Difficult Words Proper 21B

 

Difficult Words

Difficult words. Mark 9:38-50 provides a prime example of a difficult bunch of words in three seemingly unrelated sections of Jesus forcefully schooling the disciples. It starts out with an “us and them” conflict, which settles into, “how about we just worry about us!”

 

The disciples complain. What else is new! They saw a man casting out demons in Jesus’s name and tried to stop him “because he was not following us.” Cue yet another heavy sigh for Jesus who is working overtime to transcend the kind of “us and them” environment in first century Israel that pitted Pharisees against Sadducees against Essenes against Zealots against the poor of the land as to how the yoke of Roman occupation might be run out of town. “Whoever is not against us is for us…let it go. No more of this us and them. I welcome all outsiders who join in our work of repairing the world. Let’s concentrate on the motes in our own eyes.”

 

Then come the most difficult words about stumbling blocks, scandals, within the community. It was only last Sunday in the verses just preceding these that the disciples themselves were arguing over who amongst them is the greatest. There must be more problems because now Jesus goes into a tirade over how unspecified “little ones” are being treated within the community of his followers. This could be children, this could be the poor, this could be those who are yet weak in their faith and might be misled by bad behavior such as the disciples arguing over petty stuff. So, if you cause one of these little ones to stumble “it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.” The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

 

Evidently, we moderns have trouble with hyperbole. But perhaps we can understand that sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice a part to preserve the whole – in this case being eternal life in God’s ways, God’s kingdom – a deeply held understanding in the community of faith known as Israel into which Jesus was born, lived, moved and had his being. This is not a literal commandment per se, but more of an analogy: just as a diseased limb is sometimes amputated to preserve the health of the whole body, so it is with the Body of Christ, his community of followers, later the Church. Jesus speaks with prophetic and even apocalyptic sharpness to drive home the positive: the supreme value of living in the kingdom of God, here and now lies in how we treat one another, insiders, and those outside the community as well who do the reconciling work we do whether or not they join us or even know who we are.

 

The consequences of causing others to misbehave, or even misbehave yourself, is landing in Gehenna. Our text repeatedly translates this as “hell,” which immediately brings to mind the later Christian idea of hell as a place of fire and eternal punishment and beings with tails and pitchforks, etc. Etc. The world of first century Judaism would have no idea what we are talking about since to this day only a small minority of Jews even believe in hell. What Jesus is talking about is either Sheol or Gehenna, two words that since the King James English has been rendered “hell” in most English translations. This is too bad. Sheol was understood to be that place where everyone, good, bad or indifferent goes – a place of no punishment and no reward. Gehenna is an actual place outside Jerusalem, a valley where long ago before the time of Jesus forbidden pagan worship took place, and after the reforms of King Josiah it became the city garbage dump. Trash would be burned. That these fires burned continuously contributed to Gehenna becoming a byword or slang for a place the wicked would be consigned for destruction. Note, the fires are continuous, not punishment. For those consigned to Gehenna simply cease to be. Fini.

 

And, of course, any talk about Gehenna or Hell is really only based in our perverse desire to consign anyone we do not like to some place as far away from us as possible. Inspired by an actual place, and by ancient Greek and Roman mythology, Gehenna and Hell are simply symbolic of our inability to seek reconciliation with those we do not like, and therefore not an actual place at all – which, of course, was where the disciples at the beginning of this difficult passage hoped Jesus would send with the man who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name. Jesus is doubling down against any such thinking. As St. Paul would later write to the churches in Corinth, “If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” [2Corinthians 5:17-18] We are to be reconcilers, not dividers.

 

Finally, some enigmatic words about salt and fire – two elements traditionally used to purify and preserve things like food. “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

 

To be salted, or seasoned, with fire elsewhere in the New Testament suggests the gift of the Holy Spirit. To scandalize others, inside or outside the community of faith, is to lose the Spirit. Fire might also refer to persecutions that will test the mettle of the community and may require the kind of sacrifices Jesus speaks of in his tirade. Rather, we are to have salt in ourselves suggests maintaining that quality of life, with all the sacrifice it entails, to be a reconciling community, we will, despite all, live in peace with one another; there will be no ‘scandalizing’ of the little ones, those who most need the care, love and attention that Jesus freely gives to all from all stations of life, without question or qualification.

