Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life Proper 14C

 Faith, Worship, & The Christian Life

Faith. It’s a word that gets thrown around. And it is, writes the author of the treatise known as Hebrews, central to a God centered life. As I write that, it seems quaint. Almost unheard of, that a person would live a God centered life rather than the more modern and more popular self-centered life as advocated by Ayn Rand and her disciples among Libertarian and Conservative political movements. 

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 tells us: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Not to get into the weeds of translation and the Greek text, but the argument has been made, persuasively, that it ought to read more like, “Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” [i] By striking a contrast with the customary understanding of this verse, in which it asserts the obvious truth that faith involves confidence about things that cannot presently be verified, what Hebrews actually asserts is that in faith the believer already anticipates the final outcome (the reality) of what is believed. That is not to say that believing makes something true or that whatever one actually believes will happen, but that faith itself has a kind of eschatological power. Similarly, “conviction” speaks to a personal belief that something may happen, whereas the Greek means “proof” that it will happen. Rather than a claim about personal belief, Hebrews makes the highly provocative claim that faith itself moves in the direction of the realization of those things that are presently beyond demonstration.[ii] 

The originating example of this movement of Faith, the originating story of the Bible, concerns Abraham and Sarah – who are moved by faith to leave everything behind them – home, family, friends – and journey toward two promises of a new home and nearly infinite progeny! As we all know, they never see either one.Bbut faith moves their unlikely progeny, (astonishingly so given their advanced ages – “and he as good as dead!”), become twelve tribes who multiply for generations in Egypt, and another two generations in the wilderness before the proof of those two promises is a reality. Jesus does not see the fullness of the kingdom of God he proclaims, yet, as it was for Abraham and Sarah, so will be the future fulfillment of the kingdom of God. 

In all the examples marshalled in Hebrews, God is the object of Faith. And as the First Letter of John (4:7-21) reminds us, God is Love: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. … Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.” 

Faith is God’s love moving in us, through us, and all around us. Just as important as it is to know God and God’s love as the object of Faith, we need to know what the opposite of Faith is. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, author, and teacher asserts that the opposite of love is not hate, but rather indifference. It was the indifference of neighbors who saw the evil that was happening throughout Europe that allowed the Nazi driven Holocaust to happen. There was no significant uprising until it was too late. In his memoir, Night, Wiesel writes that those in the camps believed that even God could not know what was happening. Yet, when they were released from the camps, they learned that the whole world had known. And in particular, the US State Department had hard evidence of what was going on, and chose to do nothing until Japan eventually drew us into the war. 

The subject of Faith is God/Love. The Opposite of Faith, therefore, is indifference. Love is a verb, not a noun, not a feeling or belief, but what one does! It is in faith that we act in the direction that God and Christ call us to prove what will be the ultimate reality for all people – a world of mercy, love and justice. 

Worship. The poet-prophet Isaiah explores the connection of faith with worship. Specifically, the Temple worship in Jerusalem. Isaiah announces that God is not happy with the sacrifices at the Temple: “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 fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.”( Isaiah 1:1, 10-20) There is also a harsh word for the people’s prayers, “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” Thus, the expression, there is blood on our hands – not only for what the people do, and what is done on our behalf by our leadership, but for what the people of God and our leadership are not doing. 

Why this condemnation of worship and prayer? Because both tend to be self-centered. We often  use worship, sacrifices, and prayers to manipulate God to do what we want. Which is backwards. We are there in the Temple, the synagogue, the church, to learn just what it is God wants from us. What God wants us to do. And for Isaiah, it is all quite simple: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” We are to love our neighbors – to love those who are vulnerable, and in need of a helping hand. 

In Luke 12:32-40, just after the story about the self-centered man whose sole concern is to build more, bigger, fuller barns, Jesus puts a fine point on it: “Sell your possessions, and give alms.” And later in Luke Volume 2, The Acts of the Apostles, we see a community living in Jerusalem doing just that: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47) 

That is, worship and prayer are not a means by which we manipulate God to do our bidding. Worship and Prayer are the means by which God seeks to change us – to lead us in the Way of Love. The Way of Faith. And Worship and Prayer are the means by which we give thanks – Eucharistia – that God invites us to be those people who proclaim and live out of God’s Love for all persons, all creatures, and all of creation. The invitation to “sell…and give” in Luke, together with the call “to be dressed and ready,” suggests that our use of financial resources is inextricably related to our conviction that the future and our destiny lies ultimately with God. Then living our of our Faith about the future affects how we live in the present. 

When we allow worship and prayer to help us become those who trust in God’s reign, makes possible that our lives will be God centered with love for all our neighbors. Amen.

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[i] Newsom, James D., Texts For Preaching: Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.465-66

[ii] Ibid, Newsome

Experiences of God Proper 13C

 Experiences of God

“The wrath of God is his relentless compassion, pursuing us even when we are at our worst. Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy” – Maggie Ross

Luke more than any of the four evangelists seems concerned with the problem of “Affluenza.” Although we tend to think that most of Jesus’s most ardent followers as those who were land poor, homeless, collaborators with the Empire like tax collectors, the lame, the sick, and the demon possessed. Yet, Luke, writing to a church a generation or two after the Crucifixion, and perhaps a decade after the destruction of the Temple and all of Jerusalem, which now has attracted people of wealth, land holders, the oiko despotos, and there are inheritances at stake. 

Luke tells the story of a Prodigal Son which revolves around the inheritance of two sons. And this story which begins with a question about an inheritance: someone in the crowd asks, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."  [Luke 12:13-21] Jesus is a shrewdie. He knows what we all know. There are family members who no longer speak to one another because one of them got the tea cup, and the other got the saucer. 

I’m no probate judge, he says. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." What I am is a rabbi, a teacher, and I tell funny stories. There was a man whose farm produced abundantly. What shall I do, he says to himself? I will build more and bigger barns to store all “my grain and goods.” Then I will say to my Self, “Self, we have accumulated all this grain and all this stuff. Let’s eat, drink and be merry. I am set for years to come! Relax!” When suddenly from offstage comes the Voice of God: “Self, you are no self. You are no soul. What you are is a fool. Look at you celebrating all by yourself. You’ve got no friends, no neighbors. All you have is barns full of stuff, and tonight your life will be taken from you. Whose will it all be now? That’s the question for all of us. Whose is it now? Psalm 24, which follows right after the 23^rd Psalm, reminds us, “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything therein.” We are just temporary stewards of what is the Lord God’s to begin with and for evermore. 

In case we have all forgotten this comes the punch line: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." Grain is no good stored in barns. Everyone listening to Jesus knows that much. There are rats. And mold. It rots. It’s no good unless it is sold or given away for those who can use it for the daily bread we are meant to pray for. He just taught them how to pray. And he didn’t say to pray for a freezer full of bread, and meats, and veggies for the future. Pray for bread that is given daily. The man in the story could be feeding all those who have no daily bread. That’s what it means to be “rich toward God.” For those called to love God and love neighbor, it’s all pretty simple. We don’t need more and bigger barns, larger investment portfolios, and offshore bank accounts. We need to keep the grain, the goods, and the wealth in circulation for it all to do any good. 

