When Things Fall Apart Lent 5A

When Things Fall Apart

There may be only one thing everyone can agree on: every day it appears more and more that things are falling apart – both here and around the world, and including the world itself. This experience of falling apart generates fear, and some people and groups try to induce fear on purpose. Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun reminds us that fear is a natural part of life, especially when we feel there is nothing to hold onto. Yet, she writes, “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.” [i]

 

Just ask Ezekiel. Nearly 600 years before the time of Jesus, things had fallen apart. The people of Judea and Jerusalem had been exiled to Babylon. The Temple had been razed, burned to the ground. All that had been the life of Israel had fallen apart. They are no longer at home. They cannot practice the appointed sacrifices. The prophet imagines the community of Israel as a Valley of Dry Bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones! Hear the Word of the Lord!

 

God calls upon Ezekiel to call for ruach, God’s breath which is life. These dry bones will have new life. [ii] For only God creates new life. We note that the animation and resurrection of these dry bones is a retelling of the creation story in Genesis 2:4b-7: first the body is formed, and then comes the breath of life. We note also that these bones are “the whole House of Israel.” Cut off from home, without hope, they are in a valley of fear and death. They have become a powerless community at the mercy of a brutal Babylonian Empire. Psalm 137 records this moment of hopelessness: “By the rivers of Babylon/Where we sat down/And there we wept/When we remembered Zion/But the wicked carried us away captivity/Required of us a song/How can we sing King Alpha song in a strange land?” [iii]

 

This prophecy asks whether or not powerless communities can again participate in the power of public life. To which the answer is yes – when the community leans into fear and hopelessness and accepts God’s power of renewal and new life! The claim made for God’s power stands over against the closed reality of any and all empires which intend that the dry bones should never live again: “O my people,” God says, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord. The concrete and human voice of Ezekiel calls God to act.  As a narrative for Lent, the invitation is to reject the conclusions of the empire, and to trust in the stunning freedom and power of the God who creates and gives life. God can and will bring new life.

 

The circumstances are much the same as depicted in all four gospels. Now it is the Empire of Caesar’s Rome. No need to transport people to another land: instead, a kind of martial law and brutal taxation and indentured slavery is imposed on the homeland itself. They are no longer at home. And by the time these texts are written down, the Second Temple in Jerusalem has been razed, burned to the ground once and for all. For all intents and purposes, the whole house of Israel is once again reduced to a valley of dry bones. They are powerless once again

 

Into this fallen apart reality comes Jesus. He and his companions get word that one of his dearest friends has fallen ill: Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany, a small village near Jerusalem – a home where Jesus would often find refuge from those who opposed his mission to bring new life to people who feel powerless against the new Empire. [iv] Martha and Mary call for their friend to come to their ailing brother. Jesus hesitates, and who could blame him. Once he decides to go to Bethany, his companions warn him that there are people in and around Jerusalem who “were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” As we have seen with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the Man Blind Since Birth, Jesus asserts that a day of deep darkness lies ahead in Jerusalem and that he needs to be about his Father’s work while it is still light – while he is still free and able to bring new life to his powerless community. Despite the real fear for his very life, Jesus moves forward and leans into the danger. He arrives four days too late. As it was with Ezekiel 600 years before, Jesus appeals to his Father to raise the dry bones once again. Once again, it will be the concrete human voice of Jesus that will invite the power of God to bring new life where there is death. He says in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” Out he comes. “Unbind him and let him go,” says Jesus.

 

The story is not about Lazarus. Lazarus is a metaphor for the whole house of Israel that needs to be given new life – unbound from the fetters of the Empire, so that they can one day be at home again. The Lectionary shields us from the full response. Not everyone is happy. There are those who report this episode to the collaborators in Jerusalem, and they conspire not only to kill Jesus, but to have poor Lazarus killed as well – for it is his fault that he died and so that God in Christ  would have the opportunity to grant him new life. [v] The Empire continues to propagate fear. Jesus will not let the fear stop him. He continues to breathe new life into the whole House of Israel.

 

Here we are. The irony is that everyone knows things are falling apart. It is scary. It is fearful. But instead of leaning into the fear with peaceful hearts and love, all sides increase the fear by blaming one another. We seem to be at war with ourselves, generating more fear every day. And it is not only here at home, but around the world.

