The Wood of the Manger is the Hard Wood of the Cross

Good Friday 2016

The Wood of the Manger is the Hard Wood of the Cross

I have always thought that to make sense out of Good Friday and just why it is so good requires some reflection upon that other Christian festival that for reasons that are more patriotic than theological outshines Holy Week and Easter in American culture: that would be, of course, Christmas.

So when John writes that it was “about the sixth hour” on the Day of Preparation, he is signaling that in Jerusalem as Passover approaches, it is one chaotic and busy time! And since John also places Passover on the Sabbath, it means that on top of Passover there is the already hectic and frantic running around town that takes place in Jerusalem before the beginning of the Sabbath every week: the shopping areas and markets are just teeming with people buying, selling, haggling, yelling, pushing, shoving, racing and just about every other kind of ing-ing imaginable. Having been in the markets of Jerusalem hours before the Sabbath begins I can confirm that not much has changed in this regard.

Which is to say it is like the Day of Preparation before Christmas Eve, say, when relatives are arriving at the airport, the train station and the front door, some early, some late, a blessed few on time. A day when all bon fide, red-blooded U.S. males are completing long put off last minute shopping. Kitchens are marked off with yellow caution tape with ingredients and spicy invectives flying through the air. Kids are tugging at peoples’ apron strings, overcoats, pants legs and demanding to know when when when can we open the first gift?!? Uncle Pete is asleep in the parlor, while Aunt Hilda is busy trying to convince the household teens that yes, we do dress up for Christmas, and yes, we do dress up for Christmas dinner. While all the while the soft glow of the moon’s beams reflects off the pillows of new fallen snow.

Which is to say, most people in Jerusalem are not at all present, let alone aware of, at the insignificant little drama going on down at the Pro-Counsel’s office. In fact, most people in first-century Jerusalem would make it their habit to stay as far away from Pilate, the most brutal Pro-Counsel ever, and his Roman minions as possible every day of the year.

So it came as no surprise to me to learn that there is a long tradition that says the hard wood of the manger is the hard wood of the cross. It works of course the other way around: the hard wood of the cross is the hard wood of the manger. Christmas and Good Friday really mean to convey the same truth: God chose to become incarnate, that is human, and experience all that being human entails, which ultimately speaking leads to death. Not always the horrible death depicted on the Roman crosses used for executing only the lowliest of the low, but death nonetheless.

To put it another way, being born into this world of Mary the God-Bearer, and being fully human, not part human and part something else, means that he was in fact born to die. That seems obvious to us at this point, but it never seems quite so obvious as we joyfully entertain ourselves with Christmas Carols, building the crèche, swinging the incense, gazing at poinsettias and falling on our knees to sing Silent Night, dimming the lights to inject about as much treacle as one church can possibly bear at one time. It all seems so, well, darling and sweet at the time. Death tends to be the last thing on our minds.

Enter Good Friday to remind us that Christmas is one of the reasons Good Friday is Good. Since receiving a sentence of capital punishment and being executed all in one day does not stir up visions of sugar plums or anything else good in our little Christmas saturated heads. Good Friday is Good because of Christmas – because Jesus Christ the human being means that God entered our reality, allowing that we may, and even should, be human beings before God. Being created in God’s image carries some responsibilities after all, and being human before God is as good a place to start as any. Nevertheless, as Dietrich Bonhoffer has observed [“Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection” in Meditations on the Cross (Westminster John Knox, Louisville:1996) p.76ff], this God with us, Emmanuel, is not a simple confirmation of the goodness of humankind. The decisive distinction is that Jesus was without sin.

“Among other human beings, however, Jesus lived in deep poverty, unmarried, and died as a criminal. So Jesus’ human existence already contains a double condemnation of human beings: the absolute condemnation of sin, and the relative condemnation of human circumstances.” p. 76

Yet, despite this double condemnation, of which we are to take careful note, Jesus himself is genuinely human and wants us to be genuinely human as well, while at the same time indicating that we are not the ultimate end of creation, but rather of penultimate status. As such we are to be taken seriously, but not that seriously, since hidden deep within us, like yeast in a lump of dough, are the seeds for the Kingdom of God – that is the potential for life as God truly wants it to be – free of poverty, crime and isolated individuals.

This reality of this incarnate double condemnation does seem inevitably to lead to the Cross – a cross which until later in the Good Friday service is conspicuous by its absence from the sanctuary. Some churches do not even bring it in at all, so powerful is its presence and meaning in our midst. We prefer, perhaps, to meditate on the hard wood of the manger.

