Mercy Now

Mercy Now

Lent 5-C - John 12: 1-8                                  

Kurt Vonnegut once preached on this very story. He calls it Spikenard Saturday. It’s the night before Palm Sunday in John’s gospel.  In a sense it is about mercy – mercy now, not later. Although as the story unfolds Jesus allows that there will always be time for mercy now. Perhaps that is what is meant by The Eternal Now – being merciful yesterday, today and tomorrow; being merciful always and in all ways.

At the outset Vonnegut says the one good idea we have been given so far is to be merciful. Perhaps, he ponders, one day we will be given another good idea and then we will have two good ideas. In the meantime, he believes that music – that ineffable expression of the human heart almost hard to define and even harder to understand why it moves us so – music is that second good idea being born.

Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem and his inevitable showdown and march to the scaffold, has returned to Bethany and the house of Mary, Martha and their brother Lazarus who had been as good as dead until Jesus, having mercy on him, called him out of the tomb and ordered the crowd to “unbind him and set him free.” Lazarus, of course, is a stand-in for all others, for all of us, who are bound by sin – the sin of whatever it is that separates us from the love of God as our prayer book defines it. Sin is what makes us unable to accept God’s mercy now.

Martha is serving dinner. No surprise there. Mary, now behaving much more like Martha, assumes the position of the lowest household slave and begins to anoint Jesus’ feet with nard – the costly ointment from the Spikenard plant. This is all at once humble, merciful and downright extravagant on Mary’s part. As Judas the Traitor would observe, this ointment could bring in 300 denarii on today’s market. One denarii was about one day’s wages. Nearly a year’s worth of wages being lavished on Jesus’ feet.

It takes someone like the late Kurt Vonnegut to see the humor in all of this. First off you have the King of Kings, Lord of Lords being anointed. But unlike the kings of old who were anointed meshia, messiah, God’s chosen, with oil on their heads with the oil flowing down through their beards, this King of Kings gets his feet anointed. Additionally you have a woman doing this – a woman who should not even be seen with men other than her husband in those days – let alone wiping his feet with her hair. And what of the irony (?) that it is Jesus who will, the night before Good Friday, assume the same posture as Mary to wash his disciples’ feet, rather than the disciples caring for their master. Something, as we say, is afoot.

And on both occasions there is a disciple, Judas on this night, Peter on Maundy Thursday, who protests just what is going on. Judas, who represents our inner Pharisee and inner Puritan, all of a sudden holier than the King of Kings himself! “No way! This cannot be right! Why don’t we sell the ointment and give the money to the poor?” Believing in his heart that he has finally understood what Jesus was about. And despite the unkind editorial remarks of the editors of the fourth gospel, we should admit that in fact he is not far from wrong. His mistake here is that he is simply not living in the moment as we might say nowadays.

Imagine, for just a moment, having walked nearly a hundred miles or so on the rocky and dusty highways and bi-ways of Israel without much more than sandals on your feet under the hot sun by day and through the cold, chill air at night. Now close your eyes and try to imagine someone like Mary massaging your feet with oil and wiping them with her hair. Is that a smile creeping across your face right about now? Can we allow ourselves some idea of just how Jesus, who knows that in a mere few days he will feel all the pain and suffering that a mortal can feel when he dies on the cross, might feel right then and there in Bethany? No doubt it feels really really good.  Can anyone blame him at all for feeling that way?

It is a wonder that Jesus does not come out with anything more stern than his astute observation, “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Of course by now we all know it was said in Aramaic, and may have sounded more like, “Don’t worry, Judas. There will be plenty of poor people left long after I’m gone. I have a tough road to go from here. Why not let her show me a little mercy now?”

Vonnegut says that’s it. That’s the joke. “Do you really think there won’t be enough poor people to serve after I’m gone?” might be the sense of it here. It is often hard to see the humor in the Bible because, well, it’s the Bible. And dark humor like this is often difficult to pick up even in real life. But what we are meant to do is laugh at ourselves and at the notion that there was no more time than that very moment to sell the oil and serve the poor when in fact it is our lifetime vocation as the body of Christ! “Don’t sweat it, Judas, you’ll have plenty of time and money to do that yourself. After all, as the editor says, you have the purse and all the money, AND you are a thief!” Do we get it now?

Judas did not get it. And neither do a lot of well-meaning Christians today. Verse 8 tends to be heard as something more like this, “Poor people are hopeless. We will always be stuck with them. Jesus said so.” Which then appears to give people warrant to say other things like the poor are helpless and hopeless because they are lazy, or dumb, or drink too much, or take drugs, and have too many children, and on and on it goes.

