Openest Our Hands, O Lorde Proper 12B

Openest Our Hands, O Lorde!

The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lorde, / and thou givest them their meat in due season;

Thou openest thine hand, / and fillest all things living with plenteousnesse.

Glory to the Father and to the Son, / and to the Holy Spirit,

As it was in the beginning, / is now and forever. / Amen. 

Chanting this was how we began each meal in the General Theological Seminary refectory. We sang it from this earlier Coverdale translation that graced earlier editions of The Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer. This prayer from Psalm 145 [i] means to remind us that we are only here because of God’s grace and sustaining mercy; that our God is a God of open hands, not hands that hold onto things and hoard things, but give it all away; that our God means to fill all living things with ‘plenteousness’ to satisfy the needs of every living creature. 

Chanting this daily at meals helps to multiply God’s mercy so that, as we pray, “we may pass through things temporal and not lose those things that are eternal.” As the anonymous author of Ephesians tells us, that which is eternal is that which strengthens our “inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” [ii] 

Faith rooted and grounded in Love. Love that is comprehended and made visible as we open our hands in love and charity for others – those others who are the very neighbors Christ commands us to love as he loves us! We are to be those who seek to satisfy the needs of all living creatures. 

As the successor to the prophet Elijah, Elisha served the third through eighth kings of Israel from 892-832 BCE. He lived among the company of prophets, a guild of poet-advisors and interpreters of God’s love and mercy. When a widow of one of these prophets was in insurmountable debt, Elisha helped her to multiply a small amount of oil to be sold, which resulted in retiring her debt with plenty of money left over to raise her family as a now single mother. When her son died, Elisha went up into the boy’s room and revived him.

 Upon returning to Gilgal, home of the community of prophets, there was a famine. Elisha ordered a pot of stew to be made, which at first tasted of ‘death in the pot.’ Elisha threw in some flour, and suddenly it was edible. Just then a man came from Baal-shalishah, a nearby town. He brought the prophets food from the first fruits – the tithe, or ten percent, of the barley harvest consisting of twenty barley loaves. We know little of the man or the town, but barley loaves were the staple of the poor who could not afford wheat, which tells us something about this man and his people: they were faithful to bring the tithe to the community of God’s prophets, and they were generous to open their hands and like God, despite their poverty, to help meet the needs of others; to satisfy the needs of every living creature. 

Elisha orders the loaves to be given away as well. His servant, Gehazi, says, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” Elisha repeats, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” Gehazi set the barley loaves before the people, they ate, and there were leftovers for others who may pass through Gilgal. [iii] 

Some eight hundred years later, people are flocking from all over the region around the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias, to be with Jesus. The Passover Festival of the Jews was at hand. When Jesus sees the large crowd coming toward him, he turns to Philip and asks, “Where can we buy some bread for all these people?” (He said this to test Philip for he knew what he would do.) Philip says, “Six months wages would not buy enough to feed so many!”  Wrong answer. Just then, Andrew said, “Here’s a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many?” Jesus orders the disciples to have the people sit down. The young boy, becomes an icon of the image of God, as he “openeth his hands” and gives away all he has. After blessing the poor, rough barley loaves, and the fish, Jesus himself distributes the loaves and fish to everyone, as much as each wanted. Then he tells the disciples to gather up the leftovers. They fill twelves baskets, one for each disciple, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. It was Gilgal all over again. It was like the manna in the wilderness, where every day each family could gather enough for the one day, no one got too much, and if you gathered too much, it would rot and be no good. Jesus would later teach us to pray for bread that is given daily. 

The people want to take him right there and make him their king. Jesus withdraws to a mountain top. No doubt he remembers when in the time of the boy prophet Samuel the people wanted a king, and God had cautioned that would not be good. The king, Samuel warned, would make servants of their women, and send their boys off to war. Jesus would have none of that, being grounded and filled with the unlimited love of God. [iv] 

The disciples take off in a boat and immediately run into wind and rough water. They see Jesus, walking toward them on the water. They are terrified. He says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they want to take him into the boat. But before he could get in, suddenly the boat reaches the land toward which they were going. For some strange reason, here endeth the reading! Tune in next Sunday as the story continues, as the crowd of 5,000 hustle around the Sea of Galilee, also called Tiberias, to join him, so amazed were they by the five barley loaves and two fish! 