As to helping our neighbors, as the hymns says, as the Letter to the Colossians says, “all are neighbors to us and you.” To those of us “made new” in Christ, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” [Colossians 3:1-11] Or as it might be written today: There is neither black, brown, yellow, red, or white, nor male or female, gay or trans! We are all humans created in the image of God! All deserving daily bread, forgiveness of debts, and to be spared the times of trial. The danger is not in having great wealth, it’s having what the text says in Greek, pleonexia – literally “the desire of gaining more and more.” It was a problem then, and surely is a problem today. It is placing one’s life, one’s security, in the abundance of possessions.

 

As Father Brendan Byrne, SJ, writes in his commentary on Luke, The Hospitality of God, the theme is prominent in Luke’s gospel is that “nothing is more destructive of life and humanity than preoccupation with acquiring, holding onto, and increasing wealth. The problem is not so much the possession of riches as such. It is that the desire to acquire and enhance them, fed by insecurity, prevents people from attending to the relationship with God that brings the only security that counts. Such desire also erodes the concern for the other that is the basis of true community. Attachment to wealth is incompatible with living, sharing, and celebrating the hospitality of God.” [i] Like the man in the story, you end up celebrating all by yourself. 

And now, the rest of the story. Jesus turns to his disciples, which of course means us – we the baptized ministers of his Community of Love we call “church.” The underlying message is to seek the kingdom, for “life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” [Luke 12:22-34] Consider the birds who have neither storehouses nor barns – but God our father feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? And consider the lilies of the field, how they grow – “they neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these!” Solomon, of course, represents the culture of conspicuous consumption. We are told in 1 Kings 4:22 that “One day's food supply for Solomon's household was: 185 bushels of fine flour 375 bushels of meal 10 grain-fed cattle 20 range cattle 100 sheep and miscellaneous deer, gazelles, roebucks, choice fowl,” and a partridge in a pear tree. While others in the kingdom starved, Solomon’s household ate really really well. 

Finally, Jesus urges us, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

How are we to know this? Some eight hundred years before Jesus and Luke, Hosea reminds people that the more they stray from God’s Way, the more God loves them – like a mother with her only child: “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks… I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”[ii] The God of the Old Testament is a God of Love.

When we suffer from “all kinds of greed,” when we worship idols of money and possessions, our God suffers with us and wants to hold us with “bands of love, with cords of human kindness.” God calls us to a life in his kingdom, and wants to know, where is our heart? Where is our treasure. Jesus issues a call to a fundamental reallocation of material and social goods according to our knowledge of God’s justice, for this is what can make us “rich toward God.” [iii] This will make us a people who love God and love neighbor. It is this love that characterizes God’s reign, God’s kingdom. And it will be this love that shapes us as a Community of Love.

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[i] Byrne, Brendan, SJ, The Hospitality of God (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN:2000) p.114-115

[ii] Hosea 11:1-11.

[iii] Ringe, Sharon, Luke (John Knox Westminster Press, Louisville: 1995) p.179

Prayer & The Kingdom of God’s Love Proper 12C

 Prayer & The Kingdom of God’s Love

Jesus was praying “in a certain place.” (Luke 11:1-13) The men and women disciples traveling with him ask him to teach them how to pray, just as John taught his disciples. What follows is a version of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, though our usual liturgical version is based largely on that presented in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. The prayer is followed by a funny story about bread, scorpions, and the Holy Spirit. It seems it’s always about bread! 

Although Jesus launches right into a prayer, a close reading of the text suggests that the first step very well may be to find ourselves “a certain place.” As the final petitions are in the second person plural, “us and we,” Jesus is suggesting that we pray together. In his Jewish world, that requires a minyan, ten or more people. The “certain place,” then, appears to be with the Community of Love he is building. Elsewhere, Jesus appears to reduce the minyan to two or three: “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). Our certain place may not be a place at all. It can be wherever two or three or ten or more are gathered. We, the Community of God’s Love, are that place wherever and whenever we are together. At the time of Jesus, and even more so the time of Luke following the destruction of the Temple, finding a place to gather could be dangerous given the intention of the Roman Empire to put an end to Jesus and his followers who choose to follow the will of a higher power. 

Jesus begins our prayer quite simply: Father. This was Jesus’s personal address to the God of all creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Passover and Exodus, the God of the Wilderness Sojourn. That is, Jesus invites us to become part of his family, God’s family, and we are granted permission to address God as he does: Father. The Community of God’s Love becomes our fictive family – not related by blood or marriage, but on our mutual affection and mutual support for one another, and all those in need. 

“Hallowed be your name.” Holy, Revered, Honored be God’s name. How might we hallow God’s name? It begins with loving the God who loves us and all that God has created, and loving everyone and all that God has created ourselves. That is, we are to love one another, all others, in the sense of support and meeting the needs of others. 

Then comes the Big Ask: Your Kingdom come! I am quite sure we say this without really grasping that for which we ask. On this earth alone there are many kingdoms, with many kings or queens or presidents or whatever kind of leadership is in charge. We pledge allegiance to these kingdoms. But in this prayer we ask for something entirely different: we want God’s kingdom to come. Here. Now. Jesus’s whole ministry begins with him saying that God’s kingdom is at hand. Which is a way of saying it is here for those who recognize it and accept it and are willing to step into it. We are not praying for some distant future, nor some time to come after death. We are talking about living in God’s kingdom here and now, which can mean bucking the empire. 

The most basic element of God’s kingdom here and now is expressed in the very first petition: “give us each day our daily bread.” This recalls the wilderness sojourn during which time manna, a flakey kind of “bread,” was sent by God to his people each day. When they entered the land of promise the manna stopped. There were no real preservatives, no refrigeration, so grain would be ground and dough made in the evening. The next morning you take it to the community oven or furnace, or to a baker, to be baked for that day’s bread. A daily reminder that it is by the grace of the God whose name we are to hallow that we have been given the ingredients, the skills and a community of love to help insure there is bread enough for all. And enough to share with others. Yet even now, we store up food meant for children here and abroad, lock it up in a warehouse, let it pass its expiration date, and destroy it – while there are children and adults throughout our country, and far away in Gaza, who pray for a crust of bread even now as we come to break bread at the Lord’s table. [i] Just as the recent Reconciliation Bill cuts SNAP and school lunches for millions to give tax cuts for the country’s most affluent billionaires. 

