When Will We? Last Sunday after the Epiphany C

 When Will We?

In the midst of unfolding war, we are reminded of the Primacy of Love. The story of the Transfiguration[i] ends, “And all were astounded at the greatness of God.” What does that tell us about the Transfiguration of Jesus? His appearance changes. Three witnesses, as unreliable as they may be, see him talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the spiritual formation of God’s people in the long and difficult wilderness experience. Elijah is perhaps the earliest of God’s appointed prophets sent to speak truth to power – to chastise and call Israel’s leadership to return really to the Way of God. They are discussing Jesus’s exodos, his Exodus, his departure that is to be accomplished in Jerusalem – the power hub for Israel, the Temple and Rome to which Jesus has been sent by God to speak truth to power.

 

Peter, James and John hear a voice from a cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen, my Beloved. Listen to him!” So far, the question in Luke has been, “Who is this Jesus from Nazareth?” After all, isn’t the expected and desired anointed one of God supposed to come from Bethlehem, the City of David? Nevertheless, Moses and Elijah are the archetypal consultants for anyone who is anointed, christos, by God to speak Truth to Power. It is no wonder Peter wants to build them some dwellings to keep them around for a while.

 

This is the second time the voice has spoken. We heard it at his baptism by John. This Jesus is sent to be God’s expression of the Primacy of Love in God’s Creation, now transfigured as Love incarnate. His first act after being transfigured is restore a convulsing young man, dismissing an unclean spirit, and the crowd who has been hanging around for at least two chapters, like a Greek chorus proclaim, “Look at the greatness of God!” They look at transfigured Jesus and see God.

 

They all see the God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Transfiguration appears to be the very moment in the story that the young man from a backwater village in the hills of Galilee embodies the very image and power of God. Which image and power is Love.

 

This is no doubt why Moses and Elijah show up in the midst of his prayer time, his quiet time to get away from the crowds and all their demands and all their speculations and all their neediness. Moses and Elijah both see that this is God, this is Love, this is the Love of God incarnate, love become flesh and blood to reveal the Love that is baked into our DNA from before the beginning of time. Little wonder his face and raiments radiate a brightness only Love can shine into this world.

 

The great Franciscan priest and scholar, John Dun Scotus says that sin is not the reason for Christ, love is. For all eternity God willed to love a creature to grace and glory. Before the stars were born, Christ was in the heart of God, “hidden from the foundation of the world” (Colossians 1:26).[ii]

 

In her book, The Primacy of Love, Ilia Delio writes, “God is most deeply actualized not in individual beings, but in the multitude of love they exist to enact. Albert Nolan posits that it is better to say that the mystery we call God is personal rather than a person. In this sense, God does not exist as an absolute being in love with a separate existence, but rather God loves in and through our love for one another.”[iii] Which Jesus makes clear is to include love for our enemies.

Given the current state of affairs vis a vis the crisis in the Ukraine, such love is challenging to say the least. We allow such crises to divide us rather than unite us – which undoubtedly is what Vladimir Putin and his like intend to do by such heinous and tragic actions. These divisions deeply sadden to the point of breaking the heart and the love of God.

 

Another Franciscan, Bonaventure in reflecting on the resurrection says this about transfiguration:

“Christ shares existence with each and every thing: with the stones he shares existence, with the plants he shares life, with the animals, sensation … all things are said to be transformed in Christ since in his human nature he embraces something of every creature in himself when he was transfigured.”[iv]

 

That’s what was happening up on the mountain – Jesus the Christ was revealed as he embraces something of every creature and everything in himself! This is the Greatness of God the people at the base of the mountain call us all to see. Look at the transfigured Jesus, they say; see that God lives in and through our love for one another – including our enemies. Sadly, there are those like Vladimir Putin who resist being embraced and transfigured by the Love of God in Christ.