It's about open hands that give away all that we have. It’s about tithing the first fruits of all harvests. It’s about God’s desire to fill all things living with plenteousness; to satisfy the needs of all people and all creatures. It’s about deciding just what role we are meant to play in seeing that all living creatures are filled with plenteousness; that all of us are filled with Christ’s love and faith. A faith that trusts in the abundance of all good gifts around us. A faith that gives away rather than hoards. A faith that says it’s not just about us. It’s about hundreds and thousands of others. A faith that understands that all these stories spanning hundreds of years, and all of the Old and New Testaments are one story for all of us for all of time. These are the things eternal. 

The miracle is that the Elisha took the risk of giving all twenty barley loaves away. The miracle is not that Jesus distributes the bread and fish, but that the boy gives all he has away! The miracle is that everyone is satisfied and still there is more. The miracle is that there is faith on earth.

 Faith rooted and grounded in Love. Love that comprehends and is made visible as we open our hands in love and charity for others – all others who are the very neighbors Christ commands us to love as he loves us! A love that fills us with all the fullness of God! Amen.

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[i] Psalm 145:16-17

[ii] Ephesians 3:14-21

[iii] 2 Kings 4:42-44

[iv] John 6:1-21

 

 

  

One Breath, One People Proper 11B

 One Breath, One People

Through the prophet-poet Jeremiah, YHWH, the God of Creation, the God of the Escape from slavery in Egypt, the God who made a disparate group of slave into a people, one people, a covenant people who are to be God’s Light to the whole world, is concerned that the political and religious establishment, meant to be the Good Shepherds of Israel, meant to maintain the unity YHWH has intended for all peoples, but who have instead scattered YHWH’s flock, have driven them away, and not attended to their needs as shepherds ought to do. [i] 

As we heard from Amos, these bad shepherds have divided the people, and worse often only look out for themselves, “selling the needy for a pair of Jimmy Choo’s or Moonstar shoes…and crush the poor with unfair taxes and prices.” [ii] We might call it the ideology of Imelda Marcos! Now YHWH intends to shepherd the people himself, reunite them, make of them one people, YHWH’s people, “and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” This unity and restoration is often depicted in art and stained-glass by Jesus the Good Shepherd holding one sheep, one lamb – a lamb that represents us all, united as one body. 

Eight hundred years later, the peoples of the earth are still divided. The anonymous author of the Letter to the Ephesians recalls Jeremiah’s prophetic imagination. Whatever has characterized the divisions between Gentiles and Jews shall be no more. “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” [iii] Christ is often identified as the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23, who makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters. He revives our soul and guides us along right pathways for his Name's sake.” Christos – the Universal embodiment of Gods love, justice, mercy and compassion. Christos is our peace – our shalom – our embodiment of God’s dream of all peoples united by one spirit – one breath – one animating energy of compassion for one another. In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel one sees crowds of thousands of people following Jesus wherever he goes seeking to have their lives healed and made whole. [iv] 

YHWH and the prophetic poetry of nearly 3,000 years imagine a peaceable kingdom, a peaceable world, a united people. Kind people. People who love their neighbors whomever they are, wherever they are. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Monk and Priest, makes an assertion which many of us pondered during the “valley of the shadow of death” the world experienced as Covid. Rohr says, “Your image of God creates you.” Which may be extended: Our image of God creates us. Does it create us as those people who choose to be united with others? All others? Or, does our image of God drive us to divide ourselves from others? All others? Rohr takes the biblical idea that we are created in the image of God, and then asserts that it is our understanding of God is what makes us fundamentally who we are – either as individuals, as members of a community, as a nation, and as the world. 

In perhaps his most astonishing statement of all, in his book, The Naked Now, Fr. Rohr invites us to an even deeper understanding of what it means to have an image of God that is possible of healing the divisions among the peoples of the earth. If only we might imagine God as the origin of Life, and that to live, we must breathe. The image of God Rohr invokes revolves around God’s “unspeakable name.”

            “I cannot emphasize enough the momentous importance of the Jewish revelation of the name of God. It puts the entire nature of our spirituality in correct context and, if it had been followed, could have freed us from much idolatry and arrogance. As we now spell and pronounce it, the word is Yahweh… It was considered a literally unspeakable word for Jews, and any attempt to know what we are talking about is ‘in vain’ as the commandment says (Exodus 20:7)…whenever it appears in scripture another word is substituted, like Adonai.