 

Make no mistake, these stories about Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman at the well, the man blind from birth, and Lazarus, are all about new life for the whole community. A community which Jesus expands to include everyone, everywhere, all the time! We know what it feels like to live in a time when things are falling apart. We can choose to stay at war with one another. Or, like Jesus, we can choose the way of peace, love, and respect for all others. As Pema Chodron writes, “Every day we could think about aggression in the world, in New York, Los Angeles, Waco, D.C., Syria, Ukraine, Paris, the Korean peninsula…Iraq, everywhere. All over the world, everybody always strikes out against the enemy, and the pain escalates forever. Every day, we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to add to the aggression in the world? Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, ‘Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?’” [vi]  The Good News in all of these stories is that God will breathe new life into those who choose the Way of peace. Like Jesus, we can move into the places of fear knowing that our Lord calls us to come out from behind our petty differences and let him unbind us all from all our fears so that together we can work on real problems that face us all. We need to take time-out to breathe. As we remember we are all in this together, New Life will be ours.  

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[i] Chodron, Pema, When Things Fall Apart (Shambala, Boulder: 2016) p.2

[ii] Ezekiel 37:1-14

[iii] Bob Marley and the Wailers, By the rivers of Babylon, https://youtu.be/4tAb5rYRXvs

[iv] John 11:1-45.

[v] John 12:9-10

[vi] Ibid, Chodron, p.12 

A Resurrection Story Lent 4A

A Resurrection Story?

As Jesus is walking along, he sees a man blind since birth.[i] His disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is blind?” Jesus says that neither the man nor his parents sinned. Jesus speaks of the urgency of working on behalf of God now, for the “night” is coming. He then says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus then spits on the ground, makes a little bit of mud to put on the man’s eyes, and sends him to the Pool of Siloam to wash his eyes. Voila! The man can see. At this point, Jesus disappears altogether from the story until the very end.

 

The neighbors, we are told, are disturbed and confused. Is this not the blind man we see begging every day? If so, how is it he can now see? They call over some Pharisees to “see” what’s really going on! The man then needs to tell his inquisitors how it is he can see. He tells them about Jesus, the mud, and washing in the Pool of Siloam. But are you the same man that once was blind. Yes, he says. Then they call his parents to verify if he is man blind since birth. They say, yes. Then how can he see, they ask. Ask him. We don’t want to get involved. Then the man is grilled again.

 

As with the Samaritan Woman at the Well, suddenly he is another unlikely character who becomes an eloquent theologian able to argue his point-by-point with the Pharisees. It cannot go without saying: this is what Pharisees love to do – to argue over all the details of living a righteous life as instructed by Moses who was instructed atop the mountain by God. Oh, yes. Narrator John says it was the Sabbath. Some, not all, of the Pharisees say that Jesus cannot be from God because he made mud on the Sabbath which is work. Still, some Pharisees did not think this was a Sabbath violation.

 

The questions seem to be: How did you come to see again? Who is Jesus? Is he of God? Or, not? Were you really blind to begin with? Are you the same man that was blind? In the end, there is no resolution, but lots of very good arguments back and forth! The Pharisees give up in frustration, because the man’s arguments are too good! Only then does Jesu return. He asks if the man believes in “the Son of Man.” Who is that, he asks? “The one who is speaking to you is he.” The man says, “Lord, I believe.” And he worships Jesus. It ends with an enigmatic saying about some people who are blind can see, and some people who can see are blind. Again, some of the Pharisees overhear this and wonder if Jesus is talking about them.

 

First, it is important to reestablish that the Pharisees in 1^st century Israel, under the occupation of Rome, were the good guys. And that those who seem to be giving the man who was once blind a hard time are just some; a few; not all. And those few are simply doing due diligence at the neighbors’ request. It’s the neighbors who cause all this trouble for the man. They appear to be threatened that they have lost a town beggar. They represent those of us resistant to change. Blind beggars should remain blind beggars! The neighbors like to think they are better than disabled folks. Or, better than foreigners. They are suspicious of those like Jesus who work to bring about change, even if it is positive change. The story casts these folks in a poor light. Because, if for no other reason, 1^st century Israel was in need of serious change. The darkness that prevailed was the occupation of the Empire. Somethings need to change to get out from under being enslaved by Caesar and Rome!

 

Second, for the Fourth Gospel, it is always about light vs darkness; a metaphor for good vs evil. The gospel begins by announcing Jesus is the light of the world, the kosmos He will only be here for a brief time. Sabbath or not, he has work to do to free people who have been chained by circumstances beyond their control. The man had been blind since birth. How could he possibly have “done” anything to deserve being blind. And does God mean to blind people? Or, does he send his Son, Jesus, his Beloved, to bring light, and life, abundant life, to the world; to all people: male or female or LGBTQ+, Gentile or Jew, slave or free, Israelite, Roman, Asian, European, African, Indian, Persian, or the yet to be discovered, Americans – the first peoples of America that is.

