of my favorite collects. It is classically Anglican, written for the original 1549 Book of Common Prayer. “All” holy Scriptures is an echo of that book’s preface, which lamented how the medieval accretion of liturgical rules and saints’ days had chopped up the readings so much “that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread…There was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” By contrast, that first prayer book provided an orderly reading of nearly the entire Bible each year at Morning and Evening Prayer.
It is quite a challenge to understand all Scripture as written for our instruction. Some passages are just plain boring (especially in Leviticus). Others are guaranteed to create an upset stomach as they are “inwardly digested.” Take Sunday’s reading from Zephaniah, for instance. It proclaims the day of the Lord, “a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom.” This does not sound like good news – at least not to those who are well off. But what about those who suffer under tyrannical government, or the many who can’t afford food while the few are fabulously wealthy? For them, this is a promise that God will right the wrongs. It is a warning to those who rely on silver and gold more than God, those who buy yet another Lexus when their neighbors are in want, those who pass by the Occupy protesters in the street, en route to their multimillion dollar jobs.
Paul takes up the warning against complacency in his first letter to the Thessalonians. Christ will return unexpectedly like a thief in the night, he says. Christ will come as inescapably as a child is born to a woman in labor. Yet Paul provides hope where Zephaniah does not. “God has not destined us for wrath,” he writes, “but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is not God’s will that anyone should perish; it is we who we bring disaster on ourselves by our own actions, by the choices we freely make.
Jesus says as much in his parable of the talents. Like the master in the story who goes on a journey, God has given us talents, gifts, for us to use in his service. When we use them as God intends, they multiply. Not only are we able to return to God more than we have been given, God gives us even more. But if we hoard what we have been given, keeping it only for ourselves and not others, we both forfeit the blessing and lose what we already have. The most remarkable part of this passage is that God come to us just as we expect him to be. If we believe that God is generous, we see God’s generosity. If we believe that God is harsh and judgmental, we experience God’s judgment. Would that more Christians would read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest that passage!
And so Scripture provides just what the collect says: learning, instruction, guidance for the journey, a journey made in the blessed hope of everlasting life. Whether it is the wrath of Zephaniah, the warning of Paul, or the use of our talents in Jesus’ parable, we can find wisdom in the lessons that are read day by day, week after week, if only we search for it.
[Pentecost 22: Zephaniah1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 5:14-30. The information about the collect is from Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the American Prayer Book. The wonderful preface to the 1549 prayer book can be found in the current 1979 book on p. 866.]
This is one of my favorite collects. It is classically Anglican, written for the original 1549 Book of Common Prayer. “All” holy Scriptures is an echo of that book’s preface, which lamented how the medieval accretion of liturgical rules and saints’ days had chopped up the readings so much “that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread…There was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” By contrast, that first prayer book provided an orderly reading of nearly the entire Bible each year at Morning and Evening Prayer.
It is quite a challenge to understand all Scripture as written for our instruction. Some passages are just plain boring (especially in Leviticus). Others are guaranteed to create an upset stomach as they are “inwardly digested.” Take Sunday’s reading from Zephaniah, for instance. It proclaims the day of the Lord, “a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom.” This does not sound like good news – at least not to those who are well off. But what about those who suffer under tyrannical government, or the many who can’t afford food while the few are fabulously wealthy? For them, this is a promise that God will right the wrongs. It is a warning to those who rely on silver and gold more than God, those who buy yet another Lexus when their neighbors are in want, those who pass by the Occupy protesters in the street, en route to their multimillion dollar jobs.
Paul takes up the warning against complacency in his first letter to the Thessalonians. Christ will return unexpectedly like a thief in the night, he says. Christ will come as inescapably as a child is born to a woman in labor. Yet Paul provides hope where Zephaniah does not. “God has not destined us for wrath,” he writes, “but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is not God’s will that anyone should perish; it is we who we bring disaster on ourselves by our own actions, by the choices we freely make.
Jesus says as much in his parable of the talents. Like the master in the story who goes on a journey, God has given us talents, gifts, for us to use in his service. When we use them as God intends, they multiply. Not only are we able to return to God more than we have been given, God gives us even more. But if we hoard what we have been given, keeping it only for ourselves and not others, we both forfeit the blessing and lose what we already have. The most remarkable part of this passage is that God come to us just as we expect him to be. If we believe that God is generous, we see God’s generosity. If we believe that God is harsh and judgmental, we experience God’s judgment. Would that more Christians would read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest that passage!
And so Scripture provides just what the collect says: learning, instruction, guidance for the journey, a journey made in the blessed hope of everlasting life. Whether it is the wrath of Zephaniah, the warning of Paul, or the use of our talents in Jesus’ parable, we can find wisdom in the lessons that are read day by day, week after week, if only we search for it.
[Pentecost 22: Zephaniah1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 5:14-30. The information about the collect is from Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the American Prayer Book. The wonderful preface to the 1549 prayer book can be found in the current 1979 book on p. 866.]
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
For All the Saints
Recently the local paper had a couple of articles on life after death. Sort of. One, headlined “What happens when you die,” featured the work of a funeral home and cemetery. The other article was about Iowa ghosts, a not unexpected topic around Halloween. The only mention of belief in either article was a discussion of what different faiths do with their dead. I should not have expected anything about the afterlife in a newspaper, given that cultural relativism tells us that all religions are valid, if not fundamentally the same.
Last week R and I watched "The Bishop’s Wife," perhaps in anticipation of the upcoming diocesan convention. Loretta Young is smashing in the title role, and David Niven is the perplexed bishop trying to raise money for a cathedral. His prayers are answered when an angel played by Cary Grant arrives to give him guidance. Of many memorable moments, there’s one where Grant sits down at a harp and starts playing. Of course! He’s an angel, and all angels play the harp, right? This is 1947 culture: Christianity is assumed, but bowdlerized, inoffensive. Angels are good-looking, perform minor miracles, play harps, and have to leave when they start getting too attached to humans. God and Jesus hover in the background but are never mentioned (unless you count the Christmas setting, but that’s mostly for making us feel good and providing a memorable skating scene.)
The reality of Christian faith in the Bible is quite different. For one thing, death is looked squarely in the face. That is possible because Jesus passed through death to rise again on the third day. We still celebrate the day of resurrection every Sunday, the day when death lost its final power over us. I say “final” power, because we do still die, of course. Yet as the prayer book burial service says, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” There lies the great hope, the great belief of Christian faith. Like Christ, we will die. And like Christ, we shall one day rise again.
That’s why we have All Saints’ Sunday. We remember all who have gone before us in Christian hope, waiting for the resurrection of the dead. At our church there will be pictures and other remembrances of the saints in our own lives. Those saints are truly blessed. They hunger no more and thirst no more. God has wiped away every tear from their eyes.
But what about us who are left here without them? For us there are tears and mourning. There is hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God. We will bring pictures because we truly miss those faces and those voices. Yet we still have this incredible promise from God, a promise about which the Apostle John wrote: “Beloved, we are God’s children now. What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
And that’s it: we are promised the vision of Jesus. When we see him, we will be transformed. We will be like him: no longer dead, but alive; no longer in this body that hungers and aches, but in a resurrected body more solid and fresh and imperishable that anything we have experienced on earth. That’s a promise that Christ himself gave us. As for whether or not such a body comes with a built-in ability to play the harp – I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
[All Saints’ Sunday: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12. I discovered via Google that Gail Laughton actually played the harp in "The Bishop’s Wife"; it is his arms and hands we see in the close-ups. He also dubbed the harp segments in Harpo Marx’s movie appearances, in spite of the fact that Harpo was an accomplished, if unique, harpist.]
Last week R and I watched "The Bishop’s Wife," perhaps in anticipation of the upcoming diocesan convention. Loretta Young is smashing in the title role, and David Niven is the perplexed bishop trying to raise money for a cathedral. His prayers are answered when an angel played by Cary Grant arrives to give him guidance. Of many memorable moments, there’s one where Grant sits down at a harp and starts playing. Of course! He’s an angel, and all angels play the harp, right? This is 1947 culture: Christianity is assumed, but bowdlerized, inoffensive. Angels are good-looking, perform minor miracles, play harps, and have to leave when they start getting too attached to humans. God and Jesus hover in the background but are never mentioned (unless you count the Christmas setting, but that’s mostly for making us feel good and providing a memorable skating scene.)
The reality of Christian faith in the Bible is quite different. For one thing, death is looked squarely in the face. That is possible because Jesus passed through death to rise again on the third day. We still celebrate the day of resurrection every Sunday, the day when death lost its final power over us. I say “final” power, because we do still die, of course. Yet as the prayer book burial service says, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” There lies the great hope, the great belief of Christian faith. Like Christ, we will die. And like Christ, we shall one day rise again.
That’s why we have All Saints’ Sunday. We remember all who have gone before us in Christian hope, waiting for the resurrection of the dead. At our church there will be pictures and other remembrances of the saints in our own lives. Those saints are truly blessed. They hunger no more and thirst no more. God has wiped away every tear from their eyes.
But what about us who are left here without them? For us there are tears and mourning. There is hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God. We will bring pictures because we truly miss those faces and those voices. Yet we still have this incredible promise from God, a promise about which the Apostle John wrote: “Beloved, we are God’s children now. What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
And that’s it: we are promised the vision of Jesus. When we see him, we will be transformed. We will be like him: no longer dead, but alive; no longer in this body that hungers and aches, but in a resurrected body more solid and fresh and imperishable that anything we have experienced on earth. That’s a promise that Christ himself gave us. As for whether or not such a body comes with a built-in ability to play the harp – I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
[All Saints’ Sunday: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12. I discovered via Google that Gail Laughton actually played the harp in "The Bishop’s Wife"; it is his arms and hands we see in the close-ups. He also dubbed the harp segments in Harpo Marx’s movie appearances, in spite of the fact that Harpo was an accomplished, if unique, harpist.]
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Servant Leadership
Over thirty years ago Robert K. Greenleaf wrote a book called Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Power & Greatness. It was so popular that it has remained in print ever since, most recently appearing in a 25th anniversary edition. The dust jacket claims that with its publication, “a new paradigm of management entered the boardrooms and corporate offices of America.” Perhaps so. Yet the idea of servant leadership was at least two thousand years old when Greenleaf started writing. It was Jesus who said, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
Jesus knew the history of leadership in Israel, from the patriarchs through Moses, through David and the sorry succession of kings who followed him. By the time of Micah, more than two centuries after David, leadership was reaching its nadir. Micah castigates prophets “who cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.” Perversion of justice, bribery, requiring payment to dispense God’s free grace – that was “leadership” in Micah’s time. The future is described in terrifying words: “Therefore because of you Zion shall be a plowed field” and “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins.” Micah called everyone to true justice, to return to God’s Law.
Jesus is equally condemnatory of religious leaders. He acknowledges that they know the Law; they just don’t follow it. They create more and more rules, but do nothing to adjust the burden to make it bearable once they have thrown it on someone else’s back. And they make sure that everyone knows just how holy they are. Today they would sport hundred-dollar haircuts and thump big gold-edged Bibles and park their new BMW in a reserved space right next to the church door. Everyone would know them from TV broadcasts and call them “Pastor,” or “Doctor” if they had an online degree. And they’d love it.
By contrast, Jesus calls for someone who leads not as a person apart and above, but as one who is in common relationship with all. “Call no one Rabbi,” Jesus says, “because you have one teacher [God], and you are all brothers and sisters. And call no one father of yours upon the earth, for you have one heavenly Father” – one Father to whom each owes life in the Christian community. And call no one your private tutor, for you have only one tutor: Christ.
Within that community of Christ, Jesus maps out a path to greatness: “The greatest among you will be your servant.” The Greek word is diakonos: agent, intermediary, assistant; not doulos, slave. Leaders assist the community in doing God’s work, carrying out God’s mission. Indeed, it is the deacons among us who are icons of servanthood, showing us how to serve Christ by serving others.
I have to admit that I’ve had trouble getting through Greenleaf’s book. I’m not sure why. It seems a bit preachy to me, and I’ve never responded well to preachy books [!]. But the real reason, I think, is that servant leadership has much greater power when it comes from the mouth of one who served people so faithfully that he was willing to die for them. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many,” Jesus says. If all of us, especially church leaders, were to live that way, it would transform more than corporate America. It would transform the world.
[Pentecost 20: Micah 3:5-12; Matthew 23:1-12. The last saying of Jesus is from Mark 10:45. Once again I am indebted to John Nolland’s The Gospel of Matthew, and the classic Greek-English Lexicon familiarly known as BDAG.]
Jesus knew the history of leadership in Israel, from the patriarchs through Moses, through David and the sorry succession of kings who followed him. By the time of Micah, more than two centuries after David, leadership was reaching its nadir. Micah castigates prophets “who cry ‘Peace’ when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.” Perversion of justice, bribery, requiring payment to dispense God’s free grace – that was “leadership” in Micah’s time. The future is described in terrifying words: “Therefore because of you Zion shall be a plowed field” and “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins.” Micah called everyone to true justice, to return to God’s Law.
