To Follow Christ Proper 22B

 

To Follow Christ

Beginning in Mark 8:22 and continuing to the end of chapter 10, we find Jesus making his way to Jerusalem. The narrative is bracketed by the healing of two blind men: one in Bethsaida, and the other, Bartimeus, outside the gates of Jericho. Both seem to represent those, like many of the demons in Mark, who recognize who Jesus is immediately, so unlike the disciples, who almost never do. 

The pivotal question throughout the saga of this journey is the one Jesus puts to the disciples just after the first blind man recovers his sight. After first asking the twelve who people are saying he is, he puts the question directly to them, and in turn to all of us: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter appears to be on the right track, answering, “You are the Christos, the anointed, the Messiah.” Jesus orders them “not to tell anyone about him,” and goes on to teach them that it is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things, be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise. Peter objects, to which Jesus replies, “Get out of my sight, Satan, you don’t judge things the way God does, but the way people do.” i This was the first time he spoke plainly to them about what would happen when they got to Jerusalem. 

Just before our episode with James and John, Jesus tells them for a third time, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the high priests, be condemned to death, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles – that is, the Roman occupational forces. The Romans will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. After three days he will rise.” Again, Jesus speaks plainly to them, that it is the Gentiles, the Empire of Caesar, Rome, who will kill him. ii 

It is then and there that the Brothers Zebedee, James and John, a couple of fishermen, walk up to Jesus and say, “Uh, Teacher, whatever we ask, you have to do it, okay?” Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” They reply, “Uh, okay. Give us this: in your glory, one of us sits on your right, and one of us on your left. Okay?” Jesus replies, “You have no idea what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Or the baptism I must undergo, are you able to take that, too?” iii 

It helps to understand that in the Psalms and prophetic literature, “the cup” means to indicate the fate that lies ahead of a person, which Jesus has three times tried to make clear. And he is not referring to the baptism of John, nor Christian baptism, but rather invokes a common biblical metaphor in which trials and dangers that lie ahead are going to be like passing through turbulent and stormy waters. What we today might call a “baptism by fire.” Confronting the Roman Empire is not going to go well. Jesus has just asked them if they, too, are ready to endure that which he has made clear now for the fourth time, rendering their response at best ironic, and even laughable: “Sure, we can do that. No problem!” 

Yet, surprisingly, rather than chastising them, Jesus affirms their declaration: “Yes, you will drink the same cup, and yes, you will face a baptism of fire, but sitting on my right and left is not for me to say. It belongs only to those for which it was prepared by my Father. Please understand, there is not going to be an immediate and happy ending. I’m not going to emerge as some imperial potentate with absolute power over all the world. I will suffer, as I have said, and I will surrender my future into the hands of God my Father, in whose power, mercy, love, forgiveness, and generosity I have complete trust.” 

Before James and John can say anything else, the ten remaining disciples are angered by the brothers’ pre-emptive strike for sharing in what they perceive will be Christ’s power and glory. Glory throughout the Bible refers first to God’s aura of splendor, power, and sovereignty, often understood as God’s presence in Israel as a brightness of light that shines visibly, as when he had guided the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness sojourn. And any person, like Jesus, who might share in God’s glory is considered a person of significant “weightiness, power, influence, prestige, and gravitas.”  This is what the brothers want for themselves. iv 

Realizing once and for all the need to spell out the misunderstanding of what it’s going to be like once they are in Jerusalem, Jesus says, “You know that the ones who seem to rule over the Gentiles, like Rome, like Babylon, like Egypt, lord it over them. Their great ones push them around. It is not to be that way with you! On the contrary: You want to be great? Wait on tables. Serve others. You want to be in first place? Become everyone’s slave. The Son of Man, after all, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life, a ransom worth many people.” 

Ransom, he says, as opposed to sacrifice, signifies a price paid to liberate people from some kind of bondage. When he says, “many people,” this is a Semitic idiom that does not mean, “many people, but not all,” but rather is inclusive. That is, it does not mean that many are saved, but some are not, but between the many and the one that acts on their behalf, all will be liberated. v 

What begins with Jesus’ attempt to counter the disciples’ blind ambition becomes instead the most profound interpretation of just what his death in Jerusalem means for the community of those of us who wish to follow him. Father Brendan Byrne, an Australian Jesuit and biblical commentator, sums it up like this: The statement that concludes this episode “grounds the community’s exercise of authority as ‘service’ on nothing less than the redemptive action of Christ. If James and John and the other ten disciples – and indeed all who would be disciples – wish to enter into and share Jesus’s glory, the only ‘way’ is to follow him in the self-sacrificing service of humanity that will have its high point of concentration on the cross.” 

