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.

To Be Mothers of God Proper 5A

 

To Be Mothers of God

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” – Hosea 6:6

 

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  - Matthew 9:13

 

Faith. It has been suggested by Frederick Buechner, faith is better understood as a verb than a noun. As a process rather than a possession. “It is on-again, off-again rather than once and for all. Faith is not sure where you are going, but like Abraham, going anyway. A journey without maps. Tillich said that doubt is not the opposite of faith, but rather is an element of faith ... Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (Wishful Thinking, (Harpers, San Francisco: 1973 – pp. 20, 27)

 

It is by faith that Hosea suspects there will be a way out of Babylon, and that it will be led by YHWH, and that the people of God will make it back to Jerusalem despite having no Temple in which to make sacrifices. Rather, steadfast love and knowledge of God will suffice.

 

The Psalmist concurs in Psalm 50 since the God of Creation, the God whose intentions are marked by mercy, compassion, and forgiveness desires of us only a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and that we honor our vows, our covenant relationship, with our God.

 

Saint Paul reminds us that God’s promises depend on our faith being like that of Abraham’s which honors and trusts the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist – things beyond even our hope and imaginings!

 

Sin. Look at Jesus who shares a meal around a table of tax collectors and sinners. Sin, as understood in the New Testament, is not about whether we have been naughty or nice, but rather implies those who accept and even participate in systems and structures of oppression, those powers that seek to oppose God’s will that nature be allowed to exist in harmony and abundance; that people be allowed to live with purpose and dignity in joyful communion with others; that people have life, and have it abundantly, all people, everywhere, all the time. Sinners, then, are those who collaborate to exploit nature, deny the dignity of all persons, and who, through systems of greed and acquisition, deny the basic elements of abundant life for others. All others.

 

The tax collectors, and presumably everyone at the table, collaborate with the Roman occupation of Israel, assisting Rome to strip Israel of all its resources, property, and powers of self-determination. The holier-than-thou Pharisees are astonished and ask his disciples “how on earth can your master sit with all these sinners?” Jesus overhears and answers them: “Go back and re-read Hosea, and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” 

 

Suddenly, there is a story of a young girl who is dead, and a woman who has had a flow of blood for twelve long years. Women ranked only a little ahead of children and slaves. Young girls were not considered of much value by their fathers. Yet, surprise, a leader of the synagogue kneels before Jesus and begs Jesus to save his daughter who is dead. As they head to his house, there is an interruption: the woman with the flow of blood, which renders her ritually unclean, unable to participate in the ritual life of her people, and is certainly not expected to touch a man in public, believes if she could touch Jesus she may be healed, restored to life in the community that has rejected her for over a decade. Madeleine L’Engle lets her tell her own story:

The Lightning  

When I pushed through the crowd,

jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious

who wanted to see what everyone else

was so excited about,

all I could think of was my pain

and that perhaps if I could touch him,

this man who worked miracles,

cured diseases,

even those as foul as mine,

I might find relief.

I was tired from hurting,

exhausted, revolted by my body,

unfit for any man, and yet not let loose

from desire and need. I wanted to rest,

to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment.

I don’t really know why

I thought he could help me

when all the doctors

with all their knowledge

had left me still drained

and bereft of all that makes

a woman’s life worth living.

Well: I’d seen him with some children

and his laughter was quick and merry

and reminded me of when I was young and well,

though he looked tired; and he was as old as I am.

Then there was that leper,

but lepers have been cured before –

No, it wasn’t the leper,

or the man cured of palsy,

or any of the other stories of miracles,

or at any rate that was the least of it;

I had been promised miracles too often.

I saw him ahead of me in the crowd

and there was something in his glance

and in the way his hand rested briefly

on the matted head of a small boy

who was getting in everybody’s way,

and I knew that if only I could get to him,

not to bother him, you understand,

not to interrupt, or to ask him for anything,

not even his attention,

just to get to him and touch him…

I didn’t think he’d mind, and he needn’t even know.

 

I pushed through the crowd

and it seemed that they were deliberately

trying to keep me from him.