Jesus is equally condemnatory of religious leaders. He acknowledges that they know the Law; they just don’t follow it. They create more and more rules, but do nothing to adjust the burden to make it bearable once they have thrown it on someone else’s back. And they make sure that everyone knows just how holy they are. Today they would sport hundred-dollar haircuts and thump big gold-edged Bibles and park their new BMW in a reserved space right next to the church door. Everyone would know them from TV broadcasts and call them “Pastor,” or “Doctor” if they had an online degree. And they’d love it.
By contrast, Jesus calls for someone who leads not as a person apart and above, but as one who is in common relationship with all. “Call no one Rabbi,” Jesus says, “because you have one teacher [God], and you are all brothers and sisters. And call no one father of yours upon the earth, for you have one heavenly Father” – one Father to whom each owes life in the Christian community. And call no one your private tutor, for you have only one tutor: Christ.
Within that community of Christ, Jesus maps out a path to greatness: “The greatest among you will be your servant.” The Greek word is diakonos: agent, intermediary, assistant; not doulos, slave. Leaders assist the community in doing God’s work, carrying out God’s mission. Indeed, it is the deacons among us who are icons of servanthood, showing us how to serve Christ by serving others.
I have to admit that I’ve had trouble getting through Greenleaf’s book. I’m not sure why. It seems a bit preachy to me, and I’ve never responded well to preachy books [!]. But the real reason, I think, is that servant leadership has much greater power when it comes from the mouth of one who served people so faithfully that he was willing to die for them. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many,” Jesus says. If all of us, especially church leaders, were to live that way, it would transform more than corporate America. It would transform the world.
[Pentecost 20: Micah 3:5-12; Matthew 23:1-12. The last saying of Jesus is from Mark 10:45. Once again I am indebted to John Nolland’s The Gospel of Matthew, and the classic Greek-English Lexicon familiarly known as BDAG.]
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
It's All Greek to Me
The priest I worked with in my field education placement had been in the business a long time. He was raised a Roman Catholic and entered a pre-seminary high school at the age of fourteen. From then on his life was regulated by the Church. When I asked Bill how he came to the Episcopal Church, he raised his left hand and showed me his wedding ring. Clear enough!
I valued Bill’s experience. Once when we were talking about sermon preparation, I told him how I like to translate the Gospel, at least, from the original Greek. Smiling, he assured me that once he left seminary he had found no use for Greek or Hebrew. I noted his opinion but it didn’t change my habits. Whenever I did find occasion to mention Greek in a sermon after that, I’d look over at Bill and he would have this little smile on his face.
This week Bill would really be smiling. It was the Greek Gospel text rather than any translation that started me thinking. There are several nuances that are lost in English, in part because of idioms that require rephrasing to make them intelligible.
Jesus, having told a series of parables that really honked off the religious establishment, finds that those leaders are retaliating. They send a group to trap him in words – representatives of the religious right and those who favor the status quo (sound familiar?). The Pharisees want every Jewish law followed to the letter, and the Herodians want Caesar in control so that they can keep their cushy jobs.
They come to Jesus with simpering smiles and false praise. They try to set him up with flattery, not realizing that they are actually speaking the truth. “Teacher,” they say, “we know that you are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” At least that’s what it says in English. The Greek is literally, “for you do not look into the face of people.”
Having softened him up, they spring the trick question. “Tell us, then, how it seems to you. Is it permitted to pay tax to Caesar, or not?” The questioners think this puts Jesus in a box. If he says yes, all of the zealous Jewish Rome-haters will desert him. If he says no, they can run him in on a charge of sedition.
But Jesus, being Jesus, sees right through them. “Why do you test me, you hypocrites?” he says. “Show me the coin of the tax.” So they produce a silver denarius. “Whose is this image and inscription?” he asks. Well, Caesar’s, duh! So he says to them, “Then give back the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God.” Astonished at his answer, they slink away, trying to figure out how he slipped out of their noose.
The whole story is very visual, but the only word in English that hints at it is “image.” Even that one word should resonate, however, reminding us that we are made in the image of God. If the denarius goes to Caesar because his image is on it, God’s claim on us is even greater, because all that we are and have comes from God.
“Image” is eikon in Greek. Icons themselves are windows to God – or rather, windows from God to us, through which God sees us, and we see God. If we are made in the image of God, then we, too, become icons through which other people can see the love of God in Jesus Christ.
But what about this business that Jesus doesn’t look into the face of people? It’s not that Jesus is shifty-eyed. Rather, he isn’t checking people’s reactions to see whether or not they approve what he says. He’s not a political poll-watcher. Nor does he tailor his speech based on the kind of reaction he’s getting. I don’t know about you, but I find myself doing that a lot. If I see someone’s blood pressure starting to rise because of my words, I’ll modify what I say to prevent an explosion. Jesus, like the prophets, lets the Word of God fly, unconcerned who takes offense.
Jesus calls his questioners “hypocrites.” That itself is a Greek word, originally meaning actors on a stage. Given that acting involves deception, pretending to be someone else, it fits Jesus’ use very well. And if you consider that actors wore masks in classical Greek drama, we are back to the whole question of true image.
Our true likeness is found in God. Often we put on masks out of fear or deception, hiding that likeness. We study the faces of others to see how they react to us, to see if our deception is working, to peer through their masks. “Hypocrites!” Jesus would say. Put off your mask and reveal your true image, the image of God. Be transparent. Let the love of God shine through you, and look for the face of Christ in everyone you meet.
And Bill, my priest friend, still smiles, now not at the Greek, but at the thought of seeking Christ in everyone he meets. He knows his own faults and the temptation to put on masks. Yet he also knows that there is nothing greater than to seek the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
[Pentecost18: Matthew 22:15-22.]
I valued Bill’s experience. Once when we were talking about sermon preparation, I told him how I like to translate the Gospel, at least, from the original Greek. Smiling, he assured me that once he left seminary he had found no use for Greek or Hebrew. I noted his opinion but it didn’t change my habits. Whenever I did find occasion to mention Greek in a sermon after that, I’d look over at Bill and he would have this little smile on his face.
This week Bill would really be smiling. It was the Greek Gospel text rather than any translation that started me thinking. There are several nuances that are lost in English, in part because of idioms that require rephrasing to make them intelligible.
Jesus, having told a series of parables that really honked off the religious establishment, finds that those leaders are retaliating. They send a group to trap him in words – representatives of the religious right and those who favor the status quo (sound familiar?). The Pharisees want every Jewish law followed to the letter, and the Herodians want Caesar in control so that they can keep their cushy jobs.
They come to Jesus with simpering smiles and false praise. They try to set him up with flattery, not realizing that they are actually speaking the truth. “Teacher,” they say, “we know that you are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” At least that’s what it says in English. The Greek is literally, “for you do not look into the face of people.”
Having softened him up, they spring the trick question. “Tell us, then, how it seems to you. Is it permitted to pay tax to Caesar, or not?” The questioners think this puts Jesus in a box. If he says yes, all of the zealous Jewish Rome-haters will desert him. If he says no, they can run him in on a charge of sedition.
But Jesus, being Jesus, sees right through them. “Why do you test me, you hypocrites?” he says. “Show me the coin of the tax.” So they produce a silver denarius. “Whose is this image and inscription?” he asks. Well, Caesar’s, duh! So he says to them, “Then give back the things of Caesar to Caesar and the things of God to God.” Astonished at his answer, they slink away, trying to figure out how he slipped out of their noose.
The whole story is very visual, but the only word in English that hints at it is “image.” Even that one word should resonate, however, reminding us that we are made in the image of God. If the denarius goes to Caesar because his image is on it, God’s claim on us is even greater, because all that we are and have comes from God.
“Image” is eikon in Greek. Icons themselves are windows to God – or rather, windows from God to us, through which God sees us, and we see God. If we are made in the image of God, then we, too, become icons through which other people can see the love of God in Jesus Christ.
But what about this business that Jesus doesn’t look into the face of people? It’s not that Jesus is shifty-eyed. Rather, he isn’t checking people’s reactions to see whether or not they approve what he says. He’s not a political poll-watcher. Nor does he tailor his speech based on the kind of reaction he’s getting. I don’t know about you, but I find myself doing that a lot. If I see someone’s blood pressure starting to rise because of my words, I’ll modify what I say to prevent an explosion. Jesus, like the prophets, lets the Word of God fly, unconcerned who takes offense.
Jesus calls his questioners “hypocrites.” That itself is a Greek word, originally meaning actors on a stage. Given that acting involves deception, pretending to be someone else, it fits Jesus’ use very well. And if you consider that actors wore masks in classical Greek drama, we are back to the whole question of true image.
Our true likeness is found in God. Often we put on masks out of fear or deception, hiding that likeness. We study the faces of others to see how they react to us, to see if our deception is working, to peer through their masks. “Hypocrites!” Jesus would say. Put off your mask and reveal your true image, the image of God. Be transparent. Let the love of God shine through you, and look for the face of Christ in everyone you meet.
And Bill, my priest friend, still smiles, now not at the Greek, but at the thought of seeking Christ in everyone he meets. He knows his own faults and the temptation to put on masks. Yet he also knows that there is nothing greater than to seek the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
[Pentecost18: Matthew 22:15-22.]
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Wedding Dress
I grew up in a large family, so we didn’t go out to eat very often. It was just too expensive. On those few occasions when we did, we often went to the Viking Restaurant. The Viking had an authentic Scandinavian smorgasbord, the precursor of today’s huge buffets that encourage people to eat in one sitting enough food for a week. We liked it because we could get as much of whatever we wanted. My mother liked it because she didn’t have to cook. I still remember the little cards on every table: “Eat with taste; please don’t waste.”
The Viking had a dress requirement. Every male from adolescence onwards had to wear a sport jacket or suit coat, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the dining room. The management even had a few spare jackets available in case someone forgot. After wearing one of those garish ill-fitting loaners a time or two, I always remembered to bring my own.
Dress requirements seem quaint, a thing of the past, certainly in our corner of the world. It’s like three-piece suits in our church, a clear indication of a visitor. Even festal occasions nowadays don’t always mean festal dress. R and I recently attended a wedding reception at the local country club, and saw a farmer in his overalls with a pair of pliers still in the tool loop. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough that it didn’t faze me a bit.
Thus a Bible story about someone getting booted out of a wedding feast because of improper clothes seems yet another example of how out-of-date Scripture is. What makes this story worse is that the ejected guest appears to have been welcomed at first. So why care what he looks like?
But I get ahead of myself. This wedding feast is a parable of Jesus, another one that begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” Once again there’s a king, whom we’ve already seen is the stand-in for God. As Jesus describes the banquet, it sounds more and more like the feast, the messianic banquet God offers to everyone. One hears echoes of Isaiah: “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The steaks are on the grill and the beer is in the cooler. All the king needs are guests.
The trouble is that those who got the invitation don’t want to come when everything’s ready. One decides that the combine needs some tinkering and another remembers paperwork at the office that needs shuffling. With the steaks heading toward very well done, the king tells his servants to go out into the streets and haul in everyone they find. (I love the Authorized Version’s translation of the parallel passage in Luke: “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” It’s so British.)
When the king comes in and starts working the room, he spies someone who isn’t wearing the right wedding garment. Either the man didn’t stop at home to change first, or he didn’t like the loaners the king had hanging on a rack. Or maybe he was just walking by as everyone went in and decided to crash the party. The king, calling him “friend,” gives him a chance to explain himself. But the man is speechless, and his silence condemns him. So the king has him thrown out on his ear.
In this parable, Jesus tells us something important about the messianic banquet. First of all, God’s feast is going to be a big one. Everyone is invited. But not everyone is going to be there. Some of the invitees will be too busy to show up. They’ll walk the other way when the time comes. And a few will try to get into the banquet on their own terms, not God’s. When they’re found out, they’ll be shown the exit.
We don’t like the idea that some people will be excluded from the banquet. We want to think that everyone is there. That’s called universal salvation: everyone gets to be with God, everyone goes to heaven. It is true that God intends salvation, reconciliation with God and one another, for everyone. Yet it’s also true that we are given the freedom to walk away from God. We can make light of God’s invitation. We can try to get in on our terms, not God’s. Jesus made it quite clear that such behavior has consequences. It puts us in darkness, not light. It separates us from the joy of the wedding feast.
As far as I can tell, the Viking Restaurant is no longer in business. I’m not surprised. The formality of the owners and their stinginess with the food (remember those table cards?) could not compete with the informality and largesse of the modern family buffet. I no longer have to worry about wearing an ill-fitting loaner jacket. And when the day comes for that big feast, the messianic banquet, I hope and pray that I will have the sense to accept the invitation and arrive clothed in Christ. In the meantime, I better do something with the pile of paperwork on my desk.
[Pentecost 17: Isaiah 25:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14.]
The Viking had a dress requirement. Every male from adolescence onwards had to wear a sport jacket or suit coat, or he wouldn’t be allowed in the dining room. The management even had a few spare jackets available in case someone forgot. After wearing one of those garish ill-fitting loaners a time or two, I always remembered to bring my own.
Dress requirements seem quaint, a thing of the past, certainly in our corner of the world. It’s like three-piece suits in our church, a clear indication of a visitor. Even festal occasions nowadays don’t always mean festal dress. R and I recently attended a wedding reception at the local country club, and saw a farmer in his overalls with a pair of pliers still in the tool loop. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough that it didn’t faze me a bit.
