It's a Miracle

It’s a miracle! How often we have all said that! And yet I wonder. Have any of us seen a real miracle, an event that seems so out of the ordinary that we can only attribute it to divine intervention?

Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.

Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”

Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!

And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.

Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”

No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”

Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.

Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.

Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.

Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?

The Hidden Work of God

Who knows why all the paraments are now green? The altar frontal, the pulpit and lectern drapes, even my chasuble and stole. Two weeks ago they were all white, the week before that they were all red. Why are they now all green? Can anyone tell me?

In the Episcopal Church we are blessed with a liturgical year that has distinct seasons. In Advent, our paraments are all blue, to symbolize our solemn preparation for the coming of Christ. In Christmas tide, in Easter tide, and on other festal days, they are white and gold, to symbolize our joyful response to Jesus’ birth and Christ’s resurrection. During Lent, the paraments are purple, symbolizing our need to confront our weaknesses and amend our lives. During Holy Week and on Pentecost, they are red, symbolizing either the blood of Jesus’ death or the fire of the Holy Spirit. And finally, in Epiphany tide and from now until next Advent, the paraments are all green. And, if you look outside the church, you see the same color: green! Yes, my friends, during the short season of Epiphany and during this longer Pentecost season, we wear green so that we may always remember that God is at work within us helping us to grow. We may not feel as if we are growing, we may not see any growth. Nevertheless, God is at work within us: enabling us to grow personally in our individual spiritual lives, to grow together as a Christian community held together by bonds of love, and to grow in our ability to see where and how we may join God in God’s work in the world.

Growth: it’s a mysterious process. As you gardeners know, we can stunt growth, or, we can encourage it, but we can’t make it happen. Often, we have to wait patiently before we can even see that it has happened. So you might rightly ask, “How can we tell if we are growing? How we can tell whether God is at work in the world?” I look around me, and it looks like the same old, same old. Same old sins, same old weaknesses, same old conflicts, same old war, violence, corruption, injustice, and death. Am I really growing as a Christian? What does God see that I don’t see? Is God really at work in the world? Well, my friends, you may not have always had the ambition to be a plant, but you are a plant! We are all God’s plants, and rest assured, God is at work in God’s field, even if we don’t always see where and how! Indeed, today’s lessons remind us that most often God’s work is invisible, mysterious, and hidden from us.

Were you surprised by the outcome of today’s lesson from 1st Samuel? God had surely been at work in David from the time of David’s birth, but God’s work was hidden. It was a mystery to everyone, perhaps even including David himself. Certainly, God’s choice of David was hidden from Samuel, from David’s family, and from the whole community of Israel, until the moment that God directed Samuel to anoint David. If you had been there, you would surely have thought: Jesse’s youngest son? Perhaps in 2006 General Convention delegates thought the same thing when Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop. She was certainly not the most obvious choice among the group of seven nominees. In subsequent readings this summer we will hear why God chose David and how, with the help of God’s Spirit, David became a great king and the ancestor and model for God’s messiah.

Both of the parables in today’s Gospel lesson remind us even more forcefully that God’s work is hidden, mysterious, and mostly beyond our control. God is indeed bringing in God’s Reign, but we as humans mostly can’t fathom how. The coming of God’s Reign, Jesus tells us in Mark’s Gospel, is like someone throwing out seeds and then waiting. The farmer may prepare the soil and plant at the right time, but the farmer can’t make the seeds grow. Without the farmer knowing how, the earth produces grain all by itself. And the signs are unmistakable: first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain. How? We don’t know. But the harvest is nonetheless assured – in great abundance. In the same way, Jesus suggests, the coming of God’s Reign can be compared to a tiny mustard seed. Not only does the tiny seed grow into a large shrub, it also produces oil and more seeds for cooking and flavoring. But how? We don’t know. In the end, despite our best efforts to find out – and despite the discoveries of modern science – the growth, of plants, no less than of ourselves, is still mysterious.

In his second letter to that fractious Christian community at Corinth, Paul also wrestled with the mysterious, hidden work of God. Paul knew that the Corinthian Christians took great pride in what they thought of as their great spiritual gifts. In this letter, as in his first letter to them, he reminded them that, if we grow or mature spiritually, it is because God has taken the initiative, and God has done the work. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians and us that if we are confident about God’s work, our confidence should not come from ourselves but from the death and resurrection of Christ. Because of Christ’s work, we are able to see as God sees, that is, we are able to “regard nothing from a human point of view,” but rather, to remember that “everything has become new,” through the death and resurrection of Christ.

