Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Everlasting Covenant

Why do we think of the story of Noah and the flood as a children’s story? In our old Sunday school room here at St. Peter’s – as in many churches – there’s that charming mural showing the ark and several pairs of animals. Children’s books and toys depicting the story abound. We know that kids like animals. Is that what makes us think that this is a children’s story? Actually, if you think about it, the story of Noah is a very frightening story. Noah and his family and all the pairs of animals were saved, but what about the rest of creation? Can you picture all those people and animals drowning in the torrential rains, their bodies floating on the water? Something like the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina? And what must have confronted the survivors as they gingerly made their way off the ark? A soggy, bare earth? Is this really a children’s story? Or is it a story for adults, adults who seek good news as they travel the road to Jerusalem?

Are there any surprises in this story, surprises that the pretty murals and children’s books don’t prepare us for? Perhaps we are shocked that God might be so disgusted with God’s creation – for that’s where the story actually begins – that God would want to destroy it all, in effect start all over again? The opening verses of the book of Genesis remind us that God brought creation into being by breathing over chaos and nothingness. Unfortunately, humanity seemed intent on returning to chaos, lawlessness, and nothingness. We have only to look around us, open our newspapers, turn on the radio, or check our news web sites to see that humanity hasn’t changed much. Wars, rape, riots, greed, lies, cruelty to animals, environmental destruction – we’re still at it. Just as God said in the story of Noah, God could easily say of humanity now, “Yahweh saw the great wickedness of the people of the earth, that the thoughts of their hearts fashioned nothing but evil ….”

Even so, perhaps we not surprised that God couldn’t bring Godself to actually go through with God’s intention to completely destroy creation. The ancient Hebrews certainly had a strong sense of God’s desire for justice and righteousness. However, they also trusted in God’s mercy and compassion. On Ash Wednesday, we heard again, both from the psalmist and the prophet Joel, that God is “quick to forgive and abundantly tenderhearted.” So, yes, God did save at least a remnant of God’s creation, so as to be able to recreate and repopulate the earth, starting with Noah’s family and the representative animal pairs.

What is truly surprising about the story of Noah is the promise that God makes at the end of the story. As the survivors of the flood come out of the ark and survey the destruction around them, God promises that God will never again visit this kind of destruction on creation. The God of justice, righteousness, and peace vows not only to show mercy and compassion on occasion, or to forgive those who are penitent. The God of justice promises even to give up the possibility of destroying creation forever. God has surrendered God’s power to destroy the earth forever!

Indeed, God has made a covenant with Noah and his family. In his declaration to Noah, God uses the word “covenant” six times. Now covenants have a long history in the ancient world, and many other peoples besides the Hebrews made covenants with each other. Often covenants were made between parties who were more or less equal to each other, e.g. two merchants, or two kings, or a group of tribal chieftains. The parties in the covenants could also be of unequal status. In both cases, both sides promised to do or refrain from doing something, and the covenant spelled out the consequences if the parties did not keep their promises. As it happens, in our Hebrew Bible readings for Lent, the Revised Common Lectionary, which sets our Scripture readings for worship, gives us a unique opportunity during the five weeks leading up to Palm Sunday to look at some of the most important covenants that God has made with God’s people. During this and the next four weeks, we will look more closely at all of them, and we’ll have a chance to ponder them together in our Eucharists on Wednesday evening. As we ponder God’s promises made to the ancient Hebrews, perhaps we will also gain a deeper understanding of God’s mighty acts in Jerusalem.

The covenant that God made with Noah is actually the very first covenant, according to the Hebrew Bible, that God made with God’s people. The story of Noah came together from two different sources – as you can easily see if you read the whole story in the Bible – after the Israelite community returned to Jerusalem from Exile in Babylon, about the 4th century B.C. As such, the story must have been a great comfort to the returning exiles, who themselves confronted destruction in Jerusalem – and later also to the beleaguered community addressed by the writer of today’s Epistle lection, what we call the First Letter of Peter.

