Ascension 2022 - The Valley of Pain

 Ascension 2022 – The Valley of Pain

With little time to process the targeted killing of 10 people in a Buffalo, NY supermarket, suddenly we are immersed in the killing of 19 young elementary school children and two adults in Uvalde, TX. In both cases, the shooters purchased AR-15 style automatic weapons legally at age 18 from Federally licensed dealers. A photo from what looks like a church or school yard in Macedonia, OH shows 21 chairs lined up outside in front of the building: 19 child-size chairs, with an adult-size chair on either end – a photo summarizing more than 1,000 words of pain, grief, anger and sorrow. Meanwhile, we are reminded with horrendous images from the eastern Ukraine Donbas region almost daily where at least 4,000 non-combatant citizens have been killed by the Russian invaders.

 

One afternoon in May of 2012, I returned to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Ellicott City, MD, to find that my two closest colleagues in ministry, Brenda Brewington and The Reverend Mary Marguerite Kohn, had been shot execution style in the church office by a young man with a gun who took his own life in the woods nearby. Each time one of these mass shooting events takes place, there are countless numbers of people throughout the country and throughout the world who have memories of similar events in their own lives brought back as if it were happening again, over and over again. Right here. Right now.

 

It's easy to overlook what lies at the heart of storyteller Luke’s two versions of what the church remembers as The Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his two-volume work, Luke-Acts, beginning with the events of what we call Holy Week, the 120 men and women Luke tells us who were in Jerusalem with Jesus had witnessed the brutality of the Roman Empire’s use of crucifixion not only of their Lord and companion, but of others, all others, whom the Empire considered a threat to what the Empire deemed law and order of its authoritarian regime. Both Luke and John describe the 120 as hiding in fear of who among them may be next. Children and teachers throughout these United States know this kind of fear as they practice “active shooter” drills just to be able to go to school each day.

 

A colleague I have never met reminds us that Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and priest, has said, “All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it to those around us.” [i]

 

All week at our Live-Stream Noonday Prayer I have been reminded that the Ascension, which Luke describes twice, once at the end of the gospel and again at the opening of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles,[ii] is not really about Jesus finally, forty days after Easter, forty days having returned from the tomb to appear among his followers, finally returning from whence we all come and to where we will all one day return. It is about us, the survivors, and what we are to do, as Jesus modeled over and over again - what we need to do to transform our pain, our grief, our anger and what often feels like paralyzing, numbing sorrow.

 

Both accounts of the Ascension in Luke-Acts depict Jesus’s departure as a teachable moment. Jesus is giving instructions that must have sounded dangerous if not outright insane: remain in the city, stay in Jerusalem as “my witnesses” – witnesses as to how we are to live even in the midst of the terror and pain of our present circumstances as an occupied people. Like those 120 men and women disciples, we are to remember that Christ is already Lord of a Kingdom like none we have ever seen or experienced in human history. A Kingdom, a world, in which spears are to be turned into pruning hooks, and guns melted down to become gardening tools.[iii]

 

As the 120 men and women gaze up into the sky at the departing Christ, two men in white robes suddenly appear nearby. We have seen them before. The women immediately recognize them as the two men robed in white who greeted them at the empty tomb.[iv] “Why do you stand looking up into heaven?’ they now say. Translation: Did you not hear the man? You are to be his witnesses back in the city of Jerusalem, and in Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth! You have been called by him to live God’s peaceful tomorrow today! Get going! He has promised to send his Spirit, his Power, his Love, his Compassion to clothe you from on high as his witnesses, his ambassadors to all the peoples of the world. Get back to the city. Get to work! There is much work to be done to transform the pain, grief, anger and sorrows of the world into a joyful and peaceful tomorrow today!

 

Yet, the deeper truth of the Ascension is that Jesus never really leaves us. Whenever we gather to share the bread and the wine, his body, his blood, he is here. Whenever we reach out to feed the hungry, heal those in dis-ease, welcome the stranger, care for the poor, the discarded, the outsiders, he is here. Whenever we sing the glory of these Great Fifty Days of Easter, and pray the Psalms, he is here. Whenever we pray the final words of Holy Scripture, “Come, Lord Jesus, come,” he is here. He is with us in our pain, in our grief, in our anger and in our sorrow. Alleluia, alleluia he is here! Reminding us to stop gazing into heaven and get to work living God’s peaceful tomorrow today! Amen.

