Violins Violence Silenc

“VIOLINS VIOLENCE SILENCE,” is a neon light sculpture by Bruce Nauman that has been wrapped around the outside of the Baltimore Museum of Art since the 1982-83 exhibition of his neon works. It was a gift of the Nauman Galleries to the BMA, and therefore to Baltimore, the community and the world. The words light up forwards and backwards in multi-color rhythm that is both confrontational and meditative all at once. Violins interrupted by violence results in silence? Violence often results in violins, as in funeral music, as well as in silence? Or, as art critic Gregory Volk once suggested, it may represent both the silence of victims of violence and the silence of those who choose/chose not to bear witness or to oppose the violence.

It seems to be one work of art that continues to have relevance to a week like the one just concluded: the violence of 58 killed and nearly 500 wounded in Las Vegas by one man and a cache of weapons; the violence of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of two uniquely powerful hurricanes; the violence of political rhetoric that seeks to deafen and numb the population into unbearable silence. I find the confrontational violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg hauntingly playing in the background as I struggle not to fall into symptoms of PTSD such events like Las Vegas threaten to precipitate ever since gun violence ended the lives of my two closest colleagues in ministry one afternoon in the offices at St. Peter’s, Ellicott City: Brenda Brewington and Mary-Marguerite Kohn. And then I recall Nauman’s neon sculpture endlessly, relentlessly, lighting up back and forth: violins violence silence silence violence violins. And I thank God that I have music to listen to and music to play as I struggle to make sense of it all.

How long have the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words as they are also known, been around? Articulated in Exodus chapter 20 and reprised by Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 5, these words are meant as a gift to outline a Way of Being One’s True Self in the World. They not only outline a way of acting but more importantly a way of Being – they confer identity – they give shape to what it means to be “created in the image of God.”

I am forever indebted to Abraham Joshua Heschel who once observed that in the Deuteronomy version the command for Sabbath comprises nearly one-third of the text of the Ten Words, and that only one commandment is stated twice – the Tenth: thou shalt not covet, and in case you did not hear me the first time says YHWH, thou shalt not covet. And yet, we live within an economic system that is defined by covetousness -  the need for more and more of everything. Advertising: an entire industry devoted to making us more and more covetous.

So, Heschel suggests that the Sabbath, a day off, is not at all a religious command or ritual. It is an alternative to the 24/7 relentlessness of a covetous economic system that often drives people to violence. Sabbath is a periodic withdrawal from the dominant economic system; the unfettered need to produce, acquire and consume more and more stuff – be it money, products, or property. Our very identity is wrapped up in this “stuff” – my car, my home, my clothes are carefully curated to say something about who I am. I often joke about the creation of the Self Storage industry – lockers, most as big as a garage, in which to store our excess “self.” But it is no joke. For covetousness eventually leads to violence somehow. Sabbath is meant to break the cycle of covetousness long enough to remember who we are and whose we are.

Note the actions of the tenants of the vineyard in Matthew chapter 21, The Parable of the Vineyard. They live and work in a vineyard that is not their own. Yet, when the owner sends servants and even his own son to collect his produce, the tenants become violent and kill one after another so as to take possession of the vineyard for themselves. Covetousness begats violence, which results in silence and the violins of funeral music. Once again this is a parable that means to hold up a mirror before us and help us to see a way beyond violent solutions.

Saint Paul, in writing to the Philippians in chapter 3 comments again on the need for a change of mind – a radical reassessment of past, present and future. Everything I have accomplished and acquired in my otherwise exemplary past is rubbish he says. Actually, this is a genteel alchemy of translation, for the Greek text of his letter calls it dung. In a this tightly argued part of this letter he seems to say that the Good News, the Gospel, is not an answer to all the problems in our lives. Rather, the Good News of God in Christ means to disturb all my settled answers, we might say “my ideology, or my theology,” and sends me searching for new answers and new solutions!

I have not reached the goal, he says, but I press on, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead – that which is the “unseen” of our creed – because God in Christ has made me his own. I have been overtaken by Christ. All that I think I already know is dung. What is important lies ahead.

What the Ten Words know is that unless we break the cycles of production, acquisition and consumption, unless we break the cycles of debates that hide behind “this is what I know and I am not changing my mind,” we cannot lean forward into a future in which violence itself is silenced. So important is Sabbath Time, suggested my friend and mentor Gordon Cosby, so relentless is the pace of life today, that I may need Sabbath Time once a day instead of just once a week. To literally, physically withdraw from the 24/7 busyness of covetousness for a period of time each day to simply Be with God and rediscover my True Self once again.

A self that is molded and shaped by the statutes, the law, the commandments that give “light to the eyes, wisdom to the innocent and right judgments” as Psalm 19 invites us to sing! “More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold, sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb…above all keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me; then I shall be whole and sound and innocent of a great offense.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer!”