In emphatically stating God’s covenant, God’s promise irrevocably to bind Godself to creation, the Hebrews reflected a different understanding of God’s nature from that of other ancient peoples. The ancient Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, even the Greeks, mostly depicted their gods as vengeful, capricious, and generally unconcerned with the fate of creation. The ancient Hebrews understood God differently. They show us that God was willing to make a self-limiting promise to creation. Not only that, God’s covenant, unlike other ancient covenants, was one-sided. God made all the promises: all Noah and his family had to do, as we learn from what precedes our lection, was to have children, not eat blood, and not kill each other. Moreover, God made God’s covenant not only with human beings, but with all creation. And God’s covenant is “for all future generations.” Indeed, it is an “everlasting covenant. The rainbow in the story is not only God’s post-it note to Godself – as if God could forget God’s promises – but, what is more important, it is a reminder to us of God’s wonderful promises.

And they are wonderful. By virtue of God’s covenant with Noah, God has become the “God who remembers,” to whom the psalmist rightly pleads. God is now invested in us. God is deeply committed to us. God is not only just and righteous – the ancients already knew that – but God is also totally self-giving. Through the story of Noah, the Hebrews tell us that God has willingly given up part of God’s power and now intimately shares our lives and our fortunes with us. Even before the Word became flesh, the Hebrews proclaimed God’s abiding relationship with humanity.

As we begin our journey to Jerusalem, to the events of Holy Week and Easter, why does the church ask us to hear again about this ancient covenant? Quite simply, this surprising covenant reminds us of God’s willingness to limit God’s power and freedom to act. Are we astonished that God would identify with our weakness and vulnerability? How else are we to understand that God in Christ willingly accepted the limitations of becoming human? How else are we to understand St. Paul’s reminder to the Christian community at Philippi, that, “Christ, though in the image of God … became completely empty and took on the image of oppressed humankind?” How else are we to understand that in Jesus God sealed God’s relationship with humanity through death on a Cross?

My friends, this is the God to whom we have committed ourselves. Becoming more like this God is what we have committed ourselves to in baptism. Can we follow through on that commitment? The psalmist asks God to “lead me in your truth and teach me.” As we join the Lenten retreat of the church, perhaps we can ask God to help us model more closely God’s self-limiting and self-giving. Perhaps we can examine and reconsider our relationships with each other, and with all the rest of creation. If God was willing to enter into covenant with all humanity, all creation, can we do anything less? Can we get beyond our own needs? Can we forego any part of our self-indulgent, self-centered lives, to look more closely at the needs of others? Can we see all whom we encounter as members of the same human family that God has promised to protect and cherish? Can we reach out to others in love and compassion? Can we ponder our relationship to the rest of creation? As we travel to Jerusalem, might God be asking us to see God’s world in a new way?

Might we also be ready to pray this prayer? O God of wild beasts and angels, of waters and wilderness, remember us; remember all whom we remember; remember the covenant you made with every living creature, for that is our bond with you now and forever.

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With thanks to David J. Lose for suggesting the basic thrust of this sermon in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 27-31.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Why Are We Here?

Why are we here? What are we doing here? Why all of a sudden have all the paraments and my vestments changed from green to purple? Where are the altar flowers? Why did we enter in silence? And why are we engaging in this ancient liturgy of taking on ashes? Have we suddenly heard Jonah’s call to the Ninevites and decided to copy their response?

Perhaps we have done just that. The donning of sackcloth and ashes by the Ninevites is only one of many examples in the Old Testament of collective rituals of prayer, fasting, repentance, and the use of ashes. Indeed, Daniel Clendinen reminds us that in some ways Ash Wednesday is akin to Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.1 Still today, even those who do not regularly attend synagogue services hear the call to join the “solemn assembly,” confess their offenses against God, and express their hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. For us Christians too, Ash Wednesday is day of “solemn assembly,” a day of special prayer. But for us, Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Easter. For the earliest Christians, as we will hear shortly, Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of the intensive preparation for Easter that newcomers to the faith observed. For us too, Ash Wednesday marks our first step on the road that leads us to Jerusalem, the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

Like the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians, we begin our preparation for the remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection with a poignant reminder that we too must undergo death. All of today’s readings speak in one way or another of our mortality, but our psalm most particularly reminds us of who we are in God’s sight: “For he himself knows whereof we are made;/ he remembers that we are but dust. Our days are like the grass….” And why do we come here to hear this reminder? Because it is the truth. Despite all the “age-defying” cosmetics that American manufacturers serve up, all the promises of immortality, all our attempts to hide death, we know that “we flourish like a flower of the field” that is scattered by a puff of wind. We know that our lives are uncertain, that no one of us knows how much time we have left, and that apart from God we have nothing. We know, or we are reminded yet again, that “to dust” we shall indeed return. Are we ready to hear that reminder? As a Lenten discipline, consider meditating on this question: how would I live my life if I knew that Easter Sunday would be my last day on earth?