Thus a Bible story about someone getting booted out of a wedding feast because of improper clothes seems yet another example of how out-of-date Scripture is. What makes this story worse is that the ejected guest appears to have been welcomed at first. So why care what he looks like?
But I get ahead of myself. This wedding feast is a parable of Jesus, another one that begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” Once again there’s a king, whom we’ve already seen is the stand-in for God. As Jesus describes the banquet, it sounds more and more like the feast, the messianic banquet God offers to everyone. One hears echoes of Isaiah: “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The steaks are on the grill and the beer is in the cooler. All the king needs are guests.
The trouble is that those who got the invitation don’t want to come when everything’s ready. One decides that the combine needs some tinkering and another remembers paperwork at the office that needs shuffling. With the steaks heading toward very well done, the king tells his servants to go out into the streets and haul in everyone they find. (I love the Authorized Version’s translation of the parallel passage in Luke: “Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in.” It’s so British.)
When the king comes in and starts working the room, he spies someone who isn’t wearing the right wedding garment. Either the man didn’t stop at home to change first, or he didn’t like the loaners the king had hanging on a rack. Or maybe he was just walking by as everyone went in and decided to crash the party. The king, calling him “friend,” gives him a chance to explain himself. But the man is speechless, and his silence condemns him. So the king has him thrown out on his ear.
In this parable, Jesus tells us something important about the messianic banquet. First of all, God’s feast is going to be a big one. Everyone is invited. But not everyone is going to be there. Some of the invitees will be too busy to show up. They’ll walk the other way when the time comes. And a few will try to get into the banquet on their own terms, not God’s. When they’re found out, they’ll be shown the exit.
We don’t like the idea that some people will be excluded from the banquet. We want to think that everyone is there. That’s called universal salvation: everyone gets to be with God, everyone goes to heaven. It is true that God intends salvation, reconciliation with God and one another, for everyone. Yet it’s also true that we are given the freedom to walk away from God. We can make light of God’s invitation. We can try to get in on our terms, not God’s. Jesus made it quite clear that such behavior has consequences. It puts us in darkness, not light. It separates us from the joy of the wedding feast.
As far as I can tell, the Viking Restaurant is no longer in business. I’m not surprised. The formality of the owners and their stinginess with the food (remember those table cards?) could not compete with the informality and largesse of the modern family buffet. I no longer have to worry about wearing an ill-fitting loaner jacket. And when the day comes for that big feast, the messianic banquet, I hope and pray that I will have the sense to accept the invitation and arrive clothed in Christ. In the meantime, I better do something with the pile of paperwork on my desk.
[Pentecost 17: Isaiah 25:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14.]
Thursday, September 29, 2011
A Fruitful Vineyard
A few weeks ago I was asked to give a lecture in an Introduction to Liberal Arts course at Monmouth College. The class was reading Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, and the professor wanted the perspective of a botanist/theologian. I began with what are sometimes called ways of knowing, ways in which we make sense of the world around us (such as history, music, and science). Some ways of knowing, like theology, also provide meaning to our lives. We use them to explain the why of what happens, not just the how and what. Pollan happens to be a materialist, one who believes that nothing exists except matter. That in itself is a faith statement, although my guess is that Pollan would not see it as such.
The Bible, of course, is full of theology. It is concerned with who God is, who we are, and what our relationship should be to God and one another. It uses the how and what to illustrate the why, its chief focus. Sometimes we get mixed up and think that the biblical how and what are just as important as the why. Then the Bible becomes the basis for all ways of knowing, so that even science must yield to what the Bible says. That is not a fruitful approach, although I would not go so far as a former colleague who described it as “intellectual suicide.”
Remembering that the “why” is important, and that Scripture is about who we are in relation to God and one another, becomes essential when approaching the more difficult biblical stories. This Sunday we have two such passages. Both present God as judge and destroyer. Both repel us, for we would much rather hear about God’s love and mercy.
The first passage, from Isaiah, presents itself as a love-song for God’s beloved. It describes Israel, and more particularly Judah and Jerusalem, as a vineyard lovingly planted and tended, given everything it needs to provide a bountiful harvest of grapes. Instead, it yields wild grapes, the small, sour kind that no one wants. So the vineyard is destroyed and becomes a wasteland.
Jesus undoubtedly has this passage in mind when he tells his own parable of a vineyard to the chief priests and elders of the people. Ostensibly the story is about a landowner, but as Jesus describes the creation of the vineyard, it’s clear that he is really talking about Isaiah’s vineyard, and the landowner is God. In Jesus’ story, however, it’s not the grapes that are the problem. It’s the tenants who care for the vineyard. They are the ones who kill the landowner’s slaves, and eventually his son, when they attempt to get the fruits of the harvest. So when the landowner himself finally arrives, he is expected to destroy the wicked tenants and lease the vineyard to others.
Isaiah wrote about the vineyard as a warning to the people of Judah. They should not think that they can do whatever they want because they are God’s chosen people. God has expectations of them – and of us – expectations of justice and righteousness, not only as individuals but as a society. Instead, what God found was bloodshed and the cry of the oppressed. Later, when both Israel and Judah were conquered and the people carried away, their destruction was interpreted as God’s judgment on an apostate people. That theology provided the why of exile.
Jesus had a different object in mind. He expected the vineyard, God’s people, to bear fruit. It was the tenants of the vineyard, the religious leaders, who had gone astray from God And just in case they missed the point, Jesus made it explicit: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” The chief priests and the Pharisees heard him loud and clear, and plotted how to get rid of him.
In each case, the Bible tells how to act toward God and one another. We are to acknowledge that all we have comes from God, that we are living in a world that God created. Our response should be not only to praise and give thanks to God, but also to bear the fruits of the gifts we have been given. In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul lists some of those fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Yet it is essential that we do not forget that both Jesus and Isaiah are also concerned with the wider community, both the community of faith and the nation. Justice and righteousness must be found there as well as in our individual actions.
That is why theology, for me, is the most important way of knowing. It tells us how to act, not only as individuals but as a society. It tells us that our choices have consequences, that it is a matter if life or death which way we go. Jesus assures us that the kingdom of God, God’s vineyard, will bear fruit no matter what. The question is, are we willing to share that fruit, or will we try to keep it for ourselves and cast out those whom God sends to us?
[Pentecost 16: Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46. The Galatians passage is 5:22-23, and not part of this Sunday’s lectionary.]
The Bible, of course, is full of theology. It is concerned with who God is, who we are, and what our relationship should be to God and one another. It uses the how and what to illustrate the why, its chief focus. Sometimes we get mixed up and think that the biblical how and what are just as important as the why. Then the Bible becomes the basis for all ways of knowing, so that even science must yield to what the Bible says. That is not a fruitful approach, although I would not go so far as a former colleague who described it as “intellectual suicide.”
Remembering that the “why” is important, and that Scripture is about who we are in relation to God and one another, becomes essential when approaching the more difficult biblical stories. This Sunday we have two such passages. Both present God as judge and destroyer. Both repel us, for we would much rather hear about God’s love and mercy.
The first passage, from Isaiah, presents itself as a love-song for God’s beloved. It describes Israel, and more particularly Judah and Jerusalem, as a vineyard lovingly planted and tended, given everything it needs to provide a bountiful harvest of grapes. Instead, it yields wild grapes, the small, sour kind that no one wants. So the vineyard is destroyed and becomes a wasteland.
Jesus undoubtedly has this passage in mind when he tells his own parable of a vineyard to the chief priests and elders of the people. Ostensibly the story is about a landowner, but as Jesus describes the creation of the vineyard, it’s clear that he is really talking about Isaiah’s vineyard, and the landowner is God. In Jesus’ story, however, it’s not the grapes that are the problem. It’s the tenants who care for the vineyard. They are the ones who kill the landowner’s slaves, and eventually his son, when they attempt to get the fruits of the harvest. So when the landowner himself finally arrives, he is expected to destroy the wicked tenants and lease the vineyard to others.
Isaiah wrote about the vineyard as a warning to the people of Judah. They should not think that they can do whatever they want because they are God’s chosen people. God has expectations of them – and of us – expectations of justice and righteousness, not only as individuals but as a society. Instead, what God found was bloodshed and the cry of the oppressed. Later, when both Israel and Judah were conquered and the people carried away, their destruction was interpreted as God’s judgment on an apostate people. That theology provided the why of exile.
Jesus had a different object in mind. He expected the vineyard, God’s people, to bear fruit. It was the tenants of the vineyard, the religious leaders, who had gone astray from God And just in case they missed the point, Jesus made it explicit: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” The chief priests and the Pharisees heard him loud and clear, and plotted how to get rid of him.
In each case, the Bible tells how to act toward God and one another. We are to acknowledge that all we have comes from God, that we are living in a world that God created. Our response should be not only to praise and give thanks to God, but also to bear the fruits of the gifts we have been given. In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul lists some of those fruits: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Yet it is essential that we do not forget that both Jesus and Isaiah are also concerned with the wider community, both the community of faith and the nation. Justice and righteousness must be found there as well as in our individual actions.
That is why theology, for me, is the most important way of knowing. It tells us how to act, not only as individuals but as a society. It tells us that our choices have consequences, that it is a matter if life or death which way we go. Jesus assures us that the kingdom of God, God’s vineyard, will bear fruit no matter what. The question is, are we willing to share that fruit, or will we try to keep it for ourselves and cast out those whom God sends to us?
[Pentecost 16: Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46. The Galatians passage is 5:22-23, and not part of this Sunday’s lectionary.]
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Reconciliation
Peter, Paul and Mary had a memorable song called “Right Field.” It was about the common childhood experience of being chosen for a pick-up ball game. The team captains choose the best and most athletic kids first, so one finds out pretty quickly how one is regarded. Unlike the person in the song, I was never the last to be chosen, but I was pretty close to it. It’s not that I was uncoordinated or unathletic. I just didn’t care that much. I’d rather stand in the middle of the field and talk with a friend than pay attention to the game. That’s not what a team captain likes.
Being part of a group, even at the lowest level, is always important. It is how we are made as humans, to be in relationship with one another. We like to think that we are independent sorts, but in reality we need one another. This past week we saw an example of that in Vermont, a state full of independent people. When Hurricane Irene wiped out roads and isolated villages in the Green Mountains, the people in those towns got together and started fixing roads and cleaning up long before anyone “official” arrived. Eventually all will return to their scattered homes deep in the woods. But for a short time, at least, they worked together as a community. They know that’s part of their identity.
The Gospel reading for Sunday shows us just how important it is to be part of a community, particularly the community we call the Church. I’ve heard some say that this reading is all about forgiveness. I think it is more accurate to say that reconciliation is at its heart.
Suppose someone sins against you, Jesus says. The first thing you should do is go to that person yourself and point out the problem. He or she might listen to you, and if so, you have regained a friend. But if no listening occurs, next take along another person or two. After all, you may have misheard. Or it may be that part of the fault lies with you, and a neutral observer can see that. If it turns out that the offender refuses to listen to anyone, tell the church. If he or she refuses to listen to the church, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
All of this sounds very awkward to our postmodern ears. After all, aren’t we supposed to respect everyone, even if we think they’re wrong? (Tell that to Congress!) Aren’t there many ways of being right? And how can we afford to turn people out when we want more to attend church?
Jesus wasn’t talking to postmoderns, of course, or even moderns. He was talking to people who were quite comfortable with the idea that there is one true church, and people are either in it or out of it. Even today some Christian groups operate that way. Some practice “shunning” – when someone is cast out of the group, no one will ever speak to or acknowledge them again. Shunning is based on that very verse: “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
I don’t think shunning is what Jesus had in mind. For one thing, the “you” is singular. It is not the plural “you” of the whole church; it is the “you” who originally went to talk one-on-one with the offender. And treating a person as a total outcast is to act as ancient Jews did toward Gentiles and tax collectors. It is not the way of Jesus, who ate with tax collectors. Matthew himself, we are told, was one of them. And by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the apostles will be told to make disciples of all nations – all Gentiles. It’s hard to make a disciple of someone you’ve shunned.
Maybe that’s the point. An unrepentant sinner is an outsider, but not beyond reconciliation. He or she is not destined to remain outside permanently. The community must have boundaries, if it is to have any integrity, any clarity of belief. Yet those boundaries are not so solid that reentry is impossible.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu after the collapse of apartheid in South Africa is the best illustration I know of what Jesus was saying. During weeks of testimony, those in the former government who had committed atrocities confessed what they had done, in the presence of their former victims. It came with a tremendous emotional cost, as Archbishop Tutu vividly describes. But the reward was greater. For telling the truth, the torturers received reconciliation with the community that had thrown them out.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is far from the light-hearted “Right Field” song. Yet both spring from the same basic human need to belong. Without other human beings, we are lost. We may do things that cause us to lose community, but no one is ever beyond reconciliation. That is true for individuals as well as the church. Is there someone formerly in your church who needs to hear from you? Someone in your own life who needs your reconciliation?
[Pentecost 12: Matthew 18:15-20.]
