Do We Understand The Bible? Lent 2B

 Do We Understand The Bible?    2B

Let’s back up a bit. Jesus and his disciples are near Caesarea Philippi. It is as far north as he is recorded to have traveled. It was an ancient Roman and Greek city known for its revelations by the God Pan. It is a lush region at the base of Mt. Hermon, and the headwaters of the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan. It’s here, about as far away from Jerusalem as one can get, in a land of revelations, that Jesus asks the central question in Mark, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter alone answers, “You are the Christos, the anointed, God’s messiah.” And Jesus scolds them to speak to no one about him. This may strike us as odd. But that’s not all. He teaches them that it is necessary that the son of adam [man] suffer many things, be rejected by the Judeans and Romans in power in Jerusalem, and be killed, and after three days rise. He says this all plainly. [i] 

Then Peter begins to scold him. Jesus, turns and sees the rest of the disciples, and scolds Peter. “Get behind me, you satan. You don’t judge things the way God does, but the way people do.” Ouch! We remember the satan is not a guy with a pitch fork and horns. In Hebrew culture and literature, it is someone sent by God to be sure everyone understands. To test people’s faith. In this case, however, it is the tester who does not understand at all.  

This is the heart of the Good News, the evangelion, that Mark is proclaiming. This episode is dead center in Mark’s gospel. Set in this historic region of revelations, this truly deserves to be called, Breaking News! Jesus is revealed for who he is, the Christ, and reveals the rest of the story. Peter does not yet understand who this Christ, this messiah, really is. Begging the question: Does the Church really know who Jesus is? Do we really understand who Jesus is? 

As I pondered all of this, along comes this on Facebook by a Pastor named Brian Zahnd:

"I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

“That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

“I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem. One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.

“Imagine a history of colonial America written by Cherokee Indians and African slaves. That would be a different way of telling the story! And that’s what the Bible does. It’s the story of Egypt told by the slaves. The story of Babylon told by the exiles. The story of Rome told by the occupied. What about those brief moments when Israel appeared to be on top? In those cases, the prophets told Israel’s story from the perspective of the peasant poor as a critique of the royal elite. Like when Amos denounced the wives of the Israelite aristocracy as ‘the fat cows of Bashan.’

“Every story is told from a vantage point; it has a bias. The bias of the Bible is from the vantage point of the underclass. But what happens if we lose sight of the prophetically subversive vantage point of the Bible? What happens if those on top read themselves into the story, not as imperial Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans, but as the Israelites? That’s when you get the bizarre phenomenon of the elite and entitled using the Bible to endorse their dominance as God’s will. This is Roman Christianity after Constantine. This is Christendom on crusade. This is colonists seeing America as their promised land and the native inhabitants as Canaanites to be conquered. This is the whole history of European colonialism. This is Jim Crow. This is the American prosperity gospel. This is the domestication of Scripture. This is making the Bible dance a jig for our own amusement.

“As Jesus preached the arrival of the kingdom of God, he would frequently emphasize the revolutionary character of God’s reign by saying things like, ‘the last will be first and the first last.’ How does Jesus’ first-last aphorism strike you? I don’t know about you, but it makes this modern day Roman a bit nervous.

“Imagine this: A powerful charismatic figure arrives on the world scene and amasses a great following by announcing the arrival of a new arrangement of the world where those at the bottom are to be promoted, and those on top are to have their lifestyle “restructured.” How do people receive this? I can imagine the Bangladeshis saying, “When do we start?!” and the Americans saying, “Hold on now, let’s not get carried away!” [ii] 

As I read this from Pastor Brian Zahnd I said, Wow! Who is this guy? This is brilliant! Can we see the problem here? Do we begin to understand? Do we understand who Jesus is? Do we even know who we are? We are Peter. Peter the satan. Hold on there, Jesus, he says. Let’s not get carried away. We want a Christ, a messiah, who can vanquish these Romans and deliver us from this Exile-at-Home we have suffered for generations now. A messiah who can make all our problems go away. Not a messiah hanging on a Roman cross! 

Then what do we hear as Jesus concludes, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” There’s some more upside-down, right-side-up thoughts to ponder. 

Meanwhile, there is this: according to news accounts, we live in a time where in many churches across the land, people are chastising their preachers and pastors for talking about The Beatitudes. Calling them “liberal talking -points,” and saying “they’re too weak.” This is no time for humility, they say. How dare Jesus say the meek shall inherit the earth! And Jesus wept. 

