Sermons from the Church of the Incarnation
Sep 01, 2019 |
Proper 17, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Proper 17, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
Proverbs 25:6-7
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
+ + +
I’m one of those rare people who have never watched an episode of the show Game of Thrones: all I know is context-free cultural references. But over the past eight years it’s been impossible not to hear about things like the Red Wedding, the White Walkers, dragons, armies, and a gripping mix of violence, intrigue, and high fantasy, all centered around the manipulations, alliances, and betrayals involved in jockeying for the right to sit on the Iron Throne.
Palace intrigue, jockeying for position: it’s a formula that seems to work for TV in general. It’s been at the heart of other recent series from The Tudors (set in 16th-century England) to House of Cards (set in modern-day Washington). The record-setting number of hirings and firings in the current presidential administration means we hear a lot about the game of power in real life too. It’s a game with lots of strategies. But false humility is often a good one. It pays to be visible, but not too visible. People in power don’t like to be outshined. You don’t want to overplay your hand. Better to bide your time, kiss up to the boss or king or president, and then bask in their praise when it comes your way.
Now Jesus’ parable about taking the lowest seat at a banquet seems a bit strange, in that it seems to fit right into this pattern. Don’t march right up and sit by the host only to be embarrassed; instead, act humble and then reap the rewards. It seems to have more in common with Game of Thrones than with the upside-down values of God’s kingdom. It’s conventional wisdom, all right. It actually echoes our first reading from Proverbs almost word for word. So there’s not much original that Jesus is saying here. Which probably means that we have to look deeper.
One important thing about this story is the situation in which Jesus tells it. Luke tells us he says this while at a banquet, watching the guests jockey for their seat positions. So this isn’t about abstract theoretical advice. Instead, it’s almost as if Jesus is naming the elephant in the room by describing exactly the behavior he’s seeing. It’s as if, while the guests sidle up to the head table while trying not to look too obvious, Jesus announces to the room, “You know what would work even better?” And then reminds them of this bit of canny folk wisdom from the book of Proverbs. It’s as if, perhaps, Jesus isn’t so much suggesting that false humility is the best way to get ahead, as exposing the absurdity of the entire game.
And now after exposing it, he doubles down by imagining a world beyond those games entirely, where the point isn’t to gain honor and respect in the eyes of others, but to give them away. “When you give a banquet, don’t invite your friends and neighbors who can repay you. When you give a banquet, invite those who are poor, those who can’t repay you.” Put it on God’s tab, Jesus says. You’ll be repaid all right, but not in the world’s currency. Not in job prospects or gossip-column mentions or Twitter likes. Not in this world’s terms, but those of the next.
How do we practice Jesus’ call to live like this, a life not based on status or reciprocation but on totally free, lavish grace?
One way we try, a little bit, here at Incarnation is our Sunday morning Open Table breakfast. Every week, before our 8:00 service, we serve a hot breakfast to all comers. It’s free. It’s good. You can have some, no matter who you are. It’s a small, imperfect, but real and meaningful sign of God’s kingdom. It’s a perfect counterpart to the other breakfast we celebrate each Sunday, the one in this room around this table. That one is a full meal, with plates and silverware and napkins. This one is ritualized, with a morsel and sip for all. Each of these two meals is a a symbol of the great wedding banquet we’re all invited to. And these two meals need each other, in a way. The Open Table breakfast is an invitation for all, offered freely in the name of Jesus. For those who find themselves drawn to Jesus by that invitation, there’s an invitation to join him in another way by sharing his body and blood at this table. But for those who share his body and blood at this table, the very life of Jesus we receive here catapults us back out to love and serve and seek our neighbors, maybe by serving at Open Table, among all the other ways we might find ourselves living out our call to follow Jesus in the world.
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” says our second lesson this morning; “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” It’s a reference to an ancient story of Abraham and Sarah, who showed hospitality to three traveling strangers who turned out to be the angels of the LORD. But it’s also a reference for all of us, because each time we are generous, each time we offer kindness to a stranger, each time we give without thinking about the return, it’s to God that we are giving.
May God teach and train our hearts, day by day, to be soft and generous. May this eucharist fill us with the life of Jesus, and send us into the world to serve. May we live a life beyond status, beyond prestige, where all are welcome because all are guests of the one who gave everything for us.
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
+ + +
I’m one of those rare people who have never watched an episode of the show Game of Thrones: all I know is context-free cultural references. But over the past eight years it’s been impossible not to hear about things like the Red Wedding, the White Walkers, dragons, armies, and a gripping mix of violence, intrigue, and high fantasy, all centered around the manipulations, alliances, and betrayals involved in jockeying for the right to sit on the Iron Throne.
Palace intrigue, jockeying for position: it’s a formula that seems to work for TV in general. It’s been at the heart of other recent series from The Tudors (set in 16th-century England) to House of Cards (set in modern-day Washington). The record-setting number of hirings and firings in the current presidential administration means we hear a lot about the game of power in real life too. It’s a game with lots of strategies. But false humility is often a good one. It pays to be visible, but not too visible. People in power don’t like to be outshined. You don’t want to overplay your hand. Better to bide your time, kiss up to the boss or king or president, and then bask in their praise when it comes your way.
Now Jesus’ parable about taking the lowest seat at a banquet seems a bit strange, in that it seems to fit right into this pattern. Don’t march right up and sit by the host only to be embarrassed; instead, act humble and then reap the rewards. It seems to have more in common with Game of Thrones than with the upside-down values of God’s kingdom. It’s conventional wisdom, all right. It actually echoes our first reading from Proverbs almost word for word. So there’s not much original that Jesus is saying here. Which probably means that we have to look deeper.
One important thing about this story is the situation in which Jesus tells it. Luke tells us he says this while at a banquet, watching the guests jockey for their seat positions. So this isn’t about abstract theoretical advice. Instead, it’s almost as if Jesus is naming the elephant in the room by describing exactly the behavior he’s seeing. It’s as if, while the guests sidle up to the head table while trying not to look too obvious, Jesus announces to the room, “You know what would work even better?” And then reminds them of this bit of canny folk wisdom from the book of Proverbs. It’s as if, perhaps, Jesus isn’t so much suggesting that false humility is the best way to get ahead, as exposing the absurdity of the entire game.
And now after exposing it, he doubles down by imagining a world beyond those games entirely, where the point isn’t to gain honor and respect in the eyes of others, but to give them away. “When you give a banquet, don’t invite your friends and neighbors who can repay you. When you give a banquet, invite those who are poor, those who can’t repay you.” Put it on God’s tab, Jesus says. You’ll be repaid all right, but not in the world’s currency. Not in job prospects or gossip-column mentions or Twitter likes. Not in this world’s terms, but those of the next.
How do we practice Jesus’ call to live like this, a life not based on status or reciprocation but on totally free, lavish grace?
One way we try, a little bit, here at Incarnation is our Sunday morning Open Table breakfast. Every week, before our 8:00 service, we serve a hot breakfast to all comers. It’s free. It’s good. You can have some, no matter who you are. It’s a small, imperfect, but real and meaningful sign of God’s kingdom. It’s a perfect counterpart to the other breakfast we celebrate each Sunday, the one in this room around this table. That one is a full meal, with plates and silverware and napkins. This one is ritualized, with a morsel and sip for all. Each of these two meals is a a symbol of the great wedding banquet we’re all invited to. And these two meals need each other, in a way. The Open Table breakfast is an invitation for all, offered freely in the name of Jesus. For those who find themselves drawn to Jesus by that invitation, there’s an invitation to join him in another way by sharing his body and blood at this table. But for those who share his body and blood at this table, the very life of Jesus we receive here catapults us back out to love and serve and seek our neighbors, maybe by serving at Open Table, among all the other ways we might find ourselves living out our call to follow Jesus in the world.
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” says our second lesson this morning; “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” It’s a reference to an ancient story of Abraham and Sarah, who showed hospitality to three traveling strangers who turned out to be the angels of the LORD. But it’s also a reference for all of us, because each time we are generous, each time we offer kindness to a stranger, each time we give without thinking about the return, it’s to God that we are giving.
May God teach and train our hearts, day by day, to be soft and generous. May this eucharist fill us with the life of Jesus, and send us into the world to serve. May we live a life beyond status, beyond prestige, where all are welcome because all are guests of the one who gave everything for us.
Aug 25, 2019 |
Proper 16, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Proper 16, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
+ + +
“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
That’s one of the Ten Commandments, either #3 or #4 depending on whose numbering system you use. They aren’t actually numbered in either of the two places they appear in Scripture, so Jews, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and other Protestants have all developed slightly different numbering systems.
Those two places are the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. And each one gives a different rationale for this commandment. Exodus says: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy … for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.” So in Exodus the Sabbath is based on God’s own day of rest after the creation. Deuteronomy: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy … (for) you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” So in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath is based on liberation: the day of rest is a sign that the people of Israel are no longer slaves who must work seven days a week, but the free people of God.
Today we hear about Jesus performing an act of liberation on the Sabbath. He even seems to suggest that it’s especially appropriate on the Sabbath. His rationale is that if some forms of work, like feeding and watering your animals to sustain life, are appropriate on the Sabbath, then how much more should the life of a child of God be restored to wholeness on this day. Jesus is acting as a rabbi giving an interpretation of the Law, one that differs from the synagogue leader’s interpretation. Often this passage has been misused by Christians to portray all of Judaism as a kind of loveless, rules-driven religion, and to portray the Sabbath as a kind of joyless day where people aren’t allowed to do anything fun. Anyone who’s ever spent Shabbat with an observant Jewish friend knows better. The Sabbath is a day of joy and love, family, prayer, and play. In opposing the synagogue leader Jesus isn’t setting aside Judaism or the Law; he’s stepping into a rich stream of tradition of interpreting the Law on how to honor Shabbat as a day of both rest and liberation.
There’s another misunderstanding Christians have often fallen into about the Sabbath, and that’s to apply the word and the concept to Sunday. Sometimes we hear Sunday called a “Christian Sabbath.” But from the very beginning Christians understood Sunday as something different from the Sabbath. The earliest Christians, who were Jews, kept Sabbath on Saturday—and met together after the Sabbath to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week. It’s certainly appropriate to treat Sunday as a special day, to refrain from work when we’re able, and to do family and church things on Sunday. But we miss the mark when we think of Sunday as a kind of replacement Sabbath, especially when that becomes the same kind of joyless stereotype that was wrong in the first place. From a Christian perspective, Saturday is the Sabbath, the seventh day of creation, a day of rest—one that’s not binding on Christians who are Gentiles, but to be respected nonetheless. Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, sometimes also called the eighth day, as if to say that the resurrection of Jesus bursts out of the boundaries of the calendar to launch a new era of history.
So we gather on the Lord’s Day. And although it’s not the Sabbath, our worship should still carry some of those qualities of both rest and liberation, which aren’t opposites but part of a single unified whole.
Take out a prayer book for a moment, the red book in the pew rack. Turn to page 855. This is part of the Episcopal Church’s catechism, a simple overview of the church’s teaching. If you haven’t seen it before, I recommend it. If you don’t have a prayer book at home, it’s available online.[1] Let’s read just the first two questions and answers on this page:
Sometimes we think of worship on the one hand and mission on the other. We might think of going to church on Sundays to refuel our gas tank, and then going out the rest of the week to practice our mission of doing justice. But in reality it’s much more intermingled than that. We are doing justice right here, right now, as we worship. We are praying for ourselves and our neighbors. We are sharing the peace of Christ with friends and strangers. We are treating one another with courtesy and reverence, sharing the body and blood of Christ together, young and old, rich and poor at the same rail, receiving the same food and drink, all receiving enough, none receiving too much. “The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships,” the catechism says. And it pursues its mission outside these doors too. Worship is part of mission, not separate from it.
And mission is part of worship too. When we share food or drink with someone who’s hungry. When we advocate for housing for everyone who needs it, or for fair treatment of people who come here seeking safety or a better life. When we do the hard work of loving our families and friends and coworkers and neighbors in Jesus’ name—each of those things is also an act of worship, because it gives praise and glory to God.
Today Jesus lifts up a woman who has been bowed down for eighteen years. Today still he is lifting us up too, and enlisting us with him in sharing his mission. Today too we are baptizing David Del Vecchio into that mission: a mission of worship and prayer, of justice and service; a mission that continues until that great Sabbath when our worship and our liberation are complete.
[1] See The Online Book of Common Prayer, https://bcponline.org/Misc/catechism.html.
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17
+ + +
“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
That’s one of the Ten Commandments, either #3 or #4 depending on whose numbering system you use. They aren’t actually numbered in either of the two places they appear in Scripture, so Jews, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and other Protestants have all developed slightly different numbering systems.
Those two places are the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. And each one gives a different rationale for this commandment. Exodus says: “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy … for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.” So in Exodus the Sabbath is based on God’s own day of rest after the creation. Deuteronomy: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy … (for) you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” So in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath is based on liberation: the day of rest is a sign that the people of Israel are no longer slaves who must work seven days a week, but the free people of God.
Today we hear about Jesus performing an act of liberation on the Sabbath. He even seems to suggest that it’s especially appropriate on the Sabbath. His rationale is that if some forms of work, like feeding and watering your animals to sustain life, are appropriate on the Sabbath, then how much more should the life of a child of God be restored to wholeness on this day. Jesus is acting as a rabbi giving an interpretation of the Law, one that differs from the synagogue leader’s interpretation. Often this passage has been misused by Christians to portray all of Judaism as a kind of loveless, rules-driven religion, and to portray the Sabbath as a kind of joyless day where people aren’t allowed to do anything fun. Anyone who’s ever spent Shabbat with an observant Jewish friend knows better. The Sabbath is a day of joy and love, family, prayer, and play. In opposing the synagogue leader Jesus isn’t setting aside Judaism or the Law; he’s stepping into a rich stream of tradition of interpreting the Law on how to honor Shabbat as a day of both rest and liberation.
There’s another misunderstanding Christians have often fallen into about the Sabbath, and that’s to apply the word and the concept to Sunday. Sometimes we hear Sunday called a “Christian Sabbath.” But from the very beginning Christians understood Sunday as something different from the Sabbath. The earliest Christians, who were Jews, kept Sabbath on Saturday—and met together after the Sabbath to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week. It’s certainly appropriate to treat Sunday as a special day, to refrain from work when we’re able, and to do family and church things on Sunday. But we miss the mark when we think of Sunday as a kind of replacement Sabbath, especially when that becomes the same kind of joyless stereotype that was wrong in the first place. From a Christian perspective, Saturday is the Sabbath, the seventh day of creation, a day of rest—one that’s not binding on Christians who are Gentiles, but to be respected nonetheless. Sunday is the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, sometimes also called the eighth day, as if to say that the resurrection of Jesus bursts out of the boundaries of the calendar to launch a new era of history.
So we gather on the Lord’s Day. And although it’s not the Sabbath, our worship should still carry some of those qualities of both rest and liberation, which aren’t opposites but part of a single unified whole.
Take out a prayer book for a moment, the red book in the pew rack. Turn to page 855. This is part of the Episcopal Church’s catechism, a simple overview of the church’s teaching. If you haven’t seen it before, I recommend it. If you don’t have a prayer book at home, it’s available online.[1] Let’s read just the first two questions and answers on this page:
Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.
A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Q. How does the Church pursue its mission?
A. The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.
Sometimes we think of worship on the one hand and mission on the other. We might think of going to church on Sundays to refuel our gas tank, and then going out the rest of the week to practice our mission of doing justice. But in reality it’s much more intermingled than that. We are doing justice right here, right now, as we worship. We are praying for ourselves and our neighbors. We are sharing the peace of Christ with friends and strangers. We are treating one another with courtesy and reverence, sharing the body and blood of Christ together, young and old, rich and poor at the same rail, receiving the same food and drink, all receiving enough, none receiving too much. “The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships,” the catechism says. And it pursues its mission outside these doors too. Worship is part of mission, not separate from it.
And mission is part of worship too. When we share food or drink with someone who’s hungry. When we advocate for housing for everyone who needs it, or for fair treatment of people who come here seeking safety or a better life. When we do the hard work of loving our families and friends and coworkers and neighbors in Jesus’ name—each of those things is also an act of worship, because it gives praise and glory to God.
Today Jesus lifts up a woman who has been bowed down for eighteen years. Today still he is lifting us up too, and enlisting us with him in sharing his mission. Today too we are baptizing David Del Vecchio into that mission: a mission of worship and prayer, of justice and service; a mission that continues until that great Sabbath when our worship and our liberation are complete.
[1] See The Online Book of Common Prayer, https://bcponline.org/Misc/catechism.html.
Aug 18, 2019 |
Proper 15, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
| Linda Clader
Proper 15, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
+ + +
Fire! Ominous-sounding baptisms! Divisions among families! Threatening signs of social disaster!
Sometimes I fantasize about publishing an expurgated version of the Gospel. You can bet the section we just read wouldn’t be in it! In fact, I think most of us operate on a sort of mentally-expurgated version of the Bible, where the parts that threaten us most–or fit least well with our personal experience–just disappear.
Some of you know that my husband used to be the Protestant Chaplain at Napa State Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane. I asked him whether he would preach on this passage to his mental patients, and he said, “Absolutely not! They need to hear about peace and love and forgiveness.” I knew he would say that. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Isn’t that what I need to hear, too? Isn’t it what all of us need to hear? Peace and love and forgiveness? Why do we have to deal with these nasty sayings of Jesus? And more to the point, what do I think about Jesus–and my commitment to Jesus–if he really said things like this?”
It may be helpful to imagine the audience Jesus was saying these things to. The first part of what we read was directed at the disciples. Jesus is telling them that he came to bring fire to the earth, and he came to undergo a kind of baptism, and he is anxious to get on with it. It sounds like he is talking with his closest followers about his real ministry, right then and right there. He may not know for certain at this point that his path will lead to the Cross, but he certainly knows by now that it is already leading to conflict with the leaders of his society. And that conflict is going to be big. Jesus sees himself as something quite a bit more than just a catalyst for change. When he describes the coming crisis, he doesn’t use “tame,” civilized images like national conventions and ballot boxes; he talks in cosmic-level pictures: earthquakes and epidemics and firestorms and riots. The crisis is coming, and it’s going to be big.
And the fallout for these followers of his will be cataclysmic, too. That is why he goes on to talk about how he brings not peace but division—and specifically, division within the very most basic system of the society, the family. He demands from his disciples a level of loyalty that could mean turning away from those nearest and dearest to them. And in fact, in the history of Christian discipleship over the centuries, there are hundreds and thousands of stories of people who were faced with precisely this dilemma–do I follow Christ or the rules of my father, or mother, or clan?
Why were the disciples following Jesus right then and there? It seems certain that many of them were hopeful that he would be the one to drive out the Romans and restore Israel to a time of independence and prosperity. A return to the kind of stability they associated with peace. The kind of peace that results from military and economic success. The kind of peace that speaks to the world the news that “our people are the most favored.” You know, that kind of peace. So in declaring “I have come not to bring peace but division,” Jesus is warning his disciples about their blindness to what he is really doing. He is marching toward Jerusalem, and the stakes in the game are rising. The great crisis of his time with them is at hand. Will they stand with him or against him? Will they follow him through this wrenching demonstration of God’s truth? Or will they hang back, retreating to the safety of their families, of old structures, old norms, old alliances? Are these disciples really prepared for the difficulties that will beset them in the future?