When I think about the mysterious, hidden work of God in myself, in the Church, and in the world, I’m often reminded of the saguaros of the southwest desert. The saguaros are the cacti that most often symbolize the desert for us: tall, green, spiky, with great curving arms. Of all the cacti, the saguaros grow the most slowly. You can grow one from seed, but you will probably not live to see it as an adult. When they are about my height, they are about 75 years old. They’re about 100 when the buds for the arms begin to develop, and they’re close to 200 years old before they’re fully grown. They do produce flowers and fruit when they are mature, but they grow very slowly. If you want saguaros, you have to be very patient, and you have to take a very long view.

Fortunately, God takes the long view. God is at work in us, invisibly, mysteriously, slowly, and, rest assured, God will have God’s harvest. You may feel like one of those saguaros, as if God’s growth is happening so slowly that you cannot perceive it. Rest assured: you are growing! The Word of God somehow penetrates our hearts, and we come back to Christ with renewed devotion. By God’s grace, we find growing within ourselves the desire to deepen our relationship with God, perhaps even to seek spiritual direction. By God’s grace, we begin to read Scripture more intentionally and regularly. By God’s grace, we begin to pray for others. One day, without our knowing where the words come from, we finally have the courage to ask others to pray for us. By God’s grace, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, we are finally able to commit to a twelve-step program, give up our addictions, and become sober or clean. By God’s grace, we can finally forgive all the old wrongs members of our families have done us. By God’s grace, we can put behind us the old conflicts in our families, workplaces, and churches, and begin to reach out to one another in love. By God’s grace we hear God calling us to a new vocation, and, from unknown depths within ourselves, we answer, “Here am I, send me.” By God’s grace, our parishes discover new ministries that enable us to use our gifts and meet the needs of those around us. By God’s grace, we realize that God’s Reign has already begun, and we take our place at God’s side and participate in God’s renewal of creation. By God’s grace, we realize that where God is at work, the harvest is more abundant than we can ever ask or imagine.

And so, as we enter into this season of growth in the spiritual life, this season of growth reflected in the green paraments around us, we can be filled with hope and faith, and we can patiently trust that God is at work, even if God’s work is hidden, invisible, and mysterious. In a few minutes we will affirm our faith in the words given us by the early Church. Now, though, I’d like us to share a different kind of affirmation of faith, faith in God’s mysterious growth, given us by a contemporary spiritual “midwife,” Joyce Rupp. Let’s stand and say it together.

I believe that it takes much patience to sow a seed, to freely give it away to the heart of the earth, to allow it to take root and to grow in its own good time.

I believe that the Word of God has many times been planted in my life, often because of another who received the seed in ready soil, brought forth a harvest, and shared that goodness with me.

I believe that great things can come forth from even the tiniest seed planted in love and cared for tenderly in the heart of another.

I believe that even the most insignificant aspects of life can be the seed of God’s gifting, that deeper faith can root and mature in very ordinary soil.

I believe that some dying of seed has to take place before it can give itself over to life, that every heart has its germination time, its dark moment, before the future holiness of harvest comes.

I believe that my life will always know its season of hope … that I will find green, growing things after every harsh, barren winter.

And most of all … I believe in the Sower of all seeds, in the God of renewing seasons, in the Giver of all good and growing things, my Lord and my God! Amen.

The Binding of Isaac

“God tested Abraham…. He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering….” This story is a shocking story for most of us. It is especially shocking for us who believe that God cares deeply for us. Called a “text of terror,” the story raises many unanswerable questions. To begin with, why would God ask anyone to kill his own son? Why especially would God make such a demand of a man to whom he had promised that, “I will make a great nation of you?” Why would Abraham actually agree, at least silently, to obey this seeming command, even to the point of actually raising the knife to kill his son? Why would Isaac meekly accept his fate instead of struggling and crying out? Did Abraham “pass” the test? Does the Bible sanction child abuse?

It’s a shocking story. And yet this story is venerated by Jewish tradition and even by many Christian texts. In Hebrew this story is known as the Abedah, the “binding” of Isaac. It has been an important story for rabbinic theology, interpretation, and meditation. It is even incorporated into the traditional daily liturgy, where the focus is not on Abraham but on God and Isaac, and where the worshippers express their confidence that God will intervene to save God’s people.

