Suddenly Everyone is a Theologian! Epiphany 3C

 

Suddenly Everyone is a Theologian!

I don’t know about you, but I am getting tired of people hurling hateful rhetoric at our U.S. presidents. It does not matter who it is: it can be Joseph Biden, it can be Donald Trump, and for goodness sake, since I was old enough to pay attention, around eight or nine years-old, I have always been puzzled at people who still hate Franklin Deleno Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln! What has happened to having some modicum of respect for the office of the President and whomever it is that currently holds that office? Okay, you hate “my” president, then I will hate “yours.” I cannot see how it helps us to be 50 “united states” to behave this way. 

And surely such behavior flies in the face of the most fundamental dimensions of what some would call a “biblical world-view.”  God’s vision of Shalom, oft translated “peace,” for all the earth, all creation, all creatures, the entire cosmos, is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely the care and management of all of God’s creation, all of God’s people, all of God’s creatures, and all of this fragile Earth, our island home. 

To act upon and live into our single destiny, from the outset the Bible makes the audacious assertion that we are all, male and female, created in the “image of God,” or in theological God-speak, imago Dei. Evidently there are those theologians who believe God speaks mostly in Latin! As to the content of God’s image, there is a long historical arc that asserts itself over and over again that our God is “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment.” [i]  For those of us who read the Bible with any kind of regularity, these qualities of God’s character are to be found in Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Psalm 86:5,15, Nehemiah 9:31, Joel 2:13, and Jonah 4:2. Which, among other things, insists that the God of the Old Testament is a God of Mercy, Love, Forgiveness, and Shalom. 

It is important for us Christians to recognize that the young Jew named Jesus of Nazareth makes the very same claims about our destiny to embody the essence and image of God, most especially in what we call The Sermon on the Mount, which is his version of a Christian Magna Charta or Constitution. This teaching comprises all of chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew, far more than just the opening salvo we call The Beatitudes. It includes such seminal ideals of Christian moral virtue such as to love our enemies and pray for them; in everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets; to be merciful as God is merciful; to be the light of the world. [ii] 

In a truly dramatic moment in the life of Jesus is a sermon he preached in his hometown synagogue, reported to us only by the evangelist Luke (4:16-30), which curiously is assigned for us to be read this week and next. A fault of mine is that I abhor breaking such an important story into more than one reading, and we won’t hear it next week which will be the Feast of the Presentation. Yet, it seems to be pertinent to some of the events of the past week. Jesus is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and seems to choose to read from chapter 61: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." He then hands the scroll back, sits down, and as the eyes of the whole congregation were looking at him, he preached arguably the shortest sermon in the history of Christian homiletics: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." 

Both Isaiah and Jesus would be understood to be referencing The Jubilee Year as prescribed in Leviticus 25:9-10: a time when all debts are to be canceled, debt-slaves set free, and a full economic and community reset is to take place. It is a story that demonstrates what being merciful looks like: to care for those who are most at risk. At first the hometown crowd cheers the young man. Then after giving illustrations of Elijah and Elisha offering mercy to foreigners and perceived enemies, suddenly the crowd turns ugly and tries to run him out of town and toss him over a cliff. Somehow, he calmly walks away “through the midst of them.” 

Can we see just how odd it is that we get this story this week? After all holy-hell broke loose the day after Bishop Marriann Budde made a plea for mercy for people who are legitimately scared and frightened in the current national climate? It was a prayer service for National Unity, something the president has stated as a priority more than once. A key element of prayer is making pleas. Yet, her plea has been characterized as everything from biblical and true to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to a tirade, a scolding, and worse. Against the back drop of two of Jesus’s best-known sermons, and Paul urging the church in Corinth to embrace all the different parts of the Body of Christ, as all are necessary, and all depend on one another, it has been baffling for many that so many people have reacted much like that crowd in Nazareth when Jesus made a plea for mercy for people both within and beyond the immediate community. It’s almost funny that the Bishop’s plea has resulted in everyone all of a sudden becoming theologians! 