 

Footnote: As we read these difficult words of Jesus this week, we read in Friday’s Baltimore Sun that Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, a co-founder of the Taliban, “will once again carry out executions and amputations of hand, though perhaps not in public [as had previously been done].”[1] As scandalous and abhorrent as this news is, we must remember a few things. By far the majority of Muslims and Muslim majority nations do not believe in nor participate in such judicial severity. And we must remember that the other two monotheistic communities of faith are not innocent of atrocity either: the Christian Crusades and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians are only two examples of such scandalizing behavior. And we must remember these difficult words of Jesus are all too easily understood to be sanctioning religious violence.

 

That we may hear Jesus’s call to welcome outsiders, and become a reconciling community of faith in peace with one another and all others, may God help us. Amen!

---

[1] “Taliban co-founder: Strict punishment, executions will return,” The Baltimore Sun, Friday,

 September 24, 2021, p8

Children of God Proper 20B

 

This week our prayer is, “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.” And there are plenty of things about which to be anxious, and plenty of things are in danger of passing away. With the increasing ferocity of forest fires in the west there is a realistic chance that some of the oldest creatures on earth might pass away: the grand Sequoias, seemingly eternal, towering so high above the forest floor they have survived dozens of fires, but last year nearly 14% of them died from the combination of drought and larger, longer lasting fires. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, women and girls who have been going to school the past 20 years already face new restrictions in education under Taliban rule. And worldwide, the Pandemic still rages, while measures to contain it have become politicized causing more and more people to die needlessly.

 

Against all of this we read Mark 9:30-37 where we find increasingly anxious disciples, following Jesus back from gentile territory, passing through Galilee. Earlier in chapter nine, Peter, James and John accompanied Jesus to the top of a mountain where they witnessed Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah about “his departure,” in Greek, his “exodus.” And they heard a voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved: Listen to him.” On the way down Jesus, who has already told them what will happen in Jerusalem, orders them to “tell no one about what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead could mean.” [Mark 9:9-10]

 

After witnessing Jesus healing a young boy, he tells them for the second time that in Jerusalem he will be betrayed, they will kill him, and after three days he will rise again. “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” [Mk 9:32] From our perspective, their anxiety and perplexity may strike us as odd. Are they just dense? Or, more likely, is it that they just cannot face the “killing” part of it all, let alone unable to grasp what it all means? We do well to remember that there are many amongst us who cannot or will not face the growing results of climate change despite evidence of earthly things passing away right before our very eyes, and others who deny that the coronavirus deadly. The disciples are us. We are the disciples. Anxiety has a grip on us whether or not we admit it or even recognize it.

 

Jesus asks them what they are talking about on the way. Now they are embarrassed as well as anxious. They are silent, and then admit that they were arguing who amongst them was the greatest. Seriously. In other versions of this story, they are even imagining sitting on his right hand and his left. After months of following Jesus, watching Jesus with others, and listening to what he has been saying, they really, truly do not understand at all. Yet, these are the people he has chosen to help him change the world.

 

It was just last week he laid it down: if you want to become my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Does Jesus look like someone who is at all concerned about being “the greatest”? The one who says I have no home, nowhere to lie my head. The one who says wildflowers in a field are dressed in finer array than King Solomon, the all-time king of conspicuous consumption. I find myself wondering sometimes why so many Americans, the undisputed capital of greed, acquisition and consumption, worship Jesus instead of Solomon?

 

He sits them down and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Then he picks up a child from the crowd, takes the child in his arms and says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” It helps us to know that children on the streets of Galilee in those days had zero status. They were the least and the lowest and the last on the Totem Pole of importance. They were considered “not the greatest” of all. The child cannot care for herself. She represents all those in society who cannot, for whatever reason, care for themselves.

 

I want you who are wanna-be followers of mine to get down on your hands and knees, wrap your arms around a child, wash their grubby little feet, and provide for all their needs – because that is how you will learn to care for others – all others, of all ages, of all stations of life, with whatever needs they may have. Greatness is not what this is all about.

 

Those who want to be great are too busy accumulating and consuming and building more and more barns in which to store all their stuff they will never get around to using before they die to even see a child on the street. While I will be hanging on a Roman Cross, and buried in a borrowed tomb at the end of this journey of healing, feeding, and caring for all persons, of all ages, of all stations of life, the “great” are busy counting their money. The night before I die, I will get on my hands and knees to wash your feet so you might never forget what you are called to be and to do.