 

Sin is not the reason for Christ, love is. God loves in and through our love for one another. When Christ was revealed, when Christ was transfigured, when Christ sent away the unclean spirit from the young lad at the foot of the mountain, it was another moment of the transfiguration of us all as the Love that God wills to exist through all creation – through all creatures. Yes, sin, and its notorious twin, evil, has entered the world, and persists. Unclean spirits seek to convulse and divide us while Christ continues to seek to unite us. This most mysterious of all episodes in the Bible begs the question, ‘When will we?’ When will we allow ourselves, all of us, everyone, to be embraced by God’s mercy and steadfast Love? When will we show forth this transfigured love in all that we say and all that we do, all of the time? When will we? If not now, when? Amen.

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[i] Luke 9:28-43a

[ii] Ilia Delio, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2022) p. 34.

[iii] Ibid p.36

[iv] Ibid p. 43

Mercy Now Epiphany 7C

 

Mercy Now

Even knowing the results ahead of time, it was still hard to imagine that anything could look more lonely, isolated, painful and tragic than what took place on the Olympic Ice to end the Women’s Free Skate as I watched it Thursday evening. To see the fifteen year-old Kamila Valieva having to pick herself up off of the ice over and over again; at the end of her skate bent over, head in hands, unable to look up, a blank look in her eyes as she attempted to make the obligatory arms in the air “thank you” to what passes for a crowd; then skating off the ice only to be criticized by her coaches for not “fighting” through the errors, rather than them showing any compassion or comfort for the girl who had become the flashpoint of multiple layers of failures and scandal among the adults entrusted to care for one who is arguably one of the greatest talents ever to glide across the ice. She was made to carry the burden of a drug doping scandal onto the ice and into her routine. It was too much.

 

While Valieva was in tears, her body heaving and shaking as she sobbed uncontrollably, backstage, the Gold Medalist, Anna Shcherbakova, sat alone, clutching a teddy bear, no one there to congratulate her, a vacant far away look in her eyes trying to grasp how it had all come to this; while teammate Alexandra Trusova, in disbelief that throwing five quads in one program was not enough to win Gold, angrily shouting and crying how unfair it all is and refusing at first  to go out to the podium for the Mascot presentation. Then there were the tears of joy cascading down Kaori Sakamoto’s face in mixed joy and disbelief that without the “big jumps” of the Russian girls she somehow landed in third place for the Bronze.

 

Half-way around the world, it was heartbreaking in so many different ways that one was forced to agree with Jesus addressing that huge and diverse crowd on the plain who suffered from troubled spirits and all kinds of dis-ease; Jesus who says to them, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,” [Luke 6:36] no doubt invoking the psalmist who declares, “God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” [Psalm 103:8] If ever there was a scene deserving such steadfast love, graciousness and mercy, it was in Bejing’s Capital Indoor Stadium on Thursday, February 17, 2022.  

 

 The Court of Arbitration of Sport deemed it would be damaging not to let Valieva skate despite the evidence of a banned substance in her blood test. By the end of the night, however, it looked as if it was even more damaging to her emotionally and physically not to have withdrawn her from the competition. It was hard not to be angry. Angry that any number of adults and agencies allowed had failed her. It was hard not to judge and condemn all those who put Valieva in position to fail.

 

Yet, Jesus says, Judge not lest ye be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven. [Luke 6:37] And, Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful. At times like this it is just so so hard to live into the essence of what Jesus means when he speaks about Love and Mercy. It was as if there was a murderer’s row of enemies to lash out at, and yet, we are to be merciful, forgiving, and, oh yes, we are to love our enemies. One day each week at Noonday Prayer John Philip Newell urges us to pray:

We wake to the forgiveness of a new day.

We wake to the freedom to begin again.

We wake to the mercy of the Sun’s redeeming light

Always new, always gift, always blessing.

We wake to the forgiveness of this new day. Amen.

 

If you love those who love you, says Jesus, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. To love one’s self, we need to wake to the forgiveness of each new day, and wake to the freedom to begin again. This must also be our prayer for those young women who skated the other night – all of them. For all of them, no matter where they placed, no matter where they were from, every single one of them had to feel that not only the eyes of the world were watching them, but must have felt the weight of the entire world on their shoulders as they attempted to fly across the ice and leap through the air to bring wonder and joy and astonishment to those of us who were watching.

