The Promise: to Become a Blessing to All th Peoples of the Earth Proper 10A

 The Promise: To Become a Blessing to All the Peoples of the Earth

This is the promise God made to Abraham. So far, as the story is told in Genesis, the fulfillment of the promise depends upon Sarah and Abraham having a child, “and he as good as dead” as the treatise called Hebrews reminds us; [i] Isaac survives a near-death experience; Rebecca has the option to say “No” to marrying Isaac; and now one twin, Jacob, tricks his older brother Esau out of his birthright. [ii] And this is just the opening few acts of the story! One has to believe in miracles and/or God’s providence that the promise made it all the way to Jesus some 1800 years later! Along the way there are those who have, as Psalm 119 puts it, let God’s Word be “a lantern to their feet…and a light upon their path.”  And Matthew’s story of Jesus tells us that he applied his heart to fulfill God’s statutes of blessing, compassion, justice, love and forgiveness for all people by forming an ongoing community of disciples “forever and to the end.” [iii]

 

Chapter Thirteen in Matthew marks a new approach to Jesus’s teaching. Up to now he has been rather straightforward in his teaching like the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. And he has been busy living out God’s statutes of hospitality for all people, including strangers, outcasts, resident aliens, widows, and orphans, all the while challenging those tenured to the status quo and the occupying forces of Caesar’s Empire, Rome. He calls people not to believe in him, but instead to follow him: to be with the people he seeks out, and to heal folks in body, mind and spirit. He encounters resistance, and promises those who choose to follow him that they too will encounter resistance.

 

Now as he speaks to crowds that will inevitably include those who resist the ways in which he fulfills God’s statutes and promises, he begins to teach in parables – parabolic stories that begin in one place and wind up somewhere completely different. That is, like a parabola, the meanings and interpretations continue all the way out to somewhere like infinity! And beyond! That is there is no one way to interpret a parable. In Matthew 13:1-9 the parable is about agrarian practices to a crowd that is largely made up of tenant farmers – indentured “farm hands;” practically speaking, debt-slaves working in a system that rarely allowed one to work off one’s debt – a not unfamiliar predicament within the financial systems of our own day.

 

He says, “Listen! A sower went out to sow!” Those of us who do listen may notice, that this sower seems rather wasteful, scattering the seed all over the place rather than carefully making cultivated rows. Some of the seeds land on rocks, some among thorns and weeds, and just a few, fall on “good soil,” to yield one hundred, sixty and thirty-fold! “Let anyone with ears listen!” That is, despite squandering and wasting much of the seed, this sower ends up with a bumper-crop of completely unheard-of yields!

 

Try to imagine the disciples and the farmers in the crowd hearing this tale as Jesus plays with them. No wheat on earth, then or now, would yield one hundred-fold. No doubt they would have laughed at the very mention of it. Jesus then says, Well how about sixty, do I hear sixty-fold? More snickering and a few cat-calls! People are right! You are a glutton and a drunkard if you think sixty-fold is possible! OK, he says, how about thirty-fold, which lies at least within the slim possibility of best agricultural practices.

 

In the section missing, the disciples take him aside and say, in effect, you are losing the crowd, and may be losing your mind as well! Why are you doing this? He says to them, you have seen how our Father’s world works if we fulfill his statutes of compassion, love, forgiveness and justice for all people, no exceptions, no exclusions. But there are those who just cannot hear this or understand what we are doing. Still, we need to be extravagant like the sower, sowing and practicing the good news of our Father’s kingdom, which is utterly unlike the kingdoms of Israel at present, and Rome at present. But you will understand, and there will be others who will understand – and if we are sworn and concerned to keep God’s righteous judgments, the yields will in fact increase. We must work and do the things we are called to do faithfully, forever and to the end! And most importantly, even those who scoff at us know what we all know: whatever yield we gather is a gift from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of us all. It is our Father who makes the rain to fall and the sun to shine and the seeds to grow.

 

We remember that Matthew’s story of Jesus is being told to those who have already seen the destruction of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple, the very center of Israelite religious ritual for centuries. Everything has been burned to the ground. Yet, the gift of a great harvest still awaits us, says Matthew’s Jesus to the disciples and others who have ears to hear! The power and the witness of the people of God, always fragile and at peril in a world that does not have the lantern and light of God’s Word shine upon their path, nevertheless, the Lord shall be magnified by the generosity of God into a fruitful and extravagant harvest. “Therefore, the church is called to ‘waste itself,” to throw grace and love and compassion around like there is no tomorrow, precisely because there is a tomorrow and it belongs to God!”’ [iv]

 

As imperfect as the church has been in generosity and wasteful extravagance throughout the ages, here we are. The promise of being a blessing to all peoples, fragile and at risk as it may be, has been entrusted to us. We can be hearers and doers of God’s word. We can choose to welcome black, brown, yellow and red people of all nations and all cultures. We can choose to accept all male, female, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, and queer people. We can choose to reach out to all who are free, enslaved, trafficked, oppressed, and in anyway restricted from living life to its fullest. We can offer a world of justice and peace for all people. We can choose to respect the dignity of every single human being – and every creature under heaven as well! We can choose to be responsible stewards of the environment God has created for us to live in – this fragile earth, our island home. And in fact, we have all promised, in our baptism, to choose to live out of all of these truths of God’s Word! Because we have been touched by Jesus and the example of his word and his works. Every day we read the good news, and every day Jesus picks us up and turns us around whenever we stray from his path.

