Ascension: It's about you - It's about me - It's about us

 

It’s about you – It’s about me – It’s about us

Faith is one part hope, one part imagination, and in many ways beyond explanation. Give it to Luke – Luke gives us not one, but two imaginings of just how the Risen Christ Jesus departed once and for all. One view at the end of the Gospel and one at the beginning of Acts. We call it the Ascension. In both he gives final instructions which instructions make clear that his Ascension ultimately is all about us. It’s all about you. It’s all about me.

 

The genius of Luke is that he, or she, tries to make the final Act of the Gospel, and the first Act of the Book of Acts appear to be about Jesus, with not one, but two possible scenarios of just how the Christ’s departure from this world may have looked like. Luke goes so far as to imagine the resurrection, the appearances, first to two companions on the way home, then to them again along with the rest of the crowd of disciples in Jerusalem, and finally his departure all on the same day: Easter. Then Luke imagines in Acts that the Risen Christ went on an appearances tour after the resurrection for the Biblical period of forty days (which means more than one lunar cycle), and THEN took off for parts unknown, but assumed to be at the right-hand of God.

 

So, which was it? All in one day? Or, forty days later? Luke knows what we all know – nobody knows. Nobody knows any more than one day the tomb was empty and people experienced him walking down a country road, breaking bread at a table, and eating fish to try and convince the often clueless disciples to at demonstrate that ghosts don’t eat fish! At the end of the day, it does not matter if it was one day, or forty, or even more, because the story as Luke tells it is not about Jesus. It is a story about us. About you. About me. And, what we call the Ascension is a hinge, a moment in time, between one period of time and another – it is that moment between the time of Jesus and the time of what has come to be known as The Church.

 

The Ascension is a Rite of Passage. Jesus had done all that was possible to do over several years to not simply demonstrate, but rather to actually live what it means to be created in the image of God his Father. The God of the Covenant who is repeatedly depicted as merciful, compassionate, forgiving, and caring. Jesus came to show that these qualities of God his Father were not abstractions, but rather ways of Being that are meant to shape the fabric of our lives. Lives that hope for mercy, compassion, forgiveness and care, but lives that often have a difficult time Being merciful, compassionate, forgiving and caring. Even worse, we often run away from those who try to love us out of such God-like qualities. Which is what I suspect is meant by the “sins of the world” – our resistance to God’s love for us which is mediated by others just like us. Sometimes we just do not allow ourselves to believe that God might really love us. Which is why God sent us Jesus as God’s little demonstration project!

 

It’s like the other day when I looked out at our pool which has been drained for repairs. I thought I saw something huddled against the far side and went to get a closer look. It was a fledged Mocking Bird who could not fly out. I got the skimmer net hoping he might hop on so I could lift him out, but instead he ran away to the other side of the pool where, lo and behold, there was another fledge also stranded. And who also ran away from my attempts at rescue. I was getting frustrated, and they were good at escaping my best intentions for them. It struck me all of a sudden – this must be what God feels like trying to rescue us and embrace us with all of God’s mercy, compassion, forgiveness and care. Jesus even said God his Father is like a Mother Hen trying to gather all her chicks under her protective wings. Three get under her wings, and two more squirt out! Jesus experienced this all first-hand. “Who said you could heal a blind man on the Sabbath?” they said. “Who said you could allow people to pluck grain to make some bread on the Sabbath?” they said. Jesus must have felt frustrated with all the resistance to God’s love for every single one of us.

 

Enter his final words. His final play. His final plan to rescue humankind from itself and gather us back under the Mother Hen God’s wings. His final instructions after eating some fish go like this, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and 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. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

It’s brilliant! Get the recalcitrant chicks to gather one another back under the wings of our merciful, compassionate, forgiving, and caring God! We are to be witnesses of these things: repentance and forgiveness, which is turning back to God and accepting God’s love. God works through us.

 

Scenario Two in Acts – Forty days after the resurrection from the dead, once again he is with the disciples – and they want to know when he will overturn Rome and restore the monarchy of King David. ‘He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But 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." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.’ Translation: you will be my witnesses to the ends of the Earth! You will be given power from on high. And as I have said elsewhere, you will continue to do the things I do, and greater things than these! Brilliant once more! Note, however, they just stand there gazing into the sky until two characters dressed in white chide them: Don’t just stand there, get going and do what he said.

 

Do we get it? God is going to do God’s work of mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and care no longer through one man, but through all of us together. Knowing that we cannot do it all by ourselves, God will endow us with powers to succeed. And people will say when we feed them, or welcome them, for care for them out of God’s love and forgiveness, they will say, “You must have been sent by God. I thought I was on my own all this time, and here you are to rescue me, and accept me, and serve the Christ that is in me, and love me in all the ways that make me feel whole again!”

 

Instead of Jesus being God’s one-man demonstration project, Jesus commissions us all to be his Body on Earth – what the Episcopal Church calls the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS). DFMS is the official name of the church first adopted by the special General Convention of 1821 and incorporated by the New York State legislature. In 1835 the General Convention adopted a new constitution which made membership in the society no longer voluntary but inclusive of all the baptized in the Episcopal Church. We are all domestic and foreign missionaries. This is exactly what Jesus had in mind on that day he Ascended to return to the household of God’s merciful and compassionate and forgiving Love. Jesus imagined that together we could reach out in Love to rescue more of the whole world, empowered by his Father’s love.