A few thoughts. First, watching the video over and over, Bishop Budde embraced the humility of which she had spoken as foundational to unity, and spoke fearlessly, gently, and quietly. She did not try to make her plea with bombast or speaking louder. She sounded humble and with a sense of the very mercy of which she spoke. Second, she lifted up those who feel at risk, those who feel marginalized, not attacking either the president nor specific policies. There was no taking individuals to task. It did not feel or sound like an anti-administration plea, but rather a pro-those-who-are-afraid-right now plea. Third, as I hear it, she invited all of us, the whole nation, to something higher than politics or winning and losing. She called us to a value that ought to unite us: mercy. She wasn’t arguing for a particular policy, but for a particular posture. The profoundly Christian posture of merciful compassion, especially for the marginalized and those at risk. 

Finally, all speech that seeks to bring the community to anything like unity is political. All of Jesus’s speech with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Herod and Pilate, even his speech in his hometown synagogue that day in Nazareth, was political. It took place in a culture that does not recognize a divide between religious speech and political speech. Political, from the Greek polis, means “citadel, city, or community.” All community speech, even in the community of love, is political by definition. It is such speech that is meant to protect us like a citadel on a hill. 

It feels risky to attempt to frame this all within the context of the portions of God’s Word which some thirty years ago were placed in the lectionary just, as it turns out, for this week of all things. It is impossible not to see how relevant the scripture we are meant to hear and interpret turns out to be. And I fully understand and honor that others may hear all of this in a different way. I would love to hear about that as well. For if anything is needed in the present moment, it is to be merciful in how we speak and live with one another. We need not agree, but to respect one another no matter what is at the very heart of becoming merciful as our Lord himself is merciful.

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[i] Jonah 4:2

[ii] Matthew 7:12, Matthew 5:43-44, Matthew 5:7, Matthew 5:14-16

Do This In Remembrance of Me Epiphany 2C

 Do This In Remembrance of Me

Each time we gather for the Eucharistic feast, we hear Jesus’s words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” twice: for the bread and for the wine. A few weeks ago, I almost stopped as I said those words. I was suddenly overcome with a thought: it sounds as if Jesus thinks that people, including his closest family and disciples, might actually forget him after his crucifixion the next day. Every mention of “disciples” means us, the readers and hearers of these gospel stories. The thought that he would think that we would forget him, that I would forget him, was terribly sad. That even his Body, the Church, might actually forget him was unbearable. And then I thought, day by day, we probably do. There are so many different people, politicians, commercials, corporations, all demanding our attention all day every day on the computer screens we carry with us everywhere we go – it is a very real possibility that remembering Jesus gets crowded out much of our life. All of this was going through my mind as I held the Host up in the air for all of us to see. It felt as if I might break down and cry. That moment has stuck with me ever since. 

I bring this up because this story of a wedding feast may really be about just that: Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper. We know that in all the chapters in John about the Last Supper, there is no mention of the bread and wine. Instead, Jesus washes people’s feet, and then offers a long farewell speech and prayers asking for his Father to protect those who follow him, who become his Body in this world, here and now. 

Jesus, his mother, and the five disciples he has gathered over the previous two days, arrive in Cana of Galilee where a wedding feast is under way. They were invited to join in the celebration which often went on for several days. Almost immediately, the wine runs out. Perhaps these seven additional guests were not accounted for, which may explain why the mother of Jesus expresses her concern as she mentions the need for more wine to her son. The English translation of his response comes across as harsh, “Woman, what concern is that for you or me. My hour has not yet come.” But the sense of it in Aramaic may simply be, “It’s all right. It’s not time for me yet.” The hour and time for what? In John’s narrative “the hour” always refers to the hour of his glory – his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. [i] 

What happens next echoes the parable of the father who asks his two sons to help with some yardwork, in which the son who says, “Not now, I can’t help right now,” Jesus who appears to blow-off his mother’s concern, immediately takes over and instructs the servers at the wedding feast to fill some jars with water. Six jars each holding 30 gallons to be exact. That’s 180 gallons of water. The empty jars were for the ritual of washing one’s hands before meals. How many people could wash their hands with 180 gallons of water? This is one big wedding party!

