The Cross We Carry

Last Sunday in Part I of this episode in Matthew 16:13-28 we learned that the answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?’ is in the question itself: the christos or Christ of God is one and the same as the voice from the burning bush who announces to Moses when aske, “Who are you? Who should I say is sending me to Pharaoh and my people?” is “I am.” “I am who I am.” That’s all we need to know. That’s all there is to know, as Moses leads the people out of bondage into a new life of freedom. Once safe across the Red Sea, his sister Miriam and the rest of the women get out their tambourines and lead the people in dancing and singing their way to a new life with the inscrutable I Am. Now Christos says that we who choose to follow him must pick up our cross.

 

At my first baptism at Christ Church, Winnetka, IL. A little girl named Eleanor, and her mother Francis who had never been baptized. Everyone said some version of, “Awwww, this is so sweet!” Afterwards, we were invited back to their home for brunch. There I was, standing talking with someone, with a plate of quiche in one hand, and a glass of wine in the other. Suddenly, there was a tug on the back of my pants leg. I turned around, and there was Eleanor. “Can you still see the cross on my forehead?” she asked. Meaning the cross traced with oil blessed by our bishop, sealing her as Christ’s own forever, and marking her as fully incorporated into the Body of Christ.

 

Eleanor was about five. When asked if everything she does and everything she says will proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, she said, “I will with God’s help.” Same when asked if she will seek and serve Christ in all people, loving her neighbor as herself, and will she strive for justice and peace for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. All this flashed through my mind before saying, “Yes, Eleanor, we can still see the cross on your forehead!” And the smile on her face lit up as she skipped off utterly pleased with herself!

 

I thought, wow, that’s a great question. We should all be asking ourselves, Can people see the cross on my forehead? This is the cross we carry as a sign of who we are and whose we are. But then I went back to eating quiche and drinking wine and talking with other people. All the next week I forgot that question. The next Sunday I was vesting for church. There was a tug on the back of my alb. It was Eleanor again. Pointing to her forehead, she asked, “Can still see the cross on my forehead?” A week later she still knew what had happened to her. The question remains, can people still see the cross we carry on our foreheads?

 

There are people in our communities and in our country who have never heard the Good News of Jesus. Jesus, who in his first sermon in his hometown synagogue announced, after reading from the prophet Isaiah, that he comes to bring Good News to the poor, to release prisoners and to help those who are blind to see. There are people in the streets every day trying to help us all to see things that happen every day to black and brown people to which most of us are blind. We hear every day about the pipeline from high school to prison in many cities, with people serving sentences for relatively minor infractions that are far too long. And it has been a very long time, if ever, that poor people have heard any kind of good news. Homeless people too. People with addictions of all kinds. The list goes on, there being no shortage of people in need of our love and care.

 

One of the things we have learned Monday through Friday at Noon listening to Black and Brown American voices is that minority peoples often feel invisible at best to the rest of us. We have no idea what it is like to live as a Black or Brown person in America We have no idea how many times a month or a year non-white people get pulled over by police for minor or even fabricated infractions such as the well-known “driving while Black.” How do we begin to wear the cross of Jesus on our foreheads when fellow citizens of this great country of ours are not being respected with dignity? How do we begin to wear the cross of Jesus on our foreheads when it is rare, if ever, that we strive – defined as to make great efforts to achieve or obtain something, to struggle or fight vigorously – for justice for all people and peace for all people? Do we really believe that there is something of the Christ of God in all people, let alone seek and serve that which is of God in all people? Does everything we say and do proclaim the Good News of Jesus? To all people – Black, White, Brown, Straight, LGBTQ, Rich, Poor, Homeless and in Prison? These questions are front and center in what it means to be baptized into the Body of Christ. How will people see the cross on our foreheads, which our opening prayers says ought to issue forth in good works.

 

The heart of the Good News is that you are God’s Beloved. And not only that, but that God is well pleased with you. And that our God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Just ask the group of slaves who escaped Egypt for a new home and a new life if this is true. Once across the Red Sea, Miriam, Mose’s sister, and the rest of the women got out their tambourines and led the entire cohort of 650,000 escapees in dancing and singing their way to freedom! That is some real striving for justice and peace! We are all meant to be dancing and singing the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God together and with all people. All people.

 

I am forever grateful that early in my ministry, a young girl opened my eyes to even begin to understand what it means to pick up my cross and follow Jesus when she asked, “Can you still see the Cross on my forehead?”