 

The Feast of the Ascension is about you. It’s about me. It’s about us. It’s about Being the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. It’s about being the Love that is all around! It’s about accepting God’s power of Love and loving others – all others. All of the time. To the ends of the Earth. It’s a miracle. As one wag put it, God’s wrath is God’s relentless compassion, pursuing us even when we are at our worst. It will take imagination to do this work to which we are called. And hard work. But we will finally Be, finally act, as if we are truly created in the image of God.

 

Oh yeah, about those fledged Mocking Birds. I devised a way to trap them between the net and the soft vinal side-wall of the pool and gently, slowly, brought them up to safety, much to Mother Mocking Bird’s relief! It feels good to reach out and rescue others – for it rescues a little something inside of ourselves at the same time. Amen.

 

See The Son Rising

Imagine The Love We Can Be Easter 6A

 

Imagine the Love We Can Be

As I ran across an old seminary text on the history of the Reformation, I found myself thinking: Was the Reformation really such a good idea? Before the sixteenth century there were arguably four branches of Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, along with a few movements that were not really what one thinks of as a denomination, but altogether let’s say there were fewer than ten organized Chrisitan movements, with the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Western Roman Catholic Churches being the two best defined Christian denominations.

 

Compare that with today, when it is estimated that there are something like 30,000 – 45,000 Christian denominations worldwide! I often imagine that a new branch of the Church is born at least once a day, and perhaps more often than that! As Jesus seeks to comfort the disciples after announcing that he would be leaving them, he continues to urge them to “love one another as I have loved you, and as the Father has loved me.” He imagines a kind of Christian unity, that honestly has not been seen in this world since the early father of Chrisitan Theology, Tertullian, in the second century converted to Christianity, leaving a pagan world in which everyone hated everyone else! It was Tertullian who famously wrote, imagining how the pagan world viewed Christianity: “Look . . . how they love one another (for they themselves [pagans] hate one another); and how they are ready to die for each other (for they [the pagans] themselves are readier to kill each other).”

 

Alas, even before the Reformation, that sort of Chrisitan love and hope had been shattered by episodes like the Crusades, when the Christian Crusaders had slaughtered the Jews and Muslims of Jerusalem, who at the time were living peaceably with one another, they then turned on the Christian community in Jerusalem as well. Look, how they love one another, indeed.

 

Yet, the earliest Christian texts, such as the First Letter of Peter, like Jesus in the 14^th chapter of John, urges strength and hope while living in a world that readily persecuted the Church. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil.” [1 Peter 3:13-22]

 

Amidst the acrimony and divisiveness of today’s world, one can hardly imagine defending one’s position, one’s faith, and one’s hope with “gentleness and reverence” for those who malign you. But this is what the texts, and what Jesus, repeatedly call Christians to do: imagine a better world. And to imagine this better world, early Christians, as Tertullian observed, truly loved one another to the point of laying down their lives for Christ and for one another. One can only believe that those who truly were attentive to the directions of the promised Holy Spirit, the Paraclete or Advocate as Jesus says, would withstand the endless persecutions with “gentleness and reverence” for the persecutors. “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you,” he says in his Farewell Discourse. “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

 

There are still those who live among us, Christians and non-Christians, who can imagine the kind of God’s Spirit of Shalom being possible in our own time. One such person was a singer song-writer, Ed McCurdy. After the murder of my two closest colleagues in ministry at St. Peter’s, Ellicott City, a fellow musician and friend of over half-a-century, sent me a CD of music meant to heal a truly broken spirit and heart. Among the songs was McCurdy’s song, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, as sung and interpreted by Johnny Cash.

Like Jesus in John, and the 1^st Letter of Peter, the song calls upon us to imagine what could be if, as Jesus commands, we would truly love one another.

Last night I had the strangest dream

 

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed

To put an end to war

 

I dreamed I saw a mighty room

The room was filled with men

And the paper they were signing said

They'd never fight again

 

And when the papers all were signed

And a million copies made

They all joined hands and bowed their heads

And grateful prayers were prayed

 

And the people in the streets below

Were dancing 'round and 'round

And guns, and swords, and uniforms

Were scattered on the ground

 

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed

To put an end to war

Songwriter: Ed Mccurdy

 

It’s all about hope. Ed McCurdy, Johnny Cash, and recently Pope Leo XIV, all hope and imagine that one day there can be an end to humankind’s endless warfare.

The modern theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, in his little book, Experiences of God, which I picked up for the first time in over a decade, writes this about Christian hope: “Christ is our hope because Christ is our future. That means we are waiting and hoping for his second coming, praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come to the world, come to us!’ Just as the resurrection faith is hope’s foundation, so Christ’s second coming defines hope’s horizon. Without the expectation of Christ’s second coming there is no Christian hope; for without it hope is not putting its trust in a radical alternative to this world’s present condition…It is only the person who does not really look for a truly new beginning, or who thinks that he has no need of it, who can do without the alternative future offered by the image of the returning Christ. A person like this can do without this new future. But for the person who commits oneself unreservedly to the new beginning…Christ’s future is more important than the world’s present.” This is why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Let thy kingdom come.”

