Easter 4A Good Shepherds and Bad Shepherds

 Easter 4A   Good Shepherds and Bad Shepherds

No longer living in a pastoral world, few of us have any direct experience of sheep and shepherds. Such that when Jesus spins an extended metaphor about sheep and shepherds, we are very much at a disadvantage unlike the people to whom the evangelist John addresses this episode in chapter 10. We spend a childhood reciting, “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow/and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.” We devour candy and cake lambs at Easter. We think of sheep as cute, fuzzy little things, when the only sheep I ever met were in a barnyard, and were nowhere near white as snow, not very cute, rather smelly, and will do their level best to head-butt you all the way from the backdoor to the outhouse. I would have to grab one by the head to hold it at bay as I would back my way from the house, to the outhouse and back.

 

They will graze a pasture to the ground, then eat the roots, creating a desert, unless a shepherd moves them on. They will eat until they bloat themselves to death on green alfalfa, lacking all sense to stop eating as their bellies swell. They can be rude, rambunctious, and get lost at a moment’s notice.[i] It is safe to say, that when the Bible tells us that we are the sheep of the Lord God’s pasture,[ii] it is not exactly a compliment. The great 20^th Century theologian, Karl Barth, used to urge people to read the Bible in one hand and the day’s news in the other. The daily news will most often confirm, that like sheep, we humans tend to be an unruly bunch. We seem not to have learned our lessons; have made little progress in getting along with one another, let alone love one another; we tend to listen to the loudest voices in the room, ignoring the voices of wisdom throughout the ages that have tried to guide us along right pathways. We find ourselves seduced by the voices of bad shepherds telling us its ok to be greedy, to be angry, to be ignorant of facts and believe in lies. As the T’ang Dynasty Zen Buddhist poet Shih Te warned some 1500 years ago, “drink deep these poisoned wines, and lie drunk in darkness and unknowing.” [iii]

 

Jesus and his co-religionists were faced with such darkness and unknowing every day, some 800 years before Shih Te. Speaking of shepherds and sheep, he taps into some 1800 years of experience as he speaks of good shepherds and bad shepherds; thieves and bandits. God, his Father, YHWH, a God of mercy and justice for all people, had chosen shepherds like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to guide people on the right pathway to a world of promise. But straying from that way, they end up under the yoke of a harsh life of slavery in Pharaoh’s Empire – an empire of greed and over consumption. God calls Moses to lead the people back onto a right way of living together. Moses, himself a shepherd of a flock belonging to the Priest at Midian after saving the priest’s seven daughters from a band of bad shepherds who tried to drive the women away from a well where they were drawing water. [iv] Moses was a good shepherd.

 

For 40 patient years, YHWH and Moses outlined a way of living together with mutual respect and a just life for all people. Yet, long after Moses led them to the land of promise and abundance for all, bad shepherds, kings and priests alike, forsook their responsibilities to shepherd God’s people and gave-in to lives drunk on greed, anger and ignorance. YHWH, God of mercy and justice, declared through the prophet Ezekiel some 700 years before Jesus: “Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: … Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them…I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep…I myself will find the strays, heal the wounded, heal the seek and feed my sheep…[v]

 

Now captive by the Empire of Caesar’s Rome, with bad shepherds like the Herods, Pilate, and the collaboration of some of the priests and aristocracy of Jerusalem, not to mention those impressed into service by Rome to be tax collectors, Jesus draws upon Ezekiel’ prophecy, first saying, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep… Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” That is, unlike the current and past bad shepherds, as the gatekeeper to the sheepfold keeps out the bad shepherds and thieves, Jesus himself will protect the flock, let them out to pasture and return to the safety of the fold. Jesus himself will feed them, search for the lost, heal the sick, bind up the wounds of those injured, and clothe those who are naked. He knows them by name. They know his voice. They will follow him out of the darkness of the bad shepherds and into the light of God’s mercy and justice. [vi] Jesus also hints at other sheep and other shepherds, other voices, who will also live out God’s promise and purpose.  

 

Jesus then says, “I am the good shepherd.” That is, Jesus asserts a particular relationship between himself and God. Jesus makes the words of God in Ezekiel his own, and in doing so aligns himself with God’s purpose! [vii]  Jesus becomes the fulfillment of the prophecy Ezekiel proclaims. Jesus not only assumes God’s role as good shepherd, he lives it out every day on every page of all four gospels! Throughout all four gospels, Jesus the good shepherd issues only two commands: Follow me, and Love one another as I have loved you. That is, we are to become a community of good shepherds for the world and for one another. We are to listen to his voice, and follow in the way he lives his life. It is just that simple

 

As John’s gospel ends, Jesus lays down his life for his friends; he returns to remind them of all he has said and done; then he stands on the shore of lake Galilee as they have a bad night fishing. He calls out to throw their net on the other side. Change what you are doing. Suddenly, the net and the boat is filled with very many fish – or, do they bring more sheep into the fold to live together with the good shepherd? As mixed as John’s metaphors may be, they come ashore, and there is Jesus, beside a charcoal fire, cooking bread and fish. “Come and have breakfast,” he says. They know his voice. Once again, he feeds them as he has so many times before. He is still their shepherd. This is all they need to know. He is still here!