Being part of a group, even at the lowest level, is always important. It is how we are made as humans, to be in relationship with one another. We like to think that we are independent sorts, but in reality we need one another. This past week we saw an example of that in Vermont, a state full of independent people. When Hurricane Irene wiped out roads and isolated villages in the Green Mountains, the people in those towns got together and started fixing roads and cleaning up long before anyone “official” arrived. Eventually all will return to their scattered homes deep in the woods. But for a short time, at least, they worked together as a community. They know that’s part of their identity.
The Gospel reading for Sunday shows us just how important it is to be part of a community, particularly the community we call the Church. I’ve heard some say that this reading is all about forgiveness. I think it is more accurate to say that reconciliation is at its heart.
Suppose someone sins against you, Jesus says. The first thing you should do is go to that person yourself and point out the problem. He or she might listen to you, and if so, you have regained a friend. But if no listening occurs, next take along another person or two. After all, you may have misheard. Or it may be that part of the fault lies with you, and a neutral observer can see that. If it turns out that the offender refuses to listen to anyone, tell the church. If he or she refuses to listen to the church, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
All of this sounds very awkward to our postmodern ears. After all, aren’t we supposed to respect everyone, even if we think they’re wrong? (Tell that to Congress!) Aren’t there many ways of being right? And how can we afford to turn people out when we want more to attend church?
Jesus wasn’t talking to postmoderns, of course, or even moderns. He was talking to people who were quite comfortable with the idea that there is one true church, and people are either in it or out of it. Even today some Christian groups operate that way. Some practice “shunning” – when someone is cast out of the group, no one will ever speak to or acknowledge them again. Shunning is based on that very verse: “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
I don’t think shunning is what Jesus had in mind. For one thing, the “you” is singular. It is not the plural “you” of the whole church; it is the “you” who originally went to talk one-on-one with the offender. And treating a person as a total outcast is to act as ancient Jews did toward Gentiles and tax collectors. It is not the way of Jesus, who ate with tax collectors. Matthew himself, we are told, was one of them. And by the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the apostles will be told to make disciples of all nations – all Gentiles. It’s hard to make a disciple of someone you’ve shunned.
Maybe that’s the point. An unrepentant sinner is an outsider, but not beyond reconciliation. He or she is not destined to remain outside permanently. The community must have boundaries, if it is to have any integrity, any clarity of belief. Yet those boundaries are not so solid that reentry is impossible.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu after the collapse of apartheid in South Africa is the best illustration I know of what Jesus was saying. During weeks of testimony, those in the former government who had committed atrocities confessed what they had done, in the presence of their former victims. It came with a tremendous emotional cost, as Archbishop Tutu vividly describes. But the reward was greater. For telling the truth, the torturers received reconciliation with the community that had thrown them out.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is far from the light-hearted “Right Field” song. Yet both spring from the same basic human need to belong. Without other human beings, we are lost. We may do things that cause us to lose community, but no one is ever beyond reconciliation. That is true for individuals as well as the church. Is there someone formerly in your church who needs to hear from you? Someone in your own life who needs your reconciliation?
[Pentecost 12: Matthew 18:15-20.]
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Ten Years Later
[I will not be preaching this Sunday, so I do not have an entry on the Sunday lessons. Instead, I am posting the reflection that will be in the church's September newsletter.]
September 11th will be the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States: the destruction of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, the crashing of a jet into the Pentagon, and the loss of life in Pennsylvania when passengers attempted to regain control of a hijacked plane.
No one who lived through that time will forget where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. No one will forget the fear of what might be next, or days without planes in the sky. It was a defining moment for this country, like the loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All are etched into the memories of those who lived through them.
Ten years later, we still live in the shadow of 9/11. As a country, we struggle to disengage from two wars initiated in retaliation for what happened. Travel in general, and air travel in particular, has become difficult and costly. Even the political polarization and gridlock we now experience can be traced to differing reactions to the attacks, and the tremendous economic cost of responding to them. If, as is sometimes suggested, one of the intentions of the attackers was to overburden the U.S. economy, they have certainly succeeded.
In the last decade, historians have documented the precise sequence of events that occurred. Engineers have analyzed the mechanical weaknesses which caused the towers to collapse. CIA and law enforcement officers have examined the failures in intelligence and communication that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Sociologists have weighed in on the political and economic conditions that spawned people who sought to destroy as many lives as possible through their suicidal acts.
What about the religious response? How can our Christian faith, in particular, give meaning to what happened? An early response by Pat Robertson, who said that God punished the U.S. for its sinfulness, especially its tolerance of homosexuality, must be rejected as non-Christian. The God revealed to us through the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is not a God who capriciously kills innocent people. One wonders what Bible Pat Robertson reads, that he is so quick to condemn others.
What is clear is that the God whose Son died an excruciating death on the cross was present with those terrified people in the hijacked planes. God was ready to receive them into his everlasting arms, ready to embrace the workers and firemen and policemen who died.
It is also clear that evil is very real, evil greater than any human being. The men who trained to fly their planes into buildings – who practiced takeoffs but not landings – allowed themselves to be overpowered by evil under the deadly illusion that they were doing the work of God. I do not believe that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion, any more than Judaism or Christianity are. But each religion has adherents who preach violence in God’s name. And that, I believe, is a perversion of their faith.
This September 11th our church will have a brief ceremony of remembrance in the park across the street. There will be representatives from the local fire department and a military honor guard. After that remembrance we will have our annual community picnic. You may wonder why we’ll have a joyful event on such a solemn day, but it makes perfect sense to me. September 11th brought us together as a nation. It created community, common purpose, and a turning toward God. What better way to remember that sense of unity than to offer what we have to the community around us? What better way to be thankful for what God has given us than to provide a free meal to everyone who comes? And what better way to come together as a church community than to work toward a common purpose of helping others?
Yes, 9/11/2011 will have its somber moments as we remember those who have died. Yet it is also an opportunity to witness to our faith that evil will not prevail, that through his resurrection, Jesus Christ overcame evil and destroyed death. God reigns. And no amount of human-caused destruction can change that fact.
September 11th will be the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the United States: the destruction of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, the crashing of a jet into the Pentagon, and the loss of life in Pennsylvania when passengers attempted to regain control of a hijacked plane.
No one who lived through that time will forget where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. No one will forget the fear of what might be next, or days without planes in the sky. It was a defining moment for this country, like the loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. All are etched into the memories of those who lived through them.
Ten years later, we still live in the shadow of 9/11. As a country, we struggle to disengage from two wars initiated in retaliation for what happened. Travel in general, and air travel in particular, has become difficult and costly. Even the political polarization and gridlock we now experience can be traced to differing reactions to the attacks, and the tremendous economic cost of responding to them. If, as is sometimes suggested, one of the intentions of the attackers was to overburden the U.S. economy, they have certainly succeeded.
In the last decade, historians have documented the precise sequence of events that occurred. Engineers have analyzed the mechanical weaknesses which caused the towers to collapse. CIA and law enforcement officers have examined the failures in intelligence and communication that allowed the hijackers to succeed. Sociologists have weighed in on the political and economic conditions that spawned people who sought to destroy as many lives as possible through their suicidal acts.
What about the religious response? How can our Christian faith, in particular, give meaning to what happened? An early response by Pat Robertson, who said that God punished the U.S. for its sinfulness, especially its tolerance of homosexuality, must be rejected as non-Christian. The God revealed to us through the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is not a God who capriciously kills innocent people. One wonders what Bible Pat Robertson reads, that he is so quick to condemn others.
What is clear is that the God whose Son died an excruciating death on the cross was present with those terrified people in the hijacked planes. God was ready to receive them into his everlasting arms, ready to embrace the workers and firemen and policemen who died.
It is also clear that evil is very real, evil greater than any human being. The men who trained to fly their planes into buildings – who practiced takeoffs but not landings – allowed themselves to be overpowered by evil under the deadly illusion that they were doing the work of God. I do not believe that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion, any more than Judaism or Christianity are. But each religion has adherents who preach violence in God’s name. And that, I believe, is a perversion of their faith.
This September 11th our church will have a brief ceremony of remembrance in the park across the street. There will be representatives from the local fire department and a military honor guard. After that remembrance we will have our annual community picnic. You may wonder why we’ll have a joyful event on such a solemn day, but it makes perfect sense to me. September 11th brought us together as a nation. It created community, common purpose, and a turning toward God. What better way to remember that sense of unity than to offer what we have to the community around us? What better way to be thankful for what God has given us than to provide a free meal to everyone who comes? And what better way to come together as a church community than to work toward a common purpose of helping others?
Yes, 9/11/2011 will have its somber moments as we remember those who have died. Yet it is also an opportunity to witness to our faith that evil will not prevail, that through his resurrection, Jesus Christ overcame evil and destroyed death. God reigns. And no amount of human-caused destruction can change that fact.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
A Question of Identity
Earlier this week there was an article in The Hawk Eye about two twenty-something sisters who are having trouble getting Social Security cards. It seems that their parents were lifelong hippies/gypsies, never staying long in one place, getting odd jobs as they went, living outside any system. One daughter was born in a house and the other in the back of a van. Neither birth was officially recorded at the time. Now that they are older, the two women can’t prove their identity to the satisfaction of the Social Security Administration. And without a card they can’t get regular jobs.
Identity papers are a relatively recent invention. They crop up when a government feels the need to distinguish among different groups. Proof of identity has become particularly important in a world fearful of random violence. Somehow we feel more in control if we think we know exactly who everyone is. Never mind that tighter control makes counterfeiting more lucrative, or that some people are frozen out of the system because their personal identity isn’t good enough for a bureaucracy.
On Sunday we will have several questions of identity placed before us. Who is Moses? Who is Jesus? Who is Simon Peter? None of these people will be able to produce identity papers.
The story of Moses’ birth is a long one, befitting his importance. And like a good story, there is suspense. The struggles of the Israelites in Egypt are interwoven with the faithfulness of their midwives, who subvert orders to kill newborn baby boys. One such boy is hidden and discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh, who takes him as her own. Only at the end is the name of this child finally revealed: Moses. But even that drives the story forward. Will this child grow to identify himself as an Egyptian or as an Israelite? What will Moses’ final identity be?
Jesus comes right out and asks the identity question. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” he questions his disciples. They give him a variety of answers they’ve heard floating around, each a return to life of some famous figure in Israel’s history. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah (why him? Jesus wasn’t that much of a party-pooper.) Some other random prophet.
Jesus then turns the question on them. “But who do you say that I am?” Simon blurts out the right answer in spite of himself. “You are the Christ/Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus is impressed, so impressed that he gives Simon a new name with a play on words. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah…and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock (petra) I will build my church.”
It won’t take long for Simon Peter’s swelled head to get cut back to size – that happens next week – but for now he gets it right. And, I think, that is exactly what happens to us. There are moments when we can clearly see Jesus for who he is, when God names us and reveals to us who we really are. Even if we shortly thereafter fall into a confused forgetfulness, it is those moments of clarity that give us our true identity. It may not be one recognized by a bureaucracy, yet it is more permanent than any government card. It is who God knows us to be. And to be known, fully known and loved by God, is all the identity that we really need.
[Pentecost 10: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Matthew 16:13-20. I should note that Roman Catholics and Lutherans and others who fought bitter Reformation wars in continental Europe argue whether Jesus was building his church on Peter and his successors (i.e., the bishops of Rome) or Peter’s confession of faith. I’m thankful that from within the Anglican tradition I can talk about something else.]
Identity papers are a relatively recent invention. They crop up when a government feels the need to distinguish among different groups. Proof of identity has become particularly important in a world fearful of random violence. Somehow we feel more in control if we think we know exactly who everyone is. Never mind that tighter control makes counterfeiting more lucrative, or that some people are frozen out of the system because their personal identity isn’t good enough for a bureaucracy.
On Sunday we will have several questions of identity placed before us. Who is Moses? Who is Jesus? Who is Simon Peter? None of these people will be able to produce identity papers.
The story of Moses’ birth is a long one, befitting his importance. And like a good story, there is suspense. The struggles of the Israelites in Egypt are interwoven with the faithfulness of their midwives, who subvert orders to kill newborn baby boys. One such boy is hidden and discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh, who takes him as her own. Only at the end is the name of this child finally revealed: Moses. But even that drives the story forward. Will this child grow to identify himself as an Egyptian or as an Israelite? What will Moses’ final identity be?
Jesus comes right out and asks the identity question. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” he questions his disciples. They give him a variety of answers they’ve heard floating around, each a return to life of some famous figure in Israel’s history. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah (why him? Jesus wasn’t that much of a party-pooper.) Some other random prophet.
Jesus then turns the question on them. “But who do you say that I am?” Simon blurts out the right answer in spite of himself. “You are the Christ/Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus is impressed, so impressed that he gives Simon a new name with a play on words. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah…and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock (petra) I will build my church.”
It won’t take long for Simon Peter’s swelled head to get cut back to size – that happens next week – but for now he gets it right. And, I think, that is exactly what happens to us. There are moments when we can clearly see Jesus for who he is, when God names us and reveals to us who we really are. Even if we shortly thereafter fall into a confused forgetfulness, it is those moments of clarity that give us our true identity. It may not be one recognized by a bureaucracy, yet it is more permanent than any government card. It is who God knows us to be. And to be known, fully known and loved by God, is all the identity that we really need.
