Easter 2 Shalom, my friends

 

Shalom, my friends

“Peace be with you.” In the Hebrew/Aramaic Jesus spoke, “Shalom lehkhem.” In John 20:19-31 he says it three times. It could simply be a common greeting, yet, even at that it is more than a casual, “Hi, how are you!” It is meant as a blessing and a wish of well-being for the other. Shalom. Shalom is at the very heart of everything Jesus says and does.

 

Shalom, writes Walter Brueggemann, embodies the central vision of world history in the Bible that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security for the joy and well-being of every other creature and creation itself. It goes even further than that: the most staggering expression of the vision of shalom is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all God’s creation. [Living Toward a Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom, Walter Breuggemann; United Church Press, 1982, New York: p.15]

 

Earlier in the Fourth Gospel, at the Last Supper, Jesus self-identifies as shalom. It is the one single word that embodies his vision of the Reign or Kingdom of God, when he says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” [John 14:27] Shalom is his parting word to his friends at supper the night before he is to be killed by state-sanctioned execution. Now it is the first word with which he greets them the evening of the day of his Resurrection. Shalom. The word that embodies the Bible’s vision “of personal wholeness in a community of justice and caring that addresses itself to the needs of all humanity and all creation.” [Ibid p 185]

 

A community of shalom is a unique triadic, or trinitarian, notion based upon righteousness, compassion and worship – worship of the One true God from whom our life together in community arises solely as a gift of a loving God – a God who creates out of nothing, delivers the enslaved to freedom, defends the vulnerable, nurtures the weak, and enlists in a universal purpose of shalom all those who respond to the divine call. The final unity of the community that answers this call to shalom is focused in our worship, from which we derive our understanding of what is true, just and good along with the courage and power to stand on the side of truth and justice, whatever the cost.

 

Jesus embodies the cost of shalom, and at supper with his friends, and three times after he returns from the dead, he gifts “his shalom” to those who will accept it. As he does so, he breathes on them. Just as the opening words of John recall Genesis 1, “In the beginning…”, so does his breathing on them now recall Genesis 2 when God breathes his ruach, his spirit, his breath, into the first human fashioned out of a handful of dust and water. This also recalls that night he tried to explain to Nicodemus that he comes to give one and all new life, new spirit, and new courage to continue his work of shalom for all. Breath is life, and we are to note that this risen Christ is still breathing! This is no ghost! He is alive! The Dead One is on the loose! And now he breathes resurrection breath that gives them a new sort of life that goes beyond the life they had before.

 

Embracing Christ’s shalom, Paul writes to the Christians in Ephesus, “He [Jesus] is our Shalom!” [Ephesians 2:14] And to the Galatians he breaks it down even further, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are One in Christ Jesus...” [3:28-29] We can rest assured that were he still writing today, Paul would go on to say there is to be neither white nor black nor brown, neither straight nor LGBTQ, neither rich nor poor, neither Democrat nor Republican, neither you nor me, but only we – a community of Shalom for the common good and the well-being of all – not some, not many, not a few, but All. As such, shalom “bears enormous freight—the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery. Shalom is the substance of the biblical vision [and Paul’s understanding] of one community embracing all creation.” [Brueggemann, Peace. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001- p14]

 

After all, Brueggemann concludes, he got the lepers and the Pharisees together again, the sons of Isaac and the heirs of Hagar – or so the vision lets us hope. He is known in the breaking of bread, he is crucified and risen; he is coming again – he who draws all people to himself who rose from the dead and defied the governor, but who could not save himself. We say he embodies our vision and empowers it. [Ibid LTV p. 24] This is the vision of the Shalom Jesus breathes upon those folks hiding behind locked doors – well-being, economic justice, and freedom for all.

 

A week later, Jesus returns for Thomas who missed the moment of Shalom his companions experienced. It is tragic and ironic that we call this Doubting Thomas Sunday since the word “doubt” does not even occur in the Greek text! It is the Greek word for “unbelief” that sadly gets translated as “doubt.” Thomas remembers the torture and violence of just a few days ago. Thomas wants to believe and insists on seeing the wounds, or else all talk of resurrection will be meaningless. Thomas does not doubt, he remembers. He is to be commended for his memory and for his integrity. For any resurrection, any resolution, any rescue or recovery that moves forward by forgetting the past will be insubstantial. Any moving forward that forgets the victims of torture, abuse and discrimination will be ill-prepared to the task of Shalom when dealing with the ongoing reality of violence and abuse in this world. Which is the task Jesus hands over to them, and to us, and to all who would live by his name, “Christian.” When he greets us, “Shalom be with you…my shalom I leave with you,” he calls us to be the community of “his shalom.”  Thomas remembers, he asks, he sees, he believes, and is the first person recorded by John to declare, “My Lord and my God!”