 

After breakfast, Jesus takes Peter aside and asks, “Peter, do you love me?” Peter says, “Yes, Lord, I love you.” Jesus says, “Feed my lambs!” Two more times Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” And two more times like Peter we say, “Yes! Lord, we love you.” Two more times Jesus says, “...tend my sheep…feed my sheep.” That’s it. We are to be a community of good shepherds. Jesus’s final words to Peter, to us, and his last words in John’s gospel are, “Follow me.” [viii]  

 

Voices of good shepherds throughout the ages seek to call us out of the darkness imposed by all bad shepherds. They all say the same thing: Follow me, and Love one another. It is that simple. We can choose. We can listen to voices of greed, anger and ignorance and live in drunken darkness. Or, we can choose to listen to the words, “Follow me, and Love one another.” Good shepherds love us, care for us, and lead us out of the darkness into the light. It is just that simple.

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[i]  Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland:2010) p.269-70

[ii] Psalm 100

[iii] Seaton, J.P., editor & translator, Cold Mountain Poems (Shambala, Boston & London:2009) p.78

[iv] Exodus 2:16-22

[v] Ezekiel 34

[vi] Ibid, Ezekiel

[vii] O’Day, Gail R. & Hylen, Susan E., John (Westminster John Knox Press:2006) p.106

[viii] John 21:15-19

They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread Easter 3A

 Easter 3A: They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread

When I was in the Diocese of Connecticut, the officer for Stewardship was Roger Alling. In addition to developing a financial stewardship program for the diocese, Roger encouraged us all to give even more attention to stewardship of the earth, of the environment – “this fragile Earth our island home.” The bishop, unhappy with what some of the larger parishes were giving to the diocese, insisted that environmental stewardship was a distraction from the important work of God in Christ that needed funding. Sadly, Roger did not last long as Chief Stewardship Officer. Tragically, he was correct. No amount of money in diocesan budgets can overcome the damage we, humans, have done to the environment in the decades since Roger issued the warning. It is in this context that we have heard the Song of the Three Young Men:

Let the people of God glorify the Lord, sing praise and give honor for ever.

Their captor, Nebuchadnezzar the Warrior King, gave them Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Their real names were Annanias, Azarias, and Misael. These three young Jewish men refused to worship Babylonian idols, so the king threw them into a furnace to burn. But an angel of the Lord came down into the furnace, drove the firey flame out of the furnace, “and made the inside of the furnace as though a moist wind were whistling through it.” With one voice the three young men praised and glorified and blessed God singing of all the wonders of creation. They called upon all of us to glorify the Lord! As we gather on this Earth Day 2023, we take time together to renew our commitment to glorify the Lord by caring for the creation about which the three young men sang so gloriously from the depths of their captivity. [i]

 

Perhaps their singing can inspire us as we look at the central element of our Gospel from Luke 24:13-35. That would be bread. We read that after walking home with two followers of Jesus, the Risen Christ sat down at their table. He took, blessed, broke and gave it to them.  “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” They recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Just what is bread.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as he is known by his followers, is the late Vietnamese Zen master, poet and peace activist, nominated in 1967 for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., helps us see that a loaf of bread, or even one communion wafer, can represent the presence of the whole world, the whole cosmos. [ii] We can, as Buddhists and Christian Mystics have, see the oneness of all creation: the total interconnectedness and interdependence of all people, all creatures, and all living things in a loaf of bread. When we look at a loaf of bread, we see a combination of grain and water. When we look deeper with the eyes of our hearts, we can see a cloud floating in our loaf of bread. Without the cloud there would be no water; without water the grain cannot grow; and without grain and water we cannot make bread. The existence of our bread is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Bread and cloud are so close, says Thay. And we can see sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the grain cannot grow without sunshine, and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So, the farmer needs sunshine in order to plant, grow and harvest the grain, just as the grain needs sunshine to grow. Looking ever more deeply, we can see bees flying around in our bread. Bees are essential to pollinating the plants that become the grain that becomes bread. Therefore, we can see that clouds, water, sunshine, bees, and the farmer, and those who harvest the grain in our loaf of bread. When we look more deeply, with the eyes of those who are awake, we can see that everything is here: those who mill the grain, those who mix the dough, those who deliver the bread, those who put it on the shelf in the store, those who check us out of the store, the oil reserves that powered the vehicles that bring the bread and us together – everything is in our loaf of bread! Without all of these non-bread elements, without so many many people, the bread would be empty. There would be no bread.

 

Bread is not a separate thing, just as we are not separate selves. Like bread, we depend on non-self-elements and people! Is it any wonder that Jesus says, when we take, bless, break and give bread away we do this in memory of him? The bread he takes, blesses, breaks and gives away that night before he died and was raised from the dead, contained the presence of the whole cosmos. It was the bread he took, blessed, broke and gave to thousands of people to eat. That bread contained the manna that appeared every morning for 40 years in the wilderness to sustain a wandering and homeless people. That bread he took, blessed, broke and gave contained the unleavened bread the slaves in Egypt made to sustain them in their great escape to freedom and to become God’s people. The bread he takes, blesses, breaks and gives to those two people in Emmaus contains the bread that the Priest King Melchizedek gave to Abraham outside the city of Shalem, the city of Peace, Jerusalem, as the journey from Ur to a land of promise was under way.