The Thursday following Spikenard Saturday Jesus takes Mary’s lead, gets on his knees with a wash basin and towel and begins washing feet and saying, “For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” That is, there is no end to a life of serving others as I have served you. There is no time for being merciful as important as the present moment. Show a little mercy now, not later.

If we could not understand it on Spikenard Saturday, surely when we see Jesus on his knees washing feet on the very night he would also say, “Do this in remembrance of me,” surely, he must be thinking, they will get it now. Surely we do, don’t we?

So let Jesus wash your feet. And know that when we wash others’ feet and take care of the poor that we are in fact joining ourselves with Mary of Bethany in anointing and caring for our Lord’s feet as well. As you do this for the least of these, my sisters and brothers, you do it for me.  Amen.

Mercy Now

Words and Music Mary Gauthier

My father could use a little mercy now

The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground

His work is almost over it won't be long, he won't be around

I love my father, he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now

He's a stranger to freedom, he's shackled to his fear and his doubt

The pain that he lives in it's almost more than living will allow

I love my brother, he could use some mercy now

My church and my country could use a little mercy now

As they sink into a poisoned pit it's going to take forever to climb out

They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down

I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now

Only the hand of grace can end the race towards another mushroom cloud

People in power, they'll do anything to keep their crown

I love life and life itself could use some mercy now

Every single one of us could use a little mercy now

I know we don’t deserve it but we need it anyhow

We hang in the balance between hell and hallowed ground

Every single one of us could use some mercy now

Join The Party Every Day!

Join the Party Every Day!

Lent 4C – Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32/ 2 Corinthians 5: 16-21

When I was ordained into the priesthood I received a telegram that read in part, “Dear Kirk Alan Kubicek, May this day mark the beginning of a mission that will bring many people closer to each other, closer to God and closer to themselves.”

This would be the task for all of us as Jesus illustrates in the 15^th chapter of Luke. Often called The Prodigal Son, it might better be titled The Generous, Loving and All Merciful Father. Or, The Ungrateful Brother.  Or, The Steward of the Household of God. Or, Life Among The Pigs! It is true that Ernest Hemingway tried out almost 50 different titles for his book A Farewell to Arms.

So we read that tax collectors (read “collaborators with the Roman Oppression) and sinners were flocking to see him and listen to him. Obviously he is teaching at the dinner table as the Pharisees and scribes are sneering, “Look, this man welcomes and eats with sinnerssssssssssss…..”, offering their very best serpent impersonation.  Overhearing them Jesus does what he does best. He tells a story about a young man and his father. We are all too familiar with this tale. The young man wants and gets his inheritance right now. The beginning of the instant gratification movement! Of course he squanders the money and ends up literally among the pigs. Pigs, you may recall, are not kosher. They are unclean. Yet, there he is wishing that he might eat some of the pig slop.

He had reached his bottom as we say in Twelve Step groups. The text says he came to himself. Spiritual teachers would say he woke up! He realizes that even his father’s debt-slaves get better than this pig slop. So he decides to go home, repent to his father and ask if he might work the fields as a hired hand. He has been humbled indeed.

Before he even gets to the front door his Father runs down the road to greet him and kiss him. Then the Father turns to a servant, apparently the steward of the household, and orders him to bring the best robe, a fine ring and to kill the fatted calf so there can be a party to celebrate the son’s return, “…for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now he is found.” The Father is genuinely happy, merciful, abounding in steadfast love and relents from punishing his Son.  The party gets under way.

The older brother was just coming in from a hard day’s work in the fields. He hears the music and asks, ‘What’s up?’ A servant tells him the news. The brother is incensed and refuses to go in to join the party. The Father comes out to invite him in personally, but the brother will have no part of it. “I have obeyed you and worked my tail off for you day after day and you have never given me so much as a young goat with which to party with my friends!” No doubt he is pouting as he whines.

The Father reminds him that all that is his will one day be yours since your brother already has claimed and spent his inheritance. But we had to celebrate. We just had to! For this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now has been found!

We are never told if the brother relented and joined the party. Jesus leaves it right there for the scribes and Pharisees and tax collectors and sinners and for all of us to ponder.  There is no moral or explanation. Evidently he feels there is no need for one. It is, as we say, self-evident. Or is it?