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[i] Tim Seitz-Brown on Facebook

[ii] Luke 24:44-53,  Acts 1:1-11

[iii] Ibid Seitz-Brown

[iv] Luke 24:1-12

Rogation Sunday 2022 Easter 6C

 

Healing the Earth / Healing Ourselves

“Let your ways be known upon earth, your saving health among all nations.” Psalm 67:2

            I was listening to Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and a First Nations member of the Civil Potawatomie Nation as she combines science with the wisdom of her elders as to our relationship with the Earth. In her nation’s native language there is no word for “it,” our much used indefinite pronoun. As a result, one does not think of, let alone address, a plant, or an animal, or even rocks, rivers and streams as “it,” anymore than anyone of us would refer to dear old Aunt Grace as “it.” Science does objectify such things, whereas Kimmerer’s nation treats everything that is of the Earth as living beings.

            “I can’t think of a single scientific study in the last few decades,” she offers, “that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than we think. It’s always the opposite, right? What we’re revealing is the fact that they have a capacity to learn, to have memory. And we’re at the edge of a wonderful revolution in really understanding the sentience of other beings.”[i]

            Psalm 67 reminds us that since the very beginning of creation, we were put on this fragile Earth our island home to know the Creator’s ways, and that there are ways to walk upon this planet as participants in the health of all nations – which ultimately, clearing all the other obstacles of religion, politics and national identities aside, depends on our stewardship, our caretaking, of all living things around us.

            The problem with a worldview infected by the Enlightenment and science objectifying everything around us is that we tend to carry on a one-way relationship with the things of nature and see this world as objects to be consumed and exploited with little or no concern for the needs of plants and animals and rocks, rivers and streams, and the earth itself, let alone any concern for the future not only of our planet, but of our children and grandchildren. Ironically, Kimmerer suggests we need to retreat to a child-like way of knowing, which is actually a worldly-wise way of knowing – a deep kind of attention that we pay as children can be a “doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. And it worries me greatly, she says, that today’s children can recognize 100 corporate logos and fewer than 10 plants.”[ii]

            Listening to this conversation, I was already approaching our lessons in Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, and John 5:1-9, asking myself, Just what does Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath and John exiled on the isle of Patmos’s vision of a new Earth, a new Jerusalem, have to do with Rogation Sunday? With no need for a cultic center like The Temple, all the rules of sacrifice and healing are out the window. Instead, there is a “river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” It’s all there.

            We need to allow this vision to reside in our hearts, not our minds. When we do, we begin to see that all we need for health and healing, even the healing of nations, has been given. In all that is alive all around us is all that we need to go beyond simply finding ways to sustain life on this planet, which is to treat creation as something we sustain only to be able to consume more and more. The vision invites us to go beyond sustaining and to open the door to reciprocity – “recognizing that we humans do have gifts that we can give in return for all that has been given to us, is … a really generative and creative way to be a human in the world. And some of our oldest teachings ask what does it mean to be an educated person? It means that you know what your gift is and how to give it, on behalf of the land and of the people, just like every single species has its own gift. And if one of those species and the gifts that it carries is missing in biodiversity, the ecosystem is … too simple. It doesn’t work as well when that gift is missing.”[iii]

            Jesus knows this reciprocity as he abandons rules that suggest you cannot heal on the Sabbath. He knows that the man waiting near the pool inside the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem ought not have to compete with others to get to the healing waters at just the moment the water is stirred. It turns out that survival does not depend on who wins and who loses, or who is the fittest – it depends on the kind of reciprocity, the giving and sharing of gifts, throughout the entire ecosystem. Jesus gives away his gift of healing. We say we know this, and yet the allure of greed and conspicuous consumption of resources tempts us to ignore what even more ancient civilizations have long known. Every plant, every ant, every drop of water, every molecule of breathable air is essential to the earth and to one another.

