Openest Our Hands, O Lorde Proper 12B

Openest Our Hands, O Lorde!

The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lorde, / and thou givest them their meat in due season;

Thou openest thine hand, / and fillest all things living with plenteousnesse.

Glory to the Father and to the Son, / and to the Holy Spirit,

As it was in the beginning, / is now and forever. / Amen. 

Chanting this was how we began each meal in the General Theological Seminary refectory. We sang it from this earlier Coverdale translation that graced earlier editions of The Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer. This prayer from Psalm 145 [i] means to remind us that we are only here because of God’s grace and sustaining mercy; that our God is a God of open hands, not hands that hold onto things and hoard things, but give it all away; that our God means to fill all living things with ‘plenteousness’ to satisfy the needs of every living creature. 

Chanting this daily at meals helps to multiply God’s mercy so that, as we pray, “we may pass through things temporal and not lose those things that are eternal.” As the anonymous author of Ephesians tells us, that which is eternal is that which strengthens our “inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” [ii] 

Faith rooted and grounded in Love. Love that is comprehended and made visible as we open our hands in love and charity for others – those others who are the very neighbors Christ commands us to love as he loves us! We are to be those who seek to satisfy the needs of all living creatures. 

As the successor to the prophet Elijah, Elisha served the third through eighth kings of Israel from 892-832 BCE. He lived among the company of prophets, a guild of poet-advisors and interpreters of God’s love and mercy. When a widow of one of these prophets was in insurmountable debt, Elisha helped her to multiply a small amount of oil to be sold, which resulted in retiring her debt with plenty of money left over to raise her family as a now single mother. When her son died, Elisha went up into the boy’s room and revived him.

 Upon returning to Gilgal, home of the community of prophets, there was a famine. Elisha ordered a pot of stew to be made, which at first tasted of ‘death in the pot.’ Elisha threw in some flour, and suddenly it was edible. Just then a man came from Baal-shalishah, a nearby town. He brought the prophets food from the first fruits – the tithe, or ten percent, of the barley harvest consisting of twenty barley loaves. We know little of the man or the town, but barley loaves were the staple of the poor who could not afford wheat, which tells us something about this man and his people: they were faithful to bring the tithe to the community of God’s prophets, and they were generous to open their hands and like God, despite their poverty, to help meet the needs of others; to satisfy the needs of every living creature. 

Elisha orders the loaves to be given away as well. His servant, Gehazi, says, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” Elisha repeats, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” Gehazi set the barley loaves before the people, they ate, and there were leftovers for others who may pass through Gilgal. [iii] 

Some eight hundred years later, people are flocking from all over the region around the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias, to be with Jesus. The Passover Festival of the Jews was at hand. When Jesus sees the large crowd coming toward him, he turns to Philip and asks, “Where can we buy some bread for all these people?” (He said this to test Philip for he knew what he would do.) Philip says, “Six months wages would not buy enough to feed so many!”  Wrong answer. Just then, Andrew said, “Here’s a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many?” Jesus orders the disciples to have the people sit down. The young boy, becomes an icon of the image of God, as he “openeth his hands” and gives away all he has. After blessing the poor, rough barley loaves, and the fish, Jesus himself distributes the loaves and fish to everyone, as much as each wanted. Then he tells the disciples to gather up the leftovers. They fill twelves baskets, one for each disciple, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. It was Gilgal all over again. It was like the manna in the wilderness, where every day each family could gather enough for the one day, no one got too much, and if you gathered too much, it would rot and be no good. Jesus would later teach us to pray for bread that is given daily. 

The people want to take him right there and make him their king. Jesus withdraws to a mountain top. No doubt he remembers when in the time of the boy prophet Samuel the people wanted a king, and God had cautioned that would not be good. The king, Samuel warned, would make servants of their women, and send their boys off to war. Jesus would have none of that, being grounded and filled with the unlimited love of God. [iv] 

The disciples take off in a boat and immediately run into wind and rough water. They see Jesus, walking toward them on the water. They are terrified. He says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Then they want to take him into the boat. But before he could get in, suddenly the boat reaches the land toward which they were going. For some strange reason, here endeth the reading! Tune in next Sunday as the story continues, as the crowd of 5,000 hustle around the Sea of Galilee, also called Tiberias, to join him, so amazed were they by the five barley loaves and two fish! 