Now Jesus turns to the crowd gathered around him. “You are plenty skilled at predicting the weather,” he says. “Why can’t you look at the signs of the times and see what’s coming?” Again, he may simply be directing their attention to the increasing resistance to his own mission, right then and there. Or he may be trying to alert them to the overall direction of events in first century Judaea–the events that will lead, not too far in the future, to the complete crushing of the Jewish nation and the destruction of the Temple. There are a number of places in the Gospel accounts where Jesus predicts the fall of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. Here he seems to be saying, “It doesn’t take special powers to see into the future to know that the end is near. If you all would just open your eyes, you would see it as plainly as I do.”
So the rather scary message we just heard can be firmly rested in the specific, limited historical world of the New Testament. Jesus’ powerful images of fire and baptism and weather signs, his claim that he came as a force of division rather than to bring peace–these strong words were spoken to real individuals, operating in a very peculiar, a very particular time and space. We breathe a sigh of relief–maybe it’s “their” message, not really “ours”.
The problem is, if we step outside the frame of that biblical picture—if we hold that world at arm’s length and happily sing about how “then was then” and “now is now”–I mean, we’re not first-century Jews and we’re not physically walking along with a known revolutionary–the problem is, if we abandon all that, then we have to let go of the rest of the story, too. The part about being made one with God in the blood of Christ. The part about “God so loved the world.” The part about forgiveness. We would have to abandon the very basis of our Christian hope–the claim that an event that happened two thousand years ago has direct bearing on the meaning of our lives today.
So if we open our hearts and open our minds to listen to what Jesus was saying two thousand years ago–to those people, in that place–what do we hear him say to “these” people, in “this” place?
I hear him calling us to listen with new ears, to learn new languages. Why were the hearers of his own day in such grave danger? Why was Jesus himself such a threat to the authorities, and why would his fledgling church so provoke the people around it? Because Jesus was demanding that the old vessels be smashed, the old terms be abandoned. You people have tried to tie God up in a box, he says. You’ve wrapped God in a tidy package and covered it with bows and stickers and just the right amount of postage and insurance. And then you’ve begun to worship the packaging! God bestows the blessings of peace, and so we look at the peace itself and fall in love with it and make it into a god. God bestows the blessings of the family, and so we look at the family structures and traditions and relationships and we fall in love with them, and we make them into a god. And God bestows freedom on a people, and we cherish the freedom and revel in it, and make it into a god. We worship the peace, and the family, and the freedom, and forget that they are gifts, and work for them as if they were the living forces undergirding our lives.
But only God is God. And those blessings, wondrous as they may be, like freedom and peace and the security of the home, are only blessings, they aren’t God. But God is alive, and God is moving, and God can’t be contained in any language or picture or package of any kind. God isn’t a tame God! God isn’t a palsy-walsy God! The God of Jesus Christ is full of surprises, full of a power we can’t predict or comprehend! Are we ready to swear allegiance to that? Are we ready to walk with Jesus in humble obedience to a God we can’t comprehend, can’t contain, can’t reduce to simple, pretty, human terms?
That seems to me to be something like what Jesus is saying to us, here and now. And after issuing us this challenge, this warning, Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and demonstrates to us, shows us, lives out for us just how outrageous and unconventional and awesome this God is. With Jesus, we live through the most extreme opposite of those blessings we value so highly. Instead of winning military or social success, Jesus lives out dismal failure. Instead of the security of family, Jesus dies abandoned by his closest friends. Instead of peace, his presence brings on violence. Instead of freedom, Jesus is caught in a web of political and religious tyranny.
And yet…that suffering, that captivity, that abandonment brings the very gifts we long for. This awesome, outrageous God of Jesus wrestles joy and peace and life and hope from the most unlikely human events. God showed us how it worked then, two thousand years ago. But even that mighty story can’t define how God will act tomorrow, or the next day. The God of Jesus Christ isn’t tame! The God of Jesus Christ can’t be contained! Are we ready to walk with Jesus in faithfulness to that awesome God? Are we ready to walk with him into the next, unexpected story of God’s power?
In a few minutes, here, at this altar, Jesus will offer us himself, as nourishment for that walk. Let us receive him in faith, our loving brother, the source of our courage, and the living Word that challenges us to open our ears and eyes and minds to the endless possibility that is our God. Amen.
Psalm 82
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
+ + +
Fire! Ominous-sounding baptisms! Divisions among families! Threatening signs of social disaster!
Sometimes I fantasize about publishing an expurgated version of the Gospel. You can bet the section we just read wouldn’t be in it! In fact, I think most of us operate on a sort of mentally-expurgated version of the Bible, where the parts that threaten us most–or fit least well with our personal experience–just disappear.
Some of you know that my husband used to be the Protestant Chaplain at Napa State Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane. I asked him whether he would preach on this passage to his mental patients, and he said, “Absolutely not! They need to hear about peace and love and forgiveness.” I knew he would say that. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Isn’t that what I need to hear, too? Isn’t it what all of us need to hear? Peace and love and forgiveness? Why do we have to deal with these nasty sayings of Jesus? And more to the point, what do I think about Jesus–and my commitment to Jesus–if he really said things like this?”
It may be helpful to imagine the audience Jesus was saying these things to. The first part of what we read was directed at the disciples. Jesus is telling them that he came to bring fire to the earth, and he came to undergo a kind of baptism, and he is anxious to get on with it. It sounds like he is talking with his closest followers about his real ministry, right then and right there. He may not know for certain at this point that his path will lead to the Cross, but he certainly knows by now that it is already leading to conflict with the leaders of his society. And that conflict is going to be big. Jesus sees himself as something quite a bit more than just a catalyst for change. When he describes the coming crisis, he doesn’t use “tame,” civilized images like national conventions and ballot boxes; he talks in cosmic-level pictures: earthquakes and epidemics and firestorms and riots. The crisis is coming, and it’s going to be big.
And the fallout for these followers of his will be cataclysmic, too. That is why he goes on to talk about how he brings not peace but division—and specifically, division within the very most basic system of the society, the family. He demands from his disciples a level of loyalty that could mean turning away from those nearest and dearest to them. And in fact, in the history of Christian discipleship over the centuries, there are hundreds and thousands of stories of people who were faced with precisely this dilemma–do I follow Christ or the rules of my father, or mother, or clan?
Why were the disciples following Jesus right then and there? It seems certain that many of them were hopeful that he would be the one to drive out the Romans and restore Israel to a time of independence and prosperity. A return to the kind of stability they associated with peace. The kind of peace that results from military and economic success. The kind of peace that speaks to the world the news that “our people are the most favored.” You know, that kind of peace. So in declaring “I have come not to bring peace but division,” Jesus is warning his disciples about their blindness to what he is really doing. He is marching toward Jerusalem, and the stakes in the game are rising. The great crisis of his time with them is at hand. Will they stand with him or against him? Will they follow him through this wrenching demonstration of God’s truth? Or will they hang back, retreating to the safety of their families, of old structures, old norms, old alliances? Are these disciples really prepared for the difficulties that will beset them in the future?
Now Jesus turns to the crowd gathered around him. “You are plenty skilled at predicting the weather,” he says. “Why can’t you look at the signs of the times and see what’s coming?” Again, he may simply be directing their attention to the increasing resistance to his own mission, right then and there. Or he may be trying to alert them to the overall direction of events in first century Judaea–the events that will lead, not too far in the future, to the complete crushing of the Jewish nation and the destruction of the Temple. There are a number of places in the Gospel accounts where Jesus predicts the fall of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem. Here he seems to be saying, “It doesn’t take special powers to see into the future to know that the end is near. If you all would just open your eyes, you would see it as plainly as I do.”
So the rather scary message we just heard can be firmly rested in the specific, limited historical world of the New Testament. Jesus’ powerful images of fire and baptism and weather signs, his claim that he came as a force of division rather than to bring peace–these strong words were spoken to real individuals, operating in a very peculiar, a very particular time and space. We breathe a sigh of relief–maybe it’s “their” message, not really “ours”.
The problem is, if we step outside the frame of that biblical picture—if we hold that world at arm’s length and happily sing about how “then was then” and “now is now”–I mean, we’re not first-century Jews and we’re not physically walking along with a known revolutionary–the problem is, if we abandon all that, then we have to let go of the rest of the story, too. The part about being made one with God in the blood of Christ. The part about “God so loved the world.” The part about forgiveness. We would have to abandon the very basis of our Christian hope–the claim that an event that happened two thousand years ago has direct bearing on the meaning of our lives today.
So if we open our hearts and open our minds to listen to what Jesus was saying two thousand years ago–to those people, in that place–what do we hear him say to “these” people, in “this” place?
I hear him calling us to listen with new ears, to learn new languages. Why were the hearers of his own day in such grave danger? Why was Jesus himself such a threat to the authorities, and why would his fledgling church so provoke the people around it? Because Jesus was demanding that the old vessels be smashed, the old terms be abandoned. You people have tried to tie God up in a box, he says. You’ve wrapped God in a tidy package and covered it with bows and stickers and just the right amount of postage and insurance. And then you’ve begun to worship the packaging! God bestows the blessings of peace, and so we look at the peace itself and fall in love with it and make it into a god. God bestows the blessings of the family, and so we look at the family structures and traditions and relationships and we fall in love with them, and we make them into a god. And God bestows freedom on a people, and we cherish the freedom and revel in it, and make it into a god. We worship the peace, and the family, and the freedom, and forget that they are gifts, and work for them as if they were the living forces undergirding our lives.
But only God is God. And those blessings, wondrous as they may be, like freedom and peace and the security of the home, are only blessings, they aren’t God. But God is alive, and God is moving, and God can’t be contained in any language or picture or package of any kind. God isn’t a tame God! God isn’t a palsy-walsy God! The God of Jesus Christ is full of surprises, full of a power we can’t predict or comprehend! Are we ready to swear allegiance to that? Are we ready to walk with Jesus in humble obedience to a God we can’t comprehend, can’t contain, can’t reduce to simple, pretty, human terms?
That seems to me to be something like what Jesus is saying to us, here and now. And after issuing us this challenge, this warning, Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and demonstrates to us, shows us, lives out for us just how outrageous and unconventional and awesome this God is. With Jesus, we live through the most extreme opposite of those blessings we value so highly. Instead of winning military or social success, Jesus lives out dismal failure. Instead of the security of family, Jesus dies abandoned by his closest friends. Instead of peace, his presence brings on violence. Instead of freedom, Jesus is caught in a web of political and religious tyranny.
And yet…that suffering, that captivity, that abandonment brings the very gifts we long for. This awesome, outrageous God of Jesus wrestles joy and peace and life and hope from the most unlikely human events. God showed us how it worked then, two thousand years ago. But even that mighty story can’t define how God will act tomorrow, or the next day. The God of Jesus Christ isn’t tame! The God of Jesus Christ can’t be contained! Are we ready to walk with Jesus in faithfulness to that awesome God? Are we ready to walk with him into the next, unexpected story of God’s power?
In a few minutes, here, at this altar, Jesus will offer us himself, as nourishment for that walk. Let us receive him in faith, our loving brother, the source of our courage, and the living Word that challenges us to open our ears and eyes and minds to the endless possibility that is our God. Amen.
Aug 11, 2019 |
Proper 14, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
| Hugh Stevenson
Proper 14, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40
+ + +
I thought of calling this piece, “Defensive Living.” I wanted to write about being prepared for such things as drivers who run red lights, or for checking out where the emergency exits are located or even for preserving your teeth by flossing. Jesus spoke about defensive living in his parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids. The wise bridesmaids took enough oil for the lamps, plus some in reserve. The parable concludes with the same exhortation as today’s parable: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” We need to be prepared for the crisis that is to come (we are all too familiar with devastating fires, earthquakes and El Niño floods). We need to keep our gas tanks filled, our cell phones charged, our bicycle tires inflated. We need to keep our emergency pack handy (ours includes a flash light with spare batteries, a wind up radio, a can opener and a space blanket among other things). But I find “Defensive Living” is already taken as the titles of a couple of books whose message is that you need a handgun to protect yourself.
The message in today’s gospel is “Be prepared.” It is important that one is ready. If you are going to run a marathon you need to train for several months. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth where the Isthmian Games were held (a rival of the games held at Olympia). Athletes need discipline and self-control. They need to run with perseverance, which means having stamina.
Medical students learn a great many things without knowing if they will ever come in useful. When we were in Hong Kong, a pediatrician diagnosed a Wilms Tumor in the young child of some parishioners. He had never seen one before but his training taught him to diagnose it. He sent them immediately to the University of Rochester Medical Center where they treated it.
The metaphor concerns some servants who are waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet. They have no idea when it will happen. It could be in daytime or the middle of the night. The important thing is for the servants to remain alert. This is more than a commonplace story. The situation may be urgent, a matter of life-and-death.
Let me illustrate. André Trocmé was the pastor of the Huguenot church in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in south-east France during World War II. He was posted to this remote village because his pacifist views were not popular with the hierarchy. Even before the war began, he was training his parishioners for the forth-coming crisis, so that when the Jews arrived, escaping from the Nazis, they were ready to provide shelter. They knew that it was their duty to help their neighbors in need. Trocmé preached about the passage in Deuteronomy ordering the setting apart of sanctuary cities where someone who has unintentionally killed another may flee and live. During the war, this village of 3,000 residents saved 5,000 Jews, mostly children. He was aided and abetted by his remarkable wife Magda. One time when the Vichy police came to arrest her husband, she fed them. “It was dinnertime,” she said, “and they were standing in my way, we were all hungry,” None of this would have happened if Trocmé had not trained his parishioners in advance. The two are designated as “Righteous among the Nations,” at Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial.
A second story is closer to home. 20 years ago I attended the Faith-based Coalition for Affordable Housing in Santa Rosa. Members of 17 different denominations attended the city planning board. The land which had been set aside for affordable housing was being used to build high-end properties. For a long time the cost of housing in Sonoma County has been out of sight and there have been few places for low-income people to live. 102 people were there to see that justice was done, a crowd which filled the room. We were led by my friend Rabbi Michael Robinson and his congregant, Stephen Harper. There were a lot of members of the synagogue, Shomrei Torah. I asked Stephen why they were there. He told me that they had been discussing the problem of Affordable Housing and this was their opportunity to stand up and be counted. Most of Friends Meeting were there; they had been holding monthly meetings for the previous 18 months, getting informed and talking about homelessness in our community. We all heard the chairman mutter to his colleague, “I knew that this would happen sooner or later.”
We usher at the Luther Burbank Center. Ushers are the first line of defense for the safety of our guests. Each time we go Betsy or Marcus reminds us what to do in the event of an earthquake: open the doors before the building subsides. We also had training in the event of a shooter entering the building. In order of preference: run or hide or as a last resort fight. These instructions are approved by the Department of Homeland Security. It is crucial that we know what to do in advance.
As Jesus said, “We know neither the day nor the hour.” We need to listen to the prophets when we are “wakened by a solemn warning.” We need to distinguish between false prophets and true prophets. False prophets tell us that everything is going to be fine, fine, fine! But true prophets tells us things that we don’t want to hear, about the coming crises like climate change or the coming financial crash. Whatever the crisis is we need to take action now. Here is the urgency. If we leave it too long it will be too late. So “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.”
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning give me oil in my lamp, I pray
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning keep me burning till the break of day
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna, sing hosanna to the Servant King
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40
+ + +
PREPARATION
“You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Luke 12:40I thought of calling this piece, “Defensive Living.” I wanted to write about being prepared for such things as drivers who run red lights, or for checking out where the emergency exits are located or even for preserving your teeth by flossing. Jesus spoke about defensive living in his parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids. The wise bridesmaids took enough oil for the lamps, plus some in reserve. The parable concludes with the same exhortation as today’s parable: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” We need to be prepared for the crisis that is to come (we are all too familiar with devastating fires, earthquakes and El Niño floods). We need to keep our gas tanks filled, our cell phones charged, our bicycle tires inflated. We need to keep our emergency pack handy (ours includes a flash light with spare batteries, a wind up radio, a can opener and a space blanket among other things). But I find “Defensive Living” is already taken as the titles of a couple of books whose message is that you need a handgun to protect yourself.
The message in today’s gospel is “Be prepared.” It is important that one is ready. If you are going to run a marathon you need to train for several months. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth where the Isthmian Games were held (a rival of the games held at Olympia). Athletes need discipline and self-control. They need to run with perseverance, which means having stamina.
Medical students learn a great many things without knowing if they will ever come in useful. When we were in Hong Kong, a pediatrician diagnosed a Wilms Tumor in the young child of some parishioners. He had never seen one before but his training taught him to diagnose it. He sent them immediately to the University of Rochester Medical Center where they treated it.
The metaphor concerns some servants who are waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet. They have no idea when it will happen. It could be in daytime or the middle of the night. The important thing is for the servants to remain alert. This is more than a commonplace story. The situation may be urgent, a matter of life-and-death.
Let me illustrate. André Trocmé was the pastor of the Huguenot church in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in south-east France during World War II. He was posted to this remote village because his pacifist views were not popular with the hierarchy. Even before the war began, he was training his parishioners for the forth-coming crisis, so that when the Jews arrived, escaping from the Nazis, they were ready to provide shelter. They knew that it was their duty to help their neighbors in need. Trocmé preached about the passage in Deuteronomy ordering the setting apart of sanctuary cities where someone who has unintentionally killed another may flee and live. During the war, this village of 3,000 residents saved 5,000 Jews, mostly children. He was aided and abetted by his remarkable wife Magda. One time when the Vichy police came to arrest her husband, she fed them. “It was dinnertime,” she said, “and they were standing in my way, we were all hungry,” None of this would have happened if Trocmé had not trained his parishioners in advance. The two are designated as “Righteous among the Nations,” at Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial.A second story is closer to home. 20 years ago I attended the Faith-based Coalition for Affordable Housing in Santa Rosa. Members of 17 different denominations attended the city planning board. The land which had been set aside for affordable housing was being used to build high-end properties. For a long time the cost of housing in Sonoma County has been out of sight and there have been few places for low-income people to live. 102 people were there to see that justice was done, a crowd which filled the room. We were led by my friend Rabbi Michael Robinson and his congregant, Stephen Harper. There were a lot of members of the synagogue, Shomrei Torah. I asked Stephen why they were there. He told me that they had been discussing the problem of Affordable Housing and this was their opportunity to stand up and be counted. Most of Friends Meeting were there; they had been holding monthly meetings for the previous 18 months, getting informed and talking about homelessness in our community. We all heard the chairman mutter to his colleague, “I knew that this would happen sooner or later.”
We usher at the Luther Burbank Center. Ushers are the first line of defense for the safety of our guests. Each time we go Betsy or Marcus reminds us what to do in the event of an earthquake: open the doors before the building subsides. We also had training in the event of a shooter entering the building. In order of preference: run or hide or as a last resort fight. These instructions are approved by the Department of Homeland Security. It is crucial that we know what to do in advance.
As Jesus said, “We know neither the day nor the hour.” We need to listen to the prophets when we are “wakened by a solemn warning.” We need to distinguish between false prophets and true prophets. False prophets tell us that everything is going to be fine, fine, fine! But true prophets tells us things that we don’t want to hear, about the coming crises like climate change or the coming financial crash. Whatever the crisis is we need to take action now. Here is the urgency. If we leave it too long it will be too late. So “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.”
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning give me oil in my lamp, I pray
Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning keep me burning till the break of day
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna, sing hosanna to the Servant King
Aug 04, 2019 |
Proper 13, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Proper 13, Year C, Revised Common Lectionary
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21
+ + +
There are a lot of clichés associated with this gospel passage, about how possessions don’t do us any good after we die. Fairly often we hear people say “You can’t take it with you.” Sometimes people facetiously say, “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” and presumably they don’t mean it literally but as a commentary on how empty that philosophy is. More creatively, there was a country song a few years ago that said, “You’ve never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch.”