We do well to acknowledge that the Church has, throughout history, vacillated between the blind ambition and presumed power sought by James and John, and believing that to serve Christ as he serves the world is perfect freedom. We must look back at eras like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust as times when we were like James, John, and the ten and acted in ways contrary to the Way of Christ, which is the Way of the Cross. Fortunately, there have been examples of those like Lawrence, Deacon of Rome, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who have shown us the way of service to ransom the lives of many. 

It is no coincidence that the lessons from Isaiah and Hebrews today are also included in the lectionary for Good Friday, to which this entire section of Mark’s Gospel points those of us who wish to be faithful in following Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are to see in the cross a mirror that reflects our true image: The image of who we are reflects the image of what we are; the image of love incarnate that serves the world; the image of Christ. vii  May God the Father, his Son our Lord, and the Holy Spirit help us to remember who we are and whose we are, and to act accordingly. Amen. 

i  Mark 8:31-33

ii  Mark 10:33-34

iii  For the following excerpts of the text in Mark 10:35-45, I am guided by the translation of Richard W. Swanson in his book, Provoking the Gospel of Mark (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2005) p.303-305.

iv  Brueggmann, Walter, Reverberations of Faith, (Westminster-John Knox Press, Louisville: 2002) p.87-89

v Byrne, Brendan, A Costly Freedom (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota:2008) p.169, n.61

vi  Ibid, Byrne, p.169

vii  Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis:2022) p.49-50

Supersessionism, Marriage, and Metaphor Proper 22B

 

God speaks to us in many different ways at many different times. Once upon a time, The Letter to the Hebrews was thought to be one of Paul’s letters. The lack of greeting common to all his letters, the vocabulary, and a carefully sustained argument, sets it apart as utterly un-Pauline. In fact, it stands out from all other New Testament documents in three distinct ways: it is the only document that contains a sustained argument on the nature of Christ as both human and divine; its origin is unknown, its intended audience is unknown, and thus its connection to the rest of the New Testament is unclear; and it is often perceived as among the New Testament’s most anti-Jewish texts. [i] It is this third perception that has caused much mischief, especially as we witness a meteoric rise of anti-Semitism in America, and around the world, today. 

Which is too bad. We can never know the unknown author’s intention in this regard. It is too bad because in many ways it is the very best example of New Testament Greek rhetoric, and presents some of the more compelling early reflections on who and what Jesus is. From the very outset in its opening statement, it tells us that God speaks to us in many different ways in different times. Long ago God spoke in one way through the prophets, then in a new way through a Son “whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his power word.” There is perhaps no more majestic depiction of just how this unknown author has experienced Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is a ‘reflection’ and an ‘imprint’ of God. He is not God, but it is easy to see how one might get that impression. 

Where Hebrews gets into trouble is when it makes similar suggestions that this ‘appointed heir’ is a new kind of priest, not like the Temple priests, offering a new kind of sacrifice only one time, instead of repeatedly, and therefore it has been interpreted by some to say Christianity replaces Judaism and God’s covenant with Israel. This replacement theory is called supercessionism, and suppersessionism happens to be the foundation upon which the current White Christian Nationalist movement is based. Jesus never meant to start a religion, let alone a nationalist movement. In fact, for nearly three hundred years it was anti-nationalist, and served as an alternative to the brutality of life in the Roman Empire. Jesus called people to become a community of love – to love God and to love neighbor. All neighbors. For becoming a community of love, the earliest Christians were routinely arrested, tortured and killed by the Empire. All notions of a modern Christian Nationalism go against all that Jesus taught and lived, and against our founders intention that in America there be a separation of Church and State. 

Such interpretations of this document called Hebrews stands in direct contradiction to Paul’s assertion that those of us who follow Christ have been grafted onto the vine that is Israel, and that together we are all God’s people. I have no doubt that our unknown author likely believed something similar to Paul, but from time-to-time Hebrews can be understood to suggest that Jesus and Christianity replaces Israel. Such an interpretation of Hebrews seems also to contradict Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan which teaches that we are all in this together, even those most unlike ourselves, and that as the familiar hymn Jesu, Jesu puts it, “All are neighbors to us and you.” Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jew, and all other religious and wisdom traditions are neighbors to be loved, as God loves those of us who strive to faithfully receive the call to follow Jesus of Nazareth, who lived, died, and rose again as a Jew – a beloved Son of Israel. Whatever Jesus was, is, and always shall be, he is no anti-Semite, and no White Christian Nationalist. 

