The Gerasene Demoniac & Empire Proper 7C

 

The Gerasene Demoniac & Empire    Proper 7C

I’ve been pondering our story of a naked, demon possessed man in the gospels (Luke 8:26-39), and St. Paul’s assertion that for those of us who dare to claim we are of the Body of Christ there is no male and female, no free and slave, no Jew and Greek (Galatians 3:23-29). Were Paul alive and writing letters today one can safely imagine he would add, “there is no liberal and conservative, no red states and blue states, no MAGA and Woke people, but in the Kingdom of God Christ lives, died, and rose from the dead for, we are to Be and Act as One in Christ for the sake of the life of the world. In Christ there are to be no such divisions. 

Meanwhile, we are seriously considering to enter into the widening war between Israel and Iran. Mike Huckabee, our Ambassador to Israel, and an Evangelical Zionist Christian who believes that a Middle East War will precipitate a return of Jesus, urges our president to listen to the voice “he will hear from heaven,” and take advantage of an opportunity “we have not seen since President Truman,” who ordered the drop of two nuclear weapons on Japan, destroying two cities and killing somewhere between 240,000 and 260,000 people, not including many more civilians and soldiers who died in the subsequent weeks, months, and years due to injuries, burns, and radiation poisoning. The ambassador seems to feel this is the time to drop The Bomb on Iran. And bring Jesus back – as if we have the power to do such a thing. 

Enter a man possessed by demons. We might take the story of this man as primitive, but no one in his or her right mind can deny that there is set before us any number of demonic options of how to proceed as a nation that many want to call, or categorize, as Christian. As I was running the other morning the following quote popped into my consciousness:

“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.”

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

Crossan, also wrote, God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now, in which he argues that in contrast to the oppressive Roman military occupation of the first century is the non-violent Kingdom of God prophesized by Jesus, and the equality and breaking down of all “us and them” categories advocated by Paul. Crossan contrasts these messages of peace with the misinterpreted apocalyptic vision from the Book of Revelation, which has been misrepresented by modern right-wing theologians and televangelists to justify U.S. military actions in the Middle East. Seriously, does anyone believe that Jesus, who on his last day walking upon this Earth made clear to Pilate, the Empire’s local toady, that he had no army, and had no plan to fight; that he came to announce the kingdom of God as a kingdom of justice and peace for all people with respect, mercy and love for every human being; does anyone think that Jesus, our Jesus, would justify military action anywhere as a solution to anything whatsoever? Let alone trigger his return. 

Then I asked myself, who is the demon possessed man, chained and shackled by others, separated entirely from his home community, living among the dead in the tombs? Might he symbolically represent Israel, and any other of the client states of Rome, oppressed by an Empire just as the Hebrew children were by Pharaoh in Egypt? Like those Exiled to Babylon after destruction of the First Jerusalem Temple? Like those in the first century under a military occupation such that home is no long home, but a land oppressed and forced to feed the needs and greed of the Roman Empire, causing great poverty, loss of family lands, and unhappiness? 

We note that the demons identify themselves as Legion, “because we are many.” Is it too far fetched to think they represent the Roman legions who occupy the homeland? And they ask to be sent into a flock of un-kosher pigs, which tells us that Jesus is in Gentile territory and interested in helping a Gentile who has been ostracized from his home community. Again, if someone mentioned that the Tenth Roman Legion was responsible for burning down all of Jerusalem and the Temple, and that the Tenth Legion’s emblem was a Boar, is it to far fetched that those watching this drama unfold might see the irony and the hope that this young Jew might be the one who could end the nightmare of Roman occupation and send it headlong into the sea? 

Jesus is there in the region of the Gerasenes to demonstrate that Paul would eventually “get it,” and recognize that in the kingdom Jesus comes to announce and inaugurate is to be a peaceable kingdom as Isaiah had envisioned some six hundred years earlier. He reaches out to this dangerous looking demon possessed man and recognizes him as a human being like any other, someone’s son, someone’s brother, perhaps someone’s father. Even the townspeople seem to have recognized him as someone who has some relationship to their community, or else they likely would have treated him like a mad dog, and put him down. But they do not. 

As soon as they see him properly dressed, demons gone, in his right mind at the feet of Jesus, they are afraid. They see that the power of love and mercy is stronger than any Empire, than any and all attempts to divide the community into acceptable and unacceptable persons. Others were upset that pork belly futures had literally sunk into the roiling surf. They asked Jesus to leave. 

But before he can even get back into the boat, the boat which the night before had nearly sunk in a storm, the man whom Jesus had accepted as one more human being deserving of respect, and justice, and God’s mercy and shalom, begs Jesus to take him with the others, the oft bumbling disciples who were frightened out of their wits the night before, and even more so when they saw this man, naked and wracked with demons. 

