The Night-Sea Journey Proper 14A

 

The Night-Sea Journey

We are mistaken when tempted to think that this journey we call life is meant to be a time to find something – or, rather someone – or The SomeOne. That is to ignore a great cache of literature that seeks to direct us in a different way. Rather than a quest, they suggest, we are best to abandon all that we think we know and even that which we “think” we are. Such abandonment of “self” is often experienced as darkness, as aloneness, as stillness, but may result in being found.

 

The prophet Elijah, for instance, on the run for his life having challenged the Canaanite God Baal, and having slaughtered the prophets of Baal after a contest on Mt. Carmel, hides himself in the darkness of a cave on Mount Horeb – the only person in the Bible to have gone back there since Moses left after his encounter with YHWH several hundred years prior. [1 Kings 19:9-18] Jezebel, wife of king Ahab and worshipper of Baal, had set a price on Elijah’s head. In this darkest moment of his soul, it is the Lord God YHWH who comes to find him, and summons Elijah to come out as He promises to pass by. There is a great wind, splitting rocks, tossing trees and shrubs all around, but God was not in the wind; then an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; then fire, but God was not in the fire; finally, Elijah barely hears a still, small voice – the sound of sheer silence. It turns out that when things are bleakest, life is at its darkest, most precarious ebb, God comes to us. God seeks us out. God gives Elijah new “marching orders” and sends him back into the fray!

 

John Matthias, later known in sixteenth century Spain as Juan de la Cruz, Saint John of the cross, famously wrote, “Upon a gloomy night/With all my cares to loving ardors flushed/(O venture of delight!)/With nobody in sight/I went abroad when all my house was hushed.” For John, it was Elijah all over again. It was a “dark night of the soul,” having been jailed in a tiny cell by rival friars. This led him to discover that once he allowed himself to be “entirely burned away,” God came to him in the midst of the hushed darkness: “Oh night that was my guide!/Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride/Oh night that joined the lover/To the beloved bride/Transfiguring them each into the other.” John felt rescued from his despair by the “beloved bride,” the alive-again Christ, who had come to shine light upon John’s night of deep darkness.

 

In this season of renewed interest in Homer’s Odyssey, and directly related to our gospel for today, we are reminded of that other metaphor for spiritual growth and mystical experiences of God: the darkness and potential dangerous wildness of the “wine-dark sea.” There may be no other life as lonely as that of one of the prophets and those like John of the Cross than those who sail the often roiled and wild seas. The Seafarer, by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet describes life on the open sea while others on land spend nights in the mead-hall enjoying lavish banquets before a roaring fire:

 

“I can sing my own true story/of journeys through this world/ how often I was tried/by troubles. Bitterly scared/I would be sick with sorrow/on my night watch as I saw/so many times from the prow/terrible, tall waves/pitching close to cliffs./My feet were frozen stiff/seized and locked by frost/although my heart was hot/from a host of worries./A hunger from within/tore at my mind, sea-weary. But men on solid ground/know nothing of how a wretch/like me, in so much pain/could ever live a winter alone/exiled, on the ice-cold sea/where hail came down in sheets/and icicles hung from me/while friendly hall-companions/feasted far away./The crashing sea was all/I heard, the ice-cold wave.” [translated by Mary Jo Salter in The Word Exchange]

As the night-sea journey continues for our Anglo-Saxon poet, he is struck by just how “Terrible and great/is the Lord, and the very world/turns to him in awe….Blessed is he who lives in all/humility, what comes to him/in Heaven is forgiveness…” The Seafarer then concludes: “Let us ponder where our true/home is, and how to reach it./Let us labor to gain entry/into the eternal/ to find the blessedness/of belonging to the Lord/joyfully on high./Thanks be to God who loved us,/the endless Father/the Prince of Glory forever. Amen.”

 

Which certainly needs no analysis to lead us into a deeper look at what is the Second Night-Sea Journey in Matthew 14:22-26. Earlier, Jesus had invited others to join them in the boat, but who had other things to do before getting in [8:18-27]. This time, Jesus “made the disciples get in the boat and go on to the other side” while he took a very much needed time-out to recharge after healing and feeding thousands. Not for long, though. These men, among them fishermen, found themselves rowing against a mighty wind, with the boat in danger of foundering. It is dark. It is night. Waves batter the boat. The going is rough. The going is exhausting to be sure. We try to imagine what was going through their minds as they continued to fulfill their mission to get to the other side. When all of a sudden, a vision appears. They suppose it is a ghost. They cry out in fear! But immediately the vision speaks to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Actually, it says, “Take heart, I am.” They would recognize “I am” as the voice of God to Moses from the bush that burns but is not consumed. Like our Anglo-Saxon poet, they recognize that in the darkness on the wind-blown sea they are in the presence of the Lord God, “I am who I am.”

