The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew 26:14- 27:66

 

The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew 26:14- 27:66

 

The heart of Judeo-Christian worship is remembrance. Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, famously said, “If anything can, it is memory that can save humanity… Memory is not just a way to honor the past, but is a shield against evil.” Memory is a gateway to creating a better future for us all. This is especially true of our reading different accounts of Christ’s Passion each Palm Sunday, and John’s Passion on Good Friday: to guard against sentimentalism and to remember what is always at stake to risk, year after year, day after day, following The Way of Jesus.

 

For instance, we tend to think the Passion begins with the rag-a-tag parade into Jerusalem during the week of Passover – a political satire of the ways in which kings and emperors would enter major cities on a white steed, with many armed soldiers, and great pomp and circumstance. Branches and garments of a beleaguered populace, Jesus on a donkey, people chanting, “Hossana!” was easy to be overlooked by the crowds of people from all over the ancient world crowding the streets of Jerusalem for Passover.

 

But as Matthew tells the tale, Christ’s passion begins all the way back in the beginning – in Bethlehem, the City of David, the child’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. The empire wanted him dead, he of whom it was said was born to be King of the Jews. King of the Jews was Herod’s job. Herod, who set out to have the child hunted down and killed, along with all his aunts, uncles, and cousins – all the children under the age of two were to be killed. The trauma must have been insurmountable. Joseph is warned in a dream that they would hunt the whole family down, so he takes the child and his mother to Egypt to hide, safe from the clutches of the Caesars and Herods of the Empire. Years later, when he eventually returned, and began to teach people, heal people, people, and love people, the hunt-to-kill Jesus was revived.

 

As one listens to Matthew’s Passion, we will see that indeed, the very crowd that shouted “Hossana!” and welcomed him to the festival, will later turn sour, egged on by Pilate. Pilate who offers a choice. “I can release Jesus Barabas (that is Jesus son of the father), or Jesus who is called Christos, or Messiah.” Barabas had led an armed insurrection that had promised liberation from the Empire by way of the sword. Whereas, Jesus Christos taught liberation through love of God, neighbor, and even love of enemies. The crowd sees more promise in the sword and ask for Barabas. It seems that we always do, generation after generation. The Way of Jesus Christos just seems too difficult and takes too much time and effort. We try to forget how futile is the choice for violence. Yet, we continue to make that choice right down to the present day.

 

Pilate wants to pass the buck. He tries to avoid blame by washing his hands. If we remember, we have heard all this before: “The woman made me eat it…somebody else is responsible…I was only following orders…I was not in charge…I heard the people and did what they asked.” Such excuses echo throughout history. In Jerusalem that day, the chief priests and leaders of the people were afraid. Afraid that if they tried to intervene, they would be next. They remember that the Empire had been hunting this man since he was a child. Pilate’s wife issues a warns him of a dream she has had, thus further complicating things even further. Pilate, who had given up smoking just the week before lights up and takes a long drag, and wonders just why he lobbied for this job in this God-forsaken province in the first place.

 

Then Matthew, and only Matthew of the four evangelists, portrays the crowd shouting out, “His blood be on us and on our children.” Pilate is relieved. For centuries Gentile Christians have felt relief. And yet, no single verse in all of scripture has caused more heartache, damage, and death. Wiesel would be appalled at how many people today have never heard of the Holocaust; how many deny it ever happened. Let alone do they even know the long history of anti-Semitism this one verse set in motion. Years ago, I met someone who grew up Jewish in Baltimore, and who had to run home from school Holy Week every year with Christian classmates chasing him ready to beat him up for being responsible for the death of Jesus. That was probably fifty or more years ago. On one day two weeks ago, a man drove his car into a Michigan synagogue with the intent to kill Jews, while the same day another man walked into an ROTC class at Old Dominion University and began shooting, killing the instructor and critically wounding two students perceived to be related to our current military intervention in the Middle East with our current and only ally, Israel. In the Middle East, memories last for centuries. For many, the Crusades seem to have happened just a few years ago, just a generation ago.

 

Scholars have tried to understand why Matthew included this one verse. Did the crowd really shout this? Was it to indicate the fulfillment of some ancient prophecy? Or, did he really mean it literally, as if to say, “We will take the blame, but only for one more generation; the generation of our own children?” One verse continues to fuel anti-Semitic violence throughout the ages.

 

The Passion narratives seem to highlight what Hannah Arendt, listening to the testimony of Adolph Eichman, called “the banality of evil.” People in Jerusalem that day, people from all over the world, just went about their business. No one spoke up on behalf of Jesus called the Christos, the Messiah. The centurion, and other Roman soldiers, who had been tasked to handle Jesus, mocked him and cast lots for his clothing. And yet, are the only witnesses who may have said, “Truly, this man was God’s Son.” Surely Matthew means this to be ironic! Because this is not a story meant to convey that Gentiles got it, and Jews did not. We are meant to dig deep and ask ourselves what would we do had we been there that day? Would we go along with the crowd? Would we run off and hide with the disciples? Would we cast lots for his clothing with the soldiers? Simply go about our business in the marketplace to prepare the Passover meal?