 

Third, the Pharisees keep calling the man who was once blind back over and again to tell his story. They want to know. They want to believe. They just cannot fit his story into their standard categories of belief. But they keep trying! Does narrator John make them out to be blind while it is the man who can now see? Of course. The Pharisees are a mere prop for the Fourth Gospel. They stand in for all who refuse to find out the truth; those who cannot imagine change is possible. But in real life everyone knows Pharisees were enacting change every day. Pharisees worked to make life easier and at the same time more sanctified, more holy, for everyone. Holiness was not just for the priests. The Pharisees imagined a kingdom in which everyone is a priest! Which was important since soon the Temple and the priests would be gone.

 

Fourth, Sabbath is not just something that the Jews have kept for millennia. It is the Sabbath that has kept the Jews a people. A people free from being addicted to working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Pharisees know this. And in the annals of their arguments about Sabbath restrictions, saving a life or healing a person or an animal on the Sabbath is overwhelmingly not considered work. Not a sin. But worth exploring, because the practice of Sabbath defines the difference between being free or being enslaved. Abraham Joshua Heschel writes this about the Sabbath: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue, but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when…the control of things…becomes our sole concern.” [ii]

 

Finally, I am persuaded this is not a story about healing, or Sabbath, or righteousness, or a coming time of darkness. And it certainly does not mean to disparage the Pharisees. If anything, we need to adopt their practice of seeking truth in any and all circumstances. This is a resurrection story. All of the rest is metaphor. Note carefully, Jesus is absent altogether as people try to figure out just who he is, and how a man once blind can see. Then, as it is after the dark night of his crucifixion, Jesus returns. When he does, some know who he is and believe, and others do not. But he returns, and is present to those who believe. He is here as the tangible presence of God in all of life, all of the time. He comes to affirm that all persons, those who can see and those who are blind, are all children of the One God. That all are deserving of love and care, and dignity, and respect. That’s why some of us, like the man born blind, believe, and worship him. Here. And now. For the light shines in the darkness, all the time, and in all times. And the darkness does not, and cannot, overcome his light, and our light. May we all come to see and be seen. As it is said, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” [iii]

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[i] John 9:1-41

[ii] Heschel, Joshua Abraham, The Sabbath (Shambala, Boston:2003) p. ix

[iii] Ephesians 5:8-14 

A Samaritan Woman: The Beloved Disciple Lent 3A

A Samaritan Woman: The Beloved Disciple

We are not told her name. She comes to draw water from her ancestor Jacob’s well. She is a Samaritan. It’s noon, the hottest time of the day. The other women of Sychar draw water early in the morning, or near dusk, when it is cooler. It’s embarrassing when they are there. They know her story. She has lost five husbands. She now relies on a man who is not her husband. Most days they just avoid her altogether. She is perhaps the most broken individual in all of the four Gospels: hers is a life of loss, loneliness and emptiness. She comes when no one is there.  [i]

 

But now there is a man is sitting there. This is a problem. Unrelated men and women are not seen together in public. Yet, this man is different. He senses her loneliness and emptiness. He says, “Give me a drink.”  His accent betrays that he is from Galilee. He speaks Aramaic. He is a Jew. For centuries Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common; worship on separate mountains; and have little or nothing to do with one another. But now he asks that there is something she can do for him. He recognizes her as a person. He treats her with dignity.  She is astonished at this. Later, we learn that his friends who return from fetching lunch are equally astonished that their master was speaking to a woman – in public. And a Samaritan at that! Their people have been divided for centuries.

 

We who have heard this story told throughout the years might understand just how charged with tension this encounter must be. We know such division all too well. We see the divide between White Supremacists and Black Lives Matter. Between Pro and Anti-abortion activists. Between some Evangelical Christian and LGBTQ communities. Between School Boards and Parent Groups. Between immigrants seeking asylum and vigilante border protection groups. We’ve seen the tension caused by a Black woman sitting in the “Whites Only” section of a bus. Between Drag Queens and the State of Tennessee. Asians are attacked and blamed for the Pandemic. Poor people blamed for being poor. Red States vs Blue States. America today knows all too well the tensions that seek to divide us as a people.

 

A woman comes to draw water. A tired man of another tribe needs water. Centuries old disputes have erected a not-so-imaginary wall between their two peoples. Who will be the first to tear down the wall? Surprise. It is the Samaritan woman: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” She has the courage to call attention to the strangeness of this encounter. She knows the history of the divide between Jews and Samaritans all too well.

 

Jesus answers her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She does not back down. “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” This Samaritan Woman has chutzpa! Jesus says to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” It is evident even to this Samaritan that they are no longer talking about water. There’s something he can do for her. She says, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” The wall of division starts to crack.