[Pentecost 10: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Matthew 16:13-20. I should note that Roman Catholics and Lutherans and others who fought bitter Reformation wars in continental Europe argue whether Jesus was building his church on Peter and his successors (i.e., the bishops of Rome) or Peter’s confession of faith. I’m thankful that from within the Anglican tradition I can talk about something else.]
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Crying for Help
This summer R and I had a wonderful two-week vacation on the West Coast. Some of the time was spent in Berkeley, where she had a conference. Most of it was in Seattle, a beautiful city with cool air and lots to see and do. We spent a lot of time drinking coffee, of course, and made our pilgrimage to the original Peet’s in Berkeley. In Seattle, R browsed the Elliott Bay Book Company while I checked out the flagship stores of Daniel Smith and REI. We’d love to go back there again.
Like any big city, and unlike where we live and work, there were people on street corners asking for money. Some were clearly destitute, carrying all of their possessions with them. Usually they had a territory staked out and were present on the same corner every day. They also knew one another. In Seattle one man sold an alternative newspaper as a way of earning a small wage, a practice I had seen and supported when we lived in Evanston. But by and large, the needs were always greater than my ability to give. And, of course, there was no way to determine what the money would be used for.
I returned from vacation with a new perspective on the many people who drop by the church asking for assistance. Some have obvious needs – the fellow who walks everywhere, thin as a rail and brown as a nut, asking for food. The sickly, pale young woman who needs gas money to get to Iowa City for leukemia treatments. Then there are those who appear to be gaming the system, giving stories that aren’t true when checked, arguing when told no as though assistance is their right. I try to work through Community Action whenever possible, because I know that at least there’s some screening and accountability there.
My response to people in need undoubtedly developed from what I saw others around me doing as I grew up. For instance, my mother used to make a sandwich for anyone who came to the door asking for money for food. Then one day she found a sandwich in the bushes, and that was the end of that. We both became more wary of people who said they were hungry.
In the Gospel story this week, Jesus seems very constrained by his Jewish upbringing. Jews had interactions with non-Jews out of necessity rather than choice. When Jesus and his disciples went off into Gentile territory, one gets the impression that their teeth were set on edge just by being there. Sure enough, a foreign woman came running up and started shouting at them. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!” she cried. “My daughter is tormented by a demon.” I imagine a disciple muttering under his breath, “and she isn’t the only one!”
Jesus remained silent. “He answered her not a word” is the literal translation. That, of course, did not quiet her down. Like any parent, she wanted help for her child. Her persistence annoyed the disciples so much that they asked Jesus to send her away. Finally Jesus the Jewish Messiah spoke, telling her that he was only sent to the lost of Israel. Still she persisted, kneeling down in worship before him. “Lord, help me,” she said.
What follows is an exchange that is guaranteed to offend anyone with modern sensibilities. In effect, Jesus calls her a dog, saying that isn’t fair to throw the Jewish children’s bread to dogs. Remarkably, she comes right back at him. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”
I can just imagine what would happen if I told someone who asked for assistance that they are a dog. The parish administrator’s eyes would get very big. And the supplicant would be very offended and either leave in a huff or cover me with verbal abuse.
So what’s going on here? Bad day for Jesus? One request too many? Did he think the woman was on drugs? Some would say that the woman caused Jesus to change his mind, making him realize that he was sent to non-Jews as well. Others use this passage to show that the whole Bible is hopelessly patriarchal and should either be rewritten or thrown out.
There’s no question that this is a remarkable woman. For one thing, she addresses Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, the Son of David. She falls at his feet and worships him. She is willing to take him on his own terms. When he talks about dogs, she even goes with that. Her one goal is to get her daughter healed.
And she succeeds. “O woman, great is your faith,” Jesus says to her. “Let it happen for you as you wish.” And that is the key. The woman succeeded through faith. It’s not that she made Jesus change his mind; rather, it became clear to him what was appropriate for this particular woman. Her faith was great, unlike the little faith of the disciples. The whole scene anticipates the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, when the disciples will be told to go into all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I don’t want to minimize the offensiveness of this passage to our ears. No one should be called a dog, much less treated like one. But don’t let offense get in the way of meaning. Jesus responds to faith. Even if there is silence at first, persistence in prayer has an effect. Jesus is willing to listen and respond, if we are willing to come to him in faith. And that is why I pray every day for everyone who comes through the church doors. I may not be able to give them all that they request, but I can pray for them. And someday, unknown to me, Jesus might say, “Let it happen for you as you wish.”
[Pentecost 9: Matthew 15:10-28.]
Like any big city, and unlike where we live and work, there were people on street corners asking for money. Some were clearly destitute, carrying all of their possessions with them. Usually they had a territory staked out and were present on the same corner every day. They also knew one another. In Seattle one man sold an alternative newspaper as a way of earning a small wage, a practice I had seen and supported when we lived in Evanston. But by and large, the needs were always greater than my ability to give. And, of course, there was no way to determine what the money would be used for.
I returned from vacation with a new perspective on the many people who drop by the church asking for assistance. Some have obvious needs – the fellow who walks everywhere, thin as a rail and brown as a nut, asking for food. The sickly, pale young woman who needs gas money to get to Iowa City for leukemia treatments. Then there are those who appear to be gaming the system, giving stories that aren’t true when checked, arguing when told no as though assistance is their right. I try to work through Community Action whenever possible, because I know that at least there’s some screening and accountability there.
My response to people in need undoubtedly developed from what I saw others around me doing as I grew up. For instance, my mother used to make a sandwich for anyone who came to the door asking for money for food. Then one day she found a sandwich in the bushes, and that was the end of that. We both became more wary of people who said they were hungry.
In the Gospel story this week, Jesus seems very constrained by his Jewish upbringing. Jews had interactions with non-Jews out of necessity rather than choice. When Jesus and his disciples went off into Gentile territory, one gets the impression that their teeth were set on edge just by being there. Sure enough, a foreign woman came running up and started shouting at them. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!” she cried. “My daughter is tormented by a demon.” I imagine a disciple muttering under his breath, “and she isn’t the only one!”
Jesus remained silent. “He answered her not a word” is the literal translation. That, of course, did not quiet her down. Like any parent, she wanted help for her child. Her persistence annoyed the disciples so much that they asked Jesus to send her away. Finally Jesus the Jewish Messiah spoke, telling her that he was only sent to the lost of Israel. Still she persisted, kneeling down in worship before him. “Lord, help me,” she said.
What follows is an exchange that is guaranteed to offend anyone with modern sensibilities. In effect, Jesus calls her a dog, saying that isn’t fair to throw the Jewish children’s bread to dogs. Remarkably, she comes right back at him. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”
I can just imagine what would happen if I told someone who asked for assistance that they are a dog. The parish administrator’s eyes would get very big. And the supplicant would be very offended and either leave in a huff or cover me with verbal abuse.
So what’s going on here? Bad day for Jesus? One request too many? Did he think the woman was on drugs? Some would say that the woman caused Jesus to change his mind, making him realize that he was sent to non-Jews as well. Others use this passage to show that the whole Bible is hopelessly patriarchal and should either be rewritten or thrown out.
There’s no question that this is a remarkable woman. For one thing, she addresses Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, the Son of David. She falls at his feet and worships him. She is willing to take him on his own terms. When he talks about dogs, she even goes with that. Her one goal is to get her daughter healed.
And she succeeds. “O woman, great is your faith,” Jesus says to her. “Let it happen for you as you wish.” And that is the key. The woman succeeded through faith. It’s not that she made Jesus change his mind; rather, it became clear to him what was appropriate for this particular woman. Her faith was great, unlike the little faith of the disciples. The whole scene anticipates the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, when the disciples will be told to go into all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I don’t want to minimize the offensiveness of this passage to our ears. No one should be called a dog, much less treated like one. But don’t let offense get in the way of meaning. Jesus responds to faith. Even if there is silence at first, persistence in prayer has an effect. Jesus is willing to listen and respond, if we are willing to come to him in faith. And that is why I pray every day for everyone who comes through the church doors. I may not be able to give them all that they request, but I can pray for them. And someday, unknown to me, Jesus might say, “Let it happen for you as you wish.”
[Pentecost 9: Matthew 15:10-28.]
Monday, August 8, 2011
Walking on Water
Jesus finally got to take a break. At first it didn’t seem that he would. He got into a boat and took off across the sea. But some people saw him and guessed where he would be going, and they got there first. By the time he arrived they were waiting, holding up sick children and old parents and asking him to heal them. Because he was Jesus, he relented. He could tell that they wanted to hear the good news about God’s love for them.
Jesus healed and preached for so long that it was way past dinnertime when he finally finished. By then his disciples were hungry and cranky, and asked him to send everyone away so they could eat. “You feed them,” he said. They protested and said that they didn’t have enough food. So he took the little that they had brought along, blessed and broke it, and gave it back to them to distribute. Not only did it feed everyone, but there was a lot left over.
Now Jesus could command his disciples to get into the boat and take off. Then he dismissed the crowd. Finally he was alone, able to go up into the mountain and pray. He prayed for all the people he had healed and he prayed for those cranky disciples and he prayed that God’s Spirit would be with him for the days ahead.
Meanwhile the disciples were out at sea, struggling against the wind and waves. They toiled all night but despaired of ever reaching shore. Then, shortly before the first light of dawn was to appear, they saw something white, walking on top of the waves. A ghost! A phantasm! They cried out in terror.
Then it spoke. “Have courage,” it said, in a familiar voice. “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They recognized the voice, but Peter needed proof. “Lord, if it is indeed you,” he said, “command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus knew what would happen, but he still said, “Come.” So Peter clambered down out of the boat and into the water. He started walking with his eyes fixed on Jesus.
Then a wave splashed him in the face. He blinked, and suddenly remembered how exhausted he was, and how the boat had pitched on the waves. He took his eyes off Jesus to look at the surging water. He got scared all over again. And he started to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he cried out.
Immediately Jesus reached out and grabbed Peter. He held him firmly until they got to the boat. Then as soon as they both climbed in, the wind stopped.
Did all of this really once happen? As a scientist, I used to get all worked up about the reality and details of this passage. Eventually I realized that it is a narrative, where the story is what’s important, not its historicity as we understand it. And the story is very clear, even today. Jesus comes into the midst of fear and says, “Have courage. Do not be afraid.” As long as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we can do whatever God asks us to do. And even if we do take our eyes off Jesus and fear returns, he will reach out and hold us until we reach safety. Walking on water may have happened, or it may not. But the promise that God will be with us in the midst of whatever life brings is a truth that is not dependent on historicity. It’s as true as having to take an occasional break from cranky disciples and pressing crowds.
[Pentecost 9: Matthew 14:22-33.]
Jesus healed and preached for so long that it was way past dinnertime when he finally finished. By then his disciples were hungry and cranky, and asked him to send everyone away so they could eat. “You feed them,” he said. They protested and said that they didn’t have enough food. So he took the little that they had brought along, blessed and broke it, and gave it back to them to distribute. Not only did it feed everyone, but there was a lot left over.
Now Jesus could command his disciples to get into the boat and take off. Then he dismissed the crowd. Finally he was alone, able to go up into the mountain and pray. He prayed for all the people he had healed and he prayed for those cranky disciples and he prayed that God’s Spirit would be with him for the days ahead.
Meanwhile the disciples were out at sea, struggling against the wind and waves. They toiled all night but despaired of ever reaching shore. Then, shortly before the first light of dawn was to appear, they saw something white, walking on top of the waves. A ghost! A phantasm! They cried out in terror.
Then it spoke. “Have courage,” it said, in a familiar voice. “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They recognized the voice, but Peter needed proof. “Lord, if it is indeed you,” he said, “command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus knew what would happen, but he still said, “Come.” So Peter clambered down out of the boat and into the water. He started walking with his eyes fixed on Jesus.
Then a wave splashed him in the face. He blinked, and suddenly remembered how exhausted he was, and how the boat had pitched on the waves. He took his eyes off Jesus to look at the surging water. He got scared all over again. And he started to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he cried out.
Immediately Jesus reached out and grabbed Peter. He held him firmly until they got to the boat. Then as soon as they both climbed in, the wind stopped.
Did all of this really once happen? As a scientist, I used to get all worked up about the reality and details of this passage. Eventually I realized that it is a narrative, where the story is what’s important, not its historicity as we understand it. And the story is very clear, even today. Jesus comes into the midst of fear and says, “Have courage. Do not be afraid.” As long as we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we can do whatever God asks us to do. And even if we do take our eyes off Jesus and fear returns, he will reach out and hold us until we reach safety. Walking on water may have happened, or it may not. But the promise that God will be with us in the midst of whatever life brings is a truth that is not dependent on historicity. It’s as true as having to take an occasional break from cranky disciples and pressing crowds.
[Pentecost 9: Matthew 14:22-33.]