Without giving it any thought, how many of you identify with the younger son? Perhaps you have squandered an opportunity, or have let go of your relationship with God and/or with others and really really know what it is like to be eating slop with the pigs! Or, how many of you identify with the older brother? I mean really, if there was ever a justified moment for righteous indignation, coming in from the fields and hearing the music and merriment and then realizing it is for your no good reprobate younger brother! Resentment is easy to fall into, just as easy as the younger brother fell into the pig pen. Then who identifies with the Father? You have known the pain of loss – of having lost a child, or at least one that is as good as dead. Or you have felt estranged from a close family member or friend, and yet you still yearn to somehow make things right again. You want to return to a relationship with that person no matter what the cost. And when it happens you put on the Ritz and celebrate and embrace that lost soul unconditionally just to be reunited with one you believed to be as good as dead.

That leaves one final character in our story for today: who identifies with the slave, the servant, the household steward. Does anyone identify with him, this debt-slave? Ironic, isn’t it, that the word steward derives from the term “sty warden” or keeper of the pigs! We ought to all identify with this servant, because that is who we are. St. Paul writes in the fourth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians – “…we are servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

The Father (God, Abba, Father?) entrusts the entire household to this debt-slave. This servant has access to all the finest possessions in the household: fine robes, fine jewelry, the finest food! The Father trusts this debt-slave with all of this, just as God in Christ trusts us with all the finest gifts of creation, with creation itself, and with the mysteries of God. As Paul writes in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, we are given a specific ministry – that of reconciliation. As such, we are ambassadors for Christ. This, writes Paul, is what it means to be created imago Dei, in the image of God.

“In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” We are stewards of the mysteries of God!

I am told Carl Jung’s understanding of dreams is that we are all of the characters in our dreams working out our own internal stuff. Applying that to this story, it is reasonable to assume that at one time or another we all are the young son, we all are the older son, we all are the Father, and we all are the steward.  We can only imagine what the scribes and Pharisees made of all this. We can be sure the tax collectors and sinners understood it right away and left the supper table humbled and with a renewed sense of life and purpose and gratitude.

As stewards of the mysteries of God, we are all given a mission of reconciliation – as my mentor Elie Wiesel wrote to me that day long long ago, “a mission that will bring many people closer to each other, closer to God and closer to themselves.” It was only when the young son came closer to himself that he was able to repent and return home. His Father was so eager to get closer to his lost son that he ran down the road to embrace him. So it is that God waits upon us to come closer to ourselves, our true selves. It is only when we reconcile ourselves with ourselves and others that we truly are home again. We come from love, we return to love, and love is all around. All of life is a homecoming – a coming home to God.

We are not told what the older brother did, but my hope and my prayer is that one day he too “came to himself” and joined the party and truly came home again. The Father loves them both. The Father invites us all to join the party every day! Amen. 

I Am The Wings of God

I Am The Wings of God

Genesis15: 1-12, 17-18/Luke  13: 31-35

In Genesis chapter 15 God ratifies a covenant with Abram. Abram, who at his advanced age has left home as the Lord God had called him to do and is still without an heir.  God says you shall have an heir, and you shall have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And they shall be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. And this is the land I have promised you as your new home. Abram says, But how, Lord, am I to know this? This is the question for all of us. How indeed!

When the heavens are darkened, when we cannot see the light, when we cannot count the stars, how are we to know? When politicians fail to fulfill promises, or obfuscate and lie, how are we to know? When we know that if we are to proceed in the way in which we are traveling it will lead to certain confrontation and even death, how are we to know?

The Lord says, “Bring me a heifer, a goat, a ram a turtledove, and a young pigeon and I shall show you,” says the Lord.

Which strikes us as odd, but Abram knows what to do. He sacrifices the animals and lays out one half of each across from the other half, driving away the birds of prey. This is an offering for the Lord, and sets the stage for the Lord’s covenant ceremony. This is how covenants were sealed in those days. The parties would walk between the laid out animal parts with the understanding that this will happen to me should I break the terms of the covenant. Note how God passes through on Abram’s behalf while Abram is in a deep sleep and terrifying darkness.

This passing through can be likened to Moses and the people passing through the Red Sea on dry land. Or, like Jesus passing through the cross and what the world counts as death into new life. Covenants are sealed by someone having passed through something somewhere, just as we pass through the waters of Baptism into a covenant relationship with God in Christ.

Once you have passed through there is a degree of ultimate safety guaranteed.

Abram knows this. Jesus knows this. Knowing this, Jesus, like God does for Abram, passes through death for us while we are in deep darkness. We are those people who know this story well. The Herods and Pilates of this world never do get it and so trust only their own violence and forcefulness.