 

Mercy now, Lord. Mercy now for Kamila, Anna, Alexandra and Kaori. Help us, dear Lord, not to judge, not to condemn, but to accept your forgiveness, accept your mercifulness, accept your belovedness; that we too may become merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; that we may love our neighbors, love our enemies, and be merciful. May we be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful.   Amen.

Mercy Now - Mary Gauthier

It is Good! Epiphany 6C

 

It is Good!

Jesus went up on a mountain to pray. While there, he gathered his twelve apostles. The next day they come down from the mountain to level ground where they are met by people from all over Judea, Jerusalem, Tyre and Sidon. It’s a great crowd of disciples and a multitude of others: a mix of Jews and Gentiles with all kinds of disease and unclean spirits, all trying to touch him, “for power came out from him and healed all of them.” [Luke 6:17-26] All of them. Everyone, no questions asked, no qualifications to be met, no triage, no discussion. It just happens: free healthcare for everyone. Imagine that.

 Then he looks up at everyone and begins to speak:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now,

for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

for you will laugh.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets."

 Those of us following Luke’s Story of Jesus have heard some of this before when his Mother Mary sang to her kinswoman Elizabeth: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

 Mary envisioned a coming Reign of God in which the current status quo undergoes a reversal. The poor in the land are economically destitute, land and debt poor, and who claim no power and reap no benefits from the dominant economic system. These poor and hungry people will inherit  the kingdom, be filled with good things, will laugh, and achieve the status of prophets. Beginning now, thanks to the new power that is already coming from Jesus!

What is in store for those who currently benefit from the current economic imbalance? A mirror image of “Woes,” in which the reversal continues: They will experience hunger, mourning, weeping, an end to the enjoyment of their accumulated wealth, and a loss of their status in the community.

Sharon Ringe, in her commentary on Luke,  has observed that “In each case, the blessing makes a statement of fact: one is blessed because of a future that is a sure part of God’s reign. There is no note of threat or challenge in these blessings: Nowhere do they say, ‘Do this in order to guarantee a specific result.’ They announce a truth about the divine agenda rather than a mandate for human morality. In a similar way the list of woes is not one of behaviors to be avoided or changed in order to avert disaster. Instead, it states facts: People who are rich, well fed, laughing, and enjoying good reputations will also experience the alternative. They are not being punished for their actions; rather, they have enjoyed the blessing and now the turn passes to others.”[i]

 One other fact: Unlike in Matthew where the blessings are assigned in the third person at some future time, both the blessings and woes in Luke are in the second person, for those being addressed right now. This suggests that amidst this great multitude of persons that have come to be with Jesus, those in Luke’s own audience, and of course all of us who are present thanks to the power of story, those who benefit from the status quo hear the woes directed to them, while those who presently suffer with economic hardships hear a word of blessing. In eight succinct statements of blessings and woes, Jesus has managed to give every single person present a glimpse of the Great Reversal of fortunes that constitutes God’s plan, as Luke has already made clear in the hymns and birth stories, and most especially in Jesus’s announcement of the Jubilee year which he had made in his hometown synagogue when reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

Ringe further suggests that, “To see the beatitude as rewarding an attitude (as Matthew seems to imply) or an economic condition for its own sake (as Luke seems to imply) is to miss the principal point.”[ii] Rather, in all announcements of the Great Reversal, that the last will be first and the first will be last, one dimension of the good news of Jesus is that all calculations of both economic station and social status is ended. God in Jesus Christ institutes a social structure founded on the generosity, respect, and equal treatment of everyone; Jew and Gentile alike.