 

We have been called. It was never about us or them choosing to follow Jesus. Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea! Perhaps the only thing all of us can agree upon is that this life is getting wilder and more restless every day, making us more anxious about earthly things, while things we thought could be counted upon are passing away. Who has time for heavenly things?

 

Jesus is trying to show them, with this child on his lap, how to hold onto those things that endure, those things that are heavenly: things like faithfulness, the common good, caring for all others, and love – divine love.

 

As Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters used to say, “Either you are on the bus, or off of the bus.” In Jesus’s Father’s kingdom there is no middle ground. There’s no way to delay that trouble coming every day.

 

Some Sequoias are believed to be three thousand years old, and only now are being threatened with extinction. Girls in Afghanistan fear they may never get the education they need to get ahead and become the next generation of leaders in their country. These trees, women and girls, along with many many others who are considered “last” in this world are the child on Jesus’s lap. They are the canary in the coal mine. They are the emergency broadcast system, only now this is not only a test. Or, is it? These endangered trees, women and children are calling us to understand what’s going on. They call us to engage in finding new and better ways to care for one another and care for the very earth upon which we live. To once again value some understanding of gospel values for the common good.

 

May we let go of our anxieties of earthly things, and love things heavenly. May we leave behind all that is not pleasing to God’s Son, who therefore became a child of man, so that he might help us one day understand, and become children of God. Amen.

Vivekananda's Way

 

Proper 19B Vivekananda’s Way

How very good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity! Psalm 133

 

September 11, 2001 was a day, among other things, that saw the most unity across the nation and around the world that many of us have ever experienced. Given the current state of disunity and polarity, it is almost hard to remember a time when we really truly cared about one another as Americans.

 

In Mark 8:27-38, we hear Jesus ask the pivotal question for us all: Who do you say that I am? Peter gives it a one-word reply, “You are the christos, the anointed, the messhiah, the messiah.” Jesus tells them to tell no one and then let’s them know what will happen to the christos when he arrives in Jerusalem: be will be betrayed, undergo suffering, be rejected, killed, and on the third day rise again. Peter, we are told, rebukes him. No, that cannot be if you are the christos! Peter was expecting a warlord like Joshua or King David, or a redeemer like Cyrus of Persia – someone who would physically and violently drive out the Roman occupational forces. Making sure the rest of the disciples are watching and listening, Jesus rebukes Peter saying, in part, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

Until the time of the early church, a satan was not the devil or even a fallen angel, but simply an adversary or a tester. A satan would test someone, not lead them into sin, to see if they could be distracted from what they are meant to be doing. A satan was a divider, not a uniter. What Jesus appears to be saying is get behind me, follow me and see what it means to be a disciple of mine – pick up your cross and follow me. This is the path of a true christos. I am a uniter, not a divider.

 

Soon after the time of Jesus, however, Christians began to cast as Satan anyone who was “other” than a Christian. In her book, The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels writes, “I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call ‘others’. Satan has, after all, made a kind of profession out of being the ‘other’; and so satan defines negatively what we think of as human…the worldview of many peoples consists essentially of two pairs of binary oppositions: human/nonhuman, and we/they…so that ‘we’ equals ‘human’ and ‘they’ equals ‘nonhuman.’ [Pagels pxviii] From the earliest days of the church Christians began to see all non-Christians as nonhuman. Despite Jesus urging his followers to reconcile before coming before God’s altar, and to love and pray for one another and one’s enemies.

 

There have been those who have followed in the way of Jesus the christos without dehumanizing their opponents: St Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther King Jr. are two who come to mind. “Their religious vision inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying for reconciliation – not damnation – of those who opposed them...I hope my research may illuminate for others, as it has for me, the struggle within Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that ‘otherness’ is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine.” [Pagels p. 184] This illuminates Jesus’s telling Peter his mind is on human things, not on divine things.

 

Every anniversary of 9/11/2001 sends me back to a Welcome Address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago, at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, a kind of World’s fair. It was delivered by the representative from India, Swami Vivekananda:

 

Sisters and Brothers of America,

 

It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us. I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of the millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects.

 

My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of bearing to different lands the idea of toleration. I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.’

 

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world, of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: ‘Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me.’ Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

 

How ironic is it that Vivekananda delivered this on September 11^th, 1893. Imagine how different the world would be today had we all taken Vivekananda’s words to heart – if even just Christians would take these words, which surely echo those of Jesus the Christos, to heart.

