Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Easter 2024

 Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer        Easter 2024 

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

Yes, that’s what the young man said. He was dressed in white sitting in an empty tomb, like some lost refugee from a casting call for Saturday Night Fever, “He has been raised,” he said. Then, as if needing to state the obvious he adds, “He’s not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.” The three of us looked, and sure enough he was not there. But then, who is this young man in white? Is he the same young man who ran away from the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested? But he ran away naked – leaving his white robe behind. Who is this guy anyway? There we stood, three Marys: Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Mary Salome. We saw Joseph take him away. Place him in the burial chamber. Roll a large stone across the entrance. And now this. Someone had rolled away the stone. The chamber is empty except for this young man. Where is he, we wondered? Where did he go? Jesus!

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

Some call us Les saintes-maries-de-la-mer: The Three Maries of the Sea. We were the first witnesses of the resurrection. But just what did we see? Just an empty tomb. That’s it. The end of the story, according to Mark. But what does he know. He wasn’t there. We were, the three of us. The young man gave us a message to tell the disciples, and quote, “and Peter.” And Peter? Isn’t he one of the twelve? What does “and Peter” mean? Who was that young man dressed in white? Where have they put my Jesus? Our Jesus? We followed him all the way from Galilee. Pilate and the Romans had him killed. Afraid he would spark an insurrection. We went to do the customary ritual with the ointments. But he was missing. Gone? End of story? 

Or, was it? Looking back at it, that morning after Shabbat was just the beginning. We were scared, despite the usual angel’s assurance, “Do not be afraid!” Easy for you to say, whoever you are. And where did you get that new white outfit? The three of us were uncertain what to do next, what with the Roman Centurions and their orders to round up the rest of Jesus’s Community of God's love and shalom. God's Shalom of Justice and Peace and Healing for a broken world. Tikkun Olam, he would say. Repair the World! As usual, at the beginning of the troubles, the men ran off and hid. The three of us stayed to watch. To make sure. To know just where they would put him so no one would steal the body and say he never existed. And we wanted to perform the ritual anointing. But now this. An empty tomb. What next?

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

Why do you all keep saying that? The young man said, “It’s ‘He has been raised,’” not “he is risen.” It makes a difference. We knew that. There is only one way that he could have been raised, and that was up on that Roman Cross at the Place of the Skull. The three of us were there as well. But once we saw that ‘he has been raised,’ we ran for our lives. And Mark is right. We told no one. How the word got around, we don’t know. We kept our mouths shut for fear of the Roman soldiers who were everywhere that Passover. Pilate had ordered extra troops from Rome fearing an insurrection was about to take place. Which was absurd. That’s not what Jesus taught us to do. Put down your swords, he would say. Turn them into ploughshares, he would say. He was always quoting Isaiah. Believe us when we tell you now, though. The tomb was empty.

When our uncle Joseph found out, he too was scared for his part in all of this. He hustled two of us onto his boat, and Mary Salome got the Zebedee’s boat, and we sailed away to a sleepy little resort town on the coast of France to get some rest and safety. We were all from fishing families. And now we were to fish for people to join Jesus’s Community of God’s Love and Shalom. We stayed there and began inviting people to join us in his Community of God’s Love. We fished for people on the coast of France.

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

Jesus had told us it would be like this. That after three days dead he would be raised from the dead. What he didn’t tell us is that everything would be different. That things would not look or be the same. We would only recognize him in the breaking of the bread. And it’s true. It’s as if he is more present to us now than he was before the Cross and the tomb. He tried to explain what had happened when he had been raised from the dead:

Two of the fingers on his right hand

had been broken 

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised

him – it hurt him at first. 

And the whole body was too small. Imagine

the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill. 

He came into it two ways.

From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants. 

And from the center – suddenly all at once.

Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone. [i]

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

Now he is with us again! He had been raised! He is still with us to this day. Which means we have been raised with him. We just did not know it at first. It surprised us as much as it surprised him. Even more so since he had been expecting it would end this way all along. But, as I said, it was not the end at all. It was just the beginning. He had told us all along that we would do the things that he had done, “and greater things than these,” if we would only believe. Believe in him. And believe in ourselves. After all, it was the three of us and all the other women from Galilee who took care of him and the others until that morning we found the empty tomb. Then we knew it was time for us to take care of ourselves – and to reach out and take care of others whenever we can. Just as he had always done. None of us ever forgot that night he had washed our feet. Peter thought he was daft! But Peter finally got the message and helped us all to understand. We were to love one another, as had loved us. 

Did you ever wonder just where the wind comes from? Or, the spirit? Or, the colors of the sky when the sun rises and sets? He had taught us what his friend and rabbi Hillel had taught him: If we did not take care of ourselves, who would look out for us? And if we looked out only for ourselves, who are we? And if not now, when?

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

I often remember the first time I met him at the well in the middle of the day. It was the first day of the rest of my life. I ran and told everyone that I had found someone who really knew me! And it’s funny, to have known him, and be known by him, makes every day like that day all over again. The tomb is still empty. You can keep looking for Jesus all you want. After a while, however, you will see the tomb is empty because he is always with you, wherever you go. Because he knows his work is never done. He will never be done with any of us. He will lead us to take a first step into his Father’s Kingdom – a kingdom not like any in this world! A kingdom where he will be with us, and we will be with one another forever. And ever. We, Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer have seen and experienced all of this, and we know that our testimony is true. He has been risen, and has been with us ever since. We have written all of this so that you too might come to know Jesus the way we know Jesus. He is alive! He is beside you here and now! Like us, become a part of his ongoing Community of God’s Love and Shalom for all! 

