Swords into Ploughshares

In the north garden of the United Nations building in New York City stands a huge bronze sculpture. The sculpture depicts a man with a hammer in one hand and a sword in the other. The man is beating on the sword, in order to convert the sword into the cutting edge of a plow. This arresting sculpture was created by the Ukrainian artist Evgeniy Victorovich Vuchetich. It was given to the UN by the then Soviet Union in December, 1959. Although at that time the United States and the Soviet Union were “enemies,” the statue is a powerful visual reminder of our human desire to end wars and to convert instruments of death into tools that bring forth life.

Vuchetich’s statue alludes to one of the most famous passages of Scripture, which we just heard: “… they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks….” This image comes from the beginning of the book of the prophet Isaiah. Really three books bound together, the first forty chapters of Isaiah were written in the 8th century BC, during a period of great political turmoil in Israel. The passage that we just heard presents a series of wonderful images that point us to God’s promises and God’s future, to what lies beyond our immediate earthly events.

Speaking through Isaiah, what does God promise us? We hear first of all that devotion to God will be what brings all people together. We hear that humanity – all humanity – will be happy to receive God’s direction and instruction. We hear that people will no longer be motivated by envy, greed, resentment, retribution, and fear. We hear that people will renounce war, and that they will turn their instruments of war into implements that enable them to nourish each other. And, lest we get too dreamy about all these promises, we hear a challenge from God: “O house of Jacob. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” Through Isaiah’s words, God invites us – not commands us, invites us – to share God’s vision and to orient ourselves towards God’s promises, just as we follow a beam of light.

What a vision! While much of the church has just begun Advent, we are in the fourth week of our extended Advent. During this season we are invited to continue sharing God’s vision of what will be. As Jesus’ followers we are confident that God’s reign has already begun. After all, Jesus began his ministry by calling out, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” As we wait in this mid-time for God’s reign to be fully realized, in this Advent season we continue to divine its shape. Two weeks ago, we heard that there are no scapegoats in God’s realm, no one who is “other.” In God’s realm all are included, a promise echoed in Isaiah’s prophecy in “all the nations” and “many peoples.” Last week we heard that, as people already living in God’s realm, we owe our highest allegiance not to any earthly authorities but to Christ himself. Today we are reminded that in God’s realm, there will be both diversity and unity: all the many nations and peoples of the earth will come together under God, and will live with each other in peace. As followers of Jesus, is God’s promise of peace so surprising? Didn’t Luke’s gospel depict angels announcing Jesus’ birth with the promise of “Peace to all men and women on earth who please him?” Didn’t Jesus himself promise, in the gospel of John, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you?”

So do we see any of Isaiah’s vision of peace and unity realized in our own world? I was born in 1943. I was too young to experience World War II. But I do remember the cold war and the threat of nuclear disaster: “duck and cover” under my school desk, bomb shelters, and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. I remember Korea, Viet Nam, India and Pakistan, Bosnia, and Iraq. Now Syria is in ruins. Forty years after the 1967 war, Israelis and Palestinians are still not at peace.

And in our country? We have just come through a divisive election, in which both sides vilified each other. We heard that some groups among us are dangerous and unwanted. Even local elections proved divisive, causing conflict in families, among friends, even in parishes. Many people fear for the future of our nation, state, and community. Will we ever get closer to Isaiah’s vision of unity and peace?

What about in our own lives? Are we at peace within our families, with our friends, within this parish? Or are we estranged from someone? Is there someone with whom we need to reconcile? Are we are peace within our own hearts? Or are we fearful, worried, angry, feeling unloved, or even unworthy of love?

If we want to catch glimpses of the reality of God’s promises, perhaps we need to begin with ourselves. Perhaps we need to make peace within ourselves. Perhaps we are called to accept God’s invitation to walk in God’s way on a personal level. As your pastor, I invite you to take time, even during this busy “holiday” season, to sit in silence and encounter the true source of all that we long for, the true source of shalom, peace. Find that deeper relationship with God. Franciscan Richard Rohr reminds us that, “This might well be the essence of the spiritual journey for all of us – to accept that we’re accepted [by God] and to go and live likewise.”1 Can you know the truth of that acceptance by God in your own heart and share it generously with others? Perhaps this is the time to engage in self-examination, to look hard at our relationships with family members, friends, members of this parish, and members of other faith communities and organizations. Perhaps this is the time to pursue reconciliation wherever it is needed.

