Just Breathe Advent 1C

  Just Breathe

“…cast off the works of darkness…put on the armor of light…” (Collect for Advent 1)

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise…” (Jeremiah 33:14)

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you…”  (Psalm 25:1)

“…stand up and raise your heads…Look at the fig tree and all the trees…Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…Be alert at all times, praying…”  (Luke 21:25-36)

 

Lots of imperatives on this first Sunday of Advent – New Year’s Day for Christians around the world! On top of the busy-ness that marks life between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, it appears as if there is a lot of work to be done in Advent to. With cards to get out, presents to purchase, trees to decorate, cookies to bake and all the rest, how on Earth are we to have the time to cast off, put on, lift up our heads, look at trees, be on guard, and be alert? Oh yes, all the time praying?

 

Or, as Paul neatly sums it up, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing…” (I Thess 5:16-17)

 

All the while, as Jeremiah and Luke’s Jesus point out, “The days are surely coming,” and indeed, already seem to be here with all kinds of calamities in the heavens and on earth seeming to surround us on all sides, every minute of every day. Why, even gift giving is under siege. Every year we believe it is our patriotic duty to purchase more and more gifts so that at the end of the Christmas Season when we hear that this year’s purchases surpassed the previous year’s, we can feel proud. But we are already being prepared for disaster even in our rush to snatch up all good gifts around us because the very merchandise we need to purchase to eclipse that sacred number are stranded on cargo ships for which there are not enough laborers in the field to unload them; not enough trucks and drivers to deliver them; not enough stockroom workers to put them on the shelves.

 

Do we even have time to hear what Jesus is saying? “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” Dissipation: the squandering of money or resources, often in the pursuit of happiness. Is it possible that being urged to shop until we drop ultimately does not lead to happiness? That it may even lead to missing that day, that moment in time when Jesus will return, to fulfill the promises made to Israel and the House of Judah, and to you and to me? To return in glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, and raise us to eternal life immortal?

 

Advent, it seems, is to be a time of prudent preparation and joyous expectation! All the usual holiday hustle and bustle simply diverts us from the true gifts of the season: an awareness of the nearness of God and God’s love, and compassion for all the world. All the rest, he says, is a trap!

 

The Good News lies in “Being Alert.” Which means praying. Praying without ceasing. It seems like that may be difficult to do. Yet, we are those people who pray week in and week out for the “inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” To inspire means to breathe in. Each time we breathe in, we inspire the breath, the spirit, the ruach of God. The same breath that hovered over the face of the waters in the beginning. The same breath that God breathed into a handful of moist dust to give life to the first person – a person created in the image of God. The most basic form of prayer is what we all do without ceasing: breathe.

 

The most basic form of prayer is to be attentive to our breathing. Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment. Breathing out, I know it is a wonderful moment. Present Moment/Wonderful Moment. Letting go of dissipation, letting go of worry, just breathing is the prayer that helps us to be attentive to the very spirit of God, the Spirit that is in us which gives us life and inspires us. Attentiveness to our breathing can bring us the very happiness and joy we seek from all the dissipations and distractions of the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

In 2015, Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent a week in dialogue with the Dali Lama at his exiled home in India. The Dali Lama has been a displaced person since fleeing the Communist Chinese as a child. Their dialogue is recorded in their book, Joy. Near the end of their time together Bishop Tutu offered the following blessing which pretty well sums up all the imperatives we are given for Advent:

“Dear Child of God, you are loved with a love that nothing can shake, a love that loved you long before you were created, a love that will be there long after everything has disappeared. You are precious, with a preciousness that is totally quite immeasurable. And God wants you to be like God. Filled with life and goodness and laughter—and joy.

“God, who is forever pouring out God’s whole being from all eternity, wants you to flourish. God wants you to be filled with joy and excitement and ever longing to be able to find what is so beautiful in God’s creation: the compassion of so many, the caring, the sharing. And God says, ‘Please, my child, help me. Help me to spread love and laughter and joy and compassion. And you know what, my child? As you do this—hey, presto—you discover joy. Joy, which you had not sought, comes as the gift, as almost the reward for this non-self-regarding caring for others.’”       [Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, Generosity of Spirit, 11/29/2018]

 

This Advent may we so continually and ceaselessly be attentive of each breath with which God makes us, wants us and needs us to be like God: filled with life, goodness, laughter and joy, so that we may always be those people who help God to spread love, forgiveness, compassion and joy to others – all others - all the time. Amen.