Jesus then instructs the servers to take a cup out of one of the jars and take it to the chief steward, the person in charge of the wedding feast. He takes a drink, and immediately calls over the bridegroom who has no idea that the wine has run out, probably no idea that Jesus is there, and no idea that there now seems to be 180 gallons of more wine. The chief steward compliments the bridegroom saying, “Most people serve the good wine first, and once people have been drinking for a few days and are drunk, bring on some cheap stuff – maybe Boone’s Farm, or Thunderbird. But you have saved the best wine for last!” Neither the chief steward nor the bridegroom has any idea what has just happened. Only the servants do. And, of course, those of us reading this.

Jesus’s mother and five disciples see this as a sign. Note, the text says a sign, not a miracle. We are not told how it happened. Just that there was no wine, and now there was lots of wine. Good wine. Perhaps an old vine Zinfandel! 

In chapter six there is a similar story, but this time with bread. Jesus instructs his now twelve disciples to feed a crowd of 5,000 men, along with the women and children traveling with them. “Six months wages would not buy enough bread for all of them to get just a little!” they cry. Just then a boy with five barley loaves and two fish offers what he has for the cause. Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and instructs the disciples to give it away. When everyone has had their fill, he tells them to gather up the leftovers. To everyone’s astonishment, they gather twelve baskets of bread! This, in John, is followed by a long discussion that Jesus is the bread of life. In both of these stories, John suggests that Jesus does not “institute” the Eucharist on the night before he is executed. Jesus institutes the bread and wine every moment of his life. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of life. I am the vine.” The opening verses of John proclaim that Jesus, the Word, is the source of all life, all material, all creation. Including bread. Including wine. [ii] 

The wedding feast and the feeding of the 5,000 are signs, not miracles. Signs of what it means to follow Christ. What it means to “Do this in remembrance of me.” Gail O’Day and Susan Hylen write that, “To share in the Eucharistic meal is not to “remember” or commemorate one particular event, but is to share in all of Jesus’s life, including ultimately his death. Participation in the Eucharist creates a relationship between Jesus and the believer that contains within it the promise of new life… By placing this story of an enormous amount of good wine for the wedding reception into the life of Jesus, John suggests that participation in the flesh and blood, bread and wine, belongs to all the days of Christian life, not just ‘special’ days, because it embodies the possibility of new life with Christ. The Eucharist is a meal of celebration, of sharing in the abundant presence of God in the world.” [iii] 

Several things in all of this. As in the Eucharist in which we share, Jesus who is an invited guest becomes the host. He does this without pomp, without asking for recognition. In fact, the people amazed, the chief steward and bridegroom, have no idea who or even what has taken place. Only the servants who did what Jesus asked them to do. Begging the question, what does Jesus ask us to do each and every day of the week? Also, he sees a need – for more wine, to extend the joy and love of this wedding day, or hungry people following him by the sea Galilee – and then fills that need. What needs do we see that we can we address each day of the week?He takes, blesses, breaks, and gives away the little he has at his disposal and gives it all away. One meaning of these signs he does with wine and bread, is that first change that is affected in us by the touch of Christ upon our lives. Then there is the reminder that there is always more and better to come! 

To do this in remembrance of him, then, is not just to remember the Last Supper, but to allow our fellowship with God, made known in Christ, to touch every moment of every day of our lives, and to remember that “you have kept the good wine until now!” That is, the best is yet to come: new and abundant life in and with Christ. The story concludes saying that those five disciples “believed in him.” Meaning that they commit themselves to Jesus in personal trust as the example of what we are to do and say every day of the week. The Eucharist binds us to him and to one another as a Community of Love: Love of God and Love of neighbor. As we sing, “all are neighbors to us and you.” And that is good news!