 

Those who answer Jesus’s call to a life of Shalom join ourselves as a community of worship so as to deepen our understanding of what is true, just and good along with the courage and power to stand on the side of truth and justice, whatever the cost. Like the God, in whose image we have been created, we are to be those people who seek to free those who are enslaved, defend the vulnerable, nurture the weak, tend to and heal creation, all while we enlist others into the joyful life of Shalom Jesus gives us as his last and final gift of life – true life, real life. Life as Shalom for all people and all of creation itself. For our joy, security and well-being, our personal sense of shalom, depends on the well-being of every other creature, and that of the health of creation itself.

Amen. It is truth. It is so. Shalom, my friends, shalom. 

 

 

Easter 2021 See The Son Rising!

 

Easter 2021    He Gave Up His Spirit

People often ask why Good Friday is so Good if the result of a week in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Passover, teaching and making symbolic gestures, was to end up on a Roman Cross as an example to others not to do as he had done? Visitors from all over the ancient world had come to watch, study, and simply gawk one suspects, at the customs such a festival of Freedom evokes. The Roman hand of law and order and bread and circuses was felt far and wide, and if the God of Israel had succeeded more than once in ransoming his people what’s to say it won’t happen again? Perhaps, they are thinking, we will all be free again.

 

But of course, it didn’t. Rome burned Jerusalem, The Temple and much of the rest of Israel to the ground in 70 CE after a real attempted revolt in the year 69 CE. The goodness of this day is not readily apparent to all people, but sisters and brothers, it is very good indeed. Because The Last Supper, Good Friday and Easter are all one continuous event, not the three discreet, isolated moments our Kalendar and liturgies make it out to be. Against the oppression of Rome, Jesus charts a different way, a new way, a non-violent way to secure peace, shalom, and justice for all people everywhere. And that is very very good!

 

Good Friday and Easter ask, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The answer, of course, is Yes. Every time we witness an injustice like that which occurred that Friday outside the walls of Jerusalem and we don’t speak out, we are there. As Elie Wiesel and Archbishop Tutu have said over and over again, neutrality, not speaking out, is to side with the oppressor every time. That is how they persist year after year, century after century.

John tells us, “Jesus knew everything that would happen to him.” Seems likely Jesus knew it would not end well. Yet, I suspect even he was surprised on Sunday morning, after the other two disciples had run off to hide behind locked doors with all the rest, to all-of-a-sudden see Mary Magdalene standing, looking at the now empty tomb, descending into grief at having lost the only person who understood her, but still holding her ground, still waiting to see him one last time – the only person who made her feel whole, forgiven, and loved. Not as in being “in love,” mind you, but loved as one of God’s Beloved. Two angels dressed in white in the tomb ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  They have taken my Lord away and I don’t know where to find him. She turns around and sees Jesus, but does not recognize him. Then comes my favorite line, as if from an Agatha Christie mystery, “Supposing he was the gardener,” she asks, “Where have you put him, show me and I will take him away!” Try to imagine this once broken and now grieving woman carrying him off all by herself, wrapped up as he is with 100 pounds of aloes!  I imagine Jesus smiling as he realizes, perhaps for the first time, that his appearance was not only surprising, but must have changed. He says only one word. “Mary!”

 

Only one person could say her name like that. She feels whole again. She cries out, “Rabbouni,” which means teacher; teacher, and more than teacher: visionary, one who walks the walk, one who walks in the Way. The text is vague, but it appears as if she lunges at him and grabs onto his feet as if never to let him go again, because he says, “Do not hold onto me as I still have to ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and yours! Tell the boys I am risen, I am ascending, I am going home!” It appears she might have held back his ascension, but instead she becomes the first evangelist, the first sent by God to announce the Good News!

 

Listen, she says. Not only is he not in the tomb, he is no longer dead – dead as we last saw him high on the cross as he breathed his last. Or, as John puts it, “Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” His last most precious gift to the whole world: his ruach, his spirit, his breath. He breathes his last and at once his breath joins with all breath blowing throughout the world, so that when we breathe in, it is a portion of his Spirit that inspires us. We all become the Magdalene. Like her we are changed. We are made whole. He is risen. And so are we!

 

It is just so like Jesus. They did not take his life on the cross. He would not let them. He gave it up so that we all could live with his Spirit in us. How could any thing be more-good than that? How could any day be more-good than that day that he willingly gave up his spirit for us? Every single one of us all around the world! There had never been another day like that ever. There has never been a day like that ever again. Except perhaps that day Dame Julian saw everything, all things, in some-thing the size of a hazelnut. Or, when Martin King went to Memphis to sacrifice his time, his energy and ultimately his life as part of his Poor People’s Campaign on behalf of some 1,300 African-American Sanitation Workers. Or, when Gandhi led the Salt March. When Archbishop Tutu stood firm against Apartheid. When Bonhoeffer returned to confront Naziism in the name of Christ. When John Lewis walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Every time Mother Theresa touched an untouchable and breathed on them the breath of God. Jesus gave up his Spirit, and people like all of them and more have accepted his Spirit as their own.