Perhaps “now in the time of this mortal life,” we might consider accepting God’s invitation to partner with God in making real God’s promises of unity and peace. Can we truly accept that there are no “others” in God’s realm? I want to share with you a poem that so perfectly expresses that acceptance. It is called “Shalom: Magnetic heart.” The poem begins with the lines,
You and I are “other” to each other,
foreign creatures,
locked in our independent skin.


You and I, we’re unnerved
when we’re together,
we’re fractured, disconnected,
thin as moth-wing.

And yet, the same stuff
that tears us from each other
gravitates us to each other,
and all along,
the earth keeps spinning
to help us shake the
regret-dust from
our shoulders.

The poem ends with these lovely images of unity within God’s Shalom:

Shalom– She knows us better.

Shalom– She binds together the
blistered souls,

and we quiet ourselves,

eyes locked,

all “otherness” dissipated
in a stream of
perfect light.2 https://kaitlincurtice.com/

Can we accept that we live in a diverse nation that embraces people of all ethnicities, national origin, faith community, and gender? Can you find that part of God’s realm that you are uniquely called by God to contribute to? Can you make common cause with others across ethnic and religious lines? Perhaps you want to see immigrants treated fairly. Perhaps you want to stop the death penalty. Perhaps you want to see to see the people who grow our tomatoes receive a fair wage and access to decent health care. Perhaps you want to help end the scourge of addiction in this community. Today we offer a diverse community of people a hot meal. Where else in this county are we called to bring people together in peace?

And world peace? “Not in my lifetime,” you say. Yet, all over the globe, Episcopal Relief and Development, the United Thank Offering, and many other organizations are showing us how we might make it possible for “all people” to come together. An example. For generations different tribes have fought each other in Kalinga, a region of mountain villages in the Philippines. The region struggles with chronic economic hardship. In November 2012, three Episcopal congregations came together to begin planting trees. In the face of climate change that has denuded their mountains and eroded their soil, these communities have overcome decade old feuds to undertake a massive tree planting. In so doing they have helped various ethnic and tribal groups to come together in peace and to advance themselves economically. Is ERD on your Christmas gift list? Perhaps it should be.

And just one more example. This coming February, the Rev. Abeosah Flemister, a priest of our diocese, will visit us and tell us about Partners in Ministry in Liberia, a mission of our diocese that brings diverse people together to provide education for children. Are we called to be one of the partners in this ministry?

In any of these activities we are doing no more than accepting God’s invitation to follow where Jesus led and to share God’s peace with all. And we engage in any of these activities not because we rely on our own strength, or our own political leaders, but because we believe God’s promises. We especially trust that the end of all things, as God’s seers have taught us, is God’s shalom, peace, justice, and well-being for all creation. May it be so.

1. The Divine Dance (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016), 109.
2. https://kaitlincurtice.com/

O Wisdom from on High

Is it All Saints Day? We began our worship singing that glorious All Saints Day hymn, “For all the saints who from their labor rest….” Then our sequence hymn, the between the New Testament lesson and Gospel, called us to rejoice with the saints and angels. So is it All Saints Day? Yes and no.

No, it is not All Saints Day, which traditionally falls on November 1st. This year we observed the day by welcoming Haven Rose into the Body of Christ through baptism. But also yes. The Revised Common Lectionary, which gives us all our Scripture readings for our three-year cycle of readings, recognizes that most people will not observe a feast of the church that falls on a weekday, even a major feast such as All Saints. So the RCL allows us to celebrate the Sunday following November 1st as All Saints Sunday, which we have done in previous years.