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Feeding the Multitude
In September our church will be hosting its second annual community picnic in the park across the street. Last year’s picnic grew out of discussions in the Outreach Team over what we could do for the surrounding community, which ranges from well-to-do to hand-to-mouth. Most church activities revolve around food, and weekday visitors often ask for food vouchers redeemable at the local supermarket, so the decision was made to get the entire parish involved in feeding people. It worked. Everyone had a good time.
The planning for this year’s picnic started in March. Three especially energetic new team members jumped on the chance to organize it, so now we have a menu, food sources, grill, entertainment, advertising, alternate rain location, and organizational chart. Soon there will be personal calls to everyone in the parish, signing them up for jobs. The picnic happens to be on September 11, so the tenth anniversary of 9/11 has been incorporated. It’s a lot of work, but everyone enjoys it. We hope to feed some two hundred people – or whoever shows up.
Jesus, too, fed whoever showed up. In contrast to our careful planning, however, Jesus simply took what was at hand and managed to make it stretch to five thousand men, besides women and children. (Doesn’t that “besides” get you? At least Matthew includes the women and children. Mark just has men.)
Jesus’ disciples clearly are not as thrilled about the prospect of feeding everyone as our Outreach Team. They seem a bit peeved that a crowd showed up in a deserted place where Jesus was supposed to get some down time. It didn’t help that he preached right through the dinner hour. When their stomachs were growling and they were eyeing the bread and fish they’d brought along, Jesus had the nerve to tell them to feed everyone. Not having a cooler full of meat and ten bags of charcoal handy, they protested.
So Jesus took the little that they had. He blessed it, broke, it, and gave it back to them so that they could feed everyone. And they did. Not only that, but when they cleaned up afterwards they filled twelve baskets with what remained.
It was only in connection with Jesus that the disciples were able to feed those thousands of people. It will only be in connection with Jesus that our church will be able to put on a community picnic. It is the Spirit of Christ within that makes us want to help others in the first place. It is the love of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ that brings us together as a Christian community. It is the joy of Jesus that will be expressed that day.
If we do start to run out of food in September, someone will make a quick trip to the store. No one will ask me to take, bless, break, and give what’s available, expecting that it will miraculously multiply. Jesus will be present, but we still have to do the work. And by the grace of God, everyone will eat and be filled.
[Pentecost 8: Matthew 14:13-21.]
The planning for this year’s picnic started in March. Three especially energetic new team members jumped on the chance to organize it, so now we have a menu, food sources, grill, entertainment, advertising, alternate rain location, and organizational chart. Soon there will be personal calls to everyone in the parish, signing them up for jobs. The picnic happens to be on September 11, so the tenth anniversary of 9/11 has been incorporated. It’s a lot of work, but everyone enjoys it. We hope to feed some two hundred people – or whoever shows up.
Jesus, too, fed whoever showed up. In contrast to our careful planning, however, Jesus simply took what was at hand and managed to make it stretch to five thousand men, besides women and children. (Doesn’t that “besides” get you? At least Matthew includes the women and children. Mark just has men.)
Jesus’ disciples clearly are not as thrilled about the prospect of feeding everyone as our Outreach Team. They seem a bit peeved that a crowd showed up in a deserted place where Jesus was supposed to get some down time. It didn’t help that he preached right through the dinner hour. When their stomachs were growling and they were eyeing the bread and fish they’d brought along, Jesus had the nerve to tell them to feed everyone. Not having a cooler full of meat and ten bags of charcoal handy, they protested.
So Jesus took the little that they had. He blessed it, broke, it, and gave it back to them so that they could feed everyone. And they did. Not only that, but when they cleaned up afterwards they filled twelve baskets with what remained.
It was only in connection with Jesus that the disciples were able to feed those thousands of people. It will only be in connection with Jesus that our church will be able to put on a community picnic. It is the Spirit of Christ within that makes us want to help others in the first place. It is the love of God revealed to us through Jesus Christ that brings us together as a Christian community. It is the joy of Jesus that will be expressed that day.
If we do start to run out of food in September, someone will make a quick trip to the store. No one will ask me to take, bless, break, and give what’s available, expecting that it will miraculously multiply. Jesus will be present, but we still have to do the work. And by the grace of God, everyone will eat and be filled.
[Pentecost 8: Matthew 14:13-21.]
Friday, July 22, 2011
Life in the Spirit
This week three kinds of Bible readings greet us. First is the story of how Jacob, the ancestor of all Israel, got his first two wives. The second is one of the Apostle Paul’s closely reasoned arguments from his letter to the Romans. And last is a series of short parables from Jesus, each beginning with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” Three passages from continuous readings of three books of the Bible, so it’s not surprising that they don’t intersect with one another but rather seem to run parallel.
I’m not going to spend time with Jacob. To make sense of his story I’d have to supply a lot of background before getting to the point. Suffice it to say that summarizing it as “how he got his first two wives” shows what kind of “family values” are in the Bible.
Paul is worth the hard work of understanding, especially the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans, often described as “Life in the Spirit.” Last week we saw how all “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” – a claim that always astonishes me, that not just we, but everything that exists, await redemption through Jesus Christ.
Yet Paul well knows that though redemption is promised, it has not fully arrived. The yearning for it is so deep that we cannot find words to express it. Here the Spirit helps us, for God, too, knows that deep yearning, and wordlessly speaks it in our hearts. That Spirit brings us comfort, hope, and patience.
And it brought Paul the conviction that nothing can separate us from God’s love. He ends this section with a Spirit-filled expression of great power. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” Nothing. Nada. Nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God.
The power of that love, the all-encompassing nature of that love, Jesus shows us in a few short parables. What starts out as small as a seed becomes mighty; it fills everything like yeast in dough; it’s worth paying any price to get. Yet it is possible to reject God’s love. Why anyone would do that is beyond me, but God does give us the awful freedom to walk the other way. The end result as described by Jesus is sobering.
This Sunday I will be baptizing a three-month-old infant. Talk about a mustard seed! Through water and the Holy Spirit she will be raised to a new life of grace. She will be sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. When she yearns too deeply for words, the Spirit will intercede with God for her. Those are promises we are all given at baptism. It takes a lifetime to learn their truth – that nothing in all creation will ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
[Pentecost 6: Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.]
I’m not going to spend time with Jacob. To make sense of his story I’d have to supply a lot of background before getting to the point. Suffice it to say that summarizing it as “how he got his first two wives” shows what kind of “family values” are in the Bible.
Paul is worth the hard work of understanding, especially the eighth chapter of his letter to the Romans, often described as “Life in the Spirit.” Last week we saw how all “creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” – a claim that always astonishes me, that not just we, but everything that exists, await redemption through Jesus Christ.
Yet Paul well knows that though redemption is promised, it has not fully arrived. The yearning for it is so deep that we cannot find words to express it. Here the Spirit helps us, for God, too, knows that deep yearning, and wordlessly speaks it in our hearts. That Spirit brings us comfort, hope, and patience.
And it brought Paul the conviction that nothing can separate us from God’s love. He ends this section with a Spirit-filled expression of great power. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” Nothing. Nada. Nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God.
The power of that love, the all-encompassing nature of that love, Jesus shows us in a few short parables. What starts out as small as a seed becomes mighty; it fills everything like yeast in dough; it’s worth paying any price to get. Yet it is possible to reject God’s love. Why anyone would do that is beyond me, but God does give us the awful freedom to walk the other way. The end result as described by Jesus is sobering.
This Sunday I will be baptizing a three-month-old infant. Talk about a mustard seed! Through water and the Holy Spirit she will be raised to a new life of grace. She will be sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. When she yearns too deeply for words, the Spirit will intercede with God for her. Those are promises we are all given at baptism. It takes a lifetime to learn their truth – that nothing in all creation will ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
[Pentecost 6: Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52.]
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Weeds
One of the botany courses I used to teach was plant identification. When we got to the section on lawn weeds, I brought the class to my home. R still talks about it. I would excitedly walk around our property identifying all the weeds and the students would dutifully take notes. I can only imagine what must have been going through their heads!
Occasionally a “complimentary” lawn analysis would be left on our door by a local lawn care company. If they made the mistake of following up with a call, I good-naturedly berated them for listing so few plants, and then proceeded to tell them all of the species they missed. Soon they would be laughing and I had made my point: I was not a potential customer.
What is a weed, anyway? Basically, it’s a plant that’s out of place. Many, like dandelions, hitchhiked from Eurasia. Most people would consider dandelion a weed, but if they aren’t useful, why are they made into wine or used in salad? It’s curious how the whole concept of what does and does not belong in a lawn changed with the invention of herbicides and the desire to make money from them.
Agricultural weeds are a different story. In abundance, they can reduce crop yield. They gum up machinery. And some are just plain noxious, poisonous to people and cattle, or so invasive that they outcompete everything else. There’s even a USDA website for them.
One of the chief candidates for the “weeds” (KJV “tares”) in this week’s Gospel is such a plant, the black darnel or ryegrass (Lolium temulentum to a botanist). It isn’t true rye (that’s Secale cereale) but a lookalike to both wheat and rye, at least when it’s young. It can also be home to a fungus that, when present, makes darnel toxic. Not something you’d want in your wheat field.
So when the biblical farmer’s servants noticed darnel coming up with the wheat, he knew something was amiss. He must have had a nasty neighbor, whom he immediately suspected of skulking about at night with some bad seed. Rather than risk disturbing the wheat, the farmer opted to wait until the harvest and then separate the desirable crop from the weeds.
Matthew provides an interpretation of this parable. The interpretation sounds like Matthew, but the story does not, so there’s a possibility that the parable existed before its explanation. There are some characteristic images picked up by the interpretation: God as the sower, God’s people as the good seed, Satan as the enemy. Yet the story clearly states that evil’s immediate removal is not desirable. Rather, the outcome is what matters. The desire is to harvest good fruit, just as we saw in last week’s parable of the sower.
That’s an important message in a time when so many are anxious to define who is good and uproot those considered evil. The existence of evil cannot be denied or ignored. Yet that is not the primary focus of the parable. Growth and fruitfulness are. True, growth can be hindered by evil, but the Spirit cannot be stopped. Faithful growth will bear fruit.
We don’t have many weeds in our lawn any more, as our new house has fewer trees shading a healthier lawn. I no longer need the lawn as a teaching tool, either. Yet I still have a fondness for plants whose names I know, about whom I can tell stories of their journey to this continent. I’m still willing to let some weeds grow where they are not wanted. And now I have a parable from Jesus to back me up for doing so. I can leave them alone until harvest time.
[Pentecost 5: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.]
Occasionally a “complimentary” lawn analysis would be left on our door by a local lawn care company. If they made the mistake of following up with a call, I good-naturedly berated them for listing so few plants, and then proceeded to tell them all of the species they missed. Soon they would be laughing and I had made my point: I was not a potential customer.
What is a weed, anyway? Basically, it’s a plant that’s out of place. Many, like dandelions, hitchhiked from Eurasia. Most people would consider dandelion a weed, but if they aren’t useful, why are they made into wine or used in salad? It’s curious how the whole concept of what does and does not belong in a lawn changed with the invention of herbicides and the desire to make money from them.
Agricultural weeds are a different story. In abundance, they can reduce crop yield. They gum up machinery. And some are just plain noxious, poisonous to people and cattle, or so invasive that they outcompete everything else. There’s even a USDA website for them.
One of the chief candidates for the “weeds” (KJV “tares”) in this week’s Gospel is such a plant, the black darnel or ryegrass (Lolium temulentum to a botanist). It isn’t true rye (that’s Secale cereale) but a lookalike to both wheat and rye, at least when it’s young. It can also be home to a fungus that, when present, makes darnel toxic. Not something you’d want in your wheat field.
So when the biblical farmer’s servants noticed darnel coming up with the wheat, he knew something was amiss. He must have had a nasty neighbor, whom he immediately suspected of skulking about at night with some bad seed. Rather than risk disturbing the wheat, the farmer opted to wait until the harvest and then separate the desirable crop from the weeds.
Matthew provides an interpretation of this parable. The interpretation sounds like Matthew, but the story does not, so there’s a possibility that the parable existed before its explanation. There are some characteristic images picked up by the interpretation: God as the sower, God’s people as the good seed, Satan as the enemy. Yet the story clearly states that evil’s immediate removal is not desirable. Rather, the outcome is what matters. The desire is to harvest good fruit, just as we saw in last week’s parable of the sower.
That’s an important message in a time when so many are anxious to define who is good and uproot those considered evil. The existence of evil cannot be denied or ignored. Yet that is not the primary focus of the parable. Growth and fruitfulness are. True, growth can be hindered by evil, but the Spirit cannot be stopped. Faithful growth will bear fruit.
We don’t have many weeds in our lawn any more, as our new house has fewer trees shading a healthier lawn. I no longer need the lawn as a teaching tool, either. Yet I still have a fondness for plants whose names I know, about whom I can tell stories of their journey to this continent. I’m still willing to let some weeds grow where they are not wanted. And now I have a parable from Jesus to back me up for doing so. I can leave them alone until harvest time.
[Pentecost 5: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.]
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
A Smooth Man
My dad always liked the story of Jacob and Esau. Maybe it reminded him of his brothers, who could be as wily and mischievous as Jacob. They resembled one another in appearance, and once my grandfather on my mother’s side mistook one Horn brother for another, who played the part so well that my grandfather never caught on.