 

He asks her to bring her husband back. She says that she has no husband. Jesus says, “You have spoken correctly. You have had five husbands and the man you are living with is not your husband.” She’s astonished that he knows all this. And it seems not to be a problem for him. “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Which was true. Then comes the most surprising answer of all from the man sitting by the well of Jacob, their common ancestor: “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The primary dispute is set aside. We can all worship wherever we are in spirit and truth. Suddenly, she says, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus says to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Silence... The walls come tumbling down. It is like Joshua at Jericho all over again. Two people from two opposing tribes have transcended centuries of division. It’s a new world. A new day. Divisions can be overcome.

 

His friends return. She sees their concern, drops her bucket and hurries back to the village to tell people about the Jewish man at the well. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” She is energized. She has purpose. The living water gushes up within her. She has been made new! The Samaritans rush to see him themselves. In his presence they come to believe. It is just as the woman who had lost five husbands had said. She becomes the first evangelist. She brings a crowd of historic enemies to Jesus. They believe because of her testimony, her witness, her telling them her story. Then suddenly, the townspeople are dismissive of her once again. “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” No good deed goes unpunished for this Beloved Disciple!

 

How many of us would have the courage and confidence this Samaritan woman displays as she goes toe-to-toe, head-to-head with Jesus – the Savior of the world? She speaks truth to power, and power listens. Power sets aside whatever leverage he might have. But this is God’s Beloved Son. His life is one of radical inclusion. No one is left out. We cannot let the evils of the past persist in the present. We cannot let the evils of the present persist into the future. All people are made in the image of God. All are God’s Beloved. He who is God’s Beloved knows this, practices this, and gathers all people to become a Community of the Beloved. A community that grows that day because one broken woman, a Samaritan, was courageous enough to engage the strange man sitting at the well. She did not back down. She did not run away. Until it was time to tell the others – all others – the Good News!

 

We know her. She is not unlike ourselves. May we all be like her. We can and we must bring others together, to a place of radical inclusion of one another, no matter what the background, no matter what the history. For it is such radical acceptance and inclusion of one another that is the living water that springs up within us. The water of reconciliation. The water of Eternal Life and Love. We pray to be defended “from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.” May we be inspired by this Samaritan Woman to be a people of Love, Spirit and Truth.  Amen. 

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[i] John 4:5-42

Earth+Water+Breath = Life Lent 2A

 

Earth+Water+Breath = Life

Round Two: “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, 

but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.[i] -John Dominic Crossan

Case in point, John 3:1-17: almost everything in the Gospel of John is either symbolic or referential to Hebrew Scripture – The Old Testament. This is particularly true of this story about Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a community leader.

 

The Pharisees were just one group among many in 1^st century Israel. There were also Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, followers of John the Baptist, and then sub-groups, or “Schools” with individual leaders among the Pharisees like Hillel, Shammai, Akiva, and Gamaliel, some of whom were contemporaries of Jesus.

 

In this pluralistic stew of parties, the Pharisees taught and interpreted Torah, the Way of the Lord God of Israel, And, they were among the most popular party among the common people. In part because, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, they “alleviated the harsher prescriptions of the Bible in civil and criminal law.” [ii] They also made efforts to incorporate certain holiness practices meant for the priests and Sadducees in Jerusalem and the Temple common in the home: such as washing one’s hands before a meal. This would introduce a sense of Temple holiness into the life of the household. They also believed in resurrection, unlike the Sadducees who did not. The Pharisees also held different interpretations of Torah amongst themselves, and as such had much in common with Jesus and his way of living and teaching. Of those with whom Jesus challenged the teachings of others, the Pharisees were very much the good guys.

 

Nicodemus appears to know what Jesus has been up to so far: the wedding reception where Jesus turns water into wine, and his symbolic turning of the tables in the Temple precinct, which had more to do with the Temple officers collaborating with the Roman occupation than any financial or theological issues. Not that the priests and Sadducees had much choice in the matter – they were appointed, forced, by Rome to be a liaison between the Empire and the people. Most everyone came to resent them. One might guess that the Pharisees would have found Jesus’s action at the Temple to be an appropriate prophetic judgment on the current state of affairs.

 

Nic wants to know more about Jesus. His arrival at night surely foreshadows what will soon be a dark time to come when Jesus confronts the authorities once again in Jerusalem. Nic recognizes the signs Jesus performed in Cana and Jerusalem. He concludes that Jesus must be a man in whom God’s presence is revealed here and now. Jesus answers him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The Greek word “above” can mean “again,” and has often been translated as such. But as the conversation continues, “from above” seems to recall Jesus’s baptism by John in which God’s breath, God’s ruach, comes down from above to land on Jesus, declaring him as God’s Son, God’s Beloved. In the past translators usually translate the Greek word for ruach, pneuma, as ‘spirit’ instead of breath, but as we will see, breath is what makes the most sense. So far, though, none of this is making sense to poor Nic who asks, “How can this be?”