 

Moltmann goes on to suggest that to refer to Christ’s return as a “second coming” implies Christ is not here at this moment and must come again. For that reason Martin Luther and others have urged that we speak instead of “the future of Jesus Christ” – for his future presupposes his present and presence in the here and now, most especially in our weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist, our Holy Communion with Christ who promises that he is always with us and in us just as he is in the Father, and the Father in him.

 

The importance of hope and imagination in the life of faith cannot be overlooked. Christ’s future is our future – a future that lives out of love for one another, making our case for Christ’s future to others with gentleness and reverence, and allowing ourselves to truly commit to the belief that Christ’s future is more important than the world’s present. Every time we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” may we recommit ourselves, as individuals, but more importantly as a community of those who follow Christ, to love one another as Christ loves us. Just as Christ has loved us, we also should love one another. Imagine the Love we can be. We can be The Future of Christ! May the Spirit of God’s love move us to become the community Christ imagines and knows we can be. Amen.

 

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream Johnny Cash

The Farewell Easter 5A

The Farewell

“Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” [John 13:1] Thus ensues what many perceive as the most unusual portrayal of the Last Supper, unique to the Fourth Gospel. No mention of bread or wine. Instead, Jesus strips down, wraps a towel around his waist, and begins to wash people’s feet. There were the twelve disciples, including Judas who would betray him. There must have been other men, women, and children who had accompanied him into Jerusalem to participate in the annual festival of Passover – itself the remembrance of a long ago farewell. Farewell to Pharaoh, farewell to Egypt, farewell to several generations of slavery. The event that marks a new beginning in the lives of those descendants of Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, Leah, Rachel and Jacob.

 

Washing all those feet was his way of saying “Farewell.” It was a way of expressing his love for them all. Even for Judas the Betrayer. He issues a new commandment. Which may strike some as rather pretentious. But this is the logos, the Word. The embodied Word that was with God in the beginning. The Word through which all things came to be. The Word which is the light and life of the world. He had helped a lawyer reduce the 613 commandments of the Sinai Covenant to the simplified formula: Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul; Love your neighbor as yourself. For God is Love. So, if the Word was with God in the beginning, and the Word was and is God, surely, reasons narrator John, the Word has the authority to issue a new commandment: Love one another, as I have loved you. I risk my life out my Love for all of you. Just as I love you, you are to Love one another. N.B the “you” in the Greek text is plural – as in, “Just as I have loved y’all!”

 

Peter. Peter was uncomfortable with the foot washing until Jesus commanded him to submit, or have nothing to do with the Risen Lord ever again. And Peter at the end of chapter 13 insists he will follow where Jesus is going on Friday, the Day of Preparation for the Passover. N.B. Maundy Thursday was not, according to narrator John, the Passover meal. Jesus tells Peter, “No, where I am going you cannot follow right now. And before the cock crows tomorrow morning, you will betray me three times.” Peter refuses to accept any and all of this. Peter’s heart is troubled. So are the hearts of all those who traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem with Jesus to celebrate the festival of farewells and new beginnings.

 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Commit yourselves to God, commit yourselves also to me.” He goes on to say he is going back to whence he had come – His Father’s house where there are many dwelling places. And I am going to prepare a place for y’all. And I shall return and take y’all to myself that where I am, there y’all may be also.” Then comes the problematic part: “And y’all know the way to the place where I am going.” Those with troubled hearts allow as that they do not know the way. How can we know the way, they say. One imagines Jesus, after three years of living the Love of God, his Father who is the full embodiment of Love, heaving a sigh of disappointment and disbelief. Thus begins his Farewell Discourse meant to comfort their hearts.

 

By way of clarification (no pun intended), he states, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If y’all know me, y’all will know my Father also. From now on y’all do know him and have seen him.” Let’s remember who is being addressed here – the community of those who have followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. His gathered community of those interested in loving God and loving their neighbors. He is not addressing only Peter. Or, Thomas. Narrator John portrays him speaking to a particular community of people, not to the whole world. Jesus does not make a statement about the relative worth of other religions, other philosophies, or other ideologies. The lack of clarity, however, is signified by this particular community’s continued lack of understanding.

 

Jesus then tries to help them to understand. He says, in effect, the way in which I call y’all to walk, the truth and the life I call you to embody, is the way, the truth and the life of the works I have been doing: accepting others, all others; healing and welcoming into our fellowship those with disabilities; feeding those who hunger and thirst; welcoming strangers, even those foreigners who are utterly unlike us; bringing all people into the world of God’s shalom for all people. To commit yourselves to me, is to continue the works that I do…” and then comes the the kicker! “…and in fact, greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”

 

With all the attention on “the way, the truth, the life,” the truly most controversial statement of all is that we who wish to follow the Christ, and bear his name as our own, will do greater works than he does. We need to just let that sink in. Take a breath, and just let that sink in.

 

These are meant to be words of comfort for their troubled hearts. And yet, they are also words of awesome responsibility! These words are also meant for us, his gathered community here and now. We are to be those people in this world who do the things he does, “and greater things than these!” Then comes his promise. “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

 

These prayers of ours are to be related to do the works he does, and greater things than these. This is not, “O, please, Jesus, let me win the lottery!’ Or, win a football game. Or, find a parking space. It is an invitation to pray something like this: “Please Lord, help us to feed even more people than you did when you walked among us.”