Know, my sisters and brothers, there is a place in your heart where Jesus lives and calls you to do something beautiful in this world. Go forth with Christ, go into the world with Love. With Peace. With God’s Shalom! A Peace that passes all understanding! And you will discover what the three of us did that morning – the tomb is not empty once you take that first step in as we did. Step in with your whole self and you will know he is always at hand. Reach out and he will take your hand and lead you into a new day, a new world, a new way of being you. A new way of loving others. All others, as together we usher in His world of Love and Shalom! Shalom, my friends, shalom, my friends, shalom, shalom! Shalom my friends, shalom my friends, shalom, shalom! 

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!

And so are we! 

 

[i] Howe, Marie, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, New York: 2008) p. 24

As one can see, this poem is by yet another Marie. Marie Howe’s work is extraordinary, and much of it reflects on the life of faith.

MI CRISTO VIVE!

 MI CRISTO VIVE!          Good Friday 2024

In the early morning nearly every day, I go running or walking around a parking lot. Every now and then, on the back row nearest the road, some vehicles are parked by men and women who work for Retro Environmental. Many of them are from Latin America. And one little Tacoma pick-em-up truck is sometimes there. The gentleman is from Honduras, and when he makes enough money here, he goes back to Honduras to build churches. In the back window of the truck in all-caps are the word, “MI CRISTO VIVE.” My Christ Lives! As I ran by this morning, I said to myself, “That is why Good Friday is good: because it was not the end of the story. In fact, it was only the beginning. MI CRISTO VIVE! 

Wednesday was the morning after the Key Bridge collapsed and eight men, also from Latin America, were plunged into the icy waters of the Patapsco River from a height of 185 feet. So far in the rescue and recovery effort, only two survived, and one of them is in critical care. I happen to know one of the men of Retro Environmental commutes from Dundalk every morning. I asked him if the bridge collapse had changed his commute. He said no, but that he lives only five minutes from the bridge, and that it woke him and his family in the middle of the night. He said it sounded as if a bomb had gone off. He was clearly shaken. And Thursday morning he told me that Wednesday night they took a service road down into the Port area and just sat on the shore, not far from the water, and looked at the wreckage. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “It just all collapsed at once.” 

It was raining when we spoke. It rained pretty much all day the morning after the Key Bridge collapsed. For the last year or so, as I run my laps around the parking lot, I suddenly find a line of five syllables come to mind, and I stop and write a haiku, a Japanese style of poem: three lines, five syllables, seven, and then five. I jotted down, “The sky is weeping/After tragedy destroys/Bridge and many lives.” I later revised it to say, “Our God is weeping/After tragedy destroys/Bridge and many lives.” 

How mysterious for this to happen in Holy Week. A few days earlier I was doing a walking meditation after my exercise. As I walked westward there were piles upon piles upon layers of dark clouds, recalling those dark hours for Christ on the Cross. I was listening to John Adams’s music and taped sounds, On The Transmigration of Souls, itself a meditation on the day of 9/11 and the aftermath. More than one person has said the disappearance of the Key Bridge bears an errie resemblance to the disappearance of the Twin Towers from the New York City skyline. 

As I walked into the darkness, I hear the words “missing” and “remember” intoned over and over again over the music and sounds of voices on the street that morning in New York City. And words from posters people posted near the St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway near Trintiy Episcopal Church: “She had the voice like an angel…and she shared it with everyone…in good times and in bad…” I used to do Stations of the Cross with children on Good Friday morning. They would draw a picture of Jesus before Pilate, or, Jesus carries his Cross. One little girl drew Jesus holding the cross in one hand as if the cross was only five or six inches high. I remember saying, “Jesus makes the cross look so small!” And that’s so true! That’s what Good Friday really is all about. The Roman Cross, a symbol of capital punishment. A symbol of the very idea of state-sanctioned execution. A desperate symbol of Power and Punishment for any and all who dare to challenge the authority of the Empire in one corner wearing the dark trunks. In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, Jesus, an itinerant teacher and ambassador for God’s love of all people no matter what. Jesus, who as much as tells Pilate, representative of the Empire’s utter brutality, “Go ahead. Give me your best shot. It will be nothing over against the power and love of God, my Father.” Jesus really does make the cross look so small. MI CRISTO VIVE! 

Turning back eastward on my walking meditation, the sky is lighting up with pinks, reds, purples and yellows of Easter sunrise. I’m thinking of my days at the New York Foundling Hospital under the supervision of Sister Anne Flood, Sisters of Charity. For my “job interview” to do field work there as a chaplain to group homes and in the main hospital, she introduces me to a young girl, fourteen and pregnant, and leaves the two of us to get to know one another. And after been tossed into the deep end of the pool Sister Anne takes me up to the top floor where there is a girl who has been born with just a brain stem, no brain, unable to communicate with us, but through her eyes we know she knows we are there with her as the Foundling keeps her safe and secure. Or, being asked to teach a group of young boys the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, “Our Father…” They look at me with so many questions because most of their fathers are absent, or incarcerated, and why would anyone pray in the name of someone we have never ever known? 