            “This unspeakability has long been recognized, but we now know it goes even deeper: formally the word was not spoken at all, but breathed! Many are convinced that its correct pronunciation is an attempt to replicate and imitate the very sound of inhalation and exhalation. The one thing we do every moment of our lives is therefore to speak the name of God. This makes it our first and last word as we enter and leave the world.

            “For some years I have taught this to contemplative groups in many countries, and it changes peoples’ faith and prayers lives in substantial ways. I remind people that there is no Islamic, Christian, or Jewish way of breathing. There is no American, African, or Asian way of breathing. There is no rich or poor way of breathing. The playing field is utterly leveled. The air of the earth is one and the same air, and this divine wind [ruahch] ‘blows where it will’ (John 3”8) – which appears to be everywhere. No one and no religion can control this spirit.

            “When considered in this way, God is suddenly as available and accessible as the very thing we all do constantly – breathe. Exactly as some teachers of prayer always say ‘Stay with the breath. Attend to your breath’: the same breath that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils by this Yahweh (Genesis 2:7); the very breath that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross (John 19:30 and then breathed on us as shalom, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit all at once (John 20:21-23). And isn’t it wonderful that breath, wind, and spirit and air are precisely nothing – and yet everything?”[v] 

Our image of God creates us. How we see, understand, and experience God is capable of making us a people who stand in the breach to be healers – healers of division, rather than being those people who believe it is more important to stand pat believing that only our vision of life on this planet is the one and only vision. Jeremiah, the Psalmist, the author of Ephesians, and the Good News according to Mark all believe in an image of God that unites, that heals division, that brings God’s dream of a world of peace, love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness into being. 

Fr. Rohr ends his meditation on Breath with this prayer: “Just keep breathing consciously in this way and you will know that you are connected to humanity from cavemen to cosmonauts, to the entire animal world, and even to trees and plants. And we are now told that the atoms we breathe are physically the same as the stardust from the original Big Bang. Oneness is no longer merely a vague mystical notion, but a scientific fact.” 

May our God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, help us to be open to the Oneness of all creation, all peoples, and all creatures; as healers of the breach; as those who break down all divisions and hostilities; that we might allow your image and your breath create us as One Breath, and One People, now and forever. Lord, help us to stay with the breath. Amen. 

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[i] Jeremiah 23:1-6

[ii] Amos 2:6-7; 4:1

[iii] Ephesians 2:11-22

[iv] Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

[v] Rohr, Richard, The Naked Now (Crossroad Publication, NYC:2009) pp. 25-26

The Plumb Line Proper 10B

 The Plumb Line

Look at the plumb line. What do we see? The plumb line is meant for us. It’s used, among other things, to build city walls and important buildings like temples to make certain the walls are vertical. To make sure they are true. It is the simplest of devices. And yet, in the hands of the Lord God and his prophets, it becomes a metaphor for the health of the life of the community. In this case, in Amos chapter 7, we are talking about Israel. Not as we think of it today, or even in the time of Jesus. For eight centuries before Jesus Israel was divided into a northern kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah, later Judea. The cultic center for Israel was the temple at Bethel. The cultic center for Judah was the temple in Jerusalem. (Amos 7:7-15) 

The Lord God is sending Amos to deliver some bad news: Bethel and Israel is about to be dismantled. Why? First of all, they are using the temple at Bethel to worship idols and other gods. The second and more important charge is rampant economic and social inequality. It is Amos, after all, who earlier writes that the king and leadership in Bethel “sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth”; they “who oppress the poor, who crush the needy” (Amos 2:6-7; 4:1). 

We misunderstand the role of the prophetic voices in the Bible. They are not predictive, as some would assert. Nor do these voices seek to scold, nag, or act self-righteous about social justice. These poetic voices simply hold up a mirror before God’s people. Or, a plumb line. To help us to see if we have been true to God’s desire for us to be a community of love. 

All the prophetic voices of the eighth and sixth century (BCE) prophets write in Hebrew poetry. Thus, metaphors like the plumb line abound. The plumb line reveals that there are consequences for the economic and social inequality: YHWH will allow the establishment at Bethel to be dismantled. It’s no wonder that Amos tries to shirk his assignment, crying, “I am no prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son. I am a dresser of sycamore trees!” The Lord God will have none of it. “Go and prophesy to my people Israel…then run for you life down to Judah!” The basic offense is that there is no love of neighbor, which is meant, according to the Lord God, to include the poor, widows, orphans and resident aliens. 