 

What do we think when we hear the crowd choosing Barabas? What do we feel and say when our own leaders and crowds choose the sword over the love of God and God’s Son over and over again? Do we speak out when someone tells an anti-Semitic “joke”? Or, makes an anti-Semitic slur? Jesus was a Jew, through and through. He was in Jerusalem for all the appointed festivals. He invites one and all to live the Way his Father wants us to live – to love God, to love neighbor, and even to love and pray for our enemies. And our prayers for our enemies ought not to be for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy,” as was the prayer in the Pentagon this past week. As we listen to this Passion account of Matthew’s with compassion for Jesus, may we remember that “If anything can, it is memory that can save humanity.” To remember, that every moment of every day there are those who die on the cross with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Who ought to speak out on their behalf? Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say that to be silent or neutral is to side with the oppressors every time. And what we need most to remember is that the Cross was not the end of the Empire’s hunt to silence Jesus, and that three days later, Jesus’s resurrection was the beginning of a new and better future for all humankind, should we remember who we are and whose we are.

None Of Us Are Free Lent 5A

“None of us are free, if one of us are chained, none of us are free” – Solomon Burke

Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus lived outside of Jerusalem. Jesus would sometimes stay with them to get away from the crowds, the disciples, and to just spend a quiet day or night with close friends. Martha, we know, was the consummate hostess, while Mary is more reflective, sitting at their friend’s feet to listen to his teachings, his insights on how one can live in the eternal presence of God – every moment with God is an eternity. And it felt that way when in the presence of Jesus, God’s Son. [John 11:1-45]

 

We know less about Lazarus until word comes to Jesus that Lazarus is ill. Please come, the sister’s plead, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  Oddly, Jesus delays going to Bethany. He says it is so the glory of God, and of God’s Son, may be made manifest – visible, undeniable. Two days later he says to the disciples, “Let’s go to Bethany.” “But there are people there who wish to stone you, who wish to kill you!” the disciples say. Thomas goes one step further, “Let us all go so that we may die with him.”

 

Jesus and his followers barely get to the edge of town when word comes to the sisters that he is on his way. They are sitting shiva, the three days of mourning with friends and family, for Lazarus has been dead for four days. It was believed in those days that the soul departs the body on the third day. Lazarus is already in the tomb.

 

Martha leaves Mary and the neighbors and marches out to the edge of town, and let’s Jesus know how disappointed she is. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Disappointment, even anger, but held within a tremendous sense of hope. “Your brother will rise again,” he says. “Oh, I know, we all know, he and all those who have gone before will rise on the Last Day. But we miss him now” Jesus responds with yet another “I am,” this perhaps the boldest of all: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

 

He has said, “I am the light. I am the bread of life. I am the vine you are the branches. I am the Good Shepherd” We can be sure, that those who heard him say these things only heard two words, “I am.” The same words the burning bush uttered to Moses when Moses seeks to know who it is sending him to challenge Pharaoh: “I am what I am. Tell him ‘I am’ sent you.” It is a phrase that reduces all to a barely perceptible stillness as Elijah found out. Martha hears it, and replies to his question to her, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Christos, the Anointed One of God.” She joins the Samaritan Woman at the Well and the Man Born Blind at Birth, both of whom also say, “Yes, I believe.” Mary may sit at the Lord’s feet, but Martha, busy serving everyone else’s needs, is the first in Bethany to declare who Jesus is.

 

Martha hurries back to tell Mary. Mary goes out to also express her disappointment. Those who were with the sisters at home followed her. Mary is weeping at his feet. The friends and neighbors are weeping. Jesus is moved to see so much love and grief poured out in human tears.

Jesus says “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. The gathered crowd says, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

 

Jesus orders the crowd to roll away the stone. Martha warns, “But Lord, he has been in the tomb four days. There is a stench!” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” They rolled away the stone, and Jesus calls in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

 

Unbind him and let him go. The message “I am” instructs Moses to take to Pharaoh, “Unbind my people and let them go!” Only now, Jesus does not act alone. Jesus enlists the whole crowd to participate in the raising of Lazarus. It is they who roll away the stone. It is they who unbind him and let him go.

 

The story, as Evangelist John says later, is told as an invitation to all who hear it to get into the business of rolling away the stones that keep others, and even ourselves, entombed. John’s story calls all who hear this story to get about the business of unbinding those who need to be set free. Especially ourselves. What keeps us from growing? What keeps us from rolling away stones and freeing those who are bound? Because Jesus knows, as we all know when we are honest with ourselves, none of us are free if even one of us are chained, if even one of us is bound. None of us are free! None of us are free! None of us. None of us!