Important as it is, the reminder of our mortality is never God’s last word to us. We also hear today the loud call to repentance and fasting, to acknowledging the ways in which we fall short of God’s expectations. But we do not repent without hope. There is good news here. We do not cringe before an angry vengeful God ready to strike us down for the slightest provocation. We do not expect to be cast into hell for deviations, great or small, from God’s law. We know that we are preparing for Easter. And so, we hear again that, although God cares deeply for justice, God’s nature is one of mercy and love. We hear that, although we cannot save ourselves, God is always ready to rescue, heal, and save us. The psalmist reminds us that: “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy/ slow to anger and of great kindness…. For as the heavens are high above the earth,/ so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.” The prophet Joel repeats that refrain. “Return to the Lord, your God,” he exhorts us, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love….” Joel also reminds us, that what God really desires of us is change of heart, transformation. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing,” he commands us. Don’t just make a show of taking part in rites and rituals. Don’t take God’s mercy for granted. Deeply commit yourself to God. Most important, let God continue to change you into the people God created you to be.

Finally, we prepare for Easter by acknowledging once again that we are members of a Body, that we are deeply bound to one another. As we hear in the call of the prophet Joel, all the people are to be gathered into a “solemn assembly.” No one is exempted, not newlyweds, not the elderly, not even babes in arms. St. Paul similarly called the entire Christian community in Corinth to be reconciled to God, so that as a community they might reflect Christ’s saving power to the world around them. We too are members of one another, and what we do on this day, or any other day in the church, we do together. Our repentance and our salvation is never a private affair. Our repentance and renewal is always corporate. Jesus did not die to save me. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate for us and our salvation. Because our repentance and renewal are corporate, because we are members one of another, we are not dependent solely on our own spiritual resources. Lent calls us to uphold and support one another, to encourage each other in Christian formation and transformation, to relearn and deepen our faith and practice together, and to build up our common life in this place.

To help us to remember our mortality, deepen our faith, and strengthen the bonds among us, the church offers us Lent as a time for simplifying our lives through fasting and abstinence, engaging in more intentional corporate and private prayer, serving others, studying our faith and history, and acknowledging our shortcomings. We might think of Lent as a time for the whole church to be on retreat, so that we might take stock of who and where we are, lay aside our own self-preoccupation, and ponder how we can more truly love God and our neighbors. Keeping a good Lent ultimately means drawing closer to God and one another, preparing ourselves once again for the renewal of our baptismal covenant, and looking with hope toward our celebration of the mystery of Jesus’ redeeming death and resurrection.

As we start down the road that leads us to Jerusalem, we do so trusting that we are already saved and deeply loved. Frail and mortal as we are, sinful and ungrateful as we are, isolated and mistrustful of each other as we are, we still trust in the glory that awaits us. In his wonderful sermon for Easter, fourth century bishop and preacher John Chysostom will invite us all to the feast, no matter how well we have kept Lent:

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

I wish us all a holy and blessed Lent, and I look ahead with hope to a joyful celebration of Christ’s glorious resurrection.

1. “A Day of Ashes and Rituals of Renewal,” Journey with Jesus, accessed on Feb. 20, 2012 at http://www.journeywithjesus.net


Sunday, February 19, 2012

Listen to Him!