Those clichés have value as far as they go. Death is a reality for us and we have to come to terms with that as human beings. Piling up possessions, for those who are able to do it, can be one way of trying to hide from our mortality. Life is short, and we don’t know when it will end, and we need to see our lives in the light of eternity.
And yet today I find myself unable today to find a lot of meaning in those clichés, at the end of a week where our culture’s obsession with violence and oversaturation with weapons has borne fruit in three more mass shootings. The week began with a terror attack in Gilroy. When I went to bed last night I thought it had ended with another at a Walmart in El Paso. When I woke up this morning I learned that even that wasn’t the end of it: late last night another nine people were killed by another gunman outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio.
So today it’s hard for me to be satisfied with a kind of conventional moral lesson from our gospel story today that simply says, be ready for death because it could come at any time. Sure: it could come at any time. But it’s not supposed to come like this. The kind of random, sociopathic hate we see in these acts of terror is something different. A healthy awareness of our mortality is one thing. Living in a society where a Walmart can become a war zone is unacceptable. It’s not the result of the ordinary fragility of existence. It’s the result of human choices. It’s the result of human sin.
What I think this story does have to say to us today is less about mortality and more about isolation. The man in this story seems to think he needs no one but himself and his things. The only person he talks to in the story is himself. He tries to create a universe sufficient to himself. And in the end it’s an empty one. That’s the same kind of isolation that we see so often in young, disaffected men who commit these horrific acts of nihilistic rage. It’s the lie that says that we are separate from one another, that my well-being isn’t bound up with yours.
Today we gather in community, (here at Incarnation, and then later others of us at Armstrong Woods) under the redwood trees, siblings in Christ from Incarnation and St. Andrew’s Mission. It’s a small act and a very unremarkable one. But just by gathering today we are doing something important. We are bearing witness to the fact that we exist most fundamentally not as isolated individuals but as a community. We need one another. As Christians we cannot be the Body of Christ alone. And we proclaim that human beings were not created to be self-sufficient. We are not worlds unto ourselves. We need each other.
I read an article[1] earlier this week about trees: about how trees in a forest, which look like separate organisms, are often actually interconnected at the root level. So deeply interconnected that some forests are less separate organisms than “superorganisms,” like a coral colony, where the distinctions among individuals blur together. The article was a study that found that even leafless stumps are sometimes kept alive by their neighbors, even though they can no longer create their own food by photosynthesis, and no longer contribute any to the rest of the system.
As Christians we believe human beings are something like that. We were created for connection. And we need one another. And that means that if one member of the human family is suffering, is excluded, is mistreated, that mistreatment ripples through the entire root system. It hurts us all. And it means we are called to support one another, to share what we have and care for others.
As Christians we also gather here today in the name of Jesus Christ. And as followers of Jesus one of our core beliefs is that death is not the final word. We believe we are held in the hands of a God who has conquered death, has conquered violence, and who is working even now through Jesus Christ, and through us, to overcome evil and heal the world.
What we do when we gather is unremarkable. But it’s also radical. Today we proclaim that we are members of one another and that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of all of us. That none of us will be fully free until all are free, and as Paul says in Colossians today, Christ is all in all.
________________
[1] “Tree Stumps Can Live On Indefinitely … With A Little Help From Their Friends,” The Economist (July 25, 2019): https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/25/tree-stumps-can-live-on-indefinitely. The article’s behind a paywall; for a similar, freely accessible article, see Russell McLendon, “Why Would Trees Keep a Nearby Stump Alive?”, Mother Nature Network (July 29, 2019): https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/tree-stumps-can-be-kept-alive-nearby-trees.
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21
+ + +
There are a lot of clichés associated with this gospel passage, about how possessions don’t do us any good after we die. Fairly often we hear people say “You can’t take it with you.” Sometimes people facetiously say, “The one who dies with the most toys wins,” and presumably they don’t mean it literally but as a commentary on how empty that philosophy is. More creatively, there was a country song a few years ago that said, “You’ve never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch.”
Those clichés have value as far as they go. Death is a reality for us and we have to come to terms with that as human beings. Piling up possessions, for those who are able to do it, can be one way of trying to hide from our mortality. Life is short, and we don’t know when it will end, and we need to see our lives in the light of eternity.
And yet today I find myself unable today to find a lot of meaning in those clichés, at the end of a week where our culture’s obsession with violence and oversaturation with weapons has borne fruit in three more mass shootings. The week began with a terror attack in Gilroy. When I went to bed last night I thought it had ended with another at a Walmart in El Paso. When I woke up this morning I learned that even that wasn’t the end of it: late last night another nine people were killed by another gunman outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio.
So today it’s hard for me to be satisfied with a kind of conventional moral lesson from our gospel story today that simply says, be ready for death because it could come at any time. Sure: it could come at any time. But it’s not supposed to come like this. The kind of random, sociopathic hate we see in these acts of terror is something different. A healthy awareness of our mortality is one thing. Living in a society where a Walmart can become a war zone is unacceptable. It’s not the result of the ordinary fragility of existence. It’s the result of human choices. It’s the result of human sin.
What I think this story does have to say to us today is less about mortality and more about isolation. The man in this story seems to think he needs no one but himself and his things. The only person he talks to in the story is himself. He tries to create a universe sufficient to himself. And in the end it’s an empty one. That’s the same kind of isolation that we see so often in young, disaffected men who commit these horrific acts of nihilistic rage. It’s the lie that says that we are separate from one another, that my well-being isn’t bound up with yours.
Today we gather in community, (here at Incarnation, and then later others of us at Armstrong Woods) under the redwood trees, siblings in Christ from Incarnation and St. Andrew’s Mission. It’s a small act and a very unremarkable one. But just by gathering today we are doing something important. We are bearing witness to the fact that we exist most fundamentally not as isolated individuals but as a community. We need one another. As Christians we cannot be the Body of Christ alone. And we proclaim that human beings were not created to be self-sufficient. We are not worlds unto ourselves. We need each other.
I read an article[1] earlier this week about trees: about how trees in a forest, which look like separate organisms, are often actually interconnected at the root level. So deeply interconnected that some forests are less separate organisms than “superorganisms,” like a coral colony, where the distinctions among individuals blur together. The article was a study that found that even leafless stumps are sometimes kept alive by their neighbors, even though they can no longer create their own food by photosynthesis, and no longer contribute any to the rest of the system.
As Christians we believe human beings are something like that. We were created for connection. And we need one another. And that means that if one member of the human family is suffering, is excluded, is mistreated, that mistreatment ripples through the entire root system. It hurts us all. And it means we are called to support one another, to share what we have and care for others.
As Christians we also gather here today in the name of Jesus Christ. And as followers of Jesus one of our core beliefs is that death is not the final word. We believe we are held in the hands of a God who has conquered death, has conquered violence, and who is working even now through Jesus Christ, and through us, to overcome evil and heal the world.
What we do when we gather is unremarkable. But it’s also radical. Today we proclaim that we are members of one another and that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of all of us. That none of us will be fully free until all are free, and as Paul says in Colossians today, Christ is all in all.
________________
[1] “Tree Stumps Can Live On Indefinitely … With A Little Help From Their Friends,” The Economist (July 25, 2019): https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/25/tree-stumps-can-live-on-indefinitely. The article’s behind a paywall; for a similar, freely accessible article, see Russell McLendon, “Why Would Trees Keep a Nearby Stump Alive?”, Mother Nature Network (July 29, 2019): https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/tree-stumps-can-be-kept-alive-nearby-trees.
Jul 28, 2019 |
Year C, Proper 12, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Proper 12, Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 18:20-32
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-13
I tell you, even though he won’t give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will give it to him.
+ + +
This passage has a special resonance for me now that I have a three-and-a-half-year-old who’s a master at the dark arts of negotiation and stalling.
I actually wonder if she’s been reading this passage. “They might not give it to you because they’re your parents, but at least because of your persistence they will give it to you!” This does work sometimes. Some of the things I’ve been asked for in the last several days include: permission to eat a strawberry before washing it. Permission to eat the dessert watermelon before having at least two bites of squash. A real jump rope. Seven different toys from a small toy store in Guerneville. Not to have to take a bath. I’ll let you guess which ones I gave in on.
It’s hard when your kid asks for something and you’re not sure whether to say yes or not. I think every parent likes to make their child happy. Certainly if Abby asked for an egg we would never give her a scorpion. But of course she often asks for things that wouldn’t be good for her; or wouldn’t be good for her right then. Even though she asks with an admirable boldness, there are things we have to say no to that she simply isn’t able to understand.
Scripture tells us that God is in many ways like a parent. The metaphor of God as Father reigned unquestioned for centuries, and in the past few decades it’s come in for some well-merited criticism. Today, more than in many past eras, we’re aware of how our cultures and even our languages tend to privilege male over female. We’re aware that not everyone has a father, and that for those who do, not everyone has a positive experience of their fathers. Fatherhood for some can mean absence, or tyranny, or abuse. We’re aware of the shortcomings of that metaphor, and of the fact that God is also in many ways a Mother, and a Friend, and many other things. As we move toward a healthier understanding of gender and power, we may be able to get back to having “Father” as one very important member of our repertoire of titles for God; a title used by Jesus himself, and not the only title, but a central one.
And if God is like a Father, and for that matter a Mother or any kind of Parent, then presumably there are things we may ask for that God can delight in giving us, right then and there, as I might delight in handing Abby a strawberry (hopefully washed). And then there may be other things we may ask for that aren’t good for us; or wouldn’t be good for us right now. And like a small child, we may be completely unable with our human capacities to comprehend why on earth something we long for so ardently and pray for so fervently might not be good for us, and why God says no.
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray with confidence to a parent who loves them. And he teaches them to pray with boldness and persistence. And yet in this passage he doesn’t actually say we will be given whatever we want. Jesus says “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”—not “give whatever they ask for,” but “give the Holy Spirit.” (In the version of this passage that appears in the Gospel of Matthew, it says he will “give good things” to those who ask him … again, not just anything, but good things.)
There may be times in our lives when we pray and don’t get what we want, yet what we do get is what we most need.
Now I want to be careful here. Because as soon as we acknowledge that sometimes God doesn’t give us what we want because it isn’t good for us, we run into the danger of a kind of simplistic theology that says “Everything happens for a reason.” Many of us when facing some kind of suffering or loss have experienced the pain that can come when a well-intentioned friend says something like, “Well, God must want it this way” or “God never gives you more than you can handle,” as if God is the source of the evil things that happen. Those who are going through a life-threatening illness, or a loved one’s betrayal, or the death of a child, or the horrors of war know that some things are just bad. Not gifts in disguise, not clouds with a silver lining. There is tragedy in this world. Christian faith knows that. We don’t proclaim that evil is an illusion or that everything is a beautiful balance of good and evil. We proclaim that evil exists, and that God is in the process of defeating it. That defeat happened once and for all in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And yet the victory isn’t complete yet, and we still live in a world where we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Last Wednesday morning I was at Anam Cara, our weekly contemplative prayer group. We chanted Psalm 15, which describes a righteous person, and ends, “Whoever does these things shall never be overthrown.” In our discussion afterwards we reflected on what that really means. Lots of righteous people suffer unjustly. We talked about how the psalm might be a kind of wish: “Oh, that those who do these things would never be overthrown!” Or might be taken more in the light of eternity: in God’s ultimate justice and mercy, the righteous may indeed face tragedy but will not be overthrown in the end.
We don’t know why some of our prayers seem to be answered and others not. What we can know is that our prayers are heard by a God who is pure, fierce love. And beyond that, a God who took on the human condition as one of us. A God, the Son of God, who taught his followers to pray boldly for their needs: “Give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, do not bring us to the time of trial.” Jesus himself prayed to be spared his own trial. And that prayer was heard, although not answered in the way the Son of God himself hoped for in that moment. Jesus went to the cross. The righteous man was overthrown. Until, on the third day, he wasn’t.
May God grant us the gift of boldness and persistence in prayer. And may we know that whatever our prayer is, it is always heard by one who loves us more than we love ourselves, more than we could ever know.
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-13
I tell you, even though he won’t give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will give it to him.
+ + +
This passage has a special resonance for me now that I have a three-and-a-half-year-old who’s a master at the dark arts of negotiation and stalling.
I actually wonder if she’s been reading this passage. “They might not give it to you because they’re your parents, but at least because of your persistence they will give it to you!” This does work sometimes. Some of the things I’ve been asked for in the last several days include: permission to eat a strawberry before washing it. Permission to eat the dessert watermelon before having at least two bites of squash. A real jump rope. Seven different toys from a small toy store in Guerneville. Not to have to take a bath. I’ll let you guess which ones I gave in on.
It’s hard when your kid asks for something and you’re not sure whether to say yes or not. I think every parent likes to make their child happy. Certainly if Abby asked for an egg we would never give her a scorpion. But of course she often asks for things that wouldn’t be good for her; or wouldn’t be good for her right then. Even though she asks with an admirable boldness, there are things we have to say no to that she simply isn’t able to understand.
Scripture tells us that God is in many ways like a parent. The metaphor of God as Father reigned unquestioned for centuries, and in the past few decades it’s come in for some well-merited criticism. Today, more than in many past eras, we’re aware of how our cultures and even our languages tend to privilege male over female. We’re aware that not everyone has a father, and that for those who do, not everyone has a positive experience of their fathers. Fatherhood for some can mean absence, or tyranny, or abuse. We’re aware of the shortcomings of that metaphor, and of the fact that God is also in many ways a Mother, and a Friend, and many other things. As we move toward a healthier understanding of gender and power, we may be able to get back to having “Father” as one very important member of our repertoire of titles for God; a title used by Jesus himself, and not the only title, but a central one.
And if God is like a Father, and for that matter a Mother or any kind of Parent, then presumably there are things we may ask for that God can delight in giving us, right then and there, as I might delight in handing Abby a strawberry (hopefully washed). And then there may be other things we may ask for that aren’t good for us; or wouldn’t be good for us right now. And like a small child, we may be completely unable with our human capacities to comprehend why on earth something we long for so ardently and pray for so fervently might not be good for us, and why God says no.
Jesus teaches his disciples to pray with confidence to a parent who loves them. And he teaches them to pray with boldness and persistence. And yet in this passage he doesn’t actually say we will be given whatever we want. Jesus says “If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him”—not “give whatever they ask for,” but “give the Holy Spirit.” (In the version of this passage that appears in the Gospel of Matthew, it says he will “give good things” to those who ask him … again, not just anything, but good things.)
There may be times in our lives when we pray and don’t get what we want, yet what we do get is what we most need.
Now I want to be careful here. Because as soon as we acknowledge that sometimes God doesn’t give us what we want because it isn’t good for us, we run into the danger of a kind of simplistic theology that says “Everything happens for a reason.” Many of us when facing some kind of suffering or loss have experienced the pain that can come when a well-intentioned friend says something like, “Well, God must want it this way” or “God never gives you more than you can handle,” as if God is the source of the evil things that happen. Those who are going through a life-threatening illness, or a loved one’s betrayal, or the death of a child, or the horrors of war know that some things are just bad. Not gifts in disguise, not clouds with a silver lining. There is tragedy in this world. Christian faith knows that. We don’t proclaim that evil is an illusion or that everything is a beautiful balance of good and evil. We proclaim that evil exists, and that God is in the process of defeating it. That defeat happened once and for all in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And yet the victory isn’t complete yet, and we still live in a world where we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Last Wednesday morning I was at Anam Cara, our weekly contemplative prayer group. We chanted Psalm 15, which describes a righteous person, and ends, “Whoever does these things shall never be overthrown.” In our discussion afterwards we reflected on what that really means. Lots of righteous people suffer unjustly. We talked about how the psalm might be a kind of wish: “Oh, that those who do these things would never be overthrown!” Or might be taken more in the light of eternity: in God’s ultimate justice and mercy, the righteous may indeed face tragedy but will not be overthrown in the end.
We don’t know why some of our prayers seem to be answered and others not. What we can know is that our prayers are heard by a God who is pure, fierce love. And beyond that, a God who took on the human condition as one of us. A God, the Son of God, who taught his followers to pray boldly for their needs: “Give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, do not bring us to the time of trial.” Jesus himself prayed to be spared his own trial. And that prayer was heard, although not answered in the way the Son of God himself hoped for in that moment. Jesus went to the cross. The righteous man was overthrown. Until, on the third day, he wasn’t.
May God grant us the gift of boldness and persistence in prayer. And may we know that whatever our prayer is, it is always heard by one who loves us more than we love ourselves, more than we could ever know.
Jul 21, 2019 |
Year C, Proper 11, Revised Common Lectionary
| Pamela Moore
Year C, Proper 11, Revised Common Lectionary
Jul 14, 2019 |
Year C, Proper 10, Revised Common Lectionary
| Linda Clader
Year C, Proper 10, Revised Common Lectionary
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25:1-9
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
+ + +
Do you know what a snow-plant is?
I had never seen a snow-plant until I was walking in a grove of sequoias a year or two ago, up at Lake Tahoe, and there they were, two or three of them, poking up from beneath the pine needles, looking like red torpedoes, or fat red asparagus, or some kind of lumpy red mushroom. I stopped in amazement, and crouched low over them, with my hands clasped behind me, to look closely without disturbing them. And someone, it seemed, had taken the trouble to make sure I didn’t disturb them, because around them was drawn a circle in pinecones.
On this hike, nearly every little cluster of snow-plants I saw had a similar circle of pinecones drawn around it. Some of the snow-plants were done for the season, rusty brown and dried out with their seeds sprinkled around them; and some of them were still bright red and fresh. So I was sure that the same person had not drawn all the pinecone circles. And what made me the most sure was that finally I found a group of brilliantly colored, new snow-plants, and I stopped for a minute and enjoyed them, and then I gathered pinecones and drew a circle around them myself.
Later, back at camp, I was reporting my experience to my husband. “Why did you draw the circle?” he asked. “I’m not quite sure,” I answered. “It seemed like the thing to do. It was like when you see something really wonderful, or you see something that looks magic or sacred, you want to draw a circle around it to set it apart, to hold it up, to say, ‘This is special, this is to be noticed, this is to be wondered at.'” And my husband answered, “Seems to me when you draw a circle around something, it means, ‘Keep out.'”
Boundaries. The problem is, they don’t have any absolute meaning in themselves. My husband and I, looking at the same raw data, made two different meanings of it. I saw a frame around a work of art. He saw a fence. A wall. And we were both looking from the vantage point of someone standing outside the circle of pinecones. Might the boundary mean something else from inside the circle?
You know on the west shore of the lake, those magnificent estates that you can barely see into, because they have a huge wall around them? Boundaries, for sure. But what do they mean? If you live in the big house inside, maybe you’re thinking about security, or privacy. All those tourists, you think. All those people like Linda Clader who want to peer into your yard, and catch a glimpse of how you live. If you’re on the outside, driving by, you’re probably thinking about snobbery, or the division of wealth in our society. And you might feel a little envious. Or you might reverse the discrimination, and feel superior because you have to work so hard for what you have.
Boundaries. They aren’t all like a wall or a circle, or the frame around a picture– a line you can see. Boundaries can be produced by sounds, too. A neighbor of mine keeps his dog in the yard with a boundary made by a high-pitched noise. And another friend of mine doesn’t go into a store unless she can hear someone speaking Spanish.
Boundaries. Without them, you can’t play tennis. Without them, you can’t drive a car safely. Without them, you can’t keep a calendar, you can’t run a government, you can’t wage a war. It seems that we humans are programmed, or built, to need edges on things.
