I Have Come Not To Bring Peace, But A Sword Proper 7A

 “I Have Come Not To Bring Peace, But A Sword”

The tenth chapter of Matthew presents many challenges: from Jesus’s instructions to the disciples; his warnings that there will be rejection and even death along the way; to his assertion that what they teach and preach and do in his name will result in tearing families apart. There will be a dividing line between those who choose to follow the way of Jesus, and those who do not; one’s enemies will be members of one’s own household. “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword!”

 

Jesus then likens what is happening in Israel in the first century will be similar to what happened almost eight hundred years ago when Micah, a younger contemporary of Isaiah, wrote that because of the unfaithfulness of Jerusalem and her leaders, invasion from the east will divide fathers and sons, mothers and daughters until one’s enemies divide one’s own “household.” [i]

 

One could take Micah and Jesus as describing divisions within families; within clans; within tribes; or, the “household” may represent the nation of Israel itself. We need not think too hard to imagine these kinds of divisions, as it has long been the case for the Church, and is presently manifest throughout families, between political parties, and throughout our entire nation, from sea to shining sea; not to mention between nations and ideologies throughout the world. 

 

In the midst of such social division and disintegration, Jesus sends those who follow him to teach and preach the good news that the kingdom of God ‘has come near,’ and to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.” [ii]  As good as all that must have sounded, he warns, that there will be those who will go to any and all lengths to preserve the status quo; those who have a vested interest in seeing that people remain unhealed, and demons remain unleashed! There will be concerted resistance to this good news. As someone has paraphrased Jesus: I came not to bring the peace of escapism, the peace that fails to confront the real issues of life, the peace that makes for stagnant complacency, but the ‘sword’ that challenges it.

 

This is why Jesus says to them and to us, “Do not worry” (v.19); “have no fear” (v. 26); “do not fear” (v. 28); “Do not be afraid” (v.31). Why? Because, “the spirit of your Father is with you”; “all shall be revealed…there will be no darkness, no secrets”; “those who kill the body cannot kill the soul”; “you are of great value to your Father.” And as the ultimate promise, he says, “Whoever welcomes me, welcomes the One who sent me” That is, we are not alone! The One, the One who is all in all, Elohim, YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus, my Father, is your father; as we pray, “our Father.”

 

Jesus remembers that Micah, the poet-prophet, wrote that those who remain loyal to God, those who look to the Lord, those who wait for the God of our salvation; our God will hear us, heal us, preserve us and deliver us from all division and darkness; while our enemies, those who mock us and resist the good news of the kingdom saying, “Where is your God?” will bear the shame, and shall “lick dust like the snake.” [iii]

 

While those who teach and live the good news,  God who is our Father will pardon our failings, our iniquities, pass over our transgressions, and will not retain his anger forever, “because he delights in showing clemency…compassion….and will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea!” [iv] That is, the good news Jesus urges us to teach and live in all that we say and all that we do, is to work with Jesus, with his Father and our Father, to reconcile the divisions that beset us on all sides; not to give into them, nor perpetuate them, but to reconcile all manner of “us and them.” There is One God, and One Faith, One God and Father of All. As in, “All”!

 

It will be some one hundred years after Jesus says, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword,” that someone wrote a little treatise simply titled “Hebrews,” which echoes this pronouncement, and reminds us all that there is something even mightier than the sword: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” [v] Thus, the importance of taking time out week by week to hear the reconciling and healing word of God. The Word that was with God in the beginning. The Word that became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood to reconcile as One things that had been separated by our selfishness and intransigence. To heal all divisions that we may be united in God our Father.

 

We are given the tasks to teach forgiveness and to heal all that separates us from one another and from the love, compassion and forgiveness of God. Our task, as outlined in our catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, is to “continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.” [vi] That is, not to sustain or maintain the divisions among God’s people, but to reconcile, to rebuild, to restore a community of faithful teachers and doers of the good news of God’s kingdom of love.

 

Do not be afraid. Have no fear. Do not worry. Do not fear. Know that the Spirit of your Father is with you always, and in all ways. “But as for me,” writes Micah, “I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

 

Those who want to ‘look to the Lord,’ would do well to consider what the thirteenth century Catholic Dominican preacher, theologian, philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote:

So, you want to find God?

Then seek to become one in your life.

Pay attention to what divides your heart –

your pride, your vanity, your selfishness.

As you remove these from yourself, you’ll

find your way into the Oneness that is God,

which is always within you.

So put aside all that distracts you, and you’ll find

true nobility and rest, blessedness

and contentment of heart.

There, you’ll find the divine ground

 within you; there you’ll become

wholly still, wholly one with the One. [vii]

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[i] Micah 6:1-7:7, with Jesus portrayed as specifically quoting 7:6.