Then consider the opening episode in chapter 10 of Mark’s Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is easy to interpret it as fundamentally being about divorce. The Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. What is not in the text is the fact that for nearly a century, the Pharisees had been debating this question among themselves. There were two schools of thought: the school of Shammai said only the man can dismiss his wife, and only for unfaithfulness, while Hillel allowed for more latitude, which eventually included a woman being able to initiate a divorce as well. Jesus is a real shrewdie and is not about to enter into this long-standing debate. He knows it’s a trap either way. Instead, he changes the conversation to be about marriage. It helps to remember that marriage in first century Israel was still a business arrangement between two fathers, involving dowry payments meant to protect everyone’s interests, but which payments would need to be returned if the marriage failed. 

Marriage, says Jesus, is a covenant, very much like the covenant God makes with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that is, with Israel. In fact, the prophets use marriage as a metaphor for the covenant between God and Israel. Which covenant is utterly unlike a typical marriage contract in the ancient world in that no matter how many times Israel gives up on God, God never gives up on Israel. Jesus knows this better than most. Despite his cries of abandonment on the cross, he rose to live another day.  He also knows that the debate on divorce misses the essential truth: when relationships of any kind break down, everyone is hurt no matter who initiates the breakdown, and no matter what happens next. 

Which may be why Jesus brings back the teaching on children which began back in chapter nine where the disciples evidently did not learn the lesson. People are bringing children to Jesus for a blessing, and the disciples try to send them away. Oy vey! Children had no rights, and, like women, were considered property. They were in every way marginalized like the poor, the halt, and the lame. Jesus says in effect, if you welcome me into your life, you must welcome them. As you reach out and receive into your life and into your heart those who are most hurt, damaged, marginalized and broken, it is as if you have welcomed me and my Father into your heart. Let’s not get hung up on blaming one another for whatever breaks down in our relationships, but rather let’s love one another, as my Father loves us and never gives up on us. We may not agree on all the details, we may go our separate ways, but if we do not stay in relationship with one another, then all truly is lost. 

God speaks to us in many different ways in many different times. As we consider these sacred texts from Hebrews and Mark: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

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[i] Levine, Amy-Jill, Brettler, Marc Zvi, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press, USA:2017) p 460

Have Salt In Yourself…… and be at Peace, Shalom, with one another Proper 21B

 Have Salt In Yourself…… and be at Peace, Shalom, with one another

Most churches, like other public buildings, are required by code to place Exit signs over doors that open out from the church. This is of course for safety reasons. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton reminded us last week of one of the essential sayings of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple: “The Church exists primarily for the sake of those who are still outside it.” [i] The archbishop is absolutely correct. This suggests that these signs over church doors ought to  say, “Entrance.” They are the entrances to the mission field of “those who are still outside of it.” This is why the Holy Eucharist concludes with a dismissal such as, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.” Which is to say, we come to church precisely to be sent out, dismissed, and dispersed into the mission field to bring the Good News of Christ to those – all those – who are outside the church. 

This recalls another saying of William Temple: “It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly, concerned with religion.” [ii] This all sounds frightfully counterintuitive until we ponder this enigmatic text from Mark 9:38-50. Jesus’s disciples had witnessed someone casting out demons in the name of Christ. Disciple John tells Jesus, “We tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” Poor John. Elsewhere, he and his brother James tell Jesus that he must seat them at his right hand and his left when he comes into the glory of his Father’s Kingdom. In that instance, Jesus says to be careful what you ask for, because in my case it leads to execution by the Romans. John and James just don’t get it, which leads to the misconception that there is some sort of division between us and them; we are the insiders, and those not “in the church” are outsiders. How dare these outsiders be doing the work we are meant to be doing. We promise in our baptism to follow Jesus when we walk out the “Entrance door” to our mission field! 

Jesus issues a mild rebuke to John, and to any and all of us who would be followers of the man from Galilee. “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” I often wonder if we really get the sense of what Jesus is talking about. He says that one need not be a member of the Church, which in fact he had no idea of starting, to do the work he does, and “greater works than these” he tells them later. Indeed, the archbishop’s corollary that God is not chiefly even concerned with religion at all is meant to remind us that what we do outside the church is what matters. And outside can mean many things. You might be a Buddhist, a tradition that had been underway for some 600 years by the time of Jesus, or a Muslim, or Daoist, or even an atheist, and if you are casting out demons, or healing people, or even just offering someone who is thirsty a cup of water, then you are doing the work Jesus calls us to do. And greater works than these! 