But Jesus says, “No. Go back to your city and tell people what the God of the Exodus, the God of Return from Exile, the God who will be with me as I hang on a Roman cross, and like you, will raise me from the dead; tell everyone the things our God, my Father, did for you.” And he did. And with no ire for those who had chained him and tossed him into the wilderness, he proclaimed to one and all the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 

When we find ourselves isolated like this man; when we feel surrounded by demons of all kinds; when we find ourselves being encouraged to draw lines between ourselves and others; when home suddenly no longer looks or feels like home anymore; when it seems as if more violence is the only answer to a world of violence; what are we to do? Will we have the courage to respect the dignity of others – all others? Will we truly love our neighbors as ourselves – no exceptions? Will we proclaim a new kingdom, a new world, of justice and peace for all people? Can we find ways to allow Jesus to open us to the world he imagines; the world which his Father and our Father wills? For in such a time as we now find ourselves, this is what this story is meant to inspire us to become: the Body of Christ. Amen.

Trinity & Communitas Trinity Sunday (C)

 

Communitas    Trinity Sunday (C)

Bob Dorough, teaching about the number “3” on Schoolhouse Rock, used to sing:

Three is a magic number.

Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity

You get three as a magic number.

The past and the present and the future,

Faith, hope, and charity,

Give you three.

A man and a woman had a little baby, yes, they did.

They had three in the family.

That's a magic number. 

Three makes a family. A family is a small community. Community: from the Latin “communitas,” commonly referring to an unstructured community in which people are equal. A root understanding of community then is an unstructured group in which the people, or in the case of the Trinity, the personae, are equal. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then, can be seen as such a family or community in which the essence of the community is that the three are equal. Or, as we take some liberty with that equality, they are One. 

Those third- and fourth-century Christians who were under command to make some creedal assertions about the nature of Christian communitas referred to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as personae, as in a Greek play in which a single actor assumes the persona of two, or three, or more characters simply by changing masks – masks that represent the various characters the actor is playing. Those hammering out the creeds adopted as a metaphor the language of the theater, that artistic discipline which at its very core plumbs the diverse depths of human nature in story and narrative. 

So here, in our creeds and our theology, the single actor (God) is capable and has been perceived, and experienced in history, as having three basic, somewhat distinct personae or characteristics: that of a nurturing Father whose essence is Love; a Son who lives and acts among us as a representative of the essence of the Father; the Holy Spirit which sustains the actions of the Son as an ongoing essence of who we are, both as individuals and as a community of the Father and the Son. Trinity, then, means to express a communitas of three personae, the essence of which is Love. 

Paul, in his letter to the emerging church in Rome, recognizes this when writing that the peace, or Shalom, of God, is present in the Christian communitas because God’s essence, which is Love, has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That is, in Christ, we are to become a community of God’s love in all that we say and all that we do. 

In this sense, what we call Trinity is the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit infusing those of us who dare to call ourselves Christian with the Love of God. At the same time, these personae of God’s Love – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – are, in a sense, a communitas, or family of three. The famous Rublev icon depicts this family of three somewhat androgynous Beings in that all three have long hair tied back with a long braid down their backs. In the background is a tree, perhaps the tree in the original garden, perhaps the tree upon which hung the world’s salvation, or perhaps the tree of the renewed and resurrected garden imagined by the revelation of St. John   the Revelator, with the crystal river flowing through the middle of the city, with trees from which hang leaves meant for the healing of all nations. 

When we try to speak of God, the God who has created all that is seen and unseen, a universe of some 14 billion years of light and love, we have no choice but to speak in metaphor. We speak of past, present, and future as a way of describing what we mean by “time.” This does not really give us a full picture and understanding of time; it doesn’t account for perceptions like when time seems to stand still or speed up. Certain times dissolve us into tears, other times give us great joy. Past, present, and future, then, gives us a framework to help us understand at least a part of what time is like. 

Ritually, we speak of this family or community of love as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Others call these three personae “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer.” Former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry sometimes invokes the “Loving, liberating, and life-giving God.” The New Zealand Prayer Book describes our God as “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver.” All are attempts to describe this sacred Family: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 A family, and yet a unity. Three experiences or co-equal essences of the One God. Of Love. 

The deeper truth of it all is that the revelation of God is not dogma, not theology, not a doctrine, not a creed – not even a belief. For us, the revelation of God is a person – Jesus Christ, a person whose every story and teaching gives us some deep truth about the life, love, and the will of our God. Jesus reflects the very truth of creation – creation that is not static but ever unfolding with newness and more diversity. Things yet unseen come into being. And if we let ourselves enter into the diversity of God’s Triune Being, we learn that we are ever-changing, just as the whole universe is constantly coming into being. 

Paul tries to sum this up when he writes, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.… the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:11-5). This gift of the very Spirit of God’s love constantly transforms us into a community that reflects God’s love. Of course, as important as is the giving of this gift, so is the receiving. Like all of creation which continues to unfold, when we allow ourselves to receive the love of God that the Spirit pours into our hearts, we become love made new. 