Jesus Christ, the Crucified – “This means,” writes Bonhoffer, “that God has pronounced the final judgment over fallen creation. God’s rejection which happened on the cross of Jesus Christ contains the rejection of the human race without exception.” p.77

It is the “without exception” clause that is perhaps deserving of most of our attention. For it leaves no room to boast of our being human, nor the world of its divine order. Lest we think this is primitive stuff, we need only recall that in the writings and visions of the prophets God is frequently pictured as putting humanity on trial with Creation in the jury box. So just for a moment imagine a jury box filled with trees, flowers, birds, animals, fish, whales, crabs and oysters. Their duty as jurors will be to determine whether or not we have succeeded or failed in our duties as Stewards of all creation – the Earth and all that is therein – this fragile Earth our Island Home. One does not need to be a die-hard proponent of Climate Change and its causes to hazard a guess at the jury’s verdict. Rampant greed fueled by consumer-driven capitalism does have its down sides – destruction of the Earth for one, and usually the grinding up of human labor as another. Someone has to fund all those year-end corporate bonuses and golden parachutes. We contribute whether we mean to or not. Usually the grinding of the market economy, so-called, does not allow much time to reflect on all of this. This is one good reason to take time on Good Friday to simply sit and think about the unthinkable.

Yet, it is under the symbol of death –the cross - that human beings are now to live on, “in judgment upon themselves if they despise it, or toward their own salvation if they acknowledge it.” At the end of the day, we can choose – we can choose to see the cross as judgment or as grace. The latter, of course, is what leads to Good Friday being good.

And not to run too far ahead, but it is of course Jesus Christ, the Resurrected that makes Good Friday truly and ultimately Good! For it is in Christ’s resurrection that God brings an end to death and calls a new creation into being. “See,” says the Risen Lord, “I am making all things new.” (Rev 21:5)

Just because it is Good Friday does not mean that we or the world are frozen in time and place. In Christ being raised from the dead resurrection and new life has already commenced in the midst of this tired old world with its wars and tumults of wars, famine, poverty, cancer, depression, hunger, and all manner of sufferings. In the lives of those who are baptized into the Body of Christ, a beachhead is set. Resurrection is a sign of this old world’s end and of its inevitable future. And so human beings remain human, though sharing in Christ’s resurrection we in no way resemble the old human beings if we are among those who acknowledge the cross as grace. To be sure, up to the boundary of our own death, “those who are resurrected with Christ remain in the world of the penultimate, the world into which Jesus himself entered and in which the cross stands. Thus, as long as the earth exists, the resurrection will not suspend the penultimate, even though eternal life, new life breaks into earthly life ever more powerfully and creates space for itself in that life.” p.78

Incarnation, cross, and resurrection become clear in their unity and in their differences. They make up a kind of mosaic of life in Christ – we cannot survive with just one dimension of God in Christ, we need all three at all times and in all places. “Christian Life means being human by virtue of the incarnation, it means being judged and pardoned by virtue of the cross, and means to live a new life in the power of resurrection. None of these becomes real without the others.” p.78

The wood of the manger is the hard wood of the cross. The Biblical story begins with a tree in a garden, and begins all over again on a tree in Jerusalem. Good Friday is good when we take the time to reflect on just where we stand in the midst of the three dimensions of life in Christ – Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection. Where we find our selves and where we can see our selves makes all the difference in the world and for the world. Even in times as chaotic and disruptive as the sixth hour on the Day of Preparation, we come to prepare ourselves to be fully incorporated into the full life of Christ and the Body of Christ, His Church.

Amen.

Maundy Thursday 2016

Maundy Thursday 2016

Do As I Have Done To You

This is a night of quite mixed traditions: Last Supper, foot washing, altar stripping, all-night vigil. There is the Passover first described in Exodus. There is Paul’s take on the Last Supper. There is John’s take on the Last Supper. We compress them all into this one night we call Maundy Thursday.

The name derives from the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment or mandate, and the phrase in John’s Gospel: "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you").

Although it is often assumed the Last Supper was a Passover meal, even a Passover Seder, John’s account quite definitely places it “before the festival of Passover.” For John, it is not Passover and it is not a Seder meal.

The ritual behavior of blessing bread and blessing wine, however, is quite common around Jewish dinner tables year-round, especially on Sabbath eve. What is unusual is Jesus’ self-identification with the bread and wine.

Oddly, out of all five chapters in John’s gospel that describe the Last Supper, there is no mention at all of bread or wine. None. It can be seen in other parts of John’s gospel, but it is conspicuously absent from the Last Supper.

Instead, John offers the unique description of Jesus washing feet. He takes off his outer robe, ties a towel around himself, pours water in a basin and begins to wash feet and wipe them with a towel the night before Good Friday.

Perhaps we remember Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus anointing his feet with oil and wiping them with her hair the night before Palm Sunday – Spikenard Saturday. Perhaps we remember that foot washing was done by the lowliest of household slaves.

It is an extreme posture and activity to assume. Not unlike overturning the tables in the Temple precincts to make a point. Not unlike withering fig trees to make a point. Not unlike accepting a drink of water from a Samaritan woman in public. Not unlike eating with prostitutes, tax collectors, blind, lame and sinners of all kinds.