[ii] Matthew 10:7-8

[iii] Micah 7:8-17

[iv] Micah 7:18-20

[v] Hebrews 4:12

[vi] BCP 855

[vii] Sweeney, Jon M., and Burrows, Mark S., Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness & Light (Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, VA:2023) p.81

All You Can Do Is Laugh! Prop6A

 All You Can Do Is Laugh!

Really, it’s laughable. Truly laughable. Recall that Abraham and Sarah left their home and the Temple of the god and goddess Nana and Innana in the affluent city-state of Ur in the Sumerian Empire of King Sargon on the promise of another God, YHWH, to hit the road and keep going until they are told to stop and begin life all over again. Without any idea where they would end up. Today, such a “promise” would be considered utterly laughable!

 

But as chapter 18 of Genesis unfolds, it gets better. Abraham and Sarah are camped near the Oaks of Mamre. In the heat of the day, three visitors arrive. Following the nomadic code of hospitality to strangers, Abrham welcomes them, arranges for their feet to be washed, has Sarah prepare some bread and cheese for appetizers, gets a servant to work on a fatted calf, and returns to chat with the strangers – one of whom he addresses as “Lord.” It is the same word Abraham has used previously with YHWH.

 

Suddenly, the conversation takes a turn. ‘They said to him, “Where is your wife, Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”’ Sarah is eavesdropping in the tent. She thinks to herself, Abe and I are very old, and I am past the time of bearing children. Then she laughs to herself. So she thinks.

 

The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” To make matters worse, Sarah denies laughing at the very thought of bearing a son. “Oh yes you did laugh,” says The Lord. Abraham, we are told, was one hundred years old. Time passes. The boy is born. Sarah says, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Then, still laughing she says, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” So, they named the boy Isaac, which means, “he who laughs.” Despite her doubt, and having lied to the Lord, the unstinting love, faithfulness and  compassion of the Lord follows through anyway.

 

It is all truely laughable! Yet, the point is made – nothing is too wonderful for the Lord! Sarah reminds us not to get upset, not to disbelieve the promises of the Lord, and whenever we feel overwhelmed by what we hear - it’s Okay to laugh!

 

Then there is Jesus in chapters 9 and 10 in Matthew. He needs help to move forward with God’s mission – to care for and to heal all manner of sickness, loneliness and oppression from the Empire and rapacious land owners, especially, as Jesus says later in chapter 25, for the least of these, our sisters and brothers. He says the harvest is plentiful – an interesting metaphor for such a needy, desperate, and oppressed class of people which includes aliens, people fleeing other countries on the slim hope that they might find labor and sustenance in Israel. Jesus puts out a plea for more workers. No qualifications are specified. No skills or previous experience with curing every dis-ease and sickness is necessary. He just needs people who can offer the kind of compassion his Father showed to Abraham and Sarah with others – all others.

 

Besides, look at the laughable company of his so-called disciples. There’s Matthew the tax collector. A tax collector! Essentially a toll booth operator who is in cahoots with the Romans. He and his fellow tax collectors are despised for fleecing people as they transport their goods to market. Then there is Simon the Cananaean, whose distinction is not that he comes from

the town of Cana, or is a Canaanite, a gentile, but that he is or was a Zealot, a militant political extremist – a follower of those who proposed armed insurrection against the very Romans who were Matthew’s employers. Just try to imagine Simon and Matthew working together. And finally, there is Judas Iscariot, “who betrayed him.” His presence among the disciples is a constant and sober reminder that those included in the mission carry the potential to oppose the very Christ who commissions them. A curious and motley crew if there ever was one. And yet, along with all those fishermen, they leave everything behind, like Abraham and Sarah, and follow Jesus on what on the surface appears to be a fool’s mission.

 

Note, they agree to follow Jesus even though he describes their mission as inherently dangerous – like being “sheep among wolves”! They follow him in his peaceful revolution on the promise that the coming Son of Man (10:23), whose presence symbolizes vindication and restoration for the people of God. A promise not unlike the one that created a family for Abraham and Sarah. Their mission is among crowds of onlookers, most of whom do not share the faith that Jesus and the disciples have, like sheep without a shepherd, and are curious observers of what Jesus teaches and does among them. Even though they have no faith, they are not to be rejected or attacked in the least, but are to be the primary subjects of the Lord’s endless compassion.

 

Again, one has to laugh at the very thought of how Jesus goes about his Father’s business. One has to laugh at the utterly unqualified and truly diverse and curious band of merry men and women who followed Jesus, day after day. Just as he calls us to follow him, day after day. Not only to share in his mystical communion on Sundays. He is more interested in us working all other days of the week among those who are “sheep without a shepherd.” Those who are not part of his missionary disciples. Simply people in need of companionship in a world beset with very many problems. Not the least of which is the iron, authoritarian grip of Caeser’s Empire of greed, acquisition and consumption.