But God’s word does not end with judgment and the unimaginable dismantling of the present world. The prophetic voice also issues a second impossibility: after Bethel is destroyed and the people carried off into captivity, God will one day bring them home and resettle them in safety. 

Eight centuries later, John the baptizer learns how dangerous it can be as God’s prophetic voice. After calling all of Judea and Jerusalem to a ritual bathing to repent and turn back from continued rampant economic and social inequality, and accommodating the cult of Caesar’s Rome which recognizes Caesar as God, John is put in prison by Herod, Caesar’s appointed king of the Jews. Yet, we are told that Herod is intrigued by John. But Herod has married his brother’s wife, Herodias, and John repeatedly warms Herod that this is not lawful. This violates the commandments and the love of neighbor, in this case your brother! 

Herodias, thinks John’s railing against the empire is one thing, but interfering in her personal life goes too far. She has a grudge against John and wants to kill him. At Herod’s birthday banquet, her daughter performs a beguiling dance. Herod is so pleased he tells her, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” Herodias tells her, “Ask for John’s head.” The young girl takes it one step further, asking not only for John’s head, but to have served on a platter. Right now. All this takes place while Jesus and his disciples are calling people to love God, love neighbor, and in your spare time, love your enemies as well. After John’s execution, Herod wonders if Jesus is John back from the dead? God’s prophetic voice will not be silenced. (Mark 6:14-29) 

Madeleine L’Engle, author of children’s books, memoirs, novels, and plays, was also a poet. Like the prophets, her poetry is like the plumb line: it invites us all to wrestle with just how faithful we are to God’s dream that we love God, love our neighbors, and love our enemies as well.

Lines Scribbled on an Envelope While Riding The 104 Broadway Bus:

There is too much pain

I cannot understand

I cannot pray

I cannot pray for all the little ones with bellies bloated by starvation in India;

for all the angry Africans striving to be separate in a world struggling for wholeness;

for all the young Chinese men and women taught that hatred and killing are good and compassion evil;

or even all the frightened people in my own city looking for truth in pot or acid.

Here I am

and the ugly man with beery breath beside me reminds me that it is not my prayers

  that waken your concern, my Lord;

my prayers, my intercessions are not to ask for your love

   for all your lost and lonely ones,

   your sick and sinning souls,

but mine, my love, my acceptance of your love.

Your love for the woman sticking her umbrella and her expensive parcels

   into my ribs and snarling, " Why don't you watch where you're going? "

Your love for the long-haired, gum-chewing boy who shoves the old lady aside

   to grab a seat,

Your love for me, too, too tired to look with love,

too tired to look at Love, at you, in every person on the bus.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain,

help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes

   and bunioned feet,

the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft,

the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth,

the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes.

Help me through these scandalous particulars

to understand

your love.

Help me to pray [i] 

Again, we need to look at the plum line. What do we see? In our community? In our country? In our hearts? Have we been true to the will of God? May the Lord God of Amos and John and Jesus help us all to pray that we might all return to a life that loves God, loves all neighbors, and loves our enemies as well. Amen.

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[i] L’Engle, Madeleine, The Ordering of Love (Convergent, NYC: 2020) p.8

The Scorn of the Indolent Rich Proper 9B

 The Scorn of the Indolent Rich

Mark chapter six comes right after chapter five. Now that may seem obvious to us, but we must keep in mind that all chapter and verse designations in the Bible are largely arbitrary and are there only to aid us in studying and analyzing the texts. And that storyteller Mark as editor of the gospel could have placed this story of Jesus going home to teach in his hometown Nazareth, on the Sabbath in some other part of the story, but chose to put it right after several healing stories: 1) healing a man possessed by demons in Gentile territory, 2) a woman who had suffered a flow of blood for twelve years, and 3) the twelve year-old daughter of Jairus, a leader in a synagogue, who was believed by many to be dead. All this involved two trips in a boat across the Sea of Galilee. Many people, Jews and Gentiles alike, were radically amazed at their encounters with Jesus. And yet, as he told the woman, it was not him, but her faith that made her well. Her ragged determination against so many obstacles to try, perhaps as a last resort, to just touch the hem of Jesus’s garment, believing that that may finally grant her some of God’s mercy and relief. Perseverance furthers equals faith, hope, and charity. 