Who Am I!

WDYSTIA

 We all remember WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? Long before that became ‘a thing,’ I was living in a small Massachusetts town of about 600 people and thousands of acres of State Forest. I was in a band, and we played frequently at the Warwick Inn, just up the road from Wendell. As I sat on the stage behind my drums, I could see a poster on the wall, in black and white, of The World Champion Chinchilla, and it’s trophy! During our breaks I would head back to the bar for a glass of water. And finally, one night I asked Greg, son of the owner of  both the Inn and The World Champion Chinchilla, about a sign over the cash register: WYBMADIITY. Greg replied, “Would you buy me a drink if I told you?” I said, “Sure, but what does it mean?” With a smile on his face Greg says, “Would You Buy Me A Drink If I Told You!”

Jesus asks his closest followers, “Who do people say that I am?” [Matthew 16:13-20] It’s not a poll. He has been followed around by thousands of people. Thousands. Both Pharisees and Sadducees, together, are trying to figure him out. They NEVER get together, let alone interrogate someone together. Jesus is a small-town kid and has never anticipated this much attention. He wants to know what people are saying. The disciples respond: John the Baptist (who, by the way, had recently been beheaded by Herod Antipas), Elijah (who is never pictured in scripture as having ‘died,’ and whom the prophet Malachi says will return before the Day of the Lord, [Malachi 4:5-6]), Jeremiah (who warned about the destruction of Jerusalem, and lamented its eventual destruction), or some other of the prophets. Not bad company! But not who he is.

Then he asks the pivotal question: Who Do You Say That I Am? WDYSTIA! Let me begin by saying, having served a total of nearly 23 years in churches named after St Peter, a central figure in today’s story, so that this story comes up two times every year to preach on, means I have something like 46 sermons archived on just this story! Yet, I was sitting in the backyard getting a fire going in the Webber, reading Wendell Berry, when out of nowhere it struck me! The answer to his question is in the question. I never ever noticed that before, not in 46 iterations of this sermon! Even after I had preached on the numerous instances in John’s Story of Jesus on the “I Am” speeches: I am the Good Shepherd, I am the gate to the sheepfold, I am the bread from heaven, I am the true vine, I had never noticed, the answer is in the question in the final two words: I Am. This is the one who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush, who when asked by Moses, much like the Caterpillar asks Alice, “Who are you?” the bush says, “I am who I am.”

Suddenly, out of the blue, Peter, bumbling Peter who lost his nerve and lost faith in himself out on the water, gets it: You are the Christ, God’s Anointed, the Messiah, “the Son of the Living God.” Which is the equivalent of saying, “Oh my God look, it’s ‘safe drivers save 40%’”! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!) It’s the equivalent of saying, “You are ‘I am who I am’!” Those two words, “I am,” always, always, point back to the God of the burning bush. Jesus is ‘I Am.’

Yet, there is an even more important question implied in WDYSTIA! WAI! Who Am I? We and the disciples are meant to ask ourselves this pivotal question. For when we are baptized into The Body of Christ, a cross is traced on our foreheads with oil blessed by our bishop, sealing us and marking us as “Christ’s own forever. The Bond established in Holy Baptism is indissoluable.” [BCP 298] Who are we? Who are you? Who Am I?  Do we remember? How often do we remember who we are and whose we are? That we are the Body of Christ? To be continued. 

What’s A Mother To Do?

 

(With thanks and gratitude for the insights of Amy Jill Levine into this pivotal story)

Once again, the themes of perseverance and have faith in yourself persist in Matthew’s Gospel [15:21-28]. Keep in mind, just before this scene of a mother desperate to find help for her daughter, Jesus is debating the Purity Squad, saying it is not what you eat, what you put into your mouth, that defiles a person. Rather, he says,  it is what comes out of your mouth that defiles you. Then, inexplicably, he turns around and calls this Canaanite mother, her daughter, and all of “her people,” a dog.

 

I could not help but think of this Canaanite woman, perhaps one of the most important figures in the Bible, while hearing Tamika Palmer and Bianca Austin pleading with the authorities in Louisville for healing for themselves and the community, and for justice for Breonna Taylor: they are her mother and aunt respectively. They spoke of bridging the gap between the police and the community and making a world where there will be no more Breonna Taylors, George Floyds, or Eric Garners.