 

This is where it gets a bit strange. Peter demands proof as their Lord stands upon the battering waves before them. He wants to be like Jesus, standing on the roiling sea. OK, says the Lord. Give it a try. So, Peter gets out of the boat, starts to walk toward Jesus when suddenly, he noticed the strong wind and begins to sink. He has been rowing against the strong wind all night. How is it just now that he notices the wind? Or, is he suddenly struck oblivious? Or, is he thinking only of himself and not the great “I Am” who stands before him? Or, is this really a ghost? A vision of overly exhausted rowers on the boat? Or, is this a resurrection appearance of Christ that Matthew has for some reason inserted back into the middle of the story? And if so, why?

 

So many questions, all of which are worth tracking down. Of important note, in any case, once again, in the dark of night, in the despair of near-drowning, it is the Lord who comes to us. For we are the disciples. He sends us off, thinking perhaps we now know what kingdom living is really like. And, when they finally get there, with Jesus in the boat, they get back to the work of healing all those in need. But in the darkest hours of the night-sea journey, they seem to have forgotten who they are and whose they are. Matthew seems to present this second night-sea journey as a step-along-the-way to fully knowing who God in Christ is.

 

Unlike John of the Cross, Peter has yet to have let go of all he thinks he is to allow Christ to gather him fully into the life of the kingdom. As it is for Peter, it is, no doubt, for all of us. We think we know the Christ, and perhaps we do, but we allow personal and social distractions to forget who we really are, and whose we are. We all experience “dark nights of the soul” – a night sea journey. Matthew offers this story so we might take the Seafarer’s lesson to heart: “Let us ponder where our true/home is, and how to reach it./Let us labor to gain entry/into the eternal/ to find the blessedness/of belonging to the Lord/joyfully on high./Thanks be to God who loved us,/the endless Father/the Prince of Glory forever. Amen.”

 

A Magic Loaf of Bread Proper 13A

 

A Magic Loaf of Bread

When you were four years old, I had a dream about you.

In the dream you had found a loaf of bread.

You worried for the poor of the world, and you decided to

feed everyone from your loaf. From one loaf of bread?

Yes. It was a magic loaf. And it was a dream.

Story by Jumana Emil Abboud, a Palestinian-Canadian artist and collector of folk tales, in the book Bread for the Living, Bread for the Dead, edited by Alexander Strecker 

I grew up across the street from an elementary school. Before I was in kindergarten, I had a lemonade stand at the corner for all the older kids on the way to school. I kept going into the kitchen to get more lemonade. My mother said, “You must be making a lot of money!” I replied, “Money? I’m giving it away to all my friends!” 

You may have noticed, from one end of the Bible to the other, the story is often about bread. When Father Abraham is in the middle of almost nowhere, the mysterious King of Salem, that is the King of Peace, arrives with bread and wine, which they share. Then the king  blesses Abraham, and off Melchizedek, Hebrew for King of Righteousness, goes never to be seen again. Except in the curious New Testament treatise called Hebrews which states categorically that Christ is a priest “after the order of Melchizedek”: Christ, the King of Peace, Christ the King of Righteousness. 

There is the manna in the wilderness, after the Great Escape from Pharaoh’s Egypt. It appears every morning. Everyone gets enough. No one gets too much, for if you try to hoard it, it sours and becomes infested with worms. Utterly unlike life in Egypt where the bread supply was controlled by the empire, this manna, this bread of life, is freely given by YHWH, the God of the Passover-Exodus journey to freedom. 

The prophet Isaiah remembers this as he poses the question: Why do you work 24/7 like slaves again for this new Empire’s bread which will never satisfy? Why don’t you return to the Lord’s bread, milk, and wine that is given freely, without price? The bread that has sustained God’s people, our people, for millennia? “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live,” says the Lord. 

Several hundred years later there is Jesus. The Christ. God’s anointed. God’s beloved. Who comes to dwell among us, as one of us, with a dream. Not just any dream, but the Dream of God. He calls it a new kind of kingdom – the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. He says it is here. It has been here all along. Yet, we allow ourselves to become tenured ways of the Empire such that we no longer see that it is right here, at hand, here and now, available to those who share in God’s dream – a dream in which everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, or it begins to sour and spoil. The Empire’s bread will never satisfy nor sustain us. Jesus says, Follow me. Remember the challenge of Isaiah: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? I am the true bread that comes down from heaven, from the hand of God my Father. 

Matthew chapter 14 confronts the reader with two very different meals: Herod Antipas’s birthday and Jesus feeding a multitude of hungry, sick, and disabled people. Herod’s party devolves into a brutal act of revenge with the beheading of John the Baptizer who disapproved of Herod having made off with his brother’s wife, Herodias, amid a context of the Empire’s plenty with copious amounts of food and drink, more than the assembled party-goers could ever possibly consume. 