Jesus’s rebuke to John reminds me of a saying coined by the 20^th century Hindu Guru Meher Baba: “Don’t worry, John. Be happy!” Anyone who does the work of bringing my Father’s peace, God’s healing, loving, and forgiving Shalom, is not against us, but is for us. This is very Good News! All is well. All shall be well! All manner of thing shall be well. Would that more people inside and outside our community of God’s Love would do the work we are called to do: to serve others – all others – as we serve one another, and as I have served you, John. 

But then comes a text-driven whiplash as Jesus continues to address John, and any of us who think that somehow this work is in any way, shape, or form, the sole possession of the Church. To think this mission is ours and ours only has been the source of much mischief throughout the history of Christianity and the Church. Jesus seems to incite violence and self-mutilation when he says, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” Ouch! At the time of Jesus this was one method of execution among many for the occupying  Roman empire. Jesus then goes down a list of amputations: if your hand, foot, or eye causes you to cause “one of these little ones” to stumble, cut them off! Rip out that eye! These “little ones,” does not just mean the children we heard about last Sunday. Many have suggested that this refers to the am ha’aretz, the people of the land: the poor, debt-laden, farm workers, fishermen, as well as the sick, the halt, the blind and the lame; not to mention widows, orphans, and resident aliens; foreigners passing through, those seeking asylum danger elsewhere, looking for work, and many simply curious to learn more about the One God of Israel they have heard so much about. A God of love, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. These outsiders are the ones we are meant to serve in the name of Christ as he does at great peril. 

 Then Jesus talks about salt. Salt. Next to water, salt is the most essential element to human life. Our bodies are approximately 60% water – salt water. Salt is crucial to many life-giving ongoing chemical reactions in our bodies. Too much or too little can cause problems. We need salt. Salt is also used as a preservative and flavoring for foods, and for well over 6000 years has been used in a variety of religious rites and rituals of purification. “Everyone will be salted with fire.” Fire, one of the metaphors for the Holy Spirit, God’s ruach, God’s life giving, life sustaining breath. We are to have salt in ourselves, both as individuals and as a community; a community of God’s Love, God’s Shalom, God’s Mercy and Justice for all the world, and everyone and everything therein. Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace, at Shalom, with one another. This saltiness enables us to serve others beyond the door of our churches. 

Where are we to get this “salt”? This salt is not something we can find on our own. We cannot mine it. We cannot buy it. We cannot earn it. For this life sustaining salt is a gift. A gift of the Holy Spirit. This salt is given to us each time we come to hear and meditate on God’s Word; to Pray; and to share in the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. To take, bless, break and share bread with one another, and with all who come to His table. And this gift of Salt is given to others in other traditions, in other ways, and yet, results in all of us, we who are Christ’s own, and those who may have never heard of Christ, to go out and into the world and bring the Love, Mercy, Compassion and Forgiveness of God to others – all others. Jesus uses what may be the most provocative of metaphors and imagery to get this into John’s, the disciples’s, and our heads! And more importantly into our hearts and souls. 

What Jesus seems to say is, “When you walk out that door, the Entrance to the mission field outside the church, what are you going to do? Don’t worry about what others are doing. Just continue to do the things I do, and greater things than these you shall do!” Amen.

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[i] Frequently quoted in slightly varying forms, such as ‘the only organization that exists solely for the benefit of non-members.’ Recalled as a personal dictum in ‘Letter from the Archbishop of the West Indies’ in Theology (1956), vol. 59

[ii] R. V. C. Bodley In Search of Serenity (1955) ch. 12

In Memoriam Patricia A Rohrman

 

Patricia A Rohrman

In Memoriam

September 27, 1932 ~ July 31, 2024 

We come from love. We return to love. Love is all around.

This is the essence of what Jesus teaches his disciples at his Last Supper with them. He had just told them that he would be returning to his Father’s household of love – that place from which he came down to dwell among us as the full embodiment of the Father’s love. The disciples are upset. Peter protests, saying, “I will go wherever you go.” Yes, yes, says Jesus, all in good time, but now is not the time. Your day will come, but you have much more work to do. 

This is when he says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” [ John 14:1-6] It’s as if he is speaking to us all right now. Having lost a vital, essential, and much-loved member of our community of God’s love does trouble our hearts. Trouble mixed with love, knowing, that as he promises his disciples, Jesus has come to take her home to his Father’s house to be reunited with her beloved Charles, Thomas, and Timothy for whom he had already prepared a special place for them all. 