 

 

 

Christ the King Sunday 2021 B

 

What Kind of King is This, Anyway?

In one corner, wearing the black trunks, is Pilate, a political bureaucrat representing Tiberius Caesar Augustus, the second Emperor, King and God of the Roman Empire, exercising all the forms of institutional power at his disposal: domination, violence, economic exploitation and capital punishment to keep the Israelite colony calm, subservient and profitable for the folks back home. [John 18:33-37]

 

In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, is the Nazarene, Jesus, first born of the dead, ruler of the kings of the earth, representing his Father in heaven, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who was, and is, and is to come, who loves us and frees us, and makes us a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen! [Revelation 1: 4-8]

 

All of which sets before us on this Last Sunday of the Christian Year two very different understandings of power, and the central struggle for power between earthly kingships that rule by force over against the power of love, justice and freedom that is the way, the truth and life. In the scene that spans from John 18:28-19:16, Pilate is overmatched by one who comes to us to testify to the truth. All Pilate can respond to Jesus’s testimony concedes the match: “What is truth?”

 

But first, Pilate wants to know if Jesus is a king, By the Last Sunday of the year we are those people who know that like any good rabbi, Jesus responds with his own questions: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” To which Pilate replies, “I am not a Jew, am I?” Technically, No, he is a citizen of Rome – but we know in the end he allows himself to be cornered by the Jewish authorities to do their bidding. In the end, Pilate is a Little Man who is eventually relieved of his duty in Jerusalem and recalled to Rome to live out the residue of his small life.

 

So, what kind of king is Jesus? After all this is Christ the King Sunday, established by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in response to growing nationalism, authoritarianism and secularism. Pius XI wanted this feast to inspire the laity, writing, “The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths, will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal ... He must reign in our minds…in our wills…in our hearts…in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.” [i]

 

Given the state of the world today, this still seems like a justifiable feast to observe and to ponder just what sort of king Jesus is – is being the operant verb. Personally, I find myself recalling that day years ago that I entered the Bath Abbey in Bath, England, where one finds alongside the Roman era ruins a simple brochure that offers the best answer to this central question of faith I have ever experienced.

 

 

‘Jesus was born in an obscure Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago. During his first 30 years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary home. For the next three years he went about teaching people about God and healing sick people by the shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men to be his helpers.

 

“He had no money. He wrote no books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being nailed to a cross at the age of 33.

 

“Today, nearly 2 billion people throughout the world worship Jesus as divine - the Son of God. Their experience has convinced them that in the wonders of nature we see God as our loving Father; in the person of Jesus we discover God as Son; and in our daily lives we encounter this same God as Spirit. Jesus is our way to finding God: we learn about Jesus by reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament and we meet him directly in our spiritual experience.

 

“Jesus taught us to trust in a loving and merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He taught that we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father, and that we should therefore treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness. He lived out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing the sick - a sign of God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to death.

 

“Jesus' actions alone would not have led him to a criminal's death on the cross: but his teaching challenged the religious and moral beliefs of his day. People believed, and do to this day, that he can lead us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed means of bringing self-centered people back to God. Jesus also foretold that he would be raised to life again three days after his death. When, three days after he had died on the cross, his followers did indeed meet him alive again; frightened and defeated women and men became fearless and joyful messengers.

 

“Their message of the Good News about Jesus is the reason Bath Abbey exists. More importantly, it is the reason why all over the world there are Christians who know what it means to meet the living Jesus, and believe that He can lead us all to heal and repair a broken world.

 

“May your time in Bath Abbey be a blessing to you, and also to us in the church.”

(used with permission & thanks)

 

In the end, it was a Knock Out in Round Three for the Nazarene in the White Trunks, on this The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe!

 

May God for us, whom we call Father, God alongside us, whom we call Son, and God within us, whom we call Spirit, hold and enliven us to see your Goodness, your Love in all that is, seen and unseen, that we may testify to Your Truth as a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth you have given us to tend and preserve as Your Creation. Amen.