The gospel writers may well have had this text in mind when they depicted Jesus sending out his new disciples with the warning, as we heard in last week’s gospel reading, that, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me….” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in his role call of the faithful, directly mentions Abraham’s near-sacrifice. “By faith,” we hear, “Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, of whom he had been told, ‘It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.’ He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead….” Similarly, the writer of the Letter of James, in arguing that the spiritual life requires both faith and works, turns to Abraham. “Was not our ancestor Abraham,” he declares, “justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God.” With their focus on Abraham, the evangelists and the writers of the letters to the Hebrews and of James clearly intend us to see Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as an example of unwavering faith in God. Perhaps too the crafters of the Revised Common Lectionary wanted us to see in this story a parallel with Jesus’ own willing self-sacrifice on the cross.

Nevertheless, this is a difficult text for many of us. Atheists point to it as an example of the barbarity of religion. The rabbis and many Christian teachers have struggled with it over the centuries. In his commentary on the text, Daniel Clendinen reminds us that the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote an entire book on the story.1 In grappling with the story Kierkegaard laid out four alternative scenarios. He suggested that perhaps Abraham decided to protect God by allowing himself to be seen as a monster by Isaac, the servants, and the rest of his family. Or, perhaps Isaac’s life was saved by the sheep caught in the bush, but Isaac was thereafter traumatized for the rest of his life. Or, Kierkegaard suggested, after the deed was done, Abraham prayed for forgiveness for killing his son. Or finally, perhaps Abraham lost his nerve, failed to act, and went back down the mountain defeated and broken. Actually, that last scenario might appeal to us, as we survey the violence committed by religious fanatics or in the name of religion through the centuries and right up to today.

Now, with texts as old as this one we clearly cannot probe too deeply into the motivations and actions of the characters. We cannot read these stories as we would a modern psychological novel. Nevertheless, I’d like to suggest yet another way of looking at the “binding of Isaac.”2 Contrary to the New Testament writers, I’d like to suggest that Abraham failed the test! Four chapters earlier in Genesis, when God had decided to destroy Sodom, Abraham vigorously bargained with God to save Sodom. He even rebuked God, saying, “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty….” In the end, Abraham persuaded God not to destroy Sodom if ten righteous men could be found in it. If Abraham was able to bargain so skillfully with God for Sodom, we might wonder, why he would not do so for Isaac? We might even wonder whether God expected Abraham to bargain. When he did not, God was forced to intervene through an angel, as God did for Hagar when Abraham sent her into the wilderness.

Did Abraham’s blind consent to sacrifice his son disappoint, even disgust, those closest to him? A modern commentator suggests that the “crucial silences” that follow the story suggest that it did. God and Abraham engaged in lively conversation before the Binding. However, after the angel’s intervention, God never speaks to Abraham again in the chapters that follow. Nor, it seems does Sarah. She too has been talkative, yet we hear nothing further from her. The very next chapter begins with her death in a different place from where Abraham has settled. Did the binding of Isaac cause her to leave Abraham? Finally, we hear nothing from Isaac. Was he, as Kierkegaard suggested, so traumatized by the event that he has lost his speech? In the chapters that follow, Isaac speaks very little, and, it seems, never spoke to his father again. At the end of his life, Isaac even allowed himself to be duped by Jacob, giving Jacob Esau’s birthright.

Even in the ancient world, where wives, children, and slaves were all regarded as the property of the family patriarch, Abraham’s willingness to show his faith by sacrificing his son would not be considered praiseworthy. Indeed, Abraham would have been condemned and convicted for trying to sacrifice a human being. Perhaps then we might admire the Hebrew Bible for showing us that our ancestors in faith, the kings, prophets, and leaders whose stories we share, were all, like us, flawed human beings. As one commentator reminds us, “Judaism does not sanitize its holy texts but presents the heroes as they are, so that we can learn from their deeds – both good and flawed – as well as from their teachings.”

I’m still left with a question about this text. Most of us moderns seem to prefer a religion that asks little of us. Even so, I wonder whether it is also possible to be too zealous in sacrifice, even self-sacrifice. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer in contemporary language we ask God to “save us from the time of trial.” Did Jesus have the story of the binding of Isaac in mind when he added this petition to his instruction on prayer?

