The Open Table? Proper 13B

 

The Open Table?

We pray on this Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, “Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church. To which I would add, “cleanse and defend us all.” And “all,” in my way of thinking about Holy Communion, means all. The context of all these readings in the sixth chapter of John is Jesus feeding 5,000+ men, women and children with five barley loaves and a couple of fish that he takes from a young lad, blesses, breaks and gives it all away.

 

The miracle just as well might have been that so inspired by the total generosity of the young man and Jesus to give it all away, perhaps as the morsels of barley loaves and fish were distributed others gave all that they may have had with them. For we know at the end of the day there were twelve baskets of leftovers. Such giving and receiving would not only be a miracle in our own day, but a true moment of grace and mercy for all who were present.

 

There is no question that this story of feeding thousands is the core of John’s eucharistic theology as the fourth gospel’s later depiction of the Last Supper has no description of passing bread and wine around the table, but rather shows Jesus washing feet and issuing a “new commandment”: that those who are to follow in his Way are to love one another as he loves them. That is, to humble ourselves, taking the form of servants, and “become obedient, even to the point of death, even death on a cross.” [Philippians 2: 8] The feeding stories in the gospel go to great pains to portray these events as prototypical eucharists as Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and gives the bread away, the very actions reported by Paul, Matthew, Mark and Luke’s versions of the Last Supper.

 

It may seem obvious to point out, but at no point do any of the miraculous feeding stories in the four gospels depict Jesus appointing the disciples to go around and check to see if everyone present is in any way ‘credentialed’ or ‘worthy’ to receive the meal. Israel, even back then, being one of the most pluralistic parts of the ancient world due to the continued presence from all over the ancient world those who were traveling the great trade routes from east, west, north and south, as well as spiritual seekers who had heard of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus and wanted to see for themselves what this tradition is all about. All sorts and conditions of people are likely present. Jesus simply sees to it that all who seek to be fed are fed. The ‘table’ is his, and all are welcome. “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden…”

 

Or, as John puts it earlier in the gospel, God so loves the world that he gave his only Son so that all might share in eternal life…here…now…on earth as it is in heaven. God loves the whole world and gives Jesus to the whole world. To all.

 

And yet. And yet, Jesus’s Body, the Church, struggles to offer his sacred meal to all people, no matter what. In fact, except for a few small and largely unknown corners of the Church, requirements are routinely set for who can and cannot receive communion. Which always has struck me as odd, if not downright sad. To say, for instance as The Episcopal Church does, that one needs to be baptized seems to fly in the face of nearly all stories in the four gospels in which Jesus invites everyone, no matter what, to his table. After all, he is the host. His is the eternal presence at the center of our ritual meals of bread and wine. These restrictions are a problem.

 

To make matters worse, however, we read in the news that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is in the process of drawing up further restrictions of who can and who cannot receive communion based on, among other things, a person’s political opinions and positions. As one who was taught in my Calvinist confirmation class that one needs to feel “worthy” to receive communion in the strongest terms, I excommunicated myself for years. And yet, as we have been exploring in our Noonday Prayer sessions for the past month, it is abundantly clear that Jesus not only came for but actively sought out some of the most “unworthy” people to not only share meals with him, but to become his disciples, to share in his mission and ministry to spread God’s forgiveness and love to all people, no matter what, with no qualification whatsoever.

 

I remember hearing The Reverend John Westerhoff recalling that no less an Anglican than John Wesley suggesting that those who were “earnestly seeking” an experience of the Divine may come to the table and hopefully find the mercy of God and the grace that they need. Wesley is even reported to have said that no ecclesiastical authority has a right to “fence” the communion table except to the impertinent! It would seem that the seekers, the unworthy, the sinners, the outsiders are the very people Jesus came for and ought to be the most welcome to share in the Holy Eucharist, which by all accounts in scripture was an ‘open table,’ open to all.