Jesus was not a moderate. He did not play it safe.

He picks up a towel. It has been said by some that Jesus’ entire life was a ministry of the towel. When he was born in a lowly stable, his mother wrapped him in something like a towel. He stanches the flow of blood in a hemorrhaging woman with something like a towel. He prepares and cleans up tables before and after meals with towels. He wipes feet with a towel. And when he dies on the cross, he is wrapped in something like a towel and placed in a new tomb.

So thetowel can be said to summarize his entire life and ministry of service to others. All others. Especially those who were not welcome much of anywhere else.

Maybe that is why Peter at first refuses to participate. Maybe that is why Peter pulls back from having his feet washed: he does not want to think of himself as being lumped in with all those others, all those unclean and sinful people Jesus insists on welcoming all the time.

Maybe Peter was the first to think, “There but by the grace of God go I.” Something a lot of well-meaning Christians like to think is what God’s grace is all about.

I used to help serve meals at Paul’s Place and had a music and prayer ministry there. One day Bill Rich, a colleague and friend, turned to me and said, “There by the grace of God am I.” I have never forgotten that.

I believe that is at the heart of Jesus and the washing of feet. There we all are. We are the poor. We are the sick. We are the broken and brokenhearted. We are the slaves escaping from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke. We are the poor Syrian child who has no mother or father tonight. We are the poor Mexicans threatened by the drug cartels. We are the devastated families in Brussels, in Paris, in Yemen, in the Ukraine, in Iraq and Afghanistan whose lives have been torn apart by terror and war. We are the young black men and women stopped for driving while black, shot before a trial of their peers, incarcerated for minor offenses. We are the poor child born of a crack addict tonight. We are the men, women and children infected with HIV/AIDS. We are the hungry, the tired, and the unemployed. We are the mother, father, sister or brother who sits on Death Row. We are the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad waiting and wondering what tomorrow might bring. We are First Responders everywhere who work tirelessly day and night to meet our most urgent needs.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And the Word accepted a drink of water from a despised and broken woman.

And the Word touched a bleeding woman. And the Word fed thousands of hungry people.

And the Word picked up a towel, washed everyone’s feet and gave dignity to all of human kind.

He made us one with himself and with all creation.

He taught us how to love one another as he loves us. As He loves us. As God loves us.

Washing feet, eating bread and drinking wine makes us his own. This is his table not ours. He denies no one a seat at his table. We are to welcome everyone who comes to it. He gives his body and his blood for the life of the world – the whole world – everyone, every place, every thing, every speck of dust.

He invites us to do to others as he has done for us. Welcome them to his table. Wash their feet. Wipe them with a towel. His towel. Tonight we can feel what it is like to live with him. We hold the bread of life in our hands. We drink from the cup of salvation. He says, “Do to others as I have done to you.

We see in his body and blood all the peoples of the world, all sorts and conditions of humankind, and we join with him and say, “There by the grace of God am I.” Amen.

Mercy Now

Mercy Now

Lent 5-C - John 12: 1-8                                  

Kurt Vonnegut once preached on this very story. He calls it Spikenard Saturday. It’s the night before Palm Sunday in John’s gospel.  In a sense it is about mercy – mercy now, not later. Although as the story unfolds Jesus allows that there will always be time for mercy now. Perhaps that is what is meant by The Eternal Now – being merciful yesterday, today and tomorrow; being merciful always and in all ways.

At the outset Vonnegut says the one good idea we have been given so far is to be merciful. Perhaps, he ponders, one day we will be given another good idea and then we will have two good ideas. In the meantime, he believes that music – that ineffable expression of the human heart almost hard to define and even harder to understand why it moves us so – music is that second good idea being born.

Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem and his inevitable showdown and march to the scaffold, has returned to Bethany and the house of Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus who had been as good as dead until Jesus, having mercy on him, called him out of the tomb and ordered the crowd to “unbind him and set him free.” Lazarus, of course, is a stand-in for all others, for all of us, who are bound by sin – the sin of whatever it is that separates us from the love of God as our prayer book defines it. Sin is what makes us unable to accept God’s mercy now.

Martha is serving dinner. No surprise there. Mary, now behaving much more like Martha, assumes the position of the lowest household slave and begins to anoint Jesus’ feet with nard – the costly ointment from the Spikenard plant. This is all at once humble, merciful and downright extravagant on Mary’s part. As Judas the Traitor would observe, this ointment could bring in 300 denarii on today’s market. One denarii was about one day’s wages. Nearly a year’s worth of wages being lavished on Jesus’ feet.

