“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed/ You’re gonna have to serve/ somebody/ Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Those of you who look like me might remember Bob Dylan’s song about making choices. Dylan says, we may be a state trooper, a construction worker, or a preacher, we might wear cotton or silk, drink whiskey or milk, but we all have to make choices. God calls us all. We can turn our backs and refuse to hear God’s call, or we can fall in with God’s people and follow God’s lead. It’s our choice, but “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” This week we have begun our road trip with Jesus. Jesus has made his choice, no question there. He has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He has agreed to endure all that will take place there. However, despite all of Jesus’ teaching, his disciples have yet to understand what following him really means. On the way to Jerusalem, they pass through hostile Samaritan country. When the Samaritans realize that Jesus is headed for Jerusalem, where they would not be welcome, the Samaritans refuse to follow Jesus. Even so, Jesus has to remind his followers that his way involves compassion not retribution. The group then encounters three wannabe disciples. All three in their different ways suggest to Jesus’ friends – and to us – something about the choices that Jesus’ disciples and we must make.
The first wannabe must have been following Peter’s play book, as he naively declares that he will follow Jesus “wherever you go.” “Oh, yeah?” says Jesus, “do you realize that if you do you may not know where or when you’ll sleep, or where your next meal will come from?” It’s a warning, perhaps a suggestion that the wannabe disciple needs to discern some more. People who discern whether they are called to ordained ministry often hear a similar warning. Yet the message is clear for any disciple. You have to choose to follow Jesus, but you can’t expect worldly security if you make that choice. You might even end up homeless! Jesus’ way of life is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for you if you value personal safety and comfort above all.
On to the next wannabe disciple. When Jesus calls him, this one asks to first bury his father. Isn’t that a reasonable request? Making sure that proper burial rites were carried out, especially for one’s parents, was an important duty in the ancient world. Yet Jesus’ request carried some urgency. And his response suggests that those who are spiritually alive must choose to answer God’s call now. There can be no procrastination in responding to God’s demands. Jesus’ response also reminds wannabe disciples that traditional relationships are reordered in the Kingdom of God. Relationships within the Body of Christ must be more important than family ties. Later Christian martyrs understood this aspect of discipleship fully, as they went to their deaths in Roman arenas, despite the pleas of their families to give up the new faith. Sometime read the story of Perpetua, a Roman matron who even turned her back on her newborn infant and went instead to her death as a Christian.
The request of the third wannabe disciple also seems reasonable: he wants to bid his family farewell. However, Jesus warns the man not to have a divided heart. There will always be some reason to delay following Jesus, some obligation pulling you back into the old life. What Jesus tells him – and all of us – is that once we commit ourselves to following Jesus we must not look back to what we had, what we gave up, or what was better about our old life. In the Rule of St. Benedict, new entrants to a monastery are required to surrender every one of their possessions, including their clothing, so as to be able to grow wholeheartedly into the new life of the community. When Jesus calls us, we must set our faces to the work that God is calling us to do, to the transformations that God is inviting us to undergo, and to the new family that God is bidding us to join.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” Even Paul had to make a choice. He had had an experience of Jesus’ presence on the road to Damascus. He could have chosen to reject that experience and return to his old life. Instead, he said, “Who are you, Lord?” When he heard Jesus’ answer, he made the fatal choice: to make a radical break with his own past. He then let himself be led into the city where he was baptized by Ananias. Some years later, after proclaiming the gospel to several gentile communities, here he is writing to the newbie Christians in Galatia. In most of this letter he has been rebuking them for following those who want to circumcise them and make them into Jews. Paul reminds them that in Christ they have been freed from the demands of the law. They are not Jews, and they don’t need to be circumcised or do anything else that the law requires. However, they still face a critical choice. They can revert to their old, self-centered pagan ways, or they can live as those who are members of God’s kingdom. They can discipline themselves so that the fruits of the Spirit will grow among them. It is a choice: to be guided by the Spirit or not.