Dad’s favorite statement of Jacob’s was “my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man” (Genesis 27:11). It always made him laugh. I don’t know why. He was indeed a smooth man; his thin hairless legs gave him the nickname “Birdlegs” when he ran track in college.
Maybe the attraction of Jacob and Esau was how true to life the stories are. Even in the womb they struggled so much that their mother, Rebekah, said out loud, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” Surely my dad saw the exasperation on his own mother’s face as she struggled to raise eight children. And that wonderful image of Jacob coming out of the womb with his hand firmly gripping his brother’s heel. This was not going to be a peaceful household!
It didn’t help that Rebekah loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. Later she would help Jacob cheat his brother out of their father’s blessing. Last Sunday’s passage is a preview of this, and shows Esau as a man with more belly than brains. It isn’t as easy to find game as it is to cook up some lentils, so when Esau drags in at the end of a fruitless hunt, he readily does whatever Jacob asks just to get some dinner. Unfortunately for the slow-witted Esau, what he trades are his rights as first-born – which, admittedly, aren’t very filling when you’re hungry.
These stories aren’t intended to be historical biography, of course. They explain why the children of Jacob (Israel) didn’t get along with their distant kin, the children of Esau (Edom). Some also see them as part of the age-old conflict between nomadic hunters and settled farmers. For me, though, and probably for my dad, they show how well the biblical writers understood human nature, and how little that nature has changed over thousands of years.
That’s really what makes the Bible come alive for me. These aren’t ancient myths told by pre-scientific primitives. They are keen insights into how the world works, especially how people work. Genesis, in particular, is breathtaking in its description of how God enters into history, using someone as scheming as Jacob to create a promise that will one day be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. If these stories weren’t true to life, they wouldn’t have much meaning for me.
As far as I know, the Horn brothers never took advantage of one another except perhaps in jest, as with my maternal grandfather. In that sense, the resemblance to Jacob and Esau isn’t that strong. Yet families still have conflict, people still wheel and deal, and some make poor choices. In spite of all our human failings, God works with us and makes out of us something more than we can ask or imagine. Through God we become a blessing to others. And that’s true whether we are hairy or smooth.
[Pentecost 4: Genesis 25:19-24. I'm now back from vacation, so this is posted a bit late.]
Dad’s favorite statement of Jacob’s was “my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man” (Genesis 27:11). It always made him laugh. I don’t know why. He was indeed a smooth man; his thin hairless legs gave him the nickname “Birdlegs” when he ran track in college.
Maybe the attraction of Jacob and Esau was how true to life the stories are. Even in the womb they struggled so much that their mother, Rebekah, said out loud, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” Surely my dad saw the exasperation on his own mother’s face as she struggled to raise eight children. And that wonderful image of Jacob coming out of the womb with his hand firmly gripping his brother’s heel. This was not going to be a peaceful household!
It didn’t help that Rebekah loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. Later she would help Jacob cheat his brother out of their father’s blessing. Last Sunday’s passage is a preview of this, and shows Esau as a man with more belly than brains. It isn’t as easy to find game as it is to cook up some lentils, so when Esau drags in at the end of a fruitless hunt, he readily does whatever Jacob asks just to get some dinner. Unfortunately for the slow-witted Esau, what he trades are his rights as first-born – which, admittedly, aren’t very filling when you’re hungry.
These stories aren’t intended to be historical biography, of course. They explain why the children of Jacob (Israel) didn’t get along with their distant kin, the children of Esau (Edom). Some also see them as part of the age-old conflict between nomadic hunters and settled farmers. For me, though, and probably for my dad, they show how well the biblical writers understood human nature, and how little that nature has changed over thousands of years.
That’s really what makes the Bible come alive for me. These aren’t ancient myths told by pre-scientific primitives. They are keen insights into how the world works, especially how people work. Genesis, in particular, is breathtaking in its description of how God enters into history, using someone as scheming as Jacob to create a promise that will one day be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. If these stories weren’t true to life, they wouldn’t have much meaning for me.
As far as I know, the Horn brothers never took advantage of one another except perhaps in jest, as with my maternal grandfather. In that sense, the resemblance to Jacob and Esau isn’t that strong. Yet families still have conflict, people still wheel and deal, and some make poor choices. In spite of all our human failings, God works with us and makes out of us something more than we can ask or imagine. Through God we become a blessing to others. And that’s true whether we are hairy or smooth.
[Pentecost 4: Genesis 25:19-24. I'm now back from vacation, so this is posted a bit late.]
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Trinity
I like it when Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day coincide. It reminds me of what Gregory of Nazianzus said in his writings about the Trinity: the existence of God the Father is dependent on the existence of God the Son, because a Begetter could not exist without one who is Begotten. In the same way, a man is not a father without a child. Nice parallelism.
This Sunday we hear the Great Commission, the passage at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” – or as the stained glass window at our church puts it, “Go to therefore…” Matthew also has the only Trinitarian formula in the Gospels, “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Many scholars insist that this is the early church inserting words into Matthew’s text, but John Nolland doesn’t. Instead, he says, Matthew is neatly summarizing all that he has written. “Matthew’s story has been about the action of the Father through the Son and by means of the Holy Spirit. And that is what the baptized are joined to.”
In a sense, that’s what the whole Bible is about. We will also hear the [first] story of creation in Genesis, in which God as Creator moves as Spirit over the waters and speaks the Word/Son who causes all to come into being. For Christians, the Trinity is present right from the beginning of creation.
Father’s Day in Burlington is when the annual Snake Alley Art Fair is held. Because the church is so close to Snake Alley, parking is practically nonexistent after 8 a.m. So we will have an early service and then serve breakfast to whomever wanders in from the art fair. After taking in the artwork myself, I’ll return to the church to provide a spoken Eucharist for the kitchen help. It will be a low Sunday, as Trinity Sunday typically is. That’s unfortunate. A Trinity sermon on Father’s Day might be just the thing to help people comprehend what is one of Christianity’s most distinctive and least understood doctrines.
[Pentecost 1, Trinity Sunday: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20. The quote from Nolland’s book is on page 1269.]
This Sunday we hear the Great Commission, the passage at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” – or as the stained glass window at our church puts it, “Go to therefore…” Matthew also has the only Trinitarian formula in the Gospels, “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Many scholars insist that this is the early church inserting words into Matthew’s text, but John Nolland doesn’t. Instead, he says, Matthew is neatly summarizing all that he has written. “Matthew’s story has been about the action of the Father through the Son and by means of the Holy Spirit. And that is what the baptized are joined to.”
In a sense, that’s what the whole Bible is about. We will also hear the [first] story of creation in Genesis, in which God as Creator moves as Spirit over the waters and speaks the Word/Son who causes all to come into being. For Christians, the Trinity is present right from the beginning of creation.
Father’s Day in Burlington is when the annual Snake Alley Art Fair is held. Because the church is so close to Snake Alley, parking is practically nonexistent after 8 a.m. So we will have an early service and then serve breakfast to whomever wanders in from the art fair. After taking in the artwork myself, I’ll return to the church to provide a spoken Eucharist for the kitchen help. It will be a low Sunday, as Trinity Sunday typically is. That’s unfortunate. A Trinity sermon on Father’s Day might be just the thing to help people comprehend what is one of Christianity’s most distinctive and least understood doctrines.
[Pentecost 1, Trinity Sunday: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20. The quote from Nolland’s book is on page 1269.]
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Breath
In the middle of one night when N was about four years old, I awoke to find him standing next to our bed. I had been sound asleep, yet in that deep sleep I heard him breathing. He was quiet, barely audible even when I was fully awake, but it was his breath, and as a parent I knew that he was there and needed something. So I woke myself up.
Throughout N’s youth he had a “reactive airway” – not really asthma, but enough to give him an inhaler. And a cough. In a roomful of noisy children, R could pick out his cough and know he was there.
We don’t usually think of breath as being distinctive. Breathing is just something we do. But anyone with asthma or COPD knows how important breath is. Anyone who takes a CPR class learns how to breathe for someone else. Anyone who has been present at a death, whether of human or pet, knows the finality of that last breath – “a breath that goes forth and does not return,” as the psalmist says.
Several languages, including Greek and Hebrew, use the same word for breath and spirit, recognizing that the spirit departs when the breath ends. This multivalent meaning for one word creates some interesting ambiguities. In Genesis, God’s Spirit moves over the face of the waters. Or is it his breath? Does God give breath to Adam, or spirit? God speaks the Word in creation, but to speak God must use Breath/Spirit. And so the Trinity is present right from the beginning of creation.
This Sunday is Pentecost, the festival that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus (and thus to the Church). The familiar version of that story, in which the disciples speak in different languages, is told in the Acts of the Apostles. Sunday’s Gospel reading from John has a very different tradition. John says that on the very day of the resurrection, Easter itself, Jesus came to the disciples through closed doors, stood and their midst, and said “Peace to you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He breathed on them. In Greek it’s the same word used for God’s breathing life into Adam, and for the breath that Ezekiel prophesied into the dry bones in the valley. It’s the breath of life. But this breath comes from the resurrected Jesus. It is a new creation, new life, a new spirit that Jesus breathes.
It’s a Spirit that does not go forth, never to return. In baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever. The Holy Spirit remains with us throughout our lives and beyond. Yet I often wonder how well we listen to that Spirit. Are we like a watchful parent, waking up when it is there next to us? Can we pick out the true Spirit in a noisy culture calling to us with many spirits that are not from God?
N has long since grown up and moved away. Given how loudly I snore now, I don’t know if I’d hear him anyway. Yet I still work to hear that voice of God, to breathe that breath of Jesus, to have the words “Peace to you” in my ears. Baptized in the name of the Trinity, sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever, we are all part of the new creation. And that’s true no matter what language we speak.
[Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23.]
Throughout N’s youth he had a “reactive airway” – not really asthma, but enough to give him an inhaler. And a cough. In a roomful of noisy children, R could pick out his cough and know he was there.
We don’t usually think of breath as being distinctive. Breathing is just something we do. But anyone with asthma or COPD knows how important breath is. Anyone who takes a CPR class learns how to breathe for someone else. Anyone who has been present at a death, whether of human or pet, knows the finality of that last breath – “a breath that goes forth and does not return,” as the psalmist says.
Several languages, including Greek and Hebrew, use the same word for breath and spirit, recognizing that the spirit departs when the breath ends. This multivalent meaning for one word creates some interesting ambiguities. In Genesis, God’s Spirit moves over the face of the waters. Or is it his breath? Does God give breath to Adam, or spirit? God speaks the Word in creation, but to speak God must use Breath/Spirit. And so the Trinity is present right from the beginning of creation.
This Sunday is Pentecost, the festival that celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus (and thus to the Church). The familiar version of that story, in which the disciples speak in different languages, is told in the Acts of the Apostles. Sunday’s Gospel reading from John has a very different tradition. John says that on the very day of the resurrection, Easter itself, Jesus came to the disciples through closed doors, stood and their midst, and said “Peace to you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He breathed on them. In Greek it’s the same word used for God’s breathing life into Adam, and for the breath that Ezekiel prophesied into the dry bones in the valley. It’s the breath of life. But this breath comes from the resurrected Jesus. It is a new creation, new life, a new spirit that Jesus breathes.
It’s a Spirit that does not go forth, never to return. In baptism we are marked as Christ’s own forever. The Holy Spirit remains with us throughout our lives and beyond. Yet I often wonder how well we listen to that Spirit. Are we like a watchful parent, waking up when it is there next to us? Can we pick out the true Spirit in a noisy culture calling to us with many spirits that are not from God?
N has long since grown up and moved away. Given how loudly I snore now, I don’t know if I’d hear him anyway. Yet I still work to hear that voice of God, to breathe that breath of Jesus, to have the words “Peace to you” in my ears. Baptized in the name of the Trinity, sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever, we are all part of the new creation. And that’s true no matter what language we speak.
[Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23.]
Friday, June 3, 2011
That They May Be One
There are times when I wish the life of faith were a whole lot simpler. There’s a certain satisfaction in viewing the Bible as an answer book, a set of propositions that will fit any situation. All it takes is an index that will connect each problem to the appropriate verse, and voilá! the problem is solved. The fact that such Bibles exist makes me realize what I’m up against in insisting on more depth and complexity in Scripture.
In spite of my wish for something simpler, I can’t go there. Maybe that’s because I like the Gospel of John so much. It’s hard to extract simple propositions from John unless they’re so basic as to be almost useless (“God is love,” for instance.) No wonder most people prefer Matthew, Mark, and Luke! John is much less direct and more open to interpretation. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church emphasizes the last verse of Sunday’s passage (“that they may be one, as we are one”) to promote the unity of all Christians – a worthwhile goal, until you realize that they mean everyone needs to return to the Roman Catholic Church.
That desire for unity seems to reside close to the desire for uniformity, which itself emphasizes authority, of pope or pastor. That’s one reason I shy away from magisterial interpretations of the Bible, where Father knows best and the laity are supposed to believe whatever they’re told. The self-help Bibles may seem to be at the other extreme, but they’re not; someone created that index which purports to answer every need. Either way, we’re told to obey the authority of someone else.
