No wonder neither A.J. nor Carolyn wanted to preach today! Here we are on a lazy summer day, about to enjoy a lovely picnic, and we’ve just heard some of the hardest lessons of the liturgical year. Honestly, what were the crafters of the lectionary thinking when they set these lessons for the summer? Winter maybe, but not warm, lazy summer, and especially when our groaning potluck table beckons!
But we are part of a tradition that respects Scripture and has given us a broad three-year system of Scripture readings to be heard in public worship. And hear these lessons we must, for our spiritual health, and for our growth as followers of Jesus.
Unquestionably, the lesson from the prophet Isaiah is hard to hear. Through the prophet’s voice we first hear a love song, in which God describes all the tender care that God has lavished on Israel. The prophet then lets us hear God’s profound disappointment when Israel does not live up to God’s expectations. Did you hear the poignancy, the infinite sadness, in God’s “Why did it yield wild grapes?” Did you hear the grief in God’s decision to abandon Israel to her own ways? Our psalm echoes the same themes, but it ends with a promise both we and the psalmist know that Israel will never be able to keep: “And so will we never turn away from you….”
Our lesson from the Letter to the Hebrews isn’t a lot better. The writer gives us examples of people who were faithful to God’s call. But what did many of them get for their faithfulness? Torture, mocking, and imprisonment. And the writer’s counsel? Look to Jesus – who endured all that and more! Really God?
Our gospel lesson is perhaps the hardest of all to hear. We’re in the middle of the gospel of Luke. As we heard in chapter 9, Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” While Jesus is no doubt already focused on the events that will happen in Jerusalem, in the narrative we are on a road trip with Jesus and his friends. This and the following chapters, approximately through chapter 17, are only loosely structured in terms of story, time, and place. They seem to be more a collection of Jesus’ sayings, as the earliest community of Jesus’ followers remembered them. It’s as if the writer wanted to make sure that everything the community remembered was included. So these chapters have a cobbled-together feeling, with some sayings addressed to closer disciples, and some to wider crowds. Thus in today’s reading, the saying about conflicts within families is addressed to the disciples, while the saying about interpreting changes to come is addressed to a wider audience, perhaps curious villagers who gathered around Jesus as he passed through their area.
Even so, it’s important for us to hear Jesus’ words here. First, it’s important to hear the passion and sense of urgency in Jesus’ voice, as he wishes for his work in Jerusalem to be finished. It’s also important for us to hear what those who take his message seriously may face, those who seek to follow his example of loving self-giving, those who seek to welcome all, especially the poor and those on the social margins, and those who seek to produce good fruit and work for the justice and righteousness that God so clearly expects.
Jesus’ warning is clear: those who take the gospel seriously and seek diligently to follow him will inevitably face conflict with those around them. Certainly, Jesus’ followers will face conflict with the powers that be: the rich and powerful never want to hear that God loves the entire cosmos, all of creation, and that God especially has a preference for the poor and marginalized. And more: Jesus’ followers will also face conflict within their own families. It is not that Jesus desires that family members be at odds over following him. It is more that Jesus is realistic – and wants his followers to be realistic – about the real costs of taking the gospel seriously. So consider yourself warned!
And why should his followers face such conflict? Here and elsewhere in Luke’s gospel we hear Jesus’ reminder that he is calling together a new kind of community, not one based on blood ties and the unequal social structures sustained by traditional patriarchal family roles. Rather, Jesus is calling together a new kind of community, a community that is united not by devotion to clan or tribe, but a community that finds its identity solely in Jesus, a community where everybody matters, a community that looks “to Jesus” as it pursues its commitment to follow him and work for the coming of God’s reign.
We know only too well that our commitment to Jesus’ way and our attempt to work for God’s justice and righteousness lead to conflict, even conflict with beloved family members. We also know that when we commit ourselves to a particular faith community, we may have to leave behind our families and all that was once comforting and familiar to us.
There are so many stories of the cost involved in our faith commitments. In many stories from the early church, we encounter those who faced martyrdom. Perhaps no such story is more heart-rending than that of Perpetua and her maid Felicity. Perpetua was a high-born Roman matron in third-century Carthage whose family begged her to turn her back on the strange new religion of Jesus and return to them. Instead, Perpetua left behind her newborn infant and, with Felicity at her side, bravely faced death. A thousand years later, Clare of Assisi, whose family traced its lineage all the way back to the Roman republic, heard St. Francis preach. Although she was probably betrothed, she defied her family, left behind her riches, and joined Francis’s mission, later founding her own order, now known as the Poor Clares. During the English Reformation, family members were also deeply divided. Some, like Thomas More, refused to break with the Catholic Church in England, and was the only one of his family to be put to death. Others, to the dismay of their families, eagerly embraced the new church. And there are so many others. Here are just a few more. Elizabeth Seton, who left behind her proper Episcopalian family to join the Roman Catholic Church, eventually founded both the first Catholic girls school in the US and the Sisters of Charity. Samuel Isaac Joseph Scherechewsky was a Russian Jew, whose family expected him to become a rabbi. Instead, he found the Church of England, eventually became Anglican bishop of Shanghai, and translated the Bible into Chinese. Alice Paul, a champion of women’s suffrage, endured force-feeding in prison when she attempted hunger strikes. As we know only too well, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyr to the cause of civil rights, while his followers endured unspeakable hatred and violence in their segregated communities.
And with all that, we also know that sincere Christians – or members of any faith community – can wind up on different sides of religious, social, and political issues. Witness the many families in this area who wound up on different sides of our Civil War. I have just finished a book about Americans who joined the Spanish Civil War. There too, families were deeply divided. Today Republicans and Democrats – uneasily perhaps – coexist in the same family.
And so then, what are we to do? As people who profess to follow Jesus, who are willing to hear the hard words of today’s Scripture readings, how are we know how to produce the good grapes that God calls us to produce? How are we know whether to continue on course, despite conflict with family members and the wider community, or whether to heed the words of those who would pull us back? In effect, how are we to discern whether it is truly God who is leading us, and the path that God calls us to follow?
The answer to those questions is the one given by the writer of Hebrews: look “to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith….” In practice, that means regularly engaging in worship and prayer, letting ourselves be nourished in Word and Sacrament. It means intelligently reading Scripture, with both some understanding of the history and context of any particular book or passage, and openness to letting Scripture address us where we are. It means thoughtfully and prayerfully engaging with the issues of the day, knowing that even reasonable people can disagree. And it means admitting that, in order to remain true to the call we hear from God, we may have to disagree with those we love, over the way we express our faith, and over the way we seek to bring in God’s reign.