 

There is a tomorrow. And Jesus makes clear to anyone who hears, that tomorrow will be given like the hundred-fold yield of wheat. When we walk with Jesus wherever we may be, we can and will bear bounteous yields with the seeds that he sows! We are the keepers of the promise that has been given to us just as it was to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus! Because he’s our friend he says will do the things he does, and greater things than these we shall do! We can become God’s blessing to all the peoples of the earth! Let anyone with ears listen!

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[i] Hebrews 11:12a

[ii] Genesis 25:19-34

[iii] Psalm 119:105-106, 112

[iv] Long, Thomas, Matthew (Westminster John Know Press, Louisville: 1997) p.151.

Devoted to God and One Another Proper 9A

 Be Devoted to God and One Another

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart,

and united to one another with pure affection. Amen

 

That’s it. Devotion to God. United to one another “with pure affection.” One Another means, “all others”! No exceptions. No exclusions. That’s what is being asked of us. We come from Love = God. We return to Love = God. And Love is all around. That’s us being united to one another out of our devotion to God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishment. [i]  We are the “one another” who are meant to be united to one another in this abounding steadfast love of God. We are meant to be the love that is all around.

 

After warning his disciples that there will be resistance to being this love in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus goes on to address the resistance in chapter 11. It begins with John. The baptizer. Who is in Herod’s jail. Herod who, at the beginning of the story, slaughtered children and any adult who tried to get in the way to eliminate the child born to Mary. The story begins with violent resistance. John is having second thoughts about this man from Nazareth he had recently baptized and announced as The One who with fire and a winnowing fork will separate the wheat from the chaff. Why hasn’t the winnowing begun? What’s with all this love? Where is the fire? Find out for me if he is The One, he tells his disciples.

 

Jesus says, Tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news of Jubilee, debt reduction, brought to them. This is what love is. Believe the works themselves.

 

Then Jesus then tells anyone who will listen, John is the greatest of all ever born of women. Do you doubt this because he ignores public opinion polls? Do you doubt him because he doesn’t dress in Givenchy and velvet robes like the rich, powerful and famous? But get this: the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. See what he does there? The poor, the lame, the unwashed and unclean are greater than John! And he’s the greatest.

 

Then he begins talking ‘bout my generation! To what can I compare you? You’re like children playing, dancing, and singing, but you’re too busy thinking you know it all to kick up your heels. You’re like children wailing and keening like professional mourners as the Empire crushes us, crushes our children, burns down the temple, and yet you do not mourn. Instead, you complain. John is too harsh, too demanding, neither eating or drinking! Then you complain that I eat and drink too much with the wrong kind of people, tax cheats, prostitutes and all manner of sinners. You call me a glutton and a drunkard! You look for hope, you seek salvation, and yet, you cannot recognize it even if it were to walk up and bite you on the nose!

 

Then he quotes a venerable proverb: Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds! The proof is in the pudding! Neither John nor I look at all like the kind of folks you expect we ought to look like.  We get that. But do you want fancy packaging, or the real deal?

 

Notice that Matthew 11:20-24 is missing. No doubt the editors of our lectionary thought that we could not handle listening to sweet baby Jesus, no crib for a bed, lashing into an all-out tirade against those who complain, crying, Woe to you! And, Woe to you! Get with the program here and now, or “on that day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you!” Think you are so smart? No! You will be brought down to Hades!

 

And then he prays. I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from those who like to believe they are wise and intelligent because they are rich and powerful, but you, O Lord, have revealed the to infants, too the little ones: to the lame, the blind, the deaf, the unwashed, and yes, to the poor and even the poorest of the poor; yes, Father, for such is your gracious will. I have been entrusted by you my Father who calls me his Beloved son, to live the good news of his gracious will; the works themselves reveal his love for you and for all; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. I choose to reveal him to you, and you, and you; for you are God’s Beloved. God is well pleased with you. Amen.

 

Finally, he offers a word to the weary from one who evidently is weary himself. Come and find rest. But he offers not a hammock to rest in, but a yoke. In Judaism, the yoke, an instrument common to the hardest working animals, was a symbol of obedience to the commandments of the kingdom of God’s mercy, love and forgiveness. The yoke of Jesus represents a willingness to serve others with humility and mercy. His yoke is not easy, and his burden light, not because there is little to do or the way is safely paved. It is “light” because it is light for all those of us who live in darkness. “There is a cross to be carried, and the world is full of wolves. The yoke of Jesus is easy and his burden is light because it is the way of God, and it is profoundly satisfying to the human soul.” [ii] And it is true light! Light which darkness did not and cannot overcome!