After all of that, storyteller Mark tells us that Jesus goes home to Nazareth, a small village of Jews amidst some Gentile settlements west of the Sea of Galilee. As he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as he has done throughout the first six chapters of Mark, he teaches. People know who he is: the Son of Mary. Again, that may strike us as obvious, but the normal practice would be to say that he was Yeshua ben Joseph, the son of Joseph. Mark, however, has already told one and all in the opening verse of his Good News that this Yeshua is the Son of God. After first being “astounded” at his teaching, it seems the neighbors among whom he grew up are having none of that. Isn’t this, they say, ‘“the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.”’ This guy is just one of us. Who does he think he is? [i] 

Imagine. After perfect strangers on both sides of the Sea were amazed at his presence among them, and the astonishing fact that he would bring God’s mercy, compassion and love to people as different as a demon possessed man chained up in a tomb, a ritually impure woman with a flow of blood, and an elite community leader like Jairus, the people who know him better than anyone else are offended at whatever it was he was saying that Sabbath morning in his hometown! Perhaps to indicate to those of us pondering these texts just how absurd this is, Jesus shrugs it off as just another day at the office for prophets in Israel throughout the ages, and storyteller Mark offers this hilarious aside: “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” That’s all! He just brought God’s mercy, love and compassion to a few sick people! And now, we are told, it is Jesus who is astounded, we might say radically amazed, at his friend’s and neighbor’s unbelief. 

I believe I can speak for myself and any number of my colleagues in ordained ministry in Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, had we had a Sunday morning like Jesus had in his hometown, we would most likely spend the next week or two commiserating with one another, or making an appointment with the bishop or a spiritual director to figure out what to do next. Not Jesus! He is immediately off to teach in other villages, evidently practicing what he is about to teach his disciples whom he sends off two by two to preach the Good News, giving them authority over unclean spirits, to cast out demons, and bring people to a new sense of wholeness grounded in God’s mercy, love and compassion for one and all. But, if they are to be rebuffed as he had been at home, to shake the dust of their sandals and move on to the next village! A gesture, which later Jewish texts suggest, was customary for Jews returning to the Holy Land from visiting pagan territories so as not to bring back even a particle of “uncleanness” with them. [ii] 

In this instance, it is possible to construe that the disciples would be consigning those communities that had rejected the Good News to the unclean demonic world. Which may sound primitive and even bizarre to us “moderns,” unless we were to understand that for storyteller Mark, demons are often understood as allies of Rome, and diseases as foes that seek to weaken the body of Israel. With this understanding, it is possible to see those in the gospels who are blind or unable to speak as maladies caused by the subjugation to the foreign Empire of Caesar, he who would be God, and of Rome. In this light, Jesus and his disciples can be seen as trying to help others see and speak out against the injustices, lies, and violence of those who would occupy and rule the land of their ancestors. Jesus instructs his disciples to work with urgency to speak out and act on God’s desire for health, wholeness and happiness for all people. [iii] 

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the struggle against just such a brutal and unjust empire of Apartheid often said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” 

Or, listen to the psalmist in Psalm 123 who concludes, “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt / Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.”?  The “indolent rich” often being those who make concessions to and become allies and perpetrators of the empire. Empire, which is never viewed as a good thing in the Bible. Pharaoh, Babylon and many of the kings of Israel are repeatedly chastised by prophets like Jesus, often not ending well for the prophets themselves. Yet, their pronouncements are preserved to inform future generations of what God and his Son, Jesus, expect of those of us who follow Christ in terms of loving our neighbors.   

It does not take much textual analysis or imagination to see where Mark is propelling the story, and its meaning for us today. Jesus demands our urgency in preaching the Good News and caring for others. All others. It does not take much analysis on our part to imagine what Jesus would think of the recent decision to criminalize homelessness by our Supreme Court; rather than treat the causes of homelessness, create more affordable housing, and treat our fellow citizens with the care, mercy, compassion and love Jesus instructs all of us who would be his disciples to do. Like the woman with the flow of blood and Jairus the leader of the synagogue, we need the kind of faith that perseveres over any and all obstacles to freedom, wholeness and healing thru Christ. 