At first, I think, so many people, so many children, live their lives on the cross with Jesus every day. And I keep going back to be with these young people, and the girl on the top floor, and those in group homes because both parents are either missing, dangerous, or incarcerated, and I learn that no, that’s not it. Jesus came back to spend lifetimes with all of them. And with those missing since 9/11. And with those who just plunged into the Patapsco River on a cold night on the Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland. And with all ofus.Jesus, who makes the cross look so small, returns to be with all of us who mourn, all of those who are lost, and all of those who yearn for just one person, one someone, to share with them the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

As we listen to John’s story of the Crucifixion, we might notice that the actual crucifixion is mentioned only in passing. “There they crucified him…” That’s it. Only four words. Mark writes, “It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.” Luke says, “When they came to the place of The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals…” And Matthew gives it barely a backwards glance, “And when they had crucified him…” That’s it. That’s all the four gospels give us. No hammers. No nails. For all we know they tied his hands and feet to the cross as was often done, and which induced more suffering,  slowly suffocating with no blood lost. Why, I wonder, walking back westward into the darkness, do we fixate on the actual act itself when not one of the four evangelists gives us even one single detail about the crucifixion itself? We make dramatic movies about nailing his hands and feet to the cross. We reproduce millions of crucifixes with nails prominently displayed. I think to myself, why do we slow down to get a better look at an accident on the highway? Why did great crowds of people go to a town center to watch a black man be publicly lynched? Why did crowds gather around a guillotine during the French revolution to see the supposed bad guys get their so-called ‘just desserts’? What is it about we humans that we need to watch someone suffer by hanging, or by firing squad, or by lethal injection? We know that none of these methods of execution bring any sort of true justice or closure. We know that Jesus is there with those being executed; that he is being executed over and over again; but that in the end Jesus lives, and is living still, and makes the cross look so small. So powerless. I pass the pick-em-up truck. I see the words, MI CRISTO VIVE! 

We sing about Christ bursting his three days prison. But heading back into the lightening sky I think: from Friday at 3:00 PM to Sunday morning at, what, 4:00 AM, or 5:00 AM, marks the shortest three days in history. Something closer to 42 hours than 72 hours. Evidently, Jesus could not wait to come back to be with us! Welcome happy morning age to age shall say! 

The Passion according to John has one moment that has always given me a strange combination of hope mixed with uncertainty. It’s when Jesus, looking down from the cross, sees his mother, with her sister, and Mary Magdalene, the three of them standing there. John tells us, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” Where does this disciple some from? Is it one of the three women? Is it one of the Twelve? This “disciple whom he loved” is mentioned also at the Last Supper in John. But never identified. Some insist it is the evangelist John himself. But that has always seemed a bit sketchy. Someone has suggested it was the Samaritan woman at the well. Others suggest that we are the disciple Jesus loves. 

When the end is about to come, the text tells us, “Jesus says, ‘I am thirsty.’ And they give him some sour wine.” When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bows his head and hands over his spirit. His ruach! His breath. The very breath God first breathed into a handful of dust and water to give life to the first man. At that final moment, Jesus gives back that breath. The spirit God had put in him. The same ruach of God that hovers over the chaotic waters of creation is handed over. Returned. Given back for, as he says, for the life of the world. 

Perhaps he hands his spirit over to the disciple whom he loves. Perhaps that disciple whom Jesus loves is us. Each one of us. All of us together. He hands over his spirit, his breath, the Holy Breath of God, to each of us and all of us so we might still the chaotic waters of this life of ours. To still the waters stirred up by so many Roman crosses throughout all of Israel on that day like the three erected at The Place of the Skull. His was just one of many. He knew that. His last gift to all those whose lives are on the cross at one time or another. Or, all the time. Because once he hands over his spirit, we are made into his community of God’s steadfast love. 

MI CRISTO VIVE! I pass the pick-em-up truck one last time. As we contemplate the waters that once flowed beneath the Key Bridge, as we contemplate the chaotic waters of this world, as we see just how small Jesus makes the cross look, may we know that Jesus not only lives, but he wants to live in us. He wants us to know the steadfast love of God his Father who rescued him from the tomb, and means to rescue us all from the tombs we make for God’s Son, and the tombs we make for ourselves. And to know that Good Friday is good because it is not the end of the story, but only the beginning. And the sun is already rising on new day, a new life, a new world, if only we will receive with open hearts his one final gift to us all – the gift of His Spirit. The spirit of truth, the spirit of justice, the spirit of the Father’s Love for all that has been created, seen and unseen. Good Friday is not the end of the story. He invites us to become the rest of the story. MI CRISTO VIVE! Good Day! 

A Peculiar Dinner Guest Maundy Thursday 2024

 A Peculiar Dinner Guest   Maundy Thursday 2024

“This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” [i] These are the earliest instructions for the Passover Feast. These days, someone, usually the youngest person present, asks, “Why is this night not like any other night?” Which is one way of passing on the festival to successive generations. 

Jesus and his companions from Galilee, more than just the twelve, but a cohort of men and women who join him in going to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival – that day of remembrance when a disparate group of slaves in Pharaoh’s Egypt escaped to freedom from working 24/7, every day of every year. It is the day before the Day of Preparation for the Passover. We are told that Jesus knows before long he will return to his Father, the God of steadfast Love. He comes from Love. He is returning to Love. And on this particular night, Jesus establishes a community of Love. Which, like the instruction to remember the Passover as a perpetual ordinance, this community of Love he commissions is to become the means by which the steadfast Love of God is all around all the time. Forever. And ever. That is, God’s Love is eternal. As agents of God’s Love, we are promised eternal life. [ii] 

Whereas Paul, and Mark, Matthew and Luke, recall a ritual meal of bread and wine as the commissioning of this community of Love, storyteller John sees it differently. Where the other three storytellers devote a few sentences to the Last Supper, and stage it as if it were a Passover meal, John goes out of his way to be clear it was “before the festival of the Passover.” And John devotes five chapters to that night and meal, in which there is no mention of the bread and wine. 