 

Of course, leave it to some people to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time. Immediately there are those who murmur that there must be a stop to the things Jesus does and says. And those who even said we must plan to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many were believing in Jesus. Let’s make sure that both Jesus and Lazarus are put to death. That will stop all of this!

 

Of course, they were wrong. They killed Jesus, they probably killed Lazarus, they killed many if not all the twelve disciples. But they could not stop the love that stands against all death and all those who are bound or sealed away in tombs, especially tombs of our own making. Because what Jesus says to Martha is the way, the truth, and the life. “I am resurrection and I am life.”

 

As The Reverend Edmund Harris says in this week’s Sermon That Works. “Jesus does not say that resurrection is something that will happen someday. He does not point only toward the future. He says that resurrection is present now. Resurrection is not simply an event at the end of time; it is bound up in the very presence of Jesus. Where Jesus is, life is already pressing in on death…The miracle is not only that Lazarus is raised. It is also that the community is drawn into the work of restoration. The bindings of death must be removed. Life, once given, must be set free. Resurrection is not only something received; it is something lived into, together.”

 

We are to live into Resurrection together. Can those of us who listen to this story allow ourselves to be mobilized, as the crowd was that day in Bethany, and allow ourselves to be drawn into the work of restoration wherever there are those who are bound; those who are being deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Because Resurrection is indeed not only something that is received; it is something we are called to live into together, on behalf of others – for none of us are free, none of us are free, if one of us are chained, none of us are free! None of us! None of us! Roll away the Stones! Unbind them and set them free!

None of Us Are Free 

Shabbat Shalom! Lent 4A

Shabbat Shalom

“As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.” [John 9:1-41] Thus begins a drama in seven scenes: After healing the man Jesus talks with the disciples; the neighbors talk to the man; the Pharisees talk with the man; the Judeans talk with the man’s parents; the Pharisees talk with the man again; Jesus talks with the man; Jesus talks with the Pharisees.

 

Jesus says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” The man does, and he sees for the first time. The neighbors cannot believe it. They take the man to the Pharisees, those who devoted their lives to understand what God expects from us. Then the narrator let us know what is really at stake: “Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”

 

Sabbath. Shabbat. Sabbath is the gift of time God offers to humankind. It’s the third of the Ten Commandments. The idea is simple: Six days God created the world and appointed us as stewards of creation, and on the Seventh Day, God rested. We are given six days to work in the realm of space, working with things, acquiring things. To enhance our power in the realm of space and things appears to be our main objective. Yet, to have more does not mean to be more. As Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us in his volume, The Sabbath: It’s Meaning for Modern Man, “The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of Time. But time is the heart of existence. To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gathering power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time.

 

“[Sabbath] is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern… Many hearts and pitchers are broken at the fountain of profit. Selling himself into slavery to things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain.” It is this brokenness that leads to so much sin in the world; in our lives. The Sabbath Day, a day off, is not a religious observance, though it is at the heart of how live a religious life. It is not a day to go to synagogue or church in its inception. Shabbat is a day that is prescribed to break the tedium of our self-imposed slavery to doing and having and taking and controlling; to offer a time, a day, to let the brokenness of our lives be healed and to simply “be.” Over time, Shabbat and the preparations to take a full day-off has been likened to preparing to welcome a Queen, The Queen of Days, the Queen of Time, into our home, and thereby into our lives. It is a time to simply be and to be restored; a time to reboot; a time to remember that it is only by the grace of God that we are here at all!

 

As we reflect on the story of the man born blind coming to see, we must resist the urge to see the Pharisees as the “bad guys” for wanting to preserve the holiness of the Queen of all days, Shabbat. Indeed, it is altogether right for them to question why Jesus could not wait 24 hours for the next day, the first day of the week, to do his work of healing. Shabbat is meant to remind us that God does not intend for us to continue to slog from day to day, often working without purpose, until finally you reach the borderline of time and die pointlessly. Sabbath is meant to be a foretaste of the feast to come, and a reminder of having once been liberated from slavery: slaves in Pharaoh’s Egypt, in the Empire, get no day off. The Pharisees are correct to argue that to “work” on Shabbat is a serious matter!