 The invitation to each and every one of us who are now a part of this story is that right now we are given the opportunity to mirror the just and loving generosity of God.[iii]

 As we try to imagine just how these blessings and woes were received that day among that great and diverse crowd with Jesus, may we begin to feel his power his power to cast out all unclean spirits that trouble us; may we begin to see ourselves as a part of that great multitude from all over the ancient world, Gentile and Jew, female and male, slave and free; once and for all may we see ourselves as one with all humankind, and one with the God who looks at all things created, seen and unseen, and who still says, “It is good. It is very very good. Now and forever. Amen!” 

 

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[i] Sharon Ringe, Luke (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1995) p. 93.

[ii] Ibid p.92.

[iii] Ibid, p.95.

Candlemas 2022

 

To Be The Light - Candlemas 2022- Luke 2: 22-40

 

It began forty days after the baby was born: born to be light. Or, maybe it began when the angel first told Mary of her special calling. Or, during the reign of King David. Or, when our people were slaves in Egypt. Or, when our ancestor Abraham set out from his home town of Ur on the Chaldes to become the father of more than all the stars in the heavens and all the grains of sand on the seashore. To be a blessing to all the peoples of God’s creation. Or, when God first said, “Let there be light.”

 

Mary and Joseph traveled to Jerusalem to observe the Purification of Mary the Mother of God, and to dedicate their first son to God forty days after his birth. To offer the appointed sacrifice at the Temple to redeem the child. They did so to remind themselves that their child belongs to God. It was a reminder that God has a genuine claim on the best we have to offer.

 

The required sacrifice was a lamb, but those too poor to buy a lamb could offer a lesser sacrifice of the two birds. The crowds in the Temple precincts would know who they were: bird people were poor people. They hoped they could get in and get out quickly.

 

They were not alone. Many people were out of work. The land was occupied by Rome. Taxes were high. The government unstable. There was resistance throughout the land. Common folk had trouble making ends meet. The lines in front of the pigeon sellers were very long.

 

Mary and Joseph were faithful to the custom of the forty days. The number of days and nights of the flood. The number of years his people had wandered in the wilderness becoming God’s people escaping from Egypt. The number of days this child would walk in the wilderness tempted by the devil. The offering of these birds would be a memorial to all the first-born males ordered killed by Pharaoh in that first Holocaust which only Moses survived. The custom binds them to their people and their history.

 

They had come to make a sacrifice and a commitment. Which are really the same thing.

Every commitment comes with a cost. Little did they know the offering they were making. Not only to God, but for the whole world. Nor were they prepared for the old man.

 

Simeon had been praying and waiting. God had promised he would see the light of the world before he died. Simeon was waiting to be released. Waiting for his people to be released. Waiting to see what we all hope to see but are too busy to remember to look for: a glimpse of God’s future. A glimpse of the truth.

 

Simeon, we can imagine, had grown weary. Weary of the occupation. Weary of failed policies and failed programs. Weary of the failure of religious and political leaders. Just weary of being weary. Everything and everyone who had promised life only yielded weariness and death. So, he was waiting to die. Waiting to see if God really keeps promises.

 

Simeon takes the child out of Mary’s arms. Imagine that! Who is he, she must wonder? What is he doing with my child? Why doesn’t Joseph stop him? Suddenly, Simeon becomes a poet for the ages: announcing for all who care to listen that this is not her child, but God’s very own anointed. That this child was born to be light. Light for all peoples. Everywhere and throughout all time. Simeon sees the light.

 

Can you see it, he cries out? Here is the light which will withstand all darkness, any darkness. Even death upon a Roman cross. Then quietly he hands the child back to his mother, and he is gone. Released. God’s promise fulfilled. Simeon returns to God as the mother and father look on. Joseph with the birds in his hands. Mary with the child born to be a light. All the other mothers and fathers looking on. Do we see the light?

 

Once upon a time we lived next door to an old man: Em Tramposch. He had devoted his life to propagating life with his hands: he was a nurseryman. From his fingers new life seemingly would spring forth every day. He had a deep sense of where that life comes from. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice, but most of all in his hands.

 

I would spend days and nights in his greenhouse, watching his hands work: cutting, dipping, planting the cuttings, listening to what he had to say about life, the economy, politics and … Patsy Kline. He was always listening to Patsy Kline.