John alone talks about how deeply and eternally Jesus loves his companions. He loves them, we are told, “to the end.” And the end is near. In fact, five chapters later, he will be betrayed by one of this cohort of men and women, and arrested by a group of Roman soldiers and some local Judean police. But first, he makes clear just how deep his love is for them.  

It must have been astonishing to see this itinerant teacher some called “rabbi,” the one who had turned water into wine and raised Lazarus from his four days in a tomb, get up from the table, disrobe, tie a towel around himself, fill a basin with water, and begin to wash everyone’s feet. A task which in those days commonly was the task of the youngest household slave – to greet visitors who had walked a long distance on dusty and rocky roads to relieve their aching feet. 

Just a few evenings earlier, while at the home of Lazarus, and the sisters Martha and Mary, Mary had taken a jar of costly nard, a rare and fragrant ointment, and had anointed his feet after walking all the way from Galilee to suburbs of Jerusalem. We can be certain that this had felt good. Really, really good, as she then wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of it all! Try to imagine how good that might feel about right now at the end of a long day. We can picture Jesus enjoying this, when suddenly Judas, sounding more pious than the Pope, complains that the ointment ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor. Storyteller John makes sure we know that Judas is a thief, does not care about the poor, and used to be in charge of the common purse and steal what was in it. 

Note, this cohort of men and women did not carry individual purses of their own money. All money was held in a “common purse,” to be used by the community as any had need. Very much like the Manna in the wilderness days after that first Passover: every day everyone could gather enough Manna, no one could take too much, and if you tried to hoard a little, or even a lot, it would go sour and become useless. Refusing to spoil the mood of how great his feet felt, Jesus says, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” [iii]  Snap! One can imagine that Judas the Traitor and Thief did not take kindly to being reprimanded in front of the others. 

It's possible that Jesus’s feet felt so good a few nights earlier, that now, before his return to love, that he wants everyone to feel the Love. Suddenly, it’s Peter feeling more pious than a flock of Pharisees who complains, suggesting that if anything, he should be washing Jesus’s feet. Jesus says you just don’t understand. Peter persists in complaining. Jesus then says, Let me wash your feet or you will have nothing to do with my community of Love! Snap! Peter replies, then wash me all over, my head, my hands and my feet. Cue an audible, “Sighhhh” as Jesus washes his feet. 

If you have ever had your feet washed or massaged, you know how good it feels. But many, if not most of us, would no doubt react as Peter does. For all kinds of reasons which need not be enumerated here. We, however, get so caught up in this little drama that we miss a central detail of the story. John tells us, “After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table…” He knew one of them would betray him. He knew it was Judas the Pious One. He no doubt knew Judas was a thief and was messing with money that could help others. Yet, he washed Judas’s feet along with Peter’s and all the other men and women who were there. As we were told all the way back in chapter 3, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” [iv] 

Then comes the Maundy part of the Thursday – for maundy comes from the Latin mandatum, or commandment: This community meal and foot washing is to forever be a sign of my love for you. Therefore, a new commandment I give you: you are to love one another as I have loved you. This means love everyone. Including this thief here, and the poor who you will always have among you. I am in the poor. The poor are in me. I am in you. You are in me. This love is my Father’s love. Love one another. And in your spare time, love everyone else as well. Even if they are a grumpy-thieves like Judas here. They need our love the most because in all likelihood, they have never felt loved before. Love is more than feelings, more than liking, more than compassion-from-a-distance. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” To which we might add, all others. 

Or, something like that. Perhaps I just made some of that up as I try to understand just what he was doing that night in suburban Jerusalem, stripping down to a towel and washing everyone’s feet. As in every single one. Maybe even John embellishes the story a little bit. In any event, it seems easy to see that being the community of love has not exactly been tried in the whole sense in which Jesus is as wholly inclusive as one could ever possibly be. What we do know for sure is that that night was not like any other night that had ever been experienced in suburban Jerusalem or even at the feast of the Passover. And so, we tell this story to this day to remember who we are, whose we are, and who we ought to be loving – everybody, no exceptions! Yes, even Judases! Amen.

---

[i] Exodus 12:14

[ii] John 13:1-35

[iii] John 12:1-8

[iv] John 3:17

Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion – The Mind of Christ

 Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion – The Mind of Christ

It seems complicated. Designed to give us whiplash. We barely get ourselves settled into recalling that fateful day that Jesus entered Jerusalem, and before we know it, we are listening to one of four versions of what we call The Passion: the events that lead up to his state ordered execution. Some “passion.” What drove the Roman Empire to execute this young man from Galilee was his passion for God, and for serving others. We are so used to calling Palm Sunday Jesus’s “Triumphal Entry” that we forget just how quickly everything really did go bad. He goes to the Temple and immediately causes a violent scene disrupting the Passover economy and disturbing the peace. He then departs out of the city to the home of Simon the Leper. To take a break? Or, to escape immediate incarceration? One notices that the crowd shouting “Hosannas,” waving branches of trees and strewing clothing all over the place mysteriously disappears from Mark’s telling of the story until that day later in the week we call Good Friday. 