 

Which points to a fundamental dimension of life in the realm of God’s mercy: Argument itself is a gift from God that allows faithful people to work out proper courses of action. Argument is a sign that the faithful community is living faithfully. If they did not care about faithfulness, they would not argue…It is the Jewish ritual of thinking hard together, chewing on those things that are important, as a sign that the whole community cares about integrity. Such wrestling and arguing has resulted in  exceptions made to allow certain “work” on the Sabbath. (Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John)

 

The standard Sabbath greeting is, “Shabbat Shalom.” And just what is Shalom? The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature, including creation its self. The vision is that all persons are children of a single family, a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely the care and management of all God’s creation, everyone and everything therein. This persistent vision of joy, harmony, well-being, and prosperity is difficult to capture in a single word or idea, but Shalom is that word that bears a tremendous freight – the freight of a dream of God that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness, and misery. Shalom, therefore, connotes persistent themes of justice and peace for all persons, and the respect for the dignity of every human being. (Brueggemann, Walter, Living Toward a Vision: Biblical reflections on Shalom)

 

As the story of the Man Born Blind wends its way through one scene and argument after another, two things emerge: First, the Man whose life had been reduced to begging near the town gates has been truly liberated. Not only can he see, he can now participate as an equal in the disputations of the Pharisees as to the nature and will of God. When ordered by the Religious Authorities to give the Glory to God for his new-found ability to see, AND to declare Jesus as a sinner for having healed him on the Sabbath, he speaks with authority as he says, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” His declaration is the very genesis of the hymn Amazing Grace, written in 1779 by a man who commanded a slave ship in the eighteenth-century, saw the sinfulness of his participation in a system of injustice, and left the slave trade to become an Anglican priest, confessing, “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” As a mentor to William Wilberforce, Hannah Moore, and other abolitionists, Fr. John Newton helped to bring about the end of the slave-trade in England in 1807!

 

Secondly, what the Man Born Blind ultimately comes to see is who Jesus is as he confesses: “Lord, I believe” that you are the Son of Man. It is unclear whether or not the neighbors, the man’s parents, the Pharisees, or we have come to see who Jesus is, or whether or not it is the will of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Exodus and the Passover, to heal those in need on the Sabbath. It is fair, however, to suggest that as time rolled on, the greeting, “Shabbat Shalom,” has come to embody the notion that healing of others, the healing between nations and tribes, the healing of God’s Green Earth, is always more than just “all right” on the Sabbath, and is to be the very heart of every single day of the week. For there are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of Sabbath, for observance of Shabbat allows us time to know God and be known by God, and to know the many ways in which we can love our neighbors. Aeons hence, when many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry of the Queen of all days will continue to shine! Sabbath Time is God’s gift to those of us who live in the world of space. And for this we give thanks! Shabbat Shalom! 

Not Your Father's Story at the Well Lent 3A

 

Not Your Father’s Story at the Well

A man and a woman at a well. For those who read the Bible, this is a familiar story; a familiar set-up. One returns or sends a servant to their hometown well to find a wife. That’s where Isaac found Rebecca. That’s how Jacob found Leah and Rachel. Now Jesus is at Jacob’s well in Samaria! Jesus sits down. He’s thirsty. A Samaritan woman comes along. He asks her for a drink of water. As it turns out, the story is about water – living water. [John 4:5-42]

 

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” The narrator John adds context. (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Not even a water bucket or dipper. It has been this way for nearly 700 years when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was taken over by Assyria. Much of the population was deported and replaced by people from other territories the Assyrians had captured – the strategy being there would not be enough of the original tribes to mount an insurrection. Both Samaritans and Jews use the same Torah, but there are disagreements over where it was proper and holy to worship: Jerusalem in the south, or Mount Gerizim in the north? Both locations claim to be where Father Abraham set out to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. This is geography freighted with meaning.

 

It’s Noon. Jesus answers her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Suddenly, this Samaritan woman becomes more of an insightful theologian than Nicodemus was a few nights ago in Jerusalem. Or, is this some kind of clever flirting at the well? And why is she at the well in the middle of the day, in the heat of high-noon? All the other women in town fetch the day’s water in the cool of the morning?

 

Jesus is obviously impressed. He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” Now he is no longer talking just about at all, but about eternal life: living life, here and now in the presence of the love of God! The woman has never heard anything like this, and immediately replies, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Again, the invitation to ‘eternal life’ is accepted, unlike poor Nicodemus, an expert in the Torah texts who was unable to comprehend what Jesus is talking about. The contrast cannot be any greater.

 

The Samaritan woman has her entire world-view rewired! This Jewish man not only talks to her, but he ignores the standard gender and ethnic barriers in initiating a conversation with her. He recognizes her as an equal, as a human being, not as a despised enemy. Jesus raises the position of women in society! Though she does not fully understand “living water,” she must be moved to be included in the kind of conversation that typically only occurs among men. This is no idle chat. This is no minor topic. Her life is being changed just by being in his presence.

 

Then comes a new direction in their conversation when Jesus says, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answers him, “I have no husband.” Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” Which may explain not drawing water in the morning when other women might comment about her relationship issues. It is often suggested that with five marriages perhaps she is somehow morally loose. We need to remember, women were typically married off to much older men. Men who could die. Or, in the case of Levirate marriage which requires a man to marry a deceased brother’s wife if there are no children, anything can happen. Surprisingly to her, we imagine, Jesus knows about her past, and yet does not condemn her. Leading her to identify him as a prophet. “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain” she says,, “but your people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Rather than hurt feelings, she surprisingly takes the conversation to another level. Surely this man can tell me where to worship.