It takes someone like the late Kurt Vonnegut to see the humor in all of this. First off you have the King of Kings, Lord of Lords being anointed. But unlike the kings of old who were anointed meshia, messiah, God’s chosen, with oil on their heads with the oil flowing down through their beards, this King of Kings gets his feet anointed. Additionally you have a woman doing this – a woman who should not even be seen with men other than her husband in those days – let alone wiping his feet with her hair. And what of the irony (?) that it is Jesus who will, the night before Good Friday, assume the same posture as Mary to wash his disciples’ feet, rather than the disciples caring for their master. Something, as we say, is afoot.

And on both occasions there is a disciple, Judas on this night, Peter on Maundy Thursday, who protests just what is going on. Judas, who represents our inner Pharisee and inner Puritan, all of a sudden holier than the King of Kings himself! “No way! This cannot be right! Why don’t we sell the ointment and give the money to the poor?” Believing in his heart that he has finally understood what Jesus was about. And despite the unkind editorial remarks of the editors of the fourth gospel, we should admit that in fact he is not far from wrong. His mistake here is that he is simply not living in the moment as we might say nowadays.

Imagine, for just a moment, having walked nearly a hundred miles or so on the rocky and dusty highways and bi-ways of Israel without much more than sandals on your feet under the hot sun by day and through the cold, chill air at night. Now close your eyes and try to imagine someone like Mary massaging your feet with oil and wiping them with her hair. Is that a smile creeping across your face right about now? Can we allow ourselves some idea of just how Jesus, who knows that in a mere few days he will feel all the pain and suffering that a mortal can feel when he dies on the cross, might feel right then and there in Bethany? No doubt it feels really really good.  Can anyone blame him at all for feeling that way?

It is a wonder that Jesus does not come out with anything more stern than his astute observation, “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Of course by now we all know it was said in Aramaic, and may have sounded more like, “Don’t worry, Judas. There will be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone. I have a tough road to go from here. Why not let her show me a little mercy now?”

Vonnegut says that’s it. That’s the joke. “Do you really think there won’t be enough poor people to serve after I’m gone?” might be the sense of it here. It is often hard to see the humor in the Bible because, well, it’s the Bible. And dark humor like this is often difficult to pick up even in real life. But what we are meant to do is laugh at ourselves and at the notion that there was no more time than that very moment to sell the oil and serve the poor when in fact it is our lifetime vocation as the body of Christ! “Don’t sweat it, Judas, you’ll have plenty of time and money to do that yourself. After all, as the editor says, you have the purse and all the money, AND you are a thief!” Do we get it now?

Judas did not get it. And neither do a lot of well-meaning Christians today. Verse 8 tends to be heard as something more like this, “Poor people are hopeless. We will always be stuck with them. Jesus said so.” Which then appears to give people warrant to say other things like the poor are helpless and hopeless because they are lazy, or dumb, or drink too much, or take drugs, and have too many children, and on and on it goes.

The Thursday following Spikenard Saturday Jesus takes Mary’s lead, gets on his knees with a wash basin and towel and begins washing feet and saying, “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” That is, there is no end to a life of serving others as I have served you. There is no time for being merciful as important as the present moment. Show a little mercy now, not later.

If we could not understand it on Spikenard Saturday, surely when we see Jesus on his knees washing feet on the very night he would also say, “Do this in remembrance of me,” surely, he must be thinking, they will get it now. Surely we do, don’t we?

So let Jesus wash your feet. And know that when we wash others’ feet and take care of the poor that we are in fact joining ourselves with Mary of Bethany in anointing and caring for our Lord’s feet as well. As you do this for the least of these, my sisters and brothers, you do it for me.  Amen.

Mercy Now

Words and Music Mary Gauthier

My father could use a little mercy now

The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground

His work is almost over it won't be long, he won't be around

I love my father, he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now

He's a stranger to freedom, he's shackled to his fear and his doubt

The pain that he lives in it's almost more than living will allow

I love my brother, he could use some mercy now

My church and my country could use a little mercy now

As they sink into a poisoned pit it's going to take forever to climb out

They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down

I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now

Only the hand of grace can end the race towards another mushroom cloud

People in power, they'll do anything to keep their crown

I love life and life itself could use some mercy now

Every single one of us could use a little mercy now

I know we don’t deserve it but we need it anyhow

We hang in the balance between hell and hallowed ground

Every single one of us could use some mercy now

Join The Party Every Day!

Join the Party Every Day!

Lent 4C – Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32/ 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21

When I was ordained into the priesthood I received a telegram that read in part, “Dear Kirk Alan Kubicek, May this day mark the beginning of a mission that will bring many people closer to each other, closer to God and closer to themselves.”

This would be the task for all of us as Jesus illustrates in the 15^th chapter of Luke. Often called The Prodigal Son, it might better be titled The Generous, Loving and All Merciful Father. Or, The Ungrateful Brother.  Or, The Steward of the Household of God. Or, Life Among The Pigs! It is true that Ernest Hemingway tried out almost 50 different titles for his book A Farewell to Arms.