“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Argile Smith tells the story of Raymond and Sylvia.1 Their marriage of almost thirty years was in trouble. Lately they seemed to do nothing but argue! In a last-ditch effort to avoid divorce court, they consulted their pastor, who quickly referred them to a marriage counselor. In their first meeting with Dr. Alexander, the counselor quickly put them at ease with her warm smile and calm demeanor. During the session, Dr. Alexander asked Raymond to describe Sylvia’s personal longings. Raymond launched into a long catalogue of Sylvia’s insecurities and of all that he had done to boost her confidence. He offered his diagnosis that Sylvia’s troubles stemmed from her relationships with her dysfunctional family. Dr. Alexander abruptly stopped Raymond. “Raymond, please repeat my question,” she said. “Certainly,” he answered. “You wanted to hear about Sylvia’s insecurities, and I’m filling in the background for you.” Dr. Alexander then turned to Sylvia and asked, “Sylvia, what are Raymond’s longings?” “Frankly,” Sylvia replied, “Raymond longs to make sure I know what’s wrong with me and what I need to do to fix myself.” Raymond quickly defended himself. “No,” he said, “it’s just that I know her better than anyone else, and I want to give her advice that will help her be a better person.” “Raymond!” Dr. Alexander snapped. “I see one issue in your marriage already. You don’t know how to listen to Sylvia. You don’t listen to what she is trying to tell you. I bet you don’t listen to anyone else either! You certainly didn’t listen to me. I had to almost shout at you to get you to be quiet.” During succeeding sessions, Dr. Alexander explained that she had snapped at Raymond to get his attention and to show him that his listening skills were not what they should be. Then Dr. Alexander taught both Raymond and Sylvia how to truly and deeply listen to each other. Their marriage was saved!

When Dr. Alexander emphasized the importance of listening, perhaps she had the end of today’s Gospel lesson in mind. It’s no coincidence that Sundays in Epiphany tide begin and end with God’s voice. Do you remember Jesus’ baptism, in our Gospel reading for the first Sunday after Epiphany? As Jesus came up from the water, he was anointed with the Holy Spirit and, in Mark’s Gospel account, he alone heard God declaring, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” With that affirmation of his identity, Jesus set out proclaiming the beginning of the Reign of God. Before the events of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus had predicted his crucifixion and resurrection. He had reminded his friends that they too will face persecution if they follow him. Six days later, God led Jesus and his friends into an almost indescribable experience away from the crowds. The disciples were dazzled by a miraculous vision of Jesus. Before they could make sense of it, God spoke again, this time addressing them all. “This is my Son, the Beloved,” God told them. And then God commanded them, “Listen to him!” During the descent from the mountain, perhaps Jesus felt reassured that he had chosen the right path in setting his face towards Jerusalem and what awaited him there. However, his friends might well have been wondering, “How do we listen to him? When? And what else might he say?”

Do we have those same questions? More to the point, are we akin to Raymond, the husband in our story? Do we need Dr. Alexander’s help in learning how to follow in the disciples’ footsteps, how to truly and deeply listen to Jesus? There is so much in our world that makes it difficult for us to listen to him, isn’t there? You know how we live in a 24/7 world. Some of you are in professions where you have to be on call. Even the rest of us can surround ourselves nonstop with the TV, the radio, magazines, newspapers, e-mails, smart phones, ipods, and all the rest of our “silent noisemakers.” Remember national holidays? Nowadays, the only way I know it’s a national holiday is that there’s no mail service! And, of course, we have no Sabbath, no time to rest and just be quiet, either on Saturday or Sunday. Now I’m not advocating a return to the Sunday closings of my girlhood. When my car battery died here in Gallipolis a couple of months ago on a Sunday, I was grateful that the auto department of Walmart was open and able to replace it. And even if we do find that quiet space, if we read the daily office – even the short form – or try to study the Bible, we often have a hard time concentrating, and we find all our worries and concerns crowding out God’s voice. Or worse yet, we might even be afraid to open ourselves to Jesus, fearing what we might hear!

What might help us to listen to Jesus? There are many Dr. Alexanders in the spiritual realm, many holy ones who can school us in our spiritual listening skills. Here’s what some of them might tell us. First, we should find and use our off-switches! Second – and here’s my favorite word again – we should be intentional about our spiritual lives. Do you have a rule of life? A rule of life doesn’t have to be complicated: it involves committing yourself typically to some form of daily prayer – even very briefly – periodic Bible study, regular corporate worship, stewardship of your resources, and some form of ministry. For the more adventurous, our guides might point us to some of the contemplative prayer forms: breath prayer, lectio divina, the Anglican rosary, praying with icons, or keeping a spiritual journal. You can even find God in the movies, through creating an art object, or doing handwork. There’s no shortage of ways to listen to Jesus. What is needed is willingness to draw apart for a time and open yourself to his presence.