Lent is a time to “meditate on God’s Word,” and begin to see just where we truly fit into Mark’s story of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Pastor Zahnd correctly suggests we need to see ourselves as Pharaoh, as Nebuchadnezzar, and Caesar. And we need to hear Jesus calling us to lift up the meek, the poor, the humble, and those who mourn. The last will be first, and the first will be last, he says. Perhaps we need to stand on our heads as we try to read The Bible right-side-up! It’s a good thing we have forty days to begin to sort this out before launching ourselves into Easter and Pentecost. With God’s grace and God’s Spirit, we may begin to understand. We know that eventually Peter did. There’s hope for us yet to begin to read the Bible right. 

[i] Mark 8:27-38

[ii] https://brianzahnd.com/2014/02/problem-bible/  by Pastor & Author, Brian Zahnd

The Hokey Pokey Is What It's All About Lent 1B

The Hokey Pokey Is What It’s All About!

I remember being in awe as Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel explained that the manuscript that became his book Night began as a one-thousand-page memoir of his time in the Auschwitz camps as a teenager. He edited it down to a mere 120 pages so that it might be a bare-bones, metaphysical and existential account with no elaboration of the horrors he and some 12 million people experienced at the hands of Nazi Germany, including six million European Jews. 

Among the four gospel accounts of Jesus the Christ, Mark, long understood as the earliest of the four, stands as a similar bare bones existential account: a mere six short sentences sum up his baptism by John, his hearing the voice from heaven and an experience of the Spirit of God, the same Spirit drives him into an extended time of testing in the wilderness, and the beginning of his public ministry. His time in the wilderness in Mark consists of only two short declarative sentences, with no details of what his “testing” by “Satan” consisted of. [i] 

If one brackets out the familiar accounts in Matthew and Luke, which are nearly identical and all too familiar, one might be able to imagine this testing as a sign of an internal struggle to make sense of what the Spirit and Voice had told him: that he is God’s beloved Son, and that the God of his ancestors Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, Rachel, Leah and Jacob is well pleased with him. Too many years of Sunday School, too many years of sermons, too many annual publications around Christmas and Easter time purporting to tell “the real story” of Jesus the Christ, make it difficult to imagine anything other than what others have told us about the man from Nazareth in Galilee as he is in the wilderness. 

Only Mark leaves us to sort it out ourselves. We might ask ourselves, why? Why no details about a time away from everyone and everything else in a place with no resources but himself and the presence of God as angels, and some sort of wild beasts? And of course, the Satan, who throughout the Hebrew scriptures is portrayed as an agent of God’s to test people’s faith. 

Is it possible that after hearing the voice from heaven, that the one who would later by called the Christ, God’s anointed one, himself has some questions about just what on earth all this means? 

The immediate outcome of this extended stay in a wilderness is his confidence to proclaim the closeness of God’s “kingdom,” and the need of everyone, all the time, to “repent and believe the good news.” It is a trademark of Mark’s spare, bare-bones account to suggest in the very first sentence of chapter 1 that this Jesus who joined in John’s ritual bathing in the River Jordan is himself, his very self, the good news that he proclaims! And that Mark intends only to reveal “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Which, similar to John’s account decades later, indicates that there is no ending to the story – at least not until God’s kingdom of Shalom covers the entire face of the Earth. 

After forty days, which is meant to denote something like longer than a Lunar Cycle, more than a month, Jesus calls on everyone to change their minds – metanoia – and turn, or re-turn to God and God’s way of Shalom. Further, Mark’s choice of the Greek metanoia, as opposed to the more definite Koine Greek word for full and total conversion, epistrophe, suggests that this repentance this Beloved Son of God calls us to is not a once-and-done affair, as depicted in the epic Burt Lancaster film, Elmer Gantry – nor as often depicted in endless televangelist shows or tent revivals – but rather is an ongoing process of conversion in most of our lives, as the still popular Shaker song has it: “To turn, turn will be our delight / Till by turning, turning we come round right.” [ii] It seems part of the human condition that we continually need to turn and re-turn to God and God’s way of Shalom: justice and peace for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. Like the Hokey Pokey, we need to turn ourselves about. 