            Four times a year we renew our Baptismal Covenant to shape our knowing God’s ways upon earth, ways meant to lead to healing a fragile Earth as well as the healing of relationships with one another, including, says Jesus, our enemies and nations. Perhaps we need to regularly renew a covenant of reciprocity with Creation itself. Kimmerer suggests such a covenant might look like this: “We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity. Plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift we must pass on just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be for mourning, for the passing of polar bears, the silence of cranes, for the death of rivers, and the memory of snow.”[iv]

            The elders of the Civil Potawatomie Nation remind us that life is a dance if we remember that the Earth is a gift we must pass on just as it came to us. Our ceremonies must always help us to remember, all our dances will be dances of grief and mourning should we forget to regularly join in the Dance of the Giveaway, the Dance of Reciprocity, that our hearts and eyes may be opened to see all of Creation as living, and true, and ready to give back to us the wisdom of healing that is to be for all peoples, for all nations, for all time. May the Creator’s ways be known upon earth. Amen.

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[i] The Intelligence of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer with Krista Tippett, On Being, May 12, 2022 for this and all further references to their conversation, https://onbeing.org/programs/robin-wall-kimmerer-the-intelligence-of-plants-2022/

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Ibid

The Primacy of Love : Part VI

 

The Primacy of Love: Part VI

The first words I saw online Saturday morning were, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a strong mind.” A friend from my days in the gym, Armando Ortiz had posted them on Facebook. I was immediately reminded of an afternoon when I was alone in a large church in Rochester, walking up the aisle, and saw these words from 2 Timothy 1:7 in stained glass. Directly across the aisle was another window with these words from 2 Corinthians 13:11, “The God of Love shall be with you.” I remember standing there in that church and repeating these two verses over and over to myself. Love and a Sound Mind.

 

We tend to think of a sound mind in terms of knowledge, and a sort of unspoken assumption that more knowledge will lead us to greater success – both personal success and success in solving this world’s great problems and crises. Whereas, Ilia Delio reminds us that Bernard of Clairvaux realized that love itself is a kind of knowledge possessed of its own kind of logic. “The knowledge of love is not of the intellect alone but of the heart, an integrative knowing in the field of awareness. Knowledge through love is performative, for the one who sees the truth of things becomes a revealer of the truth through the actions of love. True knowledge is never an end in itself but always a step toward and ever deeper, richer transforming union.”[i]

 

This is what Jesus is talking about in John chapter 10, “I and the Father, we are one.” The Judeans who are questioning his identity, “Are you or are you not the one we are waiting for, the Christos, the Anointed, the Messiah?” A question for which they have preconceived and prefabricated answers – characteristics or certain minimum requirements to qualify as God’s anointed Christ or messiah.

 

Whereas, Jesus points away from himself to the performative actions of love which he does on behalf of Abba, God, Father – turning water into wine, healing those in need, feeding those who hunger and thirst for even a small sign that God is their protective shepherd as well as literal, aching hunger for a scrap of a meal shared with others – five thousand others on one occasion alone.

 

“The Father and I are one,” he says, in our love, our mercy, our forgiveness and compassion for all people. The Father and I are united through our actions of love and mercy. The sheep or our pasture know this and join us in the unfolding of a world of justice, peace and love for all persons. We are artisans of the future. God’s future. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a strong mind. Join us, and know that the God of Love shall be with you.

 

In the very next verse, his questioners pick up rocks to stone him. They try to arrest him. They accuse him of blasphemy, profaning the very name of their God – as if God is some sort of possession that needs defending. They are afraid of such perfect love that cares more for others than for themselves. This is madness, they must think. And of course, madness it is! It is a Holy Madness to empty oneself on behalf of others – others you do not even know. Cannot possibly know. Where outside of Facebook can anyone truly ‘know’ five thousand people! And yet, he gives away all that he has so that they may be fed – which goes far beyond a morsel of bread and fish, but simply a sign that someone, anyone, cares about us and our need for love, and care, and wholeness. So that our fears may be set aside and eclipsed by the source and energy of all life and the entire universe – love.[ii]