At the very heart of our prayer is forgiveness: we ask for our sins to be forgiven “for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” I read poetry when waiting for the bar-b-q coals to get ready for grilling. I recently ran across the following line penned by W.S. Merwin about the danger of the Gray whale facing extinction due to over hunting:

Gray whale

Now that we are sending you to The End

That great god

Tell him

That we who follow you invented forgiveness

And forgive nothing 

Forgiveness, says Jesus, is to be at the heart of our prayer. And yet, as Merwin observes, we often forgive nothing. Look at how we over hunt the Grey whale and other species. Look at how we routinely and without thought poison the environment. We rarely ask for forgiveness, and rarely offer forgiveness out of our outsized sense of hubris. It is meant to be the heart of God’s kingdom, what the Bible calls Jubilee: “a wholly new basis for human interaction – the polar opposite of the systems of debt and obligation, patronage and merit, honor and shame, that characterize life under various human institutions and authorities. In the realm of God, those old rules are cancelled, and all things are made new. This is a prayer to be both spoken and lived.” [ii] 

We are to conclude, “and do not bring us to the time of trial.” This could be reference to that day when we all must give an account as to how we have or have not lived into this vision of God’s kingdom for which we pray. Jesus calls us to follow the ways in which he offers endless examples of just how to live into this vision here and now. It may also refer to the trials we may face as we oppose the very systems of indebtedness and injustice that seek to grind up the people of God into so much fodder for corporate and industrial greed, power grabs, and endless conflict and wars. Jesus knows as well as anyone that to live the Jubilee of God’s kingdom can lead to trial. And crucifixion. That is one reason why following Jesus is called The Way of the Cross. 

To illustrate the need for shamelessness and perseverance in the prayer he teaches us, comes the story of a neighbor who needs bread in the middle of the night to provide hospitality for an unexpected house guest. He wakens a neighbor, who is reluctant to get out of bed, but who eventually opens the door and provides the very bread we are to pray for daily. In the dark of night in today’s world, there are many who knock on our door asking for just a crust of bread, let alone three loaves. We pray and pray as Jesus instructs us. But the question remains, what do we do? It seems that now is the time of trial. It is always now. What we do or do not do will make all the difference as to whether this prayer changes us to be more like the unchangeable God we call Father who promises to give us the Holy Spirit if only we will ask, seek and knock. Amen.

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[i] US News and World Report, July 17, 2025

[ii] Ringe, Sharon H., Luke (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY (1995): p. 165

Being Martha Proper 11C

 Being Martha

Nestled between the parable we call The Good Samaritan and the Lord’s Prayer, in a section of Luke’s gospel focused on hospitality, is this brief story about two sisters in Bethany, a village just outside of Jerusalem (Luke 10:38-42). It only occurs in Luke’s gospel, which paired with his volume 2, The Acts of the Apostles, seems in part to be a guide for how Gentiles might be incorporated into the Jewish world of Jesus, and his Father’s “kingdom of God.” A world in which hospitality toward strangers, wanderers, and even resident aliens is a hallmark of what it has meant to love God and love neighbor all the way back to the nomadic days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. 

It is an odd little story, and can seem out of place coming after the extravagant and generous hospitality of the Samaritan in the previous story, and the forgiveness of sins and debts we pray for in the Lord’s prayer following. Most of us have heard it interpreted from a protestant reformation point of view, extolling the devotion of Mary, reclining at the feet of Jesus listening to his “word,” his proclamation of the need for repentance and accepting the invitation to enter into the life of his Father’s kingdom, while demeaning the “works” of Martha preparing a meal for Jesus and his disciples as wrote, routine, tradition, and devoid of true faith. “Faith, not works!” proclaimed reformers like Martin Luther. Luther, who wanted to rip the Letter of James out of the New Testament – a letter that loudly proclaims that Faith without Works is Dead. 

This despite the fact that the only other mention of the two sisters occurs in John’s gospel. They call upon Jesus to come to the aid of their ailing brother, Lazarus. Jesus is delayed. Lazarus dies. The women are sitting shiva, neighbors are visiting, when word comes that Jesus is at the edge of town. Martha jumps us, marches out to meet him half-way and chastises him. Had you come when we called our brother would still be alive, she says. Jesus assures her that her brother will rise again. Not impressed, she says, oh yes, on the Day of the Resurrection of all faithful people, but I mean now. “I am resurrection and I am life,” says Jesus, “Do you believe this?” At which moment Martha becomes the first person in John’s gospel to confess, “Yes, Lord, I believe, you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One who is coming into the world.” A much more powerful, more assured declaration than Peter’s confession at Caesaria Philippi. How could this same Martha be saddled with a reputation as the least spiritual of the two sisters? How could her confession not be the preeminent confession of all the New Testament? 

One needs to sit with the stories in Luke and John and listen to them over and over again before being able to hear what is going on that day in Bethany. It is Martha who invites Jesus, we are told, “into her home.” Yes, women could be successful businesswomen. Yes, women could own their own home. Mary, we are told, reclines at Jesus’s feet listening to him. Martha is busy with “her many tasks.” She asks Jesus to send Mary to help her. This prompts Jesus’s strange reply, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."   

Strange, that in a world in which hospitality was a cardinal virtue, and just after a parable in which generous hospitality is championed, that is doing many things for the strange man lying by the side of the road, doing “works” to insure that the stranger might live, Jesus appears to be saying that Mary is doing the “one thing,” “the better part,” suggesting that Martha has chosen a lesser set of tasks and ought not be worried about her sister. And in teaching the Lord’s Prayer after this episode, he tells a story that says if someone knocks on your door in the middle of the night asking for a few loaves of bread, no matter how inconvenient, you ought to get up out of bed, open the door, and provide for that person’s needs. What is Jesus up to? Or, what is Luke up to? 

Sitting with the story, we notice that Jesus does not tell Martha to come sit down and listen to him. Nor does he tell her to stop doing her household tasks – literally deaconing, serving, waiting on other’s needs. Luke simply does not tell us what happens next. It is possible that Jesus recognizes that Martha understands that these are unusual times, given the Roman occupation, roads lined with crucifixions, taxes at an all-time high to feed the empire, the rich and the greedy who need more and more pairs of shoes as Amos proclaimed some seven centuries before (Amos 8:1-12). And he can see that Martha has a full grasp of the kind of hospitality he encourages toward all newcomers, outcasts, and even dreaded enemies like the Samaritans and Gentiles. In fact, she does not appear to be trying to curry his favor. She is not trying to earn God’s favor. Martha seems to understand it is not her hospitality at all, but it is God’s hospitality she enacts with no expectation of reward or thanks. 

Indeed, some thirteen hundred years later, the Dominican Meister Eckhart when preaching on just this story suggests that when Jesus addresses saying her name twice, “Martha, Martha…” it is not out of exasperation, but in recognition of her seeming spiritual completeness: the first ‘Martha’ recognizes her temporal completeness providing for the needs of all, and the second ‘Martha’ refers, suggests Eckhart, to her relationship to eternity, not some sequential future eternity, but what he calls the “equal eternal Now.” Martha lives comfortably in both worlds. She is at home in God’s kingdom, which Eckhart calls “the circle of eternity,” and in this world of daily needs. Martha already seems to know that the ‘way to God’ is not a ‘way’ at all. It is not a destination, but rather a way of being – a way of being home in God. Her actions, her works, her activities are without a “why.” Friends of God like Martha have nowhere to go and need no means of getting there because they are already Here and in the Now: she lives out of an already-arrived-ness which involves no means, no why, no reward, no return. 