 

Yes, it is challenging and dangerous work to which Jesus calls us. And to survive in his mission, perhaps the single most important quality to have is that delightful sense of laughter that is Sarah’s wonderful contribution to the entire Biblical narrative! Although it may be laughable to think we can embody the compassion of Jesus, his Father and the Holy Spirit, without the laughter the work becomes truly unbearable. In a world that seems increasingly devoid of all laughter, we are called to be the vanguard – those who sustain a measure of hope in a world that rarely offers much evidence that such hope is justified.

 

But this is who Jesus calls us to be: a people who follow him and sustain his seemingly impossible dream that one day there will be justice and peace for all people; that we will be those people who always seek and serve Christ in all persons; that one day, the dignity of every human being, no matter who or what they appear to be, or say they are, will be respected, affirmed and loved – just as the God who is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishment accepts us and loves us just as we are, without one plea!

 

All we can do is laugh!

 

Become A Blessing for All Peoples

Become A Blessing for All People

There’s an awful lot on the table this week. In one corner, wearing the white trunks, we have Abram, Sarai, family members and people and creatures they have accumulated leave it all behind to go where YHWH sends them. They leave Ur of the Chaldees, in Sumer, a bustling metropolis. In many ways a modern city and an extraordinary religious center! Abram was evidently part of the huge Semitic minority that lived in this large Sumerian city-state. Ur had hot and cold running water, a sewer system, multistory buildings, paved roads, major temples, ornate furniture, and a variety of metal instruments. The Sumerians developed a sexagesimal system that divided the hour into 60 minutes, the minute into 60 seconds, and the circle into 360 degrees—a system that we still use today. There were well developed law codes and a standard system of weights and measures. It would be a significant city even by today’s standards.

 

All this made Ur part of the first empire history had ever seen under King Sargon some 2,300 years before the time of Christ. It also boasts being the home to the first named author and poet in history, Enheduana, Sargon’s daughter and high priestess at the Temple of the moon god, Nana – whose own daughter, Inana, was the goddess of love, war, fertility, divine law and political power. Whenever Enheduana was in danger of being cast out of the Temple by another pretender, it was Inana whom she would prod to destroy her enemies, and substantial fragments of two great hymns to Inana survive to this day: The Exaltation of Inana and a Hymn to Inana. Inana is pictured both as pining after a young shepherd boy on one hand, and as a ruthless warrior “grinding the skulls to dust and feeding on the corpses of her enemies.” [i] In her hymns such modern-day concerns such as exile, social disruption, gender-bending identities, the devastation of war, the terrifying forces of nature, and the art of poetry are discussed along with the powers of Inana: “To destroy and to create, to plant and to pluck out, are yours Inana. To turn men into women, to turn women into men, are yours, Inana…To turn brutes into weaklings and to make the powerful puny are yours, Inana. To reverse peaks and plains, to raise up and to reduce are yours, Inana, to assign and allot the crowns, throne, and staff of kings, are yours Inana.” [ii]

 

YHWH, Elohim, the God of Creation, says to Abram, “Go from your country, you and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [iii]  Abram leaves all that Ur has to offer behind on a promise to become a blessing to all the families of the earth. He leaves all the wealth, all the social achievements of Ur, and all the idols of Nana and Inana, as well as his parent’s home in Haran behind, and leaves for he knows not where. That is a leap of faith. Thus, begins our story to become, like Abram, a blessing to all the peoples of the Earth.

 

In the other corner, wearing black trunks, are some snooty Pharisees who question just who sits at the table with Jesus.  Jesus sees Matthew, a despised tax collector, sitting at his tax table, and calls him, “Follow me.”  Matthew eats with Jesus and other tax collectors and sinners. Some Pharisees turn up their noses. To which Jesus replies, these are the people you and I are to welcome and care for according to Torah. Suddenly the narrative is interrupted when a man, a leader of a synagogue, begs Jesus to help with his daughter who is at home dead. Jesus leaves the meal, and on the way, unexpectedly, a woman who has suffered a flow of blood for twelve years reaches out to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment. Before she can, Jesus turns to her and says, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” – and suddenly she is healed. When he gets to the home of the leader of the synagogue, the town’s professional mourners are already tuning up their instruments and begin to wail. Jesus stops them and says the girl is only sleeping. They laugh at him. Then Jesus takes the girl by the hand – and suddenly, she rises! All in a day’s work for the Son of Man. Word of all of this, we are told, “spread throughout the district.” [iv]

 