 

Before we ever met, Armando would see me at the gym, flailing at the various punching bags until one day he walked over, and almost gently, demonstrated how one can strike each of the various bags in a manner that can enhance your speed, your strength and your attentiveness, your focus. For Armando it was a small gesture of what we used to call brotherly love born out of a deep faithfulness to the life of his shepherd, the Good Shepherd, who leads us beside still waters. For me it made all the difference not only in learning the mechanics of the “manly art,” but was evidence that when we walk together as children of God the Father we don’t ever have to worry. Through this world of trouble, we have to love one another. Even in the very smallest of things, in the smallest of gestures of care for one another. For it is even in the smallest gestures of love that we and the Father are one.

 

Elsewhere, our Bible reads in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

 

We are surrounded by much fear every day. We are encouraged by bad shepherds every day to fear one another. We are told outright that it is dangerous to love one another. That ‘the Other’ is not to be trusted. Influenced by such bad shepherds we feel a need to pick up stones and throw them at one another. Or, worse. Much, much worse.

 

May we begin each morning, as my friend Armando started my day, reminding ourselves, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a strong mind.” That, “The God of love shall be with you.” That through the eyes of love, we see the face of God. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. There is no fear in love, for the God of love shall be with you.

Amen.

 

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[i] Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2022) p. 80-81)

[ii] Ibid p.82

Your Image of God Creates You Easter 3C 2022

 

Your Image of God Creates You Easter 3C 2022

Your image of God creates you. Richard Rohr wrote this. It is surely a provocative assertion. I have written this on a post-it note, posted on the window in front of me as I Live Stream Noonday Prayer Monday thru Friday. Along comes the story of this fishing expedition in John 21:1-19, with the bonus story of Peter’s rehabilitation after denying Christ three times during his trial and execution. This story illustrates my image of God: Jesus sitting on a beach with a charcoal fire, grilling some fish and bread, saying, “Come and have breakfast,” and then distributing bread and fish to each of them, including Peter. For in the end, it’s all about Love.

 

Peter decides to go fishing at night, and some others come along. They revert right back to what they were doing before Jesus called them saying, “Follow me.” Despite several appearances of the Risen Christ, the events in Jerusalem seemed make clear that proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ is going to be dangerous work.

 

Notice that Jesus knows just where to find them – fishing right where he had found them in the beginning. He also knows they have been fishing all night, and their net is empty. The fishermen see an unfamiliar figure on the beach calling out to them, “You have no fish, have you?” It would be natural for them to think, who does this guy think he is? We’re fishermen. We know what we’re doing. But alas, they reply, “No.” This stranger tells them to throw the net on the other side of the boat - to reverse what they are doing. Repent means to turn back, reverse course, and walk in the way of God.

 

Suddenly, the net is filled with very many fishes! There are 153 large fish! The boat is foundering under the weight of the net. One of the fishermen, known only as “the one Jesus loved,” cries out, “It is the Lord!” Peter is so excited, working all night with no clothes on, dresses himself and then jumps into the water fully clothed to go ashore while the other labor to drag the net full of fishes to the shore.

 

There on the shore is the stranger sitting by a charcoal fire, grilling some bread and fish. He calls out to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." Demonstrating the same kind of humility that has characterized him throughout the gospels. He might have said, “Bring the fish I helped you to catch,” but he doesn’t. Humility is at the heart of the Christ imaged life.

 

At the heart of the story, he distributes Bread, and then Fish. It is a sacramental meal. It is Eucharistic. He is giving it all away as he did in Jerusalem on the Cross. They recognize him in the breaking of the bread. Then he asks Peter, the denier, three times, “Do you love me?” Peter says yes three times, redeeming himself. Jesus says to tend my sheep and feed my lambs. And come, follow me. Love is giving it all away as I have, Peter. It’s dangerous work, but it’s what we are here to do: love one another, love our neighbors, and even love our enemies.

