Unbind him, and let him go!

Unbind him, and let him go!

I will never forget listening to the entire Eleventh Chapter of John read at Philip Berrigan’s funeral by his wife, Elizabeth McCalister, and feeling the danger and the risk Jesus took to go to Bethany to see a friend he loved buried in a cave while there were people nearby who wanted to do him harm, wanted to kill him. As the last reading of Lent before we enter Holy Week, this year we hear this story as we continue best practices during the Covid-19 Coronavirus outbreak: to Stay Home, and when we are out of the house to practice what our bishop likes to call Compassionate Distancing: Compassionate Distancing Saves Lives.

Although one might think the main character in this story is Lazarus who is raised from the dead, I’m not so sure. Or, Jesus, who, knowing the danger of those who want to kill him, still heading back to the region of Judea to be with the friend he loves at the request of the Bethany sisters, Martha and Mary. Or, maybe it is Thomas who urges his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Or, is it the community that has been gathered in the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus to comfort and enter into the sadness, mourning and even anger the sisters experience at their brother’s death and the fact that their friend Jesus had not come when first called. Or, is it those who rolled away the stone from the cave and eventually would unbind Lazarus from the burial cloths so reminiscent of the swaddling cloths Mary wrapped around her tiny baby, or the burial cloths Jesus would soon leave neatly folded in the burial cave of Joseph of Arimathea on the day of his resurrection. Or, is it everyone of them, and everyone of us?

We, who are now “bound” by restrictions that govern our freedom to move about; fears of contagion; sadness and grief at the already monumental loss of life, and the knowledge that this is just the beginning. And beyond all of these things that bind us and keep us bound tight there are the questions: Why is this happening? What can be done? And worst of all, who can we/I blame for all of this? Why does God allow such things like Covid-19 Coronavirus to exist to disrupt our lives, our communities and the entire world?

We all want to hear the words, “Unbind us, and let us go…set us free!” When the way, the truth and the life of it, the one who is Resurrection and Life is the same one who in the story risks his own safety to be with us who, like Lazarus, like the sisters Martha and Mary, are bound up tight in their loss, sadness, fear, anger, grief and death.

Martha shows us a way. When she hears Jesus is at the edge of town, she gets up and leaves the care and comfort of the community surrounding her and marches out to meet Jesus where he is and lets him have it: If you had been here sooner, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him. We need to do this. We have to let it out and acknowledge our fear and our grief. If God in Christ is who we think he is, he can take it. He can take our anger, our sadness, our fear, our grief and hold it all, and transform it all as he does with Martha. He reminds her and us, “I am resurrection and I am life. Do you believe this?” Yes, she says, I believe you are the Christ! She binds herself unto God in Christ.

The power in this story is that it reminds us that The promise of resurrection does not lie in some future event, but that in Christ and with Christ it is here, now. Life is here now. Resurrection is here now. Christ is here now having burst the binding of his three-day prison. When the mystics among us remind us to Be Here Now, we are to remember Life and Resurrection are Now. And it is Martha, this practical woman of the household, who is first in John’s story to proclaim in no ambiguous terms, Yes, Lord, I believe. We are to remember; we are all Martha. And in the midst of all our anger, fear, grief and uncertainty that for now forces us to live together in new ways, Christ who is Life, and Light, and Resurrection and Love is here now, if only we will Be Here Now and not let ourselves be distracted by the all the chaos and controversies keeping us from our experience of  The Living God right where we are.  We need to Stay Calm, Stay Connected and Stay Church. For it is as Jesus says at the beginning of the story: God will be glorified by going to the heart of the suffering community. He is already here and always has been. Instead of being bound by the chaos and danger and sorrow that surrounds, we need to roll away the stones that keep us in our caves, and bind ourselves to God in Christ.

One final thought. As I stood alone in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Rochester, NY, there was a gigantic stained glass window of Charity: A woman like Martha, larger than life, striding forward as if out of the window, forward past all trouble, forward with Christ, and with a banner waving about her that proclaims, “Faith, Hope and Charity, abide these three, but the greatest of these is Charity!” Charity is the King James translation of Love – and reminds us that Love always means going beyond yourself to others, to otherness. That is how we are to be the character at the heart of this story and in this time in which we feel bound. Allowing ourselves to be unbound allows us the freedom to think beyond ourselves and reach out in prayer and service to others who are also feeling bound up at this time.