Yes, today’s Scriptures are not easy to hear. God often challenges us to hear what we don’t want to hear. As followers of the one who gave his life as a ransom for many, we stay open to new ideas, even as we pursue our visions of justice and righteousness. We seek the truth in ideas with which we disagree, recognizing that none of us has a corner on truth. And still, with Jesus, we continue on our journey, trusting God’s transformative work in our lives, and knowing that, despite our own imperfections and limitations our futures are always in God’s hands.
Showing posts with label Pentecost 13. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentecost 13. Show all posts
Monday, August 15, 2016
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Stand Up for Jesus
Where is Ephesus? For the last seven weeks we’ve been hearing sections of a letter addressed to a Christian community there. Where is this place?
Actually, you can visit the ruins of ancient Ephesus. Today, Ephesus entertains many tourist groups, and cruise ships regularly call at the port of Kusadasi nearby. The city lies on the southwestern coast of Turkey on the eastern shore of the Ionian Sea. Archeologists have been at work there since the 1860s and have to date unearthed about 15% of the ancient city. So visitors can see wonderful Roman ruins. There’s an imposing gate and a second-century library. There’s the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and many other temples, including one dedicated to the emperor Domitian. Among other sites you can even see an ancient theater and a marketplace.
The city had been founded in the early 10th century BC by a Hittite king. By the time that Christian communities were being established there, i.e., in the first and second centuries AD, Ephesus was a thriving commercial center with a population of about 50,000 people. Of those, a small minority had become followers of the itinerant rabbi who had been executed by the Roman establishment in Jerusalem. Comprising a small number of Jews among many gentiles, these earliest Christian communities were socially mixed and were subject to persecution and discrimination, chiefly for refusing to worship the Roman emperors.
We’ve been calling what we’ve been hearing an “epistle” or “letter,” but scholars believe that our text was probably more like an encyclical, i.e., a letter not addressed to a specific community but rather intended for circulation among several different communities. We are not sure who wrote it. Traditionally it was ascribed to Paul. However, much internal evidence suggests that it was probably written by a disciple of Paul who was writing in Paul’s name – a common practice in the ancient world.
The first half of the letter, as we’ve heard this past month and a half, deals with theological issues. The writer begins by warning the gentiles not to return to their former pagan religious practices. This was not a trivial issue for them, as much of their business and social life would formerly have centered around the temple – not unlike our own society a generation or two ago. What is more important is the reminder that, through Christ, gentiles have been brought into the covenant that God had established first with the Jews: “So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth … that you were … without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel…. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ (2:11-13). Therefore the followers of Jesus now constitute a new community, unified by the work of Christ: “So you are then no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2:19-22).
In the second half of the letter, the writer explains what it means to be a Christian community. Christians are called, we have heard, especially to live lives that reflect their commitment to Jesus, to honor his call to live in unity and peace, to give up immoral practices, and to seek wisdom. Because “the days are evil,” Christians are also called to “be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time” (5:15-16).
Now, finally, we have come to the end of the letter. We have come to what scholars the “peroration.” This is a technical term for a “battle charge.” This is what a general would say before sending troops into battle, or a coach would say before sending players onto the field or court. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of “Go get ‘em!” Now Christians were called to be peaceful, to even fly under the radar, so why did the writer use military imagery here? Think about it. What did ancient people see around them all the time? Roman foot soldiers! People were as familiar with the foot soldiers’ armor as we are today with the uniforms of law enforcement officers or Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. But there is more here than simply familiarity. Jews are also reminded of similar images in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially, for example, Isaiah’s description of Israel’s coming savior: “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist….” In the third part of Isaiah, we hear again that God, in avenging injustice, “put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head….” And finally, all the hearers, both Jews and Gentiles, are reminded that they, as followers of Jesus, are not lone rangers, but rather, like common soldiers, are part of a community, a company or platoon, a regiment in God’s forces.
What is the battle charge for the Ephesians, and by extension, for us? To what are we called as committed followers of Jesus? First, we are called to stand firm, to stand ready to do God’s work, even if that work is not popular. More important, we are called to acknowledge that there are real forces arrayed against us. These forces are not “enemies of flesh and blood,” that is our personal enemies. In the ancient world, for the writer of the letter to the Ephesians, these forces are characterized as demonic forces: rulers, authorities, “cosmic powers of this present darkness,” and “spiritual forces in the heavenly places.” We might characterize those forces differently. Certainly we can point to human beings whom we consider evil. Just this week Islamic State extremists beheaded Khaled Asaad, the eighty-two year old Syrian archeologist who gave his life defending the Roman ruins of Palmyra. However, beyond even ISIS, reprehensible though it may be, some of us might name those systemic forces against which we feel powerless. What might be such forces for us? Consider these: segregation, apartheid, and racism, the Mafia and other organized crime, terrorism of all kinds, the easy availability in this country of deadly weapons, drug and alcohol addiction, human trafficking, a celebrity culture of Bad Boys and Girls, global warming, political corruption, and unjust incarceration, just to name a few.
As Christians, we are called to participate in the struggle against all these forces of darkness. But – and this is a huge but – we are called not to depend solely on our own selves and our own efforts, but always on God’s grace. We are called to be first and foremost members of Jesus’ regiment, to put on the armor issued to us, the belt, breastplate, and shoes that are standard issue in his service. We are called to accept the protection and word, the helmet and the sword, that come from him. We are called to remember that, even with God’s grace, Christian life is a struggle against powerful forces, especially if we are imitating Jesus, who exemplified for us the ultimate struggle against evil. Finally, we are called to remember that we are already victors in this struggle, that Christ, through his resurrection, has already won for us the victory against evil and death.
And how might we remember all that? We gain the strength to combat the dark forces by remaining always in prayer, our writer tells us, prayer both for ourselves and for others. We do have spiritual resources available to us, if we would but avail ourselves of them. We do have the encouraging words of Scripture, especially Jesus’ promise that “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” We do have the nourishment of Christ’s Body and Blood and his promise, which we have been hearing all this month in one form or another, that, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them….” And we do have the encouragement, grace, and experience of transformation that comes to us through our own practices of prayer. When we remain firmly devoted to Jesus, through reading Scripture, letting ourselves be regularly nourished in communion, and deepening our relationship with him in prayer, we begin to become the Christians described by St. Teresa of Avila, when she reminded us that, “We are all vassals of the of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our king is flying and thus follow his will.” As we follow his banner, we also have his promise that we will grow in our ability to share the good news with others and establish a community of peace, love, and unity.