Shabbat shalom. The need for heart-full meditation. There can be no shalom, no peace, without Shabbat. There can be no shalom without seriously allowing our entrenched ideas and ideologies to be let go and reimagined. There can be no shalom as long as the means to mass violence are so readily available as a presumed “solution” to a current problem. I look at Las Vegas and weep. God looks at Las Vegas and weeps. Yet, our leaders in Washington, DC, effectively remain silent. A silence that only begats more violence and the need for more funeral violins.

Violins Violence Silence. When will we be able to turn off those relentless neon lights once and for all because they will no longer have meaning? 

God's Humility/Our Humility

God’s Humility/Our Humility

I confess I have succumbed to the magic, convenience and speed with which the internet can bring my need to consume right to my doorstep almost instantly. As soon as the algorithm suggests “Something you may be interested in,” just a few clicks and the book or CDs and just about anything else appears. Yet, when I look back over the years of my life, it his most often been those times when I take the time to wander in a bookstore or a record store, finding, picking up, reading a few lines, reading a few liner notes, that has propelled me to purchase a book or some music that has had a lasting impact on my life. Record stores have all but disappeared, and book stores, especially local bookstores, are few and far between. And yet, they are essential to my life, essential to our life, essential to our life together, a life “together” that in part, due to the same internet that has all but obliterated delayed gratification, is also devolving us into further and further isolation and fragmentation from one another and living in community.

            Enter The Humility of God by Ilia Delio: a Franciscan Perspective. Just as I found myself pondering for the incalculable umpteenth time these words of Saint Paul in chapter 2 to the Philippians, I came across her book on God’s humility and ours while wandering around St. Bede’s Bookstore: “4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

            A God who humbles himself. A God who empties himself.  This is the mind we are to have among ourselves. Not individually, but among ourselves: humble and self-emptying. Look not only to our own interests, but those of others. Then these words in the introduction caught my eye and led me to purchase the book: “The humility of God is really about God’s relationship to the world and God’s fidelity to the world even when everything in the world seems to fail.”p 1

            In our present circumstances we don’t need to sketch out the myriad ways in which everything in the world seems to be failing: society, politics, the eco-crisis, even the world of sports. All seem to be in free-fall at the same time. We used to turn to ancient wisdom to bear upon our present circumstances and to help us to lean into a better future. Now, however, we are urged by all sorts of cultural messages to abandon the wisdom of God, and now we are even urged to abandon the wisdom of Science as well. An “ethic,” if we can call it that, of individualized go-it-on-your-own “morality” in which your own happiness and achievement is all that matters urges us to look only at the present. This is characterized by fetishizing selfish desires, the need to control and manipulate, and an obsession with knowledge. What the Bible traditionally calls idolatry. Worse still, we have replaced God and Science with political ideologies. If it’s not the apocalyptic violence of Isis it is the Randian Objectivism of unfettered greed, consumption and acquisition of consumer capitalism. There is little or no down-time to browse for books or to simply listen to the universe that lies within.

            As the Exodus saga continues to unfold [Exodus 17:1-7], the people who have escaped the Empire of death in Egypt first complain about the food situation and the God of the Exodus provides Manna – note, the economic distribution plan stipulates that each day everyone is to get enough, no one can gather too much, and if you try to gather more than your family needs it rots and putrefies. This is why Jesus teaches to pray for bread that is given daily. Still not trusting that the God who liberated them from slavery AND provided food, it seems, they begin to complain about needing more water. Granted, we should feel some sympathy for them as water is essential to human life, especially in the Sinai wilderness. Yet, the story means to hold a mirror up to us as a nation obsessed with more. This poem from Mary Oliver holds up the same mirror:

This morning the redbird’s eggs

have hatched and already the chicks

are chirping for food. They don’t

know where it’s coming from, they

just keep shouting, “More! More!”

As to anything else, they haven’t

had a single thought. Their eyes

haven’t yet opened, they know nothing

about the sky that’s waiting. Or

the thousands, the millions of trees.

They don’t even know they have wings.

Our insatiable appetites for More! More! have pushed God, Religion and now Science away from the table. The ideologies of More! More! make it impossible to “have this mind among ourselves,” a mind of self-emptying humility that cares for the needs of others, for the neighbor, the stranger, the immigrant, the hungry, the poor, and all those who seem to live their lives on the cross with our Christ.

Then there is the story of two brothers [Matthew 21:23-32]. The father asks the first to go and work in the vineyard today. He says, “I will not.” But later changes his mind and goes. The father asks the second the same. He says, “I go, sir.” But he does not go. Asks Jesus, “Which one does the will of the father?” The chief priests and elders who have tried to trap him with questions about authority answer, “The first!” So proud of themselves! He then tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes who listened to John the Baptist and believed him will go into the kingdom of God “ahead of you” – for “even after you saw [him] you did not change your minds and believe him.”