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Dolores Hart was a beautiful and talented actress. At the age of ten, she had joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1956, at the age of only eighteen, she was signed to play a supporting role as the love interest to Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Loving You. Thereafter, Hart was in frequent demand, and she made two more films before playing with Presley again in 1958's King Creole. Hart went on to make her debut on Broadway. She won a 1959 Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination. In 1962, she starred in the film The Inspector, in which she played Lisa, a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although she was engaged to be married, she had begun to hear the invitation to a different kind of life. She had been in Rome, filming Francis of Assisi. While there she met Pope John XXIII. She told him, "I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clare." The Pontiff replied, "Tu sei Chiara!" ("No, you are Clare!"). Francis’s sister, Clare too had been beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Yet she followed Francis into a life dedicated to God, even founding her own order, the Poor Clares. Now Dolores herself heard God’s call. In 1963, at the age of twenty-four, Dolores entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, taking her final vows in 1970. In 2001, she was elected the prioress of the abbey. Dolores was profiled in the documentary God Is the Bigger Elvis, which was nominated for an academy award in 2012. In her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, released three years ago, she describes her inspiring journey from a full life in Hollywood to an even fuller life in the monastery.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Choosing to follow Jesus is never easy – despite our Scripture lessons, or even Dolores Hart’s story. When we hear God’s call, we rightly fear that our lives will be destabilized, we wonder what might be coming next, we fear that we will lose status, and we fear our choices may make life more difficult for those who are dear to us. Those who think they are called to the ordained ministry must undergo a lengthy period of discernment, involving members of a regional discernment group and a diocesan commission. In the Wellstreams program, that program that trained me as a spiritual direction, at the end of the first year I spent a full day discerning whether I felt called to continue in the program. Discernment is healthy and appropriate – and there are many different aids to discernment – so long as we understand that ultimately we must make a choice.
What choices do you face in your lives? Most often, when we face difficult choices, it is because the Spirit has called us to look hard at our lives and ask whether we are truly following Jesus or someone or something else. Turning to God in prayer and seeking counsel from other Christians are good ways for all of us to discern God’s call to us.
We don’t know what the wannabes in the Gospel decided to do, but, even if they all turned their backs on Jesus, that was a choice. Dolores Hart had to choose. Even I had to sign my name to a piece of paper committing myself to the next phase of the Wellstreams program.
Our lives constantly call us to make choices, to answer God’s call or to fall back into a comfortable status quo. “You gonna have to serve someone.” Who will it be?
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Monday, June 13, 2016
Justice with Compassion
“…that … we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion….”
Naboth’s vineyard: it’s one of the most terrifying stories in Scripture. How could this story possibly be good news? Really, it’s more like a tragic opera. In the first act, we are introduced to the characters and their relationships with each other. First, there’s poor Naboth, the tragic victim. He has the misfortune to own a vineyard abutting a palace belonging to King Ahab. Naboth and his ancestors have kept the vineyard in their family, as the Law of Moses prescribed, and have worked hard to make it productive. Enter King Ahab. If we are serious opera buffs, we know that Ahab has done more evil than any king before him. Disregarding God’s commandment not to covet another person’s property, Ahab desires Naboth’s ancestral land. For a vegetable garden? When law-abiding Naboth rightly refuses to sell, Ahab goes home and sulks. Enter Ahab’s wily, foreign-born wife Jezebel, who assures Ahab that she has the power to wrest the vineyard from Naboth and give it to Ahab.
The second act is the tragic act. Jezebel misuses the king’s authority and initiates her scheme. Law-abiding Naboth keeps the fast and attends the assembly. The covenant between God and Israel is further set aside, and another commandment is broken, as the scoundrels perjure themselves and give false testimony. On the most questionable evidence, poor innocent Naboth receives the supreme penalty and dies an extremely painful and ignominious death. Triumphant, Jezebel bids the king, who is fully complicit in what has happened, to take possession of the vineyard. Was there anyone even there to weep over Naboth’s death? Perhaps we are the only ones, as we head out to intermission.