Then there are some astonishing elements to our Gospel for today beginning with the Pharisees. After much disputation with Jesus along the way to Jerusalem, these Pharisees come as friends warning Jesus to “get away from here! Herod wants to kill you!” Jesus tells them to go to Herod, that “fox” and tell him I am “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” Already the three day pattern is set just as his face is set toward Jerusalem – the city that kills prophets!

Then comes a remarkable metaphor. Jesus says our covenant relationship with God is like being a chick under the wings of a mother hen. Under those wings is warmth, and safety, and love, and care that is unbounded, which may be the root characteristic of the very mercy we pray for today.

Note that God is portrayed as a woman, a mother hen. As opposed to Herod the “fox” which was considered a cut, a diss. Foxes were considered insignificant predators next to lions. Jesus’ listeners would know this and no doubt get a good laugh at Herod’s expense. Our mother hen of a God is infinitely more powerful than all the Herods you could line up, and in fact there were a number of them doing The Empire’s bidding.

But if we have ever seen baby chicks, we know that just as soon as the mother hen gets five of them under her wings another three pop out. They just squirt out as if they were greased or sprayed with WD-40! People in that agrarian society would know just how true and comical this really looks. Cue even more laughter from the crowd.

But then it turns serious. “See your house is left (or abandoned) to you.” Luke and his hearers know this to be true as Jerusalem and God’s house already lie in ruins when Luke is writing. Luke links Jesus’ impending death on a cross with the destruction of the Temple itself. God’s will for Jesus and Israel to be a blessing to all people is thwarted by human refusals to accept it and be gathered under God’s wings. Perhaps it helps to know that the teaching just before this story is about the narrow door which eventually will be shut. The time to be gathered under the wings of God is now. There is no later.

Note how easily Jesus begins to judge the living and the dead as we say. Those in charge in Jerusalem would not find this so funny. The peasants who usually live their lives in abject fear of the Romans and Aristocracy in Jerusalem are seeing the kind of hope Abram would see when counting the stars in the sky. The “haves” and the “have nots” always see things differently.

Also note that this section ends with the song people will sing welcoming him into Jerusalem: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. This draws us forward to his work in Jerusalem which he will complete. Even Herod cannot interfere with that. Luke seems to hold out hope that there will be those who “see” Jesus and recognize him as he who comes in the name of the Lord. It is hope and lament over the demise of Jerusalem all at once as Luke prepares us for Palm Sunday.

Whether we find this figure of God the mother hen fetching or fearsome depends on whether we count ourselves among the chicks under her wings, or among those who are busy squirting out and away from the protection of her wings. As always, it is a matter of perspective. The irony of living in God’s kingdom is that it is safer to be with the hen than with the fox! Go figure. The least and the last shall be first and so on.

Many people never even stop to think about this at all. We, on the other hand, are those people who take this time in Lent to take a look and see where we find ourselves: under the wings of God? Are we becoming the wings of God in this world? Or, are we busy playing with the foxes of this world?

God’s mercy in Jesus invites us to squirm back under the wings of God before it’s too late. Amen.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Give peace in our day, we beseech thee, O thou God of peace! And grant, that this highly favoured country may continue to afford a safe and peaceful retreat from the calamities of war and slavery, for ages yet to come. We implore all these blessings and mercies, only in the name of thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

And now, O Lord, we desire, with angels and arch-angels, and all the company of heaven, ever more to praise thee, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: the whole earth is full of thy glory. Amen.

From: A Thanksgiving Sermon, preached January 1, 1808, in St. Thomas's,

or the African Episcopal, Church, Philadelphia:

On Account of the Abolition of the African slave trade, on that day, by the

Congress of the United States.

By Absalom Jones, rector of the said church

This First Sunday in Lent falls in the midst of Black History Month. In The Episcopal Church we count Absalom Jones as one of the Saints of the Church. Although the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves slowed the slave trade, it would be many difficult decades and a Civil War to bring the trade to an end. Born a house slave in 1746 in Delaware, Jones taught himself to read out of the New Testament. No doubt the story of Jesus’ persistent faith in God and God only, resisting the temptations to power (Luke 4: 1-13), and relying on the Word of God, inspired the young Absalom.  When he was sixteen he was sold to a store owner in Philadelphia. He attended a night school for Blacks, operated by Quakers. When he was twenty he married another slave and purchased her freedom before his own with his earnings. Jones bought his own freedom in 1784. He was thirty-eight.