Evidently, it’s about changing our minds. The one thing we just hate to do. It’s about having minds of self-emptying humility as exampled in the God who bends down to dwell among us – Emmanuel, God with us. A God who empties himself, taking the form of a servant; the God who humbles himself unto death, even death upon a cross so as to stand with the most broken, most isolated, most lost among us. We are mistaken if we think for one moment that Jesus came to save us from the world, for he comes even now to save us for the world and to save the very world itself from us.

Delio asserts that the primacy of such a God of humble self-emptying “did not come because of human sin; rather, from all eternity God willed to love a finite other as a more perfect expression of his love. Jesus would have come, therefore, even if there had been no sin. The meaning of the Incarnation is not about sin, but about the love of God.” p 3

We are meant to realize that God comes among us to heal us and make us healers and peacemakers “for humankind and the earth itself.” To become healers and peacemakers we need to welcome the God of self-emptying humility and science back to the table, back into our everyday lives. Abandoning all futile attempts to get More! More! we can embody such self-emptying humility among ourselves so there will be enough for everyone, not too much for anyone, and the Earth itself shall spring forth in bountiful bread and water to sustain us and renew itself. Science and Religion will be our partners into further uncovering the mysteries of life and how to sustain it while leaning into the future with hope and trust.

Near the end of her book Delio issues a sort of invitation:

When our inner world can welcome a God of humble love, when we can believe that God loves us in our brokenness and incompleteness, our weaknesses, our failings, then we can realize that “that which sustains the universe beyond thought and language and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression is the same thing.” * The source of the universe and the source of our lives is the same source: the unconditional, surrendered free love of a humble God. When we find this source in our own lives then we can find this source at the heart of the universe.

           

-Ilia Delio, OSF, The Humility of God – p 163

           

*Yann Martel, The Life of Pi, p 48    

God Loves Us and Welcomes Us!

God Loves Us and Welcomes Us

Throughout the tales for this week, the Exodus (Ex 14:19-31), Psalm 114, Paul’s letter to the church in Rome(Rom14:1-12), and a story about extraordinary forgiveness (Matt 18:21-35) is the overarching story of God’s love for all humankind, and an invitation to come home to God.

As Moses would later remind the people, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession. It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Deut 7:6-8) And so we see that during the great escape, YHWH the God of Sarah and Abraham, Rebekah and Isaac, Leah, Rachel and Jacob, shelters and protects them from Pharaoh’s army. And opens and closes the waters to protect and liberate them. All despite lots of complaining and grumbling all through verses preceding (Ex 14 10-18).: Why are you making us leave Egypt? Is it because there are no graves for us in Egypt that you took us out here to die in the wilderness? Yet, God loves them anyway. It turns out God has the patience of Job.

As celebrated in Psalm 114, a mighty act of remembrance and source of hope for the present. It recognizes that this mass escape forged a rag-tag group of slaves into a people – God’s people. It is a psalm that is meant to astound us and make us grateful. As Psalm 115 just after this begins: Our God is in the heavens. He does as he pleases. You don’t have to like; you don’t get to vote on it. What a God! Mountains and hills skip with glee, the seas fled, the Earth trembles at the presence of the Lord, the God of Jacob. There is no more fear of intimidation by any Empire in these people because YHWH has acted!

Then Paul urges the fledgling church in Rome to embrace diversity. Some of you are vegans. Some of you are omnivores. It is the God of the Exodus, the God who can make diverse tribes into one people, who calls you and welcomes you to Christ’s table. Note, Paul does not even attempt to adjudicate whether or not there is a right way or wrong way to come to God’s table. Healthy community takes precedence over “right belief,” whatever that may be. For we all stand before the same judgment seat of God. We look pretty silly passing judgment on one another when in the end we are all accountable to the One God “I Am” who got this all in-motion back at the burning bush instructing a fugitive murderer to confront the powers of Pharaoh and his Empire and lead us all to a life of freedom with God and one another.

“We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die we die to the Lord…. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be the Lord of the living and the dead!”

To give us some idea what kind of Lord invites us to come home to the Lord’s table, along comes Peter with a question for Jesus. I have served the majority of my life in ministry in two churches named after Peter, so I feel a particular empathy for him in all these episodes like the one today where he asks, God bless his heart: If someone sins against me how often must I forgive? As many as seven times? Now the custom at the time was to forgive three times, so Peter thinks he is going the extra mile. But once again Jesus burns him: seventy-seven times. Or, because the text is unclear, it can even be translated seventy times seven times! Which in the context of the story he tells really means forever! For as it turns out, in those days the ten thousand Talents the man owes the king represents approximately 150,000 years wages for the average worker. No one can ever hope to pay off such a sum in this life time. The king knows this. God knows this. Jesus knows this. Yet, the man in the story is forgiven. That, by the way, is the punch line. The text means for us to realize we are all forgiven sinners invited to the same table, the Lord’s table, open to one and all, vegans and omnivores alike, even to this pathetic creature who clearly does not grasp what being released of his debt really means – that we are to act more like the Incredible Forgiving and Loving King in the parable.