Which is why we need to be patient with that lawyer in the story. Like all of us, he was educated to appreciate the usefulness of boundaries. When he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” he was doing nothing more outrageous than anyone does who tries to get a firm grip on the meaning of some rule or other, some boundary or other.
Even more to the point, as a lawyer, he was a professional reader and interpreter of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Now, the book of Deuteronomy has a lot to do with drawing distinctions, with defining what it means to be a member of the people of Israel. But that lawyer, that student of the Law, knew perfectly well that the Law of Moses wasn’t intended to be wielded like a club to bash those who were outside the community, outside the circle. He knew perfectly well that the Law of Moses wasn’t aimed at keeping outsiders outside; it was aimed at teaching the community under the Law to live justly with one another.
The Law drew a circle around this peculiar community of people who saw themselves as subject to their peculiar God; the Law drew a circle, to point up the wonder of that people’s story, and to mark how sacred that story was. But the Law did something else, too: it commanded those peculiar people to look around within that circle, and outside it, and to pay attention to their neighbors who were in need.
The lawyer in the story understood all this. In fact, he and Jesus seem to have agreed right away that the whole of the Law boiled down to love God and love your neighbor. “You have given the right answer,” says Jesus; “Do this, and you will live.”
The problem with the lawyer was that he apparently had no intention of doing anything. Like so many of us, he had gotten trapped into believing that knowing was enough. And again, like so many of us, he had also slid into that very dangerous habit of using his knowledge to draw a little circle around himself so he could feel safe. The circle he had drawn was smaller than that other boundary between us and them. The circle he had drawn protected him even from his own countrymen.
The story Jesus tells him takes aim exactly at those circles, those boundaries that the lawyer has pulled up so close to himself. The story follows a familiar Jewish pattern. A man lies at the side of the road, stripped of everything and beaten to a pulp. A priest passes by, and then a Levite. Both of these characters are professional holy men in the Jewish tradition, but they don’t do what is obviously–to everyone, certainly including the lawyer–they don’t do what is obviously the right thing; they pass by on the other side.
Now we’re following a traditional storytelling pattern, and Jesus’ audience and we all know that the third person is always going to be the good guy. The expected character here would have been the humble Jewish layman, who follows the Law, shows compassion, and somehow saves the day. That’s what the lawyer would have expected. Something like that is what we expect. But it’s not what Jesus gives us.
The “hero” that Jesus brings into the story at this point is the despicable Samaritan. Today, when we call someone a “Good Samaritan,” we are never playing on that aspect of the story. A Samaritan was a heretic, and an outcast, a thoroughly loathsome, barely human character. We all want to identify with the hero in a story, and so when we retell the story of the Good Samaritan, we conveniently forget that the hero is someone we wouldn’t even speak to. Then we go on identifying with the one who showed compassion.
The lawyer in the story doesn’t have that freedom: it’s entirely unthinkable for him, as a devout Jew, to identify with the Samaritan. If the lawyer is going to stay in the story at all, that leaves him only one option: he has to cross over that circle he has drawn for himself, and identify with the guy lying naked, penniless and unconscious in the ditch. He has to see himself as the victim.
Now, there’s plenty of evidence in the scriptures that Jesus was very interested in injustice among his people. And there’s plenty of evidence that possibly the form of injustice he was most interested in was injustice committed in the name of religious purity. And there’s no doubt that as the early Church got going, there was more and more interest in questions about who was out and who was in, and in particular those questions focused on distinctions between Jews and non-Jews in the Christian community. All these interests, all these themes come up in the familiar story of the Good Samaritan.
But I don’t think that those are the real target. Because this story, about crossing the boundary between privileged lawyer and hapless victim, is followed in the Gospel of Luke (next week’s reading, in fact) by another story about crossing boundaries, the famous story of Martha working in the kitchen and Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. In today’s story, the lawyer who knows it all but won’t do anything is shown to be on the wrong track; next week, it will be the doer who is told that she needs to pay attention to another way.
God knows we need our boundaries. In today’s society, somebody with “good boundaries” is considered a healthy person, and we talk about boundaries when we’re discussing the protection of the less powerful. Boundaries are with us, and they’re good and they’re useful. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is challenging us to look straight at our boundaries, and to consider what spaces or people they might be dividing, and to consider whether those boundaries have been devised to shut gates and doors rather than opening them.
Are they circles meant to frame something wonderful–a flower, a community, an experience–and hold it up so all can see? And if that’s what they’re meant to do, are they succeeding in that without being misinterpreted? Do the fences, the walls that we erect to feel snug and secure from danger keep out love, as well? Do our so-called “professional boundaries” work so well that they prevent our acting with compassion? Whether we see ourselves inside or outside someone else’s circle, can we step across and look at ourselves from that other person’s vantage point? And once we’ve stepped across, can we reach back with an open hand?
God knows we need our boundaries. But God doesn’t seem to. When we talk about God, we hear words like bound-less. Boundless wisdom. Boundless love. And we hear story after story about boundaries broken. Jesus eating with the outcast. A Samaritan presented as the hero of a story. Forgiveness offered to a sinner who hasn’t even asked for it. Our God, coming among us in the flesh, dying for us all.
God knows we need our boundaries. But we gather, now and then, to celebrate the glimpse Jesus Christ has given us of the boundlessness that is the Reign of God. Gathered here, we celebrate our claim that we dwell under that Reign of God, that everyone dwells in that Kingdom. Look hard at those circles, those lines, those walls and doors and gates and fences.What do they protect? Whom do they reject? And how might we Christians be called to open the door or hold out a hand?
Psalm 25:1-9
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
+ + +
Do you know what a snow-plant is?
I had never seen a snow-plant until I was walking in a grove of sequoias a year or two ago, up at Lake Tahoe, and there they were, two or three of them, poking up from beneath the pine needles, looking like red torpedoes, or fat red asparagus, or some kind of lumpy red mushroom. I stopped in amazement, and crouched low over them, with my hands clasped behind me, to look closely without disturbing them. And someone, it seemed, had taken the trouble to make sure I didn’t disturb them, because around them was drawn a circle in pinecones.
On this hike, nearly every little cluster of snow-plants I saw had a similar circle of pinecones drawn around it. Some of the snow-plants were done for the season, rusty brown and dried out with their seeds sprinkled around them; and some of them were still bright red and fresh. So I was sure that the same person had not drawn all the pinecone circles. And what made me the most sure was that finally I found a group of brilliantly colored, new snow-plants, and I stopped for a minute and enjoyed them, and then I gathered pinecones and drew a circle around them myself.
Later, back at camp, I was reporting my experience to my husband. “Why did you draw the circle?” he asked. “I’m not quite sure,” I answered. “It seemed like the thing to do. It was like when you see something really wonderful, or you see something that looks magic or sacred, you want to draw a circle around it to set it apart, to hold it up, to say, ‘This is special, this is to be noticed, this is to be wondered at.'” And my husband answered, “Seems to me when you draw a circle around something, it means, ‘Keep out.'”
Boundaries. The problem is, they don’t have any absolute meaning in themselves. My husband and I, looking at the same raw data, made two different meanings of it. I saw a frame around a work of art. He saw a fence. A wall. And we were both looking from the vantage point of someone standing outside the circle of pinecones. Might the boundary mean something else from inside the circle?
You know on the west shore of the lake, those magnificent estates that you can barely see into, because they have a huge wall around them? Boundaries, for sure. But what do they mean? If you live in the big house inside, maybe you’re thinking about security, or privacy. All those tourists, you think. All those people like Linda Clader who want to peer into your yard, and catch a glimpse of how you live. If you’re on the outside, driving by, you’re probably thinking about snobbery, or the division of wealth in our society. And you might feel a little envious. Or you might reverse the discrimination, and feel superior because you have to work so hard for what you have.
Boundaries. They aren’t all like a wall or a circle, or the frame around a picture– a line you can see. Boundaries can be produced by sounds, too. A neighbor of mine keeps his dog in the yard with a boundary made by a high-pitched noise. And another friend of mine doesn’t go into a store unless she can hear someone speaking Spanish.
Boundaries. Without them, you can’t play tennis. Without them, you can’t drive a car safely. Without them, you can’t keep a calendar, you can’t run a government, you can’t wage a war. It seems that we humans are programmed, or built, to need edges on things.
Which is why we need to be patient with that lawyer in the story. Like all of us, he was educated to appreciate the usefulness of boundaries. When he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” he was doing nothing more outrageous than anyone does who tries to get a firm grip on the meaning of some rule or other, some boundary or other.
Even more to the point, as a lawyer, he was a professional reader and interpreter of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Now, the book of Deuteronomy has a lot to do with drawing distinctions, with defining what it means to be a member of the people of Israel. But that lawyer, that student of the Law, knew perfectly well that the Law of Moses wasn’t intended to be wielded like a club to bash those who were outside the community, outside the circle. He knew perfectly well that the Law of Moses wasn’t aimed at keeping outsiders outside; it was aimed at teaching the community under the Law to live justly with one another.
The Law drew a circle around this peculiar community of people who saw themselves as subject to their peculiar God; the Law drew a circle, to point up the wonder of that people’s story, and to mark how sacred that story was. But the Law did something else, too: it commanded those peculiar people to look around within that circle, and outside it, and to pay attention to their neighbors who were in need.
The lawyer in the story understood all this. In fact, he and Jesus seem to have agreed right away that the whole of the Law boiled down to love God and love your neighbor. “You have given the right answer,” says Jesus; “Do this, and you will live.”
The problem with the lawyer was that he apparently had no intention of doing anything. Like so many of us, he had gotten trapped into believing that knowing was enough. And again, like so many of us, he had also slid into that very dangerous habit of using his knowledge to draw a little circle around himself so he could feel safe. The circle he had drawn was smaller than that other boundary between us and them. The circle he had drawn protected him even from his own countrymen.
The story Jesus tells him takes aim exactly at those circles, those boundaries that the lawyer has pulled up so close to himself. The story follows a familiar Jewish pattern. A man lies at the side of the road, stripped of everything and beaten to a pulp. A priest passes by, and then a Levite. Both of these characters are professional holy men in the Jewish tradition, but they don’t do what is obviously–to everyone, certainly including the lawyer–they don’t do what is obviously the right thing; they pass by on the other side.
Now we’re following a traditional storytelling pattern, and Jesus’ audience and we all know that the third person is always going to be the good guy. The expected character here would have been the humble Jewish layman, who follows the Law, shows compassion, and somehow saves the day. That’s what the lawyer would have expected. Something like that is what we expect. But it’s not what Jesus gives us.
The “hero” that Jesus brings into the story at this point is the despicable Samaritan. Today, when we call someone a “Good Samaritan,” we are never playing on that aspect of the story. A Samaritan was a heretic, and an outcast, a thoroughly loathsome, barely human character. We all want to identify with the hero in a story, and so when we retell the story of the Good Samaritan, we conveniently forget that the hero is someone we wouldn’t even speak to. Then we go on identifying with the one who showed compassion.
The lawyer in the story doesn’t have that freedom: it’s entirely unthinkable for him, as a devout Jew, to identify with the Samaritan. If the lawyer is going to stay in the story at all, that leaves him only one option: he has to cross over that circle he has drawn for himself, and identify with the guy lying naked, penniless and unconscious in the ditch. He has to see himself as the victim.
Now, there’s plenty of evidence in the scriptures that Jesus was very interested in injustice among his people. And there’s plenty of evidence that possibly the form of injustice he was most interested in was injustice committed in the name of religious purity. And there’s no doubt that as the early Church got going, there was more and more interest in questions about who was out and who was in, and in particular those questions focused on distinctions between Jews and non-Jews in the Christian community. All these interests, all these themes come up in the familiar story of the Good Samaritan.
But I don’t think that those are the real target. Because this story, about crossing the boundary between privileged lawyer and hapless victim, is followed in the Gospel of Luke (next week’s reading, in fact) by another story about crossing boundaries, the famous story of Martha working in the kitchen and Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. In today’s story, the lawyer who knows it all but won’t do anything is shown to be on the wrong track; next week, it will be the doer who is told that she needs to pay attention to another way.
God knows we need our boundaries. In today’s society, somebody with “good boundaries” is considered a healthy person, and we talk about boundaries when we’re discussing the protection of the less powerful. Boundaries are with us, and they’re good and they’re useful. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is challenging us to look straight at our boundaries, and to consider what spaces or people they might be dividing, and to consider whether those boundaries have been devised to shut gates and doors rather than opening them.
Are they circles meant to frame something wonderful–a flower, a community, an experience–and hold it up so all can see? And if that’s what they’re meant to do, are they succeeding in that without being misinterpreted? Do the fences, the walls that we erect to feel snug and secure from danger keep out love, as well? Do our so-called “professional boundaries” work so well that they prevent our acting with compassion? Whether we see ourselves inside or outside someone else’s circle, can we step across and look at ourselves from that other person’s vantage point? And once we’ve stepped across, can we reach back with an open hand?
God knows we need our boundaries. But God doesn’t seem to. When we talk about God, we hear words like bound-less. Boundless wisdom. Boundless love. And we hear story after story about boundaries broken. Jesus eating with the outcast. A Samaritan presented as the hero of a story. Forgiveness offered to a sinner who hasn’t even asked for it. Our God, coming among us in the flesh, dying for us all.
God knows we need our boundaries. But we gather, now and then, to celebrate the glimpse Jesus Christ has given us of the boundlessness that is the Reign of God. Gathered here, we celebrate our claim that we dwell under that Reign of God, that everyone dwells in that Kingdom. Look hard at those circles, those lines, those walls and doors and gates and fences.What do they protect? Whom do they reject? And how might we Christians be called to open the door or hold out a hand?
Jul 07, 2019 |
Year C, Proper 9, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Proper 9, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 66:10-14
Psalm 66:1-8
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
+ + +
I spent this Fourth of July at a local celebration in the neighborhood Julia grew up in in Palo Alto. It’s a festival we’ve been to many times before, almost exactly the same every year: the neighborhood band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and sometimes a Queen or U2 song thrown in for variety; floats kids and their parents build out of wagons; dogs and bikes and babies on parade, sack races and three-legged races and a balloon toss; the adorable drill squad of six-year-olds moving their flags in unison, with the only change in the routine from fifty years ago that boys are now on the team too. The first time I went to this celebration I almost couldn’t believe it existed, so perfect in its quintessential Americana-ness. I almost expected to see Harold Hill from The Music Man walk around the corner.
There’s something encouraging about seeing unabashed patriotism in the middle of Palo Alto, where you can’t throw a stick without hitting a Prius. In a time when flag-waving is so often seen as the province of the political right, and when media personalities throw around accusations of treason, there’s something satisfying about seeing a parkful of NPR-listening, farmer’s-market-shopping, arugula-eating Palo Altans singing along lustily to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA and nailing the cymbal-crash moment in the last verse.
Satisfying—and yet also incongruous. Because we know that even as the water-balloon toss and the tug-of-war were going on, people were overcrowded into cages in buildings with the American flag flying outside. Children huddled under Mylar blankets on concrete floors, toddlers taken from their parents and left to be cared for by their fellow detainees who were just kids themselves. People who came to our shores carrying no purse, no bag, and no sandals: and we are the town that has failed to welcome them.
The images that have flooded our screens and newspapers in the past month have made it clear to those of us who are citizens of this nation that appalling things are being done in our name, by our government, under our flag.
And not for the first time, of course. This country has done great things in its history. And it has done some very bad things. There is a narrative of progress and democracy and justice in our national story; and it’s intertwined with a narrative of genocide and racism and violence.
Which brings up the question: how should we as Christians feel about our country?
Much of the Christianity we see in the public discourse says we should wrap ourselves in the flag and treat faith in God and faith in country as almost the same thing. I don’t see any justification for that in scripture. The New Testament says we should pray for our rulers and live peaceably in society, but it’s very clear that our true citizenship is in heaven. The church is a fellowship that transcends all nations and all borders. Not all of us who worship here are citizens of this country, and any Christian congregation where a visitor or guest of another nationality is made to feel less of a member of the Body of Christ for that reason is doing something very wrong.
And yet I do think as a Christian it’s OK to love your country. It’s OK to love it and be proud of it; and it’s OK to love it and be critical of it. It may be that we love it most when we’re being most critical of it. I think as a Christian you can rightly love your country for two reasons.
One is simply because it’s yours: because its sights and sounds and smells are home. Sometimes we love something or someone not because of any objective features but simply because they’re ours. At its best family is supposed to work that way. I think Julia and Abigail are the cleverest, most delightful, most beautiful people in this world. And that’s true, from my perspective, not because I’m ranking them against others in some kind of objective competition but because they’re mine and I love them. We hear that kind of love for Israel and Jerusalem in our reading from Isaiah this morning: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, all you who love her.” All through scripture, including in the wider context of this passage, we see an oscillation between two kinds of love for Israel and for the church. Sometimes Israel is portrayed as benefiting from God’s love at the expense of other nations in an us-vs.-them scenario. But at other times the portrayal is of God’s love for Israel overflowing to benefit all the other nations too, so that Israel becomes a blessing to the whole earth. I think that latter kind of love is more faithful to the overall thrust of scripture. Our love for a home country can easily become idolatrous. It can lead us to an us-vs.-them mentality. But at best it can be something different: it can lead us to want the same good for other places that we naturally want for our own.
The second reason I think as Christians we can rightly love our country—and here I’m talking specifically about this country—is because there are some things about this country to be deeply thankful for. We live in a country and under a government that, for all its faults, is shaped by a constitution that safeguards some basic liberties that many places don’t have. We have the freedom to vote.
We have the freedom to gather here on Sunday mornings, or not to, as we choose. We have the freedom, when we’re outraged by something our government is doing, to make signs and fill the streets and demand change. There are other countries where those things are the case too. But there are a lot of places where they aren’t.
This country is far from perfect. But its own stated values are values of equality, democracy, and human rights. Those are values that are grounded deeply in the gospel, not in the shallow sense in which it’s sometimes trumpeted that this is a “Christian nation,” meaning that Christians should get special privileges, but rather in the deep sense that a government that treats everyone with the same dignity is congruent with a God for whom all are beloved children.
This Fourth of July weekend, pray for this country. Give thanks for what is good. Ask God’s grace to heal what is broken and set right what is unjust. And then do something patriotic. Go out and protest injustice. Go out and serve the poor. Go out and call this country to the values it professes. Go out and make trouble. Go out and make this land a better place, in the name of Jesus.
Psalm 66:1-8
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
+ + +
I spent this Fourth of July at a local celebration in the neighborhood Julia grew up in in Palo Alto. It’s a festival we’ve been to many times before, almost exactly the same every year: the neighborhood band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and sometimes a Queen or U2 song thrown in for variety; floats kids and their parents build out of wagons; dogs and bikes and babies on parade, sack races and three-legged races and a balloon toss; the adorable drill squad of six-year-olds moving their flags in unison, with the only change in the routine from fifty years ago that boys are now on the team too. The first time I went to this celebration I almost couldn’t believe it existed, so perfect in its quintessential Americana-ness. I almost expected to see Harold Hill from The Music Man walk around the corner.
There’s something encouraging about seeing unabashed patriotism in the middle of Palo Alto, where you can’t throw a stick without hitting a Prius. In a time when flag-waving is so often seen as the province of the political right, and when media personalities throw around accusations of treason, there’s something satisfying about seeing a parkful of NPR-listening, farmer’s-market-shopping, arugula-eating Palo Altans singing along lustily to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA and nailing the cymbal-crash moment in the last verse.