So why is it important to keep All Saints day in some form? Why not just bypass it and read what’s appointed for the 25th Sunday after Pentocost? One reason we keep All Saints Sunday is that All Saints was traditionally the end of the liturgical calendar, especially in the English church. And you can see why. We have come full circle through the two cycles of the liturgical year. First we had the cycle from the birth of Jesus through his resurrection, i.e., Christmas through Easter, what’s called the incarnation cycle. Then came the long season following Pentecost, which emphasizes deepening our understanding of God and God’s purposes and strengthening our Christian community, including mini-communities like this parish.

On All Saints we celebrate the culmination of all that growth in the lives of real people. This includes all the people officially on the calendar of the church before the Reformation: the martyrs, teachers, and theologians of the early church and the medieval saints and mystics. We also remember those, since the Reformation, who especially modelled the holy life for us, and especially those in the English and American churches. But we also remember on this day all those whose lives are known to us and God alone, those who showed us more clearly what a holy life might look like. Hear a few lines of a litany by priest and writer Barbara Crafton, that gives us a glimpse of some of those people:

O Rosa Parks and Thurgood Marshall, pray for us. O Oscar Romero and Raoul Wallenberg, O Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Medgar Evers, O William Wilberforce, pray for us. O all you whose names we do not know, who lived your lives or gave your lives in the struggle for freedom and justice, pray for us that we will be worthy of your sacrifice.
O Thomas Merton and Dame Julian, O Father Damien and Mother Theresa, O Thomas Beckett and Li Tim-Oi, pray for us. Blessed Augustine of Hippo, pray for us. Blessed Paul pray for us and help us to pray.

After mentioning authors, musicians, artists, and scientists, Crafton then comes to her own family: O Mom and Dad, O David, and O my little David who never saw the sun, pray for us. And we could all add the names of those saints who have blessed our own lives, as we pray with Crafton,

We give you thanks, O God, for setting us among the community of the saints, and for allowing the grace they showed in their lives to continue in ours – for in your kingdom, nothing is ever completely lost.

So All Saints is important, even if, in most years, we have to observe it on Sunday. But guess what: today is also the first Sunday in Advent. And why, you might wonder, are we starting the new season so soon? On All Saints we are essentially looking back. We see what God has done in Jesus, in the church, and in the lives of real people. After All Saints, it’s as if the church turns around and begins to look ahead. The readings for the last three Sundays of the traditional liturgical year, i.e., the next three Sundays, have an eschatological focus. That is, they focus on the end times, on the fulfillment of God’s promises and the coming of God’s reign. This focus continues into the next liturgical year in the traditional calendar, until the Sunday before Christmas, when we begin to look forward to the birth of Jesus and the beginning once again of the incarnation cycle.

Since our readings already call us to look ahead, we have elected to join the Advent Project. Along with other parishes in this diocese and elsewhere – with the bishop’s permission – we are bringing together the two parts of the focus on end times into a single season, a seven-week Advent. In doing this, we are not trying to compete with cultural Christmas, which in most of our stores has already begun. And we are not sourpusses, who adamantly refuse to be part of the “Christmas season.” Rather, we are taking the time to focus on God’s promises to us and, through our worship, to express our hope that God will speedily bring in God’s reign.

So what will change? Not our appointed Scripture readings, which already look ahead. However, our sermons may reflect more clearly our hope for the coming of the reign of God. Our paraments, the colored hangings in the church, and our vestments, next week will change to blue, the color for Advent. The collect of the day and the prayers of the people will be different. The service music will be a little different, and we’ll chant the opening of the Great Thanksgiving, which we’ll practice right after the announcements. And we’ll put up the new Advent wreath. See if you observe any other changes, as we move through this longer Advent.

And what might change for us personally in this longer Advent season? Despite what the stores and web sites tell us, it’s not Christmas yet. It’s not even Thanksgiving! Actually, as twenty-first century Christians, we live in what one German theologian called, “das Mittel der Zeit,” in the mid-times, the in-between time. We live in between the time frames of All Saints and Advent, between the past of what God has done and the saints have modelled for us, and the future of what we hope for and pray for when the “eyes of our hearts” are open. We live in the already-not yet.

As we hope and pray for the fulfillment of God’s reign, we seek to continue to grow in our relationship with the Holy One. We seek to more visibly reflect our commitment to Christ through the way we live. And we seek to continue working for justice and peace, so that the reign of God might at last be fully realized.