 

It is easy to overlook what this last part really means. Despite the cross, despite the tomb, despite his return to being the Word that is with God and is God, and through prayer and the works themselves, he is still with us even though he is gone. This farewell discourse goes on through chapter 17 in which Jesus prays to the Father on our behalf, which concludes: “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” It is his farewell and a new beginning for us all.

 

This is how he settles their troubled hearts. It is all about the Father’s love for Jesus, and for those of us for whom Jesus is the way, the truth, and our life. That Thursday night began: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” And this is how it ends: I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Let not our hearts be troubled. For he is in us, and we are in him. Now and forever. And ever. Amen.

Der Abschied – The Farewell

-                - Gustav Mahler 

He dismounted and handed him the drink of farewell.

He asked him where he would go

and why must it be.

He spoke, his voice was quiet. Ah my friend,

Fortune was not kind to me in this world!

Where do I go? I go, I wander in the mountains.

I seek peace for my lonely heart.

I wander homeward, to my abode!

I'll never wander far.

Still is my heart, awaiting its hour.

The dear earth everywhere

blossoms in spring and grows green anew!

Everywhere and forever blue is the horizon!

Forever ... Forever ...

Good and Bad Shepherds Easter 4A

 Good and Bad Shepherds   

Jesus says, “I am the gate for the sheep.” [John 10:7] And in the next verse he says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd risks his life for the sheep.” [John 10:11] In high school English, we would have called this a case of mixed metaphors! But this is the Son of God we are talking about. He can be a shepherd and the gate to the sheepfold whenever he wants.

 

To even begin to understand this Good Shepherd passage requires context: first, to look back at chapter 9 and the dispute over the healing of the man who was born blind; and second, to look further back to the prophet Ezekiel in the sixth-century BCE.

 

Before that, however, there is the history of shepherds throughout the Bible. It begins with Abel, son of Adam and Eve, who kept flocks of sheep. Jacob began with nothing and through clever and faithful shepherding of sheep and goats amassed great wealth. [Genesis 30:25-43] Moses, originally living in the palace of Pharaoh, took care of his father-in-law’s flock and eventually shepherded God’s people in their escape from slavery in Egypt to the edge of a new homeland. [Exodus 3] David, the youngest of the sons of Jesse, was a ferocious protecter of the family’s flock of sheep, and was chosen by God to be the second king of Israel: ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.’ [I Chronicles 11:1-2] Then there was King Ahab who worshiped any god but the God of Israel, and he married Jezebel, a princess from Sidon who led Israel far away from worshiping the true God [1 Kings 16—22]. In a tragic encounter, the prophet Micaiah uses shepherd imagery to foretell Ahab’s death in battle: “I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, ‘These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace’” [1 Kings 22:17]. Some good shepherd, some bad shepherds; some real shepherds, some metaphorical shepherds – kings, priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, political appointees of foreign empires – even a foreign king, Cyrus of Persia is one of the best shepherds ever!

 

Jesus, no doubt, refers to the prophet Ezekiel writing some two hundred years after the bad shepherd King Ahab: “The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So, they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.” [Ezekiel 34:1-6]

 

Among the real everyday shepherds, Ezekiel refers to the royal, political, and religious leadership of Israel who have been bad shepherds. He contrasts them with good shepherds who feed their sheep, strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, seek those lost and strayed, and protect them from danger. Bad shepherds care only for themselves and their cronies.

 

After restoring the sight of the man born blind, the Pharisees are questioning Jesus on just who does he think he is? They are hoping to trick him into saying something for which they can have him arrested by the bad shepherds in charge: Herod, king of the Jews, and the Jerusalem Procurator Pontious Pilate. They were put in charge by Caesar to reduce the population to poor slaves and tenant farmers to enrich Caesar’s empire, Rome. The Pharisees consistently do not seem to get it: Jesus is literally a good shepherd sent to care for the castoffs, those exploited by the Empire who had been were reduced to being land-poor, resource-poor, and tax-poor. Jesus employs the shepherd metaphor of Ezekiel’s prophecy hoping to remind the Pharisees of their nation’s past, so that they might recognize the bad shepherds operating in Jerusalem.  

 

Earlier in the Fourth Gospel it is stated that Jesus did not come to judge the world, and in today’s episode in chapter 10 he states categorically that he is here on behalf of God his Father to serve his Father’s sheep, the sheep of God’s pasture, so that they might “have life, and have it abundantly.” As he continues the extended metaphor (I am the gate to the sheepfold; I am the Good Shepherd), he also makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is willing to risk his life on behalf of God’s people, God’s sheep, who are being reduced to lives of poverty by the bad shepherds: both the Roman government functionaries, the Roman legions, as well as those Pharisees, Priests, and Scribes who have been forced to serve the Roman exploitation.

 

It does not take a genius to see that the use of metaphor is both theological and political. And when the Pharisees recall Ezekiel’s warning about the bad shepherds, and Zeke’s assertion that the only truly Good Shepherd is YHWH, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel. When Jesus says “I am the Good Shepherd,” he is making an audacious statement about who he is. So audacious, that our group of holier-than-thou Pharisees are split: half want to stone him on the spot, while the others are moved that Jesus would wield the compassion of God and the power of God to restore the man reduced to being a beggar his sight back. The man has new found confidence that when he is interviewed a second time by this group of Pharisees that he begins to push back on them asking, “Do you also wish to become his disciples?” They reply, “Are you trying to teach us?” Looking at the wrong end of the miracle, they drive him away!