“Now listen to a marvel! How marvelous to be without and within; to embrace and be embraced; to see and be seen; to hold and be held – that is the goal, where the spirit is ever at rest, united in joyous eternity.” (Meister Eckhart Sermon 86) 

Eckhart goes so far as to translate the opening of the story from the Latin Vulgate, “Our Lord Jesus Christ went into a little castle and was received by a virgin who was a wife.” By ‘virgin’ he means one who is “free of irrelevant ideas, as free as he was before he existed.” And by ‘wife’ he means someone who is free and unfettered in affections, near both to God and to self, who brings forth much fruit every day (works of faith) one hundred and one thousand-fold. Thus, a virgin wife bears fruit out of the ground of God’s eternal Word – which is, Jesus Christ. Christ who lives in the “little castle” of our soul. 

So it is that in the medieval church, Martha became the very icon of the living Christ, patron saint of hospitals, doctors, nurses, women’s communities and all who serve God by serving others. Concludes Meister Eckhart: What I have been saying to you is true, as I call on Truth to bear witness and my soul to be the pledge. That we, too, may be castles into which Jesus may enter and be received and abide eternally with us in the manner I have described, may God help us! Being Martha is being at home in God with Christ. Amen.

The Gerasene Demoniac & Empire Proper 7C

 

The Gerasene Demoniac & Empire    Proper 7C

I’ve been pondering our story of a naked, demon possessed man in the gospels (Luke 8:26-39), and St. Paul’s assertion that for those of us who dare to claim we are of the Body of Christ there is no male and female, no free and slave, no Jew and Greek (Galatians 3:23-29). Were Paul alive and writing letters today one can safely imagine he would add, “there is no liberal and conservative, no red states and blue states, no MAGA and Woke people, but in the Kingdom of God Christ lives, died, and rose from the dead for, we are to Be and Act as One in Christ for the sake of the life of the world. In Christ there are to be no such divisions. 

Meanwhile, we are seriously considering to enter into the widening war between Israel and Iran. Mike Huckabee, our Ambassador to Israel, and an Evangelical Zionist Christian who believes that a Middle East War will precipitate a return of Jesus, urges our president to listen to the voice “he will hear from heaven,” and take advantage of an opportunity “we have not seen since President Truman,” who ordered the drop of two nuclear weapons on Japan, destroying two cities and killing somewhere between 240,000 and 260,000 people, not including many more civilians and soldiers who died in the subsequent weeks, months, and years due to injuries, burns, and radiation poisoning. The ambassador seems to feel this is the time to drop The Bomb on Iran. And bring Jesus back – as if we have the power to do such a thing. 

Enter a man possessed by demons. We might take the story of this man as primitive, but no one in his or her right mind can deny that there is set before us any number of demonic options of how to proceed as a nation that many want to call, or categorize, as Christian. As I was running the other morning the following quote popped into my consciousness:

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus 

Crossan, also wrote, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, in which he argues that in contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century is the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus, and the equality and breaking down of all “us and them” categories advocated by Paul. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military actions in the Middle East. Seriously, does anyone believe that Jesus, who on his last day walking upon this Earth made clear to Pilate, the Empire’s local toady, that he had no army, and had no plan to fight; that he came to announce the kingdom of God as a kingdom of justice and peace for all people with respect, mercy and love for every human being; does anyone think that Jesus, our Jesus, would justify military action anywhere as a solution to anything whatsoever? Let alone trigger his return. 

Then I asked myself, who is the demon possessed man, chained and shackled by others, separated entirely from his home community, living among the dead in the tombs? Might he symbolically represent Israel, and any other of the client states of Rome, oppressed by an Empire just as the Hebrew children were by Pharaoh in Egypt? Like those Exiled to Babylon after destruction of the First Jerusalem Temple? Like those in the first century under a military occupation such that home is no long home, but a land oppressed and forced to feed the needs and greed of the Roman Empire, causing great poverty, loss of family lands, and unhappiness? 

We note that the demons identify themselves as Legion, “because we are many.” Is it too far fetched to think they represent the Roman legions who occupy the homeland? And they ask to be sent into a flock of un-kosher pigs, which tells us that Jesus is in Gentile territory and interested in helping a Gentile who has been ostracized from his home community. Again, if someone mentioned that the Tenth Roman Legion was responsible for burning down all of Jerusalem and the Temple, and that the Tenth Legion’s emblem was a Boar, is it to far fetched that those watching this drama unfold might see the irony and the hope that this young Jew might be the one who could end the nightmare of Roman occupation and send it headlong into the sea? 

Jesus is there in the region of the Gerasenes to demonstrate that Paul would eventually “get it,” and recognize that in the kingdom Jesus comes to announce and inaugurate is to be a peaceable kingdom as Isaiah had envisioned some six hundred years earlier. He reaches out to this dangerous looking demon possessed man and recognizes him as a human being like any other, someone’s son, someone’s brother, perhaps someone’s father. Even the townspeople seem to have recognized him as someone who has some relationship to their community, or else they likely would have treated him like a mad dog, and put him down. But they do not. 

As soon as they see him properly dressed, demons gone, in his right mind at the feet of Jesus, they are afraid. They see that the power of love and mercy is stronger than any Empire, than any and all attempts to divide the community into acceptable and unacceptable persons. Others were upset that pork belly futures had literally sunk into the roiling surf. They asked Jesus to leave. 

But before he can even get back into the boat, the boat which the night before had nearly sunk in a storm, the man whom Jesus had accepted as one more human being deserving of respect, and justice, and God’s mercy and shalom, begs Jesus to take him with the others, the oft bumbling disciples who were frightened out of their wits the night before, and even more so when they saw this man, naked and wracked with demons. 

But Jesus says, “No. Go back to your city and tell people what the God of the Exodus, the God of Return from Exile, the God who will be with me as I hang on a Roman cross, and like you, will raise me from the dead; tell everyone the things our God, my Father, did for you.” And he did. And with no ire for those who had chained him and tossed him into the wilderness, he proclaimed to one and all the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 

When we find ourselves isolated like this man; when we feel surrounded by demons of all kinds; when we find ourselves being encouraged to draw lines between ourselves and others; when home suddenly no longer looks or feels like home anymore; when it seems as if more violence is the only answer to a world of violence; what are we to do? Will we have the courage to respect the dignity of others – all others? Will we truly love our neighbors as ourselves – no exceptions? Will we proclaim a new kingdom, a new world, of justice and peace for all people? Can we find ways to allow Jesus to open us to the world he imagines; the world which his Father and our Father wills? For in such a time as we now find ourselves, this is what this story is meant to inspire us to become: the Body of Christ. Amen.