 

I would not be here today doing what I do had not a young priest, William Rich, after seeing me sit resolutely in the pew while others received communion, personally let me know I was more than welcome to join in the Eucharistic feast, no matter what. After a decade of feeling I could not possibly feel worthy of doing so, at the next opportunity, still with reservations, I accepted the bread and the wine and found the mercy and grace of God we pray for the Church today, as well as a deep experience of the living God that was life changing and sustaining. There can be no fences, no barriers, for anyone seeking to join us at the Lord’s table. There can be no tests for a kind of purity of soul that simply cannot and does not exist even among those serving at the Holy Table. We are not the host of this grace meal, we are the servers at the Lord’s table.

 

As L. William Countryman sums it up so well in his little book, Good News of Jesus, “We are all of us outsiders miraculously included within the community of the gospel by God’s call.” [p.105]

 

Jesus says to the 5,000 and to all who have ears to hear, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” [John 6:35] Whoever comes, no questions asked; whoever comes, one and all.

 

May God the Father, the Word made flesh, and the Holy Spirit, with eternal mercy, forgiveness and love continue to welcome all who are heavy laden to come to his table, and may our Lord cleanse His Body, the Church, of any pretense to fence in and guard the sacramental gift of His life, blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world.

Amen.

Do Not Be Afraid Proper 12B

 

Do Not Be Afraid

In the Gospel of John, the storyteller shows Jesus going to the three major pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem repeatedly over the course of about three years. Yet, in chapter six, the time of the Passover is near, he is on a mountain top in Galilee, far away from Jerusalem, perhaps hoping to get a break. [John 6:1-21] More likely, however, hiding out, for just before these episodes of feeding and walking on the sea to still the rough waters, he was in Jerusalem for another festival and had healed a man on Shabbat. Which, he points out to those who complain he is breaking Sabbath customs, is the right thing to do. “But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ For this reason, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. [John 5:17-18]

 

As unusual as it was for him to miss a festival as important as Passover to celebrate the escape from slavery in Egypt, he is prudent to stay away. But it must be difficult to hide when some 5,000 people show up at your hideout! He asks Philip, who was one of his first disciples and had told Nathanael he had found the one Moses and the prophets had talked about – the future king of Israel – “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” (It was to test him, says storyteller John, for he knew what he would do.) Philip allows it would take six months wages to get enough bread. Fortunately, a young boy comes to the rescue with five barley loaves and a couple of fish – or goat jerky, depending how one wants to translate the obscure Greek in the text.

 

As nearly everyone knows, Jesus takes and blesses the bread and the fish and has the disciples give all of it away to the crowd, and 5,000 fish sandwiches later, surprise – there are twelve baskets of leftovers. It’s possible other people, inspired by the young man who gave away all he had to take home to his mother that others offered whatever they had – and more. That would be no less of a miracle and a sign, that inspired by the lad and by Jesus, people suddenly become generous and give away all that they have to help one another. This does not happen every day. There are stories that suggest that in the end, Jesus orders the disciples to give the twelve baskets of leftovers to the young man to take home, whereupon he and his mother throw a block party for the entire neighborhood.

 

We are told that these are barley loaves which are much coarser than wheat, and the staple of the poor who could not afford the finer and preferred wheat at the marketplace where, as Amos tells it, the affluent merchants would put their thumb on the scales and over-charge for the good stuff. Surely Jesus and at least some of the folks in the crowd can remember the prophet Elisha giving away a gift one hundred barley loaves to feed a mere 100 people in the midst of a famine in the land. Connecting the loaves with the prophet, some in the crowd want to make Jesus a king right then and there. [2 Kings 4:42-44]

 

Jesus knows the stories of his people. He remembers the days when the people demanded that the boy prophet Samuel petition God to give them a king. “All the other countries have kings,” they whined! “We want one too!” Samuel tells them the obvious: “A king will take your young men and make them soldiers for his wars. He will take your daughters and make them his servants. He will take your fields and your produce. You will wish that you had never asked for a king, but by then it will be too late.” [1 Samuel: 8:11]