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[i] John 2:1-11

[ii] John 6:1-71

[iii]   O’Day, Gail R., and Hylen, Susan F., John (John Knox Westminster Press, Lexington: 2006) p.79

 Hymn 602  Jesu, Jesu 

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love,

show us how to serve

the neighbors we have from you.

 

1 Kneels at the feet of his friends,

silently washes their feet,

Master who acts as a slave to them. [Refrain] 

2 Neighbors are rich and poor,

neighbors are black and white,

neighbors are nearby and far away. [Refrain] 

3 These are the ones we should serve,

these are the ones we should love.

All are neighbors to us and you. [Refrain] 

4 Loving puts us on our knees,

serving as though we are slaves;

this is the way we should live with you. [Refrain]

 

Shalom chaverim, Shalom my friends Epiphany 1C

Shalom chaverim, shalom my friends…

The first thing that came to mind upon seeing the first ariel photos of the devastation brought on by the Pacific Palisades fire was that this is what Jerusalem and all of Judea must have looked like after the Roman siege of the city in the year 70 CE – nothing but rubble, smoke, hot spots still burning. It is what the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like as fires burned for at least three days after “we the people” dropped the first, and thank God only, nuclear weapons used in warfare up until now. 

Fire. One of the signs of the Holy Spirit. Along with breath, and wind – like those annual Santa Anna winds fueling the five fires that erupted around Los Angeles, the City of Angels, throughout the past week. We often write and pray for the “power of the Holy Spirit.” How often do we associate this “power” with what we have witnessed in Pacific Palisades? Luke, writing amidst this kind of smoldering devastation that once was the home base for the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, need not imagine the awful power of fire and wind. It’s all around him. 

Leading up to Jesus’s baptism, Luke presents instances of the power of the Holy Spirit, often in poetry or song. Zechariah, priest and aged father of John the Baptizer, possessed by the Spirit’s power proclaims that his child “shall be called the prophet of the Highest…to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins…to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” [i] And the song of Mary, though terrified by the announcement that she shall bear a child, proclaims that thru the power of the Spirit God “has scattered  the proud in their conceit…cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly…filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.” Through the life, death, and resurrection of the child she bears “he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to Abraham and his children for ever!” [ii] As we sing these songs we embody their vision. 

Then John, of whom Zechariah sings, announces the arrival of Jesus to the River Jordan, and warns the people, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." [iii] Unquenchable fire has become all too familiar this week. Note: this is not to suggest Jerusalem, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nor the Palisades are being winnowed out – but  their smoldering landscapes give us some idea of context from which Luke writes. 

Then comes Luke’s utterly spare account of Jesus’s baptism: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’"  This one scene features God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit all in one scene at the same time. 

Our desire to move on and away from the winnowing fork and unquenchable fire threatens to deceive us into casting this as some sort of precious moment, when in fact, given the total attention to the movements of the Holy Spirit in Luke, we are meant to be forewarned: “The coming of Jesus Christ does not baptize the status quo; rather, it overthrows every power and undermines all that seems certain in the world’s eyes.” [iv] 

As among the ashes of the Jerusalem holocaust, (a word that literally means, the whole, all, is burned and consumed by fire), as among the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and now the Palisades, this baptism of the Christ we gather to remember is to be a reminder that the power of God’s Holy Spirit is forever an agent of change – change that means to redeem all the accumulated sins of human history and return us to a vision of God’s Shalom, or what Jesus repeatedly calls the kingdom of God. What our retired Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and Martin Luther King, Jr. repeatedly have called us to return, re-turn, which is the root understanding of repentance, to re-turn to thr vision of being A Community of Love: love of God and love of neighbor – all neighbors, all creatures, and this fragile island home we call planet Earth. A community of shalom. 