In the other corner, wearing the white trunks, one finds Jesus who has heard of John’s demise and seeks to get away from the brutality of the empire. A crowd of thousands seem to know where he is going, and get there first on foot. He sees them, and has compassion for them. He  gets out of his boat and immediately begins to heal and cure the sick and disabled. The disciples come to him and say, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” This is the point really. This is what disciples and followers of Jesus are meant to do. They whine. “But we only have five loaves an two fish!” Bring it to me. Jesus takes the loaves, blesses the loaves, breaks the loaves and gives them to the disciples to give to the more than 5,000 people – if you count the women and children. Which we always should.

 

“And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” Everyone is satisfied, just as Isaiah had said. There are plenty of leftovers for others to be fed. We find it difficult to understand such a story. I suspect you may have noticed that we act out this very story every Sunday, at this table which is open to all who are hungry, all who are in need of healing, those who seek the true bread of life. We take, bless, and break the bread, and give it away, “without money, without price.” Week after week after week. 

The kingdom living, in which we are invited to live here and now, is not about “every man, woman, and child for themselves.” Jesus tells us that his Father imagines that people who are made in God’s image are to operate as a mutual aid society. Those who follow Jesus are to find ways to meet the needs of others, especially those who are sick, disabled, and otherwise living at the margins of society. Disciples, or followers, always means us. We also know he feels the same way about healthcare. At one end of the Sea of Galilee are hot springs, spas, where people came from all over the ancient world and paid large amounts of money to experience the healing waters of the hot springs. And there is Jesus, on the banks of Galilee, just giving away food and healing people of all kinds of dis-ease. For free. No wonder he was locked up. He was bad for business, and bad for the local economy. The early church never forgot these moments, witness that it is one story repeated in all four gospels. The meal the church chose to share recalls this story. It is the memory of this story that explains that we read in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles that the church grew by the thousands every day! It was a mutual aid society, utterly unlike life in the empire.

When you were born, God had a dream about you.

In the dream you had found a loaf of bread.

You worried for the poor of the world, and you decided to

feed everyone from your loaf. From one loaf of bread?

Yes. It was a magic loaf. And it wasn’t a dream.

God’s dream came alive in you as it did for Jesus.

And the world has never been the same.

Righteous Individuals? Or, A Just Society? Proper 10A

 

Righteous Individuals? Or, A Just Society?

“Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them… As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.” -Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

This Parable of the Sower sowing seeds poses several important questions: What type of soil are we? Do we hear God’s Word? Does our hearing lead to living a kingdom of God kind of life? I say “we” instead of “you” because in English one cannot distinguish between “you” singular and “you” plural. But Matthew’s Koine Greek does. It is therefore important to note that in the Beatitudes [Matthew 5] and in the parable of the Last Judgement [Matthew 25] the “you” is also always plural. And I would suggest that the Beatitudes and the Last Judgement bracket the entire ministry of Jesus. Matthew understands the Good News of Jesus Christ to inaugurate a new age in which we finally learn to love and truly care for one another as God loves “us.” We are especially to love those living at the margins of society.

 

There have been recent disagreements as to what these bookends are talking about. The Last Judgement, of course, finds Jesus self-identifying with those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, and strangers – and that as we address their needs we are serving him directly. The disagreement is whether these are instructions for individuals, or for society and nations at large. Which should be clear, since the parable opens by saying, “When the Son of Man (Jesus) comes in all his glory he will gather the nations before him [for judgement and sorting].” In some Bibles it is even called The Judgement of Nations. It is not judgement of individuals.

 

There are streams of American Christianity who see it just this way: that we are to become a nation that looks out for one another, and most especially those most vulnerable and in need of assistance. There are, however, other streams of American Christianity who think the nation as a whole ought not be involved in helping those in need; that rejects the idea that helping others is a moral duty, and teaches that rational self-interest is the highest moral purpose. Giving to others is acceptable only if it is voluntary, you can afford it, and the recipient is worthy. This might be called the Gospel of Ayn Rand’s brand of objective individualism which rejects altruism and all notions of living to serve others and self-sacrifice to help those in need.

 

This latter stream of American Christianity represents the “thorns” into which the seeds of God’s Word are choked out by “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth” Jesus speaks of,  yielding nothing more than self-preservation, self-happiness, and self-interest as the highest moral values that ought to concern us. I would further suggest that it is the American pre-occupation with what Hebert Hoover called “the rugged individual,” the idea that anyone, by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, can live a rags to riches Horatio Alger sort of self-improvement and success. Yet, even the author Horatio Alger’s young protagonists most often succeeded with the assistance of a wealthy benefactor!