 

Jesus remembers this warning. And that what Samuel said all this and more came about in the reign of King Solomon. Solomon had twelve officials over all Israel, who provided food for the king and his household; each one had to make provision for one month in the year…Solomon’s household provision for one day was thirty cors of choice flour, and sixty cors of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle, one hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, fatted fowl, and a partridge in a pear tree! They ate really really well. [1Kings 4:7,22-23] What Solomon represents is the consolidation of wealth, goods, access and power in the hands of a very few at the expense of the entire rest of the nation. There is never enough to feed the Empire. Contrary to some Biblical claims of peace and a United Monarchy under Solomon, there was such social unrest due to the excesses of the House of David, a social and military revolt under Jeroboam led to a fracture of the kingdom into two opposing factions of Samaria to the north and Judah, or Judea, in the south. This, as we have heard, is the result when “bad shepherds” are in charge.

 

Jesus will not ignore the needs of the people of the land with pretensions of a new monarchy, and so retreats once more into the mountains to let things cool down. As always, however, there is no rest for the weary. As the disciples also depart from the crowd, their boat is endangered by a mighty wind. They are scared. Jesus approaches the boat, walking on the water, which terrifies them even further. “It is I; do not be afraid.” And before they can get him into the boat, they arrive at their destination. The crowd who ate the fish sandwiches after Jesus had given thanks set off after him to ask for further clarification about the bread.

 

When the Word becomes flesh to dwell among us there can be no hiding from the needs of the people who find themselves under even greater social and economic deprivation than experienced in the time of Solomon. Under the Empire of Rome, it feels as if we are back in Egypt slaving 24/7. Jesus, the Word, knows all of this and sets his vision to return to the Way of the Lord, refusing to return to the sins of the past which repeatedly tried to employ power and violence to consolidate wealth, goods, power and access in the hands of a few.

 

Jesus is a Good Shepherd. He leads with the forgiveness and love of God, his Father. He urges a return to the commandments of Torah living to love God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as you are loved by the God who forgives you and loves you no matter what. Jesus leads with Good News, not the desire for yet another kingship which always results in great social and economic division and disparity. We’ve been there and done that he seems to say. Jesus brings words of faith, hope and love for all people, no matter what.

 

When the consolidation of goods, wealth, access and power becomes great, and the waters become rough, Jesus appears from we know not where or how to say, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Jesus knows when we set aside our fears of one another, we learn to see ourselves in one another and live together in the Way of the Lord. “The Lord is near to those who call upon him, to all who call upon him faithfully.” [Psalm 145:19]

 

May God, the Word made flesh, and his Holy Spirit, lead us out of all our fears and into his way of forgiveness, faith, hope and love for all persons, no matter what. Amen.

He Guides Us Along Right Pathways Proper 11B

 He Guides Us Along Right Pathways for His Name's Sake

Between our passages from Jeremiah and Mark [Jeremiah 23:1-6 / Mark 6:30-34, 53-56], there are shepherds who scatter and destroy the sheep of God’s pasture, and those who gather them, feed them and heal them. Although the situations depicted in Jeremiah and Mark are some 650 years apart, it is safe to say not only are the situations pretty much unchanged, I think many people would agree the situation remains pretty much unchanged to this day. Which is why the treatise called Hebrews tells us, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” [Hebrews 4:12]

 

Jeremiah issued warnings in the time of King Josiah, beginning around 626 BCE. As a result, an attempt was carried out to kill him by those who did not want to heed his warnings, and though rescued, he was imprisoned until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 587, when he was released – by the Babylonians. As we saw last Sunday, being a poet-prophet was no easy job as we heard of John the Baptizer losing his head ordered by a particularly bad shepherd in the House of Herod!