You’ve heard the call to arms. With the Ephesians, go, stand firm against indifference, scorn, and evil in high places. Stand firm in your commitment to Jesus. Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross!
Actually, you can visit the ruins of ancient Ephesus. Today, Ephesus entertains many tourist groups, and cruise ships regularly call at the port of Kusadasi nearby. The city lies on the southwestern coast of Turkey on the eastern shore of the Ionian Sea. Archeologists have been at work there since the 1860s and have to date unearthed about 15% of the ancient city. So visitors can see wonderful Roman ruins. There’s an imposing gate and a second-century library. There’s the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and many other temples, including one dedicated to the emperor Domitian. Among other sites you can even see an ancient theater and a marketplace.
The city had been founded in the early 10th century BC by a Hittite king. By the time that Christian communities were being established there, i.e., in the first and second centuries AD, Ephesus was a thriving commercial center with a population of about 50,000 people. Of those, a small minority had become followers of the itinerant rabbi who had been executed by the Roman establishment in Jerusalem. Comprising a small number of Jews among many gentiles, these earliest Christian communities were socially mixed and were subject to persecution and discrimination, chiefly for refusing to worship the Roman emperors.
We’ve been calling what we’ve been hearing an “epistle” or “letter,” but scholars believe that our text was probably more like an encyclical, i.e., a letter not addressed to a specific community but rather intended for circulation among several different communities. We are not sure who wrote it. Traditionally it was ascribed to Paul. However, much internal evidence suggests that it was probably written by a disciple of Paul who was writing in Paul’s name – a common practice in the ancient world.
The first half of the letter, as we’ve heard this past month and a half, deals with theological issues. The writer begins by warning the gentiles not to return to their former pagan religious practices. This was not a trivial issue for them, as much of their business and social life would formerly have centered around the temple – not unlike our own society a generation or two ago. What is more important is the reminder that, through Christ, gentiles have been brought into the covenant that God had established first with the Jews: “So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth … that you were … without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel…. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ (2:11-13). Therefore the followers of Jesus now constitute a new community, unified by the work of Christ: “So you are then no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2:19-22).
In the second half of the letter, the writer explains what it means to be a Christian community. Christians are called, we have heard, especially to live lives that reflect their commitment to Jesus, to honor his call to live in unity and peace, to give up immoral practices, and to seek wisdom. Because “the days are evil,” Christians are also called to “be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time” (5:15-16).
Now, finally, we have come to the end of the letter. We have come to what scholars the “peroration.” This is a technical term for a “battle charge.” This is what a general would say before sending troops into battle, or a coach would say before sending players onto the field or court. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of “Go get ‘em!” Now Christians were called to be peaceful, to even fly under the radar, so why did the writer use military imagery here? Think about it. What did ancient people see around them all the time? Roman foot soldiers! People were as familiar with the foot soldiers’ armor as we are today with the uniforms of law enforcement officers or Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. But there is more here than simply familiarity. Jews are also reminded of similar images in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially, for example, Isaiah’s description of Israel’s coming savior: “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist….” In the third part of Isaiah, we hear again that God, in avenging injustice, “put on righteousness like a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head….” And finally, all the hearers, both Jews and Gentiles, are reminded that they, as followers of Jesus, are not lone rangers, but rather, like common soldiers, are part of a community, a company or platoon, a regiment in God’s forces.
What is the battle charge for the Ephesians, and by extension, for us? To what are we called as committed followers of Jesus? First, we are called to stand firm, to stand ready to do God’s work, even if that work is not popular. More important, we are called to acknowledge that there are real forces arrayed against us. These forces are not “enemies of flesh and blood,” that is our personal enemies. In the ancient world, for the writer of the letter to the Ephesians, these forces are characterized as demonic forces: rulers, authorities, “cosmic powers of this present darkness,” and “spiritual forces in the heavenly places.” We might characterize those forces differently. Certainly we can point to human beings whom we consider evil. Just this week Islamic State extremists beheaded Khaled Asaad, the eighty-two year old Syrian archeologist who gave his life defending the Roman ruins of Palmyra. However, beyond even ISIS, reprehensible though it may be, some of us might name those systemic forces against which we feel powerless. What might be such forces for us? Consider these: segregation, apartheid, and racism, the Mafia and other organized crime, terrorism of all kinds, the easy availability in this country of deadly weapons, drug and alcohol addiction, human trafficking, a celebrity culture of Bad Boys and Girls, global warming, political corruption, and unjust incarceration, just to name a few.
As Christians, we are called to participate in the struggle against all these forces of darkness. But – and this is a huge but – we are called not to depend solely on our own selves and our own efforts, but always on God’s grace. We are called to be first and foremost members of Jesus’ regiment, to put on the armor issued to us, the belt, breastplate, and shoes that are standard issue in his service. We are called to accept the protection and word, the helmet and the sword, that come from him. We are called to remember that, even with God’s grace, Christian life is a struggle against powerful forces, especially if we are imitating Jesus, who exemplified for us the ultimate struggle against evil. Finally, we are called to remember that we are already victors in this struggle, that Christ, through his resurrection, has already won for us the victory against evil and death.
And how might we remember all that? We gain the strength to combat the dark forces by remaining always in prayer, our writer tells us, prayer both for ourselves and for others. We do have spiritual resources available to us, if we would but avail ourselves of them. We do have the encouraging words of Scripture, especially Jesus’ promise that “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” We do have the nourishment of Christ’s Body and Blood and his promise, which we have been hearing all this month in one form or another, that, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them….” And we do have the encouragement, grace, and experience of transformation that comes to us through our own practices of prayer. When we remain firmly devoted to Jesus, through reading Scripture, letting ourselves be regularly nourished in communion, and deepening our relationship with him in prayer, we begin to become the Christians described by St. Teresa of Avila, when she reminded us that, “We are all vassals of the of the King. May it please his Majesty that, like brave soldiers, we may look only where the banner of our king is flying and thus follow his will.” As we follow his banner, we also have his promise that we will grow in our ability to share the good news with others and establish a community of peace, love, and unity.