It's about open hands that give away all that we have. It’s about tithing the first fruits of all harvests. It’s about God’s desire to fill all things living with plenteousness; to satisfy the needs of all people and all creatures. It’s about deciding just what role we are meant to play in seeing that all living creatures are filled with plenteousness; that all of us are filled with Christ’s love and faith. A faith that trusts in the abundance of all good gifts around us. A faith that gives away rather than hoards. A faith that says it’s not just about us. It’s about hundreds and thousands of others. A faith that understands that all these stories spanning hundreds of years, and all of the Old and New Testaments are one story for all of us for all of time. These are the things eternal. 

The miracle is that the Elisha took the risk of giving all twenty barley loaves away. The miracle is not that Jesus distributes the bread and fish, but that the boy gives all he has away! The miracle is that everyone is satisfied and still there is more. The miracle is that there is faith on earth.

 Faith rooted and grounded in Love. Love that comprehends and is made visible as we open our hands in love and charity for others – all others who are the very neighbors Christ commands us to love as he loves us! A love that fills us with all the fullness of God! Amen.

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[i] Psalm 145:16-17

[ii] Ephesians 3:14-21

[iii] 2 Kings 4:42-44

[iv] John 6:1-21

 

 

  

One Breath, One People Proper 11B

 One Breath, One People

Through the prophet-poet Jeremiah, YHWH, the God of Creation, the God of the Escape from slavery in Egypt, the God who made a disparate group of slave into a people, one people, a covenant people who are to be God’s Light to the whole world, is concerned that the political and religious establishment, meant to be the Good Shepherds of Israel, meant to maintain the unity YHWH has intended for all peoples, but who have instead scattered YHWH’s flock, have driven them away, and not attended to their needs as shepherds ought to do. [i] 

As we heard from Amos, these bad shepherds have divided the people, and worse often only look out for themselves, “selling the needy for a pair of Jimmy Choo’s or Moonstar shoes…and crush the poor with unfair taxes and prices.” [ii] We might call it the ideology of Imelda Marcos! Now YHWH intends to shepherd the people himself, reunite them, make of them one people, YHWH’s people, “and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” This unity and restoration is often depicted in art and stained-glass by Jesus the Good Shepherd holding one sheep, one lamb – a lamb that represents us all, united as one body. 

Eight hundred years later, the peoples of the earth are still divided. The anonymous author of the Letter to the Ephesians recalls Jeremiah’s prophetic imagination. Whatever has characterized the divisions between Gentiles and Jews shall be no more. “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” [iii] Christ is often identified as the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23, who makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters. He revives our soul and guides us along right pathways for his Name's sake.” Christos – the Universal embodiment of Gods love, justice, mercy and compassion. Christos is our peace – our shalom – our embodiment of God’s dream of all peoples united by one spirit – one breath – one animating energy of compassion for one another. In the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel one sees crowds of thousands of people following Jesus wherever he goes seeking to have their lives healed and made whole. [iv] 

YHWH and the prophetic poetry of nearly 3,000 years imagine a peaceable kingdom, a peaceable world, a united people. Kind people. People who love their neighbors whomever they are, wherever they are. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Monk and Priest, makes an assertion which many of us pondered during the “valley of the shadow of death” the world experienced as Covid. Rohr says, “Your image of God creates you.” Which may be extended: Our image of God creates us. Does it create us as those people who choose to be united with others? All others? Or, does our image of God drive us to divide ourselves from others? All others? Rohr takes the biblical idea that we are created in the image of God, and then asserts that it is our understanding of God is what makes us fundamentally who we are – either as individuals, as members of a community, as a nation, and as the world. 

In perhaps his most astonishing statement of all, in his book, The Naked Now, Fr. Rohr invites us to an even deeper understanding of what it means to have an image of God that is possible of healing the divisions among the peoples of the earth. If only we might imagine God as the origin of Life, and that to live, we must breathe. The image of God Rohr invokes revolves around God’s “unspeakable name.”

            “I cannot emphasize enough the momentous importance of the Jewish revelation of the name of God. It puts the entire nature of our spirituality in correct context and, if it had been followed, could have freed us from much idolatry and arrogance. As we now spell and pronounce it, the word is Yahweh… It was considered a literally unspeakable word for Jews, and any attempt to know what we are talking about is ‘in vain’ as the commandment says (Exodus 20:7)…whenever it appears in scripture another word is substituted, like Adonai.