 

Jesus seems to let Pharisees off the hook when he says, “You do not have to believe in me. Just believe in the works themselves. Just look at what I am doing for the sheep of God’s pasture. Let the works speak for themselves. And by the way, I have sheep not of this fold who also hear my voice and follow me. We are all in this together. You just might want to join us.”

 

We do well to note that as the Pharisees refuse to believe neither the man born blind nor Jesus, they in effect judge themselves as being “bad shepherds” like the political power brokers in Jerusalem. Jesus characterizes the bad shepherds as thieves and bandits out to corrupt the sheep, steal the sheep, and whatever resources they have: their land, their fish, their grain, and ultimately their “selves,” as they are reduced to being, slaves working for Caesar and Herod.

 

We still live in a world of Good Shepherds and Bad Shepherds. The narrator of John tells us the purpose of sharing these particular stories of Jesus: so that we who were not there can read these stories and be convinced by the works themselves to follow in the Way of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, the Son of God, and thereby enjoy abundant and eternal life with God in Christ here and now. The alternative, of course, is to join with the bad shepherds and ignore the needs of those who are weak, hungry, and homeless. There is no coercion, says Jesus; it’s entirely up to you to choose. Jesus, the Risen One is going nowhere. He is here to stay! Amen.

Earth Day 2026: “One Earth, One People, One Love”

 

Earth Day 2026: “One Earth, One People, One Love”

It was 1990. I was rector of St. Peter’s, Monroe, CT. And I was recruited by the Reverend Roger Alling to join the Stewardship team of the Diocese of Connecticut. The diocese had just moved to a voluntary Allocation to support diocesan mission. The first-year results were just in as I arrived, and something like 90% of the goal had been pledged voluntarily. Which I thought was incredible! Not so, however, the diocesan leadership. Nor did the bishop like the fact that Roger had linked Stewardship of the Earth as part of his efforts to move us all to a more wholistic understanding of Stewardship. He felt that this was a distraction, and wanted more emphasis on just money. Soon Roger was soon looking for another job. In retrospect, how incredibly short-sighted of the bishop. For as we witness dwindling populations of bees, responsible for meeting our job description as humans to be “fruitful and multiply, agriculture as we know it is in crisis.

 

The same can be said about air pollution, water pollution, clear cutting of forests, especially in the Amazon rain forest (called “the lungs of the world”), climate change, the increase in severe weather. Put this all together and it does not take a stable genius to see that unless we take our role as caretakers, stewards, of God’s Earth and everything, every creature, every plant therein, not only will we not be able to be fruitful and multiply, there will be no air to breathe or food to eat. No amount of money can possibly make a difference. Roger was right, even visionary, to see the linkage between financial stewardship and stewardship of the Earth – the Whole Earth.

 

The Bible agrees. On Easter morning we saw Mary Magdalene, who after discovering the tomb of Jesus was empty, becomes manic to find her Lord. Suddenly she bumps into someone she supposes to be the gardener. Gardeners are caretakers of creation. In fact, Jesus is the gardener, who had been raised from the dead to redeem all of creation. Jesus, who uses a gardening metaphor to describe our relationship to him. He is the vine. We are the branches. We are to bear much fruit – fruit of his Father’s kingdom. Fruit of compassion for all living things and all living creatures. Jesus knows well that the Sinai Covenant goes in to great detail on how to farm and care for the land – including such provisions as to let the land, like all of us, have a periodical Sabbath; a time not to be planted; time to restore itself, which many settlers of this great land did not understand. In the move westward they over planted the land resulting in the great Dust Bowl. They had depleted the very soil upon which being fruitful depends. The indigenous people of the land had known better.

 

The covenant also originates the idea of “not cutting corners.” This was an early agricultural practice ordained by God at Sinai, not to reap the corners of a field, nor to reap the two rows nearest the roadway. This was so that sojourners, strangers, resident aliens fleeing famine or repression in nearby lands, could reap a little something to eat while trying to get established in their new homeland. The story of Ruth, a Moabite gentile, arguably the most beautiful story in the Hebrew Bible, illustrates this command not to cut corners! Jesus allowed his own disciples to reap from the corners or along the roadside, even on the Sabbath! As farmers, as gardeners, we are ordained as having been created in the image of the God who gives us all the resources of this fragile Earth, our island home in an otherwise hostile universe. We are ordained to be compassionate in our care of the Earth so that we might love one another and be compassionate to others who might be in need. Jesus reinforces this by linking abiding with him on the vine, like a tomato or a squash, so that we might be connected through him to the source of all life and light, that we might live out of his new command to love one another as he loves us – offering his own life on our behalf so that we might live into the dream of God of a fruitful world of fruitful people living in peace, justice, and harmony with one another – all others, no qualifications, no prerequisite requirements, for we are all one. On 9/11, Alice Walker, author and disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh, calmed herself with a mantra she devised: “One Earth, One People, One Love.” Thus grounding herself in the spirit of connectivity of all things Jesus talks about as he urges us to abide with him and his Father like fruit on a vine. [John 15:1-11]

 

It is often noted that the Bible begins with a tree, the Tree of Life in the Garden, and ends, on its final page, with the Tree of Life we hear about in the Revelation of John: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” [ Revelation 22:1-5] I think we all could agree that there is a deep need for the healing of nations here and now. Which means there is a deep need for Stewardship of the Earth if such a Tree in such a garden is to survive being clear cut for industrial and commercial purposes. The Tree of Life forms the bookends of the entire Bible, so essential is it to the healing of nations, or what Pope John Paul II would call “world peace.”