 

 She is yet another unnamed woman in the Gospels, much like the Samaritan Woman at the well, has a transformational encounter with Jesus – only this time he is the one who is transformed. It’s a story that invites us all to be transformed, and to let go of long held beliefs that hinder and fracture relations between communities of people.

 

Jesus is heading toward gentile territory, the very same area to which God sent Elijah to a widow who feeds him, after which he heals her son. Jesus needs a well-deserved rest when suddenly this woman shouts out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, haShem, Adonai, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” Actually, the Greek text tells us she “screams out,” giving us a deeper understanding of just how painful it is to watch her daughter suffer; we feel her desperation. Note, she, a gentile, calling Jesus Kyrios, “Lord,” is the same as calling him haShem, the Jewish circumlocution for God. And “Son of David” acknowledges him as Messiah, God’s anointed. This stranger, an outsider, knows more about who Jesus really is than the insiders like his disciples, as we find out in the following scene in Caesarea Philippi: Who do you say that I am?

 

For starters, Jesus ignores her. This alone seems cruel. Then the disciples beg him to dismiss her or release her “because she is screaming after us!” Jesus ignores their plea, but says, “I have been sent to find the lost sheep of Israel.” Not a promising sign for this gentile woman. But now she places herself on her knees in front of him – blocking his advance on the road to rest. “HaShem, help me!” she cries. This is when what comes out of his mouth sounds defiling. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” The children being the Israelites he believes are his one and only concern; she, her daughter and gentiles are “dogs”. This is at least the second time he makes this point in Storyteller Matthew’s account, for earlier he tells his disciples to stay away from gentile territory. As she is blocking his way, he is forced to address her.

 

We may as well admit, many of us would either give up at his insult, or get angry. But this mother is strong, and is desperate to find relief for her daughter. Once again, she addresses him as Lord, as haShem, as God. “Yes, but haShem, even the dogs are eating the crumbs from the table.” Any of us who have raised children know this to be true! But, to have the presence of mind to talk back to the One – haShem, The Lord! This takes moxie, determination, presence of mind, and a commitment to securing your daughter’s future, her very life.

 

It is this Canaanite Woman who not only has stopped Jesus in his tracks, but helps him to see the bigger picture, the greater mission that lies ahead of him: to rescue gentiles as well as Israelites! A vision long ago advanced by prophets like Isaiah. There are to be no “her people” and “our people.” Because of her persistence, Jesus lets go of long held biases and beliefs that had hindered relations between his people and hers. He now knows that we are all one people. He will declare this broader mission to all people to his disciples after he rises from the dead! He recognizes her faith and dispels the demons that possess her daughter. It is new life for her daughter now free from the demons. More importantly for all of us gentiles, it’s a new life for Jesus as well, and for us!

 

Unlike Peter who loses faith in himself and begins to sink into the surf, Jesus recognizes this woman has faith in herself and the God of Israel. And once again, perseverance furthers! From that moment on, Jesus is changed even more significantly than anyone else in the story.

 

All because this unnamed Canaanite Woman recognizes that her future, and her daughter’s, is with the God of Israel. Note also, she retains her Canaanite and gentile identity. She does not need to ‘convert.’ She joins herself to the God of Israel, but remains forever a Canaanite. She also proves herself more faithful than the insiders, the disciples, and especially Peter! She takes to the street to do whatever she needs to do to secure relief and safety for her family, even physically making herself an obstacle Jesus needs to get past; forcing him to address her directly. She changes the future direction of our Lord’s mission from being a parochial affair to a universal mission to all people everywhere! Jesus recognizes her as a model for us all – faithfulness is not what we say, or what we believe, but what we do on behalf of others – all others, no matter who they are or where they come from. Screaming, blocking the way in the road, and keeping the conversation going are the signs of her faithfulness.

 

Her daughter was healed from that very hour. Isn’t that what we all want? To be freed from the demons that beset us and our society? Isn’t that all that people like Tamika Palmer and Bianca Austin are asking for? They stand with other women like Rahab, Ruth, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Malal Yousafzai, and countless others who like this Canaanite Woman urge us to  live out the vision Isaiah 56 proclaimed some 600 years before Jesus:

Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord…these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. And to this we say, Amen; it is Truth; it is so!

Better Times Will Come, Janis Ian

 

Do Not Doubt Yourself! We Can Do This!