So we read that tax collectors (read “collaborators with the Roman Oppression) and sinners were flocking to see him and listen to him. Obviously he is teaching at the dinner table as the Pharisees and scribes are sneering, “Look, this man welcomes and eats with sinnerssssssssssss…..”, offering their very best serpent impersonation.  Overhearing them Jesus does what he does best. He tells a story about a young man and his father. We are all too familiar with this tale. The young man wants and gets his inheritance right now. The beginning of the instant gratification movement! Of course he squanders the money and ends up literally among the pigs. Pigs, you may recall, are not kosher. They are unclean. Yet, there he is wishing that he might eat some of the pig slop.

He had reached his bottom as we say in Twelve Step groups. The text says he came to himself. Spiritual teachers would say he woke up! He realizes that even his father’s debt-slaves get better than this pig slop. So he decides to go home, repent to his father and ask if he might work the fields as a hired hand. He has been humbled indeed.

Before he even gets to the front door his Father runs down the road to greet him and kiss him. Then the Father turns to a servant, apparently the steward of the household, and orders him to bring the best robe, a fine ring and to kill the fatted calf so there can be a party to celebrate the son’s return, “…for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now he is found.” The Father is genuinely happy, merciful, abounding in steadfast love and relents from punishing his Son.  The party gets under way.

The older brother was just coming in from a hard day’s work in the fields. He hears the music and asks, ‘What’s up?’ A servant tells him the news. The brother is incensed and refuses to go in to join the party. The Father comes out to invite him in personally, but the brother will have no part of it. “I have obeyed you and worked my tail off for you day after day and you have never given me so much as a young goat with which to party with my friends!” No doubt he is pouting as he whines.

The Father reminds him that all that is his will one day be yours since your brother already has claimed and spent his inheritance. But we had to celebrate. We just had to! For this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now has been found!

We are never told if the brother relented and joined the party. Jesus leaves it right there for the scribes and Pharisees and tax collectors and sinners and for all of us to ponder.  There is no moral or explanation. Evidently he feels there is no need for one. It is, as we say, self-evident. Or is it?

Without giving it any thought, how many of you identify with the younger son? Perhaps you have squandered an opportunity, or have let go of your relationship with God and/or with others and really really know what it is like to be eating slop with the pigs! Or, how many of you identify with the older brother? I mean really, if there was ever a justified moment for righteous indignation, coming in from the fields and hearing the music and merriment and then realizing it is for your no good reprobate younger brother! Resentment is easy to fall into, just as easy as the younger brother fell into the pig pen. Then who identifies with the Father? You have known the pain of loss – of having lost a child, or at least one that is as good as dead. Or you have felt estranged from a close family member or friend, and yet you still yearn to somehow make things right again. You want to return to a relationship with that person no matter what the cost. And when it happens you put on the Ritz and celebrate and embrace that lost soul unconditionally just to be reunited with one you believed to be as good as dead.

That leaves one final character in our story for today: who identifies with the slave, the servant, the household steward. Does anyone identify with him, this debt-slave? Ironic, isn’t it, that the word steward derives from the term “sty warden” or keeper of the pigs! We ought to all identify with this servant, because that is who we are. St. Paul writes in the fourth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians – “…we are servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

The Father (God, Abba, Father?) entrusts the entire household to this debt-slave. This servant has access to all the finest possessions in the household: fine robes, fine jewelry, the finest food! The Father trusts this debt-slave with all of this, just as God in Christ trusts us with all the finest gifts of creation, with creation itself, and with the mysteries of God. As Paul writes in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, we are given a specific ministry – that of reconciliation. As such, we are ambassadors for Christ. This, writes Paul, is what it means to be created imago Dei, in the image of God.

“In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” We are stewards of the mysteries of God!

I am told Carl Jung’s understanding of dreams is that we are all of the characters in our dreams working out our own internal stuff. Applying that to this story, it is reasonable to assume that at one time or another we all are the young son, we all are the older son, we all are the Father, and we all are the steward.  We can only imagine what the scribes and Pharisees made of all this. We can be sure the tax collectors and sinners understood it right away and left the supper table humbled and with a renewed sense of life and purpose and gratitude.

As stewards of the mysteries of God, we are all given a mission of reconciliation – as my mentor Elie Wiesel wrote to me that day long long ago, “a mission that will bring many people closer to each other, closer to God and closer to themselves.” It was only when the young son came closer to himself that he was able to repent and return home. His Father was so eager to get closer to his lost son that he ran down the road to embrace him. So it is that God waits upon us to come closer to ourselves, our true selves. It is only when we reconcile ourselves with ourselves and others that we truly are home again. We come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. All of life is a homecoming – a coming home to God.