 

How very good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity! Jesus calls us to get behind him, to follow him, to be a uniter not a divider, to learn that to see anyone as “other” is dehumanizing, that to see all persons as human is divine – that to understand the difference between ‘otherness’ that is evil, and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine. May God help us one day to sound the death-knell of all we/they, human/non-human fanaticism once and for all.

Amen.

In Memoriam - Eric Steven Weiss

 

In Memoriam

Eric Steven Weiss

1950-2021

 All sickness is home sickness. –  Writes Dianne Connelly

We come from Love. We return to Love. Love is all around. God is Love. – Pierre Wolff

All of Life is a homecoming, a coming home to Love. – KA Kubicek

 

Beginning way back in our life together, Eric and I often spoke of such things. We shared a spiritual journey. When his cancer in the need for a liver transplant, we talked for hours on the phone about life, death, gratitude, hope, and Love – central themes for our respective religious backgrounds. We also talked about music, the day’s political upheavals, and family life. After the transplant the change in Eric’s spirit seemed palpable to me. Pretty much all other topics faded into the background as he would talk about his new lease on life to spend with Lois, their children and grandchildren. Each day he felt was precious. Come what may, he would say, he was grateful for just one more day.

 

We met in September 1968 as Freshmen at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. Four years of excitement, some hard work, and some risky and even dangerous behavior. He was the roommate of my High School Tennis Doubles Partner, David Barans. This was how we found out we each had alternative names:

 

Eric was called The Kid…I the Chief. After four years, I ended up playing drums in the Outerspace Band and Eric emerged as our manager. He managed to get us into some iconic venues: Jack’s on Mass Ave, CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City….and oh yes, The Warwick Inn with its poster sized photo on the wall of The World Champion Chinchilla. Managing us proved more difficult. We were a headstrong bunch of unmanageable musicians. That he succeeded at all was a miracle and an early sign of his perseverance.

 

There are a lot of directions I could go with this remembrance, but it’s our conversations on the spiritual dimension of life and Eric’s cars that bring it all together for me.

 

First, there was his Chevy SS Super Sport which like the two of us had a name, ironic as it was: The Storm Trooper. And I and one or two others from Trinity were in it the night he totaled it on the FDR while showing a few of us “The City.” His cousin Alan rescued us.

 

The Storm Trooper was followed by a green Firebird. An uncharacteristic Saab nick-named the Slobbbb came next. For the band, he found us a Checker Station Wagon which could hold some gear and five of us from town to town playing gigs. I swear that car could drive itself.

 

Then it came. One day he asked me to drive him to Hawley Massachusetts to buy a used car. We didn’t know it, but the car was at a Buddhist temple and a community young men who were devotees of a Tibetan Lama, Dodrupchen Rinpoche. It happens the Rinpoche was visiting America for the first time and at this very place where the white Oldsmobile was living. Before purchasing the car, we were given a private audience with Dodrupchen and his sidekick, Lama Jingtze. During this audience we sat down in front of a shrine and the Rinpoche taught us an ancient mantra which I have never forgotten. Only after this transcendent experience could we drive off with the car. Had Eric not found this particular car we would never have met this most Holy spiritual guide. I still use the mantra often, and consider it a gift from Eric to this day.

 

The years 1980-83 we were both in school in NYC: he in Law School, while I was in Seminary. We would compare notes on our school life, and I that’s when I attended Gabe’s Bar Mitzvah. We were finally launching our adult vocations. Our mutual love of music, however, always remained the glue. Music, that mysterious universal language that is difficult to describe, but which can propel the musician and the listener to new dimensions of the spirit. Kurt Vonnegut once said we have been given one good idea so far: to be merciful. Perhaps, he said, we may get a second good idea, and what it is he could not guess. But Vonnegut was sure that somehow music is the second good idea being born.

 

All of which is to say, we shared a yearning for the spiritual life, and music had given us rare times when that which is utterly other and beyond this world would break in: moments charged with soul.

 

Eric shared with me the beauty Jewish life, and I would in turn, at his request, share who Jesus the Jew was for me. In our conversations, Jesus emerges not as a dividing line between our two sacred traditions, but the hinge that forever joins us all as people who serve the same God - in whose service is perfect freedom.

 

Before the liver transplant, Eric made me promise to be here for this day if things did not turn out well. Fortunately for all of us, it turned better than could be expected, and we all were gifted a few more wonderful years with our dear friend, manager, spiritual fellow traveler and loving husband, father and grandfather. Today we are here to give thanks for these times we have had together.