 

The bread Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and gives contains the entire history of God’s people as recorded in the Bible. When see what is contained in our bread, we begin to understand the interconnectedness and interdependence we share with the whole world and everything therein! And when we see our total interconnectedness and interdependence on all these non-self-elements in our loaf of bread, we join with the three young Jewish prisoners of Babylon and begin to sing and to glorify God in all of creation as we now see how all of creation is present in our loaf of bread that Jesus teaches us to take, bless, break and give it away to all, to everyone and anyone who needs to be fed with the life of the entire cosmos! The world, the entire cosmos is One. Like the bread, we are One with the entire cosmos. Everything is One.

 

Many of us became aware of our Oneness with one another and the entire cosmos when that first photo from space of our fragile island home, planet Earth appeared on the cover of the aptly named Whole Earth Catalog. That one image made clear the necessity of caring for the Earth was just as important as caring for one another.

 

It turns out that my friend Roger Alling was right all along. If stewardship means anything at all, it must begin with our stewardship of creation itself. Genesis chapter 1 announces that we are created in the image of God to have dominion over all of creation. The Hebrew word, rada, can mean to rule or have dominion, but one Hebrew scholar takes it to mean, “to actively partner with God to take the world forward.” Earth Day means to remind us that to be human we are to partner with God to take the world forward – to sustain its fruitfulness – for it is the very fruitfulness of creation that sustains us. We are especially fortunate that our Lord Jesus chose bread as a reminder – for every time we look at this bread, we can see not only the entire history of God’s saving mercy and justice, but the entire cosmos itself. If we are to survive at all on this, our fragile island home, we must take this partnership to take the world forward with utmost seriousness. It is the most important way that we can join with the three young men to glorify and praise the Lord and all creation with our active involvement to care for the environment.

 

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[i] The Prayer of Azariah, and the Song of the Three Young Men: 35-65.

[ii] Hanh, Tich Nhat, Being Peace (Parallex Press, Berkley, CA:1996) p.61-63. Thay uses the example of paper, but we can use bread, or wine, and literally everything in his example.

Shalom: Being Faithful to The Dream of God Easter 2

 Shalom: Faithful to The Dream of God     Easter 2

We call this Doubting Thomas Sunday. The problem is, there is no doubt! No, really. English Bibles since the King James Version have Jesus saying to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe.” But it’s not there in the Greek text. It does not say doubt.[i] The Greek is pistos, an adjective meaning faithful or trustworthy. Richard Swanson translates this as, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful.”[ii] Which is just what Thomas has been up to this moment throughout the Gospel of John: faithful and trustworthy to a “t”!

It was Thomas, after all, who when word came to Jesus that Lazarus was ill, and Jesus says, “Let’s go to him,” all the disciples but one say, “No, there are people around Jerusalem and Bethany who want to kill you!” Only Thomas, faithful and trustworthy, says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”[iii] Thomas is faithful and trustworthy. Jesus knows this. There’s no doubt about it. We need to dispense with anything to do with “Doubting Thomas.” Let there be no doubt about that! For Thomas is alone among this room full of disciples to declare, “My Lord and my God,” “My Kurios and my Theos!” Kurios in the Bible is the God of Mercy, and Theos is the God of Justice.

Thomas recognize Jesus as the God of Justice and Mercy. Those first reading or hearing John’s story of Jesus would have recognized that the moment Jesus breathes on them he bestows upon them the gift of God’s ruach, God's Spirit. They would recognize it as the same Spirit-Breath that broods over the chaotic waters of Creation in Genesis1 verse 2. The same Spirit-Breath that God breathes into a handful of dust and water to form the first man in Genesis 2:7. The same Spirit-Breath of which God says to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”[iv]

 As he breathes on them Jesus says, “Shalom, Peace be with you.” If there is a single word that summarizes the controlling vision of world history in the Bible, it is Shalom. Shalom says that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony, justice and security toward joy and well-being for all, for every creature under heaven, and for every living thing - the very earth itself. The community of God’s faithful are to understand themselves as members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny: the care and management of all God’s creation.[v]

Thus, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful,” is Jesus’s invitation to Thomas and all who are present to live into God’s dream of Shalom, and to share in the management of all God’s creation. It is this dream of God’s Shalom that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness and misery.”[vi] By saying, “Shalom,” and breathing upon them, Jesus reminds all who would be faithful to him and the God of Shalom of our calling, our responsibility, to the care and management of all of God’s creation: every person, every creature, every plant, every body of water, every molecule of breathable air. We might say with some degree of confidence, that this moment among followers of Jesus that evening the day of resurrection was in fact the very first Earth Day. It just took until April 22, 1970 for us to institute an annual reminder of this: our central task as humans interdependent on one another, all creatures and the environment itself. Our lives depend on the lives of the whole environment. This suggests the importance of Earth Day which will be observed later this week.