I stumbled and fell and someone stepped

on my hand and I cried out

and nobody heard. I crawled to my feet

and pushed on and at last I was close,

so close I could reach out

and touch with my fingers

the hem of his garment.

Have you ever been near

when lightning struck?

I was, once, when I was very small

and a summer storm came without warning

and lightning split the tree

under which I had been playing

and I was flung right across the courtyard.

That’s how it was.

Only this time I was not the child

but the tree

and the lightning filled me.

He asked, “Who touched me?”

and people dragged me away, roughly,

and the men around him were angry at me.

“Who touched me?” he asked.

I said, “I did, Lord.”

So that he might have the lightning back

which I had taken from him when I touched

his garment’s hem.

He looked at me and I knew then

that only he and I knew about the lightning.

He was tired and emptied

but he was not angry.

He looked at me

and the lightning returned to him again,

though not from me, and he smiled at me

and I knew that I was healed.

Then the crowd came between us

and he moved on, taking the lightning with him,

perhaps to strike again.

 

We might notice that Jesus does not do a thing. It is the faith of the woman with the flow of blood that saves the day. When he gets to the leader’s house, the professional mourners are already celebrating the girl’s death. Jesus dismisses them and says she is only sleeping. They laugh and scoff at Jesus’s absurd assertion. Jesus simply takes the girl by the hand and she rises, alive and well. Her father’s faith in Jesus saved the day.

 

These stories are meant to inspire us – to inspire us to examine our own faith, and our own doubts. Are we like the woman, who by faith risks everything, breaks all social codes, and persists in getting to Jesus by any means possible? Are we like the father who kneels before Jesus and begs him to please come home to our house and restore my little girl’s life? Are we like Jesus who willing to sit down with those who collaborate against all freedoms and dignities God wills for all people, and to share a meal, and share ideas and opinions, and listen to one another to reconcile and disperse the power of Sin, capital “s”, that threatens us all? Do we find ourselves among the professional mourners, laughing and scoffing at the power of Christ, the power of God, the powers of mercy, compassion and forgiveness that wait for us all to one day to repent, to turn around and walk in the ways of the Lord? Can we, like Jesus, be as concerned for the outsiders like the sinners, tax collectors, the little girl, and the woman with the flow of blood, as we are for family and friends? Do we value women and children the way Jesus does? When Jesus calls us, do we get up and leave everything and follow him, the way Matthew the tax collector does? For these are just some of the questions we are meant to address in ourselves when we hear these stories read.

 

Mothers of God: Thirteenth Century theologian, philosopher, and Dominican monk, Meister Eckhart once said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.” Jesus bore the intentions of God his Father in all that he said and all that he did. Jesus spends time with tax collectors and sinners; stops to recognize a woman who had suffered for twelve years; takes the time to restore the life of a little girl; all of which was endlessly baffling to those who thought they were the arbiters of faith in his day. Just as his mother, Mary of Nazareth, bore the Son of God into this world, so we who are created in the image of God are called to be “Mothers of God,” for God and God’s compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love always needs to be born into the dark corners of this world. This is as true today as the day Meister Eckhart said this. The power of Sin may never have been as prevalent at any other time in history as it is today. These stories, and so many others, call us to be those people who bear God and God’s mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and love to those whom society and leaders of all stripes push aside to the margins of life. God needs to be born today, and tomorrow, and the next day, that lives consigned to endless suffering my one day see the light of faith. That we may become Mothers of God every day, in all that we do and all that we say, may God help us! Amen.

I am with you always, to the end of the age Trinity Sunday 2026

 

“I am with you always, to the end of the age!”

Trinity Sunday. As per AI and Wikipedia: “Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar, and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This remains baffling to many who cannot get their heads around a monotheistic faith speaking of “three Persons of God.” We even sing, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Yet, our tendency is to think of a “person” as an individual, and yet, the Church does not see the Trinity as three discreet individuals.