In a book of reflections on the Bible’s call to be a community of love and shalom, Walter Brueggemann writes, “The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature…the most staggering expression of the vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God’s creation…a cluster of words is required to express [this vision’s] many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, truth, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness. But the term…used to summarize that controlling vision is shalom…it bears tremendous freight – the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery.” [v] 

Our collective tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery forever result in the kind of scorched earth we have seen in the siege of ancient Jerusalem, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more recently in Gaza, Ukraine, and the destruction of wind and fire surrounding Los Angeles, the City of Angels, to name but a few among many such historical tragedies. To live into the Bible’s vision of Shalom requires us to repeatedly repent, re-turn, to live lives of reconciliation instead of perpetuating division, hostility and fear. We are those people committed “to continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.” [vi] 

This is why we who dare to be Christ’s Church, Christ’s Body in this world, periodically need to review and renew our Baptismal Vows which are meant to remind us that the coming of Christ, for which we pray and for which we await, does not baptize the status quo – which, when we are honest with ourselves, woefully falls short of the Bible’s controlling vision that “all of creation is one, every creature in community with ever other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature.” [vii]  Speaking of harmony, Luke knows that singing helps us to embody the Bible’s vision of well-being for every creature: so we sing, “Shalom, chaverim, shalom chaverim, shalom, shalom/Shalom my friends, shalom my friends, shalom, shalom.” [viii]

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[i] Luke 1:68-79

[ii] Luke 1:46-55

[iii] Luke3:15-17, 21-22

[iv] Gaventa, Beverly R., et al, Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press: 1994) p.101

[v] Brueggeman, Walter, Living Toward a Vision, (United Church Press, New York:1982) p 15-16

[vi] The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p.855

[vii] Ibid, Brueggeman

[viii] Hymn 714, The Hymnal 1982, Church Publishing 

Epiphany and The Manifestation of Christ to The World 2025

 

Epiphany and The Manifestation of Christ to the World! 

            Each of the four gospels seek to provide evidence of who Christ is in stories, songs, and parables. Each of the four evangelists provide a combination of similar as well as uniquely different accounts of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. The impact of his life changed the world into which he was born, and continues to shape and re-shape our world to this very day. 

            Given the broad strokes of our mission as his Church, we are to live lives that manifest his love, compassion, and glory in everything we say and do, both in church and, more importantly, beyond the local parish. For Christ and his Church will be judged by the behavior and ministries of those who dare to call ourselves Christians. That is, Epiphany is more than a season. We are to live our lives every day as manifestations of his devotion to justice, peace, and love for all people everywhere. 

            His life, as reported by the four evangelists, was unique in that he recognized no such thing as we and they, us and them. As the Christ, he accepted any and all people of all walks of life as One – One with God, One with Christ, One with one another. He saw all divisions as artificial, and generally destructive of communities and societies of peoples. All sorts of groups tried to get Jesus to “be on our side.” He would have none of it. Even when it meant he would be sentenced to death on a Roman Cross, he refused to cave in and choose sides with any of several groups that likely would have spared his life.

             Epiphany season always begins on January 6^th, and concludes on Ash Wednesday, which this year is March 5, 2025. (Ash Wednesday, of course, is calculated backwards from the date of Easter, which this year will be Sunday, April 20^th) The gospel lessons will be from Luke (with the exception of one week from John). As we listen to the many different ways people recognize that there was something special and powerful about this young man from Galilee and his relationship with God whom he calls Abba, Father, we are to reflect on the ways in which we also see God in the Christ. More importantly, however, is to reflect on just how we, like Jesus, can manifest the justice, peace, and love of God in all that we do and all that we say. For Epiphany is more than a season: it is to be a way of life. A way to be. 

            In this way, we become a Community of Christ’s Love. May God for us, whom we call Father; God alongside us, whom we call Son; and God within us, whom we call Spirit; hold and enliven us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion; that in all that we say and all that we do, we may become God’s Truth, a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth. For this is who he calls us to be.