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; for our common life depends on how we treat the least and most vulnerable living beside us. Amen.

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[i] Mark 6:1-13

[ii] Byrne, Brendan, A Costly Freedom (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN:2008) p. 111 fn 5

[iii] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Mark (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland:2005) p.190

Yoga On The Beach: $15

 Yoga On The Beach: $15 

The monetization of Yoga.

The commodification of Meditation.

The weaponizing of holy scriptures. 

Where are we? 

These used to be free.

Passed on from one generation

To the next.

 These practices were

  Rituals

  A way

  A path 

Towards

  Realization

  Awareness

  Inner space

  Authenticity 

From self to selflessness

Rather than a capitulation to Ayn Rand’s

  Self interest

Rather than another commodity to purchase

Rather than another rung on a ladder 

Leading to nowhere

Instead of being here

Instead of being free

  To just be 

-Bethany Beach, 06/22/24

Thoughts while running on the Boardwalk in Bethany early in the morning....

Refuge for All: If not now, when?

 Refuge For All: If not now, when?           

“With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.” 

At first glance, a series of three parables in Mark chapter 4 might appear to be about seeds, how to sow them, an important reminder that it is the Lord God who does the growing, and then there is the mustard seed. A tiny seed that becomes a great bush or tree in which the birds of the air may take refuge. Refuge. A safe place from the chaos and ravages of the world around us. Shelter from the storms that surround us. From the Latin, refugium: literally, a place to flee to; a place to seek asylum or shelter. The mustard seeds are the Gospel: The Good News of Jesus Christ. 

Speaking of a cedar tree, rather than a mustard seed bush or tree, the prophet Ezekiel imagines that it is the role of the people of God like a cedar to provide refuge: “Under it [the cedar] every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord.” [Ezekiel 17:22-24] 

Ezekiel repeats the metaphor in chapter 31: “All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young, and in its shade all great nations/peoples lived.”[Ezekiel 31:6]  The word translated nations is goyim, which in Hebrew simply means non-Jews. People different than us. 

There is consensus that Jesus takes the cedar metaphor of Ezekiel a step further in speaking of a  mustard bush instead. Which bush is highly invasive. It knows no boundaries. It is capable of taking over an entire field. In which it is very much like the Holy Spirit, that comes from we know not where, and takes us we know not where. We don’t have to do anything to make God’s kingdom grow – we sow the seeds, we go to sleep, and we awake to its bounteous yield – many refuges for all kind of birds and animals. And people. Every kind of person. 

All of this imagery is meant to help us imagine the nature and character of God’s kingdom, and the role of a godly nation, or the community of Love, the Body of Christ, the Church, among all the other peoples of the Earth: to be a refuge and blessing to all the peoples of the Earth. Amidst the uncertain storms that surround us on all sides, we are being called to be a refuge, a place of safety and asylum, for others – emphatically, all kind of others; all others; no ifs, ands or buts. 

And where do we find ourselves? At the bank on Friday, I learned that the bank will be closed on Wednesday to observe Juneteenth – recalling June 19^th, 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger finally announced the emancipation of the estimated 250,000 slaves in Texas – 900 days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, 61 days after Lee’s surrender, and 24 days after the formal surrender of the Confederate War Department. The result of Granger’s announcement was annual Jubilees, reflecting the Biblical Jubilee years when all land and slaves were freed as a reminder that all of us and all that we have belongs to God. Juneteenth is now a Federal Holiday. And of course, it is controversial among those who claim a desire to maintain “traditional Christian/Biblical values.” Never mind the celebrations are inspired by the Bible itself. [Leviticus 25:8-13] Of course some folks just don’t like Juneteenth, let alone the racial integration of society, and refuse to participate – although getting a day off as a Federal Holiday is often something most will accept. For many families, however, for over 159 years, Juneteenth has been a refuge and an important reminder of God’s desire for all people to be free. 

We also get these parables about offering refuge and safety to all persons during Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ communities throughout the country. The idea for Pride parades and eventually Pride month began after the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969 – several days of activism seeking LGBTQ+ liberation beginning June 28^th that year.  I’ve know LGBTQ folks who have taken their own lives rather than bear the burden of being hated by so many self-righteous folks. I’ve officiated the wedding of two women, two dear friends and colleagues in proclaiming the Good News of Christ, after being told by my bishop just not to tell him I was going to do it. It is hard to reckon in the 21^st century that this community of loving, creative, productive people continue to suffer shame and humiliation just for being who they are. Seems the Mustard Seed Bush is still not big enough for us all yet. That such hate persists causes me to question whether my 40 plus years of ministry has really helped sow the seeds of safety and freedom for all? 