---

[i] Kershaw, Ian (2016). To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949. New York

Apocalypse Now and Always 28B

 

Apocalypse Now and Always

After teaching in the Temple, Jesus and some of his companions, step outside. Someone says, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” [Mark 13:1-8] 

They and we are not meant to understand this as much as imagine the majestic Second Jerusalem Temple being razed to the ground. It was the center of the universe. The Holy of Holies surrounded the Ark of the Covenant, surrounded by the Great Hall of Sacrifices ongoing day after day after day, surrounded by Temple Courtyards with its bazars, animal booths, and currency exchanges, and finally surrounded by the Great Rampart Walls of the City on the Hill itself! It was the stable and safety physical embodiment of Torah Life, Torah Existence, Torah Identity. How can it be destroyed? And when will it happen? 

There will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, false messiahs, and there will be many who will try to lead you astray. Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, families torn apart. Yet, Jesus seems to say, pay no attention to any of it. These are birth pangs of a new age, a new consciousness. Nothing but distractions. Set your minds on God. 

This is all just the beginning of what many call Mark’s “Mini-Apocalypse.” Think back to Advent 1, November 29, 2020, in the very midst of a surging Pandemic Apocalypse, before there were any vaccines, cases and deaths were skyrocketing all around us. It was on that Sunday that we heard the final verses of Mark’s mini-apocalypse: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” [Mark 13:32-37] 

It’s not about when. Because “when” is always “now.” It always seems as if:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.    – Wm. Butler Yeats, The Second Coming 

Now is precisely when we need to Wake Up! Now is when we need to, in the words of Hebrews, “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”   [Hebrews 10:23-25] 

To wake up, to keep awake, is precisely when we need to remember Saint Paul and not look around us, not ask when or where, not be afraid; rather we are to hold onto faith, hope and exercise acts of charity. We are to remember that the first Temple is long gone. The Second Temple is long gone. All temples we erect to enshrine the familiar will pass away; will give way to a coming new age of faith, hope and charity – the reign of God. He who has promised is faithful! 

We meet together under any and all circumstances, not to preserve the past, but to anticipate the promised kinder and more just future for all people, all creatures and all the Earth itself. To be God’s people is to be a community of faith, hope and charity. It’s not easy. It’s always risky. The best cannot and must not lack conviction in the face of the worst who are always full of “passionate intensity.” 

We know what that looks like. And we know what the faith, hope and charity of God looks like – for we have seen it all in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. And we know we cannot persevere on our own. We desperately do need to meet together, however and whenever we can. Even if it is to be by virtual means. 

We need one another to be able to “hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,” as we pray this twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost – that day when the Spirit flowed into and all around the very companions of Jesus who were hiding in a house from the apocalyptic death and destruction that had gathered all around them after seeing their Lord crucified, executed by the state, the Empire, the minions of Caesar. Their faith, their hope and their charity has continued down to this day – not without wrong turns and truly sinful behaviors – in Christ’s Body, the Church. 

He seems to say, look at the majestic monuments we erect for and to ourselves. Then wake up! For life is not to be found in the monuments, nor in the stones that build them. Life is from the Spirit of God which continues to blow and breathe through those who hold fast to meeting with one another, and living lives of faith, hope and charity; abide these three; the greatest of these is charity and Love for others. All others. All the time. That’s the only time that matters. Now. Right now. Apocalypse Now and Always! 

We may wish to ponder just why it is we are given these apocalyptic visions from Mark as bookends on the first Sunday of the year, and now the last Sunday of Ordinary time. Amen.

 

For All the Saints 2021 B

 

For All the Saints 2021

November 1^st, transferred to today, is All Saints Day. We pray, “Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.”

 

Yes, we are meant to follow Jesus who calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea. When we are still and listen, we can still hear his voice calling out, “Follow me.” The Saints we are to remember on this Feast of All Saints are a diverse and often unusual group of those who in the days of decision did follow Jesus.

 

One of the earliest died in Rome on August 10^th, 258 ce, at the age of 32. He was a deacon for the Pope Sixtus II in Rome. He was archdeacon in charge of the treasury and to care for the indigent and poor of the city. When a Roman prelate ordered him to turn over the treasury, he spent several days distributing all of it to those in need, then gathered his poor, widows, orphans and indigent charges and presented them to the authorities saying, "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church's crown." For his Christ-like care for others and defiance in the face of injustice, Laurence was ordered to be tortured and killed.