Jesus tries to get away, alone, to get some Facetime with his Father, but as we recall, over 5,000 hungry people followed him, so he and disciples fed them. Now he sends the disciples out on their own to the “other side” of the sea while he finally gets a break (Matthew 14:22-33). He trusts they know what to do. There are people there that need their help. But the seas are rough, the wind is fierce and they struggle to keep the boat afloat.

Perhaps this is a metaphor for so many of us buffeted by the winds of the Novel Coronavirus, over 160,000 Americans dead and counting, who knows how many times that number of families and friends who are grieving, confusion over what to do about the Pandemic, unemployment is high, businesses closing, racial tensions erupting nearly every day, lock-downs and quarantines, masks and sanitizers, the US Mail has slowed down, questions about a safe election in the fall, and more, so much more, all come together to make it feel as if the ship of State as well as our own personal boats are struggling to keep afloat. And if it isn’t external winds buffeting us, there are the sleepless nights, low and even high-level depression settling in, anxieties and fears and other effects of the ongoing isolation and disruption of much, if not all, of our daily routines becomes exhausting – physically and emotionally.

Jesus senses the problem and comes to his friends in the boat – walking on the water. They think it’s a ghost. Only Peter knows who it is and asks, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Take heart, it is I, says Jesus. Do not be afraid. Peter steps out of the boat. All is going well until he realizes how wild and tempestuous it is when you get out of the boat to follow Jesus! Peter begins to sink and cries out for help. “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reaches out his hand, catches him and says, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

As courageous as it was for Peter to step out of the boat, which is really what Jesus is asking all of us who want to follow him to do; we who have promised in our baptism to follow and obey him. It is even more courageous for Peter to ask for help. How many of us do our best to pretend all is well, when things have rarely, if ever, been as dangerous and chaotic as they seem right now? Peter is the most courageous one in that boat, both for stepping out to follow Jesus, and for calling out for help. Asking for help is the first step to getting saved. Yet, how often do we really do this – call for help?

But why does Jesus say, “…why did you doubt,” I wonder. Why did you doubt? But he does not doubt it is Jesus; he steps out of the boat sure that it is. As I was running on Friday morning, and singing in my head, “Help me Lord, Help me Lord, Help me Lord I’m feeling low…” It happened. Like Elijah waiting in the crevice of a rock for God to come to him; Elijah who endures, like us and the disciples in the boat, wind, earthquake and fire – finally hears a still small voice. Suddenly I lost all sense of the world around me, and a voice came to me and said, “I was telling Peter not to doubt himself! I could see he believed in me, but he doubted himself – that he could withstand the winds and the waves and the danger we all faced all around us. I wanted him to know, “You can do it, Peter! You were doing it! You will survive long after I am gone. Don’t doubt yourself!” Just as suddenly, I was back running around the parking lot wondering what lap it was and where had I just been.

That’s what the Lord wants us to hear today: call out to Jesus for help, and He will remind you: Do not doubt yourself. Call on me. Call on the others. We can survive the winds and waves that swirl about us if we just step out of the boat and walk with Jesus wherever he goes. If we go to be with all those he goes to see. Indeed, when they get to the other side, we will read there are many more like us in need of his healing and saving touch. Just barely touching the hem of his garment, they are healed, saved, and given the courage to trust themselves to survive. Do not doubt yourself. Have faith and do not fear. Reach out your hand, and I’ll be there to lead you safely home – your true home is with me, my Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Help Me Lord I'm Feeling Low

Listen, That You May Live

I suspect the Jesus in Matthew 14:13-21 has memorized these opening words from Isaiah 55: "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

In our consumer driven economy that can only thrive with people who covet, acquire and consume more and more stuff, much if not most of which ends up at some thrift shop or the local landfill, the prophet some 600 years before Jesus asks what is perhaps the pivotal question for all of us attempting to seriously pursue the life of the Spirit: Why do we insist on fattening the offshore bank accounts of those who claim to have a monopoly on the bread supply and labor for that will never satisfy?

There a lot going on in this little snippet of prophetic poetry: what you really thirst for and are hungry for can be had “without money and without price;” why do we labor for that which will never satisfy?; come to the waters and escape like the ancestors did at the Red Sea, or as all of Judea who bathed in the River Jordan with Wilderness John?

Speaking of whom, Jesus momentarily cuts short his journey to Jerusalem. After a long chapter of enigmatic parables, he learns that Wilderness John has lost his head at Herod’s Birthday party and now he, Jesus,  needs to get away from it all, so he heads for the hills – with 5,000 men and an additional unspecified number of women and children trailing him and his disciples! It turns out there is no rest for are weary and thsoe frightened by the Empire. And realistically, if you are in a boat on that lake we call the Sea of Galilee, anyone and everyone anywhere near the perimeter of the lake can see where you are headed. And they do, and they follow.