 

His answer is equally surprising! “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”  Jesus says to her, “I am; the one who is speaking to you.”

 

“I am.” The inscrutable name YHWH shares with Moses at the burning bush. This Samaritan woman is the first to discern to whom she is speaking. This is the heart of the Good News. She has been waiting for just this moment, but wow! She who has had five marriages has met the Christ, the great I Am,  for whom she has been waiting. The One for whom she and her people have been waiting. In the presence of Jesus, suddenly all barriers have fallen. Samaritan and Jew no longer matters. Men and women are no longer to be segregated. Where one worships is no longer an issue. That this conversation even takes place ushers in a new era, a new reality of inclusiveness heretofore unimaginable. God is Spirit; pneuma; ruah! God is truth. And all is One.

 

Seven hundred years of animosity and bickering and disagreements on how one is to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is wiped away. Note the utter astonishment of the disciples when they return from their lunch run and see him talking with, gasp, a woman! Not only a woman, but, gasp, a Samaritan woman. They had never imagined let alone seen such a thing. With Jesus the walls come tumbling down! In the best of ways. The utter inclusiveness of it all is difficult to comprehend. Yet, Paul understood what Jesus was all about. Martin Luther King Jr understood what Jesus was all about. This story means to ask us just when we might drop all the barriers? Can we ever get past red and blue states? Can we ever get past intractable left and right politics? Can we no longer segregate ourselves male and female, slave and free, black and white, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew?

 

The disciples ask Jesus if he wants something to eat. “I have food to eat that you do not know about,” he says. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Which is to drop all barriers and welcome a new era of inclusiveness. We are, after all, all in this together.

 

The result? The Samaritan woman becomes the first evangelist as she goes back to town and tells everyone what she has seen and heard. Many Samaritans go to see for themselves. Once they see Jesus, they tell her, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” Yet, who could imagine? Samaritans declare a young Jewish man to be the “Savior of the World!” The sweeping, inclusive character of Jesus’s mission is a note that needs sounding again and again today. Rebuilding walls seems so much easier than tearing them down. For just that reason, the iconoclasm of this text cannot be ignored. Oh, that we might live up to what happened that day by a well in Samaria. There was no marriage sealed at the well, people who had not spoken with one another for 700 years were reunited in Christ, if only just for that moment. Now what about that secret food Jesus has? Are we ready to do the will of Him who sent Jesus to sit at the well in Samaria one day long ago?

 

Ruah: Breath, Wind, Spirit Lent 2A

 Ruah: Breath, Wind, Spirit

As one listens to the final moments of Gustav Mahler’s 9^th Symphony, there is only the sound of a few string instruments. And it is easy to overlook which strings play the essence of what is left of melody. A few violins are playing a sort of long, drawn-out ostinato. But they almost distract from the viola – yet it is a lone viola that is given the final say, almost the final breath as all sound is extinguished into an utter silence. Like the blowing out of a candle’s flame, with a mere wreathe of vapor extending upwards.

 

Something similar seems to be going on at the beginning of evangelist John’s third chapter and the all too familiar story of Nicodemus’s visit with Jesus in the dark of night. Familiar, since it is the only passage of all Holy Writ that has given us so many end-zones in football stadia, and in the seats behind the catchers and plate umpires at so many baseball games: a poster simply emblazoned with “John 3:16.” More on that later. For such familiarity with John 3:16 and the philosophical-theological conversation between Nick and Jesus, and the misunderstandings of a word with more than one meaning, we almost overlook the main character on the stage: one of the first characters in the whole Bible; one that plays a central role in creation itself: Ruah.

 

Ruah. Ruah can mean breath, wind, and spirit. And not just any breath, wind, and spirit, but the Ruah is the power, purpose, and agent of God, YWHW’s, will. If one has ruah, one has life. If one has no more ruah, one is dead. “29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. 30 When you send forth your breath, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.” [Psalm 104]

 

Nicodemus comes in the dark of night (which for John is the darkness the world) to visit what evangelist John has identified as the Light and Life of the World: Jesus. He has witnessed, or at least heard about, things Jesus has done: turning water into wine, and overturning the money-changer’s tables at the Temple. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where we and Nick get hung up. The text, which is in a sort of patois of Greek, uses a word, anothen, which like ruah, can mean several things: ‘above,’ but also ‘anew,’ or ‘again.’ Jesus, no doubt, speaks in Aramaic, and neither we nor the translators have any idea what word he really spoke to Nick. What we do know is that John has intentionally chosen a word that carries a certain amount of ambiguity – because Jesus speaks, and John writes, in metaphor; really a kind of poetry, often leaving interpretation to the one who hears what is being said.