Very few of us can take more than a month away from everyone and everything to get this turning back to God and God’s way “just right” as Jesus appears to do. Repentance, then, is an ongoing, often never-ending, process in which we mean to never look back, but…inevitably we stray from the path, re-turn to bad habits, creating the need to “turn, turn, turn, turn again” until we “come round right” once again. Repentance is characterized as a coming to our senses and once again grounding ourselves in the presence of God – or for Christians, to see ourselves once again grounded in the promised presence of Christ “until the end of the age!” [iii] 

That is, it’s OK for us all to go astray. There are few, if any, of us who do not! One imagines this testing going on with God’s own administrator of Godly SAT’s, Satan, is based as much on our own doubts about our own belovedness as it may be in any direct questioning of our faith by God’s own tester. It was the great 20^th century theologian, Paul Tilich, who suggested that doubt is not the absence of faith, but rather is an essential element of faith. Frederick Buechner says it best: “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” [iv] 

It ought to be noted, this ritual to turn back to God is depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, or Torah. The word is shuv (pronounced shoove) – which can mean to turn from one place or direction toward another, or to re-turn to one’s beginnings. Thus, in Genesis 3:19 Adam is told by YHWH in the garden, as we were just reminded on Ash Wednesday, that ultimately, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return ( shuv ) to the ground ( a damah ), since from it you were taken ; for dust ( a damah ) you are and to dust ( a damah ) you will return ( shuv ).” 

As we were also reminded on Ash Wednesday, our God is an awesome God since the repeated description of God in Torah, the scriptures of Jesus, is often repeated: “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” [v] There it is again! We are to shuv, shuv, shuv, turn, turn and re-turn to the Lord our God because our God is not finished with us yet! 

Lent is that time of year for us all to find ways to shuv, to turn, to re-turn to the Lord our God whose Good News IS Jesus the Christ, God’s beloved Son! In his life, death and resurrection, the Christ shows us how to shuv, shuv, shuv until we come down right! And since he promises to be with us to the end of the age, we have lots of time to get it just right! And that is Good News for us all!

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[i] Mark 1:9-15

[ii] Simple Gifts, a Shaker song written and composed in 1848, generally attributed to Elder Joseph Brackett from Alfred Shaker Village.

[iii] Matthew 28:20b

[iv] Buechner, Frederick, Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC (Harper & Row, New York:1973) p. 20

[v] Joel 2:12-14

Death and Transfiguration

 Death and Transfiguration

This episode in Mark’s gospel is singularly the most mysterious episode in the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God: Jesus is Transfigured – has become blindingly white light – and is seen by three disciples speaking to Moses and the prophet Elijah. [i] 

The text in Mark begins, “Six days later….” Six days later than what? Then when Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answered, correctly, “You are the Christ!” Then Jesus told them that he would suffer many things, be rejected, killed, and after three days he would rise again. And he followed that by saying those who want to become a follower of his must pick up their cross “and follow me.” Peter objects strenuously and is told to be quiet and get with the program. 

Six days later is also another way of saying, “On the seventh day…” which for the Bible means much more than just “a week later.” God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the Seventh. The seventh day is ordained in the Ten Commandments as a day of Sabbath rest. Sabbath rest is meant to take us out of the tedium of our day-to-day activities and thoughts and use the time to remember and experience the presence of God in all things, in all places, at all times. 

Then there’s the location on a mountain. Mountains have long been considered “thin places,” higher in altitude, thinner in air, and closer to God. Moses sat atop Mount Sinai for six days, and on the seventh day God spoke to him. And Elijah wanted to see God, hid in a crevice as God passed by. After much thunder and violence, he heard a still, small voice, a sigh, and knew at once that YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was there nearby. Moses and Elijah were experienced mountaineers who both were known to have spoken directly to God. 

Curiously, the Bible offers no narrative account of either of them dying – Moses literally just disappears from the narrative, and Elijah, as we read in 2 Kings, flies off in his chariot of fire into the wild blue yonder we know not where! [ii] Both are believed to have the capacity to return to planet Earth. Therefore, who better to be seen with Jesus on a mountain top than Moses and Elijah – the Law and the Prophets. The text tells us they are talking to Jesus who suddenly appears to be radioactive, blindingly bright. His appearance, the location and the presence of Moses and Elijah suggests that the two visitors are once again talking to God. 

Try to imagine for a moment viewing this scene. At the very least, it would leave us breathless, even speech less. Not Peter!  Peter decides to get in on the conversation. He calls Jesus “Rabbi,” and offers to set up three dwellings, or three booths. Why booths? Could it be because that is how the people Moses led lived in the wilderness for forty years? It has been suggested by some that Peter wants to turn this into an extended mountaintop campout retreat. The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ the Son of God will be held over for one more week with cameo appearances from Moses and Elijah! In a rare moment of candor, the text tells us Peter has no idea what he’s talking about because he and the others are terrified. Which Moses and Elijah would agree is the proper response to a direct encounter with God. Which seems to be the meaning of this entire episode: if you want to know who Jesus is, to be in his bright white presence is to be as if you are in the presence of God.