It would not be until 2008 for Harper One to publish The Green Bible in which all passages concerned with environmental stewardship are printed in Green – it’s a “Green Letter Bible”! The Foreword to The Green Bible was written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says, in part,

“I would not know how to be a human being, how to think as a human being, how to walk as a human being, how to talk or how to eat as a human being except by learning from other human beings…We’re made for community, we’re made for togetherness, we’re made for friendship…to live in a delicate network of interdependence, for we are made for complementarity. I have gifts you don’t have. And you have gifts I don’t have. Thus, we are made different so that we can know the need of one another. And this is a fundamental law of our being.

“All kinds of things go horribly wrong when we flout this law – when we don’t ensure that God’s children everywhere have a supply of clean water, a safe environment, a decent home, a full stomach. We could do that if we remembered that we are created members of one family, the human family, God’s family.

“We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God’s family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources. We need to be accountable to God’s family. Once we start living in a way that is people-friendly to all of God’s family, we will also be environment-friendly.

“As you read The Green Bible starting in Genesis, you will see that after God created birds, fish and animals he created humans to…act compassionately and gently toward all forms of life. The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands…It is possible to have a new kind of world, a world where there will be more compassion, more gentleness, more caring, more laughter, more joy for all of God’s creation, because that is God’s dream. And God says, “Help me, help me, help me realize my dream”[vii] 

When Jesus says, “Shalom. Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you”; when Jesus breathes on them; when Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful,” he is speaking to us - all of us who would be disciples of his. Jesus says to us, “Help me realize my dream - my Father's Dream of Shalom for all creation.” This Second Sunday of Easter ask us, when will we embrace The Dream of God's Shalom? When will we accept the gift of the Holy Spirit? When will we let the Love of God be poured into our hearts? When will we, like Thomas, proclaim in all that we say and all that we do, My Lord and my God? Let there be Justice and Mercy for all. There is no doubt that all the children of God, all the creatures of the Earth, and the Earth itself, await our faithful and trustworthy commitment to live in a way that is people-friendly to all of God’s family, and thus environment-friendly as well.  Amen.

 

[i] John 20:27

[ii] Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John (The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2010) p.444.

[iii] John 11: 15-16

[iv] Ezekiel 37: 4-5

[v] Brueggemann, Walter, Living Toward A Vision (United Church Press, NY, NY: 1976) p.15-16.

[vi] Ibid, Brueggemann, p.16.

[vii] Tutu, Archbishop Desmond, The Green Bible (Harper One, NY, NY: 2008) p. I13-14. 

 

Easter Morning: I Am With You Always 2023

 Easter Morning: I Am With You Always            2023

Another tremblor! Aftershocks from Friday’s earthquake when the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary remembered how rocks were split, the tombs on the Mount of Olives were opened. Many of the saints came out of their tombs on the mount so as to be box seats when the messiah would come! Imagine! Those, who were formerly dead, were now wandering the streets! As the earth shakes again, an angel appears. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. The angel rolls away the rolling stone Joseph of Arimathea had rolled over the entrance of the tomb. Magdalene and the other Mary had been there when the guards had arrived to secure the tomb. Now the guards are lying, scattered about like dead men. Like so many bowling pins. The women, however, are rock steady as the angel seeks to assure them, “Do not be afraid! He has been raised…he has been raised!”

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

Have you ever wondered? Matthew has given meticulous detail of every major event so far: at Jesus’s birth, the slaughter in Bethlehem, that day on the mount of the Transfiguration, the voice from the heavens, the moment he dies on a cross. Then comes the most significant moment of the entire story; he has been raised; the tomb is empty; and not one single detail of just how that happens. There were guards posted there ever since Friday. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary were there then, and now. Yet, Jesus had come out of that tomb. Evidently, it was not the conventional way of rolling away the stone and walking out. The only clue is that once again, as at the Sea of Reeds; once again as in Babylon; the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus; the Lord God of Sarah, Rebekkah, Leah, Rachel, Tamar, Rahab and Ruth, YHWH had come to the rescue. He has been raised means that YHWH, the voice from the burning bush was at work once again!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

The messenger announces that these two women have an important assignment. They are to announce the news to the rest of Jesus’s followers. They are to repeat the Good News: He has been raised and is going before us to Galilee where he will meet with us all! There we will see him! The messenger in dazzling white clothes appoints the two women as the first two Apostles – those who are sent to proclaim the Good News. And off they go in a mixture of fear and great joy! They are running as fast as they can when suddenly. He. Is. There. Right. In. Front. Of them. In the road!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

“Greetings!” says he! They fall before him, grab his feet, and worship him. He has been raised somehow, and he still has feet! This is no vision. This is no ghost or apparition. Mary Magdelene and the other Mary are holding on to his feet for dear life! When had he left the tomb? How did he get here in the middle of the road? How did all those dead folks come out of the tombs and begin wandering the streets of Jerusalem? Is that what he has been doing ever since Joseph had placed him in the tomb? Raising all the dead in the universal resurrection much of Israel had been expecting? Had they been raised with him? Or, by him?

