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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

…your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

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

 

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

 

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

Amen.

Thomas Believes - Do We? Easter 2A

 

Thomas Believes – Do We?

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

The Meaning of Holy Week Part 3: Easter Morning

 

The Meaning of Holy Week: Easter Morning

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

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

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

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

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

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

 

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

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

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

 

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

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

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

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

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

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

“Easter” by Marie Howe 

Two of the fingers on his right hand

had been broken 

 

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised

him — it hurt him at first. 

 

And the whole body was too small. Imagine

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

He came into it two ways:

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

 

And from the center — suddenly all at once.

Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.

 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia! 

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

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

 

Oh, my sisters and brothers,

Jesus wants you,

he needs you,

God needs you,

the Church needs you.

  

Just as they needed me,

They need your light and your love.

 

Know, my sisters and brothers,

there is a hidden place in your heart

where Jesus lives!

 

Let Jesus live in you.

Go forward with Him.

 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!

And so are we! And so are we!

 

The Meaning of Holy Week: Good Friday

 The Meaning of Holy Week: Good Friday

 

This portion of John’s Passion Narrative, John 19:1-37, highlights two things: Jesus is in charge. Pilate feels he is losing his grip to maintain order in Jerusalem during the busiest week of the year, Passover. Pilate is desperate to bring the whole matter to a conclusion. He wants an off-ramp to make it go away. All at once he offers Jesus an off-ramp, but does so while threatening crucifixion.

 

Jesus is neither threatened, nor is he going to make a deal: besides, he says, there is someone “guilty of a greater sin – the one who turned me over to you.” Pilate pleads with the crowds. They cry out that he is guilty of claiming to be a king. The religious leaders who are on Rome’s payroll as the official liaison to the people claim the problem is calling himself the Son of God. That “we” have law and by that law he must die. Pilate becomes more afraid. Despite the fact that given the anti-monarchy history of Hebrew scripture, there is no way Jesus would pretend to be a king. And there is no such law against that anyway. Same with Son of God: no law against it. The charges are all fabricated by those who know he is a threat to long established norms that had no basis in Torah. In God’s commands.

 

Out of desperation, Pilate “hands him over” to be crucified. Revealing that Pilate is just like Judas the betrayer who handed Jesus over to the chief priests, who handed him over to Pilate. These are the true criminals, and Pilate finally reveals his guilt as well. He abdicates his power to be judge. While the real Judge turns out to be Jesus – Jesus who does not even have to act as judge since everyone else’s own words and actions are self-incriminating.

 

We who claim to follow The Way of Christ need to pay attention to what happens next. For there is one more “handing over” to come. Note, in John’s narrative, Jesus carries the cross to Golgotha on his own. No assistance from Simon of Cyrene or anyone else. We might also note that the crucifixion itself is described in just a few words: “There they crucified him.” That’s it. No drama, as depicted in movies, books, and even sermons. After Jesus receives a sponge full of wine on a branch of hyssop. He says, “It is finished.” And then it happens. The most important moment for all of us. He bows his head, and hands over his Spirit.

 

It is tradition to pause for a moment of silence. For we need to take in those words, “he handed over his Spirit.” His breath. The powerful winds of creation. God’s powerful life giving and life sustaining ruahch. The spirit of Jesus. The Spirit of Christ is handed over to whom? To those of us who strive to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. His Spirit is handed over to inspire us to follow him; to do the things Jesus does; to love those whom Jesus loved. What Good Friday means to ask of us all – do we accept that Spirit of Christ? Do we accept his Spirit as our own? For those who do accept his Spirit, Good Friday is really good!

 

There was a time when these stories we call The Passion was all people had - and the theme of these stories from Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter is that the movement Jesus led was about the importance to follow the Way of Jesus. Nothing really about belief or worship is found in these foundational stories. Simply, we are to follow The Way of Jesus. It is a difficult choice which always involves risk. Anything worthwhile involves risk.

When he enters Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, Jesus took the ultimate risk to challenge the falseness of the Empire. An Empire that used violence and taxation to strip all the resources of the land of Israel. Caesar's Rome put him to death as a warning to the rest of Israel: do not mess with the Empire. Do not challenge the Empire. The roadways around Jerusalem were lined with Roman crosses of those who had tried to dislodge the Empire. Those who had tried to return the land to the very people who farmed, and fished, and sustained abundant crops on the hard-scrabble land of Israel.

 

What nobody knew, not even the Empire, the cross could not put an end to what the young man from Galilee had started. The cross was just the beginning of the next chapter of The Greatest Story Ever Told. Because the Reign of God, what some in those early days called the Kingdom of God, is here. Jesus taught that we are never separated from God's presence. Even at times when we feel stuck, or that the Kingdom of God is far off, it is always right here. His Spirit which he hands over is always ours to accept. For when we do, where we are, Christ is, and where Christ is, God is.  The openness, love, and acceptance of God's presence is in fact our true nature. Even when we feel most confused, most alone, most hopeless, the presence of God in Christ Jesus is always here, undiminished by the clouds that may temporarily cover it. This is the wisdom and truth that resides within the stories of Holy Week. This is why Good Friday is Good! And this is Easter. Awareness of this is Resurrection.

 

On to Sunday morning and the rest of the story. Amen.

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!