So where does John’s Gospel fit in? I am often mystified myself about what he’s saying, and reading him in Greek doesn’t help much. But there are a few things that do seem clear. For one, he continually emphasizes the eternal relation of the Son to the Father. Jesus came from God and would return to him in glory: “So now, Father, glorify me…with the glory I had in your presence before the world existed.”
It is into this eternal relationship that we are invited to enter by being disciples of Jesus Christ. (And yes, it is an eternal relationship of Love.) That is what true unity is about, the unity of God. Just as one God exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so also we are created as persons in order to exist in relationship with one God and one another.
A simple enough idea, perhaps. It’s the living of it that is so difficult. I’m blessed to be in a church community whose members get along pretty well, but I don’t have illusions that we are all unified. (All I have to do is propose changing the carpet!) The local Lutherans and Episcopalians celebrate their common mission through joint Ascension and Epiphany services, but the area council of churches has such a conservative focus that I’m uncomfortable at their meetings. The divisions of Christianity are a great scandal and an impediment to mission.
So a simple life of faith is illusory. Life itself is not that simple; why should faith be? Yet I can still long for unity in Christ, to be one, as God is one. That unity will not come until God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. In the meantime we can work toward unity, the coming of God’s kingdom upon earth.
[Easter 7, the Sunday after the Ascension. John 17:1-11.]
In spite of my wish for something simpler, I can’t go there. Maybe that’s because I like the Gospel of John so much. It’s hard to extract simple propositions from John unless they’re so basic as to be almost useless (“God is love,” for instance.) No wonder most people prefer Matthew, Mark, and Luke! John is much less direct and more open to interpretation. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church emphasizes the last verse of Sunday’s passage (“that they may be one, as we are one”) to promote the unity of all Christians – a worthwhile goal, until you realize that they mean everyone needs to return to the Roman Catholic Church.
That desire for unity seems to reside close to the desire for uniformity, which itself emphasizes authority, of pope or pastor. That’s one reason I shy away from magisterial interpretations of the Bible, where Father knows best and the laity are supposed to believe whatever they’re told. The self-help Bibles may seem to be at the other extreme, but they’re not; someone created that index which purports to answer every need. Either way, we’re told to obey the authority of someone else.
So where does John’s Gospel fit in? I am often mystified myself about what he’s saying, and reading him in Greek doesn’t help much. But there are a few things that do seem clear. For one, he continually emphasizes the eternal relation of the Son to the Father. Jesus came from God and would return to him in glory: “So now, Father, glorify me…with the glory I had in your presence before the world existed.”
It is into this eternal relationship that we are invited to enter by being disciples of Jesus Christ. (And yes, it is an eternal relationship of Love.) That is what true unity is about, the unity of God. Just as one God exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so also we are created as persons in order to exist in relationship with one God and one another.
A simple enough idea, perhaps. It’s the living of it that is so difficult. I’m blessed to be in a church community whose members get along pretty well, but I don’t have illusions that we are all unified. (All I have to do is propose changing the carpet!) The local Lutherans and Episcopalians celebrate their common mission through joint Ascension and Epiphany services, but the area council of churches has such a conservative focus that I’m uncomfortable at their meetings. The divisions of Christianity are a great scandal and an impediment to mission.
So a simple life of faith is illusory. Life itself is not that simple; why should faith be? Yet I can still long for unity in Christ, to be one, as God is one. That unity will not come until God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. In the meantime we can work toward unity, the coming of God’s kingdom upon earth.
[Easter 7, the Sunday after the Ascension. John 17:1-11.]
Baptism
Central to our faith is the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. That’s what makes us Christians, after all. And what makes Christians unique is belief in the resurrection of the dead – passing through death into life. Entry into this community we call Christianity is a process that prefigures that passage, a process we call baptism. In the early church, and in some churches today, the person is literally dunked underwater and then brought up again, stark symbolism of dying and rising. In my church (and many others) that has been reduced to three splashes with water from a shell over a font that’s too small to dunk a newborn. Some parents are very happy that we don’t use total immersion with their child.
The church has always understood Israel’s passage through the Red Sea as a kind of prefiguring of baptism. The Israelites were fleeing from bondage in Egypt and God miraculously provided a route for them through the waters that blocked their way. The Red Sea crossing and forty years in the wilderness became the defining events in their development as a distinct people. In the baptismal rite, the Thanksgiving over the Water recalls those events, as well as the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters at creation, and the baptism of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.
Only in the first letter of Peter is Noah’s ark described as a prefiguring of baptism. [It was especially appropriate on this Sunday, when we welcomed a Noah into the household of God!] Peter’s symbolism is clear: the waters of chaos threatened to wipe out all humanity, but God saved Noah and his family by telling him to build an ark. I don’t want to press this story too far. For one thing, I’m not a biblical literalist, and for another, there’s the matter of all the people who died in the flood. It’s not helpful when so many have suffered recently in severe weather.
R’s favorite part of baptisms is the point at which she makes the sign on the cross on the newly baptized and says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” I can see why she likes it. That’s the whole theology in a nutshell. Through the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit enters in and makes a home in that person. He or she is marked as Christ’s own forever. That’s why we baptize only once.
John’s Gospel tells us that once the Holy Spirit abides in us, the Spirit of truth will reveal the love of Jesus, and through Jesus the love of God. “You will know that I am in my Father,” Jesus says, “and you in me, and I in you.” God’s very essence is the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a relationship built on love.
Created in the image of God, we are fundamentally relational as well. That is why baptisms in the Episcopal Church take place at the principal service on Sunday morning. Baptism is the first step in joining the Christian community, so the community must be present to welcome the newly baptized. We also reaffirm our own baptismal vows, including the promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers” – in other words, to be faithful members of a Christian community – “with God’s help.” So whether we have a complete dunking or splashes with a shell, we symbolize our passage through death to new life in Christ. No wonder that in his darkest days, Martin Luther could console himself by shouting, "I am baptized!" For him and for us, it makes all the difference between life and death.
[Easter 6: Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21.]
The church has always understood Israel’s passage through the Red Sea as a kind of prefiguring of baptism. The Israelites were fleeing from bondage in Egypt and God miraculously provided a route for them through the waters that blocked their way. The Red Sea crossing and forty years in the wilderness became the defining events in their development as a distinct people. In the baptismal rite, the Thanksgiving over the Water recalls those events, as well as the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters at creation, and the baptism of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.
Only in the first letter of Peter is Noah’s ark described as a prefiguring of baptism. [It was especially appropriate on this Sunday, when we welcomed a Noah into the household of God!] Peter’s symbolism is clear: the waters of chaos threatened to wipe out all humanity, but God saved Noah and his family by telling him to build an ark. I don’t want to press this story too far. For one thing, I’m not a biblical literalist, and for another, there’s the matter of all the people who died in the flood. It’s not helpful when so many have suffered recently in severe weather.
R’s favorite part of baptisms is the point at which she makes the sign on the cross on the newly baptized and says, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” I can see why she likes it. That’s the whole theology in a nutshell. Through the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit enters in and makes a home in that person. He or she is marked as Christ’s own forever. That’s why we baptize only once.
John’s Gospel tells us that once the Holy Spirit abides in us, the Spirit of truth will reveal the love of Jesus, and through Jesus the love of God. “You will know that I am in my Father,” Jesus says, “and you in me, and I in you.” God’s very essence is the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a relationship built on love.
Created in the image of God, we are fundamentally relational as well. That is why baptisms in the Episcopal Church take place at the principal service on Sunday morning. Baptism is the first step in joining the Christian community, so the community must be present to welcome the newly baptized. We also reaffirm our own baptismal vows, including the promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers” – in other words, to be faithful members of a Christian community – “with God’s help.” So whether we have a complete dunking or splashes with a shell, we symbolize our passage through death to new life in Christ. No wonder that in his darkest days, Martin Luther could console himself by shouting, "I am baptized!" For him and for us, it makes all the difference between life and death.
[Easter 6: Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21.]
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Irresistible Grace
One of the advantages (I suppose) of starting out at a Presbyterian seminary is that I got a good grounding in Reformed theology. Given that the English Reformation was influenced more by Calvin than Luther, that was a good thing. Calvin turned out to have some redeemable qualities. As a former lawyer he was a more systematic thinker than Luther. Like Luther, it was Calvin’s followers who hardened into stone some of the less desirable features of the founder.
The most striking example of that hardening was the Dutch Synod of Dort in the seventeenth century. Out of this came classic Reformed doctrine, summarized by the mnemonic TULIP:
• Total depravity of humankind
• Unconditional election (to salvation or damnation, from before all time)
• Limited atonement (Christ died only for the elect, not all humankind)
• Irresistible grace
• Perseverance of the saints (those who have been elected will be saved no matter what)
It’s a peculiar collection to my mind and I don’t subscribe to any of it except for one item: irresistible grace. At our clergy lectionary study this week, one Lutheran pastor brought up irresistible grace as his way of interpreting the saying of Jesus, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If it is evil that draws us away from God, he said, and in the end evil will either be destroyed or converted, then all people will eventually be drawn to God because of God’s irresistible grace. He did, however, make the concession that our free will makes it possible to refuse to turn toward God. Someone may look at what God offers and then choose otherwise (which, I suppose, means that grace isn’t really irresistible after all!).
It’s an intriguing problem. How should Christians regard those who do not believe in Jesus Christ? There are two easy solutions, neither of which I find to be scriptural. One is to presume to know the mind and will of God, and to judge unbelievers as condemned to hell. The other extreme is complete relativism, to say that there are many ways up the mountain, all of which are valid. This assumes that it is the same mountain all religions climb, which is clearly not so. Is there some third solution, an Anglican via media?
The Scripture readings this week are pretty uncompromising. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. Yet Jesus is also the Word through whom everything is created. So Christ can be revealed through the natural world and through people who are not Christians. For the strict Reformed, total depravity kicks in here – we are so sinful that we cannot see God in creation unless it is through Christ. I don’t share that interpretation, and neither did the early Anglicans who talked about the “two books” of revelation (nature and the Bible). Christ’s universal presence in creation allows Christians to work for the kingdom of God side by side with people of other faiths, including the faith of no-God (atheism).
I believe that Jesus Christ is the fullest self-revelation of God to humankind. That is why I am a Christian. True, God can be known outside of Christianity, but that is not as complete as knowing God through Jesus Christ. (And even that vision, as the Apostle Paul well knew, is like seeing through a mirror darkly.) As for salvation, it is freely offered to all. Jesus died for everyone, not just the elect. But like my Lutheran friend, I believe that grace is only irresistible to a point, because we have to cooperate with grace for it to work. We have the choice of turning away from God. Why anyone would do that, God only knows. For who can resist that Love known to us in Jesus Christ?
[Easter 5: Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14.]
The most striking example of that hardening was the Dutch Synod of Dort in the seventeenth century. Out of this came classic Reformed doctrine, summarized by the mnemonic TULIP:
• Total depravity of humankind
• Unconditional election (to salvation or damnation, from before all time)
• Limited atonement (Christ died only for the elect, not all humankind)
• Irresistible grace
• Perseverance of the saints (those who have been elected will be saved no matter what)
It’s a peculiar collection to my mind and I don’t subscribe to any of it except for one item: irresistible grace. At our clergy lectionary study this week, one Lutheran pastor brought up irresistible grace as his way of interpreting the saying of Jesus, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If it is evil that draws us away from God, he said, and in the end evil will either be destroyed or converted, then all people will eventually be drawn to God because of God’s irresistible grace. He did, however, make the concession that our free will makes it possible to refuse to turn toward God. Someone may look at what God offers and then choose otherwise (which, I suppose, means that grace isn’t really irresistible after all!).
It’s an intriguing problem. How should Christians regard those who do not believe in Jesus Christ? There are two easy solutions, neither of which I find to be scriptural. One is to presume to know the mind and will of God, and to judge unbelievers as condemned to hell. The other extreme is complete relativism, to say that there are many ways up the mountain, all of which are valid. This assumes that it is the same mountain all religions climb, which is clearly not so. Is there some third solution, an Anglican via media?
The Scripture readings this week are pretty uncompromising. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. Yet Jesus is also the Word through whom everything is created. So Christ can be revealed through the natural world and through people who are not Christians. For the strict Reformed, total depravity kicks in here – we are so sinful that we cannot see God in creation unless it is through Christ. I don’t share that interpretation, and neither did the early Anglicans who talked about the “two books” of revelation (nature and the Bible). Christ’s universal presence in creation allows Christians to work for the kingdom of God side by side with people of other faiths, including the faith of no-God (atheism).
I believe that Jesus Christ is the fullest self-revelation of God to humankind. That is why I am a Christian. True, God can be known outside of Christianity, but that is not as complete as knowing God through Jesus Christ. (And even that vision, as the Apostle Paul well knew, is like seeing through a mirror darkly.) As for salvation, it is freely offered to all. Jesus died for everyone, not just the elect. But like my Lutheran friend, I believe that grace is only irresistible to a point, because we have to cooperate with grace for it to work. We have the choice of turning away from God. Why anyone would do that, God only knows. For who can resist that Love known to us in Jesus Christ?
[Easter 5: Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14.]
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