You’ve heard the call to arms. With the Ephesians, go, stand firm against indifference, scorn, and evil in high places. Stand firm in your commitment to Jesus. Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross!
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Love One Another
“The commandments … are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Last month, the actor Robin Williams hanged himself. He was only sixty-three. Six months ago, the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose. He was only forty-six. Both men were richly talented, highly acclaimed actors. Robin Williams excelled at both zany comedy and moving drama. Who can forget his portrayal of the cross-dressing Mrs. Doubtfire, or of Patch Adams, the physician who healed his patients through deft use of comedy? Philip Seymour Hoffman gave us men of fierce intelligence, whose lives tended to end in crime or tragedy. His portrayal of Günther Bachmann, the brooding German intelligence officer in his last film, “A Man Most Wanted,” is truly riveting. Yet both of these men, at the peak of success, were also depressed and addicted to drugs. Both died at their own hands.
Writer Daniel Clendenin suggests that both suffered from what he calls “spiritual poverty.” “’The biggest disease today,’ Mother Teresa once said, is more spiritual than physical. It’s not ‘leprosy or tuberculosis,’ she observed, ‘but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference toward one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease.’”1
Do we, as followers of the Risen One, have any responsibility for Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and for others like them? Should we care about those who, despite, or perhaps because, of their great professional success, are so disconnected from God, themselves, and those around them that the path of self-destruction seems the only viable option? And what about those closer to us, our neighbors on this piece of the planet, who may also be lonely, sick, or grieving; must we be concerned about them?
Our passage this morning from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome clearly – at least to me – calls us to care for both those like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and those closer to us. We’ve been hearing passages from this long letter for several weeks. It is the last letter that Paul wrote, and, in some respects, the entire letter is about how to love. In the first eleven chapters, Paul explores the question of loving God, trying to get his arms around all that God has done for us in Christ. Now, in chapters twelve through fourteen, he deals with what was a more difficult task for many early Christians: how to love other people, especially those of other ethnicities, social class, or gender.
As a Jew, Paul understood God’s covenant with the Jews, which now, through Christ, included the Gentiles. Paul understood that a covenant is a two-way agreement: God has made promises to humanity, and humans have responsibilities in turn. Paul understood that keeping the law was the way that Jews, and now Christians, uphold their part of the covenant. Initially, of course, the covenant included only Ten Commandments, the ten which had been given on Mount Sinai during the forty years’ trek in the desert. As the community pondered how to apply the commandments to specific and changing situations, the laws multiplied. By the time of the compilation of the book of Leviticus, there were 613 of them. And, actually, the process has continued to the present day, as the rabbis continue to figure out how to apply the law to the circumstances in which Jews now live. Needless to say, the same process is at work in secular law.
Despite the pondering and the multiplying of the law to cover new circumstances, the underlying principle of the law is always the same: loving our neighbor is the way we show our love for God. In laying out the Jews’ obligations toward God, Leviticus clearly states this principle: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (19:18). We hear its echo in Jesus’ statement of the great commandment in the gospel of Mark: “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (12:29-31), or as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer put it, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The charge to love our neighbors is a constant theme in Scripture. Paul restates it in his letter to the Galatian Christians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (5:13-14). The writer of the letter of James reminds us, “You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (2:8). The writer of the first letter of John tells us clearly, “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And even beyond Scripture, early Christian writers continued to remind us of our obligation to love others. Writing in the sixth century, for example, Maximus the Confessor declared, “Blessed is the one who can love all people equally, thinking good of everyone.”
Is “loving our neighbor” easy to do? If it were, all would have haloes! In some ways, the 613 commandments were easier to keep. At least they were concrete and told pious Jews what to do and not do. Loving their neighbors as themselves was much more difficult. No wonder the gospel of Luke depicts the scribe asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In writing to the Roman Christians, Paul was perfectly aware of how difficult it was for them to give up their self-absorption and focus on the concerns others. Having been a pious Jew himself, he knew perfectly well how difficult it was for them to not look down on, condemn, or enslave those who differed from them in social class, gender, faith community, or ethnicity. And he knew well how difficult it was to compromise and to forgive old sins and hurts.
BUT here’s Paul’s good news: the Roman Christians could love their neighbors as themselves, because of God’s great self-giving love for them, because a new day was already dawning through the death and resurrection of Christ, because through the Holy Spirit working on them from within, God was already transforming them. And what should their response be? To dress appropriately, i.e., to lean on God, and to fix their intentions on following God’s call, rather than automatically succumbing to the demands of their own egos or of the surrounding culture.
My sisters and brothers, this is still our call, to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” And the good news stands: we too are empowered to follow God’s commandment. We too are called to give up our absorption with self and fix our intentions on the needs of others. And, by virtue of our baptism and our inclusion into Christ’s Body, God’s transformation of us has already begun. We too have been created and are sustained by God’s continual self-giving. We too have a true model of self-giving love in Jesus’ death on the Cross. We too are included in his resurrection. We too can rely on his promise that the Holy Spirit is now at work in us.
Does loving our neighbor require heroic deeds of us? Scottish writer Tom Gordon tells the story of the “red letter day,” when the Queen visited a factory. He ends the story with a poem entitled, “Special.”
“I always knew it was a special day
when my neighbour baked a cake.
I knew she’d baked a cake
because she always brought me a piece –
well, living alone,
and never having baked anything in my life,
she knew I appreciated home baking.
And I would always ask her,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?’
And, over the years,
I’d had a share in family occasions,
and anniversaries,
and homecomings,
and leavings,
and celebrations for coming back again,
and big birthdays,
and little birthdays,
and retirements,
and babies being born,
and Scotland winning the grand-slam at rugby,
and Labour winning an election.
I would always ask her.
And I always got my share.
And I always enjoyed my cake.
Then, one day, my neighbour baked a cake
and brought me a piece,
and I asked her, as usual,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?
And she said, ‘Nothing.’
And I asked, ‘Nothing?’
And she said, ‘Well, nothing
really ...’
And I said she’d have to explain.
And she said that she’d just felt
she should bake a cake and share it with me,
because she liked being my friend –
and it was good to be alive!
And I said, ‘Oh!’
So we shared my neighbour’s cake –
and we both agreed it was a very nice cake,
because it was shared by friends
on a
very
special day.”2
In the end, loving our neighbor does not require heroic deeds. Mother Teresa reminds us that, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." Love God, love your neighbor. God asks no more of us – and no less.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml, For Sunday, September 7,2014.