We are not told what the older brother did, but my hope and my prayer is that one day he too “came to himself” and joined the party and truly came home again. The Father loves them both. The Father invites us all to join the party every day! Amen. 

I Am The Wings of God

I Am The Wings of God

Genesis15: 1-12, 17-18/Luke  13: 31-35

In Genesis chapter 15 God ratifies a covenant with Abram. Abram, who at his advanced age has left home as the Lord God had called him to do and is still without an heir.  God says you shall have an heir, and you shall have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And they shall be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. And this is the land I have promised you as your new home. Abram says, But how, Lord, am I to know this? This is the question for all of us. How indeed!

When the heavens are darkened, when we cannot see the light, when we cannot count the stars, how are we to know? When politicians fail to fulfill promises, or obfuscate and lie, how are we to know? When we know that if we are to proceed in the way in which we are traveling it will lead to certain confrontation and even death, how are we to know?

The Lord says, “Bring me a heifer, a goat, a ram a turtledove, and a young pigeon and I shall show you,” says the Lord.

Which strikes us as odd, but Abram knows what to do. He sacrifices the animals and lays out one half of each across from the other half, driving away the birds of prey. This is an offering for the Lord, and sets the stage for the Lord’s covenant ceremony. This is how covenants were sealed in those days. The parties would walk between the laid out animal parts with the understanding that this will happen to me should I break the terms of the covenant. Note how God passes through on Abram’s behalf while Abram is in a deep sleep and terrifying darkness.

This passing through can be likened to Moses and the people passing through the Red Sea on dry land. Or, like Jesus passing through the cross and what the world counts as death into new life. Covenants are sealed by someone having passed through something somewhere, just as we pass through the waters of Baptism into a covenant relationship with God in Christ.

Once you have passed through there is a degree of ultimate safety guaranteed.

Abram knows this. Jesus knows this. Knowing this, Jesus, like God does for Abram, passes through death for us while we are in deep darkness. We are those people who know this story well. The Herods and Pilates of this world never do get it and so trust only their own violence and forcefulness.

Then there are some astonishing elements to our Gospel for today beginning with the Pharisees. After much disputation with Jesus along the way to Jerusalem, these Pharisees come as friends warning Jesus to “get away from here! Herod wants to kill you!” Jesus tells them to go to Herod, that “fox” and tell him I am “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” Already the three day pattern is set just as his face is set toward Jerusalem – the city that kills prophets!

Then comes a remarkable metaphor. Jesus says our covenant relationship with God is like being a chick under the wings of a mother hen. Under those wings is warmth, and safety, and love, and care that is unbounded, which may be the root characteristic of the very mercy we pray for today.

Note that God is portrayed as a woman, a mother hen. As opposed to Herod the “fox” which was considered a cut, a diss. Foxes were considered insignificant predators next to lions. Jesus’ listeners would know this and no doubt get a good laugh at Herod’s expense. Our mother hen of a God is infinitely more powerful than all the Herods you could line up, and in fact there were a number of them doing The Empire’s bidding.

But if we have ever seen baby chicks, we know that just as soon as the mother hen gets five of them under her wings another three pop out. They just squirt out as if they were greased or sprayed with WD-40! People in that agrarian society would know just how true and comical this really looks. Cue even more laughter from the crowd.

But then it turns serious. “See your house is left (or abandoned) to you.” Luke and his hearers know this to be true as Jerusalem and God’s house already lie in ruins when Luke is writing. Luke links Jesus’ impending death on a cross with the destruction of the Temple itself. God’s will for Jesus and Israel to be a blessing to all people is thwarted by human refusals to accept it and be gathered under God’s wings. Perhaps it helps to know that the teaching just before this story is about the narrow door which eventually will be shut. The time to be gathered under the wings of God is now. There is no later.

Note how easily Jesus begins to judge the living and the dead as we say. Those in charge in Jerusalem would not find this so funny. The peasants who usually live their lives in abject fear of the Romans and Aristocracy in Jerusalem are seeing the kind of hope Abram would see when counting the stars in the sky. The “haves” and the “have nots” always see things differently.

Also note that this section ends with the song people will sing welcoming him into Jerusalem: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. This draws us forward to his work in Jerusalem which he will complete. Even Herod cannot interfere with that. Luke seems to hold out hope that there will be those who “see” Jesus and recognize him as he who comes in the name of the Lord. It is hope and lament over the demise of Jerusalem all at once as Luke prepares us for Palm Sunday.

Whether we find this figure of God the mother hen fetching or fearsome depends on whether we count ourselves among the chicks under her wings, or among those who are busy squirting out and away from the protection of her wings. As always, it is a matter of perspective. The irony of living in God’s kingdom is that it is safer to be with the hen than with the fox! Go figure. The least and the last shall be first and so on.