We’re not told how the Pharisees react to all of this. They were good people, and very righteous in that they believed everyone ought to follow the same purity rules that the priests in the Jerusalem Temple were required to follow. They imagined that a country of “priests” would somehow prod the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus to dismiss the dreaded Roman Empire from their midst. They recognize Jesus as a “master,” as at least a co-equal of themselves. And at the same time, they just cannot fathom why Jesus would spend time with the hoi polloi off the streets: people they could not imagine being on God’s radar, despite all of Torah and all the Prophets who repeatedly point to the importance of caring for “the least” of our sisters and brothers – including sinners, tax collectors, and a woman with a flow of blood for twelve years. The good news: after the destruction of the Temple in 70ce (the common era), the Pharisees reorganized Jewish life from being a sacrificial cult into a people who seek justice, offer mercy to one and all, and walk humbly with their God. That is, ultimately, they follow what Jesus was doing – even if they did not formally become followers of his. It can be argued, if they were wearing the black trunks at the beginning of their journey, eventually they became a people who have been a blessing for people both inside and outside God’s community. They live lives of faith, hope and charity, while wearing the white trunks, and have been a blessing to others for at least the last two thousand years.

 

During which time, we need to remember, the Church of Jesus Christ morphed into becoming the Roman Empire that had crucified our master, and spending more and more time accumulating more power, more money, and more property for its self, desiring to become the very Empire they once resisted, rather than servants of the world’s most needy people in the name of Jesus. Rather than fulfilling God’s promise to be a blessing to all the peoples of the Earth

 

What we see is that some people, like the leader of the synagogue and the woman with a flow of blood, reach out for Jesus. While others, like Abram, like Matthew, and the fishermen James, John, Peter and Andrew, are called by Jesus to “follow” him. Jesus welcomes and accepts them all – even his social critics like the Pharisees. Like Abram, they all give up a lot and leave behind a settled life for a new and unknown life with the Son of God, Jesus, who lives a life of blessing for all people. Leaving us all to ponder: just where are we in these stories that stretch back nearly 4,000 years into the past? Are we reaching out? Are we being called to follow Jesusa who shows truly what it means to wear the white trunks and become a blessing for all the families and peoples of the Earth?

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[i] Helle, Shophus, The Complete Poems of Enheduana the world’s first author (Yale University Press, New Haven: 2023) p. xi

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Genesis 12:1-9.

[iv] Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

The School of Charity: Trinity Sunday 2023

 The School of Charity

The other day I sat outside at the Shrine of St. Anthony pondering just what there is to say about the Christian idea of God as Trinity and Unity all at once. Not at all sure, I headed back to the car and on the way I spied a small object on the ground: an orange Lego piece. I picked it up, looked at it, and thought, “That’s it. The Nicene Creed that describes God as Creator, Jesus and Holy Spirit all rolled into One Unity is the building block or cornerstone of who we are and what we are meant to be doing! I’ve held on to the Lego piece as a reminder.

 

As Bob Dorough once wrote for School House Rock, there is something magical about the number three. We speak of time as past, present and future. Yet, this does not really give us a full picture and understanding of time; such as when it feels as if time stands still; or time seems to speed up; certain times dissolve us into tears; other times give us great joy.

 

Three gives us heart, body and mind. Scripture, tradition and reason. We come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. Faith, hope and charity. Two people have a little baby, which makes three. A family. A unity of three. Which leads us directly to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A blessed trinity, and yet, a unity of three. An expression of the nature of how Christian’s view God, which itself has been re-stated since its formulaic development in the Nicene Creed in our liturgy. “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer” is commonly used. Our Presiding Bishop likes to use, “Love, Liberating, and Life-giving God!” And the New Zealand Prayer Book describes our God as “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver.” All are attempts to describe a Holy Family: God, Jesus and Spirit, a family, and yet a Unity: three experiences of the One God.

 

People try to use metaphors people to describe this. How can one God have three personae, some ask? It’s similar to water, that can also be ice, and can also be vapor, but is still water. No metaphor, however, gives a full picture and understanding of the One – the Unity, the One we call God. The vastness of God is indescribable. Similar to when one heads out to western Maryland, after ascending Sidling Hill, a long, steep, narrow mountain ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley character of the Appalachian Mountains, one eventually crests the top and begins a descent with a view of what seems an almost infinite valley with some minor hills that is indescribably beautiful. There are just not enough words to describe this view, just as no description of God can ever fully describe our experience of what some call the Divine Love or Charity of God.

 

And yet, we try. It confounds our fellow monotheists, Muslims and Jews, that we describe One God with three descriptors. And perhaps they are right. I have long struggled with this Trinitarian business most of my life, having once refused to sign a copy of the Nicene Creed at my confirmation – arguing that it seemed much too exclusive of other expressions of the mystery we call God. I was told to just sign it because a Bible with my name embossed in gold on the cover had already been purchased for presentation, and that “you wouldn’t want to embarrass your family not to be confirmed.” I signed it, which bothered me for a long time. I spent years fighting the urge to pick up the phone and ask that that piece of paper be pulled from the files of First Congregational Church, and sent to me so I could burn it and be done with it.