There is a video that shows a woman alone in church saying the Lord’s Prayer. Each time she says a line, God speaks to her. When she gets to, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” she tries to sneak out of the pew and the church. God stops her, and asks, “What about your brother?” “I knew you were going to say that,” she blurts out! “How can I forget what he has done to me?” “I don’t know,” asks God. “How do you want your forgiveness: with or without forgetting?” Long Pause. “How about you just begin to think about forgiving your brother, and I’ll do my best to forget all the times you have forgotten about me?” “You got me again,” she says, and the dialogue continues. As Elie Wiesel often said and wrote, God created us because he loves our stories and loves to continue the dialogue.

We promise in our baptism that everything we say and do will proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. Yet, it’s not clear that we all know just what that good news is. No doubt that is why William Countryman wrote a book titled, The Good News of Jesus. He begins it like this: “What God says to you in Jesus is this: you are forgiven. Nothing more. Nothing less. This is the message Jesus lived and spoke…. There are other things God could conceivably have said to us. And we may as well face it, most of us know forms of Christianity that relay a message quite different from this one. They say things like, ‘Good News, if you are very very good, God will love you.’ Or, ‘Good News, if you are very very sorry for not being very very good, God will love you. Or, (most insidious of all), ‘Good News, God loves you. Now get back in line before God’s mind changes!’ These messages may be good news for somebody, but they are not good for all of us …. God might have said it more simply, ‘You are loved. I love you.’ This message is true, but it would have been ambiguous. It might have meant, ‘I love you because you’re good.’ It might have meant, ‘I love the nice bits of you, but I really wish you’d clean up your act.’ It might have meant, ‘I still love you and would like to go on loving you, but I won’t tolerate your behavior much longer.’ Instead God says something quite unambiguous: ‘You are forgiven.’ What this means is, ‘I love you anyway, no matter what. I love you not because you are particularly good nor because you are particularly repentant nor because I am trying to bribe you or threaten you into changing. I love you because I love you.’” p. 3-5

Which takes us back to Moses in Deuteronomy reminding the people why God redeemed them and protected and sheltered them as they escaped Egypt and the iron rod of Pharaoh’s Empire. God loves them. We are all forgiven debtors and sinners welcomed to God’s table. This is the Good News we are given. This news is meant to drive all that we say and all that we do, loving God and loving our neighbor, all neighbors, as we love ourselves. And we should love our selves a lot. God does! Welcome home to God’s table! Amen. 

Where Do We Place Our Trust?

While Huston continues to drown beneath record setting flood waters many parts of the western United States continue to burn with 82 wildfires threatening human, animal and plant life across 1.4 million acres so far. Meanwhile, not one but two hurricanes continue to barrel through the Atlantic already laying waste whole Caribbean islands and beginning to make landfall on the Florida peninsula, threatening to wreak havoc for millions of more people. All of which distracts us from the fact of what we consider a small, rogue state exploded a “test” hydrogen bomb this past week and is launching Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles on a near weekly basis. An interview with a Japanese woman who survived WWII as a young girl reveals people in Japan currently reviving duck and cover drills due to the unpredictability of what’s going on between North Korean and the US.

It is no wonder that I find myself singing and whistling this dark and satirical Sheldon Harnick tune (he who wrote lyrics for Fiddler On The Roof and other Broadway musicals), The Merry Minuet, popularized by the Kingston Trio back in what now seems the distant 1960’s:

They're rioting in Africa / They're starving in Spain

There's hurricanes in Florida / And Texas needs rain

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls

The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch

And I don't like anybody very much!!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud

For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud

And we know for certain that some lovely day

Someone will set the spark off

And we will all be blown away!!

They're rioting in Africa / There's strife in Iran

What nature doesn't so to us / Will be done by our fellow man

     Written by Sheldon Harnick, Sheldon M. Harnick • Copyright © BMG Rights Management US, LLC

The song is meant to make us laugh at our hubris and mis-placed loyalties. Mutually Assured Deterrence may have made sense to some when only two world powers had nuclear capabilities. Once the genie is out of the bottle, however, and more and more countries develop nuclear weapons we find ourselves feeling anything but “secure.” And like the Egypt of Exodus chapter 12, portrayed as a monopolistic Empire that believes in un-checked acquisition, storing up of resources and conspicuous consumption, it seems that there can be no satisfaction with what we benignly refer to as “the economy,” a system that consolidates unfettered wealth among a tiny percent of the populace, a system that is defended as fiercely as any religious icon in ancient Egypt or Canaan, or the various idols that still recall and revere a system of slave labor and White Supremacy as pernicious as any found in Pharaoh’s Egypt.

In Exodus 12 what appear to be a well ordered set of ritual behaviors meant to protect the Hebrew slaves from the impending showdown with Pharaoh’s Empire cannot distract our noticing that the “I Am,” the God of Sarah and Abraham, Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel, Leah and Jacob “forever” is preparing to sacrifice all first-born Egyptians – human and animal – although after the series of plagues it is hard to imagine what is left in the animal kingdom, a dilemma we face as species disappear from the face of this fragile Earth our Island home daily due to unfettered human so-called development and destruction of the eco-sphere.