Many people never even stop to think about this at all. We, on the other hand, are those people who take this time in Lent to take a look and see where we find ourselves: under the wings of God? Are we becoming the wings of God in this world? Or, are we busy playing with the foxes of this world?

God’s mercy in Jesus invites us to squirm back under the wings of God before it’s too late. Amen.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Give peace in our day, we beseech thee, O thou God of peace! And grant, that this highly favoured country may continue to afford a safe and peaceful retreat from the calamities of war and slavery, for ages yet to come. We implore all these blessings and mercies, only in the name of thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And now, O Lord, we desire, with angels and arch-angels, and all the company of heaven, ever more to praise thee, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: the whole earth is full of thy glory. Amen.

From: A Thanksgiving Sermon, preached January 1, 1808, in St. Thomas's,

or the African Episcopal, Church, Philadelphia:

On Account of the Abolition of the African slave trade, on that day, by the

Congress of the United States.

By Absalom Jones, rector of the said church

This First Sunday in Lent falls in the midst of Black History Month. In The Episcopal Church we count Absalom Jones as one of the Saints of the Church. Although the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves slowed the slave trade, it would be many difficult decades and a Civil War to bring the trade to an end. Born a house slave in 1746 in Delaware, Jones taught himself to read out of the New Testament. No doubt the story of Jesus’ persistent faith in God and God only, resisting the temptations to power (Luke 4: 1-13), and relying on the Word of God, inspired the young Absalom.  When he was sixteen he was sold to a store owner in Philadelphia. He attended a night school for Blacks, operated by Quakers. When he was twenty he married another slave and purchased her freedom before his own with his earnings. Jones bought his own freedom in 1784. He was thirty-eight.

At St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, he served as lay minister for its Black membership. The active evangelism of Jones and that of his friend, Richard Allen, greatly increased Black membership at St. George’s. The alarmed vestry decided to segregate Blacks into an upstairs gallery, without notifying them. During a Sunday service when ushers attempted to remove them, the Blacks indignantly walked out in a body.

In 1787, Black Christians organized the Free African Society, the first organized Afro-American society, and Absalom Jones and Richard Allen were elected overseers. Members of the Society paid monthly dues for the benefit of those in need. The Society established communication with similar Black groups in other cities. In 1792 the Society began to build a church, which was dedicated on July 17, 1794.

The African Church applied for membership in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania on the following conditions: 1, that they be received as an organized body;  2, that they have control over their local affairs; 3, that Absalom Jones be licensed as layreader, and, if qualified, be ordained as minister. In October 1794 it was admitted as St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. Bishop White ordained Jones as deacon in 1795 and as priest on September 21, 1802.

Jones was an earnest preacher. He denounced slavery, and warned the oppressors to “clean their hands of slaves.” To him, God was the Father, who always acted on “behalf of the oppressed and distressed.”

But it was his constant visiting and mild manner that made him beloved by his own flock and by the community. St. Thomas’ Church grew to over 500 members during its first year. Known as “the Black

Bishop of the Episcopal Church,” Jones, like his Lord and Savior, was an example of persistent faith in God and in the Church as God’s instrument as he continued the struggle for freedom and equal rights for his people. Absalom Jones resisted all temptations to power, entering a lifetime of service in his Lord’s name. The world needs us all to continue the work Jones began so that one day all people in this land will know the kind of freedom Jones so exemplifies to this day.  – Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

scientist and engineer from Scotland who was for a time a missionary in Ghana in the 1950’s.

The following folk song, Jesu, Jesu is in our hymnal (602). It was penned by a Scotsman, Tom Colvin, a scientist and engineer from Scotland who later in his life was a missionary in Ghana in the 1950’s. He became familiar with a traditional love song from the village of Chereponi, Ghana. It seemed a fitting tune for a song about Christian love. He writes, “Sitting there in the moonlight, I felt it simply had to be about black and white, rich and poor. I was ashamed of the wasteful affluence of my people but proud of the Gospel that transforms us into servants of one another. It is only when we who are rich learn to have the humility of the slave towards the poor of the world that we shall be able to learn from them; they have so much to teach us and share with us.”

Absalom Jones and Tom Colvin: two men in different centuries give us plenty to think about this First Sunday in Lent as our nation struggles to find a way to talk about race relations.

Jesu, Jesu

Refrain

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love,

show us how to serve

the neighbors we have from you.

Kneels at the feet of his friends,

silently washes their feet,

master who acts as a slave to them. Refrain

Neighbors are rich and poor,

varied in color and race,

neighbors are near and far away. Refrain

These are the ones we should serve,

these are the ones we should love;

all these are neighbors to us and you. Refrain

Loving puts us on our knees,

serving as though we are slaves;

this is the way we should live with you. Refrain

Kneel at the feet of our friends,

silently washing their feet;

this is the way we should live with you. Refrain

Set us free, heavenly Father, from every bond of prejudice and fear; that, honoring the steadfast courage of your servant Absalom Jones, we may show forth in our lives the reconciling love and true freedom of the children of God, which you have given us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. 