Love alone overcomes fear and is the true foundation that lasts. Faith, hope and love, abide these three. But the greatest of these is Love! Unbind us, and set us free to bind ourselves unto God in Christ in Love and Charity!

I once was blind but now I see...

Shabbat Shalom. Peaceful Sabbath. Sabbath is the first gift given to us by our Creator. Sabbath returns us to the Holiness of Time. We spend so much of our life attending to the world of space, of things, of possessions and possessing. And when we run out of things we spend our time coveting more things, more possessions, forgetting that in the end space and all things of space only exist in Time. The Bible speaks of the creation of space in Time.

“A special consciousness is required to recognize the ultimate significance of time. We all live in it and are so close to being identical with it that we fail to notice it. The world of space surrounds our existence. It is but a part of living, the rest is time. Things are the shore; the voyage is in time.” [Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1951, p 96]

There is a Realm of Time where the goal is not to have, but to be; not to own, but to give; not to control, but to share; not to subdue but to be in accord…This is the Realm of Sabbath time. Which is the first thing in Creation that the Lord God declared Holy. [Ibid p 3ff]

Jesus heals a man born blind by spitting on the ground to mix a kind of mud, put it on the man’s eyes, and tells him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man can see. “Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes,” writes the storyteller John [John 9:1-41]. There is so much going on in this rather long account: questions about why the man was blind, about sin, about who is to blame, about authority, about light and darkness, healing, personhood and more.

Yet, at the heart of this story is the Sabbath – a day to remember the Holiness of Time, God’s first gift to humankind. Sabbath is essential to being one of God’s people, to being a Jew. It is a reminder that a people who once were slaves 24/7 now have a day off. The Pharisees, often made out to be the ‘bad guys,’ are right to be concerned that Jesus appears to be breaking time honored rituals around Sabbath – rituals that say we are meant to rest, not do the things of space, but rather rest in the realm of Time. We may overlook that on this Sabbath day the man who was forced to become a beggar is now able not only to see but to defend himself and Jesus against all assaults from the authorities who are sure they know just how Sabbath time is to be observed.

So wrapped up in things of space, the Pharisees cannot see that Jesus is that force of creation that took moisture and dust to make a kind of mud, breathed, blew God’s ruach, God’s breath, into it and created a life. That this blind man is reborn, given a new life. He is no longer afraid. And that Jesus divides light from darkness, that is sight from blindness. And it is all about seeing for the first time what God, what Jesus, what Sabbath is all about: not to have but to be; not to own, but to give; not to control, but to share; not to subdue but to be in accord. The story means to ask: Who is really breaking the Sabbath here? And, who is keeping it?

I say all this because we have been given an extended kind of Sabbath Time. For the time being we are to withdraw from the world of space and retreat to the Realm of Time of which Heschel speaks. I believe we are invited to see this time not as a time for extreme anxiety, but rather as an invitation into Sabbath, the first gift we are given in creation. Heschel asserts that, “Even when the soul is seared, even when no prayer can come out of our tightened throats, the clean, silent rest of the Sabbath leads us to a realm of endless peace, or to the beginning of awareness of what eternity means.” [Ibid p101]

One day as I stood in a Cathedral Church in Rochester, NY, I saw two stained glass windows opposite one another. The scripture of one read, “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” [2Timothy1:7] The other simply read, “The God of Love shall be with you.”[2Corinthians 13:11] Sabbath means to bring us to that awareness that the God of Love is with us, even in this time of public health crisis. And that we have been given power, and love, and strong minds that can overcome and transcend any and all fears. May we enter into this gift of Sabbath Time together and allow ourselves to experience the Living God who inhabits all Time. Who knows, an instant of returning to God in Sabbath may restore what has been lost in years of escaping from Him. The God of Love shall be, and is with us, as we travel through this extended Sabbath time. May we remember, God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Shabbat Shalom.