And when we do take the time to listen to Jesus, what indeed might we hear? We might hear a reply to our prayers. Jesus might offer us “blessed assurance.” But, on the other side of the Transfiguration experience, Jesus was headed to Jerusalem. And so Jesus might also remind us, as he had reminded his friends, that, “If any want to be my disciples, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me.”

Those are words we probably don’t want to hear! Even if we are willing to hear them, we might wonder how we do bear our own cross. Although many Americans still accept capital punishment, we no longer live in a society where crucifixion is an acceptable form of execution. So let’s starting by clarifying what bearing your cross does not mean.2 Obviously it does not mean literally being crucified. It does not mean regarding suffering as spiritually good in itself. This notion has been a pillar of centuries of Christian piety, but the truth is that Jesus did not accept death believing that his suffering as such could rid the world of evil and sin. Rather, his death showed us that the transformative power of divine love can overcome the worst evil of the world. Bearing out cross also does not mean privately bearing our own difficulties for Jesus’ sake. Jesus’ death was a very public affair, and he was executed by the prevailing authorities because he did and said things that challenged systemic greed, domination, and exploitation. Bearing our cross does mean doing what Jesus did, i.e., doing the things that got him into trouble. It means living out our baptismal vows, especially our promise to “persevere in resisting evil.” It means speaking out against injustice and violence. It means publicly and energetically pursuing personal and social righteousness. Bearing our cross means engaging with the poor and suffering. It means living out our promises to proclaim and act out the good news. As Brother James Koester SSJE reminds us, “The life which you, and we and Jesus chose at our baptisms is a life where day by day we must choose to love, and not to hate, to be friends and not enemies, to forgive and not to hold grudges, to heal and help and hold and not to injure, wound and scar. It is the choice to live such a life that eventually cost Jesus his own.”

We’ve seen the signs this Epiphany tide. We’ve gone up that mountain with Jesus. We know with greater certainty that Jesus was and is the Word made flesh. We’ve heard God’s command to “listen to him.” Now we’re coming down the mountain. On Wednesday, we too will set our faces towards Jerusalem. Are we ready to commit ourselves to the way of the Cross? Are we ready to commit ourselves to truly and deeply listening to Jesus? Are we ready to hear what Jesus might say to us about ourselves and about this parish?

If we are, then perhaps we might truly pray, O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness …. Amen.

1. In Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2011), 55-57.

2. Following Rodney J. Hunter, in Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 452.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Transformation

Suppose our Old Testament reading had begun this way: “Saddam Husain was an Iraqi military general, praised by all as a valiant warrior and a great man. In fact, the Christian God had granted victory to Iraq through Saddam.”1 Shocking? The way Saddam Husain was perceived by most Americans was exactly the way Naaman was perceived by the Israelites, i.e., as the hated and feared enemy. To be sure, Naaman was of exalted rank. As conqueror of Israel he was highly favored by his king. He was obviously wealthy. And consequently, he was arrogant and proud of all his accomplishments.

However, Naaman had a secret illness that no Aramean physician could cure. Although Scripture calls it “leprosy,” Naaman probably did not have what we have come to call Hansen’s disease, which is a contagious, debilitating, and ultimately disfiguring disease. In the Bible, the word that is translated “leprosy” covers a variety of skin conditions. Naaman could have had psoriasis, eczema, ringworm, even adult acne. Whatever it was, Naaman needed healing – and perhaps also spiritual transformation. However, he seems to have done little to initiate his needed healing. But God was at work!

God began Naaman’s journey of transformation through the counsel of his wife. The lowest member of their household, a captive Hebrew slave girl, had suggested that Naaman ought to visit a certain Hebrew holy man. Loaded down with silver, gold, and rich presents, he went instead to the man of his own station in Israel, the king – sending that worthy into near apoplexy. God initiated the second step in Naaman’s transformation by directing Elisha to offer his services. Of course, Naaman expected that the great prophet Elisha would heal him by coming out, bowing ceremoniously, accepting the costly gifts, waving his arms, and crying out to God on Naaman’s behalf. When Elisha’s servant came out and directed Naaman to immerse himself in the river near which the Arameans had once suffered defeat, Naaman was outraged. Once again, God stepped in, through the words of Naaman’s servant. Did Naaman feel foolish dunking himself up and down seven times in the muddy Jordan? Probably. But when the healing that Naaman had wanted actually happened, Naaman was not only physically clean, he was spiritually transformed as well. For, as we learn in the verses immediately following the ones we heard, Naaman returned to Elisha and declared, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.” When Elisha refused any gifts, Naaman asked for two mule-loads of earth, so that he might continue to worship the Lord on his return home. Clearly Naaman had been physically healed. What was more important, through Elisha, he had also experienced a personal spiritual transformation that changed his life forever. Touched by God, he was healed both in body and soul.