2. "A Red-Letter Day,” Welcoming Each Wonder (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publication, 2010), 243-44.
Last month, the actor Robin Williams hanged himself. He was only sixty-three. Six months ago, the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose. He was only forty-six. Both men were richly talented, highly acclaimed actors. Robin Williams excelled at both zany comedy and moving drama. Who can forget his portrayal of the cross-dressing Mrs. Doubtfire, or of Patch Adams, the physician who healed his patients through deft use of comedy? Philip Seymour Hoffman gave us men of fierce intelligence, whose lives tended to end in crime or tragedy. His portrayal of Günther Bachmann, the brooding German intelligence officer in his last film, “A Man Most Wanted,” is truly riveting. Yet both of these men, at the peak of success, were also depressed and addicted to drugs. Both died at their own hands.
Writer Daniel Clendenin suggests that both suffered from what he calls “spiritual poverty.” “’The biggest disease today,’ Mother Teresa once said, is more spiritual than physical. It’s not ‘leprosy or tuberculosis,’ she observed, ‘but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference toward one’s neighbor who lives at the roadside assaulted by exploitation, corruption, poverty, and disease.’”1
Do we, as followers of the Risen One, have any responsibility for Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and for others like them? Should we care about those who, despite, or perhaps because, of their great professional success, are so disconnected from God, themselves, and those around them that the path of self-destruction seems the only viable option? And what about those closer to us, our neighbors on this piece of the planet, who may also be lonely, sick, or grieving; must we be concerned about them?
Our passage this morning from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome clearly – at least to me – calls us to care for both those like Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman and those closer to us. We’ve been hearing passages from this long letter for several weeks. It is the last letter that Paul wrote, and, in some respects, the entire letter is about how to love. In the first eleven chapters, Paul explores the question of loving God, trying to get his arms around all that God has done for us in Christ. Now, in chapters twelve through fourteen, he deals with what was a more difficult task for many early Christians: how to love other people, especially those of other ethnicities, social class, or gender.
As a Jew, Paul understood God’s covenant with the Jews, which now, through Christ, included the Gentiles. Paul understood that a covenant is a two-way agreement: God has made promises to humanity, and humans have responsibilities in turn. Paul understood that keeping the law was the way that Jews, and now Christians, uphold their part of the covenant. Initially, of course, the covenant included only Ten Commandments, the ten which had been given on Mount Sinai during the forty years’ trek in the desert. As the community pondered how to apply the commandments to specific and changing situations, the laws multiplied. By the time of the compilation of the book of Leviticus, there were 613 of them. And, actually, the process has continued to the present day, as the rabbis continue to figure out how to apply the law to the circumstances in which Jews now live. Needless to say, the same process is at work in secular law.
Despite the pondering and the multiplying of the law to cover new circumstances, the underlying principle of the law is always the same: loving our neighbor is the way we show our love for God. In laying out the Jews’ obligations toward God, Leviticus clearly states this principle: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (19:18). We hear its echo in Jesus’ statement of the great commandment in the gospel of Mark: “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (12:29-31), or as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer put it, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The charge to love our neighbors is a constant theme in Scripture. Paul restates it in his letter to the Galatian Christians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (5:13-14). The writer of the letter of James reminds us, “You do well if you really fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (2:8). The writer of the first letter of John tells us clearly, “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And even beyond Scripture, early Christian writers continued to remind us of our obligation to love others. Writing in the sixth century, for example, Maximus the Confessor declared, “Blessed is the one who can love all people equally, thinking good of everyone.”
Is “loving our neighbor” easy to do? If it were, all would have haloes! In some ways, the 613 commandments were easier to keep. At least they were concrete and told pious Jews what to do and not do. Loving their neighbors as themselves was much more difficult. No wonder the gospel of Luke depicts the scribe asking Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In writing to the Roman Christians, Paul was perfectly aware of how difficult it was for them to give up their self-absorption and focus on the concerns others. Having been a pious Jew himself, he knew perfectly well how difficult it was for them to not look down on, condemn, or enslave those who differed from them in social class, gender, faith community, or ethnicity. And he knew well how difficult it was to compromise and to forgive old sins and hurts.
BUT here’s Paul’s good news: the Roman Christians could love their neighbors as themselves, because of God’s great self-giving love for them, because a new day was already dawning through the death and resurrection of Christ, because through the Holy Spirit working on them from within, God was already transforming them. And what should their response be? To dress appropriately, i.e., to lean on God, and to fix their intentions on following God’s call, rather than automatically succumbing to the demands of their own egos or of the surrounding culture.
My sisters and brothers, this is still our call, to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” And the good news stands: we too are empowered to follow God’s commandment. We too are called to give up our absorption with self and fix our intentions on the needs of others. And, by virtue of our baptism and our inclusion into Christ’s Body, God’s transformation of us has already begun. We too have been created and are sustained by God’s continual self-giving. We too have a true model of self-giving love in Jesus’ death on the Cross. We too are included in his resurrection. We too can rely on his promise that the Holy Spirit is now at work in us.
Does loving our neighbor require heroic deeds of us? Scottish writer Tom Gordon tells the story of the “red letter day,” when the Queen visited a factory. He ends the story with a poem entitled, “Special.”
“I always knew it was a special day
when my neighbour baked a cake.
I knew she’d baked a cake
because she always brought me a piece –
well, living alone,
and never having baked anything in my life,
she knew I appreciated home baking.
And I would always ask her,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?’
And, over the years,
I’d had a share in family occasions,
and anniversaries,
and homecomings,
and leavings,
and celebrations for coming back again,
and big birthdays,
and little birthdays,
and retirements,
and babies being born,
and Scotland winning the grand-slam at rugby,
and Labour winning an election.
I would always ask her.
And I always got my share.
And I always enjoyed my cake.
Then, one day, my neighbour baked a cake
and brought me a piece,
and I asked her, as usual,
‘What’s the cake for this time?
What’s the special day?
And she said, ‘Nothing.’
And I asked, ‘Nothing?’
And she said, ‘Well, nothing
really ...’
And I said she’d have to explain.
And she said that she’d just felt
she should bake a cake and share it with me,
because she liked being my friend –
and it was good to be alive!
And I said, ‘Oh!’
So we shared my neighbour’s cake –
and we both agreed it was a very nice cake,
because it was shared by friends
on a
very
special day.”2
In the end, loving our neighbor does not require heroic deeds. Mother Teresa reminds us that, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." Love God, love your neighbor. God asks no more of us – and no less.