 

Eric now knows better than I can ever say that indeed, we come from Love, we return to Love, and Love is all around. He has been and remains a significant part of the love that surrounds us, just as we will eternally surround him with our love every day.

 

All of life is a homecoming. Eric has gone home. In the grand scheme of things, we will not be far behind. What a gift Eric has been and remains. Now it is time for us to share Eric with everyone we meet, everyone we know, everyone we love.

 

Because Eric was Love personified – the Love of God, HaShem, the Love that sent us here, and the Love that calls us home. Amen.

 

Eric Steven Weiss

 

 

Be Opened Proper 18B

 Be Opened!

“Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! ... He will come and save you.’

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped…” -Isaiah 35:4-6

 

Mark 7:24-37. A man and a woman approach Jesus in what might be called a “Boarderland.” It is territory that was once part of Israel that has now been designated by Rome as part of Syria. It is very possible these people are Canaanites. The woman’s daughter has an unclean spirit. The man is deaf. We don’t know their names. But they know who Jesus is. Which will emerge in chapter eight as the central question in Mark’s gospel. It is a question for all of us: Who do you say that I am? As we will see, the answer to this question is more difficult and complex than we allow ourselves to think that it is. 

 

The woman is fearful of heart. Her daughter is not well. Once again, Jesus is off by himself trying to get a break. To rest. He did not want anyone to know where he was, but could not escape notice. Somehow, she ends up in the house and begs Jesus to cast the unclean spirit out of her daughter. Jesus, who often exhibits a heart of compassion, in this instance seems to blow her off, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He appears to call her a dog.

 

I remember leading book group at a parish in Connecticut and this story came up. Everyone in the group was horrified. To the point of insisting that there was no way Jesus would call anyone, especially a desperate mother, a dog. Jesus is just not that rude. For centuries before Jesus, in Greek, Roman and even Israelite worlds, however, ‘dog’ was a common insult. Furthermore, a close reading of the gospels reveals Jesus telling adversaries things like they better get with his new kingdom program or end up with a millstone tied around their necks and tossed to the bottom of the sea – surely an archetype solution for Godfathers everywhere! Jesus can be other than open and loving, accepting and inviting.

 

It may help to understand that this is the woman’s story, not Jesus’s. He’s tired. He’s trying to get away from all the hard work of feeding people, walking on water to save his helpless disciples, and healing great crowds of people. This gentile woman, which simply means she is not Jewish, has what might be called chutzpah! She barges in on Jesus’s quiet time and begs him to do what she has heard he does best. Is there no rest for the weary, he must be thinking? Evidently, there is not! He tries to discourage her, dismissing her as a dog.

 

I once tried to convert to Judaism. Rabbi Stanley Kessler in West Hartford, Connecticut not only tried to discourage me, he succeeded. He admitted, it was what he is supposed to do to see how committed I was to converting. By custom, he is meant to discourage me three times. In the end I was disappointed, but understood all his reasons as to why I should recommit myself to Jesus. “After all, Kirk, we worship the same God as Jesus did.”

 

What is admirable about this story, however, is that the woman is not discouraged. Is that all you’ve got, she seems to say. I’ve been called worse. But my daughter still needs the kind of help only you can give. So, she responds, “But Sir,” oh, so polite, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs!” Brilliant! The story turns on her response. She has captured Jesus’s attention and imagination. She’s right, he seems to think. There are no days off in my Father’s kingdom. “For saying that you may go,” he says, “– the demon has left your daughter.” And it was so. Please note, not because Jesus came to his senses. Her daughter is made well because of what her mother said – to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. She held her ground. She held her daughter’s ground. And it made a difference. We will do well to remember this story as we see, and we will see, women and girls in Afghanistan , Texas, at home and abroad, stand their ground to be treated with dignity, justice, and for who they are – not for who they are not.

 

Then, while still in the region of the Decapolis, ten Greco-Roman cities outside of Israel, an unspecified “they” brought him a deaf man who also had a speech impediment. Showing humility as well as well as protecting the man’s dignity, Jesus takes him off in private away from the crowd. This time, without hesitation, he puts his fingers in the man’s ears, spits and touches his tongue. Then he looks up to heaven, sighs, and says, “Ephphatha!” Which means, “Be opened.”