 

Make no mistake about it, there are those who have used Jesus’s name, who did not take his Spirit upon themselves, and therefore have done great tragic and evil things in his name. Make no mistake about it, when the church became the organizing principle for the Empire of Constantine and beyond, much harm has been done and continues to be done in the name of Jesus. But that he gave up his Spirit and there have been those who have breathed that Spirit not only into their own lives, but into the lives of others, eclipses all of that! That is what makes Good Friday not just good, but very good for all who open themselves to receiving the Spirit he gives up on the cross. That cross that was meant to warn people not to do the things that he had done, but now inspires people not only to do the things that he does, but, as he promises, greater things than these they have done, they still do, and will do forever until the end of time itself.

 

Maundy Thursday, ending in his arrest, was dark and dreary, but the one who is the life and light of the World continued to shine, and still does! The Spirit-Breath of God blows mightily across the land and around the world for any and all who will receive it and become one more person walking in the Way of the Cross – the Cross of Jesus. It is no longer, nor ever will be again, a Roman Cross. He not only redeemed the cross that day on Golgotha, but he offers redemption, forgiveness and love for all who are simply willing to risk breathing in that Spirit he gave up that day for one and for all, now and forever.  

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia! And so are we! And so are we!

Amen. So be it! It is truth!

MaundyThursday: Christ, Dying and Living Still

 

Maundy Thursday - “Christ, dying and living still…”

Maundy Thursday, the night of the Last Supper, is made up of what have been described as ‘gestures charged with soul.’ Each gesture is meant to be more shocking than the next. So much so that it is a wonder the disciples did not all pick up and go home that very night in Jerusalem, during the celebration of Passover – that festival that remembers when the Lord God YHWH heard the cry of a disparate group of slaves in Egypt and came to their rescue and to deliver them to a new life of Freedom in covenant with the One God of what would become Israel – those who strive with God. The One of whom our Book of Common Prayer says, “In whose service is perfect freedom.”

 

In 1^st Corinthians 11: 23-26, Paul is reminding one and all that the Eucharist is not some sort of ecumenical high tea, nor is it the kind of bacchanalian mad house that has become the church in Corinth! Paul reminds us that this is a sacrificial meal that proclaims Christ’s death until he comes again. Yes, The Eucharist recalls a final meal before the soon-to-be prisoner Jesus is hauled off to be executed by a merciless local Roman official, but Paul knows it represents a sacrifice on a number of levels. Later this evening when we strip the altar, what will remain is not a dinner table, but a stone slab like that in the Temple upon which animals would be sacrificed. The priest would butcher the animal, drain the blood, burn some parts on the altar and return the rest to the worshiper to eat. The worshipper would be symbolically sharing a meal with God. Jesus, in dramatic fashion, says that he is that meal – that the bread he blesses is his flesh. But he goes one step further in calling all present to drink the blood of his sacrifice, which was strictly forbidden in the dietary rules of Israel. At the very thought of this, the disciples cry out, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” [John 6:60] It is a gesture charged with soul.

 

As we look at the altar when it is stripped, we are to be reminded of the tension between however elegant the dining room may be, it begins in the soil, the barnyard, and in the slaughterhouse. Table manners depend upon something’s having been grabbed by the throat. Now we wrap meat in plastic wrap on a foam tray as if to hide the violence that goes into fixing dinner.  

 

The scandal deepens as John tells the tale in chapter 13, where the shock-effect is heightened when their Lord and Master, the Son of God, strips off his robe, takes up a towel, and gets on his hands and knees to wash their feet – usually the task of the youngest slave or servant in the household. Walking the dusty, rocky roads of Israel to get to Jerusalem from Galilee with bare feet, or sandals at best, would make having your feet bathed feel really really good. Speaking for everyone, however, Peter blurts out, “No, Lord, I should be washing your feet! I won’t let you do this!” Once again rebuking Jesus in front of others. Yet, Jesus insists on making his point – his followers are to be servants to one another and to all whom they meet. We are called to a life of perfect service, acts of faith, to put the interests of others before one’s own, most especially for the poor, widows, orphans, the homeless and sojourners in the land, and even to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. Yet another gesture charged with soul.

 

On Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of the District of Columbia is a statue cast by Jimilu Mason of Jesus, on his knees, ready to wash feet. It sits in front of a building called Christ House, a shelter and medical center for homeless men. In the evening, some of the men sit on benches around the figure of Jesus, watching the traffic and pedestrians pass by. Established by the Church of the Saviour, the men are grateful that there are Christians in our Nation’s Capital who sacrifice time and money to help them experience new life. I know because they have told me so on those nights when I used to play music next door at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room. After setting up my drums, I would ask if I could join them for a while, getting to know them, and resting around this figure of our Lord, on his knees, as if inviting those walking by to rest and let him wash your feet, while reminding one and all of what Jesus chose to do that last night in Jerusalem to remind us what it means to take up your cross and follow him.