One last name for this Community of Love we call “Trinity” was coined by Evelyn Underhill, someone who wrote extensively on the mystery of God. She calls the Trinity “The School of Charity.” As Paul also wrote to the Corinthians, “Faith, hope, and charity, abide these three – but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13 KJV). We who are created in the image of God – imago Dei – are to become those people who abandon self-love and the greed and acquisition that grows out of such self-love, and become more like Jesus, God’s divine charity in human flesh and blood. We are to become a giving, sharing, self-emptying community of God’s divine charity, sharing the unending, unqualified love of our creator with all people and all nations, especially with all those who are utterly unlike ourselves. We are to be students of the Trinity so that we may become the School of Charity, a communitas of equals, and like the Trinity, ever-changing, yet the same, as a Community of Love. Forever and ever. Amen.

See The Son Rising Ascension 2025

 

See The Son Rising

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages. Once upon a time, in a universe far far away, I was awakened from sleep in a cabin near a lake in northwest Connecticut by the voice of friends in a canoe on the lake singing the dawn of a new day, “See the Sun rising, see the Sun rising. Years later as I recalled that singing, and while pondering the new dawn that day of Jesus’s Ascension, I began to sing, “See the Son rising, see the Son rising,” calling us to a new dawn of being the Christ’s witnesses here and now, “to the end of the ages.” 

Storyteller Luke is the only one of the Gospel writers to describe the Christ’s ascension. Curiously, Luke offers two differing accounts: one at the end of The Gospel of Luke, and one Volume 2 at the beginning of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, his account of the early days of the people of The Way – the Way of Jesus – becoming what would eventually be called Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It may surprise us to learn that the Feast of the Ascension has less to do with Jesus than it does with us and with the Church. 

In Luke’s first account at the end of the gospel, we find Jesus issuing final instructions to his disciples, which by the time he had reached Jerusalem was a crowd considerably more than twelve men, and as Luke has chronicled, included women, many of whom were the primary supporters of Jesus’s efforts to gather a community of God’s love, peace and justice for all people. What Jesus calls the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, on Earth. 

As he had all along, especially following his resurrection [i], he “opened their minds to understand the scriptures,” the sacred texts of Israel: “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” [ii] Who is meant by “You”? The antecedent is not clear. We might presume it is this enlarged crowd of disciples and camp followers. Or, it has been suggested, one might answer “the Jewish community,” since this commission reconstitutes the people of God in Jerusalem and gives them the particular responsibility to begin at Jerusalem and proclaim the gospel to the non-Jewish world. [iii] Note that they return to the Temple to worship, praise God every day as they wait for the Holy Spirit Jesus promises will empower them to proclaim God’s intention for there to be a world-wide community of God’s love and Shalom – Shalom being justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace for all people – not some people, not most people, but all people. 

“At still another level,” writes scholar and commentator Robert Cousar, “the “you” is directed to a broader company of readers, ancient and modern, who at the end of the narrative are drawn in as participants in the story. They/We are to be witnesses, who are not allowed to put the book down like a good novel and return to business as usual, but are mandated to proclaim the story, to call for repentance, to declare divine forgiveness. They/We, like the original hearers, are to be recipients of the power [of the Holy Spirit] that the Father promises, an indication that God intends for the plans to be completed and the divine strategy to work.” [iv] That would be us. The Church Universal, and the local church congregation. Because of how As Luke portrays it, The Ascension is more about the Church and our assigned mission than it is about Jesus. 

This assignment is so important, that in Luke’s Volume 2, The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, he portrays Jesus’s departure a second time to make sure we understand our mission. Although some details are differed, the essential message is the same. Only this time it is clear that enlarged group of disciples has not fully understood the scriptures and are focused on only one political issue: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" [v] Displaying a tremendous degree of patience, Jesus once again seeks to open their minds to understand the scriptures pertaining God’s intention for a world of Shalom in which there is justice and peace for all persons in which the dignity of every human being is to be respected:  and “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Then he is gone. Or, so it seems. As Psalm 47, a psalm of enthronement suggests, he is to be enthroned with God his Father, so that he may “abide with his church on earth to the end of the ages!” That is, they/we are not alone as he sends the Holy Spirit, God’s Holy Ruach which hovered over the face of the waters in creation, and has led and inspired God’s people throughout all the scriptures to which Jesus seeks to open our minds. 

It seems as if Luke thinks that they/we still not get it as we see them remaining stationary, gazing up into the sky. Suddenly, two men dressed in white robes appear. Though not identified by Luke, is it too much to assume that this is an immediate appearance of the Holy Spirit kick starting them, and us, to be the witnesses to the ends of the Earth Jesus commands them to be? "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." There’s no time to stand around gazing up into the heavens. There is work to be done right here. Right now! Which, as the story picks up in the Book of Acts, they do, immediately replacing the recently departed traitor, Judas. They cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias as he joined the Eleven. One might say, the whole thrust of the story of the Ascension is the birth of the infant Church with all of us like them commissioned to be witnesses to the end of the ages. 