            “This unspeakability has long been recognized, but we now know it goes even deeper: formally the word was not spoken at all, but breathed! Many are convinced that its correct pronunciation is an attempt to replicate and imitate the very sound of inhalation and exhalation. The one thing we do every moment of our lives is therefore to speak the name of God. This makes it our first and last word as we enter and leave the world.

            “For some years I have taught this to contemplative groups in many countries, and it changes peoples’ faith and prayers lives in substantial ways. I remind people that there is no Islamic, Christian, or Jewish way of breathing. There is no American, African, or Asian way of breathing. There is no rich or poor way of breathing. The playing field is utterly leveled. The air of the earth is one and the same air, and this divine wind [ruahch] ‘blows where it will’ (John 3”8) – which appears to be everywhere. No one and no religion can control this spirit.

            “When considered in this way, God is suddenly as available and accessible as the very thing we all do constantly – breathe. Exactly as some teachers of prayer always say ‘Stay with the breath. Attend to your breath’: the same breath that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils by this Yahweh (Genesis 2:7); the very breath that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross (John 19:30 and then breathed on us as shalom, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit all at once (John 20:21-23). And isn’t it wonderful that breath, wind, and spirit and air are precisely nothing – and yet everything?”[v] 

Our image of God creates us. How we see, understand, and experience God is capable of making us a people who stand in the breach to be healers – healers of division, rather than being those people who believe it is more important to stand pat believing that only our vision of life on this planet is the one and only vision. Jeremiah, the Psalmist, the author of Ephesians, and the Good News according to Mark all believe in an image of God that unites, that heals division, that brings God’s dream of a world of peace, love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness into being. 

Fr. Rohr ends his meditation on Breath with this prayer: “Just keep breathing consciously in this way and you will know that you are connected to humanity from cavemen to cosmonauts, to the entire animal world, and even to trees and plants. And we are now told that the atoms we breathe are physically the same as the stardust from the original Big Bang. Oneness is no longer merely a vague mystical notion, but a scientific fact.” 

May our God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, help us to be open to the Oneness of all creation, all peoples, and all creatures; as healers of the breach; as those who break down all divisions and hostilities; that we might allow your image and your breath create us as One Breath, and One People, now and forever. Lord, help us to stay with the breath. Amen. 

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[i] Jeremiah 23:1-6

[ii] Amos 2:6-7; 4:1

[iii] Ephesians 2:11-22

[iv] Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

[v] Rohr, Richard, The Naked Now (Crossroad Publication, NYC:2009) pp. 25-26

The Plumb Line Proper 10B

 The Plumb Line

Look at the plumb line. What do we see? The plumb line is meant for us. It’s used, among other things, to build city walls and important buildings like temples to make certain the walls are vertical. To make sure they are true. It is the simplest of devices. And yet, in the hands of the Lord God and his prophets, it becomes a metaphor for the health of the life of the community. In this case, in Amos chapter 7, we are talking about Israel. Not as we think of it today, or even in the time of Jesus. For eight centuries before Jesus Israel was divided into a northern kingdom, Israel, and a southern kingdom, Judah, later Judea. The cultic center for Israel was the temple at Bethel. The cultic center for Judah was the temple in Jerusalem. (Amos 7:7-15) 

The Lord God is sending Amos to deliver some bad news: Bethel and Israel is about to be dismantled. Why? First of all, they are using the temple at Bethel to worship idols and other gods. The second and more important charge is rampant economic and social inequality. It is Amos, after all, who earlier writes that the king and leadership in Bethel “sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth”; they “who oppress the poor, who crush the needy” (Amos 2:6-7; 4:1). 

We misunderstand the role of the prophetic voices in the Bible. They are not predictive, as some would assert. Nor do these voices seek to scold, nag, or act self-righteous about social justice. These poetic voices simply hold up a mirror before God’s people. Or, a plumb line. To help us to see if we have been true to God’s desire for us to be a community of love. 

All the prophetic voices of the eighth and sixth century (BCE) prophets write in Hebrew poetry. Thus, metaphors like the plumb line abound. The plumb line reveals that there are consequences for the economic and social inequality: YHWH will allow the establishment at Bethel to be dismantled. It’s no wonder that Amos tries to shirk his assignment, crying, “I am no prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son. I am a dresser of sycamore trees!” The Lord God will have none of it. “Go and prophesy to my people Israel…then run for you life down to Judah!” The basic offense is that there is no love of neighbor, which is meant, according to the Lord God, to include the poor, widows, orphans and resident aliens. 