The leper who begged for healing from Jesus in our Gospel story was at the complete opposite end of the social scale from Naaman. We don’t know much about this man, whether he was rich or poor, what he did for a living, or whether he had a family. However, we do know how those with skin diseases were treated in the ancient world – and right through the early twentieth century. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Leviticus call for strict segregation of anyone with a skin disease. Called the “living dead,” even in Jesus’ time, a leper like this man was forced to live on the edges of his village. He was forbidden to touch anyone – not that anyone would want to touch him. This man was clearly desperate. Although he was putting Jesus in danger of ritual defilement by coming close to him, he screwed up his courage, took the initiative, knelt in front of Jesus, and begged for healing. His plight so moved Jesus that Jesus did the unthinkable: he touched the leper. And the leper experienced the physical healing that he had sought. Thus when the priests, as commanded in Leviticus, had indeed certified that he was free of disease, he would be restored to his family and village. Yet something more had happened. Jesus, of course, was afraid that he would yet again be mobbed by those who wanted nothing more than physical healing. So he cautioned the healed man to “say nothing to anyone.” However, through his encounter with God in Jesus, this man had also experienced a spiritual transformation. Disregarding Jesus, he became an ardent spokesperson for Jesus and began to “proclaim freely” the good news of Jesus’ coming. Who knows whether he knew the Torah or was doctrinally correct in what he proclaimed? His gratitude to God compelled him to share what Jesus had done for him. In effect, he was an evangelist. He was preaching the Gospel.

Does the encounter with God that leads to healing of both body and soul happen only in the Bible? We too segregated those with leprosy well into the twentieth century. Hansen’s disease, real leprosy, is still prevalent in some parts of the world, most notably north India. Without proper treatment, it can still be debilitating, disfiguring, and isolating. Fortunately, with the advent of modern drugs, Hansen’s disease is now rare in the U.S. On the other hand, when I was a girl, people rarely spoke about cancer, as if it were perhaps shameful to have a relative with breast or lung cancer. Those days are also mercifully behind us.

However, we do have a modern scourge that evokes as much fear and perhaps shame among Americans and others around the world as leprosy once did: HIV/AIDS. In the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in this country, AIDS was considered a disease of gay men, and those with HIV/AIDS were often shunned. Now we know that HIV/AIDS crosses boundaries of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, even nationality. But we know too that those who have discovered that they are HIV positive can also experience spiritual transformation, even as they seek available healing for their bodies. This past Tuesday HIV/AIDS activist Anne Fowler addressed an audience of Ohio University students and described her own spiritual transformation.2 Now sixty-five, Fowler was diagnosed with HIV six years ago. Although she took the diagnosis in stride, realizing that “It is not a death threat,” she also felt compelled to begin to speak out, especially to college students, about the importance of being tested. Across the ocean, women in Kenya are doing the same thing. Women fighting AIDS in Kenya (WOFAK) is an AIDS support organization that was started in 1994, by a group of women, many of whom had tested positive to HIV and were facing numerous challenges in coping with the diagnosis.3http://www.wofak.or.ke/about_wofak.html accessed February 9, 2012. Unwilling to remain silent and isolated, the women gathered together to support and educate each other. WOFAK now reaches over 15,000 women and 5,000 children through seven resource centers that provide comprehensive care and activities designed for people most at risk. Even those of us on the sidelines have seen our understanding of AIDS transformed and have been moved to reach out to those needing our support. Episcopal Response to AIDS (ERA) supports, fosters, and financially enables HIV/AIDS ministries affiliated with Episcopal faith communities in the greater New York area. Every spring spiritual writer and Episcopal priest Barbara Crafton invites her followers on the Geranium Farm website to support her as she walks in AIDS walk New York. Last spring she raised almost $5,000 just from the readers of her almost-daily e-mail meditations.