Yet, this God “I Am,” defined simply as a Deity that slaughters those first-born is to ignore the other attributes of “I Am” as portrayed through the entire sweep of Biblical literature: a God who seeks to demonstrate alternative loyalties to those of the oppressors; the God who loves all the peoples of the Earth; the God in Jesus who teaches us to love not only our neighbor but our enemies as well; a God who forgives Israel and all human kind over and over again.

As some commentators have observed, “That motif which stands forth as being of paramount significance in this regard is, of course, that of God as Redeemer. Thus, the symbol of the slaughtered lamb in this passage is crucial, as it gives substance to the New Testament image of Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29 )... Not only does Yahweh intend to save the Israelites in a physical sense, but Yahweh intends to redeem that special relationship which binds them to Yahweh and Yahweh to them. The struggle with Egypt is not only with its people and its government, but also with its gods (v. 12). Yahweh’s liberation of the Israelites is understood by the text to be a liberation of the people from the power of that which pretends to stand in God’s place…. The error in identifying God as the slayer of the wicked or, worse, as the slayer of those innocent people who are kin to the wicked, is that it is so easy for a nation or a group to put on God’s mantle and to begin to do God’s work for God. The weapons of mass destruction have brought home to the human race more forcefully than ever before the folly of such thought and behavior.” [Brueggemann, et. al., Texts for Preaching, 472]

The next time we hear of “collateral damage” we would do well to ponder just where we place our loyalties, whether as individuals, as a nation, and as the Church: in the powers of Empire? In the securities of monopoly and weapons of mass destruction? Or, in the powers of redemption, grace and mercy?

Our fascination with the hurricane, I believe, is that we see in it a metaphor for all that we cannot and dare not control. In his volume, Prayers Plainly Spoken, Stanley Hauerwas offers the following:

In The Aftermath of a Hurricane

OK, GOD, Job-like, we feel enough is enough. Is a hurricane Behemoth?

What are we to say to you: Are you in a hurricane?

We fear acknowledging that you may be.

We want to protect you.

We want to think you and your creation are benign.

The result, of course, is to rob you of your creation.

The hurricane becomes “just nature,”

 but “just nature” cannot be your creation.

Do we dare believe that Christ could still the winds?

We want our world regular, predictable,

not subject to disorder or chaos.

So if you are in the hurricane, please just butt out.

We confess we have lost the skill to see you in your creation.

We pray to you to care for the injured, those in shock,

those without housing, those in despair,

but how can you do so if you are not in the hurricane?

We confess we do not know how to put this together.

We want you to heal our hurts,

but we really do not want to think you can.

We want to think you make it possible for us to help one another,

but it is not clear why we think we need your help.

Help us to call for help. AMEN.

Nashville, Jesus and Holy Ground

Nashville, Jesus and Holy Ground

Moses and the burning bush [Exodus 3:1-15]. Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. Moses is now a fugitive on the run. He is tending his father-in-law’s flock. A bush is burning but is not consumed. A voice speaks to him from the burning bush. Moses approaches the bush but the voice says, “Stop and come no closer. Remove your sandals from your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Moses, the fugitive from the law, is then called to lead an exodus – to lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt into new life in a new land. Moses wants to know to whom he is speaking. In perhaps the single most iconic moment in the Bible the bush replies, “I am who I am….tell them ‘I am’ has sent me to you.” This is key to understanding who Jesus is and the entire New Testament.

Jesus repeatedly says to people, “I am….” “I am the true vine,” “I am the true bread that comes down from heaven,” “I am the way….” Remembering all this gives the episode with Jesus and Peter make sense[Matthew 16:21-28]. Jesus tells everyone willing to listen that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed and on the third day rise again from the dead. Peter says, in effect, “No way! God forbid! I just identified you as christos, the Christ, God’s anointed one, God’s messiah, and now you are saying this? This must never happen!”

Do we see what happens in that moment? Peter forgets to take off his shoes. Peter forgets he is standing on Holy Ground? Peter seems to have no idea that he is talking to “I am.”

This is the great scandal of Christianity – Jesus and the voice in the bush are one and the same. This has been a scandal from the very beginning. Peter is not alone. Well meaning Christians, bishops even, are writing books right now saying, “God forbid! This cannot be! Jesus was just a man like you and me. Nothing more, nothing less.”

If those who deny our Lord is Lord of all are right we might as well sleep in on Sunday morning. The only sin greater than idolatry would be the sin of hubris – excessive pride or arrogance. Peter has it. Peter thinks he knows better; only he knows what ‘christos’ means; only he knows all about God and what Jesus describes cannot be God. Those abandoning our experience of Jesus as God AND Man have this hubris. The Church often has it. Our nation often has it. And the moment that I identify someone else as having it, I am in danger of having it. That’s just how pervasive and tricky this hubris business is.