And how about our own lives? Retired Methodist bishop Will Willimon tells of teaching this story with his wife to an inter-generational group. His wife asked the children if they knew what the word “sacrifice” means. One third-grader answered that both her parents were physicians who operate on people to help them. When Willimon’s wife asked how that was sacrifice, the girl answered, “And I go to the day care center after school. Sometimes on Saturdays too. Mommie and Daddy want to take me home, but they are busy helping sick people – so lots of times I stay at the center. Sometimes on Sunday mornings we have pancakes, though.” Everyone knew what the girl meant.3

I don’t tell this story to trash physicians. They are some of the hardest working people in our culture. Even so, this story and the story of the binding of Isaac make me wonder whether we sufficiently take into account the impact of our actions on the lives of others. Should we ponder whether the good we might do might adversely affect those near to us? Do we need to discern deeply and carefully what we hear God calling us to do? On the other hand, perhaps the story of the binding of Isaac reassures us, as it surely does faithful Jews. Perhaps it reassures us that God will intervene for us, or, at the very least, that God will stand with us in our darkest moments. The story of the binding of Isaac comes early in the Hebrew Bible. Its interpretation continues into the present. Perhaps it also reminds us that our conception of God and of what God might ask of us continues to grow and change.

In the end, we can’t answer our questions about this story, any more than we can truly understand why Jesus had to die. Ultimately, we are left with the mystery. As we live in that mystery, however, we need not despair. We can take to heart the words of the psalmist, “I put my trust in your mercy; my heart is joyful because of your saving help.”

1. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml for June 29, 2014
2. Following here Curt Leviant in Midstream (Summer 2010), as quoted in Synthesis, June 26, 2011
3. “On a Wild and Windy Mountain,” The Christian Century (3/16/83), 237-8, quoted in Synthesis, June 29, 2014.

Who Are the Widows?

What do you do when you see a funeral procession? The Ohio Revised Code requires the cars in a procession to have their headlights on and carry purple or orange identifying pennants. The ORC allows the procession to travel through intersections regardless of stoplights and requires the rest of us to yield to the procession. So what do you do when you see one of these processions, or when you wait on the other side of the intersection while the procession crawls through? Do you fret and fume, “Just my luck to get stopped by this?” Do you say, “I wonder who that is?” If I can remember to do so, when I see a funeral procession, I offer up a prayer for the soul of the deceased and ask God to comfort his or her family and friends.

In this country, we put the dead away in coffins and hearses, while the mourners hide themselves from passersby in their cars. In India, in contrast, you could often see shrouded bodies being borne on handcarts along the streets, the Hindu dead to the riverside cremation grounds and the Muslim and Christian dead to their respective cemeteries. Whichever faith community, lines of chanting or wailing mourners would walk behind the carts. Oxcarts, bicycles, trucks, country busses, and cars would grind to a halt, while pedestrians respectfully acknowledged the dead person’s family. Those Indian funeral processions came to mind as I confronted today’s Gospel story. Can you picture all those people clogging the narrow streets of Nain? There’s Jesus followed not only by his disciples but also by a large crowd of curious wannabes. Coming towards him is the bier with the dead man, the grieving mother, clearly a widow, and the large crowd of mourners. For a few seconds time stops as the two crowds face each other.

This is the second of a pair of stories of unexpected healing. We heard the first one last week, in the story of the sympathetic centurion who sought Jesus’ help through religious leaders and friends. Actually, much of Luke’s Gospel presents us with the unexpected. Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would bear God’s Son, Mary’s hymn of praise in Elizabeth’s house, and Jesus’ first sermon in Nazareth all hint that God is doing a new thing.

Now surrounded by the crowds, Jesus does something totally unexpected. As the chattering of his disciples and the wailing of the mourners dies out, Jesus stops the funeral procession. He sees the mute and grieving widow, and he has “compassion for her.” Without having to be told, Jesus understands the desperate straits this widow is now in. Already without the support a husband would have provided, and now deprived of the safety and support that her son would have provided, this woman now has absolutely no livelihood. Without handouts from grudging relatives or struggling friends, she is herself in danger of dying. No wonder the Hebrew prophets – whose writings Jesus would have known well – constantly shouted out that care for the “widows and orphans” was a mark of the nation’s holiness, a reflection of the nation’s mercy and justice.

As the onlookers on both sides hold their breaths, without being told, without even being asked by the widow, Jesus does something else unexpected. Risking ritual defilement by touching a corpse he touches the dead man and calls him back to life. In so doing, not only has he resuscitated the dead man, but, what is much more important, he has restored the widow to life, to the prospect of having the support of a son and her proper place in society.