God willing, none of you has Hansen’s disease or are HIV positive. Some of you have battled cancer and other life-threatening conditions. The truth of the matter is that all of us are in need of both physical healing and spiritual transformation. We all come here in our brokenness. Some of us suffer from racism, sexism, nationalism, denominationalism, homophobia, or blindness to human need. Some of us came from dysfunctional families, and we still bear the scars of abuse of various kinds. The true good news is that Naaman’s encounter with God through Elisha and the leper’s encounter with Jesus are templates for every sinner’s experience of God’s grace and mercy. When we are freed from sin and made whole by God’s forgiveness, when we too are spiritually transformed, then we too can become living witnesses to God’s good news. We too can preach the Gospel.

In ten days, we will be marked with ashes, and we will begin once again our journey to Jerusalem through the reflective time of Lent. Between now and the beginning of Lent I invite you to reflect on your own experience of physical illness, spiritual transformation, and the proclaiming of God’s grace. How have we responded to our own experiences of healing? Have they been transformative? How do we regard those around us who are disabled or who need healing from conditions that alienate and marginalize their victims?

Perhaps we can begin by praying this prayer. Almighty and ever-living God, with mercy you look on our weaknesses. Stretch out your hand to protect us from danger and restore us to health of body and soul, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.

1. Daniel B. Clendinen, “A Little Girl Heals a Great Man: Exclusion and Embrace,” Journey with Jesus, accessed at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/, February 8, 2012.

2. Based on the account in the Athens News, February 9, 2012, p. 10.

3. http://www.wofak.or.ke/about_wofak.html accessed February 9, 2012.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Where's the Good News?

It’s been a difficult few weeks in Lake Woebegone. We’ve heard of several deaths of members of our extended families and of former members of this parish. Some were perhaps expected and foreseen, and we had some chance to say goodbye to our loved ones. Others were perhaps sudden and unforeseen, even shocking. At the same time we’ve been confronting physical illness in our family members and friends. We know that many of our Loaves and Fishes diners confront various forms of illness, as do the people who come to me for help with groceries or electricity. The son of a close friend has a condition that seems to be getting worse rather than better from the prescribed treatment. We ourselves may struggle with chronic illnesses, whose flare-ups periodically send us to emergency rooms or doctors’ offices. Despite continued prayers for physical healing, nothing much seems to change.

Recently, another friend confided to me that he has a hard time with the healing stories in the Gospels. His spouse is now in a nursing home with a chronic debilitative illness. When he hears a healing story in one of the Gospels, he wonders why Jesus seems to heal some people but not others. When he hears today’s reading, he especially wonders why Jesus seems to have abandoned all those others at Capernaum who would have liked to come to him for physical healing. Most especially, my friend wonders why Jesus can’t heal his spouse. Do we ask these questions too? When we hear today’s reading or ones like it, do we too ask Jesus, “Where were you when my loved one got sick?” Perhaps we think, “You could cure Peter’s mother-in-law’s fever, and you could heal the blind, the lame, and the leprous. Why couldn’t you cure my child, my spouse, my friend?” And do we ask, “Why couldn’t he or she have lived longer?”

Scripture does give us some ways to answer these questions. But to hear what the Bible has tell us about illness, healing, and God’s role in healing, we may have to put aside some of our modern preconceptions. Initially, the Bible may even disconcert us and offer us scant consolation. To begin with, in our understanding of health, we moderns have generally focused on conditions affecting only our bodies. We ignore the psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions of health. However, the Biblical view, in both the Old and New Testaments, is that health does not equate to physical or bodily health alone. Rather, the Bible has a holistic view and constantly reminds us that health consists of wholeness of body, mind, community, and spirit all together. When sickness occurs, we must address all aspects of health. What is more important, in the Bible it is ultimately God who heals. Indeed, physicians were regarded in the ancient world as sorcerers and magicians. “I am the Lord who heals you,” God tells the people in Exodus. “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal,” God reiterates in Deuteronomy. Ezekiel tells us that God is the healer of the weak, the sick, and the lost. The psalms too consistently refer to God’s healing power. “O Lord my God, I cried out to you/ and you restored me to health,” the psalmist declares in Psalm 30, for example. In the Gospels, Jesus always heals as God’s agent, as the one who, as the Word made flesh, is able to do what God does. And similarly, when the disciples heal others, as they do when Jesus sends them out in pairs, and as they do in the Book of Acts, they always do so in the name of Jesus, i.e., they act as Jesus’ and ultimately God’s agent.