 

The final gesture is declared in a New Commandment: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. … Little children, I am with you only a little longer. … so now, I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It is a new mandatum, a new command, a new mandate from which this night gets its name – Maundy Thursday. This final gesture charged with soul lies in the hook: “Just as I have loved you.” Just as I go to lay down my life for you, and for the whole world, you are to offer your entire life as a sacrifice for one another and for the whole world. John’s description of the Last Supper is symbolic of a New Passover that marks the movement from sin to reconciliation, from death to life. Jesus is the Paschal Lamb of the Passover feast, in whose service is perfect freedom.

 

Benedictine monk and priest, Aidan Kavanaugh summed up the Eucharist like this: “His broken body is my broken body upon which others feed. His blood spilled is my blood shed to rejoice the hearts of all! His tomb is mine, and in it others die to rise again. I have become him, the Stranger, and through me he beats the bushes, herding everyone in to dinner by creation’s fireside. His unique Spirit I breathe into each of my sisters and brothers. For he and I have merged by grace into one being, and we abide together for the life of the world.”

        [Aidan Kavanaugh, “Christ, dying and rising still…” in The Sacraments, Alba House, NYC: 1981, p. 271]

 

Later that night, Jesus prays in Gethsemane that the cup of his suffering be taken away, but if it is my Father’s will, then I say “Yes.” The true miracle of that night in Jerusalem is that those present said ‘Yes’ as the bread that is his flesh and the cup of wine that is his blood was passed to them, and that they let him wash their feet. Just as Mary said, “Yes.” Just as Abraham and Sarah had said, “Yes.” Just as Ruth and Naomi said, “Yes.” Just as the Church of the Saviour said, “Yes,” when they built Christ House for homeless men.

 

Gestures charged with soul. Christ, dying and living still. This evening, the last thing we will do on our way out is to pick up off a tray a paper pill cup with the sacrament – a safe practice during this time of the Pandemic. We have just a short time to reflect on the altar stripped bare and all that it represents, but that is enough time to remember what we are saying “Yes” to as we pick up that cup. “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.” We are called to consider just how much sacrificial love do we mean when we take the cup, look at the bread, and remember all those who have said “Yes” throughout the ages, to become one with the Body of Christ who gives life and light to the whole world. Now it is time once again for us to join with them and say, “Yes,” I too dedicate my whole self to a life of perfect freedom serving others as Christ serves all who come to him for rescue and relief. 

Amen.

Palm Sunday: Forgotten Women of Holy Week

 

Forgotten Women of Holy Week

Monday through Friday in Lent some of us have taken time to carefully study the book of Ruth online. Ruth is the story of how a widowed foreign woman from the wrong-side of the River Jordan becomes a valorous woman supporting her widowed mother-in-law, marries into her dead father-in-law’s family, and becomes the great-grandmother of the shepherd boy David who is anointed King of Israel. Although the God of Israel makes no appearance in the book of Ruth, it is the essence of God’s character that focuses the entire narrative around the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed, often gets translated into English as “steadfast love,” “mercy,” and “faithfulness,” is perhaps best understood as an “act of good faith.” Hesed is a quality that humans share with God: that generous ability to put the interests of another, weaker, party before one’s own, most especially for the poor, widows, orphans and resident foreigners – all categories that describe Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi. Because everyone, all of us, is created in God’s image, this makes hesed the one characteristic we share in common with the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When the Bible speaks of love, it is often hesed, which is not a feeling, but an act of faith on behalf of others – all others who are in need.

 

As if to illustrate that his entire ministry of Good News is really all about hesed, Jesus singles out two women during his time in Jerusalem for the Passover Festival – a festival recalling God’s act of redemption and liberation of a disparate group of slaves out of Egypt who become the people Israel, people who share God’s hesed with one another, with those in need, and even with strangers from other lands who for one reason or another end up sojourning in Israel.

 

After entering Jerusalem, we read that Jesus looked around the Temple and then retired to nearby Bethany where he had friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. [Mark 11:1-11] Each day he would return to Jerusalem, and each evening retire to Bethany. One day, while in Jerusalem, he sits down opposite the Temple treasury and watches people putting in money, noting that many rich people put in “large sums.” Along comes a poor widow who puts in two copper coins – likely the lepta, the smallest coin in circulation. Never missing the teachable moment, Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything, all that she had to live on.” “Truly,” at the beginning, is really “Amen,” a word connected to faith and means something more like, “So be it.” And “all that she had to live on” in the Greek is really, “she gave her whole life”! One way to hear what Jesus is saying, “So be it! As it is with this poor widow, may it also be with you! Her repeated acts of hesed exemplify her generosity, faith and trust not only in the God of Israel, but the people Israel.” For in those days, people made offerings and tithes to the Temple so that the Temple priests could feed those who were poor and hungry, like our poor widow, as an example of community hesed, community acts of faith! The story is not about the money, but about the widow, and is meant to make us wonder, How might we serve her and all others like her who are in need?