Then comes thick darkness. And a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” We, the listeners have heard this voice before when Jesus heard it at his baptism by John, who by the way, dresses a lot like Elijah. That voice was addressed to Jesus alone. This time it is addressed to Peter, James and John, and of course every one of us. The voice comes with a new commandment: Listen to him! 

One suspects the first reaction from Peter to this voice will be, “Whoever Jesus is, he’s no ordinary rabbi chatting it up with Moses and Elijah! He’s God’s Son. God’s Beloved!” No doubt, followed by, “What does this all mean?” 

Mark is anything but subtle in his purpose of telling us these stories. He begins the Gospel, “The Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. A few verses later, a voice tells Jesus standing in the River Jordan, “You are my Son, my Beloved.” Midway through the Gospel Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” After several failed attempts, Peter blurts out, “You are the Christos, the Anointed, the Christ Messiah of God.”  But as we know, as in this story of  Transfiguration, Peter once again has no idea what he is talking about. Six days later the voice from the baptism returns in the midst of this terrifying mystical experience to remind one and all, this is the Son of God, God’s Beloved. And in case we were to forget who he is, as the story now turns us toward Jerusalem, the final words that are spoken at the foot of the cross by none other than a Roman Centurion who proclaims, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” [iii] 

We should not forget this all happens on the Sabbath – a time to stop all else that we are doing to listen to God. To remember who we are and whose we are. To ponder a text like this one in which truly astonishing things are going on. And then remember, amidst all the other hub-bub and the endless fire-hose-like stream of events, information, disinformation all aimed at getting and maintaining our attention, if we were to simply stop, and “listen to him,” we will see more astonishing things than this going on all around us every day. If only we take the time out. 

Perhaps this story is meant to remind us of the most astonishing truth of all: by water and the holy spirit we have been incorporated into the body of Christ in our baptism, which, we are told, is a bond that is indissoluble. [iv] We are Christ’s own forever. When we take time out to listen to him, he tells us, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you!” I am always with you. Our God is not far off. We are those people who know who Jesus is. Truly he is the Son of God, who promises to be with us always, to the end of the age. And for this we give thanks!   Amen. 

PS On the way down from the mountain, Jesus “ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” Could it be because he wants everyone to have a chance to see him for who he really is for themselves?

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[i] Mark 9:2-9

[ii] 2 Kings 2:1-12

[iii] Mark 15:39

[iv] Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.298

The Gospel of The Old Ones Presentation/Candlemas 2024

 

The Gospel of The Old Ones   

There are days when it seems easy to imagine the end of the world. Whether it comes from a nuclear holocaust or a super-heated climate crisis; whether it be from the collapse of republican democracy or the advent of a fascistic dictatorship; whether it comes from an asteroid crashing into our planet or the outbreak of civil wars throughout this fragile earth, our island home; whether it be random acts of gun violence or a gradual stripping of individual rights, first for one group, then another, and another; from another pandemic or the simple lack of a well vaccinated population. If we do not imagine these apocalyptic events on our own, there are entire industries devoted to injecting all kinds of fears into our day-to-day existence, whether those fears are from the right or the left; from red or blue ideologies; from fear of education, fear of science, fear of modern medicine, fear of genetically modified foods. There seem to be no end to the kinds of fear entering our lives through radio and television; through social media platforms; through endless conspiracy theories; through cult-like ideologies. 

On good days, we try to keep our heads down to somehow believe we can screen all these fears out and power our way through an equally endless series of tasks and responsibilities we believe we must attend to lest life itself come crashing to a halt. We try to avoid or ignore interruptions of what passes as our necessary “routines.” It becomes more and more rare to allow ourselves to take time-out, take sabbath time, time to look at the sky, let alone time to sit in silent meditation and contemplation. To give ourselves space and time to just breathe and wait. 

The world into which God chose to arrive as one of us, a vulnerable child, a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes that also look strikingly like a funeral shroud, was a world full of the loss and fears of an occupied people. The child is just one among millions born into this world that seems hell-bent to destroy itself. When Luke wrote this account some 80 years after the child’s birth, Jerusalem and its Temple again lay in ruins, and factions of people were struggling, often against one another, to find a way forward. It seemed like the world had come to an end. Luke writes that forty days after the birth of this baby boy, the baby’s unwed young mother goes to the Temple in Jerusalem for her own traditional ritual purification by the priests, and to present this boy-child to God the giver of all good things. [i] She and the older gentleman with her no doubt saw nothing extraordinary in observing these generations-long rituals of their people. For her purification she is to offer a lamb for sacrifice. But for those who could not afford an unblemished lamb, a pair of turtle doves or pigeons would do. One imagines in the hard-times of the Roman military occupation which sought to extract all possible resources out of the country to send back home to Rome, the seat of Caesar’s Empire, that all most people could afford were the birds. No doubt Mary had hoped they could make their offering quickly and unnoticed so they might turn around and head right back home to Nazareth. It was not to be. 