 

Jeremiah also announces that a descendant of King David will one day emerge as the Good Shepherd, and indeed the people seem to confirm that Jesus is that shepherd. As he and his disciples try to get away from it all, especially having heard the news about John’s fate, alas, it is not to be. People see where he is headed and a great crowd rushes and gets there first to greet him. There were 5,000 men, not to mention women and children! As he went ashore, “he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

 

Then for some reason the lectionary leaves out 19 verses, which record Jesus asking his disciples to feed the crowd of 5,000. The disciples whine and say, “It’s impossible, it would cost too much money to buy enough bread for them all.” Jesus asks, “How many loaves of bread do you have?” They round-up five and two fish. We can imagine Jesus heaving a sigh of frustration as he takes, blesses, breaks and gives away the bread – the very same actions he will repeat with the bread at the Last Supper, and which we repeat every time we celebrate the Eucharist. The disciples see the glass as more than half empty, while afterwards they gather up twelve baskets of leftovers, demonstrating that when you dine with Jesus, you will come to see the glass as much much more than half-full!

 

No doubt Storyteller Mark places Herod’s dinner alongside Jesus’s supper with 5,000 to make a truly unmistakable comparison between a meal with a good shepherd like Jesus, and dinner with a bad shepherd who not only scatters sheep but destroys them by having them beheaded and the head brought to the dinner table.

 

We may think this is ancient and even primitive, and even fantastic stuff, but consider the following real-life scenario taking place on planet Earth at this very minute. Three of America’s wealthiest of the wealthy are racing one another to get into outerspace, with one having long ago already launched one of his automobiles into deep space for we know not what or why. Does he plan to drive it when he gets to wherever he thinks he is going? Great sums of money are being spent on these individual, competitive, not joint, ventures. Think for a moment how much bread could be purchased with their spent on space travel.

 

In the other corner, wearing the White Trunks, is Johan Eliasch, present owner of Head Sporting Goods Corporation (started right here in Baltimore by Howard Head, an aeronautical engineer at Glenn L. Martin). Mr. Eliasch is valued at £355 million by the Sunday Times "rich list" (he's number 145), and he has purchased 400,000 acres of the Amazonian rainforest, an area the size of Greater London. He bought it, he says, to save it, to preserve its plants and wildlife - and, by preserving old-growth forest, to do his bit towards counteracting rising CO2 levels. [The Guardian, April 3, 2006]

 

The Good News? There are still people who care more about the planet than escaping it. We are a people surrounded by Good Shepherds and Bad Shepherds who scatter and destroy God’s sheep – that is God’s people, which of course is all people, rich and poor, great and small, young and old.

 

When Jesus and the boys are finished with gathering up all those leftovers, they cross over the Sea once again, and people are again rushing to see Jesus. “And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

 

At the end of the day, we can almost imagine Jesus saying, “The Herods and the Caesars you will always be with you, but you won’t always have me.”

 

Which is his way of saying, “What are you going to do about the healing the sick, the poor and the planet when I’m gone?”

 

May God help us all to follow as the Good Shepherd leads us to himself. Amen.

What Do You See? Proper 10B

 I See A Plumb Line

I woke up Saturday morning to see that my friend and colleague Armando had posted this: God cares deeply about justice, about righting wrongs, and about defending the powerless. In the end, no one gets away with any act of injustice. Nor does God leave unrewarded our work done in faith for Him. How perfect as we examine the faithful work of the prophets Amos and John.

 

This is what the Lord God showed me, writes Amos: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” [Amos 7:7-15]

 

Amaziah, priest of the temple at Bethel in the then northern kingdom of Israel, and the King, Jeroboam II, are not amused. Amos makes clear that he is neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but a shepherd and dresser of sycamore trees, and was chosen by the Lord to deliver this vision. It is some 750 years before the time of John the Baptist. The reign of Jeroboam II was long, peaceful and prosperous. Israel enjoyed territorial expansion and national prosperity never to be seen again. With its military might and security, and its economic affluence, those who were the beneficiaries of this wealth took it as a sign of God’s favor; that they deserved all that they enjoyed, even if others in the kingdom were suffering.