Trinity & Communitas Trinity Sunday (C)

 

Communitas    Trinity Sunday (C)

Bob Dorough, teaching about the number “3” on Schoolhouse Rock, used to sing:

Three is a magic number.

Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity

You get three as a magic number.

The past and the present and the future,

Faith, hope, and charity,

Give you three.

A man and a woman had a little baby, yes, they did.

They had three in the family.

That's a magic number. 

Three makes a family. A family is a small community. Community: from the Latin “communitas,” commonly referring to an unstructured community in which people are equal. A root understanding of community then is an unstructured group in which the people, or in the case of the Trinity, the personae, are equal. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then, can be seen as such a family or community in which the essence of the community is that the three are equal. Or, as we take some liberty with that equality, they are One. 

Those third- and fourth-century Christians who were under command to make some creedal assertions about the nature of Christian communitas referred to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as personae, as in a Greek play in which a single actor assumes the persona of two, or three, or more characters simply by changing masks – masks that represent the various characters the actor is playing. Those hammering out the creeds adopted as a metaphor the language of the theater, that artistic discipline which at its very core plumbs the diverse depths of human nature in story and narrative. 

So here, in our creeds and our theology, the single actor (God) is capable and has been perceived, and experienced in history, as having three basic, somewhat distinct personae or characteristics: that of a nurturing Father whose essence is Love; a Son who lives and acts among us as a representative of the essence of the Father; the Holy Spirit which sustains the actions of the Son as an ongoing essence of who we are, both as individuals and as a community of the Father and the Son. Trinity, then, means to express a communitas of three personae, the essence of which is Love. 

Paul, in his letter to the emerging church in Rome, recognizes this when writing that the peace, or Shalom, of God, is present in the Christian communitas because God’s essence, which is Love, has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That is, in Christ, we are to become a community of God’s love in all that we say and all that we do. 

In this sense, what we call Trinity is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit infusing those of us who dare to call ourselves Christian with the Love of God. At the same time, these personae of God’s Love – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – are, in a sense, a communitas, or family of three. The famous Rublev icon depicts this family of three somewhat androgynous Beings in that all three have long hair tied back with a long braid down their backs. In the background is a tree, perhaps the tree in the original garden, perhaps the tree upon which hung the world’s salvation, or perhaps the tree of the renewed and resurrected garden imagined by the revelation of St. John   the Revelator, with the crystal river flowing through the middle of the city, with trees from which hang leaves meant for the healing of all nations. 

When we try to speak of God, the God who has created all that is seen and unseen, a universe of some 14 billion years of light and love, we have no choice but to speak in metaphor. We speak of past, present, and future as a way of describing what we mean by “time.” This does not really give us a full picture and understanding of time; it doesn’t account for perceptions like when time seems to stand still or speed up. Certain times dissolve us into tears, other times give us great joy. Past, present, and future, then, gives us a framework to help us understand at least a part of what time is like. 

Ritually, we speak of this family or community of love as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Others call these three personae “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.” Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry sometimes invokes the “Loving, liberating, and life-giving God.” The New Zealand Prayer Book describes our God as “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver.” All are attempts to describe this sacred Family: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 A family, and yet a unity. Three experiences or co-equal essences of the One God. Of Love. 

The deeper truth of it all is that the revelation of God is not dogma, not theology, not a doctrine, not a creed – not even a belief. For us, the revelation of God is a person – Jesus Christ, a person whose every story and teaching gives us some deep truth about the life, love, and the will of our God. Jesus reflects the very truth of creation – creation that is not static but ever unfolding with newness and more diversity. Things yet unseen come into being. And if we let ourselves enter into the diversity of God’s Triune Being, we learn that we are ever-changing, just as the whole universe is constantly coming into being. 

Paul tries to sum this up when he writes, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.… the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:11-5). This gift of the very Spirit of God’s love constantly transforms us into a community that reflects God’s love. Of course, as important as is the giving of this gift, so is the receiving. Like all of creation which continues to unfold, when we allow ourselves to receive the love of God that the Spirit pours into our hearts, we become love made new. 

One last name for this Community of Love we call “Trinity” was coined by Evelyn Underhill, someone who wrote extensively on the mystery of God. She calls the Trinity “The School of Charity.” As Paul also wrote to the Corinthians, “Faith, hope, and charity, abide these three – but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13 KJV). We who are created in the image of God – imago Dei – are to become those people who abandon self-love and the greed and acquisition that grows out of such self-love, and become more like Jesus, God’s divine charity in human flesh and blood. We are to become a giving, sharing, self-emptying community of God’s divine charity, sharing the unending, unqualified love of our creator with all people and all nations, especially with all those who are utterly unlike ourselves. We are to be students of the Trinity so that we may become the School of Charity, a communitas of equals, and like the Trinity, ever-changing, yet the same, as a Community of Love. Forever and ever. Amen.

See The Son Rising Ascension 2025

 

See The Son Rising

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages. Once upon a time, in a universe far far away, I was awakened from sleep in a cabin near a lake in northwest Connecticut by the voice of friends in a canoe on the lake singing the dawn of a new day, “See the Sun rising, see the Sun rising. Years later as I recalled that singing, and while pondering the new dawn that day of Jesus’s Ascension, I began to sing, “See the Son rising, see the Son rising,” calling us to a new dawn of being the Christ’s witnesses here and now, “to the end of the ages.” 

Storyteller Luke is the only one of the Gospel writers to describe the Christ’s ascension. Curiously, Luke offers two differing accounts: one at the end of The Gospel of Luke, and one Volume 2 at the beginning of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, his account of the early days of the people of The Way – the Way of Jesus – becoming what would eventually be called Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It may surprise us to learn that the Feast of the Ascension has less to do with Jesus than it does with us and with the Church. 

In Luke’s first account at the end of the gospel, we find Jesus issuing final instructions to his disciples, which by the time he had reached Jerusalem was a crowd considerably more than twelve men, and as Luke has chronicled, included women, many of whom were the primary supporters of Jesus’s efforts to gather a community of God’s love, peace and justice for all people. What Jesus calls the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, on Earth. 

As he had all along, especially following his resurrection [i], he “opened their minds to understand the scriptures,” the sacred texts of Israel: “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” [ii] Who is meant by “You”? The antecedent is not clear. We might presume it is this enlarged crowd of disciples and camp followers. Or, it has been suggested, one might answer “the Jewish community,” since this commission reconstitutes the people of God in Jerusalem and gives them the particular responsibility to begin at Jerusalem and proclaim the gospel to the non-Jewish world. [iii] Note that they return to the Temple to worship, praise God every day as they wait for the Holy Spirit Jesus promises will empower them to proclaim God’s intention for there to be a world-wide community of God’s love and Shalom – Shalom being justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace for all people – not some people, not most people, but all people. 