Satisfying—and yet also incongruous. Because we know that even as the water-balloon toss and the tug-of-war were going on, people were overcrowded into cages in buildings with the American flag flying outside. Children huddled under Mylar blankets on concrete floors, toddlers taken from their parents and left to be cared for by their fellow detainees who were just kids themselves. People who came to our shores carrying no purse, no bag, and no sandals: and we are the town that has failed to welcome them.
The images that have flooded our screens and newspapers in the past month have made it clear to those of us who are citizens of this nation that appalling things are being done in our name, by our government, under our flag.
And not for the first time, of course. This country has done great things in its history. And it has done some very bad things. There is a narrative of progress and democracy and justice in our national story; and it’s intertwined with a narrative of genocide and racism and violence.
Which brings up the question: how should we as Christians feel about our country?
Much of the Christianity we see in the public discourse says we should wrap ourselves in the flag and treat faith in God and faith in country as almost the same thing. I don’t see any justification for that in scripture. The New Testament says we should pray for our rulers and live peaceably in society, but it’s very clear that our true citizenship is in heaven. The church is a fellowship that transcends all nations and all borders. Not all of us who worship here are citizens of this country, and any Christian congregation where a visitor or guest of another nationality is made to feel less of a member of the Body of Christ for that reason is doing something very wrong.
And yet I do think as a Christian it’s OK to love your country. It’s OK to love it and be proud of it; and it’s OK to love it and be critical of it. It may be that we love it most when we’re being most critical of it. I think as a Christian you can rightly love your country for two reasons.
One is simply because it’s yours: because its sights and sounds and smells are home. Sometimes we love something or someone not because of any objective features but simply because they’re ours. At its best family is supposed to work that way. I think Julia and Abigail are the cleverest, most delightful, most beautiful people in this world. And that’s true, from my perspective, not because I’m ranking them against others in some kind of objective competition but because they’re mine and I love them. We hear that kind of love for Israel and Jerusalem in our reading from Isaiah this morning: “Rejoice with Jerusalem, all you who love her.” All through scripture, including in the wider context of this passage, we see an oscillation between two kinds of love for Israel and for the church. Sometimes Israel is portrayed as benefiting from God’s love at the expense of other nations in an us-vs.-them scenario. But at other times the portrayal is of God’s love for Israel overflowing to benefit all the other nations too, so that Israel becomes a blessing to the whole earth. I think that latter kind of love is more faithful to the overall thrust of scripture. Our love for a home country can easily become idolatrous. It can lead us to an us-vs.-them mentality. But at best it can be something different: it can lead us to want the same good for other places that we naturally want for our own.
The second reason I think as Christians we can rightly love our country—and here I’m talking specifically about this country—is because there are some things about this country to be deeply thankful for. We live in a country and under a government that, for all its faults, is shaped by a constitution that safeguards some basic liberties that many places don’t have. We have the freedom to vote.
We have the freedom to gather here on Sunday mornings, or not to, as we choose. We have the freedom, when we’re outraged by something our government is doing, to make signs and fill the streets and demand change. There are other countries where those things are the case too. But there are a lot of places where they aren’t.
This country is far from perfect. But its own stated values are values of equality, democracy, and human rights. Those are values that are grounded deeply in the gospel, not in the shallow sense in which it’s sometimes trumpeted that this is a “Christian nation,” meaning that Christians should get special privileges, but rather in the deep sense that a government that treats everyone with the same dignity is congruent with a God for whom all are beloved children.
This Fourth of July weekend, pray for this country. Give thanks for what is good. Ask God’s grace to heal what is broken and set right what is unjust. And then do something patriotic. Go out and protest injustice. Go out and serve the poor. Go out and call this country to the values it professes. Go out and make trouble. Go out and make this land a better place, in the name of Jesus.
Jun 30, 2019 |
Year C, Proper 8, RCL Track 2
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Proper 8, RCL Track 2
1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1,13-25
Luke 9:51-62
+ + +
I don’t know how many times you’ve moved in your life. Some of us here today may have lived in the same place our whole life. Others may move from place to place each night looking for a safe place to sleep. And for others of us it may be in between, moving around every few years or so.
By my count I’ve moved about 14 or 15 times in my life. Growing up, my family moved roughly every three years. So I’ve had a lot of practice with the winnowing process of what to bring along and what not to. And yet all that practice doesn’t make it easy. I once had a Halloween costume with a pirate hat and plastic sword. I only ever wore it one time, but for some reason that hat and sword made it through more than one move. It just kept making it into a box. I might need it someday!
Some of us may be more pack rats than others, but I think all of us have the same need to hold on to the things that make us feel secure. So the Gospel reading for today is challenging. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Those of us here today who are homeless have a better insight into this passage than anyone else. For Jesus this passage is pretty often literally true. He and his friends go from town to town preaching and looking for people to take them in. He’s just been kicked out by a village of Samaritans, who won’t put him up for the night because Jews and Samaritans don’t get along and he’s on his way to the Jewish capital, Jerusalem. But when he gets to Jerusalem, what waits for him is worse: trial, humiliation, and death on a cross.
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Romero, which came out in 1989. It’s based on the life of Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador in the late 1970’s. At the opening of the film, Bishop Romero has a nice, cushy place to lay his head. He’s surrounded by well-spoken members of the government who offer him congratulations on his position and ask for private baptisms for their babies. But when Romero begins to realize what the gospel demands of him, he has to abandon that security. He’s a conservative man with a deep life of prayer. And that prayer life leads him to speak out against the government’s repression of poor people. He negotiates with rebels and celebrates Mass in occupied cities. And on the 24th of March, 1980, Bishop Romero was assassinated. For Bishop Romero, learning to follow Jesus meant giving up his prestige, his comfort, and in the end, his life.
Sometimes the things that keep us from walking in Jesus’s footsteps are more subtle. In the reading we heard today from Galatians, Paul calls on us to “be guided by the Spirit.” When we follow Jesus, we’re not led by a system of rules and regulations. As Paul writes, “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We might prefer having clear laundry lists of what’s right and wrong. But in Christ those are swept away in favor of the rule of love.
Often we get uncomfortable with that way of living. Instead of living in the tension of listening to the Spirit’s guidance, of being open to change and new ideas, we retreat into the neat mental systems we construct to explain reality. You might say we “lay our heads down.” Having things figured out is a soft pillow.
It’s ironic that even as Paul writes about living in freedom and not submitting to the slavery of the law, people through the centuries have used this exact passage as a checklist for who’s going to heaven and who isn’t. “Fornication—check. Drunkenness—check. Idolatry—check. Carousing!” (A lot of Episcopalians I know might be in trouble there. There was a little holy carousing this weekend around Bishop Megan’s consecration.) But Paul’s point isn’t to make a checklist about what behavior gets you saved and what behavior doesn’t. God’s grace doesn’t come from our good behavior. Grace is a free gift of love that leads us to love God and neighbor in return. Holy, transformed lives are the fruit of God’s grace, not a condition for it.
James and John were thinking in terms of conditions and checklists, of who’s in and who’s out. When they got rejected by the Samaritans, they knew who was out. They wanted to torch the village with fire from above. Jesus sets James and John straight—and he does the same to us. We may not be as brash as James and John, but we may well have those moments when we’d like to torch our enemies, if not literally then at least metaphorically. How different it would be if we heard Paul’s words: “Through love become servants to one another.”
In our life as the Church, the Holy Spirit is constantly shaking us up—if we’re able to listen. Through the Spirit’s promptings, the Church has realized that things faithful people had taken for granted for centuries were totally incompatible with the Gospel of Christ. Two centuries ago, people could scarcely envision a world without slavery. Just two generations ago in a large part of the United States people could barely imagine a time when people of different colors could drink from the same spigot. When the Spirit opens people’s eyes, new and exciting things happen. But those things can also be threatening. Changing the way we do things threatens our sense of comfort—that’s part of what it can mean not to have a place to lay our heads.
Yesterday in an amazing ceremony we ordained our dear sister Megan Traquair as our new bishop. It was a beautiful day and one that was completely unexceptional. And just a few years ago it would have been completely radical. It was exactly thirty years ago that our church, the Episcopal Church, ordained its first female bishop. In 1989 that was radical. It was only fifteen years before that in 1974 that we ordained our first female priests. I think I hardly need to say, today, that this Episcopal corner of the Body of Christ is not only hugely enriched by its female clergy. I don’t think we would exist without our female clergy. As a child of the Episcopal Church in the early 80s I grew up with female clergy, thanks be to God. And yet it took us until 1989 to welcome women as bishops. And we’re still learning what it means to welcome the gifts of people who are gay, or lesbian, or transgender. There are those for whom these changes have been hard. And we have to be gracious to one another during change. It’s not always easy to tell whether a change to the status quo is the Holy Spirit or not. But in the meantime, our job is to follow that great commandment to love one another.
The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. In our journey with our Lord, we can be held back by the things we think we need—whether they’re material things, social status, or long-held beliefs. As we learn to walk the way of the Messiah, may we be guided by the Spirit out of all the things that we think make us secure, and into the only real security there is—the challenging joy of walking with God.
Amen.
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1,13-25
Luke 9:51-62
+ + +
I don’t know how many times you’ve moved in your life. Some of us here today may have lived in the same place our whole life. Others may move from place to place each night looking for a safe place to sleep. And for others of us it may be in between, moving around every few years or so.
By my count I’ve moved about 14 or 15 times in my life. Growing up, my family moved roughly every three years. So I’ve had a lot of practice with the winnowing process of what to bring along and what not to. And yet all that practice doesn’t make it easy. I once had a Halloween costume with a pirate hat and plastic sword. I only ever wore it one time, but for some reason that hat and sword made it through more than one move. It just kept making it into a box. I might need it someday!
Some of us may be more pack rats than others, but I think all of us have the same need to hold on to the things that make us feel secure. So the Gospel reading for today is challenging. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Those of us here today who are homeless have a better insight into this passage than anyone else. For Jesus this passage is pretty often literally true. He and his friends go from town to town preaching and looking for people to take them in. He’s just been kicked out by a village of Samaritans, who won’t put him up for the night because Jews and Samaritans don’t get along and he’s on his way to the Jewish capital, Jerusalem. But when he gets to Jerusalem, what waits for him is worse: trial, humiliation, and death on a cross.
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Romero, which came out in 1989. It’s based on the life of Oscar Romero, archbishop of El Salvador in the late 1970’s. At the opening of the film, Bishop Romero has a nice, cushy place to lay his head. He’s surrounded by well-spoken members of the government who offer him congratulations on his position and ask for private baptisms for their babies. But when Romero begins to realize what the gospel demands of him, he has to abandon that security. He’s a conservative man with a deep life of prayer. And that prayer life leads him to speak out against the government’s repression of poor people. He negotiates with rebels and celebrates Mass in occupied cities. And on the 24th of March, 1980, Bishop Romero was assassinated. For Bishop Romero, learning to follow Jesus meant giving up his prestige, his comfort, and in the end, his life.
Sometimes the things that keep us from walking in Jesus’s footsteps are more subtle. In the reading we heard today from Galatians, Paul calls on us to “be guided by the Spirit.” When we follow Jesus, we’re not led by a system of rules and regulations. As Paul writes, “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We might prefer having clear laundry lists of what’s right and wrong. But in Christ those are swept away in favor of the rule of love.
Often we get uncomfortable with that way of living. Instead of living in the tension of listening to the Spirit’s guidance, of being open to change and new ideas, we retreat into the neat mental systems we construct to explain reality. You might say we “lay our heads down.” Having things figured out is a soft pillow.
It’s ironic that even as Paul writes about living in freedom and not submitting to the slavery of the law, people through the centuries have used this exact passage as a checklist for who’s going to heaven and who isn’t. “Fornication—check. Drunkenness—check. Idolatry—check. Carousing!” (A lot of Episcopalians I know might be in trouble there. There was a little holy carousing this weekend around Bishop Megan’s consecration.) But Paul’s point isn’t to make a checklist about what behavior gets you saved and what behavior doesn’t. God’s grace doesn’t come from our good behavior. Grace is a free gift of love that leads us to love God and neighbor in return. Holy, transformed lives are the fruit of God’s grace, not a condition for it.
James and John were thinking in terms of conditions and checklists, of who’s in and who’s out. When they got rejected by the Samaritans, they knew who was out. They wanted to torch the village with fire from above. Jesus sets James and John straight—and he does the same to us. We may not be as brash as James and John, but we may well have those moments when we’d like to torch our enemies, if not literally then at least metaphorically. How different it would be if we heard Paul’s words: “Through love become servants to one another.”
In our life as the Church, the Holy Spirit is constantly shaking us up—if we’re able to listen. Through the Spirit’s promptings, the Church has realized that things faithful people had taken for granted for centuries were totally incompatible with the Gospel of Christ. Two centuries ago, people could scarcely envision a world without slavery. Just two generations ago in a large part of the United States people could barely imagine a time when people of different colors could drink from the same spigot. When the Spirit opens people’s eyes, new and exciting things happen. But those things can also be threatening. Changing the way we do things threatens our sense of comfort—that’s part of what it can mean not to have a place to lay our heads.
Yesterday in an amazing ceremony we ordained our dear sister Megan Traquair as our new bishop. It was a beautiful day and one that was completely unexceptional. And just a few years ago it would have been completely radical. It was exactly thirty years ago that our church, the Episcopal Church, ordained its first female bishop. In 1989 that was radical. It was only fifteen years before that in 1974 that we ordained our first female priests. I think I hardly need to say, today, that this Episcopal corner of the Body of Christ is not only hugely enriched by its female clergy. I don’t think we would exist without our female clergy. As a child of the Episcopal Church in the early 80s I grew up with female clergy, thanks be to God. And yet it took us until 1989 to welcome women as bishops. And we’re still learning what it means to welcome the gifts of people who are gay, or lesbian, or transgender. There are those for whom these changes have been hard. And we have to be gracious to one another during change. It’s not always easy to tell whether a change to the status quo is the Holy Spirit or not. But in the meantime, our job is to follow that great commandment to love one another.
The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. In our journey with our Lord, we can be held back by the things we think we need—whether they’re material things, social status, or long-held beliefs. As we learn to walk the way of the Messiah, may we be guided by the Spirit out of all the things that we think make us secure, and into the only real security there is—the challenging joy of walking with God.
Amen.
Jun 16, 2019 |
First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
| Pamela Moore
First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
- Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
- Romans 5:1-5
- John 16:12-15
- Psalm 8
- or Canticle 13 (or Canticle 2)
Jun 09, 2019 |
Year C, Day of Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Day of Pentecost, Revised Common Lectionary
Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
+ + +
They wanted to make a name for themselves.
They wanted to be somebody. To be big. To be famous.
So they decided to make a big tower.
Of course they did, right? It’s classic. Powerful people build things—particularly powerful men. To show how important you are, build something. A statue, a pyramid, a skyscraper, whatever it is, but make it huge. The bigger the better. Bigger than anybody else’s. That’s how you know you’re important. That’s how other people know you’re important.
There was a real Tower of Babel. It was the ziggurat, the stair-stepped tower at the heart of Babylon. Babylon was the most powerful city of the ancient world, until it wasn’t. The Israelites who told this story didn’t have much love for Babylon, where they’d been held captive for two generations. They reveled in the wordplay of Babylon/Babel/babble, which works in Hebrew about the way it does in English. The Babylonians had a great empire, like so many other empires before and since. They tried to bring the whole world together, which in some ways is a noble goal, except of course that it meant bringing the whole world together under the thumb of Babylon. That’s the thing about a tower. It marks the center of something. And it always has a top. It’s a good symbol for the way human beings tend to try to create unity, which is mostly by building empires. Empires tend to talk about uniting many peoples together—but in practice one group sits at the center. To quote George Orwell, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. A nobleman in Babylon is more so than, say, a peasant woman in the conquered province of Judah. The closer to the center, the higher up the tower you are, the better.
Now the story about the Tower of Babel is clearly based on Babylon. But it’s not just about that one empire. It’s an origin story about all our human efforts to build towers; to make a name for ourselves and create unity based on sameness. The Roman Empire preached peace and prosperity through military might. The British Empire preached progress through the spreading of genteel English civilization to all corners of the world. The Soviet Union preached the brotherhood of all peoples through the dictatorship of the proletariat. All those empires claimed to bring many peoples together in unity. But everyone knew the difference between a Roman slave and Caesar, or between a Punjabi villager and Queen Victoria, or between a pensioner in Kazakhstan and a Kremlin bureaucrat with a big Moscow apartment.
In the Genesis story we see what happens to empires. They fragment. Sooner or later, the myth collapses and the center no longer holds. And what we’re left with is division. We saw it happen in the former Yugoslavia after the Cold War as Croatians, Serbians, and Bosniaks shelled one another after living alongside one another for decades under a dictatorship that preached unity.
And in human terms, that’s the choice we have. A false unity based on empire or fragmentation and division.
That’s where Pentecost comes in.
This is the day when God opened the way of eternal life to every people and nation. This is the day when God undid the curse of Babel.
Two thousand years or so ago, on Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Passover, the followers of Jesus were all together in one place, waiting for whatever would happen next. And then the Spirit moved among them. Tongues of fire appeared, one on each of them. “Tongues,” another pun, because here again just like in English “tongues” can also mean “languages.” And then the real miracle began.
As the disciples began to preach, they spoke not one language but many. Parthians, Medes, Pamphylians and all the rest, heard the good news in their own native tongues. Not in the common languages of the empire they used to communicate with each other, but their own native tongues, the one they learned on their mothers’ laps. Oh, a few heard it in Latin, those visitors from Rome that get mentioned toward the end of that long list. But they’re not first, no more important than anyone else.
And what happened next was just as important. From this moment in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples begin to go out. They leave the house where they’ve been staying and get out there, as Luke puts it, starting from Jerusalem, out to the rest of Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
At Pentecost God creates a new kind of unity. One without a tower. No one place is at the center. No one group is at the top. As the psalm puts it, “the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole earth.” There’s no center in Babylon or London or Moscow or Rome, no emperor or General Secretary at the top. We have a leader, all right—but Jesus has ascended into heaven and is now to be found wherever we go. Instead of a centripetal unity converging around one favored place or people, God is creating a kind of unity that’s centrifugal. It’s about going out to carry the good news and discovering the Spirit already at work ahead of us in every place, among every people.
That kind of unity was radical two thousand years ago, and it’s radical today. We live in a country that thinks of itself as valuing unity in diversity and the equality of all. Our money itself proclaims “E pluribus unum,” out of many one. And yet it’s also true that in this country some have generally been more equal than others, and you’ve been closer to the center the closer you are to white, the closer you are to Protestant, the closer you are to male and cisgender and heterosexual. Sometimes that center has been reinforced implicitly through unspoken norms. Sometimes it’s been enshrined very explicitly into Jim Crow laws and housing covenants and gerrymandered districts and bathroom bills. Those two visions of this country have been intertwined throughout our history. Sometimes we’ve made real progress toward a fairer and more diverse society. Sometimes we’ve moved backwards. Sometimes that very vision of a nation founded on equality gets used as a smokescreen to perpetuate injustices. But it’s not just the United States. All over our world today there are movements toward greater domination or greater fragmentation or both.
As Christians this should distress us. But it shouldn’t surprise us, and it shouldn’t discourage us. It’s been in our scriptures from the beginning. We can’t manufacture unity on our own. On our own we will always either build bigger towers or degenerate into opposing camps. Only the Spirit of God can bring real unity that neither ignores our differences nor finds in them reasons to hate one another. Only in the Spirit do our differences become things of beauty, precious reflections of the infinite creativity of God.