 

Nevertheless, Scot Loyd, PhD, author of "The God I Was Given," and scholar of race, religion, culture, and communication has outlined how the cult of rugged individualism has reinterpreted Biblical religion: “For much of my life, I inherited a version of Christianity that instinctively read almost every passage of Scripture through the lens of the individual. Salvation was personal. Sin was personal. Holiness was personal. Evangelism was personal. Faith was primarily about the condition of my own soul and my own relationship with God. Looking back, I now realize that I was reading an ancient, communal faith through the eyes of a thoroughly modern Western culture. The more I have studied Scripture, the more convinced I have become that the biblical writers simply did not think the way we do. We tend to imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals who occasionally gather into communities. Ancient Israel understood itself first as a people. Identity was shared. Responsibility was shared. Blessings were shared. Even judgment was often shared.” [i]

 

If there was ever a time when America shared a common identity, a shared responsibility, shared blessings, and shared judgement, it is safe to say that that time exists somewhere in a distant past. That does not absolve Christians, however, to forsake the Bible’s vision, and thereby the vision of God in Christ Jesus, of our shared responsibilities to be peacemakers, to be humble, to offer, as we heard last Sunday, even a cup of water to “the least of these,” Jesus’s self-adopted sisters and brothers in need. Nor are we absolved from advocating for we, as a nation, as a society, to find ways to provide for all who are in need of assistance of any kind. For not everyone can be as lucky as those boys in the books of Horatio Alger to find a personal benefactor.

 

A careful reading of the Bible from one end to the other reveals that the dream and purpose of God is, as Jesus summarizes, “to love one another as I love you.” The Gospel of Rugged Individualism always results in the kind of self-interest focused on worldly desires and the lure of wealth, which chokes God’s word, and thus, it yields nothing but self-aggrandizement and greed. It yields a society of a few Righteous, Rugged individuals, rather than a Just Society.

 

This is why Jesus describes the Final Judgement as a Judgement of Nations, not of individuals. He deliberately frames His teaching in communal terms. The question is not merely whether particular people showed compassion. The question is what kind of society those people together have created. Which is the concern of all the prophets of the Bible with whom Jesus also self-identifies. Again, as Scot Loyd observes, ‘When Amos cried out, "Let justice roll down like waters," he was not addressing private devotional lives. He was confronting a nation whose religious worship had become disconnected from justice. Isaiah condemned elaborate worship services while widows and orphans were neglected. Jeremiah repeatedly warned kings who [trusted religious rituals while exploiting the vulnerable. Micah summarized true faith with words that have echoed across the centuries: "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."’ [ii]

 

It seems that the Word of God in Christ Jesus has landed among the thorns of America’s various myths of Rugged Individualism, choking out any and all notions of the communal nature of Jesus’s teaching and the central focus of the whole Bible: to create societies and nations that care for all people, not just some, not just many, but “all.” This Parable of the Sower asks us as a community and as a nation: What kind of soil are we? Do we, plural, hear the Word of God? Do we, plural, allow the Word of God to grow and influence how we address the needs of the greater society in which we live? Can we, plural, hear the Word of God take us beyond our own personal needs to establish the kind of society and nation that reflects the kingdom of God Jesus imagines can be possible here and now? Do we, plural, want a nation of a few righteous individuals? Or, a just society for all people? I am grateful to Scot Loyd who helps us to recognize just how the thorns of individualism have obscured Jesus’s and the Bible’s vision for a society and a nation that truly wants to be one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all. Amen.

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[i] https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscotloyd.com%2F2026%2F07%2F02%2Fmy-own-personal-jesus-rejecting-a-privatized-gospel%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExbkpERlFiV21CTEpORk5MM3NydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7Z-HYJbtS0mZ6qvSCqVx9KBOKI7jTTHJHbnokXGM8lU1721lKtttnEJ6oUNA_aem_dusZgU6ImtuskLQX0BvsJw&h=AUCUf0tux7SXH5RTuLuUA3SSKCH40oXDdKsZEthCZrzxcgXS_c9WzltYnE0nvOFtkL_VQ4cqy7LFZ9gpOYF8k03MjLkhPlRgKD_3W0O4VB2MBrD-4RjHJFAoFEPOl5JxO0HP4NjrX11oGA&__tn__=-UK-y-R&c[0]=AUBTLdAP-icjCITTZLsHpJGhe4w9fuSuEA9jYAKQzoRgAbPLD8k5vqtJ3T5kOjJLcLeyKKBiLPmCOSrQpKUCv5gzXO63wOfBYdmi5lCEovOlCNJ9P7m7s1tF-7a42ggyUogQbbrsKqeDrOAplfYJS-j5pQNmjSDnqlBaNQV4yRM6Fpb-K0I6V28uvdWp8zFhwuJJWayLpco6WvJWHTY 

 

[ii] Ibid, Scot Loyd

Whose Yoke Guides You? Proper 9A

 

Whose Yoke Guides You?

Chapter 11 of Matthew explores at least two identity crises going on at once: who is John the baptizer, and who is this Jesus? Two upstarts that the credentialed religious professionals and the powerful political elite relegate to irrelevance: one for fasting and eating bugs dipped in honey, and the other for letting anyone and everyone sit at the dinner table with him. One is an ascetic, the other a glutton and a drunkard. The present generation, Jesus says, just does not understand. We are that “present generation” as Matthew understands it.