1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml, For Sunday, September 7,2014.
2. "A Red-Letter Day,” Welcoming Each Wonder (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publication, 2010), 243-44.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Difficult Choices
Perhaps it didn’t happen exactly that way. Scholars are never sure with the Hebrew Scriptures, since they were edited and reworked more than once, especially during the Exile. Even so, let’s imagine ourselves into the scene at Shechem. There you are standing with the crowds. Perhaps you’re one of the representatives of the Benjaminites. And there’s your buddy over there with the Ephraimites. Oh, and your sister married into a Reubenite clan. Are you one of the judges or officers? Perhaps you’re a respected elder of your clan – at least some of us here could play the part of “elder!” Your great, great grandparents were among those whom Moses led out of Egypt with God’s help. They agreed to live as God expected, and especially to worship only Yahweh. Your ancestors wandered around the Sinai desert. Moses died before the tribes reached the Jordan River and the land that God had promised to Moses. Joshua took Moses’s place, and all have finally reached the Jordan and received their promised allotted portion.
Now here you are. Joshua is about to “sleep with his ancestors,” and reminds you of the promises the tribes made along the way. “You have a choice,” you hear him say, “you can worship the old gods your ancestors worshipped in Egypt, you can worship the gods that other people in this land worship, or you can worship the one true God, Yahweh, who liberated us from Egyptian slavery. You can choose to do the hard work that God expects of you, or not. I know what I expect of my own family, but what about you?” So, is it an easy choice for you? The way the crowd responds it sounds like it is. “… we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God,” the people answer. Well, yes, but are you really ready to give up those sacred statuettes you smuggled out of Egypt in your trunk? Are you sure? Couldn’t that one of Isis still have some power in it? And what about the Baals of these Amorites, and the Canaanites’ Astarte? Is Yahweh more powerful than they? Are you sure you don’t want to hedge your bets and worship them all?
Now, fast forward a millennium or so. Crowds again. Only this time it’s that itinerant rabbi who’s been performing all these miracles and talking about “signs.” Where in the crowd are you this time? Were you among those who were amazed when he somehow managed to get a lot of people fed with very little? Did you rush across the Sea of Galilee to catch up with him at Capernaum and get some more of that miraculous food? Did you hear him talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Yech, who wants to do that? What kind of strange cult is this? Or maybe you’re part of the group travelling with the rabbi’s closest friends. Perhaps you’re one of those wealthy women who’ve been bankrolling his ministry. Or maybe you’re just an ordinary shepherd or farmer or housewife who finds Jesus so compelling, so life-giving. Is Jesus a little shaken when people call his teaching “difficult” and begin heading for home? Is that why he offers his friends the choice of also leaving? And are you surprised when Peter answers, “Hell no! Where else would we go? You’re teaching us what we need to hear.” Is that your answer also? There’s no one else to go to? Shouldn’t you be tending the crops or the animals, or schmoozing with the fish wholesalers? Who knows about what wool is getting this season? Wait, we need to get ready for our trip to the in-laws’ house. And whom can we approach to help us dodge the taxes we owe? If we could just get the Romans off our backs …. Is Jesus really the only choice?
Fast forward to today, or maybe yesterday. Jesus has come back and called all of us who claim to be his disciples to hear his latest teaching. We’re part of a large crowd, say at the county fairgrounds, or maybe even the Marshall Football stadium. We’re listening to him. Strangely, his message sounds familiar. “You have a choice, folks,” he says. “You can give up your old ways of doing things, you can refuse to do things just because everyone else does, and you can take on my lifestyle of living and dying for others. What are you going to do?” Are we still yearning for those old gods that we’ve carried here from the 1950s? Do we think that if we could just recreate Leave it to Beaver, the pews will be filled to overflowing, and all the confusion and disorder of our lives will disappear? Are you sure? Do we really want to return to the Cold War? Do we really want to return to the time before the ordination of women, when women couldn’t sit on vestries, be delegates for General Convention, or, even in some parishes, even read the New Testament lesson?
Or perhaps the neighbors’ gods are calling out. Perhaps we’d rather worship the almighty dollar. There’s always another one to be made. How about military heroes? Perhaps if we worship them, they will keep us safe from all those terrorists. Or maybe sports stars are the ones we truly worship. Yes, Jesus, you were right to gather us together in this stadium. You know only too well that, if a visitor from outer space were to alight today, there would be no doubt in its mind that many more people have professional spectator sports as their dominant religion than the way you taught.
But the bottom line is, Jesus, your way of life is difficult. Your way of life is difficult not only because you want to nourish us with your Body and Blood. We accept that we don’t completely understand the mystery of communion, but we accept your willingness to feed us that way. Your way is difficult because we know that it involves dying. We believe that your way also will lead to resurrection. Even so, in the meanwhile, dying to old ways, changing the parts of our lives that distance us from you, and keeping you as our model, as we make choices in stores, in voting booths, in our use of money, and in our relationships with others, is so difficult! Yes, you give us a choice, a choice to love and serve you or not, but it’s a difficult choice!
It was June, 1939. German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was spending the month in New York City.1 “I do not know why I am here,” he wrote friends, as he pondered his difficult choice. As a leader of the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer had publicly defied the Nazi government. Hoping to save his life, his American friends had arranged for him to serve as a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Yet, after only a few weeks in New York, Bonhoeffer decided to return home. “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “if I do not share the tribulations of this time with my people.” Bonhoeffer did not return to Germany seeking martyrdom. In fact, he used family connections to land a position in military intelligence. Despite the danger, Bonhoeffer then chose to use his position to advance the underground conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that was led by his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi.
In 1943 both Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. They were held for eighteen months in a military prison. When the Gestapo learned the full extent of the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer was sent to Buchenwald and finally to Flossenburg prison camp. On April 9, 1945, he conducted a prayer service for the other prisoners. Then he received the summons to prepare for death. He hastily told the others, “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.” He was hanged the next day with five other resistance fighters. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”2 Today, despite having died at the age of thirty-nine, more than sixty years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the most widely read Lutheran theologians, and his works have inspired millions.
We may not face the choices that Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced. But, as professed followers of Jesus, we too have difficult choices, and we too acknowledge “the cost of discipleship.” It’s not easy to give up our attachment to old ways of life. It’s not easy to forsake the pleasures, the political stands, the self-absorption, and the neglect of the needs of the poor that others embrace so easily. It’s not easy to commit ourselves to one whose way of life was so radically at odds with the values of his own time and of ours. But that is the call that we accepted when we strode through the red doors. We choose to follow you, O Lord, to the Cross and beyond.