But God’s word does not end with judgment and the unimaginable dismantling of the present world. The prophetic voice also issues a second impossibility: after Bethel is destroyed and the people carried off into captivity, God will one day bring them home and resettle them in safety. 

Eight centuries later, John the baptizer learns how dangerous it can be as God’s prophetic voice. After calling all of Judea and Jerusalem to a ritual bathing to repent and turn back from continued rampant economic and social inequality, and accommodating the cult of Caesar’s Rome which recognizes Caesar as God, John is put in prison by Herod, Caesar’s appointed king of the Jews. Yet, we are told that Herod is intrigued by John. But Herod has married his brother’s wife, Herodias, and John repeatedly warms Herod that this is not lawful. This violates the commandments and the love of neighbor, in this case your brother! 

Herodias, thinks John’s railing against the empire is one thing, but interfering in her personal life goes too far. She has a grudge against John and wants to kill him. At Herod’s birthday banquet, her daughter performs a beguiling dance. Herod is so pleased he tells her, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” Herodias tells her, “Ask for John’s head.” The young girl takes it one step further, asking not only for John’s head, but to have served on a platter. Right now. All this takes place while Jesus and his disciples are calling people to love God, love neighbor, and in your spare time, love your enemies as well. After John’s execution, Herod wonders if Jesus is John back from the dead? God’s prophetic voice will not be silenced. (Mark 6:14-29) 

Madeleine L’Engle, author of children’s books, memoirs, novels, and plays, was also a poet. Like the prophets, her poetry is like the plumb line: it invites us all to wrestle with just how faithful we are to God’s dream that we love God, love our neighbors, and love our enemies as well.

Lines Scribbled on an Envelope While Riding The 104 Broadway Bus:

There is too much pain

I cannot understand

I cannot pray

I cannot pray for all the little ones with bellies bloated by starvation in India;

for all the angry Africans striving to be separate in a world struggling for wholeness;

for all the young Chinese men and women taught that hatred and killing are good and compassion evil;

or even all the frightened people in my own city looking for truth in pot or acid.

Here I am

and the ugly man with beery breath beside me reminds me that it is not my prayers

  that waken your concern, my Lord;

my prayers, my intercessions are not to ask for your love

   for all your lost and lonely ones,

   your sick and sinning souls,

but mine, my love, my acceptance of your love.

Your love for the woman sticking her umbrella and her expensive parcels

   into my ribs and snarling, " Why don't you watch where you're going? "

Your love for the long-haired, gum-chewing boy who shoves the old lady aside

   to grab a seat,

Your love for me, too, too tired to look with love,

too tired to look at Love, at you, in every person on the bus.

Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain,

help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes

   and bunioned feet,

the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft,

the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth,

the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes.

Help me through these scandalous particulars

to understand

your love.

Help me to pray [i] 

Again, we need to look at the plum line. What do we see? In our community? In our country? In our hearts? Have we been true to the will of God? May the Lord God of Amos and John and Jesus help us all to pray that we might all return to a life that loves God, loves all neighbors, and loves our enemies as well. Amen.

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[i] L’Engle, Madeleine, The Ordering of Love (Convergent, NYC: 2020) p.8

The Scorn of the Indolent Rich Proper 9B

 The Scorn of the Indolent Rich

Mark chapter six comes right after chapter five. Now that may seem obvious to us, but we must keep in mind that all chapter and verse designations in the Bible are largely arbitrary and are there only to aid us in studying and analyzing the texts. And that storyteller Mark as editor of the gospel could have placed this story of Jesus going home to teach in his hometown Nazareth, on the Sabbath in some other part of the story, but chose to put it right after several healing stories: 1) healing a man possessed by demons in Gentile territory, 2) a woman who had suffered a flow of blood for twelve years, and 3) the twelve year-old daughter of Jairus, a leader in a synagogue, who was believed by many to be dead. All this involved two trips in a boat across the Sea of Galilee. Many people, Jews and Gentiles alike, were radically amazed at their encounters with Jesus. And yet, as he told the woman, it was not him, but her faith that made her well. Her ragged determination against so many obstacles to try, perhaps as a last resort, to just touch the hem of Jesus’s garment, believing that that may finally grant her some of God’s mercy and relief. Perseverance furthers equals faith, hope, and charity. 