One ought to wonder: was it really a Triumphal Entry at all? When we assign a title to this or any episode, we close it off to further interpretation. We freeze frame it. We place Jesus in a kind of box, a moment frozen in time. Take the crowd for instance. This crowd is made up primarily of Judeans and whatever Galileans had traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem. All the Judeans, we recall,  went out to be baptized by John, to repent and renew their hope that they might once again leverage God to intervene in the Roman occupation, just as God had long ago in Egypt and Babylon. Once Rome’s appointed “king of the Jews,” Herod, had John executed, Jesus, baptized by John, became the one in whom resided the hopes and dreams of a free Israel once again. 

And yet, it’s possible that once they saw Jesus mimic how Caesar and Pilate would enter Jerusalem mounted on towering, white war steeds, but instead on a young colt barely old enough to bear an adult, perhaps this crowd began to think of him as hopelessly naïve, or delusional, if not bordering on insane to think he and his crowd of rough speaking Galileans stood a ghost of a chance against a city secured by hundreds if not thousands of Roman Centurions. Were they cheering him on? Or, were they simply playing along, or even making fun of him? For as soon as he is in the city, the Judean crowd shouting “Hosannas” and waving branches and strewing garments all over the place disappears from Mark’s account, not to return until they demand that a robber and murderer named Barabbas be freed instead of, as Pilate calls Jesus, “the King of the Judeans.” Was Barabbas the one the crowd wanted released? Or, is it a case of mistaken identity? For Barabbas translates as, “Son of the Father.” And Jesus never claimed to be “King of the Judeans.” He has no pretension that there is any true king but God, his Father. And it is Mark who identifies him in verse one of chapter one as, “Jesus Christ the Son of God.”  Barabbas. Son of the Father. 

A word about Judeans. Southern Israel, and Jerusalem especially, was a diverse and extremely pluralistic region. Yes, there were Jews. But as we hear elsewhere in the book of Acts, there were still Canaanites, as well as Hittites, Jebusites, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Syrians, and peoples from all over the ancient world in and around Jerusalem. Especially during the octave, the eight days, of Passover. Our Greek New Testament texts describe the crowd as “Judeans,” not Jews specifically. Another case where our historical labeling in English translations “the Jews”  has caused much mischief. And worse, great and ongoing tragedy. 

On Palm Sunday St. Paul urges Christians throughout all time to, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” It was one thing in the first centuries of the Jesus Movement to have the mind of Christ while both Christians and Jews were victims of Roman persecutions. But once the Church became the Empire, after the conversion of Emperor Constantine, can one honestly say the church had “the same mind” that was in Christ Jesus? A church in which Medieval art work portrayed hammers in the hands of Jewish men nailing Jesus to the cross? Even though it was illegal for anyone other than Rome that could order and mete out state-sponsored capital punishment. Even the stories of the four evangelists tell us it was Roman Centurions who stripped, mocked, spit upon and nailed the Christ to the Cross. When the Church sent Crusaders to “take back” the Holy Land, did they have anything remotely like the “mind of Christ”? The Crusaders, who first slaughtered Muslims, then Jews, and then even other Christians they didn’t like, all of whom had lived together in Jerusalem peacefully? Did that in any way reflect the “mind of Christ” who teaches us to love our enemies? The German Christians who managed the concentration camps, who managed the “showers” of Zyklon-B gas and carbon monoxide to exterminate Jews and others, and then would go home and say grace at dinner, and prayers with their children at bedtime, and listen to the Bach B Minor Mass. Did these Christians, and the church officials who condoned their behavior, reflect the “mind of Christ”? Throughout the centuries, Christian preachers have urged, often during Holy Week, that Christians should chase, and beat up the local “Jewish Christ killers.” A practice that still is encouraged. A practice, like all the other Antisemitic speech, hatred and brutality must grieve The Mind of Christ. 

We may think, some seventy years after the Holocaust, that we have come a long way from such antisemitism. But if one looks closely at the window below Christ the Good Shepherd above our altar, one can see a section of stained-glass with a Star of David image. For Jesus was believed to be a direct descendent of King David. And we can see that there are sections of glass that do not match, and the leading is crooked and highly irregular. That is because sometime in the 1980’s someone, or some ones, threw a rock or a brick specifically through that emblem of the Jewish people and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Though the perpetrator(s) were never brought to justice, it is believed it was done by members of a local Ku Klux Klan. 

Today it is estimated that there are over 550 white nationalist and Christian nationalist groups throughout the United States. Although these groups do not agree on everything, one belief is shared by every single one of them: a hatred of the Jewish people. We have seen mass shootings and violence against synagogues across the land such that today, synagogues in the greater Baltimore area are having to hire 24-hour security, and armed guards on Sabbath and holy days. 

This is all just one example of xenophobic hatred that is currently on the rise against Asians, LGBTQ+ people, women, the native peoples of the Americas, immigrants, and any other class of people who are not Christian and of white European descent. Why has Palm Sunday become The Sunday of the Passion? Because we need to remind ourselves at least once a year that the one we call Lord and Savior shares in the fate of all who have been discriminated against, threatened and even killed simply for being different; other; not like “us,” whomever us is. Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew, arms outstretched on the cross, still reaches out to all people, no matter who or from where, to be embraced in his arms of God’s love, remarkable as that may seem after centuries of failure to have “the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus.” And so, we read The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ According to Mark, to remind us of just who we are and whose we are.  