“At still another level,” writes scholar and commentator Robert Cousar, “the “you” is directed to a broader company of readers, ancient and modern, who at the end of the narrative are drawn in as participants in the story. They/We are to be witnesses, who are not allowed to put the book down like a good novel and return to business as usual, but are mandated to proclaim the story, to call for repentance, to declare divine forgiveness. They/We, like the original hearers, are to be recipients of the power [of the Holy Spirit] that the Father promises, an indication that God intends for the plans to be completed and the divine strategy to work.” [iv] That would be us. The Church Universal, and the local church congregation. Because of how As Luke portrays it, The Ascension is more about the Church and our assigned mission than it is about Jesus. 

This assignment is so important, that in Luke’s Volume 2, The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, he portrays Jesus’s departure a second time to make sure we understand our mission. Although some details are differed, the essential message is the same. Only this time it is clear that enlarged group of disciples has not fully understood the scriptures and are focused on only one political issue: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" [v] Displaying a tremendous degree of patience, Jesus once again seeks to open their minds to understand the scriptures pertaining God’s intention for a world of Shalom in which there is justice and peace for all persons in which the dignity of every human being is to be respected:  and “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Then he is gone. Or, so it seems. As Psalm 47, a psalm of enthronement suggests, he is to be enthroned with God his Father, so that he may “abide with his church on earth to the end of the ages!” That is, they/we are not alone as he sends the Holy Spirit, God’s Holy Ruach which hovered over the face of the waters in creation, and has led and inspired God’s people throughout all the scriptures to which Jesus seeks to open our minds. 

It seems as if Luke thinks that they/we still not get it as we see them remaining stationary, gazing up into the sky. Suddenly, two men dressed in white robes appear. Though not identified by Luke, is it too much to assume that this is an immediate appearance of the Holy Spirit kick starting them, and us, to be the witnesses to the ends of the Earth Jesus commands them to be? "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." There’s no time to stand around gazing up into the heavens. There is work to be done right here. Right now! Which, as the story picks up in the Book of Acts, they do, immediately replacing the recently departed traitor, Judas. They cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias as he joined the Eleven. One might say, the whole thrust of the story of the Ascension is the birth of the infant Church with all of us like them commissioned to be witnesses to the end of the ages. 

Ascension Day isn’t about Jesus leaving us - It is about Jesus abides and reigns among us and within us. Now! Just as Jesus fills all things, Ascension is meant to fill us, his community of love and with Hope – Hope that one day, God’s Dream, God’s intention, of a world-wide spirit of Shalom, inspired by God’s Holy Spirit of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and care for all persons and all of Creation. That we may become witnesses to these things! 

It is said that the Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius, in Roman North Africa, once said: Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. There is such a thing, says the Bible, as righteous anger [vi]- what we see as injustice, what we hear from hate speech, and feel when wounded and frightened - is not a sin! It is Hope inspired by injustice and hate that gives us courage to continue the work begun back in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. Luke bears witness to how a once frightened cohort of disciples became inspired by Hope, born of the Holy Spirit, to be witnesses to the ends of the Earth, and the world has never been the same. 

May we be so inspired on this day of our Celebration of the Feast of the Ascension! May we join the Christ, who even now abides with us as he fills all things, as witnesses and participants in the dawning of God’s reign of Shalom, on Earth as it is in heaven! Amen.

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[i] Such as the conversation on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-35

[ii] Luke 24:44-53

[iii] Cousar, Robert B., Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY: 1994) p.329

[iv] Ibid, Cousar

[v] Acts 1:1-11

[vi] Ibid, Cousar suggests, for example, the story in I Samuel 11 in which Saul’s righteous anger inspires the frightened people of God to rise with Hope and head off the threat of an oppressive regime. p.324

 

Radical Amazement Rogation Sunday

 Radical Amazement!      Rogation Sunday

For over a thousand years, Christians have gone out and blessed the earth and the fields, as we will do later in our Pollinator Garden. And more recently, Rogation Days have also recognized the contributions of human labor, hopefully in alliance with the environment, without which we would not exist, let alone be here today. And in our daily prayers, most especially Compline, we recognize our dependance on one another, and upon God’s outpouring of love through creation: the miracle of the Big Bang banging at just the right moment to make carbon-based life on Earth in an otherwise challenging and foreboding universe. A universe beautiful to behold, and at the same time hostile to human and animal life as we know it. We who are stardust are blessed! 

In our Creed, we acknowledge that the totality of creation is composed of things seen and unseen. Science confirms that the universe is comprise roughly of 70%, Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter (dark only means unseen), leaving a remaining scant 5% Visible Matter – which itself is made up of particles and atoms which themselves are not visible to the human eye without the extraordinary assistance of devices that can detect these building blocks of all sorts of carbon-based life: plants, animals, waterways, insects, and of course, human beings. When we stop to think about it all, and how it appears it all came to be, and continues to evolve all the time, it is all a source of what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would call wonder, or radical amazement. Heschel insists that such wonder and radical amazement “is the chief characteristic of a religious attitude toward life and the proper response to our experience of the divine.” [i] 

Living with such radical amazement makes possible for “great things happen to the soul.” Our lectionary offers three lessons and a psalm which work together to bring to our awareness of all things seen and unseen, and commentary by God, the author of the First Letter of Timothy, and Jesus Christ to flesh out our role as stewards of all creation, and the inevitable unhappiness that occurs to our soul when we ignore our connection and responsibilities to God, Creation, and One Another – what we commonly refer to as Sin; from the Greek that means “to miss the mark.” The “mark” being that we are to be stewards and co-creators’ with God. 

The voice of YHWH comes from a whirlwind to Job and his companions who, lacking all humility, portray their hubris in claiming to understand God and all of God’s ways, particularly as relates to the environment in which we live, move and have our being – so far the only such environment we have found in all the created universe. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? … Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.” There is much that science has divined about all of this, but even science stands in wonder of it all, falling short of any sort of ultimate answers, let alone a yet unknown Grand Unified Theory (GUT) to describe why there is something instead of nothing! Lucky for Job that he accepts his chastisement, and thus enters into a closer relationship with his maker. [ii] 

Then there is Psalm 104:25-37, which speaks of the interplay between the labor of humankind, the creatures of land, air, and sea, with their Creator, all of whom make important contributions to life on this planet, even if Leviathan was just a creative thought of God’s “for the sport of it!” The psalmist urges us to sing with wonder and radical amazement, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live: I will praise my God while I have any being. May my meditation be pleasing to him: for my joy shall be in the Lord. May sinners perish from the earth, let the wicked be no more: bless the Lord, O my soul; O praise the Lord.” Praising and singing to God in thankfulness for the fruitfulness and utter fecundity of creation is soul-making at its finest! 