 

Another of our Saints once said, “Slavery is the next thing to hell… I grew up like a neglected weed, – ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented … When I found I had crossed that [Mason-Dixon] line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven … I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

 

That, of course, was Maryland’s very own Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), included in our calendar of Saints. She risked her life to save the lives of countless others from the very hell in which she grew up. All the while singing songs which have become familiar staples of American Spirituals such as Follow the Drinking Gourd, Steal Away and Wade in the Water – songs which conveyed coded information to those slaves attempting to escape to Freedom as they remembered that Moses had done for the slaves escaping Pharaoh’s Egypt. Herself a deeply religious Christian, Ms. Tubman was often referred to as “Moses” by those who survived their own journey to Freedom.

 

Our next Saint lived during the reign of Richard I, who said of the then Bishop of Lincoln, “Truly, if all the prelates of the Church were like him, there is not a king in Christendom who would dare to raise his head in the presence of a bishop.” Lincoln was the largest diocese in England at the time, and Hugh (1140-1200), a Carthusian monk, was not eager to become bishop. Yet, once appointed he arranged for a number of well-educated monks to handle the day-to-day church affairs while he tirelessly traveled around the bounds of Lincoln attending to the diocese’s most needy people. He would risk his own life in the streets to protect the Jewish population from the anti-Semitic riots that sought to destroy them, their homes and their businesses. He was one of the few who would minister to and touch the growing population of lepers. Of his work among them Hugh said, “St Martin’s kiss cleansed the leper’s body, but the leper’s kiss cleans my soul.” He had the courage to confront and rebuke King Richard  I, no doubt due to his Carthusian training whose motto is, “The Cross stands whilst the world revolves.” Canonized quickly in 1220, Hugh of Lincoln became the patron saint of sick children, sick people, shoemakers and swans.

 

“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have

ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

 

These are the words Sojourner Truth spoke at an early Women’s Rights convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851. She had escaped to freedom with her baby daughter in her arms in 1826. In 1828, she became the first African-American woman to successfully sue a white man to secure the freedom of her son. Born Isabella Baumfree, on the Day of Pentecost, 1843, she became a Methodist and changed her name to Sojourner Truth because she heard the Spirit of God calling her to preach the truth. She preached and spoke out for the rights of women and African-Americans for the rest of her life until she died November 26, 1883 (aged 86). She is the first African-American woman to have her statue in the U.S Capitol, and in 2014 the Smithsonian magazine listed her among the “100 Most Significant Americans of All Time.”

 

These are just a few of the Saints that God almighty has “knit together … in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of his Son Christ our Lord.” May we, by your grace dear Lord, always follow you as they have “in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you.” Amen.

 

 

Days of the Dead Proper 25B

 All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween, means “Saints’ Evening,” the night before All Saints’ Day. Halloween begins three days during which the Church reflects on the lives of those who have gone before us – those who made significant contributions to the Body of Christ, Christ’s Church. It is thought that some of the tricks, treats, costumes and customs with which we are familiar evolved from Celtic harvest festivals.

 

All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls, like the fall season itself, is a time to reflect on the cycles of life and death. And for those who follow in the way of Christ, it is a time to remember that this fleshy, time-bound existence is itself bounded by a greater reality of hope beyond mortality represented and embodied in these saints and souls, a vast company and communion dwelling beyond time and forever.

 

Fr. Sam Portaro, in his reflections on the Saints of the Church, Brightest and Best, observes that laughter is a component of Halloween, “the crazy laughter that comes of surprise and of fear. We would rather not talk about the fear, yet it is the fear we commemorate these latter days of October, when the chill of winter wafts in and around the dying warmth of summer, when the trees and all of nature echo the theme of death. All the little hobgoblins in sheets, emulating the spirit world of ghosts and skeletons, as vampire and all manner of horrid creatures, move us to laughter, for laughter is our way of averting fear.” [Portaro p. 198]

 

Yet, laughter has been in short supply the past two years of a world-wide pandemic amidst an already divided and dangerous world of wars, economic inequalities, and all manner of mortal afflictions, of which we are even more cognizant as the evening news walks us through over-crowded hospital wards of our peers and contemporaries tied to ventilators and therapies hoping to survive; as doctors and nurses experience the very same PTSD symptoms from critical patient overload as many of our fighting men and women experience throughout the world.