The Voice Is For You Lent 5B

 The Voice Is for You

Previously in John Chapter 12: Six days before the Passover, Jesus spent time in Bethany with Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead, and the sisters Martha and Mary. A crowd had gathered because of Lazarus, and some Judeans from the Temple began a plot to kill both Jesus and Lazarus because of their popularity. The next day, Jesus entered Jerusalem with great pomp and circumstance, when suddenly, out of the great crowd, some foreigners, Greeks, gentiles, show up for the Passover festival. They say to Philip, “We wish to see Jesus.” Philip runs to Andrew and says “Hey, there are all these Greeks who want to see Jesus! What should we do?” [i] 

The two of them run off to tell Jesus that foreigners are at the gates looking for him. Jesus says, in effect, if anyone wants to see me, really really see me, then stick around. You’ll have to deal with my death at the hands of Rome to really really see me. Are they ready for that? Are you ready for that? Begging the question: Are we ready for that? 

He then says it is necessary. It’s like a grain of wheat dying in the ground and then coming to life to bear much fruit. A metaphor of dying to life in this world to gain a life in the world as God imagines it can be. “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” [ii] 

Then, quoting Psalm 6 Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled! What should I say? Father, save me from this hour. No, this is why I am here now. Father, glorify thy name!” The English translation is timid. His heart is not “troubled.” The text says, “My very being is struck with terror!” As well it should be. Then comes a big noise! Some thought it was thunder, so it must have been loud. Some thought it looked as if Jesus was talking to someone, but there was no one there. Must be angels, some surmise. It was the voice from heaven. The same voice he heard at his baptism that said, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you.” The same voice from the cloud on the mountain top with Peter, James and John and Jesus that said, “This is my beloved, listen to him.” Are we listening yet? 

Now when Jesus says, “Father, glorify thy name,” the voice returns and says, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” It was just thunder. Now he’s talking to himself. It sounds as if he’s lost it. Should we even think of letting the foreigners see him like this? Out of the confusion, Jesus announces, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.” That means for our sake, not his. This voice that keeps coming around is for us, not for Jesus. Which makes perfect sense. He knows the voice. The voice knows him. He has always heard his Father’s voice. Jesus comes to urge us to listen to his Father’s voice. To listen for the voice of God! 

The question is: Are we listening? Are we listening for the voice of God? It may surprise us to learn that to this very day, not just in the olden days, but today 90% of the peoples of the world regularly hear such voices? That we modern Westerners are the minority, the anomaly, as those people who do not regularly access this kind of communication with God and Spirits. The question is quite naturally, why not us? Most people say we are too busy to be listening, or think we are too sophisticated to hear voices, or think you have to be crazy or mentally ill to hear such voices. Someone has suggested that maybe it is because we are too grown up. Someone else has pointed out that most other cultures do not make such a big deal about needing to grow up. After all, it was Jesus who says we are to come to God’s kingdom like children! 

Of course, it may be that we don’t want to hear anything about having to watch him die, watch him be tortured and executed, the victim of state sanctioned capital punishment? Oh sure, dress it up as being like a grain of wheat, call it what you may, but that is what it is: state sanctioned public execution. In all the debate on capital punishment in our country, how often are we asked to reflect upon what it means that the one who calls us to “follow him” is himself the victim of state sanctioned capital punishment? The same voice that says we are to “love our enemies, “and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” [iii] This he says just after those liberal talking points called The Beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount. Are we still listening? 

Listening to his Father’s voice that says, “You are my beloved. I am well pleased with you. I have glorified my name and I will glorify it again.” We are left feeling that for God’s name to be glorified, we need to be listening to God’s voice and learn how to become part of the world’s glorifying process. Holy week, and all it portends, is dark and scary, and lays bare just how uncivilized we really can are. In Sunday School we rarely hear anything about this voice and its being for us. We typically do not spend much time on how to listen for this voice. Yet, Jesus says it is for us. And that suggests that we play a crucial role in the process of the world’s glorification. 

The creeds do not appear to discuss listening for this voice. The catechism does not seem to discuss it. Yet, there it is. “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.” Seems as if we best get listening to hear what this voice says. Nothing less than the glorification and future of the whole world is at stake according to what Jesus says.

 I think that what Jesus is saying, is that those of us, who like the foreigners want to see Jesus, are the very people to whom others come expecting to see Jesus. In us. In what we say and what we do. In his book, By Grace Transformed, the late Gordon Cosby of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., discusses just how it is others “hear the voice” and come to see Jesus. Gordon puts it this way:

Every single one of us is significant to somebody else. The people to whom we are significant will catch this thing from us if they know that we are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, absolutely devoted and loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the trouble is that, in those moments we think of as off moments, others decide whether or not we are truly committed. The times a person says, “I must talk to you,” or, when we are weeding the garden. Or, working in an office. Grading a road. Nailing on a molding or painting a room. Cooking a meal. Speaking to a child. These are the times and places where the other person decides who we really are. There can be no “off moments” for Christians if our faith and its vitality are to be contagious. [iv] 

That is, the glorification of God’s name comes in our most mundane moments. Jesus leaves it up to us to glorify God’s name. To do that we need to listen for The Voice. The Voice that is for our sake, not for his. The Voice speaks to us so that we might know just how Beloved we are. And just how important we are to join with Jesus in re-creating the world in the image of God. For it will be in listening to the voice and following Jesus that we will come to know how pleased God is with us. Once we hear this voice, know the voice, and become those people the voice calls us to be, others will come to see Jesus in all that we say and all that we do. And this is Good News! Amen.