That Spirit is alive in us today. We received it when we were baptized into Christ, just as today we baptize Fiona, Jazabelle, and Charlie. That Spirit is stirred up in us every time we renew our baptismal covenant as we do today. It stirs us up and flings us out into the world to proclaim the good news in a world without a center, without a tower—a world where Jesus is present in every language, wherever we go.
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
+ + +
They wanted to make a name for themselves.
They wanted to be somebody. To be big. To be famous.
So they decided to make a big tower.
Of course they did, right? It’s classic. Powerful people build things—particularly powerful men. To show how important you are, build something. A statue, a pyramid, a skyscraper, whatever it is, but make it huge. The bigger the better. Bigger than anybody else’s. That’s how you know you’re important. That’s how other people know you’re important.
There was a real Tower of Babel. It was the ziggurat, the stair-stepped tower at the heart of Babylon. Babylon was the most powerful city of the ancient world, until it wasn’t. The Israelites who told this story didn’t have much love for Babylon, where they’d been held captive for two generations. They reveled in the wordplay of Babylon/Babel/babble, which works in Hebrew about the way it does in English. The Babylonians had a great empire, like so many other empires before and since. They tried to bring the whole world together, which in some ways is a noble goal, except of course that it meant bringing the whole world together under the thumb of Babylon. That’s the thing about a tower. It marks the center of something. And it always has a top. It’s a good symbol for the way human beings tend to try to create unity, which is mostly by building empires. Empires tend to talk about uniting many peoples together—but in practice one group sits at the center. To quote George Orwell, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. A nobleman in Babylon is more so than, say, a peasant woman in the conquered province of Judah. The closer to the center, the higher up the tower you are, the better.
Now the story about the Tower of Babel is clearly based on Babylon. But it’s not just about that one empire. It’s an origin story about all our human efforts to build towers; to make a name for ourselves and create unity based on sameness. The Roman Empire preached peace and prosperity through military might. The British Empire preached progress through the spreading of genteel English civilization to all corners of the world. The Soviet Union preached the brotherhood of all peoples through the dictatorship of the proletariat. All those empires claimed to bring many peoples together in unity. But everyone knew the difference between a Roman slave and Caesar, or between a Punjabi villager and Queen Victoria, or between a pensioner in Kazakhstan and a Kremlin bureaucrat with a big Moscow apartment.
In the Genesis story we see what happens to empires. They fragment. Sooner or later, the myth collapses and the center no longer holds. And what we’re left with is division. We saw it happen in the former Yugoslavia after the Cold War as Croatians, Serbians, and Bosniaks shelled one another after living alongside one another for decades under a dictatorship that preached unity.
And in human terms, that’s the choice we have. A false unity based on empire or fragmentation and division.
That’s where Pentecost comes in.
This is the day when God opened the way of eternal life to every people and nation. This is the day when God undid the curse of Babel.
Two thousand years or so ago, on Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Passover, the followers of Jesus were all together in one place, waiting for whatever would happen next. And then the Spirit moved among them. Tongues of fire appeared, one on each of them. “Tongues,” another pun, because here again just like in English “tongues” can also mean “languages.” And then the real miracle began.
As the disciples began to preach, they spoke not one language but many. Parthians, Medes, Pamphylians and all the rest, heard the good news in their own native tongues. Not in the common languages of the empire they used to communicate with each other, but their own native tongues, the one they learned on their mothers’ laps. Oh, a few heard it in Latin, those visitors from Rome that get mentioned toward the end of that long list. But they’re not first, no more important than anyone else.
And what happened next was just as important. From this moment in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples begin to go out. They leave the house where they’ve been staying and get out there, as Luke puts it, starting from Jerusalem, out to the rest of Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
At Pentecost God creates a new kind of unity. One without a tower. No one place is at the center. No one group is at the top. As the psalm puts it, “the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole earth.” There’s no center in Babylon or London or Moscow or Rome, no emperor or General Secretary at the top. We have a leader, all right—but Jesus has ascended into heaven and is now to be found wherever we go. Instead of a centripetal unity converging around one favored place or people, God is creating a kind of unity that’s centrifugal. It’s about going out to carry the good news and discovering the Spirit already at work ahead of us in every place, among every people.
That kind of unity was radical two thousand years ago, and it’s radical today. We live in a country that thinks of itself as valuing unity in diversity and the equality of all. Our money itself proclaims “E pluribus unum,” out of many one. And yet it’s also true that in this country some have generally been more equal than others, and you’ve been closer to the center the closer you are to white, the closer you are to Protestant, the closer you are to male and cisgender and heterosexual. Sometimes that center has been reinforced implicitly through unspoken norms. Sometimes it’s been enshrined very explicitly into Jim Crow laws and housing covenants and gerrymandered districts and bathroom bills. Those two visions of this country have been intertwined throughout our history. Sometimes we’ve made real progress toward a fairer and more diverse society. Sometimes we’ve moved backwards. Sometimes that very vision of a nation founded on equality gets used as a smokescreen to perpetuate injustices. But it’s not just the United States. All over our world today there are movements toward greater domination or greater fragmentation or both.
As Christians this should distress us. But it shouldn’t surprise us, and it shouldn’t discourage us. It’s been in our scriptures from the beginning. We can’t manufacture unity on our own. On our own we will always either build bigger towers or degenerate into opposing camps. Only the Spirit of God can bring real unity that neither ignores our differences nor finds in them reasons to hate one another. Only in the Spirit do our differences become things of beauty, precious reflections of the infinite creativity of God.
That Spirit is alive in us today. We received it when we were baptized into Christ, just as today we baptize Fiona, Jazabelle, and Charlie. That Spirit is stirred up in us every time we renew our baptismal covenant as we do today. It stirs us up and flings us out into the world to proclaim the good news in a world without a center, without a tower—a world where Jesus is present in every language, wherever we go.
Jun 02, 2019 |
Year C, 7 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, 7 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26
+ + +
Back when I was doing a yearlong residency as a hospital chaplain in Seattle, and then again during the years I was working on a doctorate in Berkeley, I often used to serve as what church lingo calls a “supply priest.” This is a priest who’s available to cover Sunday services when a congregation’s regular clergy aren’t available. It’s sort of like being a substitute teacher, except with vestments on, and with usually a better-behaved clientele.
One of the fun things about doing supply ministry is getting to lead worship in a wide variety of different congregations. Each place has its own congregational culture, and its own ways of doing things: where to stand, when to bow, where things go. I’ve served in congregations with altars up against the wall and altars in the middle of the room, pipe organs and electric guitars, lace vestments and tie-dye vestments. One congregation I supplied in had been part of the charismatic movement and a few people still prayed in tongues during the Prayers of the People.
Doing supply gave me a new appreciation for both the diversity, and also the unity, of the church. Some of the places I’ve visited as a supply priest were congregations I’d love to worship in regularly. Others would never feel like a fit for me in the long run. But each one I benefited from visiting. I’m glad they exist. I’m glad they each contribute their own unique gifts to the Body of Christ.
It’s been said that God values unity, rather than uniformity. We don’t have to all be the same. In fact, God prefers us not to be, because God created us beautifully different. But we do have to love each other.
It goes beyond the Episcopal church, of course, or the Anglican Communion. All those congregations where I supplied were united by a single Prayer Book and by belonging to a single faith tradition, even with all their differences. But there’s also a deeper oneness of all Christians which is real, even though it’s fractured.
I believe this is true: even though we often feel like we have nothing in common, there is a unity among Episcopalians in California, incense-swinging Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Middle East, hand-raising Pentecostals in South America, and even nondenominational prosperity-gospel preachers on TV. That unity isn’t grounded in our theological opinions, because those differ drastically. But there is one thing that all Christians have in common, and that is that we love and follow the person of Jesus.
I don’t want to minimize those differences, which are painful. Yesterday my family and I were at the Pride Festival downtown, enjoying a beautiful day and a beautiful community celebration of unity amid differences: of the remarkable spectrum of gender and sexuality that I believe God has created and loves. And I’m also very aware that many Christians, in fact most Christians around the world, would not be able to celebrate that festival. One thing I do believe is that we will discover our deeper unity by going deeper into our love for Jesus: his work, his message, his person.
The name of Jesus. Paul speaks that name to free the young woman in today’s reading from Acts from demon possession. The jailer confesses that name to be saved. The book of Acts, which we generally hear read in church during Easter Season, is about the good news of Jesus moving through all sectors of society. Paul and Silas are Jews; the girl and the jailer are Greeks. The girl is a slave; the jailer is free. The girl is female; the jailer is male. So this story is a lived demonstration of something Paul writes elsewhere, in his letter to the Galatians: Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, all are made one in Christ Jesus.
Now we are entering the last week of Easter. Three nights ago we celebrated the Ascension, and in this last week of Easter the church waits in anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But today’s gospel reading takes us back to the last moments before Easter, when Jesus is praying for his disciples immediately before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. His prayer for them is to be one, as he and the Father are one.
Not to be the same, but to be one.
That prayer extends to the whole church. And it even extends beyond the church, to everyone God has created, who may or may not have come to know and love Jesus by name, but who are made for oneness with God and each other.
That oneness is not always easy.
Who is it hard for you to be one with? Who gets on your nerves?
Whose ideas can you not stand, because they’re just plain wrong?
What shows can’t you stand to watch, or websites to read?
I know some of the answers for me. Maybe you can think of some for you too. The fact is that God doesn’t expect us to agree on everything. But what God does desire for us is to be able to love one another with the same pure, self-giving love Jesus shares with the Father. That doesn’t mean we don’t stick to our convictions and fight for what we value. It does mean that when we fight, we fight fair, and we stay aware of one another as human beings and children of God. Fortunately, we’re not asked to do it on our own. Jesus says in this passage that he’s praying not only for the disciples in the room for him but also for those still to come—for us. And if Jesus prays for something, you can bet it’s going to be fulfilled. So in the end, unity isn’t something we have to manufacture. It’s a gift God has already given us, through the prayers of Jesus, the great high priest. It’s for us to open that gift, and live it out as much as we can in our own lives.
This morning we are celebrating the great sacrament of unity, the holy meal where we share one bread, one cup: Christ in us, we in one another, all of us united in the one Jesus calls “Father.” Then we are going to be sent out into the world to live out that oneness in the middle of a fractured, hurting world. As we do, remember: you do not have to do it alone. Jesus is praying for you.
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26
+ + +
Back when I was doing a yearlong residency as a hospital chaplain in Seattle, and then again during the years I was working on a doctorate in Berkeley, I often used to serve as what church lingo calls a “supply priest.” This is a priest who’s available to cover Sunday services when a congregation’s regular clergy aren’t available. It’s sort of like being a substitute teacher, except with vestments on, and with usually a better-behaved clientele.
One of the fun things about doing supply ministry is getting to lead worship in a wide variety of different congregations. Each place has its own congregational culture, and its own ways of doing things: where to stand, when to bow, where things go. I’ve served in congregations with altars up against the wall and altars in the middle of the room, pipe organs and electric guitars, lace vestments and tie-dye vestments. One congregation I supplied in had been part of the charismatic movement and a few people still prayed in tongues during the Prayers of the People.
Doing supply gave me a new appreciation for both the diversity, and also the unity, of the church. Some of the places I’ve visited as a supply priest were congregations I’d love to worship in regularly. Others would never feel like a fit for me in the long run. But each one I benefited from visiting. I’m glad they exist. I’m glad they each contribute their own unique gifts to the Body of Christ.
It’s been said that God values unity, rather than uniformity. We don’t have to all be the same. In fact, God prefers us not to be, because God created us beautifully different. But we do have to love each other.
It goes beyond the Episcopal church, of course, or the Anglican Communion. All those congregations where I supplied were united by a single Prayer Book and by belonging to a single faith tradition, even with all their differences. But there’s also a deeper oneness of all Christians which is real, even though it’s fractured.
I believe this is true: even though we often feel like we have nothing in common, there is a unity among Episcopalians in California, incense-swinging Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Middle East, hand-raising Pentecostals in South America, and even nondenominational prosperity-gospel preachers on TV. That unity isn’t grounded in our theological opinions, because those differ drastically. But there is one thing that all Christians have in common, and that is that we love and follow the person of Jesus.
I don’t want to minimize those differences, which are painful. Yesterday my family and I were at the Pride Festival downtown, enjoying a beautiful day and a beautiful community celebration of unity amid differences: of the remarkable spectrum of gender and sexuality that I believe God has created and loves. And I’m also very aware that many Christians, in fact most Christians around the world, would not be able to celebrate that festival. One thing I do believe is that we will discover our deeper unity by going deeper into our love for Jesus: his work, his message, his person.
The name of Jesus. Paul speaks that name to free the young woman in today’s reading from Acts from demon possession. The jailer confesses that name to be saved. The book of Acts, which we generally hear read in church during Easter Season, is about the good news of Jesus moving through all sectors of society. Paul and Silas are Jews; the girl and the jailer are Greeks. The girl is a slave; the jailer is free. The girl is female; the jailer is male. So this story is a lived demonstration of something Paul writes elsewhere, in his letter to the Galatians: Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, all are made one in Christ Jesus.
Now we are entering the last week of Easter. Three nights ago we celebrated the Ascension, and in this last week of Easter the church waits in anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But today’s gospel reading takes us back to the last moments before Easter, when Jesus is praying for his disciples immediately before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. His prayer for them is to be one, as he and the Father are one.
Not to be the same, but to be one.
That prayer extends to the whole church. And it even extends beyond the church, to everyone God has created, who may or may not have come to know and love Jesus by name, but who are made for oneness with God and each other.
That oneness is not always easy.
Who is it hard for you to be one with? Who gets on your nerves?
Whose ideas can you not stand, because they’re just plain wrong?
What shows can’t you stand to watch, or websites to read?
I know some of the answers for me. Maybe you can think of some for you too. The fact is that God doesn’t expect us to agree on everything. But what God does desire for us is to be able to love one another with the same pure, self-giving love Jesus shares with the Father. That doesn’t mean we don’t stick to our convictions and fight for what we value. It does mean that when we fight, we fight fair, and we stay aware of one another as human beings and children of God. Fortunately, we’re not asked to do it on our own. Jesus says in this passage that he’s praying not only for the disciples in the room for him but also for those still to come—for us. And if Jesus prays for something, you can bet it’s going to be fulfilled. So in the end, unity isn’t something we have to manufacture. It’s a gift God has already given us, through the prayers of Jesus, the great high priest. It’s for us to open that gift, and live it out as much as we can in our own lives.
This morning we are celebrating the great sacrament of unity, the holy meal where we share one bread, one cup: Christ in us, we in one another, all of us united in the one Jesus calls “Father.” Then we are going to be sent out into the world to live out that oneness in the middle of a fractured, hurting world. As we do, remember: you do not have to do it alone. Jesus is praying for you.
May 26, 2019 |
Year C, 6 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, 6 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67
+ + +
Last year I met a youngish woman named—well, let’s call her Naomi. Naomi arrived at the church office one afternoon and politely asked for help charging her cell phone. She was in the process of making a long list of phone calls, looking for a place to live.
After years on the waiting list, Naomi had finally received a Section 8 housing voucher. Good news—or so it seemed. Because having a voucher can help you pay the rent … but only if you can find a vacancy with a landlord willing to rent to you in the first place. In California, unlike many other states, it’s legal for landlords to simply refuse to take Section 8 vouchers. But if you don’t use the voucher within a certain period of time, it expires. At the time I met her, Naomi had three weeks to find a place to live, or else be sent to square one to start all over again. There are 26,000 people on Sonoma County’s Section 8 waiting list. There are only 3,000 rental properties known to take Section 8 vouchers. And each year only about 300 of those actually turn over.[1] The odds didn’t look good.
I don’t know what ended up happening for Naomi. I was able to help her by paying for a couple of nights in a motel, and offer her a list of agencies that might give her some more help navigating the process. But you can’t force an opening to appear out of thin air.
Sometimes the system just isn’t enough.
When Jesus came to the pool of Beth-zatha he met a man who had been on the waiting list for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years waiting, much like Naomi, for that one precious and scarce chance. Imagine waiting for the healing mineral waters to bubble and swirl, waiting day in and day out for your chance at healing. Then, one day, suddenly, there it is—but with so many others pushing and jostling to get in, you hardly stand a chance. And then the waters go still and the opportunity closes, and you’re back at square one once more.
So often the systems we set up to try to help people in need are colossally overburdened. In some cases they’re woefully inadequate to begin with. In other cases a spike in needs overwhelms a system that used to function. In any case, there are plenty of pools of Beth-zatha today. Think of our patchwork healthcare system, where all of us at some point find ourselves trying to navigate a complex and confusing bureaucracy at best, and where people without insurance—and even some people with insurance—often choose between taking their medicine and paying their utility bills. Or think of our immigration system, where the waitlist to immigrate legally even for people who qualify can be decades long, and where people who come seeking asylum are routinely detained for two years or more before they receive a hearing.[2]
In today’s gospel we hear of Jesus going up to Jerusalem at the time of a great festival. And when he gets there, he goes, not to the Temple, as least not on this visit. Not to mingle with the celebrating crowds. But to this pool where forgotten people are warehoused. This is where Jesus shows up. And whether it’s an ER waiting room, or an overcrowded homeless shelter, or an immigration detention center, this is where Jesus is showing up today.
How do we show up with Jesus? What can we do when people are suffering and the need seems overwhelming and beyond our control?
It would be nice to respond as Jesus does in this story by offering a miraculous healing: Rise up, take your mat and walk! Now miracles can be prayed for, and they even happen occasionally, but most of us can’t promise them with the kind of confidence Jesus can offer. We can certainly offer tangible help sometimes. Every Sunday morning this church feeds a hot breakfast to folks who are hungry. We give away blankets and clothes. We give groceries away at our food pantry in Monte Rio. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking this kind of direct assistance will fix the systemic causes behind why people are poor or hungry or sick, but that doesn’t get us off the hook of doing it. Direct human kindness is a basic spiritual practice, and every tangible act of love to another human being is a visible sign of God’s love in the world.
And, of course, direct assistance isn’t enough. As Desmond Tutu is said to have said, “There comes a point where we have to stop just pulling people out of the river. We have to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”[3] When our society’s systems are failing people, there are times when the church can actually work to build better ones. There’s a long and noble tradition of this. Over the centuries the church has often been the first to start hospitals, orphanages, schools, and all sorts of institutions that eventually became an expected part of civil society but had their origins among people of faith. Today too people of faith are organizing to build housing, to start job training programs, to build rehab centers, to step up and fill gaps and create systems that help others get up off their mats and walk.
And then there are times when the need is too great even for our pooled resources as a church, where only collective action at the societal level can really move the needle. No matter how much housing churches build, we’re not going to solve the housing crisis on our own. No matter how much we recycle and cut our carbon footprint, we can’t fight climate change without national governments and international cooperation. And so the church also has a role in advocacy, working together with friends and neighbors of every faith and no faith to use our voices, votes, and dollars to call our society to care for all its members more justly. We have to do it with humility. A passion for justice doesn’t always equate into expertise on exactly what policies will create it. But for Christians the bottom line is always God’s fierce love for all, and in particular for those who are poor, who are sick, or who are suffering.
We work at those three levels, always. Direct, loving service to our neighbors in tangible ways. Building systems and institutions through the church to amplify our ability to care. And lifting up our voices as people of faith in the public square to press our governments and collective institutions in the direction of justice and peace.
And in all of it, we remember that it’s not up to us to make God’s reign happen. God is working, always and everywhere. God’s love is on the move. It’s up to us to watch for it, to see where the Spirit is at work, and then it’s our privilege to join in.