 

Em had cancer. Some days were better than others, some not so good at all, but nearly every day he was in the greenhouse propagating life, until one summer he became bed ridden. His wife Jane found ways with her camcorder to let him see what was happening down in the greenhouse. Each day he watched and waited. That August, our daughter Cerny was born. Her first day out of the house, we wheeled her in the pram right into the living room, right up to the side of Em’s hospital bed.

 

When he saw Cerny, without a word, Em pulled together what little strength he had left, and held his arms up in the air. He wanted to hold her. I put her in his arms, and he held her by his side. For ten or fifteen minutes she slept cradled in his arms, Jane sitting beside him. He watched. He looked at the baby. It was a picture of life coming in and life going out. But mostly it was a vision of life and light. For that period of time, there we were in the Jerusalem Temple. Simeon was holding our baby. As it turned out, Em, like Simeon before him, was released. He died a few days later.

 

Like Mary and Joseph, we come to remember our past and God’s saving actions. To commit our lives to God, and like Simeon and Em, to catch a glimpse of the light so we can tell others what we have seen. So that we can feel the release. So that like the boy who was born to be a light, we too can become a light for others. So that we can be propagators of light and life for the whole world.

 

We have only this time to see The Light and live accordingly: people of light and life. Amen.

All of Life is a Homecoming: Part Two Epiphany 4C 2022

 

Good News, Bad News, Good News: Part Two

 My formative Bible teacher in college was a hometown boy from Baltimore, Professor John Gettier. He would frequently remind us that all scripture is a mixture of History, Literature and Theology – which is particularly important to remember when reading the peculiar genre of literature we call “gospel.” Luke has story to tell about Jesus, as do Matthew, Mark and John.

Luke 4:14-32 as literature can be seen as the entire “gospel in miniature,” a sort of summary of the whole story that follows. It is bracketed by announcements that Jesus is teaching in towns and synagogues, and that people are “astonished” at his teaching.[i] Between these twin announcements Jesus proclaims the Good News that, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed, God promises a Jubilee Year of release from debts and oppression, and that this promise, this hope, is fulfilled “in your hearing.” This is followed by what is heard as Bad News – that the Day of the Lord’s favor may come to those outside Israel before coming to Israel, seemingly enraging the hometown crowd to drive Jesus out of the synagogue, out of the town, and they attempt to toss Jesus over a cliff. And yet, in the unexpected way in which the God of Israel often operates, the Good News is that Jesus escapes unharmed, and once again sets off to another town, Capernaum, where people are astonished at his teaching.

It seems strange that Jesus appears to intentionally rile up the crowd with his interpretation of the Elijah and Elisha sagas – whose prophetic activities did begin among Gentiles, and were often unappreciated by the respective kings under which they served their prophetic lives. Yet, most of their vocations were served in Israel as critics of those in power.

It seems that Luke wants us to see, in this otherwise perplexing episode that swings from astonishment to rage for reasons that only those familiar with the sort of “inside baseball” knowledge that a Jewish audience would understand. They know that God’s “faithfulness always includes God’s freedom to make good on God’s promises in unexpected – and even unwanted – ways.”[ii] That is, from a literary and theological perspective, in this one story, Luke foreshadows the rest of the Jesus saga, from Astonishment to Resistance to Resurrection in which, we often forget, God, not Jesus, is the main character. That would appear to be the very point Jesus himself is always trying to make.

That is, just as the hometown crowd cannot get rid of Jesus, crucifixion will also fail to have the last word. As Paul might say, the Principalities and Powers resident in Jerusalem and Rome are ultimately no match for the likes of Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah and Jesus. This is always Good News!

Yet, we need to acknowledge that more typical Christian interpretations of this, and stories like it scattered throughout the four gospels, fail to see God as the central character, and that Luke ends the episode on the note of Good News that Jesus Lives. This has caused much mischief and tragedy as interpreters often see this as a story of Jewish rejection of Jesus and Christianity, which in turn has led to and fueled Christian anti-Semitism right up to the present day.