When we look more closely at the Gospels, we discover that the miracles – healing miracles and others – are never the point of Jesus’ actions. The miracles are always secondary. Nowhere in the Gospel according to Mark, or in any of the other Gospels, did Jesus proclaim that his ministry was about performing miracles. Jesus resisted “miracles on demand” and feared that they would give people the wrong idea about him. Rather, Jesus’ miracles are a by-product of his mission of the proclamation of God’s kingdom. They identify Jesus as the one having the authority to speak for God, and they signify that the reign of God has come near. They are signs of the coming victory of Jesus over sin and death and a promise of a kingdom in which illness and death are no more. As Jesus reminded the disciples in today’s reading, proclaiming the arrival of that kingdom “is what I came out to do.” For that reason, despite our most fervent prayers, it is not Jesus’ job to heal our physical ills. As Mark clearly reminds us, Jesus was not called to be the head of the Capernaum free clinic – nor of the Gallipolis free clinic.

Ultimately, who is physically healed in the Gospels and who is not is a mystery, as it still is today. Creation remains imperfect and unfinished, and we all still must undergo death, whenever it comes. Our physicians, counselors, pastors, parishes, and anonymous groups use their God-given skills as best they can. We continue to pray for own healing and the healing of others in body, mind, and soul. Even so, in the end why a person dies at five hours, five months, or five years, why another person lives past one hundred, why one person is cured of disease and another is not, why one person conquers his or her addiction and another does not, are all largely inexplicable.

At this point you might be thinking, “Where’s the good news? Is there any?” Of course there is, if we have ears to hear it. To begin with, our reading from the prophet Isaiah reminds us of God’s care for us. Even though, in God’s eyes we are comparable to grasshoppers, and “the rulers of the earth as nothing,” the creator of all that is cares deeply for us. Ultimately, God will sustain, renew, and restore us: “those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength … they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” Today’s psalm reiterates Isaiah’s message. Even though God “counts the number of the stars/ and calls them all by their names,” even so God “heals the brokenhearted/ and binds up their wounds.” The Gospel of Mark reminds us that Jesus knows our brokenness of both soul and body, as he calls out both the demons and the fevers within us. What is more important, despite our brokenness, Jesus calls us into partnership with him and invites us to share in his mission. “Let us go on to the neighboring towns,” he tells the disciples, “so that I may proclaim the message there also.” As did his friends, in Jesus we too have a model for faithful discipleship, as we too are called to proclaim, pray, act, and trust that God is indeed bringing in God’s reign. And we also have Jesus’ promise that whatever happens to our physical bodies, the relationship that we have begun with him here will transcend the limitations of illness and death.

Beginning in the third century, in Egypt and other parts of the ancient world, men and women who wanted a more ascetic life left the opulent towns and congregated in small communities – the forerunners of today’s monasteries and convents. These early Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they came to be called, sought integrity and wholeness, personal experience of God rather than intellectual knowledge. However, they discovered that, even as they left behind the conspicuous consumption of their home communities, they nevertheless took with them into the desert all their personal demons and sicknesses of all kinds: wherever you go there you are, as Buddhist teachers say. The Desert Fathers and Mothers also came to understand that life is difficult wherever we live it. “Expect trials until your last breath,” Saint Anthony the Great said. Nevertheless, in their desert life they also demonstrated, as Daniel Clendinen reminds us, “confidence in God’s unconditional love.”1 They were patient with one another and refused to judge one another. And they understood that they were called to live out and proclaim God’s infinite care for all of us.

As Jesus cared for Peter’s mother-in-law, as he ministered to those who crowded around the door of Peter’s house, so Jesus cares deeply for us. More importantly, he calls us to work with him, whatever the physical, mental, or spiritual limitations of our lives. He knows that we finite human beings not angels. And he assures us and all whom we cherish, that his care for us will never end. As Paul reminded the Christian community in Rome, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”

As Jesus’ faithful disciples, we press on, not expecting miracles, but trusting in Jesus’ promise of eternal life.

“’This is Why I have Come,’” Journey with Jesus, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml, accessed January 31, 2012.