[1] Laura Hagar Rush, “Big Changes Coming to Section 8 Housing Process,” Cloverdale Reveille (May 15, 2019), http://www.sonomawest.com/cloverdale_reveille/news/big-changes-coming-to-section-housing-process/article_c217b636-7754-11e9-98e5-83d95935d892.html.
[2] Zuzana Cepla, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Asylum Process,” National Immigration Forum (January 10, 2019): https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-u-s-asylum-process/; Dianne Solis, “Why Don’t Mexicans Just Apply for Citizenship?”, Dallas Morning News (August 28, 2018), https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2018/08/29/dont-mexicans-just-apply-citizenship.
[3] “Said to have said,” because although this quote is attributed to him in many places on the Internet, I haven’t been able to find a verifiable source.
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9
Psalm 67
+ + +
Last year I met a youngish woman named—well, let’s call her Naomi. Naomi arrived at the church office one afternoon and politely asked for help charging her cell phone. She was in the process of making a long list of phone calls, looking for a place to live.
After years on the waiting list, Naomi had finally received a Section 8 housing voucher. Good news—or so it seemed. Because having a voucher can help you pay the rent … but only if you can find a vacancy with a landlord willing to rent to you in the first place. In California, unlike many other states, it’s legal for landlords to simply refuse to take Section 8 vouchers. But if you don’t use the voucher within a certain period of time, it expires. At the time I met her, Naomi had three weeks to find a place to live, or else be sent to square one to start all over again. There are 26,000 people on Sonoma County’s Section 8 waiting list. There are only 3,000 rental properties known to take Section 8 vouchers. And each year only about 300 of those actually turn over.[1] The odds didn’t look good.
I don’t know what ended up happening for Naomi. I was able to help her by paying for a couple of nights in a motel, and offer her a list of agencies that might give her some more help navigating the process. But you can’t force an opening to appear out of thin air.
Sometimes the system just isn’t enough.
When Jesus came to the pool of Beth-zatha he met a man who had been on the waiting list for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight years waiting, much like Naomi, for that one precious and scarce chance. Imagine waiting for the healing mineral waters to bubble and swirl, waiting day in and day out for your chance at healing. Then, one day, suddenly, there it is—but with so many others pushing and jostling to get in, you hardly stand a chance. And then the waters go still and the opportunity closes, and you’re back at square one once more.
So often the systems we set up to try to help people in need are colossally overburdened. In some cases they’re woefully inadequate to begin with. In other cases a spike in needs overwhelms a system that used to function. In any case, there are plenty of pools of Beth-zatha today. Think of our patchwork healthcare system, where all of us at some point find ourselves trying to navigate a complex and confusing bureaucracy at best, and where people without insurance—and even some people with insurance—often choose between taking their medicine and paying their utility bills. Or think of our immigration system, where the waitlist to immigrate legally even for people who qualify can be decades long, and where people who come seeking asylum are routinely detained for two years or more before they receive a hearing.[2]
In today’s gospel we hear of Jesus going up to Jerusalem at the time of a great festival. And when he gets there, he goes, not to the Temple, as least not on this visit. Not to mingle with the celebrating crowds. But to this pool where forgotten people are warehoused. This is where Jesus shows up. And whether it’s an ER waiting room, or an overcrowded homeless shelter, or an immigration detention center, this is where Jesus is showing up today.
How do we show up with Jesus? What can we do when people are suffering and the need seems overwhelming and beyond our control?
It would be nice to respond as Jesus does in this story by offering a miraculous healing: Rise up, take your mat and walk! Now miracles can be prayed for, and they even happen occasionally, but most of us can’t promise them with the kind of confidence Jesus can offer. We can certainly offer tangible help sometimes. Every Sunday morning this church feeds a hot breakfast to folks who are hungry. We give away blankets and clothes. We give groceries away at our food pantry in Monte Rio. We shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking this kind of direct assistance will fix the systemic causes behind why people are poor or hungry or sick, but that doesn’t get us off the hook of doing it. Direct human kindness is a basic spiritual practice, and every tangible act of love to another human being is a visible sign of God’s love in the world.
And, of course, direct assistance isn’t enough. As Desmond Tutu is said to have said, “There comes a point where we have to stop just pulling people out of the river. We have to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”[3] When our society’s systems are failing people, there are times when the church can actually work to build better ones. There’s a long and noble tradition of this. Over the centuries the church has often been the first to start hospitals, orphanages, schools, and all sorts of institutions that eventually became an expected part of civil society but had their origins among people of faith. Today too people of faith are organizing to build housing, to start job training programs, to build rehab centers, to step up and fill gaps and create systems that help others get up off their mats and walk.
And then there are times when the need is too great even for our pooled resources as a church, where only collective action at the societal level can really move the needle. No matter how much housing churches build, we’re not going to solve the housing crisis on our own. No matter how much we recycle and cut our carbon footprint, we can’t fight climate change without national governments and international cooperation. And so the church also has a role in advocacy, working together with friends and neighbors of every faith and no faith to use our voices, votes, and dollars to call our society to care for all its members more justly. We have to do it with humility. A passion for justice doesn’t always equate into expertise on exactly what policies will create it. But for Christians the bottom line is always God’s fierce love for all, and in particular for those who are poor, who are sick, or who are suffering.
We work at those three levels, always. Direct, loving service to our neighbors in tangible ways. Building systems and institutions through the church to amplify our ability to care. And lifting up our voices as people of faith in the public square to press our governments and collective institutions in the direction of justice and peace.
And in all of it, we remember that it’s not up to us to make God’s reign happen. God is working, always and everywhere. God’s love is on the move. It’s up to us to watch for it, to see where the Spirit is at work, and then it’s our privilege to join in.
[1] Laura Hagar Rush, “Big Changes Coming to Section 8 Housing Process,” Cloverdale Reveille (May 15, 2019), http://www.sonomawest.com/cloverdale_reveille/news/big-changes-coming-to-section-housing-process/article_c217b636-7754-11e9-98e5-83d95935d892.html.
[2] Zuzana Cepla, “Fact Sheet: U.S. Asylum Process,” National Immigration Forum (January 10, 2019): https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-u-s-asylum-process/; Dianne Solis, “Why Don’t Mexicans Just Apply for Citizenship?”, Dallas Morning News (August 28, 2018), https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2018/08/29/dont-mexicans-just-apply-citizenship.
[3] “Said to have said,” because although this quote is attributed to him in many places on the Internet, I haven’t been able to find a verifiable source.
May 12, 2019 |
Year C, 4 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, 4 Easter, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 9:36-43
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
+ + +
I hear these sheep passages differently since moving to Sonoma County … because I see sheep more often.
I didn’t see sheep too much in Berkeley. As the old radio ad said, Berkeley has cows, grazing up in the East Bay hills, but the only sheep I used to see there were petting-zoo sheep at the Little Farm in Tilden Park.
But here they’re just kind of around more. I saw flock after flock driving down Lakeville Highway toward a meeting in Vallejo last Friday. Last fall we went to the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol and my daughter Abby watched a sheep-shearing demonstration, starting with a sheep shaped like a barrel and ending with a skinny buzz-cut sheep and massive, luxuriant piles of wool all over the ground. This is a place where people really raise sheep.
And they do it for various purposes. Wool, certainly. Milk, often. Meat, sometimes, too—we Americans don’t eat nearly as much lamb as folks in Australia or New Zealand, but there’s still a market for it.
One thing we don’t see a lot of sheep raised for today is sacrifice. And that’s a big difference between how we think about sheep today and how people in the Bible would have. People in the Greco-Roman world, and people in ancient Israel, used sheep for wool and milk and meat just like we do. But they also used sheep, and other animals, to worship with. You would take your animal to a shrine or temple, and a priest would help you ritually slaughter it, and offer up some or all of it on a smoking altar, as a gift to the gods, or if you were an Israelite, a gift to the One God. In the Temple in Jerusalem a lamb was sacrificed each morning and each evening as a continual daily offering to God, and each year at Passover each family was to sacrifice its own lamb and eat its portion as part of the festival dinner.
It can be hard for us to imagine just how central sacrifice was to religion in the ancient world—because what was a commonplace of everyday life then is almost completely absent for us today. There are reasons for that. When the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, Jewish worshipers no longer had a place for sacrifice. They began instead to understand their prayers as themselves being a kind of sacrifice, replacing the physical sacrifices from before. Meanwhile Christians had come to understand the death of Jesus as a kind of sacrifice that fulfilled all other sacrifices, so that no more animal sacrifices would ever be needed again. And they too began to speak of their prayers as a kind of sacrifice. We still use that language today when we ask God to accept “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” in the Eucharistic Prayer.
But we need to keep those images of sacrifice in our minds as we hear these scripture readings today. This Fourth Sunday of Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday, because the readings for today always feature passages about sheep and shepherds. Psalm 23 is maybe the most famous passage from the Old Testament about God as our shepherd. In John’s gospel we have the basis for our central stained glass window, as Jesus speaks of himself as a shepherd. And that’s not unusual in itself. Not only God but also kings and religious leaders in the Old Testament were often described as shepherds, charged with caring for the people.
But our passage from the Revelation to John throws a twist into things—because it gives us a shepherd who is also a Lamb. “The Lamb will be their shepherd,” it says, and echoing Psalm 23, “he will guide them to springs of the water of life.” This Lamb is none other than Jesus, the Good Shepherd who was not content just to take care of the sheep, but who loves the sheep so much that he became one of them.
A chapter earlier in Revelation, a heavenly elder has offered to show John a conquering king who he calls “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” But when John sees this king, it turns out this lion is really a Lamb, as the passage says, “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”
Pause for a moment and appreciate the paradox of that line. Slaughtered lambs don’t stand—not unless, after being dead, they have been raised up again.
Now everyone knows that lions kill, and lambs are killed. Lions are powerful, lambs are gentle. So for God’s Anointed One to identify as a lamb is something strange and new. The world says that power comes with the blade of a sword or the barrel of a gun. The world says that lions always win. But God says no. The Lamb that was slain stands again. God says that real power is Lamb power.
Our society today may not practice ritual sacrifice, at least not so overtly as those societies of the past. But that hasn’t made us nonviolent. Far from it. Indeed, we continue to sacrifice one another day after day, not in temples, but on streets, and in schools, and in synagogues. Not to gods like Zeus or Apollo, but to gods like racial ideology, or frustrated male rage, or simple economic profit.
The shooting at Chabad of Poway Synagogue was just two weeks ago. Since then not one but two more school shootings have made their way through our headlines, one in North Carolina, one in Colorado. Each time we hear the story again, numbingly familiar at this point. A person full of hate or alienation or both enters, bent on destruction, a predator, a roaring lion.
Lori Gilbert Kaye was trying to shield her rabbi from gunfire when she herself was shot and killed. Riley Howell, a student at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, died after charging the gunman in his classroom, saving the lives of other students. Kendrick Castillo did the same thing at his school in Colorado.
Today as we honor and mourn these brave people, we may well imagine them standing among that great multitude of martyrs, robed in white, with palms of victory in their hands. And we can say with utter certainty that God does not want bloodshed. Not ours; not our friends’; not our enemies’. God stands on the side of the victim. God stands on the side of the innocent. The Lord who is our shepherd is the Lamb who was slain.
It is Eastertime. And we are still rejoicing in the risen Christ, not in a naïve way that says everything is happy and easy now that Christ is risen. The suffering of Jesus is still taking place in the suffering of the world. In the resurrection of Jesus we have seen the first installment of God’s victory, the victory of nonviolent courage, the victory of the Lamb. The fullness of that victory is still to come. There are tears being cried today, and there are tears still left to cry. But at the last day God will wipe them away from every eye.
May the Good Shepherd guide and nurture us. And may we be made bold to live in the way of the Lamb, who was slain, and who now lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30
Psalm 23
+ + +
I hear these sheep passages differently since moving to Sonoma County … because I see sheep more often.
I didn’t see sheep too much in Berkeley. As the old radio ad said, Berkeley has cows, grazing up in the East Bay hills, but the only sheep I used to see there were petting-zoo sheep at the Little Farm in Tilden Park.
But here they’re just kind of around more. I saw flock after flock driving down Lakeville Highway toward a meeting in Vallejo last Friday. Last fall we went to the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol and my daughter Abby watched a sheep-shearing demonstration, starting with a sheep shaped like a barrel and ending with a skinny buzz-cut sheep and massive, luxuriant piles of wool all over the ground. This is a place where people really raise sheep.
And they do it for various purposes. Wool, certainly. Milk, often. Meat, sometimes, too—we Americans don’t eat nearly as much lamb as folks in Australia or New Zealand, but there’s still a market for it.
One thing we don’t see a lot of sheep raised for today is sacrifice. And that’s a big difference between how we think about sheep today and how people in the Bible would have. People in the Greco-Roman world, and people in ancient Israel, used sheep for wool and milk and meat just like we do. But they also used sheep, and other animals, to worship with. You would take your animal to a shrine or temple, and a priest would help you ritually slaughter it, and offer up some or all of it on a smoking altar, as a gift to the gods, or if you were an Israelite, a gift to the One God. In the Temple in Jerusalem a lamb was sacrificed each morning and each evening as a continual daily offering to God, and each year at Passover each family was to sacrifice its own lamb and eat its portion as part of the festival dinner.
It can be hard for us to imagine just how central sacrifice was to religion in the ancient world—because what was a commonplace of everyday life then is almost completely absent for us today. There are reasons for that. When the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, Jewish worshipers no longer had a place for sacrifice. They began instead to understand their prayers as themselves being a kind of sacrifice, replacing the physical sacrifices from before. Meanwhile Christians had come to understand the death of Jesus as a kind of sacrifice that fulfilled all other sacrifices, so that no more animal sacrifices would ever be needed again. And they too began to speak of their prayers as a kind of sacrifice. We still use that language today when we ask God to accept “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” in the Eucharistic Prayer.
But we need to keep those images of sacrifice in our minds as we hear these scripture readings today. This Fourth Sunday of Easter is often called Good Shepherd Sunday, because the readings for today always feature passages about sheep and shepherds. Psalm 23 is maybe the most famous passage from the Old Testament about God as our shepherd. In John’s gospel we have the basis for our central stained glass window, as Jesus speaks of himself as a shepherd. And that’s not unusual in itself. Not only God but also kings and religious leaders in the Old Testament were often described as shepherds, charged with caring for the people.
But our passage from the Revelation to John throws a twist into things—because it gives us a shepherd who is also a Lamb. “The Lamb will be their shepherd,” it says, and echoing Psalm 23, “he will guide them to springs of the water of life.” This Lamb is none other than Jesus, the Good Shepherd who was not content just to take care of the sheep, but who loves the sheep so much that he became one of them.
A chapter earlier in Revelation, a heavenly elder has offered to show John a conquering king who he calls “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” But when John sees this king, it turns out this lion is really a Lamb, as the passage says, “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”
Pause for a moment and appreciate the paradox of that line. Slaughtered lambs don’t stand—not unless, after being dead, they have been raised up again.
Now everyone knows that lions kill, and lambs are killed. Lions are powerful, lambs are gentle. So for God’s Anointed One to identify as a lamb is something strange and new. The world says that power comes with the blade of a sword or the barrel of a gun. The world says that lions always win. But God says no. The Lamb that was slain stands again. God says that real power is Lamb power.
Our society today may not practice ritual sacrifice, at least not so overtly as those societies of the past. But that hasn’t made us nonviolent. Far from it. Indeed, we continue to sacrifice one another day after day, not in temples, but on streets, and in schools, and in synagogues. Not to gods like Zeus or Apollo, but to gods like racial ideology, or frustrated male rage, or simple economic profit.
The shooting at Chabad of Poway Synagogue was just two weeks ago. Since then not one but two more school shootings have made their way through our headlines, one in North Carolina, one in Colorado. Each time we hear the story again, numbingly familiar at this point. A person full of hate or alienation or both enters, bent on destruction, a predator, a roaring lion.
Lori Gilbert Kaye was trying to shield her rabbi from gunfire when she herself was shot and killed. Riley Howell, a student at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, died after charging the gunman in his classroom, saving the lives of other students. Kendrick Castillo did the same thing at his school in Colorado.
Today as we honor and mourn these brave people, we may well imagine them standing among that great multitude of martyrs, robed in white, with palms of victory in their hands. And we can say with utter certainty that God does not want bloodshed. Not ours; not our friends’; not our enemies’. God stands on the side of the victim. God stands on the side of the innocent. The Lord who is our shepherd is the Lamb who was slain.
It is Eastertime. And we are still rejoicing in the risen Christ, not in a naïve way that says everything is happy and easy now that Christ is risen. The suffering of Jesus is still taking place in the suffering of the world. In the resurrection of Jesus we have seen the first installment of God’s victory, the victory of nonviolent courage, the victory of the Lamb. The fullness of that victory is still to come. There are tears being cried today, and there are tears still left to cry. But at the last day God will wipe them away from every eye.
May the Good Shepherd guide and nurture us. And may we be made bold to live in the way of the Lamb, who was slain, and who now lives and reigns for ever and ever.
May 05, 2019 |
Year C, Easter 3, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Easter 3, Revised Common Lectionary
Acts 9:1-6
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
+ + +
It doesn’t take a whole lot of time on pilgrimage in the Holy Land before you begin to learn to take some of the historic identifications of the holy places with a grain of salt.
It’s not that there aren’t holy sites that archeologists think could actually be historically authentic—like the Church of the Resurrection, as I said two weeks ago at Easter. But when twenty centuries have supplied enough piety, pilgrimage, and potential income, holy sites tend to pop up exponentially. So there are at least two birthplaces of John the Baptist; at least two sites where Jesus and his disciples held the Last Supper; and no less than four contenders for real Biblical town of Emmaus. Those who visit Israel and Palestine looking to find places to venerate the mysteries of the faith … tend to find what they are looking for. Those who go looking to pinpoint THE spot where they happened … are often disappointed.
And so it was back in 2009 when Julia and I arrived at the Church of the Primacy of St. Peter—THE spot on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus appeared to his disciples, cooked them breakfast, and commissioned Peter to feed his flock. Our group of pilgrims from St. George’s Anglican College in Jerusalem celebrated the Eucharist at an outdoor altar on the grounds, then toured the chapel built over a flat rock, the “Mensa Christi”—the very Table of Christ, where he laid the charcoal fire and spread out the loaves and fishes.
Or, of course, maybe it really happened at that other flat rock over there—or that other beach a mile or two down the shore. Who can say?
Yet as we stood there, looking out at the turquoise water lapping at the rocky shore, I realized just how right this holy place felt. Over twenty centuries of time, cities appear and vanish; buildings, streets, and trees come and go—but the sea today is still the same as it was then. So contemplating the story in that place was easy.
They call the church the Primacy of St. Peter. Now “primacy” is a grand sort of word—and if you’re into celebrating papal authority, perhaps that’s the aspect of the story that works for you. But as I imagine Peter experiencing this encounter with the risen Jesus, it doesn’t sound as though he’s feeling very primatial. Here he is in his soaking clothes, huddling by the charcoal fire as the rest of the disciples make their dry way back to shore in the boat. This is now the third time, the evangelist tells us, that the Lord has shown himself to the disciples. There’s been joy and astonishment as the reality has sunk in that Jesus is actually risen. And yet for Peter, there’s something that remains unaddressed—an awkward, unwelcome memory.
There are only two charcoal fires mentioned in the pages of the New Testament. They are both in John’s Gospel.
One is here. The other is just three chapters back.