 

Jesus goes on to say that one must be born of breath and of water – just as God from above all the way back in Genesis 2 took a handful of earth and water and breathed into it to form the first human – Adam. Sometimes referred to as ‘earth-guy,’ or, ‘mud-guy.’ Those who first heard or read storyteller John’s account would know that Jesus symbolically takes us back to the beginning. Indeed, the Gospel of John begins with the very first words of scripture, “In the beginning…” Jesus goes on to say, ‘Don’t be confused. Surely you know this. We know not where the breath comes from or where it goes.’ Again, Nic asks, “How can this be?” To which Jesus says, in effect, ‘It just is – surely you Pharisees know this as well as I do. Like many things, it is not easily explainable, and yet, we know it to be true. We need to accept that the breath of God can neither be explained, nor can we control it – yet, we know that the breath is life. We know water is life. We know that we are of the earth, we are dust, star dust at that! Earth+Water+Breath = Life!

 

Then follows yet another reference, now to the time Moses held up a bronze serpent on a pole in the wilderness! The people were being bitten by snakes because they had complained about being in the wilderness for too long, and were tired of eating manna; tired of daily bread. So, God relented, and told Moses to erect the bronze serpent, so that when the people looked at it they would be healed, they would be saved. For our God is a gracious God, abounding in steadfast love, merciful, slow to anger, and relents from punishing.[iii] This reference foreshadows the cross of Christ, which when we look up at him we too can be healed, made whole once again.

 

Here the translator’s punctuation is confusing. It looks as if Jesus says the following, when it seems to make more sense that this is a summary of this episode by the narrator:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

 

We are so used to seeing John 3:16 displayed in the end zone during extra-points, or behind the catcher in baseball stadia, that we tend to miss the Good News here. For we, descendants of mud-guy, created in the image of God – a God whose primary attributes are that God Loves, and God Gives. We are to be those people who Love and who Give. What God loves is the World – literally, the kosmos! All of creation, all that is seen and unseen! God loves us. Like Jesus, we are God’s Beloved! And the best news of all: despite our lack of love for one another, despite our lack of love for the world itself – evident in how we mistreat one another, and how we mistreat creation itself – God sends Jesus his Beloved Son to us, not to condemn us, but to save the world, to save the kosmos, and ultimately, to save us, or rescue us, from ourselves, just as he rescued the recalcitrant people in the wilderness from the oppressive Empire of Pharaoh, and from their own lack of gratefulness for each breath they take, and each morsel of daily bread they are given from above by the gracious and loving hand of God.

 

Nicodemus appears to have understood all of this, as later he returns. First, to remind his colleagues that the law requires that a person be heard before being judged (John 7:50–51), and again after the Crucifixion to provide the customary embalming spices, and assist Joseph of Arimathea in preparing Christ’s body for burial (John 19:39–42). May we, like him, begin to see the symbolic dimensions of the Bible’s stories so we might hear the good news and rejoice in it!

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[i] John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus

[ii] Levine, Amy Jill, Toward the Kingdom of Heaven (Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2020) p.19

[iii] Exodus 34:6-7, Jonah 4:2, Psalm 86:15

The New Ekklesia and Our Commitment to Do God’s Will Lent 1A

 The New Ekklesia and Our Commitment to Do God’s Will

“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” [i]

Among many others, John Dominic Crossan asks readers of the Bible to challenge many, if not most, of our assumptions about Jesus and the texts themselves. This story in Matthew 4: 1-11 is a primary case in point. Our lack of understanding the roots of the Greek text and the culture of Judaism in which Jesus lived and moved and had his being has long called this episode, The Temptation of Christ.

 

Jesus is proclaimed at his baptism by the voice from above as “God’s Son.” This let’s us and everyone know that this Jesus is a person of impressive stature. Throughout Matthew, Jesus is styled as “a prophet like Moses” to form a new ekklesia, a new assembly, a new community of people committed to do God’s will. It is an alternative community defined “not by blood ties, tribe, nationality or political loyalty (whether to Rome or to another empire, then or now) but by a commitment to do God’s will. The new community is endlessly inclusive; anyone who does the work of the creator is a member.” [ii]

 

After forty days and forty nights of fasting in the wilderness, narrator Matthew tells us Jesus is famished. He is hungry! Enter a new character, ha-satan. This ha-satan in the text is not an evil power engaged in eternal conflict with God, nor anything at all like the figure we associate with the Christian image of SATAN. I say Christian because the kind of full-blown cosmic battle between SATAN and God, good and evil, comes more from medieval Christendom than any understanding of ha-satan that may have existed in first-century Jewish monotheism. [iii] This ha-satan proceeds to what the text calls peirazō, which although it can mean to tempt, more often means to test or examine, and even to examine oneself.