 

On the Celebration of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990, the Holy Father wrote: “In our day, there is a growing awareness that world peace is threatened not only by the arms race, regional conflicts, and continued injustices among peoples and nations, but by a lack of respect for nature, by the plundering of natural resources, and a progressive decline in the quality of life. The sense of precariousness and insecurity that such a situation engenders is a seedbed for collective selfishness, disregard for others, and dishonesty…. Today the ecological crisis has assumed such proportions as to be the responsibility of everyone…This not only goes hand in hand with efforts to build true peace, but also confirms and reinforces those efforts in a concrete way. When the ecological crisis is set within the broader context of the search for peace within our society we can understand better the importance of giving attention to what the earth and its atmosphere are telling us: namely, that there is in order in the universe which must be respected, and that the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being  of future generations. I wish to repeat that the ecological crisis is a moral issue.” The ecological crisis is a theological and moral issue.

 

The Bible and the Christian Church, the Body of Christ on Earth, has always maintained a commitment to our Stewardship of the Earth.

Bishop Irenaeus (120-202) said, “The initial step for a soul to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.”

A Jewish midrash on Psalm 117 in the second century read, “The sending of rain is an event greater than the giving of Torah. The Torah was a joy for Israel, but rain gives joy to the entire world, including animals and birds.”

“The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God,” wrote John of Damascus (675-749).

John Scotus Eriugena (810-877), “Christ wears two shoes in the world, scripture and nature. Both are necessary to understand the Lord, and at no stage can creation be seen as a separation of things from God.”

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), “If we learn to love the earth, we will find labyrinths, gardens, fountains, precious jewels! A whole new world will open itself to us. We will discover what it means to be truly alive.”

T.S. Elliot (1881-1965), “A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1931-2021) wrote, “The first law of our being is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation,”

 

Finally, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in remarks at the Symposium on Religion, Science, and the Environment, in Santa Barbara, California, said this:

“How we treat the earth, and all creation, defines the relationship that each of us has with God… To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy biological diversity of God’s creation … for humans to degrade the integrity of Earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands … for humans to injure other humans with disease … for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life, with poisonous substances, these things are sins.” The actions of humans against the vitality of the Earth is sinful.

 

I have long felt that we lost an opportunity in the Diocese of Connecticut when Roger Alling’s urging us to get serious about caring for creation was seen as impinging on a need to focus on the stewardship of money. Two-and-one half decades later, it looks like a tragic decision to take raising money more seriously than the Stewardship of God’s Earth, and everything therein. As we ponder once again some of the images of planet Earth taken from the perspective of the dark-side of the moon by the crew of Artimis II, perhaps there will be a renewed understanding of just how unique our planet is, and how vital its care is to human life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the diversity of all creatures who play significant roles in maintaining the environment.

 

Ellen Davis, a professor of Old Testament at Duke University, a friend and colleague, points us to look at the image of God’s loving care for creation as depicted in Psalm 65:

…your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy (vv. 11-13)

 

Davis concludes, “What an astonishing picture of God’s care for the world. The Creator of heaven and earth viewed as a hardworking but gratified farmer, hot and dirty no doubt, driving home a wagonload of grain. Certainly, such a surprising image of God has something vital to say to us who are formed in God’s image. In a word, the psalm has power to humble those who read and pray it, to root us in the soil on which life depends. The psalm is an icon, a powerful and holy image of the God given, exacting, and ultimately joyful work of earth care. God does it, and so must we.” (Knowing Our Place on Earth: Learning Environmental Responsibility from the Old Testament)

 

Every day must be Earth Day – The Earth’s Day. One day a year is wholly inadequate to remind us of our ordained responsibilities as those creatures created in the image of god to care for and preserve the fruitfulness of our true home – the Earth, God’s creation and everything therein. Every day we must remember, there is only One Earth, One People, One Love.

Amen.

Thomas Believes - Do We? Easter 2A

 

Thomas Believes – Do We?

That is the question this text seeks to put forward. A narrative in two parts, one week apart.

 

Act I: We are told that a group of disciples, not including Thomas, are hiding behind locked doors. What is interesting is that the text does not say “disciples.” The word, going back to verse 18 in chapter 20 of John is mathetai, which means “followers” or “students,” and which the NRSV later translates as “community.” So, this is a broader and larger group than just the eleven remaining disciples. They are hiding for fear of some in Jerusalem who have succeeded in encouraging the Empire to execute Jesus.

 

This community is the crowd of men, women, and childen, many of whom came with Jesus from Galilee. They are afraid in part because they do not believe the witness of Mary Magdalene who tells them, “I have seen the Lord!” We are not told how Jesus enters the room. We are told, however, that he breathes on them and says, “Peace be with you.” Those present would recognize this as the same breath of life that the Spirit of God breathes into the nostrils of Adam in Genesis 2:7. With this gift of the Spirit John suggests that the resurrection of Jesus, and what Luke calls Pentecost, all happens on the same day!