 

Part of the Ordination Process in the Diocese of Rhode Island, where I first perceived the call to follow Jesus, was a series of Canonical Exams. Twice a year for three years we would troop back to Rhode Island for these exams. It was usually an hour written exam followed by a group oral exam with the Commission on Ministry. At one of my last exams, New Testament, I figured someone on the Commission would ask us each to share our favorite New Testament verse. I was prepared. Sure enough, they asked. When my turn came, I said, “Come and have breakfast.” There was an awkward silence. A priest on the Commission who had been very tough on us every year asked, in a somewhat disbelieving tone of voice, “Where is THAT in the New Testament?” I paused. All eyes were on me and him as he sought to trip me up. “Why, it’s in the 21^st chapter of John, the third resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples who were fishing all night with no success.” I paused again. “And, it happens to be the Gospel for this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Easter, Year C.” The room was silent. My student colleagues were fighting the impulse to grin.

 

This is the image of God I have treasured since that day in Rhode Island. One like us, tending a fire on the beach, grilling bread and fish, and despite whatever failures and disappointment the disciples exhibited that night on Lake Tiberias – a reminder that the Empire still surrounded them on all sides – Jesus empties himself, taking the form of a servant, not considering equality with God something to be grasped, but rather is to be given away, because as he had recently experienced, we are all going to give it all away one day. Such a God, inviting us to breakfast, still reaches out to us and asks, “Do you love me? If so tend and feed my sheep. And follow me. Wherever I go, you go; wherever you go, I’ll be there. And we know where he goes. To the lost, the rejected, the broken-hearted, and all those with physical, mental and spiritual dis-ease.

 

The Scotsman and Franciscan, John Duns Scotus famously believed that sin is not the reason the Christ comes to us, Love is. Before the moon, the sun and the stars were born out of the energy of whatever Big first Banged, the Christ and Christ’s love were hidden in the heart of God. Whether or not sin had come into the world, and there is ample evidence all around us that it has, Christ would have come. Christ is the first in God’s intention to create and to love.[i]

 

Your image of God creates you. Pray with this image of Christ on the beach inviting us to “Come and have breakfast!” Let him give you his bread as a sign of his eternal forgiveness and love. We can be grateful for John to have included this episode of Christ tending and feeding his friends when they were lost and needed a shepherd.   

 

Sit for some time with the God who says, “Come and have breakfast. Who gives you his bread. Who trusts you to accept his never ending Love so you might give it away to others. All others. Amen.

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[i] Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2022) p.34.

Earth Day 2022 Faithfulness: Easter 2C

Earth Day 2022 Faithfulness: Easter 2C

There is no doubt! No, really. When English Bibles since the King James Version have Jesus saying to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe,” it’s not there in the Greek text. It does not say doubt.[i] The Greek is pistos, an adjective meaning faithful or trustworthy. Richard Swanson translates this as, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful.”[ii] Which is just what Thomas has been up to this moment throughout the Gospel of John: faithful and trustworthy to a “t”!

It was Thomas, after all, who when word came to Jesus that Lazarus was ill, and Jesus says, “Let’s go to him,” all the disciples but one say, “No, there are people around Jerusalem and Bethany who want to kill you!” Only Thomas, faithful and trustworthy, says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”[iii] Thomas is faithful and trustworthy. Jesus knows this. There’s no doubt about it. We need to dispense with anything to do with “Doubting Thomas.” Let there be no doubt about that! For Thomas is alone among this room full of disciples to declare, “My Lord and my God,” “My Kurios and my Theos!” Kurios in the Bible is the God of Mercy, and Theos is the God of Justice.

Thomas recognize Jesus as the God of Justice and Mercy. Those first reading or hearing John’s story of Jesus would have recognized that the moment Jesus breathes on them he bestows upon them the gift of God’s ruach, God's Spirit. They would recognize it as the same Spirit-Breath that broods over the chaotic waters of Creation in Genesis1 verse 2. The same Spirit-Breath that God breathes into a handful of dust and water to form the first man in Genesis 2:7. The same Spirit-Breath of which God says to Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”[iv]