Enter the Old Ones. Simeon and Anna were unique among their septuagenarian peers. They had taken time out of life to stand and wait outside the Temple. Waiting to see what God might do this time. After all, their ancestors had escaped a life of slave-labor in Egypt, a forty-year testing period in the wilderness, and the destruction of the first temple followed by 40-plus years exile in Babylon. Each time the Lord had saved them from the fear and danger surrounding them on all sides. Simeon had avoided joining with the zealots who repeatedly tried to oust the Romans by violent force. He had stayed out of the debates between Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes as to what kind of life would evoke a response from the Almighty. Taking a path of non-violent resistance, Simeon had been visited by the same Holy Spirit who had announced that Mary would have a child. This Spirit had promised Simeon that he would not die before getting to see the Lord’s Anointed One. Ever since, Simeon had been waiting for a glimpse of a new and better future. The old woman, Anna, had been married, but has long been widowed. She too, like the old man, spent day and night at the Temple where she saw the endless stream of pilgrims come and go. She could see how some of the Temple priests would collaborate with the occupation and corrupt the life of their people. She had seen many babies, many such rituals, as she waited and prayed year after year after year to see what God might do. 

Just one look at this child and Simeon and Anna knew they were looking at the future – and they somehow sensed that the future starts now! What did Mary think as the old man grabbed the child from her arms to get a better look and begin singing? Or, why her old man, Joseph did nothing. Then Anna begins to tell everyone that this child is the One to redeem Israel. What did Simeon and Anna see? They probably saw nothing - and everything! [ii] They saw a family of humble means and demeanor, a young and tender mother and her awkward aging old man – the essence of simplicity. They seemed the kind of people who sadly would ordinarily leave no lasting impression whatsoever. Simeon and Anna knew this was God’s next intervention. 

Yes, Anna and Simeon had seen plenty of people come and go from the Temple. What they had not seen was the simple truth these ancient rituals of presentation and purification proclaimed. Until now. Looking at the infant Christ, it all comes together. Something like light emanates directly from him into them. And in its simplicity and plainness, this family represents all that it means to be human. As Sam Portaro writes, “They had neither the arrogance that pretends to greatness, nor the brooding hostility that hates the human condition. They were neither better or worse than any of God’s creatures, and they came to make an offering. Even they had no idea what an offering it would be…Simeon, who had seen all the world has to offer, and Anna who had seen all that the human soul seeks, took one look at the child and saw the truth…These eyes that had seen it all, for the first time saw all that God desired, and it was a little child.” [iii] 

Simeon and Anna do not only see the future of the world. They see new meaning for their lives, and the lives of all people everywhere. They see love personified in a little child. Their hearts were filled with love! Their lives had been fulfilled. God’s promises to them had come true as they waited patiently upon the Lord. They could now leave this world in peace. They saw at the end of long and very full lives, in the blessedness of life’s wisdom and God’s grace, that God requires far less than we may think; only what we already are. [iv] 

Pema Chodron, that beloved Buddhist nun, writes, “Things happen to us all the time that open up the space. This spaciousness, this wide-open, unbiased, unprejudiced space, is inexpressibly and fundamentally good and sound. It’s like the sky. Whenever you’re in a hot spot or feeling uncomfortable, whenever you’re caught up and don’t know what to do, you can find someplace where you can go and look at the sky and experience freshness, free of hope and fear, free of bias and prejudice, just completely open. And this is accessible to us all the time. Space permeates everything, every moment of our lives.” [v] That’s what happened that day in the Temple forty days after the Christ child’s birth.  Look to the sky and we can see it, feel it and be it. Just take the time to stop everything and look up and remember the old man and the old woman. God requires far less than we may think; only what we already are.    Amen.

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[i] Luke 2:21-39

[ii] Portaro, Sam, Brightest and Best (Cowley Press, Boston: 2001) p,40-41

[iii] Ibid Portaro

[iv] Ibid Portaro

[v] Chodron, Pema, The Pocket Pema Chodron (Shambala Press, Boston: 2008) p.70