Ascension Day isn’t about Jesus leaving us - It is about Jesus abides and reigns among us and within us. Now! Just as Jesus fills all things, Ascension is meant to fill us, his community of love and with Hope – Hope that one day, God’s Dream, God’s intention, of a world-wide spirit of Shalom, inspired by God’s Holy Spirit of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and care for all persons and all of Creation. That we may become witnesses to these things! 

It is said that the Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo Regius, in Roman North Africa, once said: Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. There is such a thing, says the Bible, as righteous anger [vi]- what we see as injustice, what we hear from hate speech, and feel when wounded and frightened - is not a sin! It is Hope inspired by injustice and hate that gives us courage to continue the work begun back in the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts. Luke bears witness to how a once frightened cohort of disciples became inspired by Hope, born of the Holy Spirit, to be witnesses to the ends of the Earth, and the world has never been the same. 

May we be so inspired on this day of our Celebration of the Feast of the Ascension! May we join the Christ, who even now abides with us as he fills all things, as witnesses and participants in the dawning of God’s reign of Shalom, on Earth as it is in heaven! Amen.

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[i] Such as the conversation on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-35

[ii] Luke 24:44-53

[iii] Cousar, Robert B., Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY: 1994) p.329

[iv] Ibid, Cousar

[v] Acts 1:1-11

[vi] Ibid, Cousar suggests, for example, the story in I Samuel 11 in which Saul’s righteous anger inspires the frightened people of God to rise with Hope and head off the threat of an oppressive regime. p.324

 

Radical Amazement Rogation Sunday

 Radical Amazement!      Rogation Sunday

For over a thousand years, Christians have gone out and blessed the earth and the fields, as we will do later in our Pollinator Garden. And more recently, Rogation Days have also recognized the contributions of human labor, hopefully in alliance with the environment, without which we would not exist, let alone be here today. And in our daily prayers, most especially Compline, we recognize our dependance on one another, and upon God’s outpouring of love through creation: the miracle of the Big Bang banging at just the right moment to make carbon-based life on Earth in an otherwise challenging and foreboding universe. A universe beautiful to behold, and at the same time hostile to human and animal life as we know it. We who are stardust are blessed! 

In our Creed, we acknowledge that the totality of creation is composed of things seen and unseen. Science confirms that the universe is comprise roughly of 70%, Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter (dark only means unseen), leaving a remaining scant 5% Visible Matter – which itself is made up of particles and atoms which themselves are not visible to the human eye without the extraordinary assistance of devices that can detect these building blocks of all sorts of carbon-based life: plants, animals, waterways, insects, and of course, human beings. When we stop to think about it all, and how it appears it all came to be, and continues to evolve all the time, it is all a source of what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would call wonder, or radical amazement. Heschel insists that such wonder and radical amazement “is the chief characteristic of a religious attitude toward life and the proper response to our experience of the divine.” [i] 

Living with such radical amazement makes possible for “great things happen to the soul.” Our lectionary offers three lessons and a psalm which work together to bring to our awareness of all things seen and unseen, and commentary by God, the author of the First Letter of Timothy, and Jesus Christ to flesh out our role as stewards of all creation, and the inevitable unhappiness that occurs to our soul when we ignore our connection and responsibilities to God, Creation, and One Another – what we commonly refer to as Sin; from the Greek that means “to miss the mark.” The “mark” being that we are to be stewards and co-creators’ with God. 

The voice of YHWH comes from a whirlwind to Job and his companions who, lacking all humility, portray their hubris in claiming to understand God and all of God’s ways, particularly as relates to the environment in which we live, move and have our being – so far the only such environment we have found in all the created universe. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? … Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.” There is much that science has divined about all of this, but even science stands in wonder of it all, falling short of any sort of ultimate answers, let alone a yet unknown Grand Unified Theory (GUT) to describe why there is something instead of nothing! Lucky for Job that he accepts his chastisement, and thus enters into a closer relationship with his maker. [ii] 

Then there is Psalm 104:25-37, which speaks of the interplay between the labor of humankind, the creatures of land, air, and sea, with their Creator, all of whom make important contributions to life on this planet, even if Leviathan was just a creative thought of God’s “for the sport of it!” The psalmist urges us to sing with wonder and radical amazement, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live: I will praise my God while I have any being. May my meditation be pleasing to him: for my joy shall be in the Lord. May sinners perish from the earth, let the wicked be no more: bless the Lord, O my soul; O praise the Lord.” Praising and singing to God in thankfulness for the fruitfulness and utter fecundity of creation is soul-making at its finest! 