 As he breathes on them Jesus says, “Shalom, Peace be with you.” If there is a single word that summarizes the controlling vision of world history in the Bible, it is Shalom. Shalom says that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony, justice and security toward joy and well-being for all, for every creature under heaven, and for every living thing - the very earth itself. The community of God’s faithful are to understand themselves as members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny: the care and management of all God’s creation.[v]

Thus, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful,” is Jesus’s invitation to Thomas and all who are present to live into God’s dream of Shalom, and to share in the management of all God’s creation. It is this dream of God’s Shalom that resists all our tendencies to division, hostility, fear, drivenness and misery.”[vi] By saying, “Shalom,” and breathing upon them, Jesus reminds all who would be faithful to him and the God of Shalom of our calling, our responsibility, to the care and management of all of God’s creation: every person, every creature, every plant, every body of water, every molecule of breathable air. We might say with some degree of confidence, that this moment among followers of Jesus that evening the day of resurrection was in fact the very first Earth Day. It just took until April 22, 1970 for us to institute an annual reminder of this: our central task as humans interdependent on one another, all creatures and the environment itself. Our lives depend on the lives of the whole environment. This suggests the importance of Earth Day which will be observed later this week.

It would not be until 2008 for Harper One to publish The Green Bible in which all passages concerned with environmental stewardship are printed in Green – it’s a “Green Letter Bible”! The Foreword to The Green Bible was written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says, in part,

“I would not know how to be a human being, how to think as a human being, how to walk as a human being, how to talk or how to eat as a human being except by learning from other human beings…We’re made for community, we’re made for togetherness, we’re made for friendship…to live in a delicate network of interdependence, for we are made for complementarity. I have gifts you don’t have. And you have gifts I don’t have. Thus, we are made different so that we can know the need of one another. And this is a fundamental law of our being.

“All kinds of things go horribly wrong when we flout this law – when we don’t ensure that God’s children everywhere have a supply of clean water, a safe environment, a decent home, a full stomach. We could do that if we remembered that we are created members of one family, the human family, God’s family.

“We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God’s family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources. We need to be accountable to God’s family. Once we start living in a way that is people-friendly to all of God’s family, we will also be environment-friendly.

“As you read The Green Bible starting in Genesis, you will see that after God created birds, fish and animals he created humans to…act compassionately and gently toward all forms of life. The future of our fragile, beautiful planet home is in our hands…It is possible to have a new kind of world, a world where there will be more compassion, more gentleness, more caring, more laughter, more joy for all of God’s creation, because that is God’s dream. And God says, “Help me, help me, help me realize my dream”[vii] 

When Jesus says, “Shalom. Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you”; when Jesus breathes on them; when Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not become unfaithful, but faithful,” he is speaking to us - all of us who would be disciples of his. Jesus says to us, “Help me realize my dream - my Father's Dream of Shalom for all creation.” This Second Sunday of Easter ask us, whe will we embrace The Dream of God's Shalom? When will we accept the gift of the Holy Spirit? When will we let the Love of God be poured into our hearts? When will we, like Thomas, proclaim in all that we say and all that we do, My Lord and my God? Let there be Justice and Mercy for all. There is no doubt that all the children of God, all the creatures of the Earth, and the Earth itself, await our faithful and trustworthy commitment to live in a way that is people-friendly to all of God’s family, and thus environmentally friendly as well.  Amen.

 

[i] John 20:27

[ii] Swanson, Richard, Provoking the Gospel of John (The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2010) p.444.

[iii] John 11: 15-16

[iv] Ezekiel 37: 4-5

[v] Brueggemann, Walter, Living Toward A Vision (United Church Press, NY, NY: 1976) p.15-16.

[vi] Ibid, Brueggemann, p.16.

[vii] Tutu, Archbishop Desmond, The Green Bible (Harper One, NY, NY: 2008) p. I13-14. 

Easter 2022 The Primacy of Love Part 3

Easter 2022    The Primacy of Love Part 3

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Since Maundy Thursday evening, we have been on a journey of Love. We come from Love. We belong to Love. We return to Love. Love is all around. We rise from the waters of Baptism, and the first words we hear, just as Jesus did that day in the River Jordan: You are God’s Beloved!