 

Later in the week of Passover/Holy Week Jesus is again in Bethany [Mark 14:3-9], where he shares a meal with “Simon the leper.” A woman walks in from off the street and crashes the dinner party. She carries an alabaster jar with ointment of pure nard. She breaks the flask and pours it over Jesus’s head - anointing him in the very same fashion in which Israel had always anointed her kings – back when they had kings like David and were not under Greek or Roman control. Some folks at the table are indignant. “Why does she waste this ointment? It might be sold for 100 denarii or more and given to the poor!” One hundred denarii would feed a family for a year. Again, never missing the teachable moment Jesus says, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burying. Amen! So be it! Wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” Like the widow, she is another exemplar of generosity, faith and trust. This is what God’s hesed looks like. So be it! May it also be with you. Again, it’s about the woman’s hesed, not the money or the ointment.

 

How much trust in God in Christ does it take to give your whole life away? How much faith and trust in God does it take to risk walking into a strange house? To crash a dinner party? To risk being thrown out? To risk being humiliated? To anoint Jesus as a king like David? And to lavish a year’s income to do so?

 

Wherever and whenever the Good News is preached in the whole world, what these two women have done is to be told in their memory! Like Jesus, they empty themselves and give their whole lives to God! [Philippians 2:5-11] Jesus calls our attention to these two women in Holy Week, the week of the Passover. The week of his Passion. His passion is for us to become a community of God’s hesed, God’s acts of faith, God’s mercy and steadfast love. Yet, we routinely rush past these two stories to get to the story of his arrest and execution. We routinely overlook these two nameless women he calls all of us to see and to remember and to tell their story. Because their story is his story. Just as his story is theirs. And his story and their story are to become our story. He knows he is going to die. Two of his last faith-acts of hesed ask us to remember them. To tell their stories. To be like them.

 

How might we best do that? What does it mean to remember them and tell their story? How might we give our whole life to Jesus in ways that he would respond by saying, “Amen! So be it”? If two unnamed women, a widow and a stranger from off the street, are exemplars of generosity, faith and trust, of what it means to follow Jesus, what in their stories might become a part of our story as well? So that one day we may hear Jesus say to us, “Amen. So be it! You live a life of God’s hesed! Wherever the Gospel is preached in the whole world, what you do for others in my name will be told in memory of you!” Amen! So be it! So, Be it!

 

 

 

Lent 5B:A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek

Lent 5B: A Priest after the Order of Melchizedek

In John 12:21 we are told that “among those who went up to worship at the Passover Festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’” As soon as I read this, I recall a time just after I had been ordained a priest in December 1983. I was at Christ Church in Winnetka, IL and part of an active Ecumenical Clergy Group. Bob Hudnut, the local Presbyterian pastor had invited me to lunch and we met at his church. As he was showing me the sanctuary, Bob was called away for a phone call and left me to explore on my own. Eventually, I found myself standing in the pulpit gazing out at the rows of empty pews imagining what it would be like on a Sunday morning, when my eyes glanced down to where one might place notes or a manuscript and suddenly, I froze. Carved into the wood where every time one would look down at one’s notes were the words, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus!” It was a moment of transcendent realization as to what my task is to be every time I preach: that whatever I say or do is meant to help people like these Greeks in our text to see Jesus in new and transformative ways. I caught my breath and was still standing there pondering these words as Bob returned to take me to lunch.

 

To help us see Jesus happens also to be the primary concern of whoever wrote the little treatise we call Hebrews. It used to be called the Letter to the Hebrews, but it is neither a letter, nor is it necessarily addressed to “Hebrews,” but rather seems likely to have been addressed to early first or second century Christians in Rome, which very likely may have included some Jews who resided there as well. Throughout this theological treatise, the primary argument is that Jesus is a new kind of High Priest, which immediately ought to strike one as ironic since in John’s gospel it is the High Priest Caiaphas who suggests that Jesus needs to be killed to save the community from destruction by Rome. Which of course did happen anyway some 40 years after Jesus.