1. The following account is based on Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 160-2.
2. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 927.
Now here you are. Joshua is about to “sleep with his ancestors,” and reminds you of the promises the tribes made along the way. “You have a choice,” you hear him say, “you can worship the old gods your ancestors worshipped in Egypt, you can worship the gods that other people in this land worship, or you can worship the one true God, Yahweh, who liberated us from Egyptian slavery. You can choose to do the hard work that God expects of you, or not. I know what I expect of my own family, but what about you?” So, is it an easy choice for you? The way the crowd responds it sounds like it is. “… we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God,” the people answer. Well, yes, but are you really ready to give up those sacred statuettes you smuggled out of Egypt in your trunk? Are you sure? Couldn’t that one of Isis still have some power in it? And what about the Baals of these Amorites, and the Canaanites’ Astarte? Is Yahweh more powerful than they? Are you sure you don’t want to hedge your bets and worship them all?
Now, fast forward a millennium or so. Crowds again. Only this time it’s that itinerant rabbi who’s been performing all these miracles and talking about “signs.” Where in the crowd are you this time? Were you among those who were amazed when he somehow managed to get a lot of people fed with very little? Did you rush across the Sea of Galilee to catch up with him at Capernaum and get some more of that miraculous food? Did you hear him talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood? Yech, who wants to do that? What kind of strange cult is this? Or maybe you’re part of the group travelling with the rabbi’s closest friends. Perhaps you’re one of those wealthy women who’ve been bankrolling his ministry. Or maybe you’re just an ordinary shepherd or farmer or housewife who finds Jesus so compelling, so life-giving. Is Jesus a little shaken when people call his teaching “difficult” and begin heading for home? Is that why he offers his friends the choice of also leaving? And are you surprised when Peter answers, “Hell no! Where else would we go? You’re teaching us what we need to hear.” Is that your answer also? There’s no one else to go to? Shouldn’t you be tending the crops or the animals, or schmoozing with the fish wholesalers? Who knows about what wool is getting this season? Wait, we need to get ready for our trip to the in-laws’ house. And whom can we approach to help us dodge the taxes we owe? If we could just get the Romans off our backs …. Is Jesus really the only choice?
Fast forward to today, or maybe yesterday. Jesus has come back and called all of us who claim to be his disciples to hear his latest teaching. We’re part of a large crowd, say at the county fairgrounds, or maybe even the Marshall Football stadium. We’re listening to him. Strangely, his message sounds familiar. “You have a choice, folks,” he says. “You can give up your old ways of doing things, you can refuse to do things just because everyone else does, and you can take on my lifestyle of living and dying for others. What are you going to do?” Are we still yearning for those old gods that we’ve carried here from the 1950s? Do we think that if we could just recreate Leave it to Beaver, the pews will be filled to overflowing, and all the confusion and disorder of our lives will disappear? Are you sure? Do we really want to return to the Cold War? Do we really want to return to the time before the ordination of women, when women couldn’t sit on vestries, be delegates for General Convention, or, even in some parishes, even read the New Testament lesson?
Or perhaps the neighbors’ gods are calling out. Perhaps we’d rather worship the almighty dollar. There’s always another one to be made. How about military heroes? Perhaps if we worship them, they will keep us safe from all those terrorists. Or maybe sports stars are the ones we truly worship. Yes, Jesus, you were right to gather us together in this stadium. You know only too well that, if a visitor from outer space were to alight today, there would be no doubt in its mind that many more people have professional spectator sports as their dominant religion than the way you taught.
But the bottom line is, Jesus, your way of life is difficult. Your way of life is difficult not only because you want to nourish us with your Body and Blood. We accept that we don’t completely understand the mystery of communion, but we accept your willingness to feed us that way. Your way is difficult because we know that it involves dying. We believe that your way also will lead to resurrection. Even so, in the meanwhile, dying to old ways, changing the parts of our lives that distance us from you, and keeping you as our model, as we make choices in stores, in voting booths, in our use of money, and in our relationships with others, is so difficult! Yes, you give us a choice, a choice to love and serve you or not, but it’s a difficult choice!
It was June, 1939. German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was spending the month in New York City.1 “I do not know why I am here,” he wrote friends, as he pondered his difficult choice. As a leader of the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer had publicly defied the Nazi government. Hoping to save his life, his American friends had arranged for him to serve as a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. Yet, after only a few weeks in New York, Bonhoeffer decided to return home. “I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “if I do not share the tribulations of this time with my people.” Bonhoeffer did not return to Germany seeking martyrdom. In fact, he used family connections to land a position in military intelligence. Despite the danger, Bonhoeffer then chose to use his position to advance the underground conspiracy to assassinate Hitler that was led by his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi.
In 1943 both Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. They were held for eighteen months in a military prison. When the Gestapo learned the full extent of the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer was sent to Buchenwald and finally to Flossenburg prison camp. On April 9, 1945, he conducted a prayer service for the other prisoners. Then he received the summons to prepare for death. He hastily told the others, “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.” He was hanged the next day with five other resistance fighters. The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”2 Today, despite having died at the age of thirty-nine, more than sixty years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of the most widely read Lutheran theologians, and his works have inspired millions.
We may not face the choices that Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced. But, as professed followers of Jesus, we too have difficult choices, and we too acknowledge “the cost of discipleship.” It’s not easy to give up our attachment to old ways of life. It’s not easy to forsake the pleasures, the political stands, the self-absorption, and the neglect of the needs of the poor that others embrace so easily. It’s not easy to commit ourselves to one whose way of life was so radically at odds with the values of his own time and of ours. But that is the call that we accepted when we strode through the red doors. We choose to follow you, O Lord, to the Cross and beyond.
1. The following account is based on Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 160-2.
2. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 927.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
How Often Should I Forgive?