 

Jesus answers the detractors, “You have fallen for my Father’s strategy to keep the central message among the “little ones,” “the children,” the uncredentialed, the unprofessional, those exhausted from endless labor with no time for Sabbath, and weary from the multi-tiered taxation of the Empire, of Herod Antipas, of the priest’s tithes, and the Temple dues. These children are not darling, innocent post-Victorian waifs and little Lord Fauntleroys. They are the land and tax poor of any and all generations. Which is why in Matthew when Jesus teaches us to pray he says, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Debt is how they ended up in Egypt in the first place: by the foreclosure of their farms and herds they became slaves for Pharoh; for the empire.

 

We may notice five verses missing from our portion of Matthew 11. It seems those who set up the lectionary thought we might not be up for hearing Jesus go into an unscheduled tirade against some of the villages where he had been teaching in the region around Galilee. Considered, perhaps, too indelicate for our Sunday morning ears to hear him castigate these towns where he he also had healed people, but they refused to repent and follow him. To refuse to put off the yokes of the Empire and Jerusalem, and try another. His yoke. Missing the tirade makes it difficult to understand what happens next.

 

After praying for his Father to continue to confound the credentialed, rich, and powerful, and continue to point to what life in God’s kingdom looks like among the “little ones,” rather than Caesar’s kingdom. Jesus also prays that he will announce what his Father is really looking for, and that he will “choose” to whom to impart this wisdom from on high. Jesus then concludes with familiar words: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

 

For generations of our Anglican tradition, we have called these “comfortable words.” We tend to heave a sigh of relief when we hear them, missing the deeper inner meanings of a saying one might embroider on a pillow. Yokes are physical implements to guide and control beasts of burden, and had long become a standard metaphor in biblical religion to refer to having one’s life, and one’s community’s life, guided and controlled by Torah, God’s commands, which Jesus regularly boils down to love God, and love neighbor – which for God and Jesus means “all” neighbors, all people, everywhere, all the time.

 

One of the pesky words in these final words is the word “all.” Like his behavior at the dinner table, Jesus invites all, everyone and anyone, to sit down with him. This means the taxed and tax collectors; the land-poor, and those who have foreclosed and usurped their family farms; the religious conservatives and religious liberals; the undocumented resident aliens and those whose tribe and clan has been in the land for generations; those whose work, poverty, illness, or social location made Torah observance difficult or just plain impossible, and those for whom Torah observance was a kind of fetish and personal luxury. Shared meals created belonging in the ancient Mediterranean world of Jesus. They marked who was included and who was excluded, Yet, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you… all y’all,” crossing the lines that organize the world into binaries: clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable, respectful and disposable.

 

“You who are exhausted and weary” of being asked to fund tributes to Caesar, to fund vanity building projects for Herod Antipas (the king of the Jews) such as a building named after the Emperor Tiberias, and to maintain the demands of the Temple. It has been estimated that one-third to one-half of one’s yearly produce went to these overlapping demands, keeping families in chronic debt and vulnerable to foreclosure. When Jesus speaks of those who are weary and heavy-laden he speaks to those who are being ground-down by the dominant economic systems. Those who work half a year to satisfy the multiple yokes around their necks.

 

Come try my yoke instead, says Jesus. It’s still a yoke. There will still be responsibilities. You will have to lay down all the hatred and mis-trust, and love one another as I love you. As my father loves me. As the psalmist sings, “8 The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. 9 The Lord is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works.” [Psalm 145] You will find that in loving all others as I love you there will be rest for your souls. The word for rest, anapausis, is used in Old Testament texts to mean Sabbath. Sabbath was not understood as a personal practice of piety, but rather represents a break with the dominant economic system and to attend to loving our family and neighbors: the hungry, thirsty, unhoused, undocumented, in prison, disabled physically or emotionally, and in any way ground down by work under the pressures of the Empire, and the state and religious elite.

 

In the very next verses in chapter 12, one sees Jesus pilloried for allowing people to work: to harvest food for the hungry while he heals people on the Sabbath day. He issues the challenge: is not relief and release from whatever exhausts one and makes one weary a kind of Sabbath in and of itself? Was humankind made for the Sabbath? Or, is Sabbath mandated for humankind?

 

Finally, he says, “My yoke is chrestos,” usually translated “easy.” Yet, it more often means useful, good, kind, or benevolent. It’s a Greek word used for the Hebrew ahavah, or “love,” as in “love thy neighbor and the sojourner in the land.” True love means actively giving to others rather than just having a feeling. It means doing something useful or kind for them. Which is consistent to the kind of Sabbath “rest” Jesus not only advocates, but encourages and actually acts out. This also may be a play on words to suggest that Jesus the christos (anointed) is also chrestos, benevolent 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Christos is Chrestos!

 

Who are Jesus and John? They do not support the status quo of dividing people into binary categories, a practice that is still prevalent in our “generation.” They share his Father’s will, love, mercy, and compassion with whomever they choose whenever necessary. Jesus insists that both he and John, and their respective followers, will be judged not by what they say or believe, but by what they do day in and day out. Jesus exposes the trappings of political power and religion as just that: traps that exhaust everyone but the elites. We all wear a yoke. The question is not whether we do or don’t, but rather whose yoke is it, and who profits from our labor? Jesus asks, “Are you ready to try my yoke?” Our answer will make all the difference in the world! Amen.