Look at the Church’s history. A long history of Anti-Semitism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, complicity with slavery, racism - the list goes on and on, all founded on hubris. And just this week Christians are faced with something calling itself The Nashville Statement – signed by over 150 “Evangelical Leaders,” the statement declares, in part, "WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness. WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree."  Talk about hubris. Judging and condemning whole classes of human beings, despite claiming to follow Jesus who says, in Luke chapter 6, among other things, "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned."

I agree with Father James Martin who has responded in part: “I affirm: That LGBT people are some of the holiest people I know. I deny: That Jesus wants us to judge others, when he clearly forbade it. I affirm that the Father loves LGBT people, the Son calls them and the Holy Spirit guides them. I deny nothing about God’s love for them.”

I believe we are meant to see that the antidote to hubris is taking off our shoes. We are to honor others, not vilify them. We are to remember we are standing on Holy Ground. Shoes are a sign of affluence, bare feet are a sign of humility and solidarity with those Jesus loves, the poor, the disadvantaged, those who are lonely and isolated due to bigotry and discrimination of all kinds – most especially discrimination declared In His Name.

Taking off our shoes begins with believing that this is God’s world, God’s creation, the earth and everything and everyone therein (Psalm 124). It means accepting that all people are God’s people. Taking off our shoes means recognizing that we stand on Holy Ground on this earth, before God and before one another. Each and every person is holy and also stands on holy ground. Each speck of dust, each cell, each atom, “every little inch – it’s holy ground.”

Woody Guthrie wrote this song – a modern-day psalm, really. Singing it may help to bring us back to an understanding of where we are, which may help us remember who we are and whose we are. Peter, like Moses before him, eventually took off his shoes and listened to the Lord. With any luck we may, like Peter, get back to our rightful places behind Jesus and let him lead us in the way to life in its fullest. Or, like Moses, against all odds, strive for justice and peace for all people, leading people out of bondage into freedom – helping the world to be a place where all people are finally recognized and accepted as God’s people.

Take off, take off your shoes

This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground

Take off, take off your shoes

The spot you’re standing, its holy ground

These words I heard in my burning bush

This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground

I heard my fiery voice speak to me

This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground

That spot is holy holy ground

That place you stand it’s holy ground

This place you tread, it’s holy ground

God made this place his holy ground

Take off your shoes and pray

The ground you walk it’s holy ground

Every spot on earth I trapse around

Every spot I walk it’s holy ground

Every spot it’s holy ground

Every little inch it’s holy ground

Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground

Every spot I walk it’s holy ground

Holy Ground The Klezmatics

The Gates of Hades Shall Not Prevail

The Gates of Hades Shall Not Prevail

Jesus surprises the disciples with a pop-quiz: who do people say that I am? That’s the easy question: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Those who remember their history know all three were constantly threatened: Jeremiah was tossed to the bottom of a well and left to die (like Joseph); Elijah was threatened by the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel and by king Ahab, his queen Jezebel, and his son Ahaziah; and John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod and eventually lost his head. Suggesting that the disciples and the people already sense the impending danger in the air surrounding Jesus the Christos. To be God’s anointed is fraught with danger as you challenge the status quo and the powers in charge.

Question number two goes deeper: Who do you say that I am? Peter blurts out, “You are the Christos, the Son of the Living God.” Yes, Peter, Petra – and you shall be the rock, petros, upon which I assemble my community. Jesus introduces a play on words either in the Greek, or the Aramaic: Kepha you are the Kepha upon which I will assemble my community. A moment to laugh, to chuckle at the joke. But then. He says. “The gates of Hell shall not prevail against my assembled community.” The ominous sense of danger reasserts itself. Either, Hades and Death are on the offensive and the community of Christos shall prevail. Or, the community shall storm the gates of Hades and Death liberating those held captive by the Empire of Death. [Matthew 16:13-20] No cheap grace either way.

Surely those first hearing this proclamation in Matthew recall these words: “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” [Exodus 1:8-2:10] With a change of administration comes danger, oppression and ruthlessness. As long as Joseph was there, the people were safe. The new king, however, not only does not “know” Joseph, but is insecure with the number and power of Joseph’s people. Let’s work them to death. Doesn’t work. Let’s make it impossible for them to reproduce by ordering the midwives to kill all the baby boys. Doesn’t work. The new king his assault on one specific gender: all the people are commanded to throw the baby boys in the Nile. Both the future of Israel and the future of God’s plans for all humanity are imperiled. All because of a change of administration and its inherent insecurities and lack of knowledge.