It’s a very old story, isn’t it? But we live in a society of laws, and things like that don’t happen anymore. Are you sure? How about this opera? It was 1948. Florida's orange industry was exploding. Citrus barons got rich through the labor of poor African-Americans, who worked under Jim Crow laws, had not been able to vote since the turn of the century, and struggled for justice in a state controlled by whites. The rich planters knew that Sheriff Willis V. McCall would keep order in Lake County. The blacks knew that McCall was a sadistic tyrant. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl said she had been raped by blacks, McCall soon arrested four young African-American men: Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of World War II.
Now the tragic act. Thomas was killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were taken to jail and were beaten to force them to confess. Irvin refused to confess falsely. The three surviving men were convicted by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the event; the other two were sentenced to death. A retrial was ordered by the United States Supreme Court after hearing their appeals, led by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1951, as a new trial was underway, Sheriff McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody. He said they tried to escape. Shepherd died immediately. Irvin told investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood. At the second trial, Irvin was convicted again and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life by the governor in 1955. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later.
Intermission is over. We now return to Naboth’s vineyard. Will anyone be punished for the death of the innocent Naboth? Naboth wasn’t even cold when Ahab goes to seize his vineyard. Enter the last character: Ahab’s nemesis, the prophet Elijah. Elijah has heard God’s command and confronts Ahab. Elijah names Ahab’s crime and pronounces God’s punishment, a disastrous death, in which dogs will lick Ahab’s and Jezebel’s blood. God is still a God of righteousness, evildoers will be punished, and God’s justice will be served. And as opera buffs know, Ahab died in battle. When his body was brought back to Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, and prostitutes washed themselves in it. Jezebel was thrown out a window of the palace and was trampled to death by horses. Dogs licked her blood as well. Naboth was avenged. We can leave the theater affirming the psalmist’s assertion that God hates “all those who work wickedness.”
Were the deaths and imprisonment of the Groveland Four, as the men in Lake County, Florida came to be called, ever avenged? Sheriff McCall was investigated numerous times on civil rights violations but was never convicted.
So here’s another story. The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other first-world country. A disproportionately high number of those imprisoned are poor and African American or Latino. Thirty-one states, including Ohio, have the death penalty. Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American, was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 1985. Bullets that the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home were the only evidence against him. There were no fingerprints. Neither was there eyewitness testimony linking Hinton to the murders. Even so, Hinton was sent to death row. Two years ago, after years of appeals by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. A year ago, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullets from the robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Two months shy of his 59th birthday, Hinton was finally a free man. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he was the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row. Many of those 152 people owe their lives to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ohio Innocence Project, and other similar organizations.
Given that you are more likely to be condemned to death if you are poor, African American, or Latino, is it time for the U.S. to rethink the death penalty? Is it time for Ohio to set aside the death penalty? We profess to be followers of one who was condemned to death on the testimony of false witnesses, and who was executed by the state. Is it time for us as Christians to work for the abolition of the death penalty? Admittedly, Christians do differ on this issue. However, the Episcopal Church has been unequivocally against the death penalty since 1959. At General Convention last year, deputies and bishops passed a resolution that reaffirmed our longstanding call to put an end to the death penalty. The resolution also encouraged us to lobby our respective state governments to support legislation to abolish the death penalty, and directed bishops to appoint task forces of clergy and lay people to develop a witness to eliminate the death penalty. In Oklahoma, Bishop Robert Moody has asked parishes to ring bells at 6 p.m. on days of executions, or hang black drapery on an outside door, or tie ribbons around trees or utility poles. "I recognize that Christian men and women differ on this issue," he said. "However, as your bishop, I ask you to prayerfully address this issue anew. For me, I have concluded that capital punishment contributes nothing that betters our society, and I cannot imagine our Lord condoning capital punishment."