---

[i] John 12:20-33

[ii] John 12:25

[iii] Matthew 5:43-48

[iv] Cosby, N.Gordon, Transformed by Grace (Crossroad, NYC:1999]) p.10

Serpents and Eternal Life Lent 4B

 

Serpents and Eternal Life

Jesus says to Nicodemus who comes to find out who Jesus is, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Adding the all too familiar sports stadium staple, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” [i]  In an astonishing analogy, Jesus self-identifies himself with “the serpent.” The people escaping Egypt were bad-mouthing Moses and God, thus separating themselves from the love of the God who had engineered their escape from slavery. To teach them a lesson, God releases some serpents, which, if they nip you on the heel, you die. Learning their lesson, they repent. “We have sinned…please pray for the Lord to take the serpents away.” The Book of Common Prayer defines sin as all desires and actions that separate us from the love of God. [ii] Note: no one accuses them of sin. They know it and renounce it themselves. 

The Lord of the Passover and Exodus instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it high on a pole, so that when the people who have been bitten look up to the serpent, they are healed. And restored to a life with God once again. The people look up to the serpent and live. [iii]  This all may strike us as bizarre. But there is ample evidence from the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE) of bronze serpents as cult objects throughout the world of the Bible. Especially in Egypt, where a single serpent on a pole, the Rod of Asclepius, which in both Greek and Egyptian mythology was a deity identified with healing. 

We might note that paradoxically, God saves the people from their affliction by inviting them to gaze on the very image of their affliction. The suggestion seems to be that a problem cannot be solved unless we face it and accepted for what it is. Perhaps God is offering a hard but life-giving lesson to God’s beloved people as they suffer in the wilderness: There is no way around. The only way out is through. Lent is a time set aside to remind us of this most important lesson. 

Jesus seems to say, “When I am lifted high upon a Roman cross, I am like the bronze-serpent Moses lifted up in the wilderness, which represents our God’s steadfast love and forgiveness, and desire to relent from punishment. God so loves the world that God gives his only Son, not to condemn the world but to save all who renounce all their desires and actions that separate themselves from the love God.” 

The very heart of John 3:16 tells us that God loves and God gives. What God loves is the world, the cosmos, all creation and everyone and everything therein. God does not love only the church. God does not love only Americans. God does not love only white people. God calls us to love our neighbors, whomever they are and from wherever they come. 

Jesus and Nicodemus both know that in the beginning, it says we are created, male and female, in the image of God. [iv] God’s image from the very beginning is to love and to give. We, therefore, have been placed here on this fragile Earth our island home to love and to give. To be gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abound in steadfast love, and to relent from punishing – as we hear that God does in the episode with the serpents in Numbers. This is what I understand Jesus means by his astonishing self-identification with the bronze-serpent of Moses. Jesus enters into a world of people that through word and action repeatedly separate themselves from God’s love and God’s forgiveness. It’s a world filled with anger and derision toward others – especially those others who are in any way unlike ourselves, unlike our tribe, unlike our country, unlike me. 

Each Sunday in Lent we begin by saying, “Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says! Love God with your whole self, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus does not make this up. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” And Deuteronomy 10: 19, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And Leviticus 19:34, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” That is, the Great Commandment and the Second that is like unto it, come from Torah, the first five books of the Bible. To be made in the image of God, is to embody God’s love and God’s infinite capacity to give to others, all others, even, as in Numbers, when they are speaking against God and you. Especially when they are speaking against God and you. 

Look at the bronze serpent and live. Look at Jesus on the cross and have eternal life. Which is not simply a long life, or even life after death, but rather a character of one’s life here and now that embodies being made in the likeness of a God who loves and who gives – who gives everything that we might live. That we might have life eternal. Life lived with God never ends. 

Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun and scholar, tells us that Clare of Assisi, an early follower of Francis, “was known as ‘the mirror saint’ because she drew her spiritual insights from her deep reflection on the cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote to her friend, Agnes of Prague, princess and daughter of King Wenceslas, that the cross reflects your true image. ‘Gaze on this cross every day,’ she admonishes Agnes, ‘and study your face within it, so that you may be adorned with virtues within and without.’” Delio then asks, “Does your face reflect what is in your heart. When the image of who we are reflects what we are; when our face expresses what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate – God’s agape love.” [v] 

Jesus self-identifies with the bronze serpent as an agent of healing. Jesus self-identifies with all people in this world who suffer. [vi] Jesus self-identifies with all those whose lives seem to be lived day after day on a cross of separation, deception, and all the brokenness of the world. His astonishing self-identification with the bronze serpent and the cross stands as symbols of his love of God and love of Neighbor. He gives his life for the world. The whole world. Not for the church, not just for Christians, but for the whole world, everyone and everything therein. Lent, Good Friday, and Easter, all call us to reflect on the man on the cross as a reminder of just who we are created to be: images, icons, of a God who loves and who gives for the life of the world. As we look upon Jesus on the Cross, we are to see ourselves: agents of love, forgiveness, and healing for a broken world of broken people. There can be nothing more astonishing than this! Imagine what the world could be like were we to live into the astonishment of Jesus. This would truly be eternal life, here and now, and for ever and ever. Amen.

---

[i] John 3:14-21

[ii] Book of Common Prayer, p.302

[iii] Numbers 21:4-9

[iv] Genesis 1:26

[v] Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2022) p. 49-50

[vi] Matthew 25: 31-46

No Catfish Messiah! Lent 3B

 No Catfish Messiah!  