 

Rather than a temptation scene, what we have is an appointed agent sent to test Jesus’s integrity as the Son of God who is sent to gather a new, inclusive community of people willing to commit to doing the work God calls us to do. Note, this is no ambush. Jesus was led into the wilderness by the spirit-breath of God for this test of his integrity and ability to be the new Moses in the midst of the ongoing crisis: being under the yoke of yet another empire: Rome. First there was Egypt; then Babylon; now Rome.

 

Immediately taking advantage of forty days of hunger, Jesus is challenged to turn stones into bread to eat. But he answers, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” This happens to be from Moses’s farewell speech in Deuteronomy 8:3. The full text ought to interest us: “He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” We know that manna was a kind of bread that was given daily. Matthew’s Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches his new community to pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread.’ To give us our daily manna. And on the night before he is to be crucified by Rome, he tells his new ekklesia that he is the manna and that the bread of the last supper is his body., We are to remember this every time we partake in the Lord’s Supper.

 

Next, the examiner tells Jesus to step off the highest place on the Temple and let gravity do its work? Here the tester examines Jesus to see if he is inclined to do stupid things on the basis of a trust in God. This time Jesus answers from Deuteronomy 6:16: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Next up, Jesus is offered dominion and glory to rule all the peoples of the earth if only he will worship the ha-satan. He responds once more from guess where? Deuteronomy 6:13: “The Lord your God you shall fear, him you shall serve.” Evidently, he passes the test: “Then the ha-satan left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” Finally, after forty days, and who knows how long this examination lasted, we can trust that the angels, those messengers of God, put together an appropriate feast for concluding his fast.

 

Given the ambiguities of the biblical Greek, it is reasonable to imagine this to be some sort of vision. Or, even a kind of dream-like self-examination. Imagine you are Jesus. You are familiar with how the ha-satan was involved in the story of Job. You seek out John’s baptism. Unexpectedly, a voice declares that you are God’s Son, the Beloved, with whom God is well pleased. Just what does that mean, you ask  yourself? But before you can even think that through, God’s spirit-breath whisks you away to a lonely place by yourself where there is to be no eating for forty days and forty nights. That is the biblical metaphor for a long time – longer, at least, than a lunar cycle. The nights in particular can be harsh and cold throughout the year in the wilderness areas of Israel. Perhaps you seek shelter in a cave. When all of a sudden you begin to have doubts about what happened back in the River Jordan. And even more for what lies ahead.

 

Am I really cut out for this work of being God’s Son? Can I persuade people to take God’s commandments, the way of the Lord, seriously? How can I possibly bring his law to life? Will people really follow me to bring healing to those who suffer in body and mind? To be generous rather than stingy; to be grateful rather than resentful? To be poor in spirit and so recognize the gap between what you have and what others need; between the way things are and the way things should be? To be meek and don’t lord it over others? To hunger and thirst for righteousness and feed the hungry? To be a peacemaker? To be salt that makes life taste good for everyone? To be a light for others? To be reconciled to each other? To love enemies as God’s own children? To trust God to provide? Paul states, “…love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law?” [iv] When we fulfill Torah, then we will be fulfilled. [v]

 

One day, not too long after this testing period, Jesus is in his hometown synagogue where he reads a vision from Isaiah of what God’s community is to be like, and then says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!” Evidently, he passed the test, because here we are: God’s new inclusive ekklesia of people committed to fulfilling the Word of God! May God’s Son, God’s Spirit-Breath, and Almighty God himself, find us engaged with the life Jesus calls us to embrace and make real, not only for ourselves, but for others – all others. Amen.

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[i] John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus? Answers to Your Questions About the Historical Jesus

[ii] Levine, Amy Jill, Toward the Kingdom of Heaven, (Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2020) p.14

[iii] For more about ha-satan and this text, see Richard W. Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Matthew (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2007) p.106-112

[iv] Romans 13:10

[v] Levine, p.9

Experiences of God Last Sunday after the Epiphany A 2023

 Experiences of God

“Tell no one of the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”

Really? Peter, James and John had just seen Jesus transfigured, talking with Elijah and Moses, and then heard the divine voice from the cloud of God’s glory remind them of what people had heard when John baptized him: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” But, really? They are not to tell anyone of their extraordinary experience of God and God’s glory that day on the mountaintop?

 

Then again, how does one even begin to describe an experience of God? It is nearly impossible to describe such unutterable experiences in ways that can convey the depth and power one feels in the presence of God’s glory. Sometimes the best we can do is to join with those who have had such experiences and follow them on their journey to the mountaintops and the blazing brightness of God’s glory.