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

It had to be quite a shock for the Empire of escalating violence to learn that even crucifixion could not put an end to his movement of the non-violent love of the Father. It continues to boggle the mind to this day. Think of our past. Ponder our futures as a species on an ailing planet. A species that never creates a weapon it does not use, or invent one weaker than what it replaces. Then here comes a kingdom of God, an atypical kingdom, that does not allow for violent “fighting” to free Jesus from execution. He tells Peter to put away his sword at the very hint of fighting back. This story of Crucifixion and Resurrection, however, is more than a story of Jesus clashing with Pontious Pilate, but about a hopeful vision and option for humanity to find a way out of the violence-based civilization we have created for ourselves. Jesus did not rise alone. The story means to challenge our species to redeem our world and save the earth by transcending the escalating violence we create as our normal human trajectory. Jesus being raised from the dead proclaims that non-violent resistance alone is capable of saving us from the spiral of inevitable self-destruction. [i]

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

Mary and the other Mary are still holding on. Snap out of it, he says! Let go, he says! You must deliver the message to my brothers and sisters to meet me in Galilee! Hurry now! Tempus fugit! Time’s a-fleeting! And off they run! How difficult it must have been to let go of him, there in the middle of the road. The one who had transformed their lives forever! He who had taught them that life need not be a life of escalating violence. That life could be a life of his Father’s love. That life can be other than what it is – than what it appears to be. Just as he had freed these two women and given them new purpose, new life, he now had a message for all of those who choose to walk in The Way of God’s eternal love for all. And when he gets to Galilee, and all the sisters and brothers who had also had their lives transformed were once again sitting at his feet, he made them a promise that has never been broken: “Teach others to obey everything I have taught you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

It was about this time of year in 1984 that I was pondering this promise. There was a little children’s chalk board in the kitchen to leave notes like, “I’ll be home from Church around 7:00 PM.” I cleared the board and wrote in ever-ephemeral chalk, “Lo! I am with you always to the end of the age.” I stared at it for a while. I went and did some other things. Came back and looked at it again. Months later I packed it up when we moved to another house. And then to Maryland. And then to Connecticut. And back to Maryland, to Sykesville. I unpacked the box and there it was, the chalk undisturbed. Its message was clear. It’s been hanging in the basement since 1995. Whenever I forget his final promise that day in Galilee with the women and men who spread out and proclaimed the Good News of Jesus, it remains. Whenever we may think we are through with him, it turns out he is never through with us. He is here. He is with us. All of us. All the time. He is with us now until the end of the age. This is why we say:

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

We need to thank Mary Magdelene and the other Mary for letting go of Jesus and following through on their appointed role as Apostles. Who is this other Mary anyway? Again, a strange lapse in detail by Matthew. Unless. Unless she represents us. You and me. Like these two women, we have been raised to be Apostles – those who are sent to proclaim the Good News!

He is here. He is with us. Always. To the end of the age! We are God’s Beloved! God is well pleased with us. Now. And forever. and ever! Amen!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

And so are we! So are we!

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[i] Crossan, John & Sarah, Resurrecting Easter (Harper One, NYC:2018) p.183-84

Good Friday = Christmas = Incarnation 2023

Good Friday = Christmas = Incarnation        2023

John Shea tells the story of a midnight Christmas Eve service in which the priest, an older fellow, begins his sermon in a barely audible volume, people leaning in to catch just what he is saying. When all of a sudden he is thundering like a freight train running down the center aisle, “The wood of the crib is the wood of the cross!” Which is to say, Christmas and Good Friday celebrate the very same reality – and that reality is what we refer to as The Incarnation of God. God comes to us as one of us, as a person. Jesus, who like all of us, was born imago Dei – the image of God. The wood of the cross is the wood of the crib! [i]

 

As evangelist John begins the tale, “In the beginning was the Logos, the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God…” And this Word comes to dwell among us – literally, the word for “dwell” means to set up one’s tent to “tent among us.” Let the theologians try to explain this. As my friend and mentor Walter Brueggemann often says, “Only modern liberals try to explain all of this! We are meant to let these words, these stories, work on our imaginations so that we might imagine that life as we know it can be other than what it is!”

 

Whether or not you want to think of the Logos, the Word, Jesus is God incarnate, or is the Son of God, as a kind of Imago Dei Incarnate, or simply a young man who was capable of inspiring all kinds of people to live their lives differently than what they had been before meeting Jesus for the first time. Whatever Incarnation means for Jesus, for the rest of us it means transformation – we come to Jesus and suddenly, inexplicably, we find ourselves changed.

 

And one truly amazing dimension of all of this is this: we can meet Jesus in others, in one another. Or, even in a stranger. Because Jesus lives in and through us all. Because Jesus lives a life that, as he says the night before he dies, he is returning to that place from whence we all come – God. God which is Love, capital “L.” Jesus realizes in that crystalline moment when he come up out of the River Jordan, and the ruach of God, God’s Breath, God’s Spirit, descends and rests upon him “like a dove,” and he hears the words, “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”He is changed. A little later this voice adds, “Listen to him!” Good Friday is the time to listen.

 

Sometime in the thirteenth century, a young woman left her affluent family’s home in Assisi, Italy, to meet a young man named Francis. It was like meeting Jesus for the first time. Until then Jesus had been a name at church, a character in a bunch of odd and wonderful stories. But somehow or other, Jesus was incarnate in Francis who had given up a life of affluence to serve among the poor, the homeless, the halt and the lame. The young woman’s name was Clare. She gave up all her family had to offer to spend her life with Jesus. With Christ. With God’s anointed.