This week we stand at a decisive moment in the history of our nation. As followers of Jesus who embrace the Anglican tradition, we know that it is always appropriate to pray for the leaders of our nation. Indeed, on page 822, the Book of Common Prayer gives us a prayer for an election. And as you know, every week in the prayers of the people, we pray for our nation and its leaders. And so, as we exercise our right to choose our nation’s leaders and our elected representatives, we pray for all who vote. We pray that all who vote on Tuesday will do so thoughtfully and wisely.

In the end, in this Advent season, we continue to remember the hope to which we press. We remember that we are citizens not only of the United States but also, and more importantly, we are citizens of God’s realm. Even so, for many of us, this has been a more difficult election season than we have seen in many years. And so, remembering whose we are, and whose kingdom we yearn to see fulfilled, I offer you another litany, this one by historian and theologian Diana Butler Bass. Join me in saying, “May it be so,” after each petition.

I believe God creates the world and therein good, even very good, no matter how far from that goodness human beings wander; may it be so.
I believe Love casts out fear, and that living with compassion is the path to joy;
I believe Gratitude threads all of the connections in the web of life;
I believe Wisdom dwells among us, embodying both divine insight and human intellect;
I believe Hope banishes cynicism, always drawing us toward a creative future;
I believe Awe opens us to an awakened life that reaches out to the world to restore and save;
I believe Justice flows all around us, like a healing river;
I believe All Shall be Well. May it be so.

I Must Stay at Your House Today

What made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? In his world, he was perhaps the least likely person to be eager to see an itinerant rabbi? The evangelist tells us that he was the chief tax collector. That means that he was not only an agent of the hated Roman government in Jericho, the city that was the entry point for goods coming into Israel from the east, but he was no doubt also a supervisor of other tax collectors. Which means that he was able to not only extract from the people the taxes that the Romans demanded, he was able to skim off a portion of what those under him could extort from the merchants and petty farmers who were forced to pay the Roman taxes.

Zacchaeus was obviously good at what he did, since he was not only a supervisor but also rich. And he was also deeply hated by the entire community of pious Jews. He was not welcome in the synagogue, and he was probably also intentionally blocked by the crowds who had come out to welcome Jesus to Jericho.

Since he was s a rich man, in Luke’s account Zacchaeus was also not likely to be someone curious about Jesus. If you read the gospel straight through, you would notice that rich men resist Jesus’ call to acknowledge the nearness of God’s reign and change their lives accordingly. In fact, Jesus begins his preaching in Luke with the sermon on the plain, in which he shouts, “… woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Then Jesus tells two stories about rich men. One is about the rich farmer who built bigger barns to house his abundant crop, but as the barns are finished God demands his soul. The other, we just heard a few weeks ago, the story of the rich man who dressed in fine purple clothes and Lazarus, who lay outside his gate, starving and so ill that the dogs licked his wounds. And in the chapter just before this one, we hear of the pious young ruler who is so attached to his wealth that he sadly leaves when Jesus suggests he give his money to the poor. In fact, after the rich young ruler leaves, the disciples ask Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” Perhaps the story of Zacchaeus is the evangelist’s answer to that question. Yet, we might also wonder, is Zacchaeus’s response to Jesus likely to be different from that of rich young ruler?

And, more important, after all this, what does the evangelist suggest about what really made Zacchaeus so eager to see Jesus? What made him race ahead of the crowds that blocked him and do something he probably had not done since he was eight years old, something that was so unseemly and incongruous for a man in his position? Was he moved by mere curiosity? Did he perhaps want to see if he might gain some business advantage from seeing this rabbi? Or maybe, just maybe, something was stirring inside Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God’s Holy Spirit had already begun to work in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, God seized the initiative and started a process that would radically transform Zacchaeus.