 

As to this “peace” he breathes on them, the text uses Eirene as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew or Aramaic shalom. This “peace” which is shalom is used in the Bible to express God’s vision and hope that all creation is One, every creature, every person, in community with every other creature and person; and that we work together to bring God’s “peace” of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity to one and all, including creation itself (which, as we have seen recently, is sometimes depicted by the prophets as the jury when God puts humanity on trial!) This greeting and breath is likely the origin of “Passing the Peace” in the Eucharistic Liturgy! Its is no casual greeting as used by the Risen Lord. His shalom means we are to seek Justice and Peace for all people while respecting the dignity of every human being, creature, and creation itself. This is the Shalom of Christ, of the Shalom of God, or what Jesus sometimes calls eternal life.

 

He then gives the gathered community authority to forgive sins, which in John’s Good News of Jesus has little if anything at all to do with personal misdeeds. That is the job for Santa Claus who keeps track as to whether or not we have been naughty or nice. Rather, John defines sin as not recognizing and embracing the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. This is the sin of the World.

 

This sin is related to the community’s command to love others as Christ loves us. And as Jesus says in John 14, we are to continue Jesus’s work of making God’s Shalom known in the world. He says if you believe, you will do the works that I do, and greater things than these will you do! The implication is, if we are not doing the works he does, and greater works than these, then we truly do not believe that Christ is Risen. We are to make it known that it is God who does the works Jesus does, it is God who raises Jesus from the dead, and not Jesus himself. And for those of us who do believe, he promises it will be God who will work through us and raise us as well! The Sin of the World is disbelief, and our failure as a community to faithfully follow and represent Jesus to the world. It is this disbelief and failure for which the World deserves God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness since the world’s failure to believe is directly linked to our failure to represent God’s Shalom to the world as Jesus does in so many different ways.

We do well to note that our general confession says: we have not, we have not, we have not….not I have not. We, the community of God’s people in Christ, have failed to do what is expected of us: to follow Christ and continue the work he does. This is faith. This is belief.

 

Act II: Enter Thomas who missed the whole episode the week before. It does not help that the NRSV, and every other English translation, has Jesus say to Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.” For the like word disciple, the word “doubt” is not in the text. The Greek word is apistos which means “unbelief.” “Do not unbelieve, but believe,” says the Risen One!

 

We know that the community did not believe Mary Magdalene until they experienced the Risen Jesus for themselves. Here he appears for a second time a week later. Thomas is now present and asks for nothing more than what they had wanted as well – a direct revelation of the Risen Christ. This is Thomas, who when Jesus said, “Let’s go to Bethany and Jersusalem,” when the disciples say, “No, it is too dangerous,” it is Thomas only who says, “I will go with him that I may die with him.” Thomas was arguably the most faithful of the twelve.

 

Mary says, “I have seen the Lord.” The gathered community of followers (more than the eleven) says, “We have seen the Lord.” But it is Thomas who makes the boldest declaration of all: “My Lord and my God!” Once again, Thomas is the only one who sees God fully revealed in the Risen Jesus. Thomas understands that Jesus reveals the true Glory of God and God’s desired Shalom for all creation; for all humankind; for all creatures, and for creation itself!

 

Jesus then tells us that to be a first-hand witness of the Risen Lord is not a prerequisite for faith! Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe – as a result of hearing the experience and testimony of those original witnesses, and their embracing and continuing the work of God’s Shalom that Jesus begins. We know the Risen Lord because they saw him and followed him. This, writes John, is the essence of faith; the essence of belief; the essence of eternal life here and now. This is living in the kingdom of God.

 

The narrator then tells us that all of this is written either that 1) you too may come to believe, or 2) that you may continue to believe. Both options are found in the various and oldest manuscripts of John. The main point John the evangelist makes is that this whole episode, indeed, the entire Gospel of John, is for us – those of us who read and hear this today. For John faith is not a one-time event, but a process, and that the process of faith is not is not the same for everyone. Some come to believe in Christ and later deny him. Others, like the community gathered in Jerusalem, have a tenuous belief that competes with their fear. And yet there are still others who believe but who do not fully understand. And of course, those like Thomas who continue the work Jesus begins, and “greater things than these.”  We need to remember that this is our story. It is about us. All of us who dare to identify ourselves by the name of “Christ.”

 

Those of us who read and hears this story are invited to believe, to become a person of faith, and to follow in the way of Jesus, doing the things he did, “and greater things than these.” For it is only by our participation in the full life, death, and resurrection of the Risen Lord that others know that we truly are people of faith; those who love others, all others, as Christ loves us. The question, then, is this: do others come to faith, come to believe, by all that we do and say as a community of God’s Shalom and Love? For we are those people called to be the rest of the story.

The Meaning of Holy Week Part 3: Easter Morning

 

The Meaning of Holy Week: Easter Morning

It was still dark, the first day of the week, when I, Mary Magdalene, went to the tomb to be with my friend, Jesus. People said that he is “the light of the world,” and that darkness cannot overcome his light. It has been three days since our last supper with all of us who followed him from Galilee to Jerusalem. It must be dark in the tomb with the stone rolled across the entrance. It was dark that afternoon at Golgotha as he was nailed to the Roman Cross. It seems that the darkness will finally have its way with him. But wait! The stone has been rolled away from the tomb. I can look in.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

I run back to tell the others. Peter and the other disciple, the one that Jesus loves, were up before the rest. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Who are “they”? Why would anyone take him away? Where would they put him? If it was not dark enough already, now this. These past few days have been the darkest ever. Now he is not there! The tomb is empty. 