 

“And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’”

 

Now, if only Jesus, or anyone at all really, could make those among us who can hear and can speak to really listen to common sense, we too would be as astonished and excited as the crowd who welcomed the man back into their community -into their world. If only all of us could adopt a spirit of “Ephphatha” and “Be Opened” to one another – friends and enemies alike, just how astonishing might that be!

 

It would be no mistake of storyteller Mark to share a story of Jesus being opened, by the gentile woman, to help others beyond his own people and follow it with the story of Jesus saying, “Ephphatha,” Be Opened, to the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment.

 

It is no stretch to imagine that for Mark we are all the man who needed to be opened. We all need to really listen to one another, and speak without the impediment of unkind speech. And, we are all the woman and need to advocate with perseverance for the desperate needs of others, here and around the world, and, on behalf of the Earth itself. To really persevere and not be discouraged in our advocacy. What she said to Jesus was the equivalent of Ephphatha, for what she said opened Jesus to a broader and deeper understanding of his mission. If Jesus sometimes needs to be opened, how much more do we?

 

That we all may be opened to the desperate needs of all others, and the world; that we may persevere in advocating for all who need help of any kind, anywhere; may God, his Son and his Holy Spirit help us all. Amen

 

Religious Speech 17B

 

Proper 17B Religious Speech

I have spent much of the past 14 days reacquainting myself with the nature and meaning of scripture with assistance from Karen Armstrong’s remarkable achievement, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts (Alfred Knopf, New York:2019) – a history of religious speech, specifically as it has emerged from ancient Israel, India and China. Speech. The sacred texts of most if not all civilizations are meant to be read aloud, chanted or sung in a community setting or ritual. Our tendency to study a text quietly, as individuals, and apply modern understandings of history and science to tease out the meaning of a specific text flies in the face of how these scriptures were meant to be experienced.

 

Sacred texts are understood to have “being” and life. They are meant to transform life. “The Word of God is living and active!” [Heb 4:12] Sacred Scriptures mean to lead us and inspire us to change and radical transformation amidst the challenges and crises that surround us, to imagine what can be, and to bind us together as a community. To do all of this they comment on past predicaments, and then must be allowed to speak directly to current predicaments and crises. As new crises arise, the narratives and myths are constantly revised to meet new challenges. So, Sacred Scriptures are always a work in progress open to new interpretation as necessary to address new circumstances. Scriptures, narrative, myth and poetry, seek to help the listener to discover that which is constant and essential to human life. It can be said that religious language, indeed all language as metaphor, seeks to make life meaningful, and that thus we create the world in which we live by means of speech.

 

For instance, the Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song of Solomon, is a group of love poems, possibly gathered together in one book to be recited or sung at weddings. It is portrayed as a conversation between a man and a woman. In chapter 2 verses 8-13 the woman hears the man’s voice declare that a recent crisis is coming to an end:

"Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

for now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come…”

 

Perhaps this declares an end to loneliness, but could also refer to one of the periods of exile Israel experienced, or even a community’s sense of abandonment by God. The Song of Songs has often been understood as a conversation between God and God’s people, with God declaring undying love despite all challenges of the present situation. Addressing the present, it would be no stretch to think of the “winter” to be the ongoing threat of nuclear winter, or the current Climate Crisis declaring that one day flowers will once again flourish and our singing of hymns and songs to the God of all creation will once again be heard throughout the land. Perhaps if we would sing the Song of Songs, we would find ways to bind the world community together to seek ways out of a crisis created largely out of our conspicuous consumption of fossil fuels.

 

Then in Mark Chapter Seven we hear a dispute. After episodes of feeding and healing large groups of people, Jesus and his now dozens of disciples pause to share a meal with one another. Such meals are themselves sacred and the foundation of Biblical religion. Some Pharisees seemingly travel all the way from Jerusalem in the south to Galilee in the north to lodge a complaint: that Jesus’s disciples do not wash their hands before meals “according to the traditions of the elders?” Jesus recognizes this as a trick question right away and calls them out as hypocrites – literally actors or posers.

 

Oh yeah! I will see you and raise you tenfold. He first appeals to the prophet Isaiah, remembering that prophets were first and foremost temple priests acting as social critics:

 

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

He concludes, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.”