Listening to the wild and wooly Rondo-Burleske of the Mahler Ninth Symphony while pondering this episode of Jesus driving out the animals for the Passover sacrifices and overturning the tables of the currency exchange in the Temple, [i] three things suddenly came to mind: 1) when I make my epic movie about Jesus, Mahler’s Rondo-Burleske will be the soundtrack for this violent scene in the outer Temple precincts; and 2) Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s Fable of the catfish. Catfish patrol fishtanks to clean up the mess all the other fish make, literally consuming their excrement. One day, however, the catfish goes on strike. The water in the tank gets cloudy, messy and disgusting. All the fish complain. “Do something about all this, Catfish!” “I’ve had it with cleaning up your messes! Clean up your own messes!” the catfish says. [ii] 

And finally, 3) it seems that Jesus, in this violent prophetic gesture, makes the same point as to what a messiah’s job really is: to lead all of us in ways to clean up our own messes! His action is similar to Ezekiel’s public demonstration, some 700 years before Jesus, eating ritually impure, and disgusting, barley cakes baked on human dung to get the people’s attention to the impending destruction of Jerusalem and Exile to Babylon as a result of their continuing inattention to God’s true desires. [iii] Desires which were expressed at least eight centuries before Christ by Hosea, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings;” [iv] and Isaiah, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.” [v] God’s appetites evidently had changed significantly, as that other eighth century prophet Micah sums it up:

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of

rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord 

require of you but to do justice and to love kindness 

and to walk humbly with your God? [vi] 

Suffice it to say, Jesus takes it upon himself to make the point that the Lord God of the Exodus, the Exile and the current Roman Occupation has had enough ritual bar-b-que to last for all eternity, and would rather have us simply be kind to one another, fight for justice for those who are oppressed, and to humble ourselves walking in God’s way instead of our own way believing that we know everything there is to know about God, Jesus and Life itself. Living, as we do, in what will one day be looked back upon as the most hubris-ridden period in human history, we can honestly say that after 2000 more years of ignoring what God really desires, we still need to learn the lessons this outburst by Jesus has tried to place squarely in front of us. No catfish messiah, he! Time to stop thinking someone besides us will do the heavy lifting! 

Although Peter, at Caesarea Philippi, seemed to correctly identified Jesus as the Christos, the Christ, God’s anointed messiah, he still believed that that meant that Jesus, on his own, would turn the world right-side-up again dispensing with all of our sinfulness, and remaking the world as God dreamed it to be: devoid our perverted understandings of “free will” as human arrogance that wants everything “go my way, which everyone must accept as their way, or take the highway;” rather, God dreams of “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky,” as was so often expressed by the African-American mystic, Howard Thurman. [vii] 

Like Ezekiel before him, Jesus knows the Roman occupation, and the Zealots’s attempts at insurrection against the Empire, will not end well. And like Ezekiel before him, it will not be long before once again there will be no Temple where God’s name can dwell and sacrifices made. The lessons of Isaiah, Hosea and Micah will come to pass, but not without greater violence than shooing some animals away and turning over the currency exchange where one changes coins of the Empire for coins acceptable for offering in the Temple – coins with the emperor’s face declaring that “Caesar is God” cannot be used. The time is now, Jesus seems to be saying in this prophetic outburst, to honor God’s true desire of shalom, peace and justice, for all people, respecting the dignity of every human being as God’s beloved. Seeking and Serving Christ in all persons; loving our neighbor as ourselves. The hardest work of all, of course, is loving one’s self. 

All four gospels recount a version of this episode. Mark, Matthew and Luke, however, place near the end of the story just before the showdown with Pilate. This would suggest that this outburst, which interrupts the commerce of the week-long Passover festival, would displease the folks back in Rome are skimming the cash offerings for themselves! As trues as this may be, John instead places this at the outset of the story to make sure the listener understands: Jesus is God’s Beloved Son; The Temple is God’s House; once The Temple is gone (which it was as John’s community was writing this down), God’s presence will heretofore reside in person of Christ. Therefore, it is important to follow this Jesus who walks humbly with God, seeking justice for all people, and exemplifying what it means to be kind to one another; to be friendly people beneath a friendly sky! And to clean up our own messes! 

This seems to be why he is talking about rebuilding the “temple”. “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.” [viii] He looks forward to Good Friday and Easter, as we do in Lent. And back to the world as envisioned by the prophets nearly 3,000 years ago, where there is no place and no need for animal, grain, oil and wine sacrifices, but a never-ending need for justice, peace and humility; for kindness; for shalom, peace, understood as all of us working together to meet the very real human needs of all people, all creatures, and creation itself. No messiah, no single figure, no one anointed by God, will ever be the catfish for our fish-tank. Every time Jesus says, “Follow me,” he invites us to clean up our own messes with justice, kindness and humility. This is God’s Dream for us all: A friendly world, of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky! We are given “free will” so that working together we might one day make God’s dream come true.

---

[i] John 2:13-22

[ii] Friedman, Edwin, Friedman’s Fables, (Guilford Press, NYC: 1991)

[iii] Ezekiel 4:9-15 “12 You shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”

[iv] Hosea 6:6

[v] Isaiah 1:11

[vi] Micah 6:6-8

[vii] Dozier, Verna, The Dream of God, (Cowley Publications, Boston: 1991) p.31

[viii] John 2:22