The Humility of God

The Humility of God

Last Sunday Jesus met with a religious professional – Nicodemus, a Pharisee. The Pharisees were one of a number of religious parties in Israel including Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and others, all who held competing views of what it means to love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself. Yet, they all establish boundaries between themselves and others. [John chapter 3]

The text goes on to tell us Jesus comes to love the world, the kosmos, all of creation and everything therein. That he does not come to condemn or judge the world, but to reconcile, repair, rescue and reunite the kosmos and everyone and everything therein. The world is filled with separation and boundaries. He reminds Nic that we are all made of the same stuff – water and spirit, water and breath – the breath, the ruach of God that animates the first human in creation – the spirit breath that is life and light and love for all.

Jesus comes to remind us that his Way, his Path, is to move us beyond the boundaries we create that judge us, condemn us to solitary lives separated from the love of God and from one another. As Paul would sum it up, if we are in Christ there is no Pharisee, no Sadducee, no Essene, no Zealot, no male or female, no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no liberal or conservative, no black or white….No. All is made one in Christ who comes to us in great humility and with reconciling love to repair and rescue a broken world, a broken cosmos.

This Sunday we read that Jesus is near a Samaritan town. [John chapter 4] He is tired from traveling, from teaching, from healing, from loving a broken, angry, and divided world. He sits down near the well that our ancestor Jacob dug for his sons and daughters, his flocks and his herds, to drink from. His disciples are off in the city shopping, buying food, emptying the shelves of bread and water and whatever else they think they need. The storyteller John says it is about noon – the hottest time of the day. A woman comes to draw water. She is a Samaritan. Jesus asks her for a drink of water.

She is astonished. How is it, she asks, that you, a Jew, as me, a woman, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water? (The storyteller reminds us Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans…a sign of just how broken the world, the kosmos, really is…yet, here boundaries are being crossed.) As he had with Nicodemus, a Pharisee, he talks with her about water and spirit. We are meant to see that this is the same conversation. No matter that she is a woman and men do not speak with non-family women in public in the middle of the day. No matter that she is a foreigner. No matter that their respective tribes strive to have nothing to do with one another.

And we learn that he knows things about her. She has had five husbands and the man she is living with is not her husband. She has suffered multiple broken and failed relationships. She comes to draw water at noon in the heat of the day so as to avoid the other women who come early in the morning in the cool of the day. So as to avoid how they avoid her, glance at her with pity, snicker about her all the while refusing to talk with her. This woman is the most broken person Jesus meets in all the four gospels. And yet, he not only speaks to her, he asks her for a drink of water, for he is tired and he is thirsty and the men he travels with are too busy buying things to help him let alone the likes of her.

She is astonished. She is astonished that anyone would speak to her at all. And that is when it happens. Are we able to see that his simple request for a drink is transformative? There is something you can do for me, he says. It no longer matters who you are or what others think of you. You are a daughter of Jacob and thereby a daughter of the Most High God. You are made of water and spirit. All at once his simple request gives her purpose, and dignity, and personhood. We notice she assumes a new confidence in speaking with this strange man sitting by Jacob’s well who speaks of Living Water that springs up within her. Suddenly she becomes a theologian engaging him about water and then stating the problem that separates their respective people – we worship on this mountain and you say we worship in Jerusalem. That no longer matters, he says. Jesus says to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then the disciples return from their shopping spree and begin babbling about lunch! She drops her bucket, runs back to the city and tells people she has had an experience of the Living God, the Christ. The Christ spoke to her despite knowing all about her broken life. Do we see that this broken woman of Samaria becomes the first evangelist, the first to proclaim the good news of God in Christ? Before Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Before Paul writes letters, she is the first to proclaim the good news! And her testimony propels others to leave the town to go see for themselves. All because Jesus asks her for a drink of water. He dares to cross every social and religious barrier and boundary to treat her as an equal. He gives her the same dignity as he would Nicodemus and anyone, really, who will come to him in the same humility in which he comes to them. To us. To all people. To the entire world, the kosmos. We are all made of the same stuff, water and spirit. He wants to be with us.

The Christ comes to unite, to repair, to rescue us from ourselves and the ways in which we separate ourselves from one another and from the love of God. When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

When You Gonna Wake Up

Wake Up!