This week The International Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed, January 27^th, the day in 1945 the Auschwitz Concentration and Death Camp was liberated by allied troops. During this week there was yet another synagogue attack in Colleyville, Texas; swastikas were graffitied all over Union Station; Robert Kennedy, Jr. likened public health measures for the current pandemic as more prohibitive than Nazi restrictions during the Holocaust; a woman in New York City made anti-Semitic slurs and spit on several 8-year-old Jewish Children; Arthur Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, a true Holocaust tale, was banned in a Tennessee school district; we were reminded that in the United States, Europe and elsewhere around the world anti-Semitic attacks and activities are on the rise. It was only four years ago that Unite the Right protesters were carrying torches and chanting the Nazi “Blood and Soil” slogan along with “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, VA.

To interpret Luke chapter four to justify such anti-Semitism is to ignore the core elements of the story as Luke tells it. Jesus is Jewish as is everyone in his hometown synagogue. It was his “custom” to publicly identify himself as Jewish, observing all Jewish customs and rituals. Jesus was never a Christian. Christianity did not even exist yet, so the townspeople are not rejecting Christianity. Jesus, like the townspeople, had preserved and cherished the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus, like the townspeople, holds onto the hope for the Year of the Lord’s favor, a year of redemption and release from the brutality of Rome. They are astonished that Jesus speaks as one with authority even though he is simply one of them, the son of a tradesman in their town. There is true pride in who this hometown boy has become. This is a family matter, not an interfaith story.

Too often Gentile Christians define ourselves by what Richard Swanson calls our “over-against-ness” – that somehow, we are utterly unlike any other ethnic, cultural or religious group on God’s green earth.[iii] We often defend our “over-against-ness” by setting up straw-figures, in this case the Jewish people, and distort stories like this one which after two weeks can begin to sound anti-Semitic. We need to admit that such anti-Semitism was preached in the very earliest days of the Church and has been right down to this very day. And, we need to repent of such distortions of the story of Jesus the Jew. Jesus, who teaches all who will listen that the Love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.[iv] That perfect Love casts out fear, fear which so often turns to hate.[v]

Several days a week, I walk the grounds of the Shrine of Saint Anthony, a Franciscan Friary. There is a memorial to Saint Maximillian Kolbe, a Catholic priest who died voluntarily in a Nazi death camp, taking the place of another prisoner. On the outer wall of the Kolbe memorial it says, “Hate Destroys, Love Alone Creates.”[vi]

In these challenging times in which we live, we need to remember this truth, and live this truth, calling out distortions of the Gospel whenever we encounter them. Our very survival depends on the careful reading and handling of our sacred texts. Amen.

 

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[i] Luke 4:14-15, 31-32

[ii] Sharon Ringe, Luke (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville:1995) p.70-71

[iii] Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, OH: 2006) p.95

[iv] Romans 5:5

[v] 1 John 4:18

[vi] Martin Luther King, Jr: “By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature love creates and builds up.”

All of Life is a Homecoming: Part One Epiphany 3C

All of Life is a Homecoming: Part One

“…I suppose it is not so easy to go home,

and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.” -  Albert Camus

 

Jesus returns home. After being baptized by John in the River Jordan, and 40 days being tested in the wilderness, he returns to Nazareth in the region of Galilee, and we are told that the power of the Spirit is resting upon him.  [Luke 4:14-30] This is the same Spirit-Breath that was brooding over the face of the waters in creation, and more recently descended upon him, bodily, “like a dove” – perhaps recalling the Dove of Peace returning to the Ark after the Great Flood had reset and restored a world of persons who had become self-centered back into a community of persons committed to the Common Good and Welfare of all. Once God’s Spirit-Breath had landed, a voice declares, “This is my Beloved Son; I am well pleased with him.”