And we Episcopalians are not alone. Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty. In 1956, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation officially declaring the church’s opposition to the death penalty. In 1980 and 2000, the UMC passed resolutions reaffirming its opposition and encouraging its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment. Although the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last resort, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances. If you’ve seen the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking,” you know about the work of Sr. Helen Prejean CSJ. Through her organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sr. Helen has worked tirelessly to save the condemned and bring about abolition of the death penalty, which she calls “one of the great moral issues facing our country.”
So like the story of Naboth, many of our contemporary operas do not end happily. We weep both for the innocent victims and for the accused. We weep most especially for those who are falsely accused and spend countless wasted years on death row, often receiving little compensation or support when they are finally released.
And yet, we are people of faith. We trust in God. We trust that God’s justice will triumph. We trust that good will triumph over evil. We remember that we are an Easter people, and we trust that life triumphs over death. We work to bring the good news of God’s victory to others, as we also work to change unjust structures that bring about injustice and death. We pray, as followers of the one who was crucified and raised, that we might be in the vanguard of those working for justice with compassion.
Naboth’s vineyard: it’s one of the most terrifying stories in Scripture. How could this story possibly be good news? Really, it’s more like a tragic opera. In the first act, we are introduced to the characters and their relationships with each other. First, there’s poor Naboth, the tragic victim. He has the misfortune to own a vineyard abutting a palace belonging to King Ahab. Naboth and his ancestors have kept the vineyard in their family, as the Law of Moses prescribed, and have worked hard to make it productive. Enter King Ahab. If we are serious opera buffs, we know that Ahab has done more evil than any king before him. Disregarding God’s commandment not to covet another person’s property, Ahab desires Naboth’s ancestral land. For a vegetable garden? When law-abiding Naboth rightly refuses to sell, Ahab goes home and sulks. Enter Ahab’s wily, foreign-born wife Jezebel, who assures Ahab that she has the power to wrest the vineyard from Naboth and give it to Ahab.
The second act is the tragic act. Jezebel misuses the king’s authority and initiates her scheme. Law-abiding Naboth keeps the fast and attends the assembly. The covenant between God and Israel is further set aside, and another commandment is broken, as the scoundrels perjure themselves and give false testimony. On the most questionable evidence, poor innocent Naboth receives the supreme penalty and dies an extremely painful and ignominious death. Triumphant, Jezebel bids the king, who is fully complicit in what has happened, to take possession of the vineyard. Was there anyone even there to weep over Naboth’s death? Perhaps we are the only ones, as we head out to intermission.
It’s a very old story, isn’t it? But we live in a society of laws, and things like that don’t happen anymore. Are you sure? How about this opera? It was 1948. Florida's orange industry was exploding. Citrus barons got rich through the labor of poor African-Americans, who worked under Jim Crow laws, had not been able to vote since the turn of the century, and struggled for justice in a state controlled by whites. The rich planters knew that Sheriff Willis V. McCall would keep order in Lake County. The blacks knew that McCall was a sadistic tyrant. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl said she had been raped by blacks, McCall soon arrested four young African-American men: Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of World War II.
Now the tragic act. Thomas was killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were taken to jail and were beaten to force them to confess. Irvin refused to confess falsely. The three surviving men were convicted by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the event; the other two were sentenced to death. A retrial was ordered by the United States Supreme Court after hearing their appeals, led by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1951, as a new trial was underway, Sheriff McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody. He said they tried to escape. Shepherd died immediately. Irvin told investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood. At the second trial, Irvin was convicted again and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life by the governor in 1955. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later.