To Serve the Little Ones Proper 8A

 

To Serve the Little Ones

Jesus concludes his instructions to those who would be his disciples, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  [Matthew 10:4042] This may also be translated, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Which instructions began back in 10:14, “If anyone will not welcome/receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

 

From the outset, Jesus warns us that to be a disciple of his, one who carries his message from town to town, household to household, you will face rejection just as he did at the hands of Rome. This broadens the scope of these instructions in that they are not just about the disciples, but also have something to say about those who welcome or reject those of us who are sent by Jesus to be co-workers of God’s dominion – over against the dominion of the Empire, the dominion of Caesar. We need to remember that Matthew has chosen to include these instructions in an atmosphere of sheer terror. To quell opposition to the Roman occupation of the land, the Roman Legions set siege to the central city of Jerusalem, resulting in the destruction of the Temple, the center of Jewish life, and the death of up to a million sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was a literal holocaust.

 

To remember this makes it reasonable to assume that some folks may be leery to open their doors to anyone not familiar, let alone those who represent an alternative to life in the Empire which has shown the full depth of its wrath. The comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah for those who do not welcome the Good News. God’s wrath rained down on them for the sin of not welcoming nor  offering hospitality to strangers, nomads. Whereas, Jesus’s practiced extraordinary Holy Hospitality by welcoming everyone, especially those routinely ignored by the establishment: those who are poor, disabled, strangers, prisoners of the Empire, the unhoused, and those who hunger and thirst. The very people with whom Jesus self-identifies in Matthew chapter 25.

 

These final instructions raise two questions for all of us: Are we willing to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, door-to-door, proclaiming the dominion of God’s love, mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness despite possible opposition? And, are we willing to open our doors to welcome the very same people Jesus self-identifies with in Matthew 25?

 

There is a Jewish principal of shaliach: the appointed representative of someone is to be understood as the legal embodiment of the one who sends him or her to you. In this case, Jesus makes a profound statement: those of us who are sent by Jesus, who is in turn sent by God, are act and be received as if we are Jesus, and thereby, as God as well. As difficult as it may be to think of ourselves in such terms, it is Genesis that tells us we are imago Dei, created in the image of God. This is who we are meant to be – the very embodiment of God’s love, justice, compassion and forgiveness to all to whom we are sent. This is what compels Paul to write: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.” [2 Corinthians 5:20] And therefore, by the principal of shaliach, all we say and do on behalf of Christ, we also say on behalf of God’s very self! The contrast is impossible to overlook. The Empire speaks only on behalf of the Emperor. Those who are sent by Christ speak on behalf of Jesus, and thereby on behalf of God who cares for all people, all creatures, and all of creation. Especially the “little ones.”

 

Not to get too deep into the weeds of the original Greek text of Matthew, but it is worthwhile to consider several key-words. The Greek for “welcoming one” is a present participle, which describes an on-going orientation, not a one-time act. The word for “reward” is actually a labor term meaning wages owed to a worker, which was a concretely economic promise in a world shaped by debt and the constant threat of being cheated out of what you’d earned. And the word for “little ones” points to those at the bottom of every social hierarchy Matthew’s community knew, and are still with us to this day, as Jesus himself says to the disciples in Matthew 26:11: “For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.”

 

This seems to be the central point of these two verses that conclude Jesus’s instructions to his disciples, which for Matthew always means for us, those who read and hear the word. I’ve noticed during this enigmatic season for Baltimore Orioles baseball that every time Pete Alanso is interviewed after a game for having made a key hit or homer to win the game, when asked what was his approach; what was he looking for as he stood in the batter’s box; he always praises those who got on base before him, the pitching staff, and everyone else but himself.

 

Matthew’s Jesus does the very same thing here: through the principal of shaliach, and his careful choice of words, we are directed not just to the disciples, and in turn to us; not to those who may welcome or reject those who carry on Jesus’s mission on behalf of God his Father; we are directed to those who are to be the primary focus of living in a world of God’s dominion, not the dominion of emperors from Caesar to the present day.: the little ones. Those at the bottom of every social hierarchy throughout all time, which includes women and children as well. As he says in Matthew 25:

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”

 

May God’s Word enter our hearts, and our minds, and show forth in all we do and say on behalf of the one who sends us to be his messengers of God’s dominion, now and forever. Amen.

Reality Check for Us All Proper 7A

 

Reality Check for Us All

Jesus does not mince words. In Matthew 10:24-39 he lays out the consequences of what it really means to follow Jesus. It’s what is often called “a hard saying.” To be a disciple, to be a faithful Christian, is not for the faint-of-heart. Just ask Dietrich Bonnehoeffer. Just ask Martin Luther King, Jr. Ask Archbishop Oscar Romero and Joan of Arc. Ask the very first martyrs as witnessed in Matthew’s gospel, The Innocent Children of Bethlehem.