 

At General Convention 2000, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold asked us to “Notice that at that shattering moment, no task is assigned, no agenda given, no test prescribed. Jesus is simply loved by God wildly and with divine abandon. Nothing … is asked for or required of Jesus other than to accept God’s delight and pleasure at his very being.”[i] 

 

Filled with this Spirit of divine affection and delight, news about Jesus began to spread like wildfire throughout the towns and villages, for he was teaching in synagogues, literally “gathering places,” and the people were giving him much honor. One Sabbath Day of Rest in the village where he grew up, Jesus, as was his tradition, entered the gathering place and stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He rolled through the scroll until he came to these words:

 

“The Spirit of the Creator has come to rest on me. He has chosen me to tell the good story to the ones who are poor. He has sent me to mend broken hearts, tell prisoners they have been set free, to make the blind see again, and to lift up the ones who have been pushed down – and to make it known that the Creator’s time of Jubilee, of Setting Free, has come at last.”[ii]

 

He rolls up the scroll and sits down. The eyes of the hometown crowd are riveted on him. Jesus says, “Today, these words you have heard have found their full meaning. They are fulfilled in your hearing.”

 

Jubilee is an ancient promise described in Leviticus chapter 25 as a full Reset and Rebalancing for Israel – every seven years the clans, tribes and all families return to the original balance and interconnectedness of the community. They do this by removing changes that have altered the balance, especially indebtedness. All debts are canceled, and all lands return to the original clan owners. Jubilee signals a return to God’s Wilderness Manna Economy of daily bread – a world in which everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, and if you try to hoard the manna, it spoils – it spoils the manna, but even more so it spoils life throughout the community.  It destroys the Common Good. Those present would recognize and remember that the text Jesus selects to read rings this note of Jubilee, and that this old practice promises and offers the hope of the restoration and recovery of all that has been lost.[iii]

 

And much had been lost. If it wasn’t lost ancestral lands to rapacious urban, elite land owners, there was the indebtedness resulting from the taxation and loss of resources to fuel the Empire of Caesar’s Rome. Living in Israel had become the equivalent of returning to Pharaoh’s Egypt, or Exile in Babylon. Now this son of the carpenter, Jesus, is saying the time for Jubilee is near. The time to heal the world, to turn the world right-side-up is approaching.

 

If this was Good News that Sabbath Day in Jesus’s hometown, most of us would likely agree that this would be Good News today. Amidst economic instability, a widening of the gap between haves and have-nots, threats of war, violence at home and abroad, threats to democracies around the world, and a seemingly never-ending global pandemic, these words of restoration and recovery of all that has been lost, and a return to a world committed to the Common Good and Welfare of all, ought to sound as hopeful today as they did in Nazareth.

 

This is just Part One of this story. Next Sunday we hear the surprising conclusion. In the meantime, we would do well to remember that like Jesus, we are loved by God wildly and with divine abandon, that we are to accept God’s invitation to Jubilee and a restoration of our commitments to the Common Good and the Welfare of all – all people, all creatures, and the Earth itself! Amen.

 

 

 

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[i] Griswold, Frank T., Going Home, (Cowley Publications: Cambridge, MA, 2000) p. 15

[ii] Isaiah 61, First Nation’s Version of the New Testament, (Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove: 2021) p. 111

[iii] Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of Luke, (The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, 2006) p.93,95

It's Not About the Wine Epiphany 2C

 

Epiphany 2C 2022 - John 2: 1-11

It’s Not About the Wine

It was Kurt Vonnegut in a Palm Sunday Sermon years ago who observed, “Leave it to people to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.”

 

This is true of the wedding at Cana in Galilee. As Father Guido Sarducci observed, it should be called the wedding reception at Cana. Wedding receptions in ancient Israel could carry on for as much as a week-long celebration.

 

Jesus’s mother nudges him, “They have no wine.” Jesus essentially says, “So, what? This does not concern us. Besides, it’s not time” Mary then tells the servants, “Just do whatever he tells you.” They do, and the results are off the charts!