And us? Why are you here? Just as was the case for Zacchaeus, there is no earthly social or economic reason for you to be here this morning. To be sure, if this were the Middle Ages or Puritan New England, you would be punished or fined for not showing up to church on Sunday. Even as recently as the 1950s in the U.S., there was strong social pressure to participate in some faith community. Now, we have come a full 180 degrees from those earlier eras. Church support and attendance have declined precipitously. The majority of Americans, especially those under thirty, identify themselves as “nones,” i.e., having no religious affiliation, or as “spiritual but not religious.”

So why are you here? Are you just curious? What will the preacher say today? Is coming to church “icing on the cake” of the good life for you? Are you afraid of God’s wrath if you don’t come? Or did something stir within you and push you, pull you, or bring you here?

Or take my own experience with my first week-long silent retreat four years ago. The longest silent retreat I had done before that was for two and half days. What impelled me to sign up for a retreat directed by the Spirituality Network, drive four hours on a Sunday afternoon, and stick it out for a whole week? Maybe, just maybe, God had taken the initiative, stirred something within me, and pushed me, pulled me, sent me to a retreat center in Fremont, Ohio for a week.

So there is Zacchaeus incongruously perched in a tree when he finally gets a glimpse of Jesus. Then the unthinkable happens. The rabbi stops, looks up, and addresses Zacchaeus by name. Even more unthinkable, he tells Zacchaeus to hurry down from the tree, and he invites himself to dinner. Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall during that dinner conversation? While the respectable, pious people wondered if this rabbi were ignorant of his host’s way of life, or naïve, or worse, clearly something was happening to Zacchaeus. Once face to face with Jesus, something life-changing was happening to Zacchaeus. We might say that he had a conversion experience, from which he gained a new understanding of who God is, and, more important, a new understanding of how he needed to change his life.

For, as Luke makes abundantly clear throughout his gospel, repentance and faith do not mean belief in a set of statements about God. Repentance and faith do not mean acknowledging that Jesus is God’s anointed one. Rather, repentance and faith always have an ethical dimension. A deep experience of the reality of God must always produce a changed life. Having faith always means being transformed by God to live a life closer to God’s expectations, a life modeled for us by Jesus. So, unlike the rich young ruler, when Zacchaeus experiences the reality of God in his encounter with Jesus, he is led to giving up his previous way of life and offering recompense to those he has wronged, far above what the Law of Moses required. And maybe, as Zacchaeus stood there and said all this to Jesus, maybe his joy was so deep that he was the happiest man that day on the Jericho road. Perhaps he was finally free of his sin and isolation. Perhaps indeed health and wholeness, salvation, had come to his house.

In seeking out Zacchaeus, Jesus demonstrates God’s relentless desire to bring us back into community with Godself and with each other, to be in relationship with us, and enable us to be in relationship with each other, to transform us into the people we were created to be. So why are you here? Did you come seeking the transformation that Zacchaeus experienced? We don’t have to climb a tree to see Jesus. As we come to the altar he calls us by name, invites himself into our lives, strengthens our bond with him, and continues that same transformative process that he initiated in Zacchaeus. Maybe, just maybe, that experience of Jesus’ bond with us enables us to see our lives differently, to know our connection with God, with each other, with all creation. Maybe, just maybe, when Jesus dines with us, he enables us to deepen our commitment to treating all with justice, compassion, and love. Perhaps he enables us to better work to bring nearer the reign of God. Maybe, just maybe, Jesus’ food and drink strengthen us to do the work that only we can do.

And maybe, just maybe, when Jesus calls us out of our hiding places, as he called to Zacchaeus, perhaps he also calls us to examine our use of our God-given resources. As Zacchaeus did, are we called to examine our use of our money? Are we called to share our resources more generously with the rest of God’s people? Are we serving God’s people in ways that use our gifts of time, of memory, reason, and skill? Are we called to change our lives in a way that might astonish those around us?

My sisters and brothers, the truth is that God, through God’s Holy Spirit, relentlessly pursues us. God stirs in us a desire to seek God. When we respond to God’s stirring, when we climb a tree to better see Jesus, when we sit in God’s presence silently listening for God’s voice, when we come to church to be nourished by Word and Sacrament, God delivers on God’s promises. God nourishes us, and enables us to become the loving people we have been created to be. But, watch out! You and everyone around you might be surprised by what happens next!