 

Just follow the three Master Escape Artists at the heart of this Sunday’s gospel.[i] Elijah, Moses and Jesus. For Elijah it began as he stood in a mountain crevasse. God promised to pass by: there was wind, but God was not in the wind; an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; fire, but God was not in the fire. Then he heard a still small voice, a quiet whisper, a low murmur, asking, “Why are you here, Elijah?” Elijah replied, “I have been zealous for the Lord, and now they want to take my life.” Then he took off on a journey with God that resulted in his escape from this world in a blazing chariot of fire!

 

Moses went up the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai. The cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. From there Moses led the people on a journey with God for forty years, took them to where the edge of the land of promise, and then Moses departed, escaped, never to be seen again.

 

And now James, John and Peter follow Jesus up that mountain. He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there were Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Saint Luke says they were speaking of his exodos, his departure, his escape – an escape that would begin with his arrest, his being crucified on a Roman cross, his body placed in a borrowed tomb, sealed with a rock. Then suddenly, he is raised to God’s Glory. It is his Passover, a new exodus, into eternal liberty. His resurrection is our Passover!

 

He had told James, John and Peter six days earlier – but of course Peter would have none of it. And as he rebuked Jesus, Jesus saw Satan once again, behind Peter. No doubt he is telling Eljah and Moses all of this when Peter comes running up to them saying, “Let’s build three booths, three tabernacles like those in which our ancestors lived with you, Moses, in the wilderness!” Peter once to stay there in the vision forever! That is, until it happened. The cloud that sat upon Mount Sinai for seven days as Moses sat, and sat, and sat – patiently waiting upon the Lord. The bright cloud of God’s glory came upon them, and the voice that had spoken down by the river; as he had come up out of the water, and the Spirit-Breath landed on him like a dove; the voice that said: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

 

When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. That’s when he tells them to tell no one until he rises from the dead. They remember he had said this six days earlier, but they could not comprehend at all what he was talking about. No doubt they were too afraid to ask if Elijah and Moses had actually been there. Was he really shining like the Sun? Remember, they said, when Moses came down from Sinai his face shown so brightly they had to put a veil over his face lest he blind the people who had already blinded themselves by worshipping a golden calf.

 

It is said that Saint Clare of Assisi, an early follower of Saint Francis, would come from prayer with her face so shining it would dazzle everyone around her! Her enclosed order of women was almost unthinkable at the time, although soon throughout Europe other women were doing the same. Some, like Agnes of Prague, daughter of King Ottokar I of Bohemia, sister of Wenceslaus I of Bohemia, formed such a community and wrote to Clare for advice. Clare urged Agnes, and all others, to spend time daily before the Cross of Christ; that it is the mirror in which we can see ourselves for who we truly are. In her fourth letter to Agnes, Clare writes: “Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance! And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead itself through contemplation! So that you too may feel what His friends feel as they taste the hidden sweetness which God Himself has reserved from the beginning for those who love Him.”

 

I read this and re-read this letter to Agnes and imagine Agnes, like Clare, emerging from her time before the mirror of the Cross with her face shining, dazzling with the love of Christ, God’s own Beloved. Several days a week I stand before a statue of Clare holding a cross which frames a mirror with Christ’s face at the center, a tear seeming to fall from his right eye as he meets my gaze. I pray for Ukraine. I pray for Michigan State University. I pray for Rock Spring Parish. I pray for our country; the country I love; the country for which my father fought against the rise of the White Supremacy of the Nazi regime.

 

If one looks at the mirror in Clare’s hands at just the right angle, one can see the Saint Francis Cross hanging over the altar at the other end of the chapel at the Shrine of Saint Anthony of Padua in Ellicott City. The cross that Francis from which Jesus asked him “to repair my church.”  It is impossible to describe what it is like to see these two crosses, one reflected in the other, while at the same time experiencing the divine presence burning in the candles that surround Clare on both sides. Feeling what his friends must have felt that day upon the mountaintop.

 

There are people who will doubt that any of this really happened: Elijah rising in his chariot of fire; Moses’s face shining so brightly it needed to be veiled; Jesus shining like the Sun, his clothes dazzling bright; Clare’s face shining like her transfigured Lord; Agnes giving up a life of a princess to live a life of poverty, prayer and contemplation; Francis hearing Christ speak to him from the cross; we, with his friends, feeling touched by Jesus who says, “Do not fear, do not be afraid.” We have forty days ahead of us to contemplate just what we think of these stories, and perhaps, if we are lucky, we too will have similar experiences of God’s love and know, really know deep down inside, that we too truly are God’s Beloved. To place our minds before the mirror of eternity. To place our souls in the brilliance of glory! And to know just how good it is!

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[i] Matthew 17:1-9

Choose Life! Epiphany 6A

 

Choose Life!