God is well pleased with you!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Mary Magdalene, her associate Joanna, and Mary the mother of James are perplexed. What has happened to our Lord? They run off to tell The Eleven that the tomb is empty. Two men in dazzling clothes reminded us he had said he would rise again!  After joining the others in dismissing the women’s witness as an idle tale, Peter runs out to see for himself. Indeed, the tomb is empty! He goes home to sort it out. How could this have happened?

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Only the poets among us can imagine what has happened and how it has happened. Marie Howe dares to describe what was going on in the tomb before the women arrived:

Easter

Two of the fingers on his right hand

had been broken

so when he poured back into that hand it surprised

him – it hurt him at first.

And the whole body was too small. Imagine

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

He came into it two ways:

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

And from the center – suddenly all at once.

Then he felt himself awake in the dark alone.[i]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Sounds about right. The Love of God in Christ is like that. No small tunnel of a tomb carved into stone can contain it. It must have been surprising, amazing and astonishing, even to him! He who had repeatedly said it would happen. But even he who, as evangelist John points out is the source of all creation, even he cannot possibly know exactly how love’s attraction really works all of the time. To awaken in the dark, all alone. Alone after all that crowd that had followed him into the City of Peace, which had become in no time at all the City of Brutality and the Violence of those who somehow believed Love could be hammered to death. Violins. Violence. Silence.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Imagine, just for a moment that we are there – as evangelist Luke means to take us there in the here and now. The last few days have been a whirlwind, and danger was lurking behind every stone of the city’s historic walls. What do we bring to the tomb? What do we expect to see? Are we capable of being amazed like Peter? Or, are we perplexed, like the women? What do we bring to the tomb of the crucified One?

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

We bring…Easter Baskets! Filled with candies and toys, and money, and whatever we can put into our baskets. Our Easter Baskets. My dear friend and poet, Pamela Pruitt sees through it all:

 

 

Easter Baskets

Each year

We try

To bring

Our Easter Baskets

To God

With all

Accomplishments,

Inside.

 

But,

They are

always

Empty

Because

One cannot Measure

Love

In a

a

Box.

 

God smiles

At us

Anyway.

Filling our baskets

Instead

With

the

Forgiving breath

That continues

To inspire

All our efforts.[ii]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

One cannot measure love in a box! One cannot measure the love, and breath, and mercy, and forgiveness of God at all! There is a Wideness to God’s Mercy! By the inspiration – the breathing in – of the Holy Spirit, all is gift. The gift is Love. Love that cannot be measured. It is love that reawakens us anew, renewed, restored, always to begin again, and again, and again! All that we have, all that we are, is gift, freely given to us by a God of gracious Love![iii]

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

This is the heart of Resurrection Life – Like Christ, always we begin again! We are God’s Beloved. God is well pleased with us. We come from love, created in the image of God’s gracious, immeasurable Love. We return to love. And we are created to be the love that is all around. This is the deep secret of all life throughout all the created universe.

 

Jesus departs from his lonely and empty tomb to be with us and to call us to follow him so that we might do something beautiful with our lives and bear much fruit.

 

Easter says: The world needs you, the church needs you, Jesus needs you.

They need your light and your love.

 

Know, my sisters and brothers, there is a hidden place in your heart where Jesus lives!

Let Jesus live in you. Go forward with Him.

 

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

 

And so are we! And so are we!

Amen!

---

[i] Howe, Marie, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W.Norton, New York:2008) p. 24

[ii] Pamela Pruitt, Dec.15, 2021

[iii] Delio, Ilya, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis:2022) p.55 

Good Friday 2022 The Primacy of Love Part 2

Good Friday 2022 – The Primacy of Love Part 2

Lord, our God. You are the clear demonstration of yourself.

You are Joyful Love. You are Boundless Good.

You see the union between yourself and that external existence which

Owes you the highest love, even if there were nothing created that has

Betrayed your Love. You see the Christ who comes as the One

Who is Pure Love, who suffers and redeems your people.  Amen.