Amen.

Who Are These Guys?

Transfiguration

As the Epiphany Season comes to a close, a season that highlights the many ways in people began to recognize who Jesus is, we always conclude with the scene of his Transfiguration. It’s like that scene in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid when Butch and the Kid are being chased by Pinkerton Agents are hiding behind a rock looking back at the cloud of dust relentlessly approaching them and they say, “Who are those guys anyway?” The Transfiguration is meant to be at least one answer to that question about Jesus: who is this guy anyway?  

The thirteenth century saint, Richard of Chichester, offers the following prayer:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ

For all the benefits Thou hast given me,

For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.

O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,

May I know Thee more clearly,

Love Thee more dearly,

Follow Thee more nearly.

The final three lines are a hymn. As a mentor of mine, The Reverend William Caradine, once observed, Richard offers a very western way of looking at the life of faith:  first we must know Jesus clearly, then love him dearly so that we may follow him more nearly.

As Bill would point out, however, that’s just not the way it is in the Gospel accounts. That is, at the outset of his ministry, he does not go down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee, hold up the Hebrew Scriptures and say, “OK, boys, read, mark and inwardly digest these stories of our people. Then tomorrow morning I will come back and give you a quiz on all of this. If you do well enough on the quiz I will let you follow me.” No. Instead he simply says, “Follow me,” and they put down their nets, leave their boats and families and follow him!

He never even asks them if they love him until after the resurrection when he asks Peter, “Do you love me?” This he asks three times.  Yes, Lord, says Peter. “Then feed my sheep…tend my flock…lead my sheep…” replies Jesus.

And arguably, given the number of books, articles, movies and what-not that fly around especially around Christmas and Easter, we are still trying to know Jesus “more clearly.” If knowing Jesus were the first required step, we would never get around to following Jesus.

A similar sentiment has been making the rounds on Facebook recently from Richard Rohr:

We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on the same path.

We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with Him and everything else.

This shift made us into a religion of “belonging and believing” instead of a religion of transformation.

And after all, transformation is one way of saying what Transfiguration is all about. Peter, James and John accompany Jesus up a mountain to pray. Suddenly Jesus is radiantly glowing bright white like no white ever seen before. And that’s not all. He is suddenly accompanied by Moses and Elijah, two of the great prophets of Israelite religion. He is one of them. They are talking about “his departure” – his “exodos” as the text has it. Like the Hebrew people passing through the sea from bondage to freedom, Jesus will pass through crucifixion and death into New Life. Peter wants to preserve the moment, build some dwellings so they can all camp out for a while, but before he can do anything a cloud covers the mountain and a voice declares, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

We may recall that we have heard this voice once before at his Baptism by John: “You are my Son, my Beloved; I am well pleased with you.” These are the bookends of Epiphany.  It is important that we listen to this voice because by water and the Holy Spirit those who are baptized are “fully incorporated into the Body of Christ.” That is, this voice says to each and every one of us, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you.”

This is the Good News we hear so much about. This is what God wants all of us to hear and to accept. This is what we are meant to believe. This is who we are. This is who we are called to be – God’s Beloved.

It could have been otherwise. The voice could have said, “If you are very very good I will be pleased with you.” Or, “If you are very very sorry you’re not very very good, I will be pleased with you.” Or, “I am pleased with you. Now get back in line before I change my mind!”

The source of our personal Transfiguration, the basis of our journey toward union with God and everything, the foundation of our personal transformation and the transformation of the world is accepting this Good News. Nothing is as important as hearing this and accepting it. All kinds of messages tell us not to accept this – messages from others, messages we tell ourselves – messages that say God cannot possibly be pleased with us.  Hearing this voice is what set Jesus on his journey and mission. Hearing this voice is what inspired him to call us to follow him. Hearing this voice makes us who we are created to be: God’s Beloved community of Faith, Hope and Charity.

In following we will come to love him and know him. And as the gospels portray, there are so many different ways of knowing Jesus. But it all begins with knowing ourselves – our true selves. And our true self is grounded in being God’s Beloved and knowing that no matter what, God is well pleased with us.

As we live out of our belovedness and follow Jesus people will say, “Who are those guys anyway?” and want to join the beloved community of God’s people. Amen.

Beloved Not Fade Away

You are my beloved/I am well pleased with you

I am God’s beloved/God is well pleased with me

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be

God’s gonna give God’s love to me

I’m gonna love God night and day

You know our love not fade away

Our loves bigger than a Cadillac

God ain’t never gonna take it back

Our love’s bigger than an SUV

No one can take it away from me

If you don’t believe I’ve been redeemed

Then come on down to Jordan’s stream

Up in the sky what do I see

The Holy Spirit coming down on me