 

A lot of wine can be consumed at a week-long party. This suggests that the family is probably pretty well off. And they have six large, expensive stone water jars holding 20 to 30 gallons each. Unlike healing and feeding people, this is less about addressing a need. It’s more of a luxury. We’re talking roughly 180 gallons of wine. Good wine at that!

 

The chief steward thinks the bridegroom arranged this, saying, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This is pretty funny, making this more in the vein of Henny Youngman than say Karl Barth or Reinhold Niebuhr! The bridegroom thinks he just hit the lottery! What is the steward talking about? This is the first moment, writes John, that Jesus has done anything to reveal just who he is. And he does this?  

 

Of course he does. After all, he is The One everyone has been waiting for. He is the bridegroom who comes at an unexpected hour. He’s The One who will eventually tell us that drinking wine makes us one of his disciples for ever and ever. That is, the salvation God gives us in Christ is more than just redemption and healing, but is also meant to be about enjoying the fullness of life and the extravagant Love of God! God in Christ who says, “I come that you may have life and have it abundantly!” [John 10: 10]

 

This is surprising good news: God saves the best for last! You’ve heard Elijah. You’ve heard Isaiah. You have been down to the river with John. But our God has saved the best for last! The party is his. He’s the bridegroom. It’s our time to be wedded to God. No one is excluded from this party. And there is enough of everything for everyone!!

 

There have been those who look at the contemporary life of the church and question whether or not we really understand this and other gospel stories of extravagance. Soren Kierkegaard Once wrote, “Whereas Jesus turned water into wine, the church has managed to do something even more remarkable; it has turned wine back into water.” That’s pretty funny for Kierkegaard, who was not known for his humor.

 

The point being: Jesus comes to make all things new, and issues a radical call to change one’s life and get about the business of sharing this new extravagant, abundant, life of God’s Faith, Hope and Charity with the whole world, everyone, with “all!” The Church, on the other hand,  often behaves as if Christianity is about being comfortable and happy with the way things are and have been. This is a problem.

 

 

A problem that prompted C.S. Lewis to say, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want religion to make you really feel comfortable, I certainly do not recommend Christianity.” Lewis wants us to remember that Jesus, the night before he dies, calls us to a deeper understanding of the good news when he says, “Pick up your cross and follow me… You will do the things I do, and greater things than these you will do.” [John 14:12]

 

The Gospel, the Good News, is about transformation and service, both of which take hard work. Christians are meant to be those people who sustain the virtue of Hope in a world that rarely provides much evidence that such Hope is justified.

 

This is why at Noonday Prayer, Monday thru Friday, we are reading The Book of Hope, in which Jane Goodall says this about Hope: "Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it so."[1]

 

To remind me what this hope, this future, and this hard work looks like, I have kept the following text pasted in the back of my Book of Common Prayer as a constant reminder:

 

Les Arbres dans la Mer by Father Didier Rimaud, SJ

Look, the virgin has a child, a man from God, Heaven is with us,

mankind is not alone any longer. If you only had a little faith, you would see trees in the sea, beggars become kings, the powerful made low, the treasures that we share.

 

Look, the water changes into wine, the wine becomes blood, the bread multiplies,

the people aren’t starving any more. If you only had a little faith, you would see trees in the sea, the desert full of flowers, harvests in winter, granaries overflow.

 

Look, the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, the people aren’t ill any longer.

If you only had a little faith, you would see trees in the sea, executioners without work,

handcuffs rusty, prisons useless.

 

Look, the cross is empty and bare, your tombs have fallen and man stands. The people are not afraid any longer. If you only had a little faith, you would see trees in the sea, guns buried, arms put away, mountains dance.

 

This is what Christianity is meant to look like. Our Hope is about what we desire to happen; that which we must be prepared to work hard at to make it so. It’s not about 180 gallons of good wine – it is about the extravagance of God’s Faith, Hope and Love, in Christ offered to all. Everyone. Now. Forever. And ever! Amen!  

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[1] Jane Goodall & Douglas Abrams, The Book of Hope, Celadon Books, 2021: p.8.