Then the First Letter of Timothy reminds the listener that we come into the world with nothing and we leave this world with nothing. Food and clothing are to be the basic elements of contentment. It is when greed for more overtakes us, when we become trapped in many senseless and harmful desires, we find ourselves headed toward ruin and destruction. Note, it is not money that is the root of all evil – but rather, the love of money causes us to wander from our responsibilities as stewards of God’s good gifts all around us, causing us to stray from the faith handed down to us, and to cause injury not only to our own souls, but to the many others we tend to trample on our way to what we think is wealth. That said, it is all right to be rich if one is not haughty, or setting their hope on “the uncertainty of riches,” rather than on the God who seeks and loves to provide us with enough for everyone. Therefore, the rich are to “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” To share the wealth is soul-making. To hoard it is the ruin of many. [iii] 

Which leads us to the many who devote every moment of every day building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more stuff. The advent of the “Self-Storage” industry where we are to store all the excess things we think define our “self.” We continue to accumulate stuff until one night, Jesus says, like the man in the story, we discover that First Timothy was right: we, all of us, will leave with nothing. In his total devotion to accumulate more and more stuff, he throws himself a party where he offers a toast, “Self! Soul! Look what grand things we have done, all stored in all of these barns.” Note, he is alone. All by himself. To which unexpectedly the voice of God responds, “Self? Soul? You have no soul. You are no self. You are a fool. Look around. As you celebrate what you have done. You are all alone. No time for friends. No time for family. And tonight, you will lose it all, including your life, pitiful as it is!” Jesus concludes his story saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.” [iv] This story is meant to help us imagine: what could the man with all the barns have done for others? How might he have used his wealth more productively for others? For other creatures? For the very soil upon which his barns are just taking up potentially fruitful space? 

These texts appointed for Rogation days are meant to guide us to return to the world of wonder and radical amazement, so that we might truly see, and appreciate, and sing, and give praise for all the miraculous good things that surround us on all sides, if only. If only we spend more time soul-making than soul-breaking. If only we would consider how each decision we make as stewards of God’s creation reflects and makes an impact, for better or for worse. As one Stephen Holmes in Edinburgh, Scotland, preached a year ago, “So, our faith gives a depth to our care for creation and an urgency, because the desecration of nature is an offence to God’s praise just as much as killing an angel would be. It should be possible for all people of good will to work together… Christians, however, have a special insight which comes with a responsibility, so, finally, we can say: ‘We pray for a blessing on this good earth, that it may be fruitful… bless our common life and our care for our neighbor, that in harmony we may praise our Creator.’” [v] Amen. 

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[i] Cannato, Judy, Radical Amazement (Sorin Books, Notre Dame, Indiana:2006) p.10

[ii] Job 38:1-11,16-18

[iii] 1 Timothy 6:7-10, 17-19

[iv] The Gospel: Luke 12:13-21

[v] Holmes, Stephen, A Sermon for Rogation Sunday 2024, Holy Cross Scottish Episcopal Church, Davidson’s Mains

Edinburgh, Scotland.

I Am Making All Things New! Easter 5C

 I Am Making All Things New!     Easter 5C

It’s worth reminding ourselves that The Bible is not “a book.” It is a library of books that includes poems, letters, apocalyptic visions, stories, myths, proverbs, historical narratives, and of course, four Gospels, which comprise their own genre. As such, this library of various kinds of literature have been written, edited, and redacted over nearly three thousand years, and further interpreted with each new translation that comes along. Understanding all of this, it should be obvious that there is no such thing as “a biblical world view.” Rather, The Bible presents a great variety of worldviews which have been further interpreted by translators and commentators throughout the ages of its ongoing existence. It consists of many living documents. 

One might say that the Bible’s one consistent unifying theme is a deep concern with how we are to live here and now. Here being on this planet, and now being the present time. As such, the Bible shares this concern with at least several other religious traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and of course, Christianity. Furthermore the Bible offers scant evidence that it is concerned with how one, or how a community, might get into heaven. In fact, the Bible shows little concern at all about what happens when we die. Rather, it seeks to map out ways in which we might better live with one another, and bring whatever imaginings or hopes may be represented by the word “heaven” into this world here and now. Which generally means, how might we reconcile all those things that separate us from one another? 

 Finally, the potpourri of excepts for this Fifth Sunday of Easter offer another Biblical point of view: things are always changing. Nothing stays the same. The Bible, like everything in the known Universe itself, is constantly in a state of change as conditions on the ground evolve and change as well. The texts mean to challenge us to accept the truth that change is a good thing. 

For instance, Peter has left the parochial world of living in and around Jerusalem and discovers, in a mystical vision, that the God of Abraham, Issaac, Jacob and Jesus shows no partiality. Not only does the vision shatter all notions of eating kosher, it shatters Peter’s belief that only circumcised Judeans can follow Jesus. Peter is so shaken by this revelation, that he goes right out into the region of Joppa and in the name of Christ and the Holy Spirit baptizes a household of Gentiles and eats with them. Both his companions and the believers back in Jerusalem cannot believe it. We must remember that the term “Gentile” simply means all others who are not circumcised Judeans, and suddenly Peter is ready to welcome Gentiles into the community of Christ without distinction. And also animals of all kinds. [i] 

This diversity of God’s kingdom is echoed in Psalm 148, which predates the books of the New Testament by many many centuries. The Psalm envisions that all people, all creatures, and all of the environment can praise the Lord! This includes all angels, the sun and the moon, mountains, the sea, hills, fruit trees and cedars, sea monsters, Kings, all peoples, young men, maidens, old and young together, wild beasts, birds, creeping things, and also much cattle! This world is one whole and holistic community of life, and as Jesus in John 13 proclaims, a community of Christ-like Love. [ii] We are to love one another as he has and continues to love us. We are to love the environment as he has and continues to love us. We are to love every thing and every creature as he has and continues to love us. Love, as attraction and union is at the heart of the entire universe. 

For as the vision in Revelation that concludes the entire Bible proclaims:

"See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away." 

Everything is being made new. As the old things pass away, a new world comes into play. As one commentator suggests, it is like Baseball. The old teams shall pass away, and new players from every kingdom on earth shall make a new team – the team of Christ-like Love! And not only the team, but a new stadium, with seating enough for all. All are welcome on the team and in the new stadium. The fundamental pain of human separation shall finally be over as we recognize and accept God’s presence among us as God seeks to “wipe every tear from [our] eyes. Death will be no more, and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” [iii] 

We might note that these visions of overcoming long periods of human separation from one another and from the God who continues to create all that is seen and unseen all come from periods of great darkness. As the narrator of the Gospel of John notes, “And it was night.” It was in a moment of darkness between the betrayal of Judas and the denials of Peter that Jesus announces his return to God his Father in which he and the father are to be glorified! It is to say that the betrayals and denials cannot and will not thwart the divine intention that this world is to become a Community of Christ-like Love. 