What are we, as Luke’s readers and hearers, to make of this story? We hear the answer in the reaction of the crowds – on both sides. At first struck dumb with holy fear and awe, the people then realize that they are in the presence of a great prophet. Shouting, “God has looked favorably on his people,” they acknowledge that God has begun to fulfill God’s promises, and that their world has begun to change. God has come to God’s people. The Kingdom of God has broken into this world in Jesus, who is both prophet and king, who is God’s anointed one. Most important, we hear this: God comes first and most mightily to those on the margins of society. God has compassion on those who are discarded and despised by polite society. God does not come first to the rich and powerful. God does not come first to us respectable and pious middle class folks. God does not come first to the scion of a patriarchal house or the beautiful, jet-setting entertainer. God comes first to those who are desperate, to the poor, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the least, the lost, and the left behind. Make no mistake. Luke’s message throughout the Gospel is this: we see God most powerfully at work – and others can see God most powerfully at work through us – when the needs of the most neglected and vulnerable people among us are being met.

Which leads me to ask myself who are the neglected “widows” among us? Certainly, there are still many parts of the world where the situation of widows is scarcely better than it was in Jesus’ time. Traditionally among Hindus in India – and probably still in many places – widows were expected to dress in plain white clothes – the color of mourning – for the rest of their lives, wear no jewelry, eat once a day if that, and spend their days in prayer, secluded in their husband’s family’s houses. In Italy, Greece, and other parts of the Mediterranean world, you can still see older women, widows presumably, dressed all in black.

But you don’t have to go to South Asia or Europe to find women in desperate straits. In this week’s very issue of the Christian Century, in an article entitled, “Poor and Unwanted,” Amy Frykholm describes the work of sociologist Susan Crawford Sullivan.1 For a recent book entitled Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, Sullivan interviewed a diverse group of poor women, asking them about the challenges of raising children, working, and getting by on a meager income. Although many had strong religious beliefs, they seldom went to church. How come? The simple answer, Sullivan found, was that they felt “unwanted.” If they did venture into a church, they felt looked down on because they smoked, or they didn’t have the right clothes. Some were ashamed of being on Medicaid or using food stamps. Some had been in jail – most for using drugs – and were sure no church would welcome them as felons. And truth be told, many church members, though good-hearted people, didn’t quite know how to relate to women living at the poverty level. Speaking to pastors, Sullivan tells the story of “Rebecca.” A religious woman, Rebecca lived in a shelter. She was dependent on public transportation – such as it was. She prayed and read the Bible. On the few occasions when she went to church, she knew she didn’t fit in. Without a family and permanent home, she had no community, and the churches seemingly had no way of helping her to find one. Sullivan wonders: is there a better way?

I don’t have an answer to Sullivan’s question. However, I myself recently had an experience that perhaps is pointing me towards an answer. As part of my Wellstreams program, this past semester I’ve had a class on the practice of prayer, which was an introduction to all different kinds of prayer. The best part of the class was the requirement to actually practice every day for the two weeks until the next class the form of prayer learned in a session. One week the topic was prayer on the outer limits, i.e., praying for those on the margins of society. As part of the class, we went to actual places in Columbus where people were ministering to those in need. I went to a recovery meeting in a Methodist church. The meeting began with a hot dinner. The clientele looked like most of the folks who come to Loaves and Fishes. I took my dinner to one of the tables, told the other diners my first name, and learned their first names. One woman and a couple of the men shared their stories with me. During the recovery meeting, they all shared something with the larger group, either something for which they were thankful or something for which they needed prayer. As part of my prayer practice for the next week, I prayed intentionally for all the people at my table. In one way, it felt odd to pray for them, since I didn’t know much about them besides their names, and obviously I was in no position to materially help them. Indeed, I ran the risk of doing what the writer of the Letter of James warns against: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (2:15-16). Even so, it felt important to pray for them. And it’s possible that I was one of the few people in their lives actively praying for them. Would any of those folks have felt welcome here at St. Peter’s? I don’t know.

If God truly comes first to those on the margins of society, if Jesus ministered first to widows, prostitutes, and task collectors, as his disciples where are we? Are we out there with him? If not, why not?

1. 130, 12, June 12, 2013, 10-11.