We notice that although Jesus is the one who will soon suffer in Jerusalem, it is he that is comforting the disciples. That’s what he comes to do – to be the visible presence of God his Father, and an ambassador of his Father’s love for the world and everyone and everything therein. Jesus comes to assemble a community of love that is all around us at all time, day and night. At that same supper, he issues a new commandment: “Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [John 13:34-35] 

Which is what brings us all here today. In our love for one another, and our love for Pat, we gather as his community of love to comfort one another, to share our troubled hearts with one another, to bear the grief, the joy, and the love we all share for Pat and for one another. Jesus reassures us that this is the Way, the Truth and the Life he calls us to live. Both Jesus and Pat are surely glad to see that here, this morning, the love for one another is overflowing, and comforting our troubled hearts. 

We also gather to remember and celebrate a life faithfully lived as an essential part of the love that is all around us at all times. As a volunteer in the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, the Community Action Agency, and the RSVP Program, Patricia A Rohrman was nominated twice for one of Harford’s Most Beautiful People Awards for her volunteer efforts. Here at historic Rock Spring Parish, she served on the Altar Guild, the Newsletter Committee, the Episcopal Church Women’s Group, and much much more. Tuesdays she worked here and at home with the Harford County Piecemakers, a quilting group that makes and distributes beautiful lap quilts to hospitals, nursing homes, and the sick, all free of charge. 

Pat had a deep love for Christ Church Rock Spring Parish. My first day in the office here, Pat was the first person to come in and charge me with the task of finding out just what had been going on here the previous ten years. There were questions that needed answers, and believe me, as she made her case, I hopped to it until we all could understand where things stood and move forward. Pat also had a special ministry to her priest: whether it was Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Birthday, the arrival of a new grandchild, on every special occasion a card arrived, on time, every year as long as I have been here with a personal message from Pat to me and our family. 

I am certain that everyone here has stories to tell about their special times with Pat, and there will be time in the parish hall after this service and The Committal in the cemetery to share those stories with one another. Pat Rohrman was and always will be a vital part of the love that surrounds us here at Christ Church on all sides, at all times. 

Just as we gather to love and comfort one another, and to remember and celebrate the life of Pat Rohrman, we also gather to affirm her faith in her Lord, Jesus Christ. As long as she was able, Pat was here on Sunday mornings to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Eucharist. She attended our parish suppers, our annual Lenten breakfast, worked at our rummage sales, but it was sitting in this historic church, singing, praying, and taking Holy Communion that tied her to Christ and to all of us. 

Her faith recognized that life is changed, not ended, and that when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for us, as Jesus promises, a dwelling place eternal in the heavens of his Father’s household of love, mercy, and forgiveness. This is why we dress the church in white and gold for Easter, for Resurrection. We light the Paschal Candle that was lit the day she entered the church in Holy Baptism, and we light it again today as she enters her new resurrected life with the God who is Love. Whose love was embodied in Jesus, his Son, the morning star that knows no setting. Whose light forever shines in the darkness, dispelling all darkness, and all troubled hearts; a reminder that we will all, one day, return to that place of love from whence we all have come. Our true home. We come from love. We return to love. Love is all around. Amen.

Love Unites Proper 17B

Love Unites   Proper 17B

Jesus’s followers, which includes more than just the twelve, are a mixed crowd, which we have seen elsewhere includes Gentiles, non-Judeans, non-Israelites. Some Pharisees see them sharing a meal, and take note that some of them, not all of them, are “eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders…). So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” [i] 

Storyteller Mark attempts to help the reader/listener to understand that the Pharisees go beyond the commandments of God as outlined in Torah in an effort to make all of Israel holy and righteous, in the hope that YWHW will once again deliver them, this time from the empire of Rome. They also observe the “traditions of the elders,” traditions accumulated over centuries that in effect erect a fence around the Torah. In this case, where Torah lays out certain dietary restriction known commonly as kosher, the elders and the Pharisees go beyond kosher by requiring that hands be washed, made undefiled, before eating at all. This is not a kosher law, and contrary to Mark’s description, not all Jews at the time of Jesus washed their hands before meals, a practice prescribed specifically for the Temple priesthood, not for your average Israelite. 

Jesus calls them hypocrites, which in Greek theatrical culture means one who plays a part, and suggests that perhaps they are posers claiming to be more pious and righteous than Moses, who, when addressing those delivered from Pharaoh’s Egypt about to leave the wilderness to enter the land of promise, reviews what they have learned of God’s commands for them and says, “You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.” [ii] 

Jesus then reminds them of what the prophet Isaiah had to say about these “traditions” you speak of, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” [iii]  To which he adds, “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” 

Jesus goes on to remind them how another “tradition of the elders” leads one to violate the command to Honor one’s father and mother. Then Jesus transcends the written tradition as well as those of the elders when he, in effect, abrogates the kosher dietary laws altogether: “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” [iv] 

Understandably, the Pharisees disappear from the narrative altogether! Jesus does not claim to return to a strict practice of the written tradition. Nor does he call for a reform of traditions of the elders. He does not reform the old order to make it more serviceable in the present circumstances, as the elders had done throughout the centuries. Jesus inaugurates something entirely new. The Pharisees disappear from the text presumably because there is nothing in their traditions, as sincere as their desire for holiness is, that they might say in return. What Jesus does is simply incomprehensible over against their deeply and faithfully held traditions. 