 

Caiaphas makes this suggestion because just before coming to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, Jesus had stopped to see his friends in Bethany, a suburb or Jerusalem, only to find his close friend Lazarus dead and in a tomb for four days. Jesus drew a larger crowd of believers after raising Lazarus from the dead. Caiaphas sees that if Jesus were to go on ‘performing signs’ like this, “everyone will believe in him.” [John 11:48] It is this that drives him to have Jesus arrested, and Lazarus as well since he is part of the reason why, as the Pharisees proclaim in the verse just before our story, “Look, the whole world has gone after him!” Which is confirmed by the arrival of “some Greeks” who wish to see Jesus. We do too. That’s why we’re here.

 

The author of Hebrews in chapter 5, and indeed throughout the treatise, makes an astonishing and curious claim: Jesus is a new kind of High Priest “after the order of Melchizedek.” Melchizedek is mentioned only twice in the Hebrew Bible: in Genesis 14 and again in Psalm 110. Melchizedek, the king of Salem, translates as “king of righteousness, the king of peace.” His singular appearance in Genesis is to Abraham, at the time still Abram, who had just successfully defeated King Chedorlaomer of Elam and others to rescue his nephew Lot, is visited by this King of Righteousness, King of Peace, who brings Abram an offering of ‘bread and wine.’ Abram offers him a tithe. Melchizedek, “a priest most high,” blesses Abram saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High; who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And that’s the last he is ever seen until Hebrews invokes him as the very kind of “priest most high” that is Jesus.

 

Curiously, in a book called “beginnings,” i.e., Genesis, there is no indication where Melchizedek comes from or where he goes. So, Jesus is like a high priest who has no beginning, and becomes a high priest who has no end. And of whom it is said, the whole world is going after him, and who declares he will draw the whole world to himself. This he says after he asks his “Abba, Father” to glorify God’s own name, and a voice from heaven replies, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” Some in the crowd who heard it, which includes people from all over the ancient world like our Greeks, thought perhaps it was thunder, while others think that it was an angel. But Jesus assures them the voice was for their sake, saying, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” [John 12:28-33] All people. The community of Christ is to welcome all people.

 

Those like the authors of John and Hebrews see Jesus as a “king of righteousness, the king of Peace,’ who comes not to condemn us, but to draw us closer to himself and to his Father, Abba, YHWH, in an effort to redeem all humankind and the world itself. On our better days, we too see Jesus in a similar light – one who welcomes all people and goes so far as to instruct us to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us. All people really means all people.

 

As I write this, and indeed over the last year of the Covid-19 Pandemic, violence against Asian-Americans, and in fact Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders worldwide, has increased, in part because of the constant referring to the virus as the “China Virus.” The majority of documented cases are against women. The recent mass shooting of South Koreans and others in the Atlanta, GA, area has only been the most recent and most attention-grabbing example of a kind of racism that has existed for decades if not longer, even in regions as isolated as Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Great Britain and Canada. As a member of an Asian-American family, all of this is of great personal concern. Many of you know, our oldest daughter is from South Korea. This makes our grandson Asian-American as well. The kinds of yelling, spitting in the face and violence going on here and around the world must stop.

 

As someone who realized long ago that all that I say and do in the pulpit must help others to see Jesus, I can’t help but feel as if there has been a colossal failure among all of us who are proclaimers of the faith with the kinds of racism and violence against “others” that persists against those who do not look just like us – despite the indisputable fact that we all share fundamentally the same genetic code, the same DNA, and the same biological beginnings as Jesus, Melchizedek, Abram and all the people of faith we read and hear about week-in and week-out. Surely it grieves the King of Righteousness, the King of Peace, the Most High Priest who gives us his body and his blood, and who calls us to be a people of welcome and prayer for all people. Not some. Not most, but all people. No matter what.

 

Next week is Palm Sunday and the beginning of the most Holy Week of the year. As we become increasingly aware of the tragic results of racism that infect us more deeply than any Pandemic ever can, our prayers in this Holy Season must call us to be witnesses not only to the One we know as King of Righteousness and King of Peace, but to vow, covenant, promise never to remain silent as all the various kinds of racism and anti-Semitism persist all around us. We must be those people who pray, but who also speak out against all that goes against our Lord’s desire to draw all people, the whole world, together as One, just as we and Christ are One. Amen.

Lent 4B: Your Image of God Heals You

 

Your Image of God Heals You

One comment we heard from Richard Rohr at Noonday Prayer & More has stuck with me for a couple of months now – in fact it is written on a sticky-note and posted on the window in front of me Monday through Friday: Your Image of God Creates You. Think about that for a moment. Genesis tells us that male and female, we are “made in the image of God.” That is, what makes us who we are is how we imagine God to be. Today’s lessons suggest to me a corollary to Rohr’s observation: Your image of God Heals You. 

 

Undoubtedly the story in Numbers 21:4-9 at first strikes us as odd. The people who have been redeemed from being debt-slaves in Egypt complain about the food given during their 40 years sojourn: they are tired of daily portions of manna and quails. In response to their grumbling, the Lord “sent poisonous snakes among the people.” The people then recognize they have sinned against God and Moses. They ask Moses to pray for them. God’s solution: place a bronze serpent on top of a pole so that anyone who gets snake-bit can look up at the serpent on the pole and live.