At St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, he served as lay minister for its Black membership. The active evangelism of Jones and that of his friend, Richard Allen, greatly increased Black membership at St. George’s. The alarmed vestry decided to segregate Blacks into an upstairs gallery, without notifying them. During a Sunday service when ushers attempted to remove them, the Blacks indignantly walked out in a body.

In 1787, Black Christians organized the Free African Society, the first organized Afro-American society, and Absalom Jones and Richard Allen were elected overseers. Members of the Society paid monthly dues for the benefit of those in need. The Society established communication with similar Black groups in other cities. In 1792 the Society began to build a church, which was dedicated on July 17, 1794.

The African Church applied for membership in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania on the following conditions: 1, that they be received as an organized body;  2, that they have control over their local affairs; 3, that Absalom Jones be licensed as layreader, and, if qualified, be ordained as minister. In October 1794 it was admitted as St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. Bishop White ordained Jones as deacon in 1795 and as priest on September 21, 1802.

Jones was an earnest preacher. He denounced slavery, and warned the oppressors to “clean their hands of slaves.” To him, God was the Father, who always acted on “behalf of the oppressed and distressed.”

But it was his constant visiting and mild manner that made him beloved by his own flock and by the community. St. Thomas’ Church grew to over 500 members during its first year. Known as “the Black

Bishop of the Episcopal Church,” Jones, like his Lord and Savior, was an example of persistent faith in God and in the Church as God’s instrument as he continued the struggle for freedom and equal rights for his people. Absalom Jones resisted all temptations to power, entering a lifetime of service in his Lord’s name. The world needs us all to continue the work Jones began so that one day all people in this land will know the kind of freedom Jones so exemplifies to this day.  – Adapted from Lesser Feasts and Fasts

scientist and engineer from Scotland who was for a time a missionary in Ghana in the 1950’s.

The following folk song, Jesu, Jesu is in our hymnal (602). It was penned by a Scotsman, Tom Colvin, a scientist and engineer from Scotland who later in his life was a missionary in Ghana in the 1950’s. He became familiar with a traditional love song from the village of Chereponi, Ghana. It seemed a fitting tune for a song about Christian love. He writes, “Sitting there in the moonlight, I felt it simply had to be about black and white, rich and poor. I was ashamed of the wasteful affluence of my people but proud of the Gospel that transforms us into servants of one another. It is only when we who are rich learn to have the humility of the slave towards the poor of the world that we shall be able to learn from them; they have so much to teach us and share with us.”

Absalom Jones and Tom Colvin: two men in different centuries give us plenty to think about this First Sunday in Lent as our nation struggles to find a way to talk about race relations.

Jesu, Jesu

Refrain

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love,

show us how to serve

the neighbors we have from you.

Kneels at the feet of his friends,

silently washes their feet,

master who acts as a slave to them. Refrain

Neighbors are rich and poor,

varied in color and race,

neighbors are near and far away. Refrain

These are the ones we should serve,

these are the ones we should love;

all these are neighbors to us and you. Refrain

Loving puts us on our knees,

serving as though we are slaves;

this is the way we should live with you. Refrain

Kneel at the feet of our friends,

silently washing their feet;

this is the way we should live with you. Refrain

Set us free, heavenly Father, from every bond of prejudice and fear; that, honoring the steadfast courage of your servant Absalom Jones, we may show forth in our lives the reconciling love and true freedom of the children of God, which you have given us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. 

Amen.

Who Are These Guys?

Transfiguration

As the Epiphany Season comes to a close, a season that highlights the many ways in people began to recognize who Jesus is, we always conclude with the scene of his Transfiguration. It’s like that scene in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid when Butch and the Kid are being chased by Pinkerton Agents are hiding behind a rock looking back at the cloud of dust relentlessly approaching them and they say, “Who are those guys anyway?” The Transfiguration is meant to be at least one answer to that question about Jesus: who is this guy anyway?  

The thirteenth century saint, Richard of Chichester, offers the following prayer:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ

For all the benefits Thou hast given me,

For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.

O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,

May I know Thee more clearly,

Love Thee more dearly,

Follow Thee more nearly.

The final three lines are a hymn. As a mentor of mine, The Reverend William Caradine, once observed, Richard offers a very western way of looking at the life of faith:  first we must know Jesus clearly, then love him dearly so that we may follow him more nearly.