Then there is a continued war on Women – specifically on their reproductive health rights, but also formal “movements” and graduation speeches seeking to send them back from living productive lives outside the home to the kitchen where they are expected to be compliant baby-making machines. There’s the recent decision not to prohibit Bump Stocks that turn a semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun during the same week that the Parkland School is being torn down, Sandy Hook families are still looking for restitution from Alex Jones’s war on their community, and families in Uvalde, Texas, who are discovering just how many failures there were that led to their school children being slaughtered. There are the thousands of people from Central America who seek safety and asylum from the murderous and autocratic governments we, US Foreign Policy, chose to back decades ago, being routinely turned away with rhetoric that cannot be used in polite society. As Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel hate rises, there are mobs of people on New York City subways threatening Jews to get off the train “before it’s too late.” 

Against this news of the past week, we hear Jesus join Ezekiel’s call for the proliferation of mustard seed bushes and trees to shelter all those who are in need of refuge and safety. Which is a lot of different kinds of people who look to us to be those people who care; who love our neighbors as we love our selves; who love the God who makes us all in God’s own image. 

The first parable of the Sower Sowing Seeds begins “Hear! Listen”, as in “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one; love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength and all your mind.” Jesus tells his disciples “Let those who have ears hear!”; chapter 4 ends, “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.” Evidently some folks have not heard. Or, choose not to listen. Even worse, there are elements across our nation and in our Nation’s capital, who work tirelessly to revoke the rights of different groups of people. All of whom deserve the safety and freedom. All the peoples. People of color. LGBTQ+ people. Women. Children. Refugees. Jews. People just want to live in safety. 

As I listen to Jesus, the words of Martin Niemöller, a German pastor during the Holocaust who was arrested and interned in a concentration camp: First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then, they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then, they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. To which one might add, the words of Rabbi Hillel, if not now when. 

It feels like it is time to scatter lots of mustard seeds!

Where Are We? Proper 5B

 

Where Are We?

“Where are you?” asks the Lord God as he walks through the garden at the time of the evening breeze! Ah, how good that must feel. And yet, disappointing at the seeming absence of the man and the woman he had placed there. As one of the oldest stories in all of the Bible, no one ever reading this has ever thought for a moment that the Lord God has no idea whatsoever where they are. (note to self: Where are you? Is plural, not singular). I imagine those first telling this tale around a campfire before ever committing it to the written Word letting out a not-quite stifled chuckle as they tell the tale. For the question, we must assume, is for the couple, not for God. It is perhaps the most central question in the entire Bible: Where are we? Do we have any idea where we are? 

The comedy continues to unfold. They are hiding, not because they are naked. Not because they have disobeyed and eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree. And what a surprise! The man says, “She made me do it! The woman you gave me, it’s all her fault.” Gee, that’s novel. Where have we ever heard that before? The woman, however, is not much better. Her defense is that the serpent made her do it. If the Lord God is not laughing by now, he must be in tears. Almost as if to go along with the absurdity of it all, God chastises the serpent. Because…well why not. That is easily done, but still does not get to the heart of things. His question has yet to be answered. [i] 

The problem facing the couple in the garden is quite simple really. They have forgotten who they are. The serpent represented that if they ate from the forbidden tree they would become like God. That, of course, is a lie. In this world, many such lies try to seduce us into forgetting just who we are. And whose we are. In the Genesis story, all the way back in chapter 1, we are told that “female and male, we are made in the image of God.” That’s who we are created to be: God’s image, God’s living icons, God’s representatives in this world of tremendous fruitfulness. 

The question, “Where are you?” means to alert us that we left our essential being: we are God’s Beloved. As with his Son, Jesus, God is well pleased with us. Until we hide from God. And forget who we are. And just as importantly, whose we are! Thus, is the beginning of division. The serpent simply reminds us that there are always those wooing us, seducing us, to leave the space and responsibility of our imago Dei, our Belovedness, and to follow an alleged bigger and better dream. 