 

Yet, the plumb line does not lie. The wall that is Israel was built on a covenant that God’s people would care for one another; would care for all the people in the land, especially the poor, the needy, widows, orphans and resident aliens.

 

The plumb line reveals a people so wrapped up in their own affluence, that the very structures of the covenant with their God are all about to crumble. Amos announces this in the Bethel temple. Amaziah warns the king that Amos is conspiring against the kingdom. In one of the most unforgettable scenes in Hebrew prophecy, he cries out, “the land is not able to bear all his words.” [v10] Not just the people of the land, but the very land itself trembles at the force of Amos’s declarations! Amos is ordered to leave Israel and return to the southern kingdom of Judah, which he does and spends the rest of his days writing down all that the Lord instructed him to proclaim.

 

His next vision, a basket of fruit, results in the official indictment of all who would ignore the covenant and treat the poor unjustly:

“Hear this, you that trample on the needy,

And bring to ruin the poor of the land,

Saying, ‘When will the new moon be over,

so that we may sell grain;

and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale?

We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,

and practice deceit with false balances,

buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes,

and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’”  [Amos 8:4-6]

 

We are reminded of Imelda Marcos, whose ‘museum’ of thousands of pairs of shoes now rot away; shoes bought at the expense of the poor and the needy of the Philippines. The judgment is as harsh as it is clear: vast wealth often, if not always, depends on others being ground-up in a system of power and access that becomes exclusionary. The very people the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus says are to be cared for and allotted a share in this fabulous wealth of the nation are left-out to rot like Imelda’s shoes. They are the victims of deceitful and unjust sales practices that strip them of their last shekels while those who control the commerce and the economy live in luxury.

 

The ‘wall’ of the covenant is no longer plumb. No number of extravagant sacrifices in the Bethel Temple will overcome the devastation of God’s people. The fabulously affluent want to believe it is God’s favor, not their abhorrent behavior towards those in need, that has made them fabulously wealthy. What if God were to hold the plumb line in the midst of our economy? Or, in that of China? Or, anywhere where military security and fabulous wealth comes at the cost of there being poor and needy people in the land? The brutality of empires to protect the fabulously wealthy is ever thus. We are meant to look at the plumb line and, like Amos, tell God what we see.

 

At least Amos gets to retire and write his memoir, the Biblical book of Amos. John the Baptizer held the plumb line in the midst of Israel seven hundred years later. All of Jerusalem and all of Judea agreed, things were not just. Then he holds a plumb line against the wall of the House of the ruling Herods, where Herod Antipas had taken his brother Philip’s wife Herodias as his own. [ Mark 6:14-29] For holding the plumb line and speaking truth to power, John loses his head. Herod Antipas will later play a role in the crucifixion of Jesus whose entire life held a plumb line for all to see to this day. Both John and Jesus were perceived as prophets and threats to the Empire’s economic control and extraction of resources from Israel. Holding the plumb line is dangerous work.

 

Neither John nor Jesus were allowed to retire and write their memoirs like Amos did. But the faithful of their followers continue to hold the plumb line before nations and even before the Church itself down to this very day.

 

This Seventh Sunday after Pentecost we pray, “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them.”

 

The Lord stands by a wall built with the plumb line of our Baptismal Covenant of divine love, peace and justice for all. What do we see?  That we might truly understand what we ought to do, may the Lord God of our ancestors, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit give us the grace and power to see what is out of plumb, so we may act faithfully, now and forever. Amen.

Proper 9B On Seeing the Holy in the Familiar

 

On Seeing the Holy in the Familiar

Jesus has just healed not one but two women: one unnamed, unknown, about his age, and one a twelve-year-old daughter of a leader in the synagogue. Now he is in his hometown synagogue teaching on the Sabbath. People are astounded by his teaching, but not necessarily in a good way. [Mark 6:1-13]

 

We know this fellow, they say. “…Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Curious, but there is no mention of Joseph. How on earth, they say, does he come by such wisdom and such deeds of power? “And they took offense at him.” The Greek word is skandalon. They are scandalized by the very presence of this hometown boy way way way overachieving! They they seem unable to  see the holy in the familiar.