 

There was no commandment in all the 613 commandments in Torah to wash hands before a meal (sorry, parents!). Most of Israel, including the Sadducees in Jerusalem, did not wash hands before a meal. Jesus says you just made that up. Furthermore, in verses strangely omitted by the lectionary, he accuses them of not Honoring Thy Father and Mother by another clever practice the Pharisees made up. Ouch! Finally, he wraps up by saying that nothing that goes into the body defiles the body, but rather only that from within, from within the human heart, do evil intentions come: “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things that come from us are what defile us and others.” No amount of handwashing can change this.

 

His accuses the Pharisees of mishandling the sacred texts and then simply make things up which contribute to evil intentions. That is, listening to untrue and unfaithful speech like that which you and your fellow Pharisees do is what damages human relations. We listen to the Word of God which is living and true to guide us through the current unpleasantness of the corrupt and corrupting military occupation by Rome along with the complicity of some of our leaders in Jerusalem. He then retires to a house in the region of Tyre to get away from it all, which of course is impossible, and leaves it to the crowd, the Pharisees and all of us to ponder just what this episode is meant to tell us.

 

For six days each day after an early morning run, I would sit near the beach, watch the waves coming in and going out, the occasional pod of dolphin diesel by, and modern-day Sun Worshipers standing with their smartphones high in the air to take photos or video of the sunrise to assure themselves the Sun once rose and might again. I would scribble a few notes and try to make sense of what has been going on all around us in this time of the Pandemic. Unwittingly, perhaps, or by divine inspiration, the last day at the beach I penned what may be one way to apply Jesus’s response to our current predicament and attendant crises:

Bethany Beach Entry #5-6    08/17-19/2021

“I must down to the seas again…”

No “go” as Maesfield wrote it, 

But as most have learnt it!

Yet, “go” we must it seems

As side by side down the beach

A Yoga class saluting the rising Sun

While fifty yards further

Beach Boot Camp makes it burn

Namaste vs grunts and shouts

Whilst most sit at the water’s edge

Quietly listen to the sound of the 

Gently rolling waves

The running tide which cannot be denied

Clouds flying overhead

Each morning a low hanging 

Line of small transparent clouds diesel by

The rising Sun

Like the pods of bottle-nosers

Who leap to our utter delight

Down to the seas

Makes us smile

Say “Good morning” to strangers

Nod to one another as we run 

Opposing directions

On the boardwalk

We discover we are 

Created to welcome 

One another

The Other

This feels good, makes us smile

Until we allow the chattering class

Make us feel afraid of 

One Another

Bash one another

Destroy one another

The Earth

And all its creatures

The seas remind us

To practice kindness

Joy

To stop each time we think

To bash someone

The Other

Stop

Reset

Be mindful

Grateful

Positive

Kind

We become

What we say and do

 

After spending three or four hours each day this past week at the Franciscan Priory in Ellicott City, I recall the words of St. Francis about preaching: “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” The language we use and the things we do create the world we live in. Amen.

 

Abide In My Love - The Eucharistic Life

 Abide in My Love - John 6:35, 41-51

Chapters 13 through 17 of John are by far the longest treatment of the Last Supper of any of the four gospels. These five chapters proclaim the heart of the Good News for John. And yet, have we ever noticed that from the opening of chapter 13, where Jesus strips down, gets on his knees, and washes feet, to chapters 15 through 17, where he does some mighty fine speechifying, in all of this longest portrayal of his last night with those he now calls friends, there is scarcely a mention of bread and none of wine? It’s as if John decides that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and even Paul have covered the blessings over the bread and the wine more than adequately, and I will, says John, tease out what it really means to “do this in remembrance of me,” to live a Eucharistic life.

 

Enter our words from chapter 6, where John appears to set the institution of the Last Supper. That is, to place the institution in the midst of Jesus’ ministry and day-to-day life. The chapter begins with the feeding of “about five thousand” people with a few loaves of bread and some fish. John pictures Jesus before a hungry crowd, a crowd that has taken to boats to cross the sea to find the One who is going about the countryside doing marvelous and miraculous things. They have heard about water becoming wine at a wedding reception in Cana. Some heard from the Samaritan woman herself about living water, and how she became the first person in John to recognize Jesus as the One who is to come. The One who takes, blesses, breaks, and gives away bread. The very same way we still take, bless, break, and give away bread in the Holy Eucharist.

 

Later, in the synagogue in Capernaum, he says astonishing things like, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” He also says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” And he says again, “I am the bread of life… the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” I am the bread. Feed on me. And as it was in his hometown synagogue, the people are now scandalized, forgetting all about the twelve baskets of leftovers after feeding the five thousand. “We know his mother and his father!” they say. “How dare he say these things!”