 

But as it turns out, the blessed Trinity is not done with me yet! Lately, I find that each time I recite it some new experience of Divine Charity emerges within me. Some dimension of God’s loving presence touches me at a deeper place than ever before. God, Jesus, and the Spirit are never through with us. Just as creation continues. New things seen and unseen continue to come into focus and become a new reality, especially with the aid of electron microscopes and the Hubble and Webb telescopes. The vastness of the universe only begins to suggest the even greater vastness and depths of the Creator; the One who is within all things and beyond all things all at once! That yes! Our God is beyond us and within us all at once all the time.

 

The deeper truth of it all is that the revelation of God is not dogma, not theology, not a doctrine – not even a belief. For us, the Revelation of God is a person – a person whose every story and statement gives us some deep truth about the life and will of our God – whom Evelyn Underhill long ago described as Divine Charity in her writings about the Creed. [i] We who are created in the image of God – imago Dei – are to become those people who abandon self-love and the greed and acquisition that grows out of such self-love, and become like Jesus, the human appearance of Divine Charity in flesh and blood like ourselves – we are to become a giving, sharing, self-emptying community of Divine Charity, sharing the unending, unqualified love of our Creator with all people, and all nations, especially with all those who are utterly unlike ourselves. Credo, which gets translated, “I believe,” in the creed, really means, “I commit myself, I turn over my self over, to the God of Divine Charity so that I too, like Jesus before me, can share the fullness of life and love with others. Jesus shows us how to serve others, and the Spirit gives us the strength and the courage to continue to do so. This is our faith. This is our hope. This is how we are meant to live as the image of God’s Divine Charity and Love.

 

Thus, writes Underhill, the importance of spending time in contemplation and prayer with the source of Divine Charity each day. We need to go within ourselves – our true selves as revealed by our God; our Love, Liberating and Life-giving God! It is like stained-glass windows, she writes. Viewed from outside, they remain dark, dirty, revealing no image to be seen. It is not until we go within a church that their beauty, their stories, their truths are revealed. She continues,  “We leave the outer world and enter the inner world; and at once we are surrounded by a radiance, a beauty that lies beyond the fringe of speech itself! The universal Light of God in which we live and move, and yet in reality always escapes us, pours through those windows; bathes us in an inconceivable color and splendor, and shows us things of which we have never dreamed before.” [ii] Like the universe, like the Earth, we are made new every day!

 

Like all of creation which continues to unfold, we too are still unsettled, still evolving, still changing, so that the deeper we go within our life with the Triune God, we are changed more and more into a people, a community, a church of Divine Charity that is open to and welcomes all people with no exception. Each time we recite the Creed, it becomes more and more a building block, the cornerstone of our very being, reminding us not only who we are, but whose we are, and what we are: reflections of the true light of God’s Divine self-giving Charity.

 

Back in 1964 I signed that paper with the Nicene Creed, grudgingly, and got my Bible. And I believe that I have been changed by doing so – or more precisely, changed by that which lives within it and behind it and beyond it. Together, we will continue to be changed into a people of Faith, Hope and Charity. Abide these three, writes St. Paul; but the greatest of these is Charity.

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[i] Underhill, Evelyn, The School of Charity, (Morehouse Publishers, Harrisburg PA:1934/1991) p.26

[ii] Ibid, p.27.

Two Worlds, One Body Ascension 2023

 Ascension 2023: Two Worlds, One Body

Matthew, Mark and John give no report of Jesus’s departure. Yet, Luke offers two different accounts: at the end of the gospel and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke envisions this moment of departure as the hinge, or the connecting point, between two worlds: the Empire world of the time of Jesus Christ the Son of God on earth, and the new world of the Body of Christ on earth – the Church, the embodiment of God’s Divine Charity and Love. What these two accounts mean to ask us: Which world do we live in? Which do we want to live in?

 

At the darkest time of all for his friends and followers, when all seemed lost on the cross, such that they were all hiding, fearful that they would be next, that the new world of God’s Divine Charity Jesus had opened to them was now lost, crushed by the Empire before it could really begin, suddenly, he returns. The Risen Jesus seeks them out, to re-ignite the light of hope, faith and charity that had been lit. Luke and only Luke offers the detail that he not only returned from what had seemed like certain and final death, but that he remained with them for forty days. The same length of time Jesus had been driven into the wilderness to learn just what it means to be God’s Beloved. What it means to be led by the Spirit of God’s Divine Love and Charity.