Then the First Letter of Timothy reminds the listener that we come into the world with nothing and we leave this world with nothing. Food and clothing are to be the basic elements of contentment. It is when greed for more overtakes us, when we become trapped in many senseless and harmful desires, we find ourselves headed toward ruin and destruction. Note, it is not money that is the root of all evil – but rather, the love of money causes us to wander from our responsibilities as stewards of God’s good gifts all around us, causing us to stray from the faith handed down to us, and to cause injury not only to our own souls, but to the many others we tend to trample on our way to what we think is wealth. That said, it is all right to be rich if one is not haughty, or setting their hope on “the uncertainty of riches,” rather than on the God who seeks and loves to provide us with enough for everyone. Therefore, the rich are to “to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.” To share the wealth is soul-making. To hoard it is the ruin of many. [iii] 

Which leads us to the many who devote every moment of every day building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more stuff. The advent of the “Self-Storage” industry where we are to store all the excess things we think define our “self.” We continue to accumulate stuff until one night, Jesus says, like the man in the story, we discover that First Timothy was right: we, all of us, will leave with nothing. In his total devotion to accumulate more and more stuff, he throws himself a party where he offers a toast, “Self! Soul! Look what grand things we have done, all stored in all of these barns.” Note, he is alone. All by himself. To which unexpectedly the voice of God responds, “Self? Soul? You have no soul. You are no self. You are a fool. Look around. As you celebrate what you have done. You are all alone. No time for friends. No time for family. And tonight, you will lose it all, including your life, pitiful as it is!” Jesus concludes his story saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.” [iv] This story is meant to help us imagine: what could the man with all the barns have done for others? How might he have used his wealth more productively for others? For other creatures? For the very soil upon which his barns are just taking up potentially fruitful space? 

These texts appointed for Rogation days are meant to guide us to return to the world of wonder and radical amazement, so that we might truly see, and appreciate, and sing, and give praise for all the miraculous good things that surround us on all sides, if only. If only we spend more time soul-making than soul-breaking. If only we would consider how each decision we make as stewards of God’s creation reflects and makes an impact, for better or for worse. As one Stephen Holmes in Edinburgh, Scotland, preached a year ago, “So, our faith gives a depth to our care for creation and an urgency, because the desecration of nature is an offence to God’s praise just as much as killing an angel would be. It should be possible for all people of good will to work together… Christians, however, have a special insight which comes with a responsibility, so, finally, we can say: ‘We pray for a blessing on this good earth, that it may be fruitful… bless our common life and our care for our neighbor, that in harmony we may praise our Creator.’” [v] Amen. 

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[i] Cannato, Judy, Radical Amazement (Sorin Books, Notre Dame, Indiana:2006) p.10

[ii] Job 38:1-11,16-18

[iii] 1 Timothy 6:7-10, 17-19

[iv] The Gospel: Luke 12:13-21

[v] Holmes, Stephen, A Sermon for Rogation Sunday 2024, Holy Cross Scottish Episcopal Church, Davidson’s Mains

Edinburgh, Scotland.

I Am Making All Things New! Easter 5C

 I Am Making All Things New!     Easter 5C

It’s worth reminding ourselves that The Bible is not “a book.” It is a library of books that includes poems, letters, apocalyptic visions, stories, myths, proverbs, historical narratives, and of course, four Gospels, which comprise their own genre. As such, this library of various kinds of literature have been written, edited, and redacted over nearly three thousand years, and further interpreted with each new translation that comes along. Understanding all of this, it should be obvious that there is no such thing as “a biblical world view.” Rather, The Bible presents a great variety of worldviews which have been further interpreted by translators and commentators throughout the ages of its ongoing existence. It consists of many living documents. 

One might say that the Bible’s one consistent unifying theme is a deep concern with how we are to live here and now. Here being on this planet, and now being the present time. As such, the Bible shares this concern with at least several other religious traditions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and of course, Christianity. Furthermore the Bible offers scant evidence that it is concerned with how one, or how a community, might get into heaven. In fact, the Bible shows little concern at all about what happens when we die. Rather, it seeks to map out ways in which we might better live with one another, and bring whatever imaginings or hopes may be represented by the word “heaven” into this world here and now. Which generally means, how might we reconcile all those things that separate us from one another? 

 Finally, the potpourri of excepts for this Fifth Sunday of Easter offer another Biblical point of view: things are always changing. Nothing stays the same. The Bible, like everything in the known Universe itself, is constantly in a state of change as conditions on the ground evolve and change as well. The texts mean to challenge us to accept the truth that change is a good thing. 

For instance, Peter has left the parochial world of living in and around Jerusalem and discovers, in a mystical vision, that the God of Abraham, Issaac, Jacob and Jesus shows no partiality. Not only does the vision shatter all notions of eating kosher, it shatters Peter’s belief that only circumcised Judeans can follow Jesus. Peter is so shaken by this revelation, that he goes right out into the region of Joppa and in the name of Christ and the Holy Spirit baptizes a household of Gentiles and eats with them. Both his companions and the believers back in Jerusalem cannot believe it. We must remember that the term “Gentile” simply means all others who are not circumcised Judeans, and suddenly Peter is ready to welcome Gentiles into the community of Christ without distinction. And also animals of all kinds. [i] 

This diversity of God’s kingdom is echoed in Psalm 148, which predates the books of the New Testament by many many centuries. The Psalm envisions that all people, all creatures, and all of the environment can praise the Lord! This includes all angels, the sun and the moon, mountains, the sea, hills, fruit trees and cedars, sea monsters, Kings, all peoples, young men, maidens, old and young together, wild beasts, birds, creeping things, and also much cattle! This world is one whole and holistic community of life, and as Jesus in John 13 proclaims, a community of Christ-like Love. [ii] We are to love one another as he has and continues to love us. We are to love the environment as he has and continues to love us. We are to love every thing and every creature as he has and continues to love us. Love, as attraction and union is at the heart of the entire universe. 