 

Jesus knows he does not look like a safe bet to everyone. Mercy, humility, forgiveness and love are hard to come by – and harder still to emulate; to become the very core of our being. To join ourselves with Jesus means to serve the world in the name of God his Father, our Father. It is a way of being the love that is all around. Devotion to God means to be united to one another with pure affection. With the pure love and light of the one who calls us his family.

 

We come from Love. We return to Love. And Love is all around. This is a way of being. A way of being with God because we know God is with us. And God is in all that God has created. It means being devoted to God and united with one another – all others – most especially the “little ones.” Those in greatest need. Set aside all expectations and join in the works themselves. You will do the things I do, he says. And greater things than these, he says. And you will be profoundly satisfied, he says. Listen to the music of the kingdom of God! Kick up your heels! For at the end of the day, and the end of days, when you join his dance, you will hear the divine voice of blessing, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Well done my dearly Beloved community of Love!”

 

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[i] Jonah 4:2b, Exodus 34:6-7, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8

[ii] Long, Thomas, Matthew, (Westminster John Knox Press:1997) p.132

Whoever Welcomes You Welcomes Me Proper 8A

 

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,

and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.

Welcoming. Hospitality. Providing for those who show up unexpectedly, was a keyl dimension of life for nomadic peoples. Beginning with the Abraham saga, the Bible reflects upon the lives of peoples throughout an ancient world who were constantly on the move. Specifically, on the move throughout the middle east, but including herders and traders from as far east as Asia, and as far west and north as Europe, and as far south as Africa.

 

Paleoindian people crossed a land-bridge in the Bearing Straits some 40,000 years ago to populate what has come to be called the Americas - north, central and south America. Humans are migratory by nature – seekers, people risking everything to find new grazing lands, new bodies of water, new locations capable of sustaining life for animals, clans, tribes, and families.

 

As settlements began to appear some 5,000 years ago in the Americas, still many of the Paleoindian people continued nomadic and migratory lifestyles, either as hunter-gatherers or as traders. Fast forward to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the modern era, the Spanish began to explore and settle the south and southwest of north America, the French in the Midwest and Canada, and eventually the English arrived along the east coast. To understand the relevance of the Bible’s stories of nomadic and settled cultures half-way around the world, we need to remember that the earliest English settlements failed, until the Powhatan Confederacy provided intervention and assistance at Jamestown (1607), just as the Plymouth Colony was assisted by the Wampanoag Confederacy (1620). That is, without hospitality and know-how shared with those who showed up unexpectedly, the English immigrants might not have succeeded at all.

 

Sadly, such hospitality was not returned in kind, despite many of the euro-settlers representing a variety of Christian traditions. This ought to strike us as odd. Jesus instructs his disciples to go throughout the middle east and beyond to preach the good news of his Father’s kingdom of love, forgiveness and a just society for all, and to follow his example of offering hospitality to “the least of these, my sisters and brothers.” He identifies himself and his mission with welcoming the stranger, the homeless, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, widows, orphans and resident aliens fleeing famines and oppression in their homelands – those without resources, family, or tribe to sustain them.

 

Although this conclusion of his instructions in chapter 10 of Matthew speaks of a reward for those who welcome the “little ones,” and those who welcome his disciples, such reward is not quantified or described. Likely, because Jesus knows that offering such welcome and hospitality to strangers is rewarding in and of itself. And that creating a kingdom of those who welcome the unexpected stranger is an essential building block toward a world of women, men and children who love and respect one another – a peaceable kingdom as described by the prophet Isaiah. [i]

 

This talk of welcoming and hospitality is the summation of his instructions to those of us called to travel this world “in his name.” That is, our lives, the lives of Christians, are to reflect his life of radical love, acceptance, and inclusion for all others. Further, he says that those of us who adopt such a culture of hospitality will be welcomed by others, and will ultimately be welcomed by God, his Father. The disciple, Jesus and God, he asserts, is the nucleus of a new kind of family. A universal family that transcends all other families. A universal family of hospitality and welcome for all.

 

This vision, this understanding of what God his Father intends and wants for all people, is breath-taking. And yet, he is saying, it all depends on those of us who are disciples of his to become a welcoming and hospitable presence in a world that is divided against itself. Divisions that were exacerbated by the Age of Exploration and Colonization, and continue down to this day.

 

As we pause on July 4^th to recall the lofty notions in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and that all persons are worthy of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” we find we need to take time to contemplate how the “American Experiment” succeeds and/or fails to embrace the ideals that Thomas Jefferson and others boldly asserted as essential of all persons. And whether or not those ideals square with the radical kind of hospitality and welcome of all others who come our way to experience just what it is America wants to be. We might begin such contemplation with the poem of Emma Lazarus that is still fixed at the base of the Statue of Liberty: The New Colossus (November 2, 1883):

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”[ii]

 

It appears that Jesus believes that welcoming strangers in need, “little ones,” with a cup of cold water is capable of making all the difference in the world. May we, and all the people of this land, have grace to welcome the stranger and one another, and maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace for all people, from sea to shining sea.

Amen.

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[i] Isaiah 11:1-9

[ii] Matthew 10:40-42

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.