The Sermon on the Mount: best understood as a Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven. We tend to think Jesus is breaking new ground as a departure from the commandments, ordinances and traditions of the God of Israel. Yet, when we last heard from him in chapter five, Jesus makes it clear: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” [i]

 

That is, he is in fact interpreting and reenforcing what Moses says just before the escapees from Egypt are to leave the wilderness, which itself was a 40 year-long “beginner’s guide to living with God and neighbor,” and enter into their new homeland: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you, life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” [ii]

 

In chapters 5-7 of Matthew, Jesus is reviewing what Moses and Jesus’s own people had learned in the wilderness: how to walk in the Way of the Lord. And that this Way is life and a blessing. And to abandon the way of the Lord is death and a curse. Jesus reminds us all: Choose The Way of Life. Thus, Matthew presents Jesus as the “new prophet” Moses promised will one day come: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…”

 

Which raises the question: Have we been listening to him? Five times he says, “You have heard it said….but I say.” He is not, as some have suggested, creating new commands, new law, or a new Torah. He is outlining how we all might fulfill the existing code of behavior and ethics outlined in Torah, the books from Genesis through Deuteronomy.

 

For instance, as regards the command against murder, Jesus says: “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” [iii]

 

Jesus here practices a long-standing rabbinic tradition called ‘building a fence around the Torah.’ It is a way of keeping you at arm’s distance from a familiar commandment, in this case, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our anger, calling people names, insulting one another can be viewed as a kind of murder, as character assassination. Such behavior does not exemplify what it means to Love God and to Love neighbor. If we can avoid doing these things, we will get nowhere near to murder.

 

Liable to judgment, however,  is vague. It may refer to Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, …by a human shall his blood be shed.” This and a few other passages also deal with homicide as a capital offense. Yet, both the Bible and post-biblical Judaism undercut any thought of capital punishment. In Genesis 4, for instance, God spares the life of Cain. And in Exodus 2, although Moses murders an Egyptian, he is not executed, and becomes God’s chosen leader to liberate God’s people from slavery. And after telling Noah about punishment for homicide, God goes on to say, “For in his own image, God created humankind.” [iv] This introduces a problem: those who commit murder are also made in the image of God – they also represent the divine image. Therefore, we need to come up with a response that is not execution. [v] Which is just what Jesus does when he urges us to avoid anger, name calling, insulting one another – essentially, treating one another as enemies. Indeed, in The Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven, he urges us to pray for and to love our enemies! He repeats the idea of ‘an eye for an eye,’ which by his time referred to financial restitution, not physical, throughout both Israelite and Roman cultures. And he stops short of saying ‘a life for a life.’ Any claim that Jesus would approve of capital punishment receives support only from what is not said. [vi]

 

Instead, building this fence is important in so many ways because of behaviors we see rampant among us today, especially the kinds of public name-calling which has become common place daily. We often say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” Yet, we know this not to be true. Names kill when young people are bullied and cyberbullied to death; people take their own lives because of the barrage of insults they suffer; individuals even strike out at others, often others they do not even know, in mass-killing events that often end in their own death also – either by law enforcement or at their own hand. Jesus is right. Names kill. If only we would listen to him. [vii]

 

A brief word about the kind of “hell” Jesus invokes. The Bible has no word or image for hell as Dante’s Inferno imagines it. In fact, the Bible knows of no place called hell, but rather imagines we end up dead one day in a pit – all of us – awaiting some sort of judgment day, or the final establishment of God’s kingdom. Rather, ancient Israelite and Persian cultures believed that on that coming ‘day of the Lord,’ some may awaken to everlasting shame and contempt – not eternal torture – a kind of self-imposed annihilation or oblivion. Such feelings of shame and contempt can burn like a fire within us. Like his co-religionists, Jesus believed in Sheol, the pit, where all of us, good and bad alike all end up. And where the prophet Ezekiel imagines possible resurrection as the Valley of Dry Bones is blown upon by the divine-ruach, the divine spirit-breath, and brought back to life once again! A new kind of life we cannot even imagine!

 

We would do well to consider what General of the Army, Omar Bradley, once said after World War II: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace; more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus’s remarks do not reject the Scriptures of Israel, nor the interpretations of rabbis, Pharisees and others. He interprets the traditional commands and ordinances, and builds a fence around them to keep us from harming ourselves and others. We pray, “Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed.” Jesus, like Moses before him, sets before us life and death, blessing and curse. Let us choose life!

 

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[i] Matthew 5:13-20

[ii] Deuteronomy 30:15-20

[iii] Matthew 5:21-37

[iv] Genesis 9:6

[v] Levine, Amy Jill, The Sermon on the Mount (Abingdon Press, Nashville: 2020) p.28ff

[vi] Ibid, Levine, p.43

[vii] Ibid, Levine, p.30