Life is so hard for the people of God such that they have no time to call upon the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Perhaps the ancestors have been forgotten not just by the new king, but by the people themselves. “Yet, uninvited, God intervenes anyway. The mercy of God is not simply reactive, returning love for love. It is proactive—seeing human need even more profoundly than they who endure that need, and benevolently intruding into their lives even when unbidden.” [Texts For Preaching, Walter Brueggemann et al, John Knox Press: CD-Rom Edition, p 454] What appears to be the story of Moses is revealed to be about five women as woman after woman after woman steps forward with courage, passion, ingenuity and acts of civil disobedience to frustrate the commands of the new king.

First up, Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives. What can we say about the courage of these two women and their trust in God? They “do not do as the king of Egypt commanded them.” When summoned by the new king who did not know Joseph, they say, it’s not our fault that these “Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them!” We are told that for their bold deception God gave them families!

Next up, an unnamed Levite woman who bears a baby boy and hides him for three months. Again, an act of courageous civil disobedience. When she could hide him no longer, she makes a basket and floats him on the Nile, thus somewhat obeying the new king. Yet, another deception. Next up, the baby boy’s for now unnamed sister stands by to see what will happen. Along comes the Pharaoh’s daughter who saves the child. “This must be one of the Hebrew children,” she says. His sister cleverly suggests, “Should I find a Hebrew wet nurse for you.” And fetches his mother! Even the “daughters” of Jacob inherit the Trickster gene!

Imagine how divine and at the same time painful it must be for his mother to be reunited with her baby boy, and yet know that she shall not see him grow up. And that he is to live in the palace of the new king who did not know Joseph; the new king who ordered the ruthless oppression of her people; the new king who ordered the death of her child. And then to stand by and listen as the new king’s daughter gets to name him – Moses, “for I drew him out of the water.”

But for these risky, courageous and deceptive acts of civil disobedience of five women, the covenant and the future blessings for all humankind would have vanished among the machinations of the new king and his Empire of ruthless oppression and death.

Years, perhaps centuries later, the people reflect in a song, Psalm 124:

If the Lord had not been on our side,

let Israel now say;

If the Lord had not been on our side,

when enemies rose up against us;

Then would they have swallowed us up alive

in their fierce anger toward us;

Then would the waters have overwhelmed us

and the torrent gone over us;

Then would the raging waters

have gone right over us.

Blessed be the Lord!

he has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.

We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler;

the snare is broken, and we have escaped.

Our help is in the Name of the Lord,

the maker of heaven and earth.

These songs of Israel are meant to bolster our hope and our trust and fear in the Lord who inspires five women to break the snare of the hunter so we might escape to live in the promises and blessings made first to Abraham and handed down all the way through Jesus and beyond among his gathered community. We are to remember their courageous acts of deception and civil disobedience when faced with the Empire of Death-dealing. We are to re-member these things and live into the promises and blessings no matter what the new king threatens. No matter that the waters rage, no matter what enemies rise up against us. The Gates of Hades shall not prevail. Empires of ruthless oppression and Death shall not prevail. The new king shall not prevail. For our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And in the women our Lord keeps sending to save us. Amen. 

Reconciliation: Two Tales and a Confession

Reconciliation: Two Tales and a Confession

A brother and a mother. Joseph and an un-named Canaanite woman. What can their stories tell us? Can they help us here and now?

Jacob’s youngest son, at the time, Joseph, was sold into slavery by his eleven brothers. He ended up in Egypt where through a series of events he became something like the Secretary of the Interior/ Secretary of State and de facto ruler on behalf of Pharaoh. A shrewd business man, he had accumulated enough agricultural product to get through a long period of famine.

Enter, his brothers. Canaan is hard hit with famine. Some brothers are sent to Egypt by father Jacob to beg for assistance. Joseph recognizes them, but they do not know he is their brother they sold into slavery. Through a series of negotiations, and some trickery on Joseph’s part, no doubt inherited from his father Jacob The Trickster, food is provided over several years and his family is saved from the famine. In Genesis chapter 45 we are told he can no longer play the charade – he makes himself known to his brothers. He weeps so loudly, we are told, “That the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.” He identifies himself, and his brothers are silent in abject fear.

Yet, something has happened to Joseph. Instead of becoming proud of himself in the kind of power and influence he has amassed; instead of being bitter and revengeful against the very brothers who first conspired to kill him and later sold him into slavery. Joseph has come to understand that there is a greater purpose at work in his life and the life of his family: the God of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he says, “sent me before you to preserve life; sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So, it was not you who sent me here, but God…. God has made me lord of all Egypt.”

“’Hurry and bring my father down here,’ he says. Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.” This is an extraordinary tale of reconciliation wrought through the mercy of God. Joseph has every right to be angry; every right for revenge; every right to allow his brothers and their families and flocks and herds to be devastated by the famine. But he has been infected with the mercy of YHWH, the God of his forefathers and mothers, the God of the promise, the God of the commandments that instruct on how others are to be treated with God’s mercy. Success like Joseph’s is not a license to do what you want. Joseph understands that God’s mercy spared him and God’s mercy must be evident in how he in turn treats others. It is a story for our time.