 

Trinity became the way in which the Church understands and talks about God. Yes, it is a doctrine, but it is used more like a metaphor. We all know that God’s inscrutable nature defies any full and complete understanding on our part. But scripture and early Church leaders experienced the God Jesus refers to most often as Father, as having what in Latin of the day describes as three personas – where persona refers to a theatrical mask:  as the mask (per) through which the voice (sonare) of the actor represents a character. With various masks one actor can represent several different characters. Thus, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Notably, all three are mentioned in Matthew 28:16-20 as part of a Baptismal formula: “…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And way back at the beginning of Matthew, all three are on the stage at the same time at Jesus’s baptism by John: the Holy Spirit descends “like a dove,” alighting on Jesus as the Father’s voice from above declares, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

 

It would be later in the 4^th century that any doctrine of the Trinitarian nature of God is formulated in discussions that led up to the Nicene Creed. The first part of the creed concerns the nature of the Father, the second section the Son, and the third section the Holy Spirit. Yet, as Saint Athanasius proclaims in his own famous creed, the three are one: “For there is one person of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet, they are not three eternals but one eternal…” etc (BCP 864)

 

The Father sends the Son, who bears the very nature of God’s Love or Charity, and, as Jesus proclaims in his final instructions to the eleven remaining disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Matthew represents that Jesus does not do away with the 613 commandments in Torah, but rather has been authorized by the Father to interpret them once and for all. And as detailed in the Farewell Discourse in John (John 13-17), the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to the Christian Community that would become the Church. This Holy Spirit empowers and equips The Eleven to baptize Gentiles in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And to teach the Gentiles (ie nations, ethnos) everything Jesus has taught them. A daunting task, if it were not for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus’s final promise: “And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20]

 

As Thomas Long in his commentary on Matthew notes: “The task is staggering, and this great commission must have seemed ludicrous to the little band of disciples… being sent on a world-wide mission across perilous boundaries. These Jews would have to learn how to phrase the gospel in thought patterns of Gentiles; …learn how to put out the welcome mat for women; these grown men would need to become humble like children; these Hebrew and Aramaic speakers would have to master the confusing polyglot of the nations.” (Westminster/John Knox Bible Companion)

 

Only one word could strengthen their resolve, and ours, to carry out the mission we all promise to continue in our own baptism, and that was the final word Jesus spoke: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That not only means that he is with us, always, everywhere, but that there is no way that we can get rid of him! As Douglas R.S. Hare observes, “The continued existence of the church despite its myriad sins of commission and omission provides the surest evidence that the promise has been kept.” (Matthew – Interpretation)

 

Although a line-by-line study of the Nicene Creed can be insightful in gaining a deeper understanding of our relationship to the three personas of our God, the final two lines serve to amplify Jesus’s final promise to us all. “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” Or, as Evelyn Underhill in her little book, The School of Charity (1934), writes: “Or, more literally, ‘I expect the life of the age that is drawing near.’ I expect eternity as the very meaning and goal of all human life, and especially of the Christian art of living. I expect it because I have already experienced it; if not in my own person, then by my share in the experience of the Saints…the closing phrases of the Creed call us to ascend in heart and mind to the world of the Eternal Perfect, the Thought of God, the Country of Everlasting Clearness, and find the meaning of existence there!...  So, since the Christian life of prayer looks through and beyond Time, and ever seeks to bring Eternity into Time, the note that we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible possibility and hope. Because we believe in the Eternal God, whose nature is creative Charity, we believe in and expect the fulfillment of His Plan; the hallowing of the whole Universe, seen and unseen.”  (p.101-102)

 