Like the Pharisees, we too might misconstrue what is being said here. Jesus does not say that religion is a matter of inward piety rather than external behavior; that one’s private spirituality is valued more highly than one’s physical actions in the world. Rather, Jesus warns that sin arises from within and leads to destructive behaviors such as fornication, theft, murder, and the like. The lack of holiness is marked not by breaches in the cultic code, nor by a lack of belief, but in bad behaviors that spring from evil intentions in our hearts often rooted in hate and division. 

This was the observation some decades later by the author of the Letter of James who writes, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing… Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”  [v] 

Simply put, love of God and love of neighbor is the liberating essence of Torah. We are blessed in our doing, our doing for others. For love is the highest good that goes out to the other, for the sake of the other, not for our own sake – and it is in the “doing for the other” that we are blessed. Jesus is says that the Holiness and Righteousness which the Pharisees seek is not found by what we do or do not eat, or whether or not we wash our hands before meals, but in the simple reaching out to others in need. It is significant that this episode is preceded by the feeding of a mixed crowd of Gentiles and Jews, and followed by healing the daughter of a Gentile woman – who, by the way, teaches Jesus something about God’s love. When he says sharing his gifts with Gentiles is like throwing the children’s food to the dogs, she replies, “Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs under the table.” He is astonished by her faith and remembers that doing God’s work is meant to unite us to one another rather than divide us. That all people are deserving of God’s healing love, mercy and forgiveness. In that moment, Jesus realizes we often have important things to learn from those who are most unlike ourselves. 

Jesus inaugurates a new age of God’s love. As Ilia Delio writes, “love [is] an irresistible ocean of attraction whose infinite goodness leads into the heart of God…For every act of love is a personalization of God and when God is born through our lives, heaven unfolds on earth. All that we long for and anticipate becomes a reality in this moment, in the here and now, in every particular act of love.” [vi]  Table fellowship with those unlike ourselves transcends washing one’s hands and is a blessing in itself. In welcoming strangers like the Gentile woman and all those different from us and our culture, we are transformed and blessed because love unites; love does not divide. When we act in love on behalf of the other, we are truly blessed. This is holiness, this is righteousness, for we finally become the image of God in this world that we are created to be!

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[i] Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

[ii] Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

[iii] Isaiah 29:13

[iv] Ibid Mark 7

[v] James 1:17-27

[vi] Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis:2022) pp.11, 82

Abide In My Love Proper 16B

 Abide in My Love

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. [i] 

As we wrap up week five listening to chapter six of storyteller John’s Good News of Jesus, things begin to fall apart. The crowd of five thousand were truly impressed when Jesus distributed the bread and fish. Everyone got enough. No one got too much. It reminded them of the manna in the wilderness days of their ancestors. Every family could gather enough for one day. Gather more than needed and it would go bad. It would sour. It would become crawling with worms. But now he speaks of eating his flesh. Or, as the Greek text has it, they are to “gnaw” on his flesh, and drink his blood. He keeps saying, “I am the true bread that comes down from my Father’s home of love, mercy, and forgiveness.” 

They don’t know what to make of all this talk. What you are asking us to do is too hard, they say! We just want more bread like the other day. I’m not a baker, he says. I am no baker’s son, he says. One cannot live on bread alone, but on the Word of God. The opening verse of John’s story speaks of The Word. In the beginning the Word was with God. And the Word was God. But what on earth does all this mean.

Taken out of the context of the whole story, it all sounds weird. Even more weird, later, chapters 13-17 focus on the Last Supper where there is no mention of bread or wine. Instead, Jesus is on his knees washing feet. And he says, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, wash your feet, you must wash one another’s feet.” [ii] In chapter 15, however, he says, “Abide in me, as I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” [iii] What does it mean to abide? 