 

Other women joined her, meeting Jesus for the first time in the kind of life Clare chose to live. They became an enclosed community of women who live the life of Franciscans, the Order of Saint Clare, or the Poor Sisters. All of which brings us back to the hard wood of the cross, which is also the hard wood of the crib, the manger – an animal’s feeding trough.

 

The Roman cross upon which Jesus was crucified itself represents the escalating violence of human history. In Genesis chapter 4, Cain, a farmer, kills a shepherd, his brother Abel with a rock. From that moment on, violence and weaponry advanced. In A Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright notes: “From the first chipped stone to the first smelted iron took nearly 3 million years; from the first iron to the hydrogen bomb took only 3,000…Now is our last chance to get the future right.” [ii] Getting our future right is represented by The Way of non-violence of Jesus. The Empire, all Empires, know that they cannot survive were a movement of non-violence to supplant the evolution of escalating violence that now seems to be escalating at an alarming pace. Francis and Clare of Assisi are among those of us who recognized the necessity to follow in the Way of Christ. A bare cross without the crucified Christ does not allow us to see the whole picture of our past and our hopes for a future.

 

This is why when people wanted to get closer with God, closer with Jesus, and closer to their true selves, Clare urged them to spend time daily before the Cross of Christ. A crucifix with the body of Christ on the cross. Clare insisted that when one sits before the cross and looks at Jesus, we can finally see who we really are created to be – people, created imago Dei, as he was; people, who come from Love and return to Love, for God is Love; people who are God’s Beloved with whom God is pleased; people who walk in the non-violent Way of Christ.

 

Contemplating the cross of Christ, we can suddenly come to see ourselves on that cross as people, who like Jesus, embody the Love of God for all people and all creation. Clare would say that the Christ on the hard wood of the cross is the mirror in which we can see who we really are – what it truly means to be imago Dei.

 

One of the women in the thirteenth century who wrote to Clare for support and insight on how one follows Jesus was a princess, Agnes of Prague. Agnes, of course, is a name rooted in angus, Latin for lamb – as John the Baptist would cry out, “Behold the lamb of God!” whenever Jesus would walk by. As Clare’s life was nearing its end, or its beginning as she would soon return to the source of all Love, Clare seeks to focus Agnes on the goal to follow The Lamb, that agnus Dei, wherever he goes! And where he goes is through the Golden Gate into Jerusalem to confront the Empire of escalating violence. In her fourth and final letter to Agnes Clare writes:

             “…you…are wonderfully wedded to the spotless Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, for you have laid aside all the vanities of this world.

 

She is certainly happy

Who has been chosen to drink at this banquet

In order to cleave with all her heart to him,

At whose beauty all the blessed hosts of heaven

Unceasingly wonder,

Whose love stirs to love,

Whose contemplation remakes,

Whose kindliness floods,

Whose sweetness fills,

Whose memory glows gently,

Whose fragrance brings the dead to life again,

The glorious vision of whom

Will make all the citizens of the Jerusalem above

Most blessed,

He is the splendour of eternal glory,

The brightness of everlasting light

And an unspotted mirror.

 

Gaze into this mirror every day, O Queen, Bride of Jesus Christ, and constantly see your own face reflected in it, so that you may adorn your whole being, within and without, in richly decorated robes. Adorn yourself as is only fitting, with virtues like flowers, and garments every bit as ornate as those of the daughter and dearly Beloved of the Most High King.

 

For in that mirror, shine blessed poverty, holy humility, love beyond words as – by the grace of God- you can contemplate in the whole mirror.

 

Turn you mind, I say, to the border of this mirror; to the poverty of him who was placed in a manger and wrapped in tiny garments. O wonderful humility! O astounding poverty! The King of Angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, rests in a manger…At the edges of that same mirror, contemplate the love beyond words through which He chose to suffer on the Tree of the Cross and, on that same Tree, to die the most disgraceful death of any…. Let us respond to Him with one voice, one spirit, crying out and grieving: I hold this memory in my mind and my spirit faints within me. So may you always catch fire more and more strongly from this burning love, O Queen of the heavenly King.” [iii]

 

The hard wood of the manger is the hard wood of the cross! As we gaze upon His Cross, what do we see? The babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, looking up at his young mother? The young man who set out to transform a warped, brutal and dangerous world of ever escalating violence into the world of his Father’s Love? A young man hung among other criminals for daring to live into what it means to be imago Dei, made in the image of God?

 

Can we see our true selves in Him? Mortal yet eternal. Wayward yet ever seeking to walk in His Way. Do we look at Jesus on the cross and experience our very own Belovedness? Do we see just how much God loves us and is pleased with us? Good Friday is Good because we take this time out from a world of escalating violence to look into the mirror on the Cross of Christ and catch glimpses of just who Jesus really is. And just who we really are! We have this time together today to do this. It is just a few moments in the scope of our day. But it is enough. It is enough to transform us for a lifetime. And in being so transformed, the world itself is brought that much closer to becoming a world of God’s love for all people, all creatures, and the very Earth itself

 

Life as we know it can be other than it is.