 

As odd as this all seems, over time ancient civilizations came up with the Rod of Asclepius, a single serpent wrapped around a staff, and Caduceus, a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. To this day we look at these symbols and understand what they represent – healing and the medical arts.

 

In John 3:14-21, summing up a conversation with Nicodemus, “a leader of the people,” Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted-up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That is, to stop and look up at Jesus is similar to looking up at the bronze serpent. It is a sign of God’s forgiveness and, we are told, God’s love “for the world” – the whole and everything and everyone therein. To be healed, we need only stop, look up and live.  

 

One commentator asks, “Why? Why does God persist in saving humankind, when humankind itself persists in rebellion and sin? The answer comes in the familiar language of John 3:16: God acts again and again for the benefit of human beings because God loves the world in spite of itself. Even as the world resists and opposes God’s Son, God persists in loving the world.” [Texts for Preaching, CD-Rom edition, Walter Brueggemann, et.al; Year B p.220-21] Our image of God loving and saving us from ourselves can in turn make us people who love and save others.

 

The biblical word for this saving love is the Hebrew word hesed. Ellen Davis, in her translation of the book of Ruth, describes God’s hesed as “good faith” or “faith-act.” Usually translated as mercy, compassion, love, grace, and faithfulness, none of these completely summarize the quality of hesed. For hesed is not merely an emotion or feeling. It involves action on behalf of someone who is in need – a faith-act. Hesed as love implies doing something merciful and compassionate and useful for someone in need. Hesed, found some 250 times in the Old Testament, expresses the essential essence of God’s character. Which is why the God of the Old and New testaments persists in saving us, forgiving us, and loving us no matter what.

 

“From a biblical perspective,” writes Ellen Davis, “the moral ecology of the world functions properly when God and humanity are engaged in the perpetual exchange of hesed, good-faith and the acts that follow.” Created in God’s image, hesed is meant to be the most basic characteristic of humanity as well. We are to exercise hesed toward God and one another. [Ellen Davis, Who Are You, My Daughter, p xiii-xiv] The essence of the good news of Christ is to accept that we are, like Jesus, God’s Beloved. This is the essence of being created in God’s image. To exchange hesed with God and with others who are in need is what it means to live our lives “for the sake of the gospel.” We who are forgiven and loved no matter what.

 

What might it mean today to stop, look up and live? This weekend we mark the one-year anniversary of our first public acknowledgment that we are in the midst of a nation and world-wide Pandemic. For a variety of health and practical reasons, when the pandemic began, I had some N-95 surgical masks and nitrile gloves. About that time, I went to get some items I would need in time of a lockdown at CVS. Before going in I put on a mask and some gloves. As I turned and looked up from what I was doing, I saw an Asian woman approach me from across the way holding her hands out with a pleading look in her eyes. With no words I could see she was asking if I might give her a pair of gloves. I nodded, reached back into the car and handed her a pair. We looked into one another’s eyes. We bowed to one another and went about our shopping at CVS. No words were spoken. An act of hesed, a faith-act had just occurred. Simply because I stopped and looked up, we both experienced an act of faith and a sense of being healed from the fear of the coronavirus that had already begun to take hold of us.

 

These odd stories of ours can help us see what it means to be human. Our image of God creates us. Our image of God heals us. Throughout the Old Testament God is described repeatedly words like these: “… you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” [Jonah 4:2] We are a busy people, even in the midst of a Pandemic. Sometimes we just need to stop what we are doing and look up. When we do, we just might experience God’s hesed, God’s steadfast love. We might feel a real sense of being saved, or of being healed of whatever it is that makes life feel in any way broken or fearful. Sometimes to stop and look up from whatever else we are doing opens us to receive a healing and saving gesture from another person – another person, who like us, is also created in the image of God. Of the God who persists in forgiving, loving and healing humankind. Just because God forgives us our rebellious nature and loves us anyway, no matter what. When this is our image of God, we reflect that image in all that we say and do for others. As the prophet Joel calls to us, “…rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” [Joel 2:13] This is Good News for all people! Amen. It is so. It is truth.

Lent 3B - Jesus on the Temple Mount

 

Jesus on the Temple Mount

We need to stop calling this episode in John 2:13-22, also reported in the other three gospels, “The Cleansing of the Temple.” It suggests that Jesus thought that something terrible and dirty and wrong was going on there. As has been pointed out by Amy Jill Levine in her book, Entering the Passion of Jesus [Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2018], Jesus did not hate, nor did he reject, the Temple. Since he was a boy he and his family had been going to Jerusalem and the Temple for many if not all the appointed pilgrim feast days: Sukkot, the feast of Booths; Shavuot or Pentecost, the Giving of Torah; and Passover, the Feast of Freedom from slavery. It is this last that brings him there a few days after his generous gift of wine, good wine at that, at a wedding reception in Cana of Galilee. He likes going to the Temple. He even calls it “my Father’s house”!  He is there to stake a claim and to let people know who he is.