Peter and the other disciple raced to the tomb to see for themselves. They don’t trust me. They won’t listen to me. Because I’m a woman. A once broken woman at that. I used to say crazy things. See crazy things. Now they don’t believe me. When I got there, I could see that the other disciple got there first, looked in, saw the linen wrappings, but did not go in. Peter went in, saw the linen wrappings as well. I remembered when Lazarus had come out his tomb he was still wrapped, still bound. After the two disciples left for home I looked in. Are those two angels in there? Dressed in white, sitting where Jesus had been; one where his head had been, one where his feet had been. Did they say, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

Am I weeping? Why am I weeping? Where have they put him? Are these angels? Or, am I hearing voices and seeing things again? Where is he? He, the only one who understood me. He, the only one who could calm me down. He, the only one that made me feel whole and safe again. He accepted me as I was. I hear myself say again, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Why do I keep saying that? It’s still dark in here. I can hardly breathe.

 

I turned to go out into the garden to get a breath of fresh air. To settle myself down. When all of a sudden, I run into someone else. I think it must be the gardener. Like the angels he asks, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Is he one of them? Or, is he the gardener? Why can’t anyone understand? Of course I am weeping. He’s gone. My Jesus is gone? First, they execute him for loving everyone, now they have taken him away. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Why did I say that? Where will I take him? Who will help me carry him off? I surely cannot carry him myself. And why is everyone asking me why I am weeping. Am I weeping? Why me? Why am I here? Why am I in this empty tomb? I remember he said at supper, “I came from God, and I am returning to God.” Maybe he’s on his way?

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

Someone says, “Mary.” How does this gardener know my name? How does he say it just the way Jesus used to say it? I must be hearing voices again. Is any of this really happening? But wait. Then he says, “Mary.” Is it really him? He does not look like Jesus. But it is his voice. He is saying my name the way he has always said it. I shout out, “Rabouni? Rabouni? Rabouni!”

 

And just like that the darkness was gone! It was lighter and brighter than Fuller’s Earth! I drop to my knees and grab on to his feet, and now yes, I really am crying. Crying tears of joy! It is really really him. He lives! He is here! “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my sisters and brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And with that, he was gone. My hands were empty. But now my heart is full! He has been raised! I run back to the house, find the Peter and the disciple Jesus loves and I proclaim, “I have seen the Lord!” And I told them all that he had told me: he had come from God and was returning to God. To our God! To our Father! And now I know he is with me, Christ is with me, the love of God is with me, here and now. 

I fell to my knees again and began to pray: We seem to give him back to you, dear God, who gave him to us. Yet, as you did not lose him in giving, so we have not lost him by his return. For not as the world gives, do you give, O Lover of souls! What you give, you take not away. For what is yours is ours always, if we are yours. And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. Lift us up, O God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly; draw us closer to yourself, that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved who are with you. Now and forever, amen. Amen!

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

At Golgotha, The Place of the Skull, the men had run off to hide. Only Jesus’s mother, her sister, and I, Mary Magdalene, were there to witness the brutality of the Empire, the violence that is Rome. As his breathing became more and more shallow, I remembered supper Thursday evening when all of us, the men, the women, the children were all together preparing for the Passover celebration. He washed our feet, and told us to love others as he has loved us. It was such a positive evening together. And all of a sudden, the three of us women could hear him say, “It is finished.” And I felt a slight breeze on my neck. Like a mere breath of wind. It seemed to fill me, to calm me. Mary and her sister felt it too. I felt new. I felt his Spirit in me. His love in me. His power in me. I must be imagining this is happening, but they felt it too. And then we knew, he had handed his Spirit over to us. His Spirit is with us to this day. Back at the house, the others had felt the breath as well. Like it was a mighty wind, reaching out to all who would accept his Spirit into their hearts.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

I began to wonder how it had possibly happened. His leaving the tomb I mean. How had be been raised from the dead? Another woman, a poet, my namesake in a way, has tried to imagine it happened something like this: 

“Easter” by Marie Howe 

Two of the fingers on his right hand

had been broken 

 

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised

him — it hurt him at first. 

 

And the whole body was too small. Imagine

the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill.  

He came into it two ways:

From the outside, as we step into a pair of pants. 

 

And from the center — suddenly all at once.

Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.

 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

However it happened, one thing is true, one thing is certain, one thing I know. He came looking for me. He remembered my name. He called me by name. He wanted to see the others. All the others. All of us, including you. He needs us. He said he was going to our Father, to our God, to the household of our God’s Love; God’s unconditional Love.

The Love of God in Christ Jesus! Our Risen Lord!

 

Oh, my sisters and brothers,

Jesus wants you,

he needs you,

God needs you,

the Church needs you.

  

Just as they needed me,

They need your light and your love.

 

Know, my sisters and brothers,

there is a hidden place in your heart

where Jesus lives!

 

Let Jesus live in you.

Go forward with Him.

 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

And so are we! And so are we!