Then, in Matthew chapter 15 we find the story of a remarkable woman – a Canaanite woman we are told. A confession: In the past I have taught that a) it was unusual and forbidden for a male to be seen talking to a woman not his wife in that time, b) that Jews at the time of Jesus would have nothing to do with Gentiles, ie non-Jews, and c) that therefore Jesus moves from a place of particularism, addressing his mission only to “the lost sheep of Israel,” to a place of universalism, addressing his mission to all people. A chance meeting, like that between this woman and Jesus, with Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament professor at Vanderbilt University, has removed the scales from my eyes to reveal the kind of hidden anti-Semitism I was unaware that I was sowing. Unfortunately, unlike the seed that falls on rocky soil, implying that Jesus was in some way charting a path against and beyond the Judaism of his time does not shrivel up – and we can see the results of such incorrect teaching in the events of the past week.

A glance at the whole of the Gospel witness and proclamation, one not only sees Jesus frequently speaking with women, we know there were women traveling with him and his disciples supporting the mission. And in chapter 8 of Matthew we have already seen Jesus heal another Gentile child. Dr. Levine also observes that the Genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew includes the names of at least five gentiles among his ancestors: Abraham, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah the Hittite – and three of them are Gentile women. Israel has a long history of honoring righteous gentiles. Perhaps most interesting for us is Rahab, “the harlot.” Rahab had hidden Israelite spies on the promise that when Jericho fell they would rescue her and her family; not unlike our Canaanite woman who will do anything to rescue her daughter from “a demon.”

Just what does she do? Evidently, she walks out the door to meet him along the way. Then she recognizes Jesus as a son of David and begs for mercy for her daughter. Jesus ignores her plea. The disciples want her sent away. Jesus appears to concur in stating, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This hesitation on Jesus’ part strikes many of us as odd. Perhaps it is a matter of resource allocation – as Paul puts it, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” For Matthew, the launching of the Gentile mission begins at the very end of the gospel with proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.

Then the Canaanite woman kneels before him and pleads for help once again. Dr. Levine suggests that rather than worship, she subordinates herself to him, but also blocks his way forward. She confronts him head-on. She is determined to have her case heard. Then, he calls her and her people dogs: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This was not some special epithet of the Jews for non-Jews. In fact, in the Sermon On The Mount Jesus uses it against other Jews who will not accept his message. It was a common Mediterranean insult as far back as Aristotle and others. This is utterly unlike what we heard last weekend in Charlottesville: all the chanting of the “unite the right” folks were anti-Semitic – “blood and soil,” an old Nazi slogan, and morphing “you will not replace us” with “Jews will not replace us. No doubt many of these marchers were raised in churches hearing sermons that cleanse Jesus of his Jewishness and set up “the Jews” as the enemy of Christianity. Sermons filled with the very misconceptions I had been taught in seminary and commentaries. Indeed, it was not until Vatican II and Nostra aetate that the church began to admit its errors in this regard.

Then it happens. She says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. Levine sees this woman as perhaps the only person to get the better of Jesus! And her response puts her in the good company of Abraham, Moses, Job and others in the Biblical tradition who argue with the God of the Covenant! Yet, even in her retort she subordinates herself to him. Jesus says it is because of her “faith.” Yet, she is not required to convert. We don’t know if her faith is in God? In Jesus? In the power of prayer? I will suggest it is a faith like Rahab’s: her willingness to put her body and her life on-the-line, and even risk insulting the man standing before her with her retort to deliver her daughter from her distress. Faith is not necessarily a belief, but a way of acting in hope that positive change can and will come.

As to universalism, the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, can be seen as one long argument of the particular vs the universal. Yet, the covenant from the outset is to lead to blessings for all people, all nations. Jesus already stands squarely in the long standing Jewish tradition of reaching out to all people. Not to mention the risk it took for the Canaanite woman to risk approaching someone outside the safety of her own people. She too demonstrates an understanding of the universal need to reach out to others – Jesus the Israelite is “other” to her.

Really, this is her story more than Jesus’ story. We have seen such faith in action. I recall meeting a girl of fifteen from Afghanistan who was willing to blog about women’s education and empowerment in the face of retribution from the Taliban. And we all saw Heather Heyer step out in faith to confront hate, bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism. Her final internet posting said, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Hearing thunderous shouts of “blood and soil,” and “Jews will not replace us” tells us what the “unite the right” folks are all about. Heather is right – we ought to be outraged. Heather, like the Canaanite woman took to the streets to confront this wrong

Joseph and his brothers were reconciled by the grace of God: those of us who share in God’s mercy need to reflect that mercy in all that we say and do. The Canaanite woman and Jesus were reconciled by her willingness to risk it all for her daughter. Sadly, our nation seeks and desperately needs reconciliation in so many areas of our common life. Our demons are on display. Heather Heyer, like the Canaanite woman, walked out the door and took to the streets to seek justice. To silence the voices of evil. We see what acting in faith looks like. The time has come to act in faith, not talk about it.