 

“So may you always catch fire more and more strongly from His burning love.”

 

The wood of the crib is the wood of the cross.

Amen.

 

---

[i] Shea, John, Starlight (Crossroads, NY:1992) p.148-149

[ii] Crossan, John & Sarah Sexton Crossan, Resurrecting Easter (Harper One, NY:2018) p.183

[iii] Downing, Sr, Frances Teresa, O.S.C. (Tau Publishing, Phoenix, Az:2012) p.83-89

Maundy Thursday 2023 New Commandments

 

Maundy Thursday 2023: A New Commandment

From the Latin, mandatum, for “commandment,” this evening gets its name. We celebrate the Last Supper, after which in John 13 Jesus issues a new commandment. In the other three gospels he also issues two commandments regarding the bread and the wine.

 

The earliest document in the New Testament to tell is reported by Paul in his First Letter to the church in Corinth. Paul, an apostle, had previously been known throughout many parts of the Empire as Saul, a Jew and a citizen of Rome, who was employed by the Empire to harass and arrest people of The Way, as followers of Jesus were known. As Saul, Paul was not at that final meal, which he acknowledges: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” The commandment is to do this to remember Jesus.

 

The evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke also hand on essentially these same words which Paul handed on wherever he went. As familiar as they have become in Christian Liturgies around the world and throughout the ages, we need to recognize just how radical and problematic they were at the time, and remain so to this day. We are to understand the bread is Jesus’s flesh, and the wine is his blood. The blessing of these elements has long been standard at Friday night Sabbath meal throughout the ages. It is not standard in Jewish life to eat flesh and blood.

 

Matthew, Mark and Luke insist this Last Supper was a Passover meal. Nevertheless, it was not a Passover Seder as currently celebrated these days. Yes, it was a Freedom Meal, recalling the mighty act of YHWH to rescue, save, a disparate band of Hebrew slaves from Egypt under a previous Empire of Pharaoh. This saving action was to become the birth of Israel. It is recorded in the book of Exodus chapter 15:2-21 that Miram, or Mary, sister of Aaron and Moses, gathered the sisters to sing the song of freedom as they took up their tambourines and began to dance singing, “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea!” The falseness of the Empire is exposed as the Empire, glug glug glug, cannot tread water.

 

John, alone among the four evangelists, places the Last Supper on the night before the Day of Preparation for the Passover. This means that Jesus would be crucified on the day that everyone else in Jerusalem is busy getting a lamb, heading over to the Temple to have it sacrificed, and home to prepare it for the Passover meal in which it must be wholly consumed. Still, it was not a  Passover Seder like people celebrate today. And as John presents it, it is unlike any meal any of us has ever experienced. There are no words about body and blood in all of chapter 13. No mention of bread and wine and blessings. Jesus disrobes, takes up a towel, gets down on his knees and proceeds to wash the feet of all who are present and wipe them with a towel. Afterwards, he says, “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

 

How does he come up with this foot washing? About a week earlier in chapter 12 Jesus is visiting his friends in Bethany, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, whom he had liberated from a tomb just days ago. People outside the house are calling for Jesus and Lazarus to be killed. Mary takes a jar of precious oil of nard. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. She kneels before Jesus, anoints his feet with the oil, and wipes them with her hair. Judas, already aligned with the people outside complains that it is a waste of money that could be used for the poor. Jesus replies that she has purchased this expensive ointment to be used at his burial. And besides, you can always serve the poor. You don’t need the money for this oil. Go to it, Judas, care for the poor. This is what it means, Judas, to love your neighbor Besides, this feels really good!

 

Later in the thirteenth chapter of John is when Jesus issues the “new commandment”: “34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Is it too much to suggest that Mary’s gesture of devotion and generosity inspired Jesus’s sudden gesture to kneel, wash feet and wipe them with a towel as a way to drive home how followers of his are meant to serve others: one another and all others? It seems quite possible that at the “first supper” in Bethany that he formulates his new mandatum: love one another as I have loved you –  for Mary has shown me how we are to empty ourselves and serve others. All others. One another. And the poor.

 

At modern Passover Seders a child is designated to ask a question: why is this night unlike any other night? Maundy Thursday asks similar questions of us all. What does it really mean each time we receive his body and blood? What does it feel like to kneel before one another to wash one another’s feet? How good must it feel to have Jesus wash your feet? My feet? What can we do for the poor? Why is that so important? What does it really mean when he says, “Do this in remembrance of me?” What can we learn from Miriam about freedom? What can we learn from Mary of Bethany about love for one another? What about our life in Jesus is capable of bringing us to our knees?

 

In the end, as John presents it, Maundy Thursday is when we get the most succinct summary of our job description as those who walk in The Way – The Way of Jesus: Love one another as he loves us, and love all others, especially the poor and all who are in need. This is his final gift to all his disciples – the gift of unfettered, unconditional love. Jesus loves us that much so that we might embody his love in all that we say and all that we do. Amen.