John tells us that the heart of the Last Supper, the very heart of the Eucharist, is love. The Father’s Love. Christ’s Love. We are to abide in Christ’s Love. To abide is to accept, to act in accordance with, to conform to. We are to accept and conform to Christ’s Love, which is his Father’s Love. And just how do we abide with Christ and one another? “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them… the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 

Every three years we spend five weeks with chapter 6 because this is where John gets to the heart of the Last Supper – the very heart of the Eucharist: God’s Love; Christ’s Love; Our Love. We come from Love. We return to Love. Love is all around. As we abide with Christ, we accept and conform to his love and we become the Love that is all around. This is what Jesus calls “eternal life” – life lived as God’s Love here and now. This is where John tells us about the bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood. As we abide with the Lord’s Communion, we become His Body, the Church. His Church is to be focused on accepting God’s Love, abiding in God’s Love, conforming to God’s love, so that we might Love on another, and Love our neighbors as God loves us and we Love one another.

We come from the Love of God. We will all return to the Love of God. And in this in-between time, we are to become that Love wherever we are, here and now. 

It was a former French Jesuit priest, Pierre Wolff, who introduced me to this summary of Eucharistic Theology. Pierre became an Episcopal priest, in part, so he could marry a nun, named Mary, who also became an Episcopalian. Mary Wolff was the warden of a men’s prison in Connecticut. Every Maundy Thursday, the day we read the story of Jesus washing people’s feet, she and Pierre would go through the prison washing the prisoner’s feet. The warden washed the prisoner’s feet. Those who could abide with that. Those who could accept the Love of God through Christ Jesus’s representatives, Mary and Pierre Wolff, who on that day were the living embodiment of the Love that is all around – of what it means to abide in Christ’s love. 

This is the essence, says Jesus, of the spiritual life. This is the essence of Eternal Life. Eternal Life is not some reward you somehow earn when it’s time to return to that place of love from whence we come. Eternal Life is life lived here and now as representatives, icons, of God’s love for all people, all creatures, and every living thing throughout the ever-expanding universe that somehow, in the beginning, banged itself into existence and continues to create and change, unfold and become more diverse despite all our efforts to try and hoard what we have and keep everything just the way it is. 

It is this that Jesus talks about in chapter six. He invites us to abide in him by eating his Body and drinking his blood. The very thought of this is too much for the crowd. They start drifting away. They mumble like their ancestors, “This is too hard. We just want more bread and fish. We just want you to open a bakery. We cannot fathom gnawing on your flesh and drinking your blood. 

And yet. And yet, his flesh is Love, and his blood is Love indeed. Like the manna of our ancestors, there is always enough love for each day. But if you gather too much and try to hoard it, it sours. Things go badly. Unless we find ways to give it away. To give love away. As the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruch Cockburn sings, “I’ve got this thing in my heart, I must give you today / it only lives if, you give it away.” Love only lives if you give it away. 

Give it all away, and we are assured that tomorrow there will be more love to gather and give away. And the next day and the next. Seems like Good News! But the people get angry with Jesus They just want a baker more than a Son of God who promises eternal life to all who choose to abide in His Love, the love of God that surrounds us at all times and in all places. The love that comes down and chooses to dwell among us. And so we sing: we come from Love; we return to Love; and Love is all around. To remember who we are and whose we are. 

For five weeks every third year we read chapter six of John because this is the heart of the matter. The heart of all matter. The bread is love for the life of the world. To eat his flesh and drink his blood is to abide in God’s love, and become the Love that is all around, says the Son of God. Be the Love and then give it away. Tomorrow morning there will be more. Amen.

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[i] John 6:56-69

[ii] John 13:1-15

[iii] John 15:4-5b, 8-9

Listen With The Ear of Your Heart Proper 14B

 Listen With The Ear of Your Heart

Some years ago, I represented the Diocese of Connecticut at a Stewardship conference held at the camp and conference center in North Carolina, Kanuga. I vividly recall being in a workshop, about what and led by whom I cannot remember. I do remember he held up a little book he had found in the Kanuga bookstore, Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living, by John McQuiston II, an attorney from Memphis, TN. He read from the book The First Rule:

“Attend to these instructions. Listen with the heart and the mind, they are provided in a spirit of good will. These words are addressed to anyone who is willing to renounce the delusion that the meaning of life can be learned, whoever is ready to take up the greater weapon of fidelity to a way of life that transcends understanding. The first rule is simply this: live this life, and do whatever is done in a spirit of thanksgiving. Abandon attempts to security, they are futile, give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning, quit the search for salvation, it is selfish, and come to comfortable rest in the certainty that those who participate in this life with an attitude of thanksgiving will receive its full promise.” [i] 