This week it is back to “In the beginning….” Which is how the Fourth Gospel begins, echoing Genesis 1. John 3:1-17 takes us back to the beginning: whether in Genesis 1 and 2, or The Wilderness Sojourn with Moses and the Grumblers.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee who comes to Jesus in the dark of night to get come clarity on just “Who is this guy anyway?” Echoing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid! Nic is looking for answers. Jesus responds by going back to the beginning. We are made of water and breath…and a handful of dust. Nic is perplexed by this. Jesus says you need to be born from above…or again, depending on how one translates this. Which is the basic message of all spiritual directors, gurus and retreat leaders, and basically means, “Wake Up!” That is, we are all sleepwalking through life. Who has time to Wake Up and remember we are water, breath and dust? We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year-old carbon, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden! Nic remains perplexed. The Spirit/Wind/Breath of God comes from we know not where, and blows where it wills. Let it enliven you and wake you up so you can see.

Jesus then reassures him, I am not here to Judge the world but to save it and love it, rescue and repair it. Judging results in separation; separation implies judgement. My efforts are focused on love for the world – literally in the text, love for the kosmos, all of creation and everything therein. And helping you to see that the kosmos is a unified whole. You are one with the kosmos and the kosmos is one with you. Join me in my efforts to save, to repair and to rescue the kosmos and everyone and every thing therein. The storyteller John cannot imagine everyone, all of us, wanting to join with him in his work to reconcile all things and everyone. We do all the separating ourselves. Wake up!

Just as your GPS suddenly says, “Recalculating,” Jesus suddenly shifts from creation to the wilderness sojourn and talks about Moses lifting up a snake on a pole. Surely Nic and his Pharisee companions remember this episode. The people wandering in the wilderness with Moses are hungry. They grumble. The Lord of Mercy apparently does not like grumbling and sends firey snakes who bite them on the heel and they die. Moses fashions a bronze snake and puts it up on a pole and instructs the people to look up at the bronze snake whenever they get bit on the heel. They do and are saved. To look up at the snake is life, is rescue, is healing. It helps to know that seraphim are firey angels who exist as flames of fire. As such they are messengers of God. Yet, here they are biting the people on the heel. This is all very odd to be sure

It’s an analogy about the Cross. Storyteller John wants us to see that looking up at Jesus on the Cross will save us, rescue us, and restore us to follow Jesus in rescue and repair of the kosmos! As with the bronze snake, looking up at Jesus on the Cross means life. It’s a wake up call. But the analogy makes Jesus the Bronze Snake, which somehow rehabilitates the original snake in the garden. Yet, what does this make Jesus? Does he bite and kill? Does he lie like the snake in the garden to get the Mother of Life to eat what is not hers to eat? Or, is he testing the people of God as Jesus was tested in the wilderness? Wake up!

Then comes a statement. Is it from John or from Jesus? The text itself is not clear. But it has been emblazoned on placards at football and baseball games and begins, “God so loved the kosmos that he gave….” Which is an indication of God’s character: God loves and God gives. We are made in God’s image, God’s character.  We are to love and to give. And what we are to love is the kosmos- the world, all of creation. Not the Church. Not a party. Not a system. We are to love the world and everything therein. And what God gave for the world was significantly more than 10%! God gave it all, God’s whole self for the world that God loves. How much are we willing to give to show our love for the world, the kosmos, the totality of Creation, all that is – seen and unseen? Maybe if we get our act together people like Nicodemus, Butch and the Kid, will look back at us and ask, “Who are those guys?” It’s the dark of night. We’re looking for answers.

Wake up!

When You Gonna Wake Up?

“Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death…”

Revelation 3:2

 

God don't make promises that He don't keep

You got some big dreams baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep.

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up

When you gonna wake up strengthen the things that remain ?

Counterfeited philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts

Karl Marx has got ya by the throat, Henry Kissinger's got you tied up in knots.

You got innocent men in jail, your insane asylums are filled

You got unrighteous doctors dealing drugs that'll never cure your ills.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools

You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules

Do you ever wonder just what God requires ?

You think He's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires.

You can't take it with you and you know that it's too worthless to be sold

They tell you, 'Time is money' as if your life was worth its weight in gold.

There's a man up on a cross and He's been crucified

Do you have any idea why or for who He died?

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up

When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain ?

                        -Bob Dylan, Copyright © 1979 by Special Rider Music