Palm Sunday: The Mind of Christ year A 2003

Palm Sunday

Paul writes to the Philippians, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus [ 2:5-11]. How amazingly hopeful is Saint Paul. If only we will let it, the mind of Christ can be in us – it’s you plural, us plural. Us, a community of Christ. When any given day it is a challenge to be of one mind in one’s self, imagine what can happen if we, all of us, were of one mind – and that that mind is the mind of Christ.

 

We want to imagine his entry into Jerusalem as being “triumphant,” when in fact, it was so humble as to be almost pitiful and one of the more satirical moments in recorded human history. The great monarchs of Israel and Rome would come through the Golden Gate he chooses to enter – the gate in the ramparts surrounding Jerusalem that legend, dreams, and all hoped, would one day welcome God’s anointed, God’s messiah. Who was, in fact, imagined by many to be a mighty warrior who could vanquish the mighty occupation of Caesar, maintained by those of the Herod family, and a middling functionary of Rome, Pontius Pilate. Both the Herods and Pilate prided themselves on their utter brutality in “keeping the peace.” Pilate would not think twice about slaughtering hundreds of pilgrims at Passover or any one of the other major festivals. And Matthew has made it clear from the very beginning that Herod never lost a night’s sleep after slaughtering hundreds if not thousands of babies, and any parents or relatives who dared get in the way, just to keep the baby Jesus from any chance of growing up. This is how the story began and must be how it ends. So the Herods of this world want us to believe.

 

Here he is, Survivor Jesus, some thirty years later at the Golden Gate with a rag-tag band of followers at the gate the Emperor uses, on a mighty white war horse, surrounded by chariots and armed centurions. Instead, here is Jesus on a donkey, perhaps the same one that bore his mother Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, to Bethlehem that cold night years ago, still not quite understanding how she found herself in such a situation – and then having to host shepherds and traveling magi all night when all she and her baby boy needed was a good night’s sleep.

 

At best, his followers were farmers, fishermen, perhaps a few tradesmen and women. Yes, there were women who, like those who kept the campfires going and uniforms repaired during our own civil war. These women were the material and spiritual support for Jesus and all the beggars, the halt and the lame who made up the bulk of the crowd scattering their very clothing on the ground, with branches from the nearby trees, before the only one who had ever seen them for who they really are – beloved children of God. Is it hard for us to imagine that they included Nicodemus the Pharisee who had visited Jesus at night so as not to be seen in God’s presence? And of course, the Samaritan woman who had lived a life of loneliness and ridicule? The man who had been blind since birth but whom now everyone thought he had been pretending all along? Poor Lazarus, who had been bound and gagged in a tomb for four long days? Even some of the many charlatans, fakers, miracle workers, mendicants, and wandering wise men who were curious to see how this particular wise young man might fair against the power elites who would themselves want to interrogate him once inside the mighty city on a hill. 

 

Most of the thousands of pilgrims from all over the ancient world would pay this traveling caravan little attention, so busy were they purchasing pigeons and sparrows to sacrifice, and souvenirs to take home to remind them of the once in a lifetime experience to observe Passover in Jerusalem. There can be no doubt that the Roman legions garrisoned in the Holy City on a Hill rounded up as many as they could to send to the jails to meet their monthly and weekly quotas set by Pilate himself. But of Jesus’s procession, there were hardly enough to make a spectacle let alone seem the cause for any serious trouble. No, this was no triumphant affair, but instead, a brilliant political satire of those who presumed to wield the power of the Empire against the power of YHWH, the power of Love – love of God and love of neighbor.

 

This is the love-power many of those in the procession had experienced with the one riding the slowly moving donkey. Jesus, making his own personal march to the scaffold. Going into Jerusalem to speak truth, God’s truth, his Father’s truth, to power. There was always a chance the Empire might be converted, transformed – but that is a story some nearly 300 years in the future. Every day, Paul tells us, Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.” From his emptiness, he gives all he has to all of God’s people, and now he rides into the jaws of the Empire’s ravenous hunger for more and more money and power, offering the opportunity one more time for the Empire to meet those he loved, those who walked beside him, no longer afraid, no longer alone, and be moved. They walked from all walks of life one more time into the lion’s den toward the new world, the new kingdom of love.

 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, wrote Paul of Tarsus to those early Christians in Philippi, a city named for king Philip II of Macedon, himself a master warrior and military strategist, who after his assassination was succeeded by his son, Alexander the Great. There were those throughout Israel who hoped and prayed Jesus would be like one of these mighty men of Macedon. No one was prepared for the emptied one, the servant of all, the humble embodiment of God’s love for all people and all of creation to be God’s anointed one.

 

Once inside the gates of the Holy City on a Hill, the story continued, but did not end there. For the Passion of Jesus for God his Father and his Passion for others, all others, continues to this day, here and now: The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew – Matthew 27:11-54…

 

After the Passion, a period of Silence

 

O Lord Jesus Christ,

Thou didst not come to the world to be served,

But also surely not to be admired

or in that sense worshiped.

Thou wast the way and the truth –

and it was followers only Thou didst demand.

Arouse us therefore if we have dozed away into this delusion,

Save us from the error off wishing to admire Thee

Instead of being willing to follow Thee

And resemble Thee.

-        Soren Kiekegaard (1813-1855), Training in Christianity

Amen.

 

Let us sing Hymn 439   What wondrous love is this, O my soul