 

Nick thinking Jesus says he must be “born again,” a phrase, unfortunately, heavily freighted with specific meaning among some Christian communities in our own day. “How can this be,” says Nick. “I cannot crawl back into my mother’s womb!” Thus, introducing the challenges and problems of biblical “literalism.” Despite all the poetry of his tradition, the poetry of the Psalms and the Prophets, Nick is mired in a literalism that misses the very meaning of what Jesus had come to proclaim. Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit (ruah). What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind (ruah)  blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

 

Enter, the central character, not only of this conversation, but the essence of Biblical Religion itself: the Spirit, capital “S,” the agent of the very purpose and will of God, is like “the wind!” The late Water Brueggemann offers the following: “Categorizing the various uses of ruah is a mistake, for in Hebrew it connotes any and all of them in a more wholistic sense that refers to an invasive power at work in the world, deeply linked to YHWH’s will and purpose, capable of disrupting and transforming earthly reality. Thus, the Godness of ruah is attested to assert that God finally orders and wills lived reality, for good or for ill, beyond the ken and control of human capacity. In short, God’s Holy Spirit-Breath-Wind cannot be placed in a flow chart, let alone easily “understood” that due to something beyond our every-day existence new possibilities open to us!  [Brueggemann, Reverberations of Faith, p.200]

 

Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” And who can blame him? Jesus continues, “Our tradition suggests that as Moses lifted up the Serpent to heal the people in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, i.e. crucified … that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Enter, the essence of the Message that has been turned into a slogan, a poster, without context and without nuance. For Jesus, and John the evangelist, “eternal life” is not some sort of magical immortality, nor is it a future life in “heaven,” but is itself a metaphor for living here and now in the unending (eternal) presence and love of God. Eternal life is John’s way of speaking of the “kingdom of God,” which Jesus inaugurates, and commissions his followers to continue down to this very day. One can only begin to understand what “new life” is, says John, when the crucifixion is in full view.

 

These verses at the heart of this story help us to see how Jesus’s death and God’s love are related. God gives Jesus in love to all the world, and whoever accepts this gift will receive, and enter into, eternal life here and now. Jesus gives his love to all the world. Not to the Church, nor to any particular expression of his gathered community of Love, but to and for the Life and Light of the world. As John repeats “eternal life” twice in two verses, Jesus gives God’s Love to all the world.

 

We may as well admit, as a slogan, all notions of ruah, Spirit, have been cheapened. We have exported it to School Spirit, American Spirit, Christmas Spirit, the Spirit of ’76 – leaving the wholeness of the breath, wind, and spirit of YHWH’s will, purpose, and Love pointing to something you know is supposed to get you to your feet cheering but which you somehow cannot rise to. God’ ruah is far more elemental to life in the Spirit.

 

Like the viola in the Mahler 9^th, the central and last word in this meeting between Jesus and Nicodemus, is God’s ruah, God’s Spirit, which is the gift of Life. Which is Light. Which is Love. Life, Light, and Love which the darkness cannot and has not overcome. Embrace God’s gift of Spirit Love and enter into eternal life here and now. Choose not to embrace the gift of God’s  Love, and one might never know the grace that such love brings and offers to the whole world and everything therein. May God’s Holy Breath, God’s Holy Wind, God’s Holy Spirit move us to embrace God’s gift of Love, in Christ Jesus, who is present and with us now until the end of the age. Amen.

To Become the Love that is All Around! Lent 1A

 

To Become the Love that is All Around!

We come from Love; we return to Love; and Love is all around. God is Love.

 

The Reverend Pierre Wolf would visit our congregation at Saint Peter’s on the Green, Monroe, Connecticut. And each time he was with us he would remind us of the fundamental truth of who we are and whose we are: We come from Love; we return to Love; and Love is all around. Because God is Love. We are created in the image of God, male and female created in the image of God, meaning we are to reflect the true nature of God’s love for each of us, for all of us, for all of our neighbors, and for all creation itself.

 

God’s love is not the love of “I want to hold your hand;” not teenage love; not the love of Halmark movies. It is not the love of Valentine’s Day. Rather, it is a love that the Bible repeatedly describes as the fundamental character of God who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment,” as the reluctant prophet Jonah found out when the people of Ninevah repented and returned to the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It seems as if Jonah might have been happier if just this once God would zap Ninevah, that great city “in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many much cattle.”