 

Nor is Jesus there because he is opposed to the purity laws that allow one to participate in the Temple Sacrifices. Over and over again, he restores people to ritual purity and even instructs them to go to see the priests at the Temple!

 

Nor does Jesus say anything about the Temple exploiting the population. Rather, he is more concerned about the people who go there: are they generous like the poor widow with two coins? Or, humble like the Tax Collector? Or, self-righteous like the Pharisee? Further, people making a long trip to the Temple to make a sacrifice cannot risk taking a ritually acceptable animal all the way to Jerusalem as it may somehow become injured along the way. And one could not use coins of the Roman Empire with the image of Caesar as God for a Temple offering, but rather had to exchange such coins for the acceptable Tyrian shekels. There is no evidence suggesting that the vendors and the currency exchangers, not “lenders,” were overcharging anyone. The services were necessary for Israel’s worship. He was not there to protest Temple exploitation.

 

Some Christians claim that the Temple banned Gentiles and foreigners. Yet, the Temple had an outer court where Gentiles and foreigners were welcome to worship. They were also welcome in the synagogues of Jesus’s time as they are today. They may not have all the same rights and responsibilities as do Jews, and this makes sense. I cannot receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church, but I am welcome to worship there. Just like Canadians cannot vote for President in the U.S., and I cannot vote in Canada!

 

Furthermore, the scene as depicted in Hollywood movies and two millennia of sermons, seems very disruptive and dramatic. Consider, however, that the Temple was the length of 12 soccer fields end-to-end, consisting of the Holy of Holies at one end (which only the high priest entered once a year on Yom Kippur), the Court of the Priests, the Court of Israel, the Court of Women, and then the Court of the Gentiles at the other end, where the vendors were located and this incident took place. It was a noisy place. Along with the noise of the marketplace, the sounds of animals and ongoing sacrifices, and people from all over the ancient world celebrating the Passover in their own languages, who would notice a few tables being turned over, coins tumbling to the floor and animals being driven out?

 

Which leads one to think that Jesus’s actions were symbolic. Symbolic of what is the question? Especially since there is clearly risk involved in what he does do. As we hear, some people notice. And the Temple has police. How well I know, as the only time I was ever on the Temple mount I was surrounded by several Jordanian police with Uzis asking why I was up on the Ramparts of the Old City with two cameras hanging around my neck! Like I almost was, Jesus could have been arrested right then and there, which would have greatly shortened John’s gospel which tells of Jesus visiting Jerusalem two more times for Passover. So, what’s he doing?

 

First, Jesus is there to make an announcement: This is my Father’s House! To which some in the crowd demand that he “show them a sign” for causing this minor disturbance. He might have said, “I already have. Don’t you get it? This is the kind of thing prophets have always done!” But instead, he answers them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up!” Pointing out the obvious, they remind him that Herod Antipas had been rebuilding the shabby old place for 46 years and was not finished yet. One might begin to sense his mounting frustration with them not getting the difference between Temple, with a capital “T,” and “temple” with a lower case “t.” I’m talking about my body. My body is the new Temple. This one is going to be destroyed by Rome, mark my words, and presence of God that has resided in this and the First Temple and all the way back to the Tabernacle now resides in me – flesh and blood just like you!.

 

Instead, at this point narrator John offers the aside, “But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” That is, all the business with the animals and the tables was a way of announcing who Jesus is, foreshadows his impending death and resurrection, and points to the day when none of this commerce going on in his Father’s House will be necessary because Rome will burn it to the ground. And we are those people who, like narrator John, know it has not been rebuilt ever since.

 

Further, the narrator wants the readers to know that we reflect on the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus from the very same perspective as the disciples: that it is from the point of view of after the resurrection that the disciples and we “remember” what he announces that day on the Temple mount, which the narrator John hopes will lead us, like the disciples, “to believe.” To believe the word that Jesus had spoken that day on the Temple Mount: this is my Father’s House, and the presence of God now resides in flesh and blood – like you.

 

The narrator wants the meaning of the Jesus story to come alive for the for everyone who hears these stories that have been chosen from among “many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written!” [John 21:25] These are the last words of the Gospel of John.

 

The question for all of us during this season of Lent is: How does our hearing of this story deepen our experience of the Word made flesh, the “new Temple” in which God’s presence dwells? Our answers to this question have the power to transform our lives and change the world around us. It did for the disciples. It did for Paul. It will for you. Amen. It is truth. It is so.