 

On Halloween we attempt snicker at death and dress up to disguise ourselves as if we might possibly fool the grim reaper. But we are those people who need not run from our fears. We follow Jesus. The same Jesus who is depicted walking straight ahead to a truly fearful end in Jerusalem. In chapter twelve of Mark, his adversaries are doing anything and everything to trick him with trick questions about paying taxes to Caesar, marriage in the after-life and all manner of ridiculous things to humiliate him and discourage his followers. [Mark 12:28-34] Yet, Jesus keeps feeding hungry crowds, healing all manner of persons from all stations of life of physical, mental and spiritual dis-ease. Jesus is already living in the very kingdom and reign of God that he announces wherever he goes, calling anyone listening and watching to follow him in his fearless journey to Jerusalem.

 

A scribe, one of several groups of people trying to stop him, asks him a question: Which commandment is the first of all? Jesus responds with the Shema Y’Israel: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[Deuteronomy 6:4-9] To which he adds a second: “And in your spare time after loving God with your whole self, the God who loves you and forgives you no matter what, you will also love your neighbor as yourself, as stated long long ago in Leviticus 19:18.”

Unlike his fellow Scribes, Pharisees and Herodians, this scribe replied, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” That is, more important than the power brokers who maintain the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem that along with Rome has monopolized the wealth and economy of all Israel. The Scribe agrees with the warnings of prophets throughout the centuries before Jesus who decried this monopoly and concentration of wealth among the very few in Jerusalem at the social expense of the rest of those who sowed and reaped the fields that fed them; those who fished and raised livestock that fed them; the craftsmen and artisans who clothed them and furnished the homes of the Empire and the Jerusalem aristocracy. This Jesus is the real thing, thinks the scribe. It’s not the rituals but what we do for others that demonstrates that we walk in the Way of the Lord.

 

The text concludes: After that no one dared to ask him any question.

 

To walk in the way of Jesus’s twin commandments of love is to walk in the Way of the Lord. It is just one way in which we seek the Lord with all our hearts. And it is one way that we live in communion with the saints and souls who in their days of decision also walked in the light of Jesus’s twin commandments of love while facing any and all fears.

 

May these days of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls reminds us of who we are and whose we are. As we reflect on the lives of All Saints and All Souls, may we acknowledge, as Sam Portaro urges us, just how hard it was for them, and is for us, to look death in the face and say, “I know you and I shall see you again.” But it is harder still to scan the flickering light of life’s vitality in the face of a dying friend or relative and say, “I know I shall see you again.” [Ibid p.201]

 

May All the Communion of Saints and Souls inspire us to be those people who sustain the virtue of Hope in a world that often presents scant evidence that such Hope is justified. May we dare to hope beyond the constraints of mortality that day by day we might take one step at a time into the Reign of God Jesus calls us to follow. Amen.

It's All In the Questions Proper 25B

 

It’s All In the Questions

Often, we come to our sacred texts looking for answers or directions. We have come to think of The Bible as a kind of cookbook filled with recipes for success in this life, or even worse, a kind of do-it-yourself handbook on how we can get more than we can ever ask for or deserve.

 

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, Priest, and writer on Christian Spirituality, suggests there are three questions we ought to be asking the sacred texts we read: 1. What is God doing here? 2. What does this say about who God is? And 3. What does this say about how we can relate to such a God? To these three I would add a fourth: What question is the text asking us?

 

Our Bible, Hebrew Scriptures, Christian Scriptures and a collection of inter-testamental documents important to both Jews and Christians, is primarily about what God, for generations going back some three or four thousand years, has been doing for us – not so much about what we need to do for God. In our Bible, God is consistently portrayed as redeeming or saving us from ourselves. From the outset in Genesis 1:26 we learn that we are made “in the image of God.” Yet, we constantly miss the mark. Sin, an archery term for missing the target, is the word most often used to describe the human condition. Curiously, despite everything, God is portrayed as continuing to Forgive us and Love us, no matter what.  

 

Take Hebrews, which we have been reading for four weeks now. God, in Hebrews, is in the Word that became flesh and blood in Jesus. Chapter 7 reminds us that once upon a time Israel needed hundreds, even thousands, of families descended from the Levites and the Cohens to operate the Jerusalem Temple’s sacrifices day and night. As a child growing up west of Chicago, as we would drive from our house to my great-aunt Grace’s even further west, we would pass a small oil refinery smack in the middle of a suburb called Melrose Park. You could see flames and smell the chemicals 24/7, any time of day or night as the refinery never rested. So it was in the Temple.