 

This is a prayer of John Duns Scotus, that thirteenth century Franciscan Friar and theologian who, as we listen to his prayer, asserts that Sin is not the reason for Christ, Love is. “For all eternity God has willed to love a creature to grace and glory. Before the stars were born, Christ was in the heart of God, ‘hidden since the foundation of the world’ (Colossians 1:26). Whether or not Sin ever entered into history, Christ would have come; Christ is first in God’s intention to love and to create.”[i]

 

Perhaps I have always sensed what Duns Scotus says is true. Perhaps that is why I have never found walking the Stations of the Cross all that helpful for me personally. Especially since a number of the 14 stations are not scenes from the four Evangelists description of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Chalk that up to the Protestant in me!

 

Years ago, I used to have children draw the six “biblical” stations, and then walk around the church or outdoors and look at and pray with each drawing. I shall never forget one little girl drew “Jesus takes up the cross.” There in her drawing was Jesus who looked very tall and mighty, holding a tiny cross in one hand! I thought, “Jesus makes the cross looks so small!” And this is one of the fundamental truths of Good Friday, and what makes it so Good: Jesus, the Love of God in Jesus the Christ, makes the Cross, and the Roman Empire which nailed him to the Cross, and all human Power Structures which try to contain and limit Love, look so very very small.

 

Several days a week I have been spending time at the Shrine of St. Anthony, a Franciscan Friary. I’ve tried to walk the outdoor Stations of the Cross, but what speaks to my heart in the language of Duns Scotus is a statue of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, that Polish Franciscan priest who while interned at Auschwitz, witnessed 10 men who were chosen to be starved to death in retribution for one who had tried to escape. One of the 10 cried out, “My wife! My children!” Kolbe volunteered to take his place, thus saving his life.

 

According to an eyewitness, who was an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. After they had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe remained alive. The guards wanted the bunker emptied, so they gave Kolbe a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection. He died on 14 August 1941. His remains were cremated on 15 August, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.

 

I often sit or stand in front of the life-size statue of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, praying for Ukraine, praying for all who suffer. And as I look into his face, I think, “He sure makes the Cross look small.” Father Kolbe looks more like the Love of God incarnate than the stations of the cross that surround his little shrine.

 

In the chapel at the Friary, there is a statue of a woman, holding a cross. The cross is really a cross shaped mirror with a wooden frame around it, and the face of Christ is at the center of the cross pieces. As I stand before it, my face is reflected in the mirror just below the face of Christ – the face of Love Incarnate. I used to think the woman was his mother, Mary of Nazareth, until I learned that Saint Claire of Assisi, Francis’s sister, was known as “The Mirror Saint” because she “drew her spiritual insights from her deep reflection on the cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote to her friend, Agnes of Prague that the cross reflects our true image. ‘Gaze on this cross every day,’ she admonished Agnes, ‘and study your face within it, so that you may be adorned with virtues within and without … when our face expresses what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate – God’s unconditional agape love.”[ii]

 

What were they thinking when they nailed Jesus to the cross? Did they think they could somehow kill Love? That Love would die on a Roman Cross? That that would be the end of Love?

 

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and handed over his spirit. We who gaze upon the cross year in and year out on Good Friday, we who are to study our faces within it, so that we may be adorned with virtues within and without: we are the recipients of his Spirit. When our faces express what fills the heart of the Christ who was nailed to the cross as his final act of God’s Love for us all, it is then that we image Christ in all that we do and all that we say. It is then that we can truly seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself. It is then that we can strive for Justice and Peace for all persons, respecting the dignity of every human being.

 

It is then that our lives become Good News for the whole world, and everything therein. It is this transfiguration of our hearts that makes Good Friday so Good.

 

Lord, our God. You are the clear demonstration of yourself.

You are Joyful Love. You are Boundless Good.

You see the union between yourself and that external existence which

Owes you the highest love, even if there were nothing created that has

Betrayed your Love. You see the Christ who comes as the One

Who is Pure Love, who suffers and redeems your people. 

Sin is not the reason for Christ – Love is.   Amen.

 

 

---

[i] Delio, Ilya, The Primacy of Love, (Fortress, Minneapolis:2022) p.34

[ii] Ibid, p.50.