It was lunch time in London on September 11, 2001, breakfast time in New York. Elizabeth Turner had just finished chatting with her husband Simon, who was heading off to a meeting at the World Trade Center.1 Seven months pregnant with their first child, and heading out for lunch, Elizabeth was wondering what kind of baby carriage to buy. When she returned from lunch, Elizabeth discovered to her horror that the life she had known was now buried with her husband in the rubble of the twin towers. In the chaos and madness of the next days and weeks, Elizabeth endured visits from the press, the police, and social workers. Family and friends kept a twenty-four hour vigil with her, lest she go into premature labor. The birth of her son plunged her into even deeper grief, shock, and fear, as she realized that her husband had died for reasons that had nothing to do with her or her family, and that their son would grow up without his father. To save her son, she knew that she had to get beyond the cycle of violence and hatred, but she also knew that “choosing to stop the cycle is just as difficult as choosing the other path of anger and hatred.” Books, therapists, and pouring out her heart to family and friends gave her little help. Finally, through Reiki, a holistic form of healing, Elizabeth was able to empty herself of all the negative emotions, including the need for bitterness and retaliation, and find peace within. “From then on I was able to reengage with life,” she tells us, “I wasn’t normal again but I was able to laugh and be a whole parent.”
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Forgiveness is difficult. Elizabeth Turner is one of several hundred people, of diverse nationalities and ethnicities, who have told their stories to the U.K.-based Forgiveness Project. All of them echo the grief, shock, fear, despair, and soul-searching that Elizabeth Turner experienced. All of them have asked, as have we, Peter’s haunting question: “When a sister or brother wrongs me, how many times must I forgive?” Peter knew he was being generous in offering to forgive seven times. So Jesus’ answer is all the more stunning, “Not seven times; I tell you seventy-seven times.” In Biblical terms, that’s an unlimited number of times. And then Jesus told a story that suggests just how difficult it is for us to forgive. And we know that. We know that we have trouble forgiving even small offenses. I think of academic departments from my former life where faculty members would not speak to each other for years. I think of families where siblings are estranged from each other, of elderly parents dying unforgiven by adult children, of church members still nursing old slights, of people unable to forgive even themselves for sins of the past. For most of us, it is even more difficult to forgive the perpetrators of evils seemingly beyond human endurance. Survivors of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events of 9/11, which are ultimately all of us, all testify to how difficult forgiveness is.
Perhaps one reason why we find forgiveness so difficult is that we’re confused about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not pardon. We do not have to waive punishment or restitution in order to forgive someone. Forgiveness is not condoning. We do not have to approve of a person’s behavior in order to forgive them. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Even if we forgive someone, some wounds cannot ever be forgotten. And forgiveness is not denial. Especially for grievous assaults and horrendous evil, we must see the assault clearly, name it rightly, and feel all the horror and outrage that it provokes in us. Ultimately, however, forgiveness is akin to reaching the place that Elizabeth Turner finally reached. She tells us, “For me forgiveness is about finding an inner peace and accepting the cards you’ve been handed in life. It’s not that the pain has gone or that things are back to how they were before. Forgiveness is accepting that we are all human beings, and that we are not separate even from those who have hurt us.”
Forgiveness is difficult. And yet we know that as Christians we are obligated to try to reach the place that Elizabeth Turner reached. Why does God ask us to do this? We try to reach a place of forgiveness, first, because, as disciples of Jesus, we strive throughout our lives to imitate him. And he has explicitly commanded us to imitate him by forgiving continually – not just when we feel like it, not just the tiny sins that we can easily brush off, but all sins, all the time. Second, we forgive, turning our back on vengeance, because we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” On September 11th, 2001 Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was in a meeting in Trinity Church in Manhattan, next door to the twin towers. After he and others had rushed out of the building, collecting children from Trinity’s day care center on the way, they breathed in the ash, they saw the rubble, and they ran for their lives. The next day, the archbishop warned the congregation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that the pressure to “do something” and the rhetoric in favor of retaliation would intensify. Nevertheless he said, “I wouldn’t want to see another room of preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn’t want to see thousands of corpses given over to the justification of some principle. And very simply: I don’t want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about 10:30 yesterday morning. I’ve been there.”2
Finally, we forgive in order to cooperate with God in our own salvation. We forgive because we know that we will ultimately perish – or go mad – if we condemn ourselves to living in the hell of continuing anger, hatred, and vengeance. Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a divorced single mother in his congregation. She worked hard to support herself and her children, but she couldn’t forgive her ex-husband for leaving her and her children to scrimp and save while he seemingly lived the high life with his new wife. In his counseling, the rabbi agreed with the wife that what her ex had done was mean and selfish. But he still asked the woman to forgive the ex. “I’m asking you to forgive,” he said, “because he doesn’t deserve the power to turn you into a bitter angry woman. I’d like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of it physically, but you keep holding on to him. You’re not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you’re hurting yourself.”3
Forgiveness is difficult. It’s been ten years. Are we ready to forgive yet? Courtney Cowart is the regional director of Calling Congregations at The Fund for Theological Education. On the morning of September 11th she too was at Trinity Church in the same meeting with Rowan Williams. Along with everyone else, she grabbed up daycare children as they all ran for their lives. In her own sermon for today, she suggests that, while honoring the memories of those lost, we might have the courage to ask this question of God: “To what would you have us re-commit, given what we saw and learned that day?” As part of her answer, later in the sermon she mentions a delegation of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who came to St. Paul’s Chapel as guests of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. “What you have done here,” the delegation told their New York hosts, “is the perfect expression of the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where so many survivors renounced revenge forever. Instead they worked ceaselessly against violence and for the world as a whole.”
Here is how I hear God answering Courtney Cowart’s question: “Your task,” God says to us, “ is first to search your own hearts. Look around you, to your own family, your parish, your community, and then the world. Let go of all those grudges and hurts, small and great, that threaten to destroy your souls and allow for forgiveness to come into your hearts. Take hold of the forgiveness that Jesus modeled for you, even on the Cross, the forgiveness that Rowan Williams and Courtney Cowart model for you, the forgiveness that Elizabeth Turner and the others in the Forgiveness Project model for you. Then recommit yourselves to the renunciation of violence and revenge. Embrace peace and pursue it with all your heart. And remember that all people, including Muslims, are your sisters and brothers.”
Amen, Lord Jesus. With your grace we can do all this and more.
1. Elizabeth Turner’s story is found at the Forgiveness Project, http://theforgivenessproject.com/.
2. Quoted by Courtney Cowart, in “An Exhortation to Forgiveness,” accessed at http://day1.org/3235-an_exhortation_to_forgiveness.print.
3. Harold S. Kushner, “Letting Go of the Role of Victim,” Spirituality and Health, Winter 1999, 34, quoted in Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville: John Knox, 2011), 72.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)