I sat there stunned. It was as if the world stood still; as if I was the only person in the room; as if God had just spoken to my heart and my head at the same time. Thanksgiving. Eucharist in the Koine Greek of the New Testament. I went and purchased the book right away, and read it cover to cover. McQuiston had boiled down The Rule of St. Benedict making it accessible for just about anyone. I learned that a group of monastics had begged Benedict to be their leader, the head of their community. He put together a rule of life for the community. Which is what the author of the epistle called Ephesians does – lay out four essential core dimensions of life lived as the body of Christ: truthful speech “for we are neighbors of one another” who are made one body; do not let anger open you to sin and to those who try to mislead, deceive, and undermine the strength of the body of Christ; do not grieve the Holy Spirit with misbehavior for we are those marked and sealed as Christ’s own forever; forgiveness must be our fundamental practice “for God in Christ has forgiven you.” [ii] 

Those who had once begged Benedict to lead their community found it too hard to follow his Rule and attempted to poison him with the communion wine. He became aware of the plot, made the sign of the cross over the jug, broke it, forgave everyone, and sent them back to work – which work was to create a community of hospitality for any and all visitors who came to visit the monks. For you were once strangers in Egypt. We are all strangers in a strange land. 

Eventually, I set out to find a copy of The Rule itself, and learned about an annotated edition with commentary by Sister Joan Chittister, OSB. While vacationing in New Hampshire one summer, I ran about five miles first thing in the morning. Soon after, we all went to the local independent Morgan Hill Bookstore. It is small, but has a truly broad and well curated selection of books. They also have easy chairs around the store so one can sit and read a book before deciding to purchase it. Suddenly I became light-headed from my morning run, and sat down in one of those chairs, head between my knees for a few minutes. I was next to a set of bookshelves. When I sat up, I turned and looked at the books on the shelf, and there it was right in front of me: The Rule of Benedict: Insights For The Ages, annotated by Joan Chittister, OSB. I wasn’t looking for it, and yet it was right there! I turned to the Prologue to the Rule and read, “Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” Listen with the ear of your heart! “This is advice from one who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice…First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to God most earnestly to bring it to perfection. In God’s goodness, we are already counted as God’s own, and therefore we should never grieve the Holy One by our evil actions.” [iii] To which Sister Joan adds, “The person who prays for the presence of God is, ironically, already in the presence of God. The person who seeks God has already found God to some extent.” We are already counted as God’s own! We are already forgiven by God in Christ. We can become those who speak truth for we are neighbors of one another, and all who God brings to us. Marked and sealed as Christ’s own forever, we remain in the presence of God not allowing those outside the community of God’s love to deceive us and mislead us. 

Still talking to the 5,000 who had feasted on five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus says. “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; … It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’” [iv] I had not looked for Always We Begin Again. It found me that day at Kanuga. Although I wanted to experience the sixth century Benedict’s Rule directly, it was the furthest thing from my mind that morning in the Morgan Hill Bookstore. And I surely had not counted on almost passing out, and then turn to see that the chair I sat in to recover was right next to Sister Joan Chittister’s annotated Rule of Saint Benedict. It truly was as if God had drawn me to that place, and that God was teaching me through Benedict and Sister Joan.

Listen with the ear of your heart. Just breathe that in. Let it come to us. Simply in seeking God’s presence in prayer is to be in the presence of God. There are no spiritual gymnastics to perform. No triple twists in tuck position needed to score forgiveness from God through Christ. We are already loved. We are already forgiven. We have already heard the truth with the ears of our hearts. Now here is the kicker: It’s our turn to do the same. Can we wrap our heads around what the unknown author of Ephesians is really saying? 

“Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Don’t imitate me, says the author of the epistle. Do not even imitate Christ. Be imitators of God. Or, as Jesus would say elsewhere, love God, love our neighbors, love our enemies, and in our spare time we are to be perfect as God is perfect! [v] That’s all. That’s it. We are made in the image of God. Live it! 

Make no mistake about it, we humans fall into terrible peril when we wrongly imitate God’s power, God’s knowledge, or God’s judgment. Benedict and Ephesians, like Christ himself, urges us to imitate a particular dimension of God, which is God’s love and forgiveness for all humankind, seen most astonishingly and most clearly in the fragrant offering of Christ’s sacrifice for the life of the world. The world. The whole world. As in “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything therein.” [vi] How different this world would be if we would only let that first verse that follows the 23^rd Psalm to penetrate the ears of our hearts so we might truly be imitators of God in Christ. Christ who is the bread of eternal life. Life lived with God here and now and forever.

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[i] McQuiston II, John, Always We Begin Again (Morehouse, New York:1996/2011) p.17

[ii] Ephesians 4:25-5:2

[iii] Chittister, Joan, The Rule of Benedict (Crossroad, NY: 2004) p.19-21

[iv] John 6:35, 41-51

[v] Matthew 5:48

[vi] Psalm 24:1