 

In his final instructions, Jesus and Matthew introduce some powerful language: Beelzebul, Sword, and here is the first mention in Matthew of the Cross – a reminder that long before it became a symbol of personal piety and a common piece of jewelry, it was a sign of terror, brutality; a sign that the Empire can execute whomever it deems a problem to the pax romana.

 

Evidently ours is not the only era in history in which name-calling has been used to damage the reputation of a perceived opponent. First century Israel was a deeply divided territory before the endless occupations by other middle eastern empires. Rome was just the most recent. Within Israel itself you had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and various militia-like Zealots which often included their own self-appointed messiahs. And like any other political parties, there were always divisions within these major political and religious parties.

 

Jesus, it seems, had been call Beelzebul – literally, Lord of the Flies. This is not another name for the satan – God’s tester. Nor was Beelzebul a challenge to the God of Israel, but rather a lesser being who is lord of all that plagues humankind, and his flies buzz around the corpses of his victims, and crawl on the faces of hungry children who starve in his famines. A formidable foe for humans, but no match for God. [Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, p.155] Jesus’s point is that if he is declared demon possessed by either political or ecclesial authorities, so will the members of his “household” – that is, his followers, his disciples, and anyone who dares to call themselves Christians. Sounding like one of God’s messengers, the angels, he tells us to “Fear not!” They can call us names, even kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul, “rather, fear him who can kill both body and soul!” That is, fear only God, and God will protect you. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and he’s watching over you – able to count each hair on your head, for like me, says Jesus, you are God’s Beloved.

 

Perhaps most shocking for modern Christians is Jesus’s announcement that he does not come to bring peace, but a sword. Shocking only because we forget all too soon that the mere mention of the birth of Jesus to be the “king of the Jews,” sets the tyrant Herod, Caesar’s appointed King of the Jews, into a rage, sending his forces into the village of Bethlehem to slaughter all children two years-old and younger. The Slaughter of the Innocents are the first martyrs as a ham-handed attempt to murder the future messiah and king. The sword was swiftly deployed early on, and eliminated a generation of Jesus’s cousins and potential aunts and uncles. It is no metaphor.

 

Indeed, the “sword” appears long after the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord in the treatise titled simply, “Hebrews” where we read: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [Hebrews 4:12 nrsvce] As we all remember from Christmas, John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is “the Word of God,” and he himself says he is capable of dividing father from son, mother from daughter, mother-in-law from daughter-in-law, “and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Lest this strike us as overwrought, let us remember how many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners have recently been ruined as during the pandemic with squabbling of vaxers and anti-vaxers, or MAGA and anti-Maga, red vs blue, etc. It goes all the way back to slave-holders vs abolitionists, patriots vs loyalists, nativists vs internationalists, and on and on and on it goes. One’s devotion to Jesus also has, and continues to have, the capability of causing such division, even within one’s own household. By the time Matthew is writing such divisions are already a reality.

 

An Important Caution: This text is often manipulated by demagogues and cult leaders who are not at all proclaiming and living the kingdom of God life Jesus encourages. They will tell someone something like this, “Of course your family does not understand us. They do not have the secret knowledge we can give you. Don’t listen to them, and see, Jesus says this is how it will always be for his followers.” I have seen it too many times. And texts like this one in Matthew is all too easily perverted to mean exactly what it does not mean.

 

Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, a contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, from chapter seven. The prophet declares that households are falling apart, and the fabric of society is falling apart due to the faithlessness of the people. Which does not mean keeping the appointed sacrifices at the Temple. In chapter six he defines faith like this: He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? It is important to remember: when Jesus spoke these words, one’s entire identity was with one’s family, clan, and tribe. Any modern notion of “the individual” was a long-way off in the future, so that the very threat of being cut-off from one’s family was in fact tantamount to a kind of death sentence among those early followers of Jesus.

 

Which brings us to the first mention of “the Cross” in Matthew’s gospel: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The cross was not a symbol, nor was it a metaphor. It was an execution device. Roman crosses were to be seen throughout the empire, along roadsides, in important public spaces, as a reminder of the power and brutality of the Empire. But to take up Jesus’s cross is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. It is to live a life shaped by God’s own mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

 

He then says those of you who follow me expecting some kind of personal gain, personal glory, or recognition, will as much as lose their life. Those who follow Jesus in giving away God’s mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness will gain everlasting life with God in Christ. What  at first sounds like bad news is ultimately good news. For, as he says earlier, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Be not afraid. Despite all possible consequences, I have your back. I am with you always, to the end of the age! In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places – there is room for everyone. Not everyone will appreciate what we are doing, but remain faithful to my Father’s mercy, compassion, justice and forgiveness, and I will have your back, just as he has my back. I am with you now. I am with you always. Together we do make a difference in the lives of others, and in the life of the world.  Have no fear. We have this! Amen.