For as the vision in Revelation that concludes the entire Bible proclaims:

"See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away." 

Everything is being made new. As the old things pass away, a new world comes into play. As one commentator suggests, it is like Baseball. The old teams shall pass away, and new players from every kingdom on earth shall make a new team – the team of Christ-like Love! And not only the team, but a new stadium, with seating enough for all. All are welcome on the team and in the new stadium. The fundamental pain of human separation shall finally be over as we recognize and accept God’s presence among us as God seeks to “wipe every tear from [our] eyes. Death will be no more, and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” [iii] 

We might note that these visions of overcoming long periods of human separation from one another and from the God who continues to create all that is seen and unseen all come from periods of great darkness. As the narrator of the Gospel of John notes, “And it was night.” It was in a moment of darkness between the betrayal of Judas and the denials of Peter that Jesus announces his return to God his Father in which he and the father are to be glorified! It is to say that the betrayals and denials cannot and will not thwart the divine intention that this world is to become a Community of Christ-like Love. 

Community, from the Latin communitas, by the way, denotes a coming together with no hierarchical arrangements – in which Love is no longer trivialized as an emotion, or debated as a philosophical virtue under scrutiny. This glorification of Christ inaugurates a new paradigm, a new era, in which even Love is made new. For now, Jesus is to be the distinctive definition of Love. [iv] 

These various visions of how to live here and now collected in The Bible speak directly to the Church which is called to be the vanguard community of Christ-like Love. And lo, we stand divided amongst ourselves, both in the Church Universal, and in the smallest of local congregations. The words of Joe Hickerson, later finished by Pete Seeger, echo through the centuries, “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn…” Just as Peter was astonished to learn, we all, each of us, have a role to play to continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in a broken and divided world – we are to reconcile the whole world and everything therein. The first things will pass away, with or without us. All things are being made new. One day we all shall be One, as Christ and the Father are One. May we be open, day by day, to the ways in which the Holy Spirit means to move us, shape us, and renew us as God’s own people. May our Community of Love let Christ-like Love be the distinguishing mark of who we are and whose we are, by which others, even those utterly unlike us, will want to be part of the new thing God is doing even now in the midst of the present darkness that seeks to divide us. Amen.

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[i] Acts 11:1–18

[ii] John 13:31-35

[iii] Revelation 21:1-6

[iv] Cousar, Charles et al, Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.310-312

Mothers, Women Everywhere, Arise! Easter 4C

 

Mothers, Women Everywhere, Arise!    Easter 4C

Simon who is called Peter is traveling along the coast near Joppa. Joppa was a port city, and therefore a truly cosmopolitan trading center: goods came in and goods were sent out by ships. The previous day, in a nearby village, he found a man, Aeneas, perhaps named for the main character of Virgil’s Aenid – written between 29-19 BCE – thus, a fairly recent poem at the time of Jesus, likely still on the “Best Sellers List.” The name suggests that Aeneas, like the Trojan who flees the fall of Troy, is a gentile. He has been paralyzed lying in bed for eight years. Peter says, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; get up and make your bed!” [i]  Sounds like everyone’s mother: “Get up and make your bed!” Aneas does get up, and all the townspeople turn to the Lord. 

Meanwhile, in Joppa there was a disciple of the Lord whose Aramaic name is Tabitha, which in Greek, we are told, is Dorcas. Both names mean “gazelle” – a doe, a female gazelle. Tabitha was devoted to good works and charity. And she is the only woman in the New Testament explicitly called a disciple. She wove tunics and other clothing for those in need. Tabitha lived and worked with a group of other women, identified as widows. The disciples in Joppa sent two men to bring Peter to Joppa: “Please come to us without delay.” For Tabitha-Gazelle was already dead. Her body had been ritually washed for burial. Peter went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to her room, while showing him the tunics and clothing she had made for the poor. [ii] 

Peter orders everyone to leave the room. He kneels beside her bed and simply says, “Tabitha, get up.” The verb is “Arise!” In Greek it is aniste¯mi. It’s the same verb he used with Aeneas. More importantly, the same verb found elsewhere to refer to Jesus’s resurrection. Peter used it when addressing the crowds in Jerusalem for the annual Pentecost Festival, “This Jesus God raised up!” [iii] He now invokes that same Spirit to perform the same miracle for Gazelle! She sits up. She sees Peter. He takes her hand and helps her up. Then he calls the widows and the saints, that is all the disciples, both men and women, and they see that she is alive! Again, this became known throughout the whole town of Joppa, and many believed in the Lord! 