As Bill would point out, however, that’s just not the way it is in the Gospel accounts. That is, at the outset of his ministry, he does not go down to the shore of the Sea of Galilee, hold up the Hebrew Scriptures and say, “OK, boys, read, mark and inwardly digest these stories of our people. Then tomorrow morning I will come back and give you a quiz on all of this. If you do well enough on the quiz I will let you follow me.” No. Instead he simply says, “Follow me,” and they put down their nets, leave their boats and families and follow him!

He never even asks them if they love him until after the resurrection when he asks Peter, “Do you love me?” This he asks three times.  Yes, Lord, says Peter. “Then feed my sheep…tend my flock…lead my sheep…” replies Jesus.

And arguably, given the number of books, articles, movies and what-not that fly around especially around Christmas and Easter, we are still trying to know Jesus “more clearly.” If knowing Jesus were the first required step, we would never get around to following Jesus.

A similar sentiment has been making the rounds on Facebook recently from Richard Rohr:

We worshipped Jesus instead of following him on the same path.

We made Jesus into a mere religion instead of a journey toward union with Him and everything else.

This shift made us into a religion of “belonging and believing” instead of a religion of transformation.

And after all, transformation is one way of saying what Transfiguration is all about. Peter, James and John accompany Jesus up a mountain to pray. Suddenly Jesus is radiantly glowing bright white like no white ever seen before. And that’s not all. He is suddenly accompanied by Moses and Elijah, two of the great prophets of Israelite religion. He is one of them. They are talking about “his departure” – his “exodos” as the text has it. Like the Hebrew people passing through the sea from bondage to freedom, Jesus will pass through crucifixion and death into New Life. Peter wants to preserve the moment, build some dwellings so they can all camp out for a while, but before he can do anything a cloud covers the mountain and a voice declares, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.”

We may recall that we have heard this voice once before at his Baptism by John: “You are my Son, my Beloved; I am well pleased with you.” These are the bookends of Epiphany.  It is important that we listen to this voice because by water and the Holy Spirit those who are baptized are “fully incorporated into the Body of Christ.” That is, this voice says to each and every one of us, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you.”

This is the Good News we hear so much about. This is what God wants all of us to hear and to accept. This is what we are meant to believe. This is who we are. This is who we are called to be – God’s Beloved.

It could have been otherwise. The voice could have said, “If you are very very good I will be pleased with you.” Or, “If you are very very sorry you’re not very very good, I will be pleased with you.” Or, “I am pleased with you. Now get back in line before I change my mind!”

The source of our personal Transfiguration, the basis of our journey toward union with God and everything, the foundation of our personal transformation and the transformation of the world is accepting this Good News. Nothing is as important as hearing this and accepting it. All kinds of messages tell us not to accept this – messages from others, messages we tell ourselves – messages that say God cannot possibly be pleased with us.  Hearing this voice is what set Jesus on his journey and mission. Hearing this voice is what inspired him to call us to follow him. Hearing this voice makes us who we are created to be: God’s Beloved community of Faith, Hope and Charity.

In following we will come to love him and know him. And as the gospels portray, there are so many different ways of knowing Jesus. But it all begins with knowing ourselves – our true selves. And our true self is grounded in being God’s Beloved and knowing that no matter what, God is well pleased with us.

As we live out of our belovedness and follow Jesus people will say, “Who are those guys anyway?” and want to join the beloved community of God’s people. Amen.

Beloved Not Fade Away

You are my beloved/I am well pleased with you

I am God’s beloved/God is well pleased with me

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be

God’s gonna give God’s love to me

I’m gonna love God night and day

You know our love not fade away

Our loves bigger than a Cadillac

God ain’t never gonna take it back

Our love’s bigger than an SUV

No one can take it away from me

If you don’t believe I’ve been redeemed

Then come on down to Jordan’s stream

Up in the sky what do I see

The Holy Spirit coming down on me

Weltanschauung

Weltanschauung

Jeremiah 1:4-10*Psalm 71:1-6*1 Corinthians 13:1-13 * Luke 4:14-30

As I ponder these readings for this Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, I find myself recalling one of the first words I encountered as an undergraduate student of religion: weltanschauung.

Weltanschauung is a German word that often is translated as “worldview” or “world outlook,” but just as frequently is treated as a calque or left untranslated. A Weltanschauung is a comprehensive conception or theory of the world and the place of humanity within it. It is an intellectual construct that provides both a unified method of analysis for and a set of solutions to the problems of existence.

[International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 2008 COPYRIGHT 2008 Thomson Gale.]