 

Perhaps no episode in all the Bible has been as misunderstood as the story of the man and the woman in the garden who are given permission to eat the fruit from every tree in the orchard but the one in the very middle of the Garden. Seems easy enough. But we know ourselves well enough to know that our curiosity is greater than that of all the cats in all of creation! We know they were already looking at the tree with great covetousness in their hearts and minds when along comes a serpent, something like the Iguanas and Nile Monitors currently plaguing Florida like Egypt and all those frogs, gnats, and flies! “Go ahead,” says the serpent. “Eat from the fruit of that one tree. You won’t die. God doesn’t want you to become like God. Go ahead, eat! Enjoy! Become like God!” This was the First Great Lie – from which many others have echoed down throughout human history right down to our own day. The Lie? That they would become like God. We all know that near the end of the previous chapter in Genesis God had already created them in God’s own image. They forgot they were already like God, which is love. And it was out of God’s love for the two of them, the first of his own children, that God wanted to protect them from the consequences of the full knowledge of good and evil. God was acting like our parents warning us to look both ways before crossing a street when saying to stay away from the tree.

 

And look at the result. Look at the consequences. They immediately try to hide their own true nature from one another. Then, as the story goes on, they try to hide from God, for heavens sake! And finally, the rupture begins: the man says, “She made me do it.” Then she says, “The serpent made me do it!” Thus, was born Flip Wilson: “The Devil Made me do it!” Despite the fact that  we have free will, and no one makes us do anything. We choose to do these things on our own. We allow others to misguide us. To mislead us into making bad decisions.

 

Which brings us to the story of Jesus as “The Breath,” the Spirit of God, leads him into the wilderness immediately after he learns that he is God’s Beloved Son. The story intentionally echoes the wilderness sojourn of the people of God who escaped Pharaoh’s Egypt where they experienced 40 years of testing after receiving Ten Commandments, which some rabbis refer to as the Ten Suggestions – Ten Suggestions on how we can best get along with one another, and with God. It does not take a biblical scholar to notice that Jesus undergoes precisely the same tests, and in the same sequence, as those refugees did in the wilderness: the first regards hunger, the second means to put God to the test, and the third regards false worship, or what the Bible often calls idolatry. One might also notice that the child Jesus follows the journey of Israel into Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous slaughter, and now the adult Jesus retraces his ancestor’s experiences in the wilderness. Matthew’s first audiences would notice this.

 

For Jesus the tester is no serpent. He is a character from earlier in Hebrew Scriptures known as sah-tanh – not to be confused with the medieval Chrisitan personification of evil, Satan, or the Devil. This sahtanh works for God, not against him. For reference re-read the story of Job. From time-to-time God sends sah-tan to text the faithfulness of certain individuals. This time it is God’s Beloved Son to see if he is up to the tasks that lie ahead in healing the many ruptures that have accumulated between God and God’s people. The world is broken and has been turned upside down. Will God’s Beloved Son be up to the task of Tikkun Olam – repair of the world?

 

Hunger We read he is famished. Of course he is. Jesus has fasted for forty days! “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread, says Sah-tanh. Jesus knows his scripture and answers from Deuteronomy, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus is called to a ministry to the whole world, not just to perform carnival tricks and assuage his own hunger. That would be to narrow the scope of what lies ahead.

 

Sah-tanh then says, “OK, so you know scripture. So do I! Let’s go to the tippity-top of the Temple. If you are the Son of God, why don’t you jump off, since it is written that His angels will bear you up and not let you dash even your foot upon a stone!” The Son of God replies, “It is also written you shall not test the Lord your God.” To test the promises of God is not a sign of faith but of fundamental doubt. It is to make ourselves God as if we know not only what God will do, but how, when and where God will act. Putting God to the test dramatically reverses our relationship with God, putting us in charge and God serving us! Nope.  Jesus again answers from Deuteronomy. Jesus is a shrewdie and wins round two.

 

Round three: If you just worship me, says Sah-tanh, you can have all the kingdoms of the world all to your very own self. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Once again, from Deuteronomy. Jesus will become Lord of all the kingdoms of the world, not by worshipping Sah-tanh, but by being nailed to a cross. By speaking truth to power. By healing the woundedness of all the world. By welcoming all people, no matter what. By extending God’s bountiful love to everyone, everywhere, all the time. Because we come from Love; we return to Love; and Love is all around. Join me, says Jesus, and become the Love that is all around. Jesus passes all three tests. Immediately, Sah-tan leaves, his job done, and angels come to wait upon Jesus!

 

To engage Lent and to be engaged by it is to render oneself vulnerable to the reality of who we are as human beings. It is also to open ourselves to the nature of God as Redeemer, the One who will not abide the space that sin has created, and who insists on spanning that abyss with Love.

The moral of the story: for us to pass the test as Jesus does, and to understand what it means to become the Love that is all around, as he did, we might do well to use these days of Lent to carefully read Deuteronomy! Deuteronomy! Deuteronomy!