It's About Compassion Proper 6A

 

It’s About Compassion

As we hear Matthew’s account of Jesus appointing the disciples [Matthew 9:35-10:23], giving them a new title, “apostles,” literally “those who are sent,” our opening prayer for this Third Sunday after Pentecost acknowledges that we too, by virtue of our baptism, have also been appointed apostles as well: Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ.

 

When I hear that we are to proclaim Christ’s truth with boldness, and minister his justice with compassion, I immediately think of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Fourth Bishop of El Salvador. He was a fearless defender of the human rights of the poor, and who spoke out against poverty, social injustice, and the state of right-wing violence during the escalating Salvadoran Civil War. He was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980. Not long before his assassination, Romero made this distinction in his weekly radio-homily broadcast: “The homily is not being “political” when it points out political, social, and economic sins. It is simply the word of God becoming incarnate in our reality, which often reflects not God’s reign, but sin.” - Saint Oscar Romero, the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 1979.

 

Matthew’s gospel reflects the archbishop’s clarification in his account of the sending the newly minted apostles to have “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.” Jesus is inspired to broaden his ministry as he looks out upon the crowds that follow him wherever he is in the region of Galilee. He sees, as Romero did in El Salvador, poor people, mistreated and beaten down by the empire and the collaborating Temple leadership. They are as “sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus views them with “compassion,” as people in deep need of healing and justice. They have been let down by their own leadership, and brutally treated, and stripped of all economic sustenance, by Caesar’s Empire of Rome, who also like it was in El Salvador, deployed death squads for any and all who resisted the military occupation of the land promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. The results of these death squads lined the fabled Roman roadways with those resistors hanging from Roman crosses.

 

As Matthew names the twelve disciples, most are named in pairs of men related as brothers or other family affiliation, with the exception of three names that ought to stand out: Matthew the tax collector, employed by the Empire overcharging citizens for tolls and taxes; Simon the Cananaean, a title that reflects his participation in a group of zealots, Jewish nationalists, who were known to mount insurrections against the Roman occupation; and of course, Judas, “the one who betrayed him,” who played a tragic role in Jesus being rounded up and eventually executed by one of the Empire’s death-squads. The inclusion of both the Roman hireling Matthew and the revolutionary Simon together among the disciples is striking. As one commentator has noted, “The startling juxtaposition of this former Roman-hater [Simon] with Matthew, a former lackey of Rome, shows that the new community of Jesus has embraced and transcended the tensions of the old community of Israel (Long, Thomas, Matthew, p.115).

 

Together, this startling and diverse group is to proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near!” That is the kingdom of God’s Shalom, God’s peace, in which, as it was in the Days of Manna, everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, and if you try to hoard it, it sours; it goes rotten. But that’s not all! They are also to “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. This is what Peace, what Shalom, is meant to look like: working to provide public health care, reconcile racial and social alienation, and wrestle with the powers of domination and oppression that bleed the life out of a community. But, those twelve men are by no means Jesus. And neither are we who are also commissioned to continue the work Jesus does, and as he says himself, “greater things than these!” How on earth are they, let alone we, to follow through on all of this?

 

The kingdom of heaven, Matthew’s interpretation of the more common “kingdom of God,” embodies the central vision of the Bible: which is that all creation is one, every creature in community with every other living thing, living in harmony, prosperity and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature. This is the good news that we are all asked to embrace and proclaim. As Jesus looks out at the crowds of people beaten down by the machinations of the dominant and dominating leadership, he recognizes at once the primary need of everyone in front of him is for compassion. Compassion is sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. That is, the beginning of physical, mental, and emotional healing is to be a presence of compassion for those who suffer for whatever reason.

 

Neither we, nor the disciples, are expected to touch someone and expect one’s cancer suddenly disappears; we cannot shout, “Be gone!” at the raging forces afflicting a diseased mind and expect illness to flee; we are not to go to a funeral and attempt to raise one out of one’s casket. (Long, p.117) But we are expected in all times and in all places to be the living presence of God’s grace in Jesus Christ; to allow Christ’s steadfast faith and love to empower us to proclaim his truth with boldness, and minister his justice with compassion. Compassion. We are to be the living presence of Christ’s compassion to any and all persons, all creatures, and all of creation itself.

 

As Saint Paul writes to the community of Christians in Rome, it is our Christ given powers of compassion which compel us to “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” [Romans 5:1-8] Acknowledging our own sufferings enables and empowers us to stand with others with Christ-like compassion, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts “through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Given, as gift.

 

Archbishop Oscar Romero says it this way, from one of his radio-broadcast-sermons to the poor poverty stricken and endangered people of El Salvador, when he says: "Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be our author if we were something worthless. You and I and all of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God, and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every person." - September 4, 1977.

 

May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit open our compassionate hearts as you keep your household the Church “in your steadfast faith and love; that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ” and the spread of God’s Shalom throughout all the world.” Amen.