Inexhaustible possibility and hope. The very nature of our God, in whose image we are created, and whom Jesus embodied and personified, is Divine Charity, or Divine Self-Giving Love. In sending Christ God gives us everything; God gives us God’s very Self. The Body of Christ, Christ’s Church, exists to work for the transformation of the world, not our own self-preservation. However adverse conditions may seem to be, Christians must never give up from this commission whether through weariness, or religious self-indulgence. We must never doubt, writes Underhill, its Ultimate achievement: “The cynical or pessimistic attitude, silent acquiescence in second-rate standards of thought or action, selfish politics tending to war or hatred, incomes drawn from dubious industries, all public or private manifestations of pride, anger, envy, greed – these things are impossible for Christians; they are betrayals of trust. In one or other of these departments every human life, however humble, can do something to hasten or retard the triumph of the Eternal Charity. The New, more Real Life that we expect must penetrate every level of existence, and every relationship – politics, industry, science, art, our attitude to each other, our attitude to living nature – spiritualizing and unselfing all this; subduing it to the transforming action of ‘the intellectual radiance full of love.” (p 105)

 

All because we believe in One God, the Eternal Perfect, His Love and Faithfulness and Beauty, so we believe in that world prepared for all who love Him, three in One and One in three; where He shall be all, in all!

 

“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, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated by government forces while celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital chapel because he had called upon Christian soldiers to stop the violence against the people of El Salvador, thus sharing in the martyrdom of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

 

Romero truly patterned his life and ministry upon the final words of the Creed:

“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come” And upon Jesus’s final words to us, us, his disciples, “And lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Our source of inexhaustible possibility and hope. Amen.

 

Do Something New in My Life Pentecost 2026

Do Something New in My Life

Pentecost. Something new, inspired by God’s ruach, God’s breath or Spirit, takes over the Community of Christ in Jerusalem. Once again, as with The Ascension, scripture offers two versions: in John’s Gospel, it occurs the evening of the day of Resurrection, and presumably after he has also ascended, so that it is a post-Ascension encounter [John 20:19-23]; while in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Volume 2 of Luke, it occurs fifty days later on the Jewish festival of Weeks, or Pentecost, some ten days after the Ascension, and fifty days after the Resurrection [ Acts 2:1-21]. John’s account is quiet, intimate, and contained in a room, perhaps where the Last Supper took place. In Acts it starts in the house where they are all living with violent wind and something like tongues of fire, and spills out into the streets of Jerusalem where Peter addresses those attending the Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost. In each imagining, the Community of Christ who have been in Jerusalem since the beginning of Passover is made new – transformed as those who will continue to represent the presence of God; continuing the work of Jesus. 

John depicts the Community hiding, fearful that they too may share in the same fate as Jesus. Though the door to the room is locked, “Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Once they were disciples, students of the master. Now they are commissioned as Apostles, literally, “those who are sent.” They are sent out into the world to do the works Jesus does, and greater things than these. [John 14:12] All because of the breath. 

Breath. The same ruach that hovered over the waters of creation “in the beginning.” The breath of creation as celebrated in Psalm 104. The same breath that God, in Genesis chapter 2, breathes into the nostrils of a handful of mud to give life to the first man. Jesus, the Word, through whom all that was created was created. His breath now transforms this roomful of fearful followers into Apostles sent to the four corners of the Earth to spread the news! YHWH, the God of the Passover is doing a new thing. And so are we! And so can you, they cry! Step into the life of God’s Peace, God’s Shalom, God’s kingdom of mercy, forgiveness, and justice for all! 

No one knows how the Hebrew letters YHWH are to be pronounced, but there is a consensus gathering to suggest it is to mimic the sound of breathing: Yah-Weh, Yah-Weh. If so, then God’s name is the first thing we “say” when we are born, and the last thing we “say” when we die. We are filled, enlivened, and sustained by the name of the One who made Leviathan and all of us for the sport of it! Richard Rohr, in his book The Naked Now, points out that there is no Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Taoist way of breathing. There is no rich, poor or middle-class way of breathing. There is no American, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, African or European way of breathing. This ruach, this breath of YHWH, levels the playing field in which we are all One with the One breath, the One life, the One spirit. We are blown upon by the Mighty Wind that takes us to places we would never imagine going! To do and to proclaim and do things that we never imagined we could say or do. You will do the things that I do, he had said. And greater things than these shall you do, he had said! Indeed! 