 

During these forty days, writes Luke, he teaches them. He reminds them that he has equipped them to move forward. It is essential to remember that when Luke writes these two accounts, the city of Jerusalem and its Temple lie in ruins, which only adds to the overwhelming and pervading darkness and dread they feel. Jesus seeks out his friends to remind them that God’s holiness was never housed in a Temple. Never lived in an idol. God’s holiness is most at home in the streets, in the slums, in the hospital wards, among the farmworkers, the rural poor, the country lanes, and  in the immigrant camps to which those who had survived the Empire’s scorched-earth destruction fled to find a new way of being God’s people.

 

Jesus no doubt reminds them that the mysteries through which God’s holiness is distributed are in the simplest of every-day elements of life: a little water, a cup of wine, a morsel of bread are enough to close the gap between the two worlds, while giving soul and senses direct contact with God’s Eternal Charity – with the Love of God! By means of these elements, these creatures, of water, bread and wine, they and we become his hands that still feed thousands, and his touch that heals body, mind and spirit.

 

Despite his time teaching them, as he begins his ascent, his friends want to know: when will you return to vanquish the Empire, to bring justice upon earth? Only the Father knows, he says. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." [i]

 

While they stand looking up into heaven, intent on waiting for him to come back and do all the heavy lifting, two men in white robes say, in effect, “What are you doing standing around? What are  you waiting for? You are to get busy as his witnesses to the ends of the earth! You are to get busy binding up the wounds of those who are weary, feed the hungry, find shelter for the homeless, support the rural poor, farmworkers, and help those, like you, who are fleeing oppression. Witnessing means doing. Just as faith means doing. Get back into the streets! There is no time for standing around looking up into the heavens, expecting him to do the work he has prepared you to do. He is sending you his spirit of Divine Love and Charity. Let’s go! There’s no time for standing around!

 

As The Reverend D. Rebecca Dinovo reminds us in her Sermon That Works, “…[ Eastern Orthodox theology tell us] the Ascension is the very culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation. In other words, it is precisely because Jesus’ body is no longer confined to earth that his body can be mystically located in us, as the Church, the “Body of Christ.” The Ascension teaches us that the Incarnation continues in each one of us, as members of Christ’s Body who have been filled with the Holy Spirit. While on earth, Jesus could only be at one place at one time; now, Jesus is present everywhere both in heaven, interceding for us, and in all of his followers, throughout the entire world.” [ii]

 

Faith, it turns out, is a verb. Faith is what we do. Not what we say. Not what we believe. Faith is what we do once we receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and become his body on earth each time we take the bread and the cup. Each time we receive his Body and his Blood. He has conferred upon us tremendous privilege of the gift of partnership with him; fellow workers with God.

 

Ascension calls us to be those people who step beyond the old world of Empire and into the new world of God’s Divine Charity and Love for all. Which leads us into a mysterious paradox that says that in his Ascension he does not leave us alone. Through the gift of the Spirit, he is with us still, now and forever. Jesus is with God and he is with us all at one and the same time. It is because he returns to Love that we are the Body of Christ. Through us he is everywhere all the time. For us, this is what it means to be a living person: living because of our share in the Spirit; a person because of the substance of our flesh. The Spirit is creative Love – which we are to receive and to transmit to others. All others. To the ends of the Earth!

 

As we see the Son rising, we are to remember all of this. We are to remember who we are and whose we are. We are to remember that faith is a verb, the sum of our actions of creative love. We are to remember that we are to take our faithing to the streets, to the cities, to the poor, to the sick, to the lonely, to the abandoned, to the unloved – In His Name! Amen.

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[i] Acts 1:1-11

[ii] Dinovo, D. Rebecca, Lifted Up, Sermons That Work, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/lifted-up-ascension-day-a-may-18-2023/

We Are Not Alone Easter 6A

 

We Are Not Alone   Easter 6A

This just in from Janice Hopkins Tanne in The BMJ (the online British Medical Journal):

 

Half of all Americans are experiencing a measurable level of loneliness and it is a serious threat to their health and to that of their communities, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has said in an opinion column in the New York Times.

 

“Loneliness is more than just a bad feeling. When people are socially disconnected, their risk of anxiety and depression increases. So does their risk of heart disease (29%), dementia (50%), and stroke (32%). The increased risk of premature death associated with social disconnection is comparable to smoking daily—and may be even greater than the risk associated with obesity,” he wrote.

 

Murthy said that loneliness harms communities as social disconnection is associated with reduced productivity in the workplace, worse performance in school, and diminished civic engagement.

 

“When we are less invested in one another, we are more susceptible to polarisation and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone—from climate change and gun violence to economic inequality and future pandemics,” he wrote. “As it has built up for decades, the epidemic of loneliness and isolation has fueled other problems that are killing us and threaten to rip our country apart.” He said that because of the costs associated with these effects, “rebuilding social connection must be a top public health priority for our nation,” and “will require reorienting ourselves, our communities, and our institutions to prioritise human connection and healthy relationships.”