After all of that, storyteller Mark tells us that Jesus goes home to Nazareth, a small village of Jews amidst some Gentile settlements west of the Sea of Galilee. As he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath, as he has done throughout the first six chapters of Mark, he teaches. People know who he is: the Son of Mary. Again, that may strike us as obvious, but the normal practice would be to say that he was Yeshua ben Joseph, the son of Joseph. Mark, however, has already told one and all in the opening verse of his Good News that this Yeshua is the Son of God. After first being “astounded” at his teaching, it seems the neighbors among whom he grew up are having none of that. Isn’t this, they say, ‘“the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.”’ This guy is just one of us. Who does he think he is? [i] 

Imagine. After perfect strangers on both sides of the Sea were amazed at his presence among them, and the astonishing fact that he would bring God’s mercy, compassion and love to people as different as a demon possessed man chained up in a tomb, a ritually impure woman with a flow of blood, and an elite community leader like Jairus, the people who know him better than anyone else are offended at whatever it was he was saying that Sabbath morning in his hometown! Perhaps to indicate to those of us pondering these texts just how absurd this is, Jesus shrugs it off as just another day at the office for prophets in Israel throughout the ages, and storyteller Mark offers this hilarious aside: “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” That’s all! He just brought God’s mercy, love and compassion to a few sick people! And now, we are told, it is Jesus who is astounded, we might say radically amazed, at his friend’s and neighbor’s unbelief. 

I believe I can speak for myself and any number of my colleagues in ordained ministry in Christ’s One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, had we had a Sunday morning like Jesus had in his hometown, we would most likely spend the next week or two commiserating with one another, or making an appointment with the bishop or a spiritual director to figure out what to do next. Not Jesus! He is immediately off to teach in other villages, evidently practicing what he is about to teach his disciples whom he sends off two by two to preach the Good News, giving them authority over unclean spirits, to cast out demons, and bring people to a new sense of wholeness grounded in God’s mercy, love and compassion for one and all. But, if they are to be rebuffed as he had been at home, to shake the dust of their sandals and move on to the next village! A gesture, which later Jewish texts suggest, was customary for Jews returning to the Holy Land from visiting pagan territories so as not to bring back even a particle of “uncleanness” with them. [ii] 

In this instance, it is possible to construe that the disciples would be consigning those communities that had rejected the Good News to the unclean demonic world. Which may sound primitive and even bizarre to us “moderns,” unless we were to understand that for storyteller Mark, demons are often understood as allies of Rome, and diseases as foes that seek to weaken the body of Israel. With this understanding, it is possible to see those in the gospels who are blind or unable to speak as maladies caused by the subjugation to the foreign Empire of Caesar, he who would be God, and of Rome. In this light, Jesus and his disciples can be seen as trying to help others see and speak out against the injustices, lies, and violence of those who would occupy and rule the land of their ancestors. Jesus instructs his disciples to work with urgency to speak out and act on God’s desire for health, wholeness and happiness for all people. [iii] 

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in the struggle against just such a brutal and unjust empire of Apartheid often said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” 

Or, listen to the psalmist in Psalm 123 who concludes, “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt / Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.”?  The “indolent rich” often being those who make concessions to and become allies and perpetrators of the empire. Empire, which is never viewed as a good thing in the Bible. Pharaoh, Babylon and many of the kings of Israel are repeatedly chastised by prophets like Jesus, often not ending well for the prophets themselves. Yet, their pronouncements are preserved to inform future generations of what God and his Son, Jesus, expect of those of us who follow Christ in terms of loving our neighbors.   

It does not take much textual analysis or imagination to see where Mark is propelling the story, and its meaning for us today. Jesus demands our urgency in preaching the Good News and caring for others. All others. It does not take much analysis on our part to imagine what Jesus would think of the recent decision to criminalize homelessness by our Supreme Court; rather than treat the causes of homelessness, create more affordable housing, and treat our fellow citizens with the care, mercy, compassion and love Jesus instructs all of us who would be his disciples to do. Like the woman with the flow of blood and Jairus the leader of the synagogue, we need the kind of faith that perseveres over any and all obstacles to freedom, wholeness and healing thru Christ. 

O God, you have taught us to keep all your commandments by loving you and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of your Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to you with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; for our common life depends on how we treat the least and most vulnerable living beside us. Amen.

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[i] Mark 6:1-13

[ii] Byrne, Brendan, A Costly Freedom (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN:2008) p. 111 fn 5

[iii] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Mark (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland:2005) p.190