 

He urges them to stop complaining. I cannot help saying these things for I am the manna. I am the bread of the Eucharistic meal. I give my life, my body for the life of the world. All this in chapter 6 is John’s institution of the Eucharist: bread is taken, blessed, broken, and given away – just as on Good Friday, Jesus will be taken, blessed by his Father, broken by us, and given away, handing over his Spirit to his community as his last act of charity, generosity, and love. Yet, it’s all too much, the love that’s shining all around him. It’s all too much.

 

Now jump ahead to the Last Supper chapters, especially chapter 15, where Jesus makes two even more astonishing declarations about who we are and whose we are. First, Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” It is impossible for us to imagine just how much the Father loves Jesus, let alone begin to grasp the reality that Jesus, in turn, loves us that much! We hear it, we read it, year after year after year. We want to believe it is true. That just as God says Jesus is his Beloved Son at his baptism, so Jesus says that we too are God’s Beloved. That God is well pleased with us. We hear this, and like the people in the synagogue, we wonder, “How can this be? How can we abide in this love of his?”

 

Jesus then doubles down on this love, as if the Great and Second commandments to love God and love neighbor are not quite enough to get to the heart of living a Eucharistic life. Jesus issues a new commandment: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” That, as Led Zeppelin reminds us, is a Whole Lotta Love. Love. For their Greek-speaking, Greek-hearing audiences, Paul and the four evangelists had a number of words to choose from. There is eros, that frenzied, passionate, ecstatic, and all-consuming love. There is philia, the love of equal for equal, friend for friend. But they all chose the word agape, which speaks of love in which the one who is loved is raised to the level of the one who loves. Jesus’ love for us raises us to the level of his love, just as he has been raised to the level of the Father’s love. We need to ponder the depth and breadth of this love we are to become as we abide in his love.

 

About this love, he says, “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.” He speaks not of immortal life or a future in heaven. Rather, this is “a metaphor for living now in the unending presence of God,”[1] what he sometimes calls the Kingdom of God. John places the institution of the Eucharist way back in the day-to-day life of Jesus and the things he does for others: feeding, healing, teaching, sharing meals. These are the things, and “greater things than these” which we are to do to abide in his love.

 

He calls us his Beloved. To accept our belovedness is to abide in his love. Once we accept this, when we look upon the host at communion, we no longer see just bread or the body of Christ. Rather, we are called to say, “Amen,” as we receive what we are to become.[2] What we are to become is the Body of Christ, and this is to shape our lives every moment of every day. Eucharist is not what Jesus does on one night near the end of his life, or what we do on Sundays. It is what he did, and we are to do, every moment of every day.[3] This is what it means to abide in his love: to accept our belovedness and live a Eucharistic life as he lived. Eucharist means “thanksgiving” – lives of thanks and giving – giving his love to others.

 

Nothing can be more important or more powerful than accepting this Eucharistic life. Every time bread is taken, blessed, broken, and given to us, he calls us once again to abide in his love so we may live his love for others – all others, no matter what. This, he says, is eternal life. Here and now. Every day. By placing the institution of the Eucharist in the midst of Jesus’ life, not on his last night among us, John suggests that our participation in the flesh and blood, the bread and the wine, belongs to all the days of the Christian life, not just Sundays or special days, but every day we are to share the love and the abundant presence of God in the world – the whole world.

 

May God help us all to abide in this love of Christ, and of the Father. Amen.

 

The Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek is currently Priest in Charge at Christ Church, Rock Spring Parish, Forest Hill, Md. Christ Church is a Small but Mighty parish, and together we are rediscovering what our Lord has in store for our future. He has spent over 35 years in Parish Ministry in all shapes and sizes of parishes, and for 15 years worked with The Episcopal Church Office of Stewardship and TENS. He often uses storytelling, music, and guitar in proclaiming the Good News. Kirk also plays drums in On The Bus, a DC Metro Area Grateful Dead tribute band. All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well!

 

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[1] Gail O’Day and Susan Hylen, John (Westminster John Knox, Louisville: 2006) p. 75.

[2] Aidan Kavanaugh, “Christ Dying and Living Still” in The Sacraments (Alba House, New York: 1981) p. 271-272.

[3] Ibid. O’Day and Hylen, p. 79.