 

Unperturbed, Jesus quotes a folksy proverb so much as to say, “Sigh, it is ever thus! Let’s move on boys. As an example of Biblical stand-up comedy, storyteller Mark adds, “And he could do no deed of power there, EXCEPT that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” That’s all! No hard feelings. He just keeps healing people wherever and whenever possible. He can’t help himself. It’s who he is and what he does, even if those who have known him since he was a child cannot wrap their heads around it. The holiness and mystery of God is in their midst, but they just cannot see the holy in the familiar.

 

He then sends his disciples out to call people to return to God, to heal people and to cast out demons. He sends them two-by-two. Protocol of the day required at least two witnesses for valid testimony. And he warns them, “As I was rejected in my hometown synagogue, you will no doubt run into similar rejection. Just knock the dust off your sandals and move on to the next town.” There will always be those, Jesus seems to say, who will not recognize the holy if it were right in front of them. If it were to bite them on the nose! Which, of course, the holy would never do.

 

It is ever thus. Human myopia is legendary. For over a month we were visited by Brood X of the periodic cicadas. Their genus name is Magicicada. This should tell us something about the magical and mystical nature of these creatures that appear once every seventeen years, spending all that time underground, in the darkness, sipping on the sap of tree roots – which tree roots we now know communicate with one another. That’s right. Trees communicate with one another underground via chemicals and pulses that can warn of danger in the area. Or, the delight that finally some creature will arise to the top of their canopy and properly prune them since genus homo species sapien is much too busy with more important things, or distracted by lots of unimportant things, to assist in this necessary activity for our sister and brother trees to remain healthy. Enter our sisters and brothers Magicicada to help out as they fly, dance and sing their love for one another and their hope for the next generation of their genus! Love and Hope reigns supreme!

 

I say sisters and brothers as the late and noted Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would remind us all, were he still among us, that once upon a time, eons ago, all life emerged from a single cell somewhere on this planet earth, our fragile island home in a vast universe that stretches far out to infinity and beyond! As Woody Eddins of Ellicott City wrote to the Baltimore Sun’s editorial page this past Monday, “Nature’s creativity, nature’s big-bang, took that cell and created an awesome diversity of life. Who could have imagined it?”[i] Which means, of course, we, like Magicicada, the trees, the birds, the manatees, tigers and toads, are all related back to that single cell. We are surrounded by Holy Ground, as the bush that burns and is not consumed reminds Moses that miraculous day on which a criminal on the run turned shepherd became the catalyst for the creation of a new people leading a rag-tag bunch of slaves out of Egypt to a wilderness adventure that resulted in what God name Israel: those who wrestle with God.

 

Loud, and smelly, and flying about hither and yon, Magicicada Brood X was yet another example of the mysteries and majesty of God’s holiness in our midst, if we could just get over ourselves and our tendency to let ourselves to be annoyed like those people long ago in our Lord’s hometown synagogue who just would not let themselves be awed by the presence of God in a human being, a homo sapiens, someone who had grown up in their midst.  

 

As Woody Eddins concludes, “I stand in awe before the power that has led all species to their current place in our biosphere. And I wonder, does the cicada on my shirt share this reverence? I think she does!”[ii]

 

We are truly are all in this together. The holy is all around us and in us. If only we will let ourselves step back and see God’s holiness for what it is: a mixture of mystery, love and hope in all things great and small. That we all might understand this, and recognize the holy in the familiar, and be eternally blessed by it, may the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit help us. Amen.

 

 

 

 

---

[i] Baltimore Sun, Monday, June 28, section 1, page 10.

[ii] Ibid.