Jesus being Jesus of the Love Ethic we have heard was exemplified by Representative John Lewis, has compassion on the crowd and goes about healing people – which in itself is dangerous since also located on the shores of the Galilee Lake is a Healing Spa which was big business at the time – it’s hot springs were reputed to heal all your ills, and people came from all over the ancient world to spend their shekels lavishly at the spa and at the local hotels and restaurants. Who, those business people no doubt were asking themselves, is this bumpkin doing it all for free right out in the open? Does he not understand how the economy works?

The disciples try to tell him it’s late, the people are hungry, so let’s send them out into the towns and city to get a bite to eat. “Feed them yourselves!” Jesus says. “They don’t need to get hustled for whatever little money, if any, they have.” The disciples reply, “Uh, we only have five loaves of bread and two fish!” This is where I imagine Jesus thinks to himself, “Have you not read, marked and inwardly digested Isaiah chapter 55? “Come eat…without money…without price!”

But instead he sighs and says, “Bring that to me, and the rest of you get the crowds to sit down on the grass.” Like his Father in heaven way back in Genesis, Jesus is always bringing order out of chaos, abundance out of scarcity.

Now the results are so over-the-top that we tend to miss what really is going on. Everyone eats until they are stuffed, and there are twelve baskets of leftovers! One for each disciple, or one for each tribe of Israel. We see the symbolism. And we think this is a miracle about feeding 5,000+ people with so little bread. So much so that we miss what’s really going on: a lesson in Kingdom Living and Kingdom Economics – so different, as in Isaiah 55, from the way those who monopolize goods, access and power like Pharaoh and Caesar. Rather, it is what Jesus does that matters and is the lesson for Kingdom Living.

The short-hand version is: Take, Bless, Break and Give. He takes what little they have. He blesses it, offers to the one who is behind the alternative bread supply. He breaks the loaves open. And he gives it away. Do we see what’s going on here? Is it clear?

It’s about taking what little we have, blessing it, offering it up to God, breaking it, and giving it away. Jesus’s actions declare, “Whatever we have is yours,” to a crowd who no doubt also understand the danger of Caesar’s Rome which through its stooge Herod Antipas has beheaded Wilderness John who had baptized most of them, and whose father, the other Herod, had slaughtered all of Jesus’ baby cousins way back at the beginning of the story while Jesus and Mary and Joseph hid in Egypt, of all places! Egypt! Where Pharaoh had perfected hoarding and monopolizing all the food in the region such that their ancestors, Jacob and the tribes of his twelve sons had to succumb to becoming slaves in Egypt to avoid starvation - just as the crowd with Jesus were now slaves of Caesar in their homeland. Israel was no longer home. Yet, here is this Jesus giving it all away – both healing and bread just being given away. As if to say, what would happen if all of us with whatever little we have would begin to take, bless, break and give it all away as well? What would that be like? If I can do it, says Jesus, under threat from the Empire like Wilderness John, I believe we can all do it together. There is a way out of all this.

Evelyn Underhill, an Anglican churchwoman, observed, “…most of us remain enslaved, bonded, to three verbs: “to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.” [Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life p 20]

In chapter 13 Jesus had said that those who have will get more, and those who have little will have it taken away. Now in chapter 14 he demonstrates that in his Father’s Kingdom those who have little will truly get more when we adopt the behaviors of the Kingdom of Living. Everyone will get enough with lots of leftovers! In Acts chapter two we learn this is how they lived!

Take, Bless, Break and Give. Some say this is about the Eucharist. Maybe, maybe not, other than the acts of the priest in the Eucharist are there to remind us how we are to live as citizens of another Kingdom, that of the alternative bread supplier of Isaiah 55.  Isaiah goes on to say, “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” Listen, so that you may live.

And this is why I believe Jesus is intimately familiar with Isaiah’s poetry, most especially passages like that in chapter 55. He embodies Isaiah’s vision. He lives it as an invitation to all who watch and listen. What will it take for us to take it as seriously as Jesus does? Or, do we wish to be spend our lives plagued by the prophet’s question: Why do we spend our money for that which is not bread, and our labor for that which does not and never will satisfy? Amen.