 

Social isolation means people have few social relationships, social roles, and group memberships, and infrequent social interactions. Loneliness is a subjective, distressing internal state which was a problem before the pandemic but made much worse by it. Communities whose residents are more connected with one another do better on several measures of population health, community safety, community resilience when natural disasters strike, prosperity, and civic engagement.[i]

 

People who worked from home during the pandemic have continued to do so. Instead of shopping for groceries, many take advantage of Insta Cart delivery. I went to the bank for the first time in several years, walked in, and was first, disoriented because it had been totally renovated, there were three, down from as many as five, cashiers, and I was the only person in the lobby! I went in specifically to talk with old friends at the counter, but only three were left.

 

Against this current background, Jesus says to us today: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” [ii]

 

That is, we are not alone. Not now. Not ever.

One dimension of our Baptism is that, unlike others in this lonely and alienating world, we see Jesus; because we love Jesus; therefore, God the Father loves us and reveals Jesus to us! Those of us who have a church are lucky. We have social interactions with one another, and with Jesus, at least once a week. We pray together. We sing together. We laugh together. We share the body and blood of Christ, together. We are not alone.

 

Our liturgy accentuates this, but is hampered by English using the same pronoun for “you” singular and “you” plural. The liturgy means for us to hear it always as “you” plural, yet we tend to hear it as “you” singular, which only adds to all other social forces that tend to isolate us.

 

For instance, the invitation to Holy Communion says, in part, “The gifts of God for the people of God; (so far so good, “people” connotes community). Take this in remembrance that Christ died for you (that is, y’all) and feed on him in your hearts (plural) by faith, with thanksgiving (which, by the way, is what Eucharist means – “thanksgiving).” Even the simple formula, “The Lord be with you,” is meant to be, “The Lord be with y’all!”

 

When we are baptized by water and the Holy Spirit; when we renew our Baptismal promises; we commit ourselves to be part of the Body of Christ – which is this congregation, and the Church Universal (which is what “One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” means – universal, the whole church, the whole enchilada, including those communities of Christ we do not know and do not understand). When we say that we, plural, will “Seek and serve Christ in all persons (plural), loving your neighbor as yourself,” we mean first and foremost the entire Church Universal, but also all those from other religious traditions and those who have no faith at all!

 

When the chrism, the oil of baptism, blessed by our bishop, traces a cross upon our foreheads, we are blessed and commissioned to connect our lives to all these other lives, because Jesus loves us, and the Father loves us all as well. It’s just that simple. We come from love; we return to love (as Jesus is saying he is about to do); and love is all around – in all those God loves!

 

We, the Church, Christ Church Forest Hill, Rock Spring Parish, have been, since 1805, a place where the healing of a culture of loneliness can begin! As if all of this is not enough, Jesus gives us “the Spirit of Truth,” the Holy Spirit, whom we will know “because she abides with you, and she will be in you.” I say “she” because I once showed a film to a group of teenage girls about the Holy Spirit in which the part of the Holy Spirit was played by an African-American girl. When I asked them later who the Holy Spirit is, one girl replied, “That girl with the big Afro!” That’s how I have seen the Holy Spirit ever since!

 

In the midst of this epidemic of loneliness, we are the luckiest people of all, for we have Jesus, we have the Father, and we have the Holy Spirit! And, of course, we have one another, us, plural! We are not alone! Because God in Christ loves us all. God is good! All the time! All the time! God is good!  And so are we. So are we!

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[i] “Epidemic of loneliness threatens public health, says US Surgeon General”  https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1017.full (The bmj, May 4, 2023)

[ii] John 14:15-21

Awakened Heart Easter 5A

Awakened Hearts    Easter 5A

While listening to the Gorecki Third Symphony, a somber and yet transcendent piece of music, sitting at a gate in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, it was hot. It was summer, and the air conditioning was not working. People around me were hot, grumpy about our plane being late, constantly harassing the airline representative for information she did not have. People walking by looked angry while lugging their luggage in the humid corridor. Suddenly, the music transported me. People looked relaxed, smiling, at one with themselves and each other. Those walking by were once again engaged in upbeat even gay conversation. No one was complaining. It was peaceable. Sparkling! Transcendent! The symphony came to an end. The rough voice of blues legend, Howling Wolf intoned, “I asked my baby for water, but she gave me gasoline…” I looked up, and everyone was as before – grumpy, angry, hot and unhappy.