Luke, on the other hand, portrays this ruach as a mighty wind blowing throughout the household, with tongues, “as of fire,” resting on each of them. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” It is the Tower of Babel in reverse! They spill out into the streets of Jerusalem where there are people from throughout the ancient world celebrating the spring harvest, a liturgical cycle that begins at Passover and during which devout Israelite families praise God for God’s grace and bounty. It also was the beginning of a period, lasting until the autumnal Festival of Booths (or Tabernacles), in which the first fruits of the field were sacrificed to Yahweh. 

Pentecost, or Weeks, is thus a pregnant moment in the life of the people of God and in the relationship between that people and God. To put the matter more graphically, Pentecost is the moment when gestation ceases and birthing occurs. Thus, it is both an end and a beginning, the leaving behind of that which is past, the launching forth into that which is only now beginning to be. Pentecost therefore is not a time of completion. It is a moving forward into new dimensions of being, whose basic forms are clear, but whose fulfillment has yet to be realized. Over time, Pentecost became a time when the Jewish people renew their covenant with their God. 

As with the breath in John, no one is excluded. The wind and tongues land on everyone. In the streets, the diversity of the Spirit’s reach touches all who are present from every imaginable land and tribe throughout the world. There are those who scoff at the Apostles, but each is able to understand the Good News in their own language. Like the breath, the wind and the fire is for everyone, for all, from every possible country – it is a gathering wind, a gathering Spirit. It is God’s Spirit of mercy, justice, and forgiveness for all persons everywhere. The breath, the spirit, knows of no exclusions. All are welcomed alike. 

The spirit can come upon you anywhere, anytime. It can happen as a mighty tsunami of change, or it can happen in a quiet moment of sheer silence when our all too restless mind is stilled and we suddenly become aware of the great depth of the mystery of our very existence and we are made new again. We see all things new as if for the first time! Pentecost means the Fiftieth Day – it was the Fiftieth Day after Passover. It is the Fiftieth Day after Easter. Seven weeks of seven days plus one more. The “one more” day is understood as a new beginning, a new creation, a literally inspired reawakening to who we are and whose we are! 

And of course, science has now told us that all of this we call creation comes from one spectacular burst of Ruach some 14 billion years ago, and that every molecule we breathe in and breathe out comes from that one burst of energy, so that the very air we breathe is the same air of the cave men and women, and the same air that astronauts breathe while blasting through the heavens. This means, of course, we all are, literally, One! One with the very source of life that sustains us with every breath we take. One with one another and all of creation. Oneness is no longer a vague, mystical notion, but a scientific fact! 

By virtue of our baptism, we too are to be Apostles. Those who are sent. The Spirit wind fills our sails and sends us to places and peoples unknown to bring the god-spel, the Good News, that yes, we are all One with God and one another. And yes, we are all in this together. And, yes, we are God’s Beloved. And yes, He filleth all things living with plenteousness. And yes, He givest us all good things in due season. And yes, He hath made us and sustains us with his breath, his holy wind, his holy spirit, his mighty ruach! And yes, He hath made us and Leviathan for the sport of it! And it is good, He says. It is very good, He says. And every day we breathe in His spirit. And it is always Pentecost every morning that we open our eyes and draw our first breath of the new day. Every morning. Every day. Always we begin again. And again. And all shall be well. All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well, says blessed Julian! And we say, yes. Yes we will start over. Yes, do something new with my life! Yes we are God’s people. Yes, we are One. Forever. And ever. Amen! Amen!

Do Something New in My Life

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

See The Son Rising

Imagine The Love We Can Be Easter 6A

 

Imagine the Love We Can Be

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

Last night I had the strangest dream

 

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed

To put an end to war

 

I dreamed I saw a mighty room

The room was filled with men

And the paper they were signing said

They'd never fight again

 

And when the papers all were signed

And a million copies made

They all joined hands and bowed their heads

And grateful prayers were prayed

 

And the people in the streets below

Were dancing 'round and 'round

And guns, and swords, and uniforms

Were scattered on the ground

 

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before

I dreamed the world had all agreed

To put an end to war

Songwriter: Ed Mccurdy

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream Johnny Cash