My Yoke is Easy

Is O.K. for a Christian to practice yoga? A recent article in the Christian Century posed this very question.1 A statement by the Hindu American Foundation had suggested that Americans focus too heavily on the physical exercise aspect of yoga and ignore its deep roots in the Hindu tradition. In response, some commentators flatly denied the connection between yogic practice and today’s Hinduism. However, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological seminary, roundly condemned yoga and other forms of “Eastern meditation.” Mohler also suggested that indeed Hindu beliefs underlie yoga practice, and that Christians compromise their relationship with Jesus by engaging in them. The author of the Christian Century article, John Sheveland, claims that what Mohler and others who agree with him miss is that yoga is a holistic system of control of the body, spirituality, and ethics. In its classical form, articulated perhaps as early as the second century, yoga consists of an eight-limbed path that integrates moral restraint towards the environment, individual practices, physical postures (the “asanas” with which many are familiar), breathing techniques, control of the senses, focus of the mind, meditation, and absorption into a transcendent consciousness. From such a system, Sheveland suggests, we Christians might have something to learn: how to be more mindful and focused in worship, for example, or how to translate spiritual insight into behavior in the world. In the end, as we ponder the riches of our own spiritual tradition, especially our own tradition of contemplative prayer, we might find that we have much in common with serious Hindu practitioners of yoga.

The word “yoga” comes from an ancient root meaning “to join or unite.” One of its very few cognates in English is the word “yoke.” Have you ever seen yoked animals? Typically oxen or water buffalo, occasionally horses, are yoked in pairs, mostly for plowing. For pulling heavily-laden carts, pairs of yoked animals are often joined together in a team. There are actually at least three common kinds of yokes, depending on the kind of animal. Whichever one is used, it must be fitted to the individual animal to avoid bruising or disabling the animal. What associations do we moderns bring to the word “yoke?” Does it connote a kind of submission? Indeed, the word “subjugate” is also cognate with the same root as that of “yoga” and “yoke.” Perhaps too, when we think of yokes, we think of onerous burdens, since yoked animals are so often found pulling heavy loads.

So what kind of invitation is Jesus offering us in this Gospel when he suggests that we take on his “yoke?” Is he offering us an onerous burden which we must submissively accept? Just before the beginning of today’s passage, Jesus has entertained a query from the disciples of John the Baptist: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” He responds by reminding them that people have been healed, and that “the poor have good news brought to them.” He then vents his own irritation to the crowd – yes, Jesus had negative emotions too – by complaining that neither John, who practiced an ascetic lifestyle, nor he Jesus, whose ministry was more expansive and inclusive, received the welcome that they deserved as prophets. The “wise and intelligent,” those who were sure they understood the demands of the Law and followed the sacrificial system to the letter, seemed especially sure that they had no need of either John’s baptism or the new way offered by Jesus, and they therefore welcomed neither.

In this narrative interlude between Jesus’ second and third great sermons in Matthew, Jesus does indeed suggest that he has something new and different to offer, especially to those who are able to admit that they might need guidance, those who are willing to submit themselves to his leading. Jesus offers them a new “yoke,” one that “fits well,” which is a better translation of the Greek than “easy.” This is not a one-size-fits-all yoke. It is one that is tailored to individual disciples and their particular circumstances. It is different from the yokes borne by oxen and buffaloes, or imposed on people by the keepers of sacrificial ritual. The yoke offered by Jesus is not burdensome but is easy to bear. However, like the yokes of oxen and buffaloes, Jesus’ yokes join us together in pairs and teams to bear each others’ burdens and to help each other grow spiritually. Most important, if we are willing to submit ourselves to Jesus’ guidance, rather than feeling constrained or imprisoned, we will truly be free to grow spiritually.

So what keeps us from joining with others and becoming part of Jesus’ teams? What keeps us from accepting his guidance? Is it that we think we can pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps, that we can go it alone spiritually? Do we resist incorporation into a community? Perhaps we wonder how a mature person can take guidance from others. “I don’t need a spiritual director,” you might say, “I’m a mature adult, able to figure things out for myself.” Or perhaps we fear that Jesus will guide us into being as inclusive as he was, that we too will have to eat with the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day, with the poor and homeless, with the alkies and ex-felons.

Or perhaps we’re bound by other kinds of yokes. Perhaps our yokes are the expectations of others. Do you find it hard to say “no,” when someone asks you to volunteer for something you don’t want to do? Do family or friends pull you in directions that hinder your spiritual life? Do others expect your house to look like a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens, your son to be an Eagle Scout, or your daughter to be first in her class academically? Or perhaps your yokes are your own expectations of yourself. How many times have you said, “I have to…. Fill in the blank: lose ten pounds, eat more healthfully, exercise more, drink less, quit smoking. Do you think you should have a cleaner house? Do you wish you could go back to school? Do you think you must work a sixty-hour week, in order to