Community, from the Latin communitas, by the way, denotes a coming together with no hierarchical arrangements – in which Love is no longer trivialized as an emotion, or debated as a philosophical virtue under scrutiny. This glorification of Christ inaugurates a new paradigm, a new era, in which even Love is made new. For now, Jesus is to be the distinctive definition of Love. [iv] 

These various visions of how to live here and now collected in The Bible speak directly to the Church which is called to be the vanguard community of Christ-like Love. And lo, we stand divided amongst ourselves, both in the Church Universal, and in the smallest of local congregations. The words of Joe Hickerson, later finished by Pete Seeger, echo through the centuries, “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn…” Just as Peter was astonished to learn, we all, each of us, have a role to play to continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in a broken and divided world – we are to reconcile the whole world and everything therein. The first things will pass away, with or without us. All things are being made new. One day we all shall be One, as Christ and the Father are One. May we be open, day by day, to the ways in which the Holy Spirit means to move us, shape us, and renew us as God’s own people. May our Community of Love let Christ-like Love be the distinguishing mark of who we are and whose we are, by which others, even those utterly unlike us, will want to be part of the new thing God is doing even now in the midst of the present darkness that seeks to divide us. Amen.

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[i] Acts 11:1–18

[ii] John 13:31-35

[iii] Revelation 21:1-6

[iv] Cousar, Charles et al, Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.310-312

Mothers, Women Everywhere, Arise! Easter 4C

 

Mothers, Women Everywhere, Arise!    Easter 4C

Simon who is called Peter is traveling along the coast near Joppa. Joppa was a port city, and therefore a truly cosmopolitan trading center: goods came in and goods were sent out by ships. The previous day, in a nearby village, he found a man, Aeneas, perhaps named for the main character of Virgil’s Aenid – written between 29-19 BCE – thus, a fairly recent poem at the time of Jesus, likely still on the “Best Sellers List.” The name suggests that Aeneas, like the Trojan who flees the fall of Troy, is a gentile. He has been paralyzed lying in bed for eight years. Peter says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!” [i]  Sounds like everyone’s mother: “Get up and make your bed!” Aneas does get up, and all the townspeople turn to the Lord. 

Meanwhile, in Joppa there was a disciple of the Lord whose Aramaic name is Tabitha, which in Greek, we are told, is Dorcas. Both names mean “gazelle” – a doe, a female gazelle. Tabitha was devoted to good works and charity. And she is the only woman in the New Testament explicitly called a disciple. She wove tunics and other clothing for those in need. Tabitha lived and worked with a group of other women, identified as widows. The disciples in Joppa sent two men to bring Peter to Joppa: “Please come to us without delay.” For Tabitha-Gazelle was already dead. Her body had been ritually washed for burial. Peter went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to her room, while showing him the tunics and clothing she had made for the poor. [ii] 

Peter orders everyone to leave the room. He kneels beside her bed and simply says, “Tabitha, get up.” The verb is “Arise!” In Greek it is aniste¯mi. It’s the same verb he used with Aeneas. More importantly, the same verb found elsewhere to refer to Jesus’s resurrection. Peter used it when addressing the crowds in Jerusalem for the annual Pentecost Festival, “This Jesus God raised up!” [iii] He now invokes that same Spirit to perform the same miracle for Gazelle! She sits up. She sees Peter. He takes her hand and helps her up. Then he calls the widows and the saints, that is all the disciples, both men and women, and they see that she is alive! Again, this became known throughout the whole town of Joppa, and many believed in the Lord! 

Simon then went out to the edge of town, near the sea, to stay with another Simon, a tanner of hides. Handling dead animals renders Simon ritually unclean, and often tanners were Gentiles. Two strikes against them. Because of the acrid smell in the tanning process, tanners lived at the outskirts of town. Despite all of this, Simon called Peter chooses to stay with Simon the tanner, foreshadowing Peter’s soon dramatic vision in which God convinces Peter to accept Gentiles into the Way of Jesus. And note, no one gives Peter credit for these miracles – people recognized that it was the healing and life giving power of Christ’s Resurrection that was being spread throughout the Empire and to the ends of the Earth! 

For many decades, the story of Gazelle, Tabitha, a disciple, a woman of faith, was not heard in our Sunday worship. Only with the advent of the Revised Common Lectionary did we finally reclaim stories of these early disciples, many of whom were affluent widows like Mary Magdelene who supported Jesus’s ministry, and they supported the life of the emerging church. Tabitha, and many other women like her who followed Jesus, faithfully served those in need as he had once said, “As you serve the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners, the strangers and the naked, you have served me.” [iv] The disciple named Gazelle made sure there would be no naked people in Joppa! 

Who knows, Tabitha may have heard Jesus tell that parable of judgment. George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister who seems to think she had, or at least was inspired by hearing about it from others in this poem of his simply titled Dorcas:

If I might guess, then guess I would

        That, mid the gathered folk,

    This gentle Dorcas one day stood,

        And heard when Jesus spoke.

 

    She saw the woven seamless coat--

        Half envious, for his sake:

    "Oh, happy hands," she said, "that wrought

        The honoured thing to make!"

 

    Her eyes with longing tears grow dim:

        She never can come nigh

    To work one service poor for him

        For whom she glad would die!

 

    But, hark, he speaks! Oh, precious word!

        And she has heard indeed!

    "When did we see thee naked, Lord,

        And clothed thee in thy need?"

 

    "The King shall answer, Inasmuch

        As to my brethren ye

    Did it--even to the least of such--

        Ye did it unto me."

 

    Home, home she went, and plied the loom,

        And Jesus' poor arrayed.

    She died--they wept about the room,

        And showed the coats she made. 

Tabitha has been canonized as a Saint in Episcopal, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches. Pope Francis recently elevated October 25^th from a memorial to a feast day, recognizing her faithfulness in serving the poor, those in need of clothing. As many of us watched for the white smoke on Thursday, and witnessed the first North American Pope, the former Robert Prevost from Chicago, Illinois, we learned that he has chosen to be named Leo XIV. It has been noted, that like Francis before him, Pope Leo XIII, the fourth longest serving pope in history (February 1878 until his death in July 1903) had a deep concern for the poor and working men, women, and children of the Industrial Revolution who were being poorly treated by the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age – the millionaires of that time. 

We can be certain that Leo XIV is familiar with the story of Tabitha-Dorcas-Gazelle. And we can be certain that despite gains made by women over the past century, there is still a long way to go to recognize their leadership in the early church and society, and then support them in leadership roles in today’s church and society, while also recognizing the work Mother sand Wives do to maintain families and homes. May Simon Peter’s cry “Tabitha, arise!” become today’s “Mothers, Women of the World, Women of the Church, Arise!” in this time of Pope Leo XIV – as we watch the erosion of women’s rights happening right before our very eyes. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit inspire and empower us to reclaim the rights and needs of all women everywhere. Amen.

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[i] Acts 9:32-35

[ii] Acts 9:36-43

[iii] Acts 2:32

[iv] Matthew 25:31-46