It was once thought, by thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Renee Descartes, and more recently Whilhelm Dilthy, that with due diligence we could perceive a single, unified world view – an historical, objective and singularly truthful world view. More recently, however, in science, philosophy and religion, the role of the individual observer, the subject, and the influence of one’s culture and language, makes for a variety of world views, or ways of seeing the world we live in and our place in it. As it turns out the Buddha was quite right to observe some six hundred years before Jesus that things are changing – nothing remains the same.

For instance, we now know that every cell in the human body is replaced approximately every seven years. I am not physically the person I was seven years ago, and in fact by now have gone through a number of physical transformations. The fact of change has led some, like Hans Georg Gadamer, to conclude that “there can be no final interpretation of reality because new life-worlds or world pictures will cause future interpreters to see and experience the world differently.” [Ibid] As some might say, circumstances alter cases.

In this age of immediate information overload driven by an insatiable devotion to electronic devices, we find ourselves flooded with a variety of vastly differing world views multiple times per day if not per hour or even per minute. All filtered through “our own” world view, and interpreted from our own particular point of view. This has become particularly important in our interpretation of scripture and religious texts like the Bible, the Quran, the Sutras of the Buddha, the Mahabharata, the Analects of Confucius and the Dao De Jing (Tao). Each of these texts, and hundreds of others, offer a particular weltanschauung that came into existence in particular historical circumstances, regions and cultures and compiled in regional languages.

The texts before us center on a world view that, as Paul says in perhaps his most famous chapter in his letter to the church in Corinth, may be summarized by the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. As the first Christian witness in the New Testament, Paul stands upon a tradition and world view that claims that the Lord God of the Exodus is “our stronghold” and source of our Hope (Psalm 71), and that we know this because it is the Lord God himself who puts “my words in your mouth” of those he calls to announce his emerging world view (Jeremiah 1).

I say emerging since throughout the Bible from beginning to end the world view of the Lord God of the Exodus is always based in Faith, Hope and Charity, but is given new interpretive meanings in the differing historical and cultural circumstances of God’s people. By the way, in High School we had to memorize chapater 13 in the King James English for our English Lit class with Clara King. A number of us Boomers petitioned to be able to use the Revised Standard Version which replaces Charity with “Love.” I have since learned that the Biblical concept of Love really is more like what we call Charity: doing something useful and helpful for others whether or not we even like them. It seems to me it is what Jesus is all about. Besides, it rhymes: Faith, Hope and Charity, abide these three, but the greatest of these is Charity!

So we have Jeremiah, and quite possibly Psalm 71, commissioned to remind the people in Exile not to let go of the Hope that their God will find them a way out. Indeed, they are to sing and pray, “In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; incline your ear to me and save me.” (Psalm 71) Some six hundred years later, under the military occupation of the Roman Empire, the people still seek deliverance and freedom when Paul writes to Corinth about the necessity to maintain Faith, Hope and Charity in spite of the current crisis – that is, to adopt and maintain a positive world view no matter what the circumstances on the ground might suggest.

Some thirty or forty years after Paul we get Luke’s portrayal of what is often referred to as Jesus’ first sermon in his hometown synagogue in which he radically reinterprets the God inspired words of another prophet of the Exile, Isaiah, to fit the ongoing crisis: God wants to set us prisoners free, give we who are blind new vision, and the cancelation of all debts! Note carefully that when asked how to pray Jesus instructs his followers to forgive debts: and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. (Luke 11) I say radical, for as it dawns on the people just what kind of Faith, Hope and Charity is being demanded of them (“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!”), they conspire to hurl him off a nearby cliff, only to have him “pass through the midst of them,” the way Moses and the people passed through (exodos) the sea, the exiles returned to Jerusalem, and Jesus passes through death back to  life.

Jeremiah, Psalm 71, I Corinthians and Luke offer an emerging world view that is grounded in Faith, Hope and Charity to withstand the competing world views of exile and military/political oppression. We can safely conclude that those who have lived out of such a world view have made it through to our present day.

I say all of this because I am aware that every day we are being courted by other world views, other weltanschauungs if you will. They come in the guise of political ideologies, scientific and anti-scientific assessments, religious and atheistic pronouncements, and of course the managed world views of Television, Movies and Advertising, to name just a few. Some are positive, many are negative. Most are seductive world views based out of the seven deadly sins: greed, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, anger, and of course, pride. We are in an election year and weltanschauungs are flying literally left and right!

As Paul asserts in his majestic 13^th chapter of First Corinthians, most of these world views will pass away. The world view grounded in Faith, Hope and Charity shall endure. Buyer beware: the trappings of world views competing for our allegiances are indeed seductive and clever. As the Lord says to Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” There is nothing clever about Faith, Hope or Charity. In any and all historical and cultural circumstances, these three virtues always survive. Amen.