Simon then went out to the edge of town, near the sea, to stay with another Simon, a tanner of hides. Handling dead animals renders Simon ritually unclean, and often tanners were Gentiles. Two strikes against them. Because of the acrid smell in the tanning process, tanners lived at the outskirts of town. Despite all of this, Simon called Peter chooses to stay with Simon the tanner, foreshadowing Peter’s soon dramatic vision in which God convinces Peter to accept Gentiles into the Way of Jesus. And note, no one gives Peter credit for these miracles – people recognized that it was the healing and life giving power of Christ’s Resurrection that was being spread throughout the Empire and to the ends of the Earth! 

For many decades, the story of Gazelle, Tabitha, a disciple, a woman of faith, was not heard in our Sunday worship. Only with the advent of the Revised Common Lectionary did we finally reclaim stories of these early disciples, many of whom were affluent widows like Mary Magdelene who supported Jesus’s ministry, and they supported the life of the emerging church. Tabitha, and many other women like her who followed Jesus, faithfully served those in need as he had once said, “As you serve the hungry, the thirsty, the prisoners, the strangers and the naked, you have served me.” [iv] The disciple named Gazelle made sure there would be no naked people in Joppa! 

Who knows, Tabitha may have heard Jesus tell that parable of judgment. George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister who seems to think she had, or at least was inspired by hearing about it from others in this poem of his simply titled Dorcas:

If I might guess, then guess I would

        That, mid the gathered folk,

    This gentle Dorcas one day stood,

        And heard when Jesus spoke.

 

    She saw the woven seamless coat--

        Half envious, for his sake:

    "Oh, happy hands," she said, "that wrought

        The honoured thing to make!"

 

    Her eyes with longing tears grow dim:

        She never can come nigh

    To work one service poor for him

        For whom she glad would die!

 

    But, hark, he speaks! Oh, precious word!

        And she has heard indeed!

    "When did we see thee naked, Lord,

        And clothed thee in thy need?"

 

    "The King shall answer, Inasmuch

        As to my brethren ye

    Did it--even to the least of such--

        Ye did it unto me."

 

    Home, home she went, and plied the loom,

        And Jesus' poor arrayed.

    She died--they wept about the room,

        And showed the coats she made. 

Tabitha has been canonized as a Saint in Episcopal, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches. Pope Francis recently elevated October 25^th from a memorial to a feast day, recognizing her faithfulness in serving the poor, those in need of clothing. As many of us watched for the white smoke on Thursday, and witnessed the first North American Pope, the former Robert Prevost from Chicago, Illinois, we learned that he has chosen to be named Leo XIV. It has been noted, that like Francis before him, Pope Leo XIII, the fourth longest serving pope in history (February 1878 until his death in July 1903) had a deep concern for the poor and working men, women, and children of the Industrial Revolution who were being poorly treated by the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age – the millionaires of that time. 

We can be certain that Leo XIV is familiar with the story of Tabitha-Dorcas-Gazelle. And we can be certain that despite gains made by women over the past century, there is still a long way to go to recognize their leadership in the early church and society, and then support them in leadership roles in today’s church and society, while also recognizing the work Mother sand Wives do to maintain families and homes. May Simon Peter’s cry “Tabitha, arise!” become today’s “Mothers, Women of the World, Women of the Church, Arise!” in this time of Pope Leo XIV – as we watch the erosion of women’s rights happening right before our very eyes. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit inspire and empower us to reclaim the rights and needs of all women everywhere. Amen.

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[i] Acts 9:32-35

[ii] Acts 9:36-43

[iii] Acts 2:32

[iv] Matthew 25:31-46

Some Thoughts on Jesus’s Third Appearance to the Disciples Easter 3C

 

Some Thoughts on Jesus’s Third Appearance to the Disciples   Easter 3C

Many years ago, in a galaxy, or diocese (much the same thing) far far away, I found myself taking the last of Nine Canonical exams in Rhode Island. It was New Testament. You write for an hour, and then, with a group of other candidates for ordination, you have a group oral exam. Shrewdly, I figured someone on the Commission on Ministry would ask, “What’s your favorite New Testament Bible verse? And, why?”  And there it was, already staring me in the face: “Come and have breakfast!” Before we could get to the why, the former trial lawyer now a priest on the Commission, who always tried to trick us with leading questions, instead blurted out, “And where, Mr. Kubicek, is that in the New Testament.’ I paused, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Why it is in the third resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples in the 21^st chapter of John.” Dramatic pause, and moment of silence as others either smiled or scratched their heads. “And it is the Gospel assigned for this coming Sunday in the Lectionary,” said I. 

This is the kind of Jesus I love. Cooking some fish and bread on a charcoal fire, greeting the disciples (and us), who in addition to being out fishing all night, for fish, instead of people as he had taught them to do, had already had two other experiences in which they were certain it was Caesar’s Ghost, but then it was he who had asked for a piece of fish that night, and everyone knows ghosts don’t eat fish. Here he is, welcoming these scared, exhausted fishermen to have breakfast with their Lord and Savior. And just how forgiving can one be. He takes Peter, who had just two nights ago denied even knowing Jesus, and reminds him what it is to be all about: if you love Jesus, then you will feed his lambs, tend his sheep, and feed his sheep. And don’t get all into whatever it is you want to do, for you will be led by God’s own Holy Spirit – the breath, the wind that was there hovering over creation. A reminder to love one another as he loves us, and don’t forget to wash all those feet. 