 

How long had the vision lasted? I’ll never know. But it has persisted. It remains one ongoing vision of what we call the Christ. Which is not Jesus’s last name. It is his essence. It is what storyteller John calls the logos, which gets translated, “Word.” But which even at the time of Jesus logos, a word borrowed from Greek philosophy, suggests Richard Rohr, meant something more like the “Blueprint” or Primordial Pattern for reality. [i] In the beginning we are told all things were created through the logos, and that the logos is the light and the life of the kosmos, the world, and everything therein.[ii]

 

What I saw at Hartsfield-Jackson International was the light that shines within us all; within all life. This logos, this life, this light is what other New Testament writers call christos, Christ. I’ve come to believe this logos, this christos is what Buddhists call bodhichitta, a Sanskrit word meaning a “noble or awakened heart.” [iii]  “It is said to be present in all beings…in difficult times, it is only bodhichitta that heals.” When all seems lost; when we feel ready to give up; this, writes Pema Chodron, is the time when “healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself…in the midst of loneliness, fear, feeling misunderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine heart of sadness…the genuine heart of bodhichitta cannot be lost. It is here in all that lives, never marred, completely whole.” [iv]

 

The 14th chapter of John comes out of a growing sadness and fear among the disciples. It is their last supper with Jesus. He says he is leaving. He says that where he is going, they cannot follow right now. Peter objects, and pledges he will follow Jesus, the logos, even unto death. Kindly, Jesus tells him he does not know what he is talking about. And out of this John has him say, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” [v] Why not? Here, translation fails us. The text continues, “Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Richard Swanson notes, in the Greek there is no question mark, and offers an alternative translation, “If there were not many places to stay in my father’s home, I would have said to you: I am traveling to prepare a place for you.” [vi]The difference is monumental. Jesus does not need to prepare a place. The father’s house already is wide enough, broad enough. large enough, so commodious as to host all of us, all living beings, all traditions, all of creation itself! Jesus does not need to prepare a place for us, or anyone else. In the cosmology of the fourth gospel, the logos, the christos, has already made room, as we heard last week, for sheep from other flocks – all other flocks. [vii]

 

Let not our hearts be troubled. The very logos, the christos, that created all that is, has placed the bodhichitta heart in us all. We need only go to this place within, where the word that has become flesh chooses to dwell, to live, to remain among us always, to heal our fear, our perceived loneliness, our sadness at his seeming departure – which, is no departure at all.

 

Besides, Jesus says, you know the way. This is what this dialogue is about: The “way,” universally understood among Jesus and his fellow Jews, is the ‘way of Torah,’ the way of YHWH, the way of the covenant life that promises life, light and abundance for everyone and all creation. Philip says, “But we don’t know the way!”  Oh, Philip, Jesus says. You have been with me all this time; I have been with you all this time. I am the way, the truth and the life. I have been with you before time itself; before creation itself; when you were a mere dot of DNA in the father’s logos, the father’s blueprint for the entire cosmos! Then here it comes – the source of much misunderstanding and trouble: “No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

 

Like Philip, we forget. Jesus, the logos, the christos, and the Father are not “Christians.” The father’s house, which is the entire 14 billion light years of the universe, the kosmos, is not the church. There is enough room for all people and all traditions. It is big enough for us all. Be we Chrisitan, Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist, Jew, Atheist – simply, who and whomever we are. This house is wide enough and broad enough for us all. It all comes from the logos, the Christ.

 

The Church has been fixated long enough on thinking we are the only folks in the house. It is time, Jesus then says, to get past that. To see the light and the life in all people. Just as some mysterious portal opened for a brief period of time at Hartsfield-Jackson International that hot and humid day in Atlanta. Curious, isn’t it. I was in an international airport. People from all over the world come through there. People travel from there to everywhere in the world. “If there were not many places to stay in my father’s home, I would have said to you: I am traveling to prepare a place for you.” For just a moment, I could see the logos, the christos, the light and the life within all of us troubled, and angry, and hot people sitting at a gate – forgetting that Jesus once said, “I am the gate to the fold.” We are not the gate keepers. He is. The Christ is.

 

This world, the kosmos, the father’s house has room enough to accommodate us all. Believe this, says Jesus, and then do the things that I do. And once you see, once you touch, the logos, the bodhichitta heart that is within you and among you all, you will do even greater things than I do!

 

That’s what this is all about: Walking in the Way. Let us remember. We have always been on the way with the christos, with the logos. We all are endowed with bodhichitta, with tender hearts that heal, that shine with the true light, with true life, with noble and awakened life. The light of Christ and bodhichitta shines through all darkness. We are to let it shine through all we say and all that we do. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!

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[i] Rohr, Richard, The Universal Christ, (Convergent, NY:2019) p.22

[ii] John 1:1-5

[iii] Chodron, Pema, The Pocket Pema Chodran, (Shambala, Boston & London: 2008) p.1

[iv] Ibid, Chodron, pp. 1-2

[v] John 14:1-14

[vi] Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2010)p. 314

[vii] John 10:1-10