It's What We Do

It’s What We Do

Nehemiah 8:1-10/Luke  4:14-21 - 24 January 2016

It is ironic that on the Sunday that we are given these two passages for our reflection that the delivery of 30+ inches of snow in our region makes it impossible for us to gather to hear them read and to find an interpretive edge that we may embody them in our own time.  I say ironic since both the passage from Nehemiah and the one from Luke portray the community of God’s people gathered, listening to the reading and interpretation of earlier texts that had inspired and sustained them throughout centuries, and now millennia, of life’s challenges.

Nehemiah was a court administrator for the King of Persia in Susa. A Jew himself by ancestry, he had heard of the difficulties the people were having in re-establishing Jerusalem after returning from the Babylonian Exile. He received permission to go to Jerusalem where he led the reconstruction of the Second Temple and the walls of the city for protection from neighboring threats.

When the construction was complete the people gathered outside the gates of the city, and at the instruction of Ezra, a scribe and priest who led the return to Jerusalem, listened to Nehemiah read the Torah, the law of Moses. Nehemiah was instructed to interpret the readings. This would sound very much like the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, which depicts Moses sitting the people down and going over in some detail the lessons learned in their 40 year wilderness sojourn before entering the land of promise. That is, God’s people gather periodically to hear the texts of the tradition and find ways to apply them to the current circumstances. It’s what we do.

The largesse and generosity of the Persian Empire ought not to be overlooked: Cyrus, a Persian gentile, released the captives to return to their homeland, and his successor allowed Nehemiah to go and help his people, Israel, as they sought to renew their commitment to being God’s people and demonstration community in an increasingly hostile world.

Fast forward 500 years or so. Jerusalem is now an occupied territory of the Roman Empire. A corrupt aristocracy in Jerusalem is aiding and abetting the Roman enemies. A young man from Nazareth returns to his hometown synagogue having already earned a reputation as a teacher, healer and possible modern day prophet. He is handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, a prophet of the Exile some 600 years earlier. Isaiah was one of a few prophets in that day that helped the people to understand the circumstances of their captivity and maintain the hope for an eventual return by the hand of their God. Little had they thought that God would use a gentile like Cyrus to orchestrate their exodus and return!

Jesus takes the scroll and opens it to what we now recognize as chapter 61 in Isaiah. He stands to read, very much like Nehemiah, very much as Moses had done, and the people hear the Word: God has anointed me to bring good news to his occupied people. Those who are blind shall receive sight, captives will be freed, the oppressed shall go free, and it is time for the year of the Lord’s favor. This last pronouncement was quite extraordinary. The year of the Lord’s favor, or the Jubilee year was to be a time to cancel all debts and allow the bonded debt slaves and servants to return home to begin again.

Then, like Nehemiah, he offers an interpretation of what was just read: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Yes, this is the crucial distinction. For those of us listening to such a recitation of the essence of who we are it is incumbent that we hear and embody the Word. That is, the role of the hearer of the Word is to both “hear” and “fulfill” the Word. This is our task. It’s what we do.

As Paul outlines in his First Letter to the Church in Corinth, chapter 12, verses 12-31, we are all given special gifts. According to the gifts given to us, we are to hear and fulfill the Word. We are not asked to do anything more than what God has equipped us, gifted us, to do. Accordingly, we are expected to do no less than what God has equipped us to do.

Read Ezra-Nehemiah. Read Paul’s letters. Read the Gospels. It ought to become evident that the work we are called to do is very hard work. It is also very necessary work as well. The world needs us to do this work. It can be discouraging. It has always been thus. It is no different in our time than it was in the days of the texts we come to hear week in and week out. This is reason enough to come together week after week: to hear the Word we have been given to fulfill and to support one another in the fulfilling of this Word. As we hear these stories, we can only be impressed with the persistence and doggedness with which the Jews of these historical periods – the days of Moses, the days of Nehemiah, the days of Jesus – confronted the challenges before them. We listen to their stories as a model for our own generation. It’s what we do.

As one rabbi, Rabbi Tarfon once said, “It is not incumbent on you to finish the work, but nor are you free to desist from it.” (Mishnah, Avot, chapter 2)

To be among those called to hear and fulfill the Word we must always remember: it is not our duty, it is our privilege. We may not enter the promised land, but we are those who can see it, can imagine it, and can do our own small part to make it one day a reality for all people. It’s what we do. Amen.