Yet, what dream can even begin to compete with our God-given tasks to build a friendly world, of friendly folks, beneath a friendly sky?   

God’s “Where are you?” echoes throughout the ages, throughout the Bible, throughout all of time. Indeed, where are we? The psalmist knows what the couple hiding in the garden know: “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication. If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand?” [ii] There we go again. “If, you, O Lord, were to note what is done amiss?” Seriously, we lack any and all biblical imagination if we think for one minute, one second of one minute, God has no idea what has gone amiss amongst us! Despoiling the tree stands in for despoiling the environment, the ecology of God’s creaton. Trees are foundational and essential for life on planet Earth, our fragile, island home. Without trees we could not breathe. Without breath, we have no life. We die.

It is dying, perhaps, that lies at Paul’s concerns with the congregation in Corinth. Like the first couple in Genesis, the Corinthians have grown surly, divisive, dividing themselves into factions – they no longer preach the good news, says Paul, let alone live it. Perhaps ringing in Paul’s ears are those famed words of Jesus, attested in three of the four gospels, and quoted by Abraham Lincoln in a speech after he had received the Republican nomination to be the candidate for the US Senate from Illinois in 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.” [iii] Paul extends the “house” metaphor writing, “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”[iv] Despite all division among God’s people, in Christ there is still the hope for a future. A future we cannot see, but can trust it will be here. 

This points to another theme through the entire history of the Bible. For the word for house in New Testament Greek is oiko – the root for such words as oikologos, “ecology” the “house in which we live; and oikonomos, “economy – rules of the household.” The couple in the garden have divided themselves from God. The psalmist feels an intense separation from the love and mercy of the Lord God. The Corinthians have divided the community of Christ into factions, and worse. The Scribes try to drive a wedge, a division, between Jesus and his followers by claiming he is subject to the Prince of Demons. And the narrative is often construed to make us think Jesus is dividing himself against his own family. But that is not what he says or does. For the sake of his Father’s kingdom, he says all who “do the will of God” are included in his own family. A family that came to be only because a young woman named Mary, and an older gentleman named Joseph, accepted the challenge of letting the will of God determine their future. A future that, as Paul has suggested, we cannot yet see, but which will not pass away as so many other of our divisions and allegiances will, but rather is, and always will be, eternal.

Indeed, where are we? Where do we find ourselves fitting into the Dream of God that all divisions shall cease? Where do we find ourselves today? As a people? As a nation? As God’s Beloved Community in this world? A world torn, and re-torn every day by one more division so that some serpent can slither up to us and at worst lead us into temptation, and at best cause us to hide from the steadfast love and mercy of God altogether out of guilt. 

A Prayer from Howard Thurman that seems to sum up the Word of God give to us this day:

Our Father, fresh from the world, with the smell of life upon us, we make an act of prayer in the silence of this place.  Our minds are troubled because the anxieties of our hearts are deep and searching.  We are stifled by the odor of death which envelopes our earth, where in so many places brother fights against brother.  The panic of fear, the torture of insecurity, the ache of hunger, all have fed and rekindled ancient hatreds and long-forgotten memories of old struggles, when the world was young and Thy children were but dimly aware of Thy Presence in the midst.  For all this, we seek forgiveness.  There is no one of us without guilt and, before Thee, we confess our sins: we are proud and arrogant; we are selfish and greedy; we have harbored in our hearts and minds much that makes for bitterness, hatred and revenge. 

While we wait in Thy Presence, search our spirits and grant to our minds the guidance and the wisdom that will teach us the way to take, without which there can be no peace and no confidence anywhere.  Teach us how to put at the disposal of Thy Purposes of Peace the fruits of our industry, the products of our minds, the vast wealth of our land and the resources of our spirit.  Grant unto us the courage to follow the illumination of this hour to the end that we shall not lead death to any man’s door; but rather may we strengthen the hands of all in high places, and in common tasks seek to build a friendly world, of friendly men & women, beneath a friendly sky.  This is the simple desire of our hearts which we share with Thee in thanksgiving and confidence. [v] Amen.

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[i] Genesis 3:8-15

[ii] Psalm 30

[iii] Mark 3:25; Matthew 12:25; Luke 11:17; Illinois Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois June 16, 1858

[iv] 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

[v] Thurman, Howard, The Centering Moment (Friends United Press, Richmond, IN: 2007)