We The People of God Ash Wednesday 2026

 

Ash Wednesday 2026

Nearly everything in our lessons and in the Ash Wednesday liturgy addresses the fact that a rupture has occurred in the relationship between God and the people. A relationship grounded in a covenant – a series of promises on just how we are to relate to one another in this world God has created to sustain creatures like us. This rupture is corporate in nature – that is, God is not at all like Santa Clause keeping track of every single one of us as to whether or not we are naughty or nice. God sees a bigger picture, a more serious situation. Thus, we hear the prophet Joel and the psalmist who wrote Psalm 103 declaring that it is time, once again, to sound a trumpet, to call the entire Community of God’s Love together to once again acknowledge that we are not doing such a terrific job loving one another as Christ loves us. Everyone is to assemble, from the wisest of elders to children still at their mother’s breast. It is time to review the nature of covenant and our responsibilities to one another, to total strangers, and to those passing through or seeking refuge in our land to escape life elsewhere, having heard what an extraordinary Community of Love the God of Jacob, aka Israel, has established. And the larger Community of Love his Son Jesus extended.

 

We don’t know much about Joel – there is no consensus as to when and where this Prophet-Poet lived. But we do know when Paul was traveling throughout the Middle East founding Communities of God’s Love. Paul, who had grown up and lived in the Community of the God of Jacob spent a lifetime extending that community to others – to Gentiles. People who were not descended from the tribes of Jacob, but people who yearned to live in a Community of God’s Love in a world that was otherwise dog-eat-dog, one more authoritarian despot after another stripping the resources of a conquered land, leaving the people helpless, desperate, and generally land-poor and over-taxed.

 

Writing to an early Christian Community of God’s Love in Corinth which had already become a rat’s-nest of factions who fought and scrapped at one another, and who treated strangers, aliens, and newcomers with disdain, if even that. To them Paul makes his plea: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That is, it is time to remember who we are and whose we are – a Community of God’s Love in Christ. We need to become more God-like once again. We need to become more Christ-like once again. We are only as strong and righteous as the least of those among us. For how we treat those who live at the very margins is how we show our love and respect for the God who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” as Psalm 103 sings about our God, and by association God’s Beloved Son, and by further association, We the people of God. There is a rupture in this series of relationships, writes Paul, and it is time for reconciliation – it is time to put these relationships back together.

 

Which is what Jesus is really talking about in this day’s portion from the Sermon on the Mount: performative acts of piety like prayer, alms giving, and fasting, are not meant for public displays which only seek to cover up where we fail love our neighbors who are poor, naked, in debtor’s prison, hungry and thirsting for relief. Save all the performative piety for yourself, He says, and get back to being the Community of God’s Love that seeks to reach out beyond itself and its own needs and get involved in the life of those both in and beyond our community who are aching day-by-day for someone to reach out to relieve them and gather them into the Community of God’s Love.

 

The operant word for Ash Wednesday is “We.” The ashes are meant to remind us that “no man is an island,” we are all a part of a larger reality, a larger community that represents God’s intentions for this world. There are those who intentionally want to destroy such a Community of God’s Love. Ash Wednesday asks us: Do we accept our responsibilities as people of the Covenant? Or, do we side with those who wish to divide and destroy God’s Community of Love? Ash Wednesday issues a clarion call like that which was heard in the 1960s: Either you are on the bus or off the bus. Jesus issues that call every day. The Risen Christ each and every day means to sound the trumpet and call us to return. Not as individuals. That is Santa’s business. He calls us as constituent members of His Community of Love.

 

Earlier this week I ran across a prayer my father wrote for Layman’s Sunday in the church where I grew up, and in which he served as a Deacon and an Usher on Sundays. This was sixty-five years ago, 1961, and yet it sounds as if he is addressing the realities of life we face it today:

 

“We gather today, O Lord, to seek your help…Your wisdom and Your Love. We come to you as lay persons of our church, believing in it, working in it, and seeking to live a Christian life. And so, we pray for Guidance.

 

“As we stumble, help us to find Your path, that we may walk in it. Teach us Your ways that we will be better able to live with our family and fellow man. Teach us to pray, though cynics may mock us or deride us. Help us to understand and meet adversities that without warning may suddenly change our life. Keep us from panic in moments like these.

 

“Give us wisdom that we may reject foolish offers from men of perverted speech. Let us find lasting faith in the House of the God of Jacob.

 

“Remind us that faith is not just attending Church. Or, building a chapel of stone and mortar. That it is not just a group of committees and meetings, or singing or prayers. But that faith is a way of life to be lived each day in our houses, with our children, and with our friends.

 

“Since we are all frail, and easily turned by many distractions and temptations, remind us that Your teachings can be woven into our day-to-day business and commerce. Give us courage to say we are wrong when we are wrong. Give us firmness to do the right thing, although it may not be popular.

 

“Help us to show our children the wonders You have created around us, the beauties of the trees now changing their colors, the flowers bringing joy and comfort to ill ones for whom we offer special prayers today. Help us also to show our children the deep mysteries of the oceans and the challenge of the skies.

 

“And finally, O Lord, help us strengthen our faith, that we can preserve these beauties and protect them and our way of life from those seeking to destroy everything. This we ask in thy name. Amen.”