It is significant, I believe, that there is no mention of church; no mention of Eucharist; no mention of vestments, or candles, or what color is it today. There is no mention of a building whatsoever. And as we all know, when the community of John wrote this all down, the main building, the Jerusalem Temple, lay in ashes on the ground – an unimaginable disaster. Take care of people. Little ones like lambs, and big ones like sheep. Oh yes, and it is the gospel of remember to do as Jesus tells us to do, even if it seems counterintuitive. Of course you have been fishing all night. And of course you have caught nothing. Just humor me, says Jesus, and try something different and throw the net on the other side of the boat. We can imagine what my friend Bob Bonner used to call, Episcopal Whine: but we’ve never done it that way before! The result speaks for itself. They could barely get to shore with the nets full of so many fishes! 

Yes, you can say fishes. It’s a double plural. I saw this guy in a video sitting on an ocean liner looking out the window at the deep blue sea, saying there’s nothing out there but water and fishes. Then he looks at the camera and says, “Because there all different kinds of fish, so even though ‘fish’ is plural, with all these different kinds of fish you can say ‘fishes.’” I’m ok with that. Which explains a song about all this I learned years ago from a wonderful songstress, Patricia Beall Gavigan. “The net was filled with very many fishes…” 

There’s just one more thing I have been thinking about this passage, which I tried to explain to the lawyer cum priest that afternoon at a church camp in Rhode Island. It is my firm belief that this 21^st chapter of the Gospel of John is a kind of gospel in miniature. A kind of cipher. If you know this story, from its various details one can recall a number of other key stories in the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 

For instance, after the crucifixion we find the disciples are frightened behind locked doors. Caesar’s centurions are all over the Holy City, and maybe they are looking for the dead one who is now on the loose and his co-conspirators. Peter has given up it seems. He says, “I’m going fishing.” That is, I’m going back to work. I’m going back to the very beginning where this all started and I knew little or nothing about Jesus. Peter and his brother Andrew, and the Zebedee brother James and John had all been fishing one day, and were getting the nets ready for another day, when out of nowhere, Jesus shows up on the shore. Just as he suggests throwing the net on the other side, that day he says, I’m calling you to do something entirely different- fishing for people! Lo and behold, now they have one hundred and fifty-three “large fish.” The disciple Jesus loves turns to Peter and says, “It is the Lord!” Peter is so excited that he puts on his clothes and then jumps into the water to swim ashore. Not the order of operations I would have thought to do, but that is just how Peter is. He wants to build booths where none are needed that night they saw Jesus talking to Elijah and Moses. The night Peter and the others were reminded by the voice that came from the heavens the day he was baptized by that other John returned: “This is my Son, my Beloved. Listen to him!” They did that night and ended up with one hundred and fifty-three large fishes! Eventually, we are told, they caught thousands of people. 

When they get ashore, Jesus has a charcoal fire going on the beach. Not unlike the one Peter had stood around in the High Priest’s courtyard when he denied knowing Jesus once, twice, one, two, three times! After declaring such loyalty at dinner that night of the betrayal of Judas. Jesus is cooking up bread and fish, like that time he fed 5,000 men, not to mention women folk and children, like the kid who gave away the few fish he had to go with the few loaves of bread, and after Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave away the loaves and fishes, everyone was fed and satisfied. It’s not often a crowd of over 5,000 people are all satisfied at one time. 

Then Jesus and Peter talk about Love and Sheep. He had once told them a story about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to go off and find the one who was lost. It seems as if some days Jesus wants us to catch lots of people to be part of his flock, and other days it is important to find just that one who makes all the difference. That one, most likely, is meant to be you. Without you in his flock it just will not be the same. And you won’t ever have to fish or look for lost lambs by yourself, because my breath, my spirit, will take hold of  you and guide you and lead you into all good things so that everyone is taken care of in the spirit of the kind of Love, I Jesus, have had for you all along, Peter, despite the booths-thing, the denials, and insisting that nothing could  possibly go wrong in Jerusalem. 

This could go on and on, and I urge everyone to read chapter 19 in John a few times and see what other stories it hints at. Soon, just knowing this story, you will be able to recite the Good News of Jesus in ways that will fill Jesus’s net with very many fishes! If only we will listen to him, as his Father had ordered us that day on the mountain top, and do as he teaches us to do: to Love God his Father, and Love our neighbors. All neighbors. All are neighbors to us and you. This may be a silly way to go about proclaiming the Good News. But it worked that afternoon, far far away in the Galaxy of Rhode Island, and here we are now, like Peter, basking in his love, his forgiveness, and sharing the sacred meal of his Body and Blood. Amen.