Intermission is over. We now return to Naboth’s vineyard. Will anyone be punished for the death of the innocent Naboth? Naboth wasn’t even cold when Ahab goes to seize his vineyard. Enter the last character: Ahab’s nemesis, the prophet Elijah. Elijah has heard God’s command and confronts Ahab. Elijah names Ahab’s crime and pronounces God’s punishment, a disastrous death, in which dogs will lick Ahab’s and Jezebel’s blood. God is still a God of righteousness, evildoers will be punished, and God’s justice will be served. And as opera buffs know, Ahab died in battle. When his body was brought back to Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, and prostitutes washed themselves in it. Jezebel was thrown out a window of the palace and was trampled to death by horses. Dogs licked her blood as well. Naboth was avenged. We can leave the theater affirming the psalmist’s assertion that God hates “all those who work wickedness.”
Were the deaths and imprisonment of the Groveland Four, as the men in Lake County, Florida came to be called, ever avenged? Sheriff McCall was investigated numerous times on civil rights violations but was never convicted.
So here’s another story. The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other first-world country. A disproportionately high number of those imprisoned are poor and African American or Latino. Thirty-one states, including Ohio, have the death penalty. Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American, was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 1985. Bullets that the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home were the only evidence against him. There were no fingerprints. Neither was there eyewitness testimony linking Hinton to the murders. Even so, Hinton was sent to death row. Two years ago, after years of appeals by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. A year ago, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullets from the robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Two months shy of his 59th birthday, Hinton was finally a free man. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he was the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row. Many of those 152 people owe their lives to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ohio Innocence Project, and other similar organizations.
Given that you are more likely to be condemned to death if you are poor, African American, or Latino, is it time for the U.S. to rethink the death penalty? Is it time for Ohio to set aside the death penalty? We profess to be followers of one who was condemned to death on the testimony of false witnesses, and who was executed by the state. Is it time for us as Christians to work for the abolition of the death penalty? Admittedly, Christians do differ on this issue. However, the Episcopal Church has been unequivocally against the death penalty since 1959. At General Convention last year, deputies and bishops passed a resolution that reaffirmed our longstanding call to put an end to the death penalty. The resolution also encouraged us to lobby our respective state governments to support legislation to abolish the death penalty, and directed bishops to appoint task forces of clergy and lay people to develop a witness to eliminate the death penalty. In Oklahoma, Bishop Robert Moody has asked parishes to ring bells at 6 p.m. on days of executions, or hang black drapery on an outside door, or tie ribbons around trees or utility poles. "I recognize that Christian men and women differ on this issue," he said. "However, as your bishop, I ask you to prayerfully address this issue anew. For me, I have concluded that capital punishment contributes nothing that betters our society, and I cannot imagine our Lord condoning capital punishment."
And we Episcopalians are not alone. Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty. In 1956, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation officially declaring the church’s opposition to the death penalty. In 1980 and 2000, the UMC passed resolutions reaffirming its opposition and encouraging its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment. Although the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last resort, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances. If you’ve seen the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking,” you know about the work of Sr. Helen Prejean CSJ. Through her organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sr. Helen has worked tirelessly to save the condemned and bring about abolition of the death penalty, which she calls “one of the great moral issues facing our country.”
So like the story of Naboth, many of our contemporary operas do not end happily. We weep both for the innocent victims and for the accused. We weep most especially for those who are falsely accused and spend countless wasted years on death row, often receiving little compensation or support when they are finally released.
And yet, we are people of faith. We trust in God. We trust that God’s justice will triumph. We trust that good will triumph over evil. We remember that we are an Easter people, and we trust that life triumphs over death. We work to bring the good news of God’s victory to others, as we also work to change unjust structures that bring about injustice and death. We pray, as followers of the one who was crucified and raised, that we might be in the vanguard of those working for justice with compassion.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
It's a Miracle
It’s a miracle! How often we have all said that! And yet I wonder. Have any of us seen a real miracle, an event that seems so out of the ordinary that we can only attribute it to divine intervention?
Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.
Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”
Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!
And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.
Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”
No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”
Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.
Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.
Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.
Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?
Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.
Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”
Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!
And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.
Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”
No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”
Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.
Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.
Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.
Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?
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