 

Some forty years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, however, Rome burned the Temple to the ground. All the Levites and Cohens were out of a sacred job – a very important job. Important to maintaining a right relationship with the God Israel understood had saved their people over and over again, as Psalm 126 reminds us. It should be observed, that the response of Israel to this tragedy was to ask questions of itself – to scour the sacred texts asking themselves: Where did we go wrong? We must have seriously missed the mark to have suffered this tragedy. It must be our fault. The texts asked them to remember who they are and whose they are.

 

Hebrews asserts that with the continued presence of Jesus we now have a single high priest who, through what he does and says can lead us on the way with no Temple and no need for other priests. We need only the example of what God’s Love and Forgiveness looks like when embodied in a person like one of us. The Word became Flesh and Dwelt among us.

 

Enter chapters 8-10 in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem begins with him asking his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” That’s the question for all of us, isn’t it?  Throughout this journey the disciples have not a clue, witness the episode where they, while Jesus is busy feeding hungry people and healing people from all stations of life of physical, mental and spiritual ailments, the brothers Zebedee, James and John ask to be appointed to positions of power and authority – to sit on Jesus’s right-hand and left. They imagine him sitting on a throne!

 

Jesus replies that we must be servants of all, and in John’s Gospel he is pictured on his last night before his crucifixion getting on his knees and washing the disciple’s feet: the role of the youngest child-slave or servant of the household. This is what it looks like to be created in God’s image.

 

Now, Jesus and his crowd of followers, enter Jericho [Mark 10:46-52].  At the gates to the city is a beggar named Bartimaeus. He is blind. He has heard about this man Jesus and what he does. Immediately we see, if we are listening to the text, that he, unlike the disciples, knows exactly who Jesus is as he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

 

People are annoyed. People from Jericho are tired of his begging day after day, and Jesus’s followers think Jesus is far too important to be bothered by this literal outsider. They try to quiet Bart. Bart’s desperation, however, is more powerful than their attempts to further marginalize him. He cries out again, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stands still and orders the crowd to bring Bartimaeus to him. Bart immediately throws off his only possession in the world, his cloak, and because of his faith, because he knows exactly who Jesus is, he can see. We are meant to see that God is in the welcoming mercy that transforms Bartimaeus, and those of us who can really see and hear what is happening, from an outsider to an insider who follows Jesus to Jerusalem, the Cross and his Resurrection.  

 

Now we know that he already could see what we, the crowd and the disciples could not see. That Jesus is the living image of the God who loves us and forgives us and wills to do everything possible to save us from ourselves – including teaching us not to marginalize people like Bartimaeus, who, unlike the rich young man just two weeks ago could not imagine parting with his possessions to care for the poor and follow Jesus.

 

When I was in Seminary, we visited one of the oldest Synagogues in New York City. The Rabbi invited us to ask questions. One of my classmates asked, “We know what the role of a priest is in our tradition. What is the role of the rabbi in a synagogue congregation?” I will never forget his answer. “The role of the rabbi is to lead and teach others through the stories of God as told in our sacred scriptures in such a way as everyone becomes a rabbi. So, my role is to put myself out of business!” If I hear Hebrews and Mark correctly, I should be feeling uncomfortable right now! With Jesus on our side, we no longer need a kingdom of priests! We are all called to live into being the image of the living God for others.

 

In our texts for today, God is in Jesus’s mercy shared with all people – especially the outsiders. This shows us that God forgives and loves all people, all the time, no matter what. So, what does this say about how we can relate to such a God?

 

Are we called to be insiders like the blind disciples and the rich young man? Or, are we called to be more like the outsider Bartimaeus, who although he is blind, can really see God is right in front of him? May God help us to see more clearly. Amen.

Melchizedek and Servant Ministry Proper 24B

 

Melchizedek and Servant Ministry

“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” says the author of To the Hebrews. Just who is Melchizedek? He is mentioned only twice in the entire Hebrew bible: in Genesis chapter 14, where we are told he is King of Salem, or King of Peace, and again in Psalm 110. Among the Israelite priests who served and maintained the Jerusalem Temple, there was no “Order of Melchizedek.” Yet, Psalm 110 imagined a day when one, a Priest-King like Melchizedek, would mysteriously return as a messiah to restore Israel and “all the nations.”