We heard about it what feels like a lifetime, but was only just over two weeks, ago: in the Passion Gospel on Good Friday. Peter is huddled around a charcoal fire in the high priest’s courtyard, with the opportunity to remain faithful to Jesus, even to the point of sharing in his suffering and death—and instead he betrays him, taking the easy way out; denying three times that he even knows Jesus, just as the Lord had predicted.
How is it for Peter as he sits here dripping by the fire, one-on-one with the friend he betrayed as he waits for the others to reach the shore? Is it too much of a stretch to imagine the unspoken questions filling his mind?
“Does Jesus even know what happened? Should I bring it up? What’s this charcoal fire doing here, anyway? Is this Jesus’ way of trying to make a point? Oh God, I have to tell him I’m sorry. Wait, that’s stupid. Maybe it isn’t really such a big deal. If only I could stop feeling bad about it.”
There’s a word for the experience of having an unnameable secret, something you can never let anyone know about you. That word is shame. Peter’s shame is the shame most of us know at some point in our lives—the conviction that we have done, or been, something so unworthy that even to acknowledge it would feel like something close to undergoing a death.
And yet death is what Jesus is in the act of triumphing over.
Here by the rocky shores of the lake, he offers his disciples not death, but life. In what must surely be one of the most loving, intimate, ordinary lines in Scripture, he tells them: “Come and have breakfast.” He cooks for them and feeds them the same meal of bread and fish he once fed five thousand people by this same lake, back when he first told the disciples that he himself was the bread of life. And when the ordinary-yet-sacred meal is over, he turns his attention again to Peter and asks him the same question three times: do you love me?
It’s a threefold undoing of a threefold betrayal.
Gently, insistently, Jesus repeats the question until it reaches the core of Peter’s shame. Twice Peter tells Jesus, “Lord, you know that I love you.” After the third time, the story tells us, Peter feels pained and blurts out: “Lord, you know everything!” Indeed, Jesus does know everything—the betrayal, the shame, the love Peter still holds. He sees Peter inside and out, and looks at him with love instead of condemnation. And as Peter’s threefold confession of Jesus overcomes his threefold betrayal, Jesus puts him back in the role of faithful disciple with the old, familiar seaside call: Follow me.
So what about you? And for that matter, what about me? Where are the places of shame in you? Where are the things that paralyze you, that fill you with fear, and that make you a slave to death?
I know in my life—and I imagine it’s the same for you—that the sources of my greatest shame haven’t always been my worst actions or experiences; but usually they have been my most secret. Sometimes the things that trap us in shame are things we have done wrong, like Peter. Sometimes they are things that have been done to us. Sometimes they are our fault; sometimes not. What is always true is that the risen Jesus offers us forgiveness for what we have done wrong and healing for whatever traps us. Just as he does for Peter, he gently but insistently moves to the core of our slavery to death, calls us his faithful disciples, and commissions us to follow him.
Maybe that’s the secret of the “primacy” of Peter. Not that he’s the first among Christians as a ruler of the church; but that he’s the first model for all of us disciples who come along later, of what it truly means to be healed by the risen Christ, and sent to serve in his name.
I don’t know for certain whether this story happened on the site of that Church of the Primacy, or whether the rock in the chapel is really the Table of the Lord. But what is certain is that the risen Jesus continues to come to his disciples. He is here again this very morning to feed us with the bread of life.
It is Easter; our Lenten fast is broken; our sin is forgiven; our shame is healed. This Table of the Lord is about to be set.
Come, and have breakfast.
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
+ + +
It doesn’t take a whole lot of time on pilgrimage in the Holy Land before you begin to learn to take some of the historic identifications of the holy places with a grain of salt.
It’s not that there aren’t holy sites that archeologists think could actually be historically authentic—like the Church of the Resurrection, as I said two weeks ago at Easter. But when twenty centuries have supplied enough piety, pilgrimage, and potential income, holy sites tend to pop up exponentially. So there are at least two birthplaces of John the Baptist; at least two sites where Jesus and his disciples held the Last Supper; and no less than four contenders for real Biblical town of Emmaus. Those who visit Israel and Palestine looking to find places to venerate the mysteries of the faith … tend to find what they are looking for. Those who go looking to pinpoint THE spot where they happened … are often disappointed.
And so it was back in 2009 when Julia and I arrived at the Church of the Primacy of St. Peter—THE spot on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus appeared to his disciples, cooked them breakfast, and commissioned Peter to feed his flock. Our group of pilgrims from St. George’s Anglican College in Jerusalem celebrated the Eucharist at an outdoor altar on the grounds, then toured the chapel built over a flat rock, the “Mensa Christi”—the very Table of Christ, where he laid the charcoal fire and spread out the loaves and fishes.
Or, of course, maybe it really happened at that other flat rock over there—or that other beach a mile or two down the shore. Who can say?
Yet as we stood there, looking out at the turquoise water lapping at the rocky shore, I realized just how right this holy place felt. Over twenty centuries of time, cities appear and vanish; buildings, streets, and trees come and go—but the sea today is still the same as it was then. So contemplating the story in that place was easy.
They call the church the Primacy of St. Peter. Now “primacy” is a grand sort of word—and if you’re into celebrating papal authority, perhaps that’s the aspect of the story that works for you. But as I imagine Peter experiencing this encounter with the risen Jesus, it doesn’t sound as though he’s feeling very primatial. Here he is in his soaking clothes, huddling by the charcoal fire as the rest of the disciples make their dry way back to shore in the boat. This is now the third time, the evangelist tells us, that the Lord has shown himself to the disciples. There’s been joy and astonishment as the reality has sunk in that Jesus is actually risen. And yet for Peter, there’s something that remains unaddressed—an awkward, unwelcome memory.
There are only two charcoal fires mentioned in the pages of the New Testament. They are both in John’s Gospel.
One is here. The other is just three chapters back.
We heard about it what feels like a lifetime, but was only just over two weeks, ago: in the Passion Gospel on Good Friday. Peter is huddled around a charcoal fire in the high priest’s courtyard, with the opportunity to remain faithful to Jesus, even to the point of sharing in his suffering and death—and instead he betrays him, taking the easy way out; denying three times that he even knows Jesus, just as the Lord had predicted.
How is it for Peter as he sits here dripping by the fire, one-on-one with the friend he betrayed as he waits for the others to reach the shore? Is it too much of a stretch to imagine the unspoken questions filling his mind?
“Does Jesus even know what happened? Should I bring it up? What’s this charcoal fire doing here, anyway? Is this Jesus’ way of trying to make a point? Oh God, I have to tell him I’m sorry. Wait, that’s stupid. Maybe it isn’t really such a big deal. If only I could stop feeling bad about it.”
There’s a word for the experience of having an unnameable secret, something you can never let anyone know about you. That word is shame. Peter’s shame is the shame most of us know at some point in our lives—the conviction that we have done, or been, something so unworthy that even to acknowledge it would feel like something close to undergoing a death.
And yet death is what Jesus is in the act of triumphing over.
Here by the rocky shores of the lake, he offers his disciples not death, but life. In what must surely be one of the most loving, intimate, ordinary lines in Scripture, he tells them: “Come and have breakfast.” He cooks for them and feeds them the same meal of bread and fish he once fed five thousand people by this same lake, back when he first told the disciples that he himself was the bread of life. And when the ordinary-yet-sacred meal is over, he turns his attention again to Peter and asks him the same question three times: do you love me?
It’s a threefold undoing of a threefold betrayal.
Gently, insistently, Jesus repeats the question until it reaches the core of Peter’s shame. Twice Peter tells Jesus, “Lord, you know that I love you.” After the third time, the story tells us, Peter feels pained and blurts out: “Lord, you know everything!” Indeed, Jesus does know everything—the betrayal, the shame, the love Peter still holds. He sees Peter inside and out, and looks at him with love instead of condemnation. And as Peter’s threefold confession of Jesus overcomes his threefold betrayal, Jesus puts him back in the role of faithful disciple with the old, familiar seaside call: Follow me.
So what about you? And for that matter, what about me? Where are the places of shame in you? Where are the things that paralyze you, that fill you with fear, and that make you a slave to death?
I know in my life—and I imagine it’s the same for you—that the sources of my greatest shame haven’t always been my worst actions or experiences; but usually they have been my most secret. Sometimes the things that trap us in shame are things we have done wrong, like Peter. Sometimes they are things that have been done to us. Sometimes they are our fault; sometimes not. What is always true is that the risen Jesus offers us forgiveness for what we have done wrong and healing for whatever traps us. Just as he does for Peter, he gently but insistently moves to the core of our slavery to death, calls us his faithful disciples, and commissions us to follow him.
Maybe that’s the secret of the “primacy” of Peter. Not that he’s the first among Christians as a ruler of the church; but that he’s the first model for all of us disciples who come along later, of what it truly means to be healed by the risen Christ, and sent to serve in his name.
I don’t know for certain whether this story happened on the site of that Church of the Primacy, or whether the rock in the chapel is really the Table of the Lord. But what is certain is that the risen Jesus continues to come to his disciples. He is here again this very morning to feed us with the bread of life.
It is Easter; our Lenten fast is broken; our sin is forgiven; our shame is healed. This Table of the Lord is about to be set.
Come, and have breakfast.
Apr 21, 2019 |
Year C, Easter Day, Revised Common Lectionary
| Stephen Shaver
Year C, Easter Day, Revised Common Lectionary
Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12
This is the gate of the Lord; whoever God makes righteous may enter.
+ + +
It’s been said that there’s only one monument in the world that was built over an empty tomb.
There are many, many monuments over tombs with bodies inside. New York City has Grant’s Tomb and Arlington National Cemetery, has the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can go to Red Square in Moscow and see Lenin, his body still eerily preserved, lying in state. The tombs of the ancient pharaohs in Egypt are empty now, mostly, the remains inside fallen victim to grave robbers over the centuries; but they weren’t built to be that way.
So the church in Jerusalem is different. Westerners mostly call it the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which of course is just a fancy word for the church of the holy tomb. In the East it’s simply called the Church of the Resurrection. And at its heart is the little enclosure built over an empty rock tomb. Is it the tomb of Jesus? There’s no way to know for certain. All we know for certain is that the Romans who first built the church around the year 320 believed it was, and that place has been prayed in without interruption ever since, which surely makes it a special place no matter what.
In the end of course whether or not that particular tomb is the tomb, the one we heard about in today’s gospel reading, isn’t the most important thing. Because unlike Grant’s Tomb or Lenin’s Tomb or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you don’t go there to pay your respects to the body inside. Of course you can pay your respects to Jesus there—but not only there. The only place you can see Lenin is in Moscow. But you never know where you might meet Jesus. Because even though Jesus had a tomb, he didn’t stay there.
The Egyptian pharaohs planned on staying in theirs. They stocked their tombs with everything they thought they might need in the afterlife: gold, jewels, food, musical instruments, and even little statues of slaves to do the manual labor for them, the same old power structures from this life replicated in the next. Jesus’s tomb wasn’t stocked with much at all: a few linen wrappings, which he left behind once he didn’t need them anymore. The women came bringing spices, but he was already gone.
I read a piece commenting on this gospel passage recently that pointed out what a difference it makes that the women step inside the tomb.[1] “When they went in,” Luke tells us, “they did not find the body.” And the women meet the two men in dazzling clothes who tell them that Jesus is risen; and they believe. But later, when Peter comes, he doesn’t go in. He stoops down and looks in from the outside. And he goes home amazed; confused, maybe; hoping against hope, perhaps; but not yet fully on board the resurrection train. And there’s something significant about that difference. Only the women actually go all the way in and stand in the place of gloom and death. These were the same women that had stayed with Jesus at the cross, while Peter lied in his fear and said he didn’t even know him. Now Peter will eventually meet the risen Jesus and come to believe, and go on to be a great preacher of the good news. But here in this moment, it’s the women who hear the good news first, because it’s only they who are willing to face the full reality of suffering and death.
In a similar way, when Jesus came to live as one of us, he didn’t just stoop down and look at the human condition from outside. He came all the way in. This is the Word of God we’re talking about, one with the Father from all eternity, dwelling in light and glory indescribable. But Jesus wasn’t content to stay that way. Rather than holding onto his privilege and power, he let it all go and was born as one of us. Not a particularly rich or powerful one. A traveling preacher and healer, going from town to town in a small province under the occupation of a big empire, talking about God’s love, and putting it into effect through his very presence.
But Jesus came farther in still. He didn’t just come to relieve suffering from the outside. He knew it from the inside, because he tasted it as one of us. The frustration of being misunderstood. The sting of betrayal by a close friend. The fear of death, and not just death, but maybe worse, the fear of pain, and the fear of shame and humiliation.
Jesus knows what it is to be human, and he knows what it is to suffer. In the suffering and uncertainty of our lives, that’s a truth we can hold on to. Jesus didn’t just stoop down from the outside. He came all the way into the tomb with us.
And he doesn’t intend to leave us there.
Maybe you’ve seen Eastern Orthodox icons of the resurrection of Jesus. They tend to show Jesus practically springing out of Hades, the gates of hell lying shattered at his feet. And they don’t show him alone. Instead they show Jesus reaching down to grasp Adam by the wrist with one hand and Eve with the other, yanking them bodily out of their tombs.
That’s the promise God is offering us today. Jesus Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us, is alive. Not just resuscitated to some more of the same life, but raised to a new and eternal life. And that life isn’t for him alone. He came to share it with us. We can share in the resurrection of Jesus, not only in the next life—although there too, thank God, because that means death is no longer the obliteration of all our hopes and loves but one moment in our journey deeper into the heart of God. But we don’t have to wait till we’re in our own physical graves for Jesus to start yanking us out of Hades. The new life of freedom and joy in Jesus is here for the taking, right now, today.
We baptized two new members into that life last night at the Great Easter Vigil. We renew our connection to that life every time we come to this table to receive the holy food and drink of Christ’s body and blood. And we seek to practice that life here in this community day after day, week after week, as we share our lives and care for the sick and feed the hungry, as we study scripture and sing and serve.
“Open for me the gates of the Lord,” says the psalm we sang earlier. Today we step into the empty tomb with Jesus. We face the reality of all the world’s brokenness and evil headon. And in the face of it all we sing our Alleluias, knowing that the stone is rolled away and the doorway out of that empty tomb is the gate of the Lord, the gateway to a new and risen life.
Alleluia: Christ is risen!
[1] Machrina L. Blasdell, “He is Risen! Easter Day (C) 2013,” https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/he-risen-easter-day-c-2013.
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12
This is the gate of the Lord; whoever God makes righteous may enter.
+ + +
It’s been said that there’s only one monument in the world that was built over an empty tomb.
There are many, many monuments over tombs with bodies inside. New York City has Grant’s Tomb and Arlington National Cemetery, has the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. You can go to Red Square in Moscow and see Lenin, his body still eerily preserved, lying in state. The tombs of the ancient pharaohs in Egypt are empty now, mostly, the remains inside fallen victim to grave robbers over the centuries; but they weren’t built to be that way.
So the church in Jerusalem is different. Westerners mostly call it the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which of course is just a fancy word for the church of the holy tomb. In the East it’s simply called the Church of the Resurrection. And at its heart is the little enclosure built over an empty rock tomb. Is it the tomb of Jesus? There’s no way to know for certain. All we know for certain is that the Romans who first built the church around the year 320 believed it was, and that place has been prayed in without interruption ever since, which surely makes it a special place no matter what.
In the end of course whether or not that particular tomb is the tomb, the one we heard about in today’s gospel reading, isn’t the most important thing. Because unlike Grant’s Tomb or Lenin’s Tomb or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you don’t go there to pay your respects to the body inside. Of course you can pay your respects to Jesus there—but not only there. The only place you can see Lenin is in Moscow. But you never know where you might meet Jesus. Because even though Jesus had a tomb, he didn’t stay there.
The Egyptian pharaohs planned on staying in theirs. They stocked their tombs with everything they thought they might need in the afterlife: gold, jewels, food, musical instruments, and even little statues of slaves to do the manual labor for them, the same old power structures from this life replicated in the next. Jesus’s tomb wasn’t stocked with much at all: a few linen wrappings, which he left behind once he didn’t need them anymore. The women came bringing spices, but he was already gone.
I read a piece commenting on this gospel passage recently that pointed out what a difference it makes that the women step inside the tomb.[1] “When they went in,” Luke tells us, “they did not find the body.” And the women meet the two men in dazzling clothes who tell them that Jesus is risen; and they believe. But later, when Peter comes, he doesn’t go in. He stoops down and looks in from the outside. And he goes home amazed; confused, maybe; hoping against hope, perhaps; but not yet fully on board the resurrection train. And there’s something significant about that difference. Only the women actually go all the way in and stand in the place of gloom and death. These were the same women that had stayed with Jesus at the cross, while Peter lied in his fear and said he didn’t even know him. Now Peter will eventually meet the risen Jesus and come to believe, and go on to be a great preacher of the good news. But here in this moment, it’s the women who hear the good news first, because it’s only they who are willing to face the full reality of suffering and death.
In a similar way, when Jesus came to live as one of us, he didn’t just stoop down and look at the human condition from outside. He came all the way in. This is the Word of God we’re talking about, one with the Father from all eternity, dwelling in light and glory indescribable. But Jesus wasn’t content to stay that way. Rather than holding onto his privilege and power, he let it all go and was born as one of us. Not a particularly rich or powerful one. A traveling preacher and healer, going from town to town in a small province under the occupation of a big empire, talking about God’s love, and putting it into effect through his very presence.
But Jesus came farther in still. He didn’t just come to relieve suffering from the outside. He knew it from the inside, because he tasted it as one of us. The frustration of being misunderstood. The sting of betrayal by a close friend. The fear of death, and not just death, but maybe worse, the fear of pain, and the fear of shame and humiliation.
Jesus knows what it is to be human, and he knows what it is to suffer. In the suffering and uncertainty of our lives, that’s a truth we can hold on to. Jesus didn’t just stoop down from the outside. He came all the way into the tomb with us.
And he doesn’t intend to leave us there.
Maybe you’ve seen Eastern Orthodox icons of the resurrection of Jesus. They tend to show Jesus practically springing out of Hades, the gates of hell lying shattered at his feet. And they don’t show him alone. Instead they show Jesus reaching down to grasp Adam by the wrist with one hand and Eve with the other, yanking them bodily out of their tombs.
That’s the promise God is offering us today. Jesus Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us, is alive. Not just resuscitated to some more of the same life, but raised to a new and eternal life. And that life isn’t for him alone. He came to share it with us. We can share in the resurrection of Jesus, not only in the next life—although there too, thank God, because that means death is no longer the obliteration of all our hopes and loves but one moment in our journey deeper into the heart of God. But we don’t have to wait till we’re in our own physical graves for Jesus to start yanking us out of Hades. The new life of freedom and joy in Jesus is here for the taking, right now, today.
We baptized two new members into that life last night at the Great Easter Vigil. We renew our connection to that life every time we come to this table to receive the holy food and drink of Christ’s body and blood. And we seek to practice that life here in this community day after day, week after week, as we share our lives and care for the sick and feed the hungry, as we study scripture and sing and serve.
“Open for me the gates of the Lord,” says the psalm we sang earlier. Today we step into the empty tomb with Jesus. We face the reality of all the world’s brokenness and evil headon. And in the face of it all we sing our Alleluias, knowing that the stone is rolled away and the doorway out of that empty tomb is the gate of the Lord, the gateway to a new and risen life.
Alleluia: Christ is risen!
[1] Machrina L. Blasdell, “He is Risen! Easter Day (C) 2013,” https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/sermon/he-risen-easter-day-c-2013.