 

Psalm 110 refers back to Genesis, where after Abram and his forces have won a battle and are collecting the spoils, in rides this mysterious Priest-King Melchizedek, literally “king of righteousness.” He shows up from Salem to offer Abram bread and wine. As a priest of “God Most High,” he blesses Abram: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” Here the text itself is hopelessly ambiguous, for it simply says, “And he gave him one tenth of everything.” A tithe. There is no way to be sure whether it was Abram giving a tithe to Melchizedek, or the other way around.

 

Then Melchizedek disappears until several centuries later in Psalm 110. And does not reappear again for many more centuries until To the Hebrews describes Jesus as “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” As Psalm 110 suggests, this Jesus is also a messianic figure.

 

Which may explain why the disciples, and specifically the Zebedee brothers, James and John, in Mark chapter 10, imagine Jesus sitting on a throne commanding heaven and earth and the entire cosmos. Somehow, they miss the significance of Jesus’s actions, serving the needs of others, and several times placing a child in their midst as an example of his devotion to “little ones”: the poor, strangers, children and even sinners. Instead, the brothers Zebedee demand that Jesus do “whatever we ask of you.” About this time every week through this long stretch of the Mark narrative, I imagine Jesus letting out yet another long sigh.

 

This time, however, he is patient with them, asking just what it is that they want. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” [Mark 10:37] They still do not get it.  “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Sure, we can, they say without thinking. They think his “glory” will be vanquishing the Roman Occupation and sitting on a throne ruling the world! While we, the readers, know his glory is his death upon a Roman Cross, the consequence of having served others, offering his life “as a ransom for many.” [v45]

 

Besides, says Jesus, it’s not for me to say who will sit where, “it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” [v40] The other ten disciples are angry with the Zebedee brothers for attempting to jump the line ahead of them. Lest we think scornfully of them, we all need to remember, the disciples are merely a stand-in literary device at this point for us – for you, for me, and most of all for the church. Patiently, Jesus says you are all imagining me as some sort of Gentile tyrant or warlord! I come to serve, not to be served. “Whoever wishes to be great among you must become your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” [v 43-45] Of all. “All” is my favorite theological word.

 

Now, as our diocese begins the process of seeking to elect a new bishop, and Christ Church Forest Hill looks to what our future might be, we all need to let this sink in. We are all called to be servants. Servant ministry is the model Jesus lives every minute of every day. It is not a particularly glorious life, but it is faithful to the will of God Most High, who sent Melchizedek to bless Abram and serve him a simple meal of bread and wine. Which meal Jesus transforms into a memorial for us all; which meal is meant to remind us that he gathers us here to his table, the altar of his sacrifice as a ransom for many, that we to might be servants of others. All others.

 

I remember how excited I was when I first understood Melchizedek as the archetype of Jesus. Servant ministry without fanfare. He shows up, serves the meal, offers a blessing, and disappears, only to return as Jesus Christ to be  king of peace and king of righteousness. I told one of my mentors while I was still in Seminary that the church is called to a life of Servant Ministry. “It will never sell,” he replied. “People aren’t going to be attracted to become servants.” He said we are all more like John and James Zebedee – we all want power and authority, or at least to be near those with power and authority. It just won’t sell.” I felt crestfallen like the young man last Sunday who left Jesus grieving, my Servant Ministry balloon temporarily deflated.

 

Not so Jesus. As we will see next week, he and the men and women following him come to Jericho where a blind beggar named Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus. The crowd and the disciples try to quiet him. But of course, Jesus says, “Bring him to me.” Jesus is undeterred. He comes to serve, not to be served. Even blind Bartimaeus can see that! But that’s all for next week.

 

The Jesus of To the Hebrews and the Gospel of Mark knows who he is and why he is here. And we are those people who know he is still here, now and forever. Try to imagine what he thinks of how we have interpreted his calling us to “follow him.” I used to have a token in my pocket of a laughing Jesus to remind me whenever I reached into my pocket how silly some of all this we call “church” must look to him. Thank goodness Jesus knows how to laugh!

 

I suggest we ponder this story as we look for a new bishop, and as we think about what our parish will look like one, two, five, or even ten years from now. How can we become more like servants than like the Brothers Zebedee?

 

This day we pray, “Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name.” Knowing what Jesus imagines such “steadfast faith” looks like, what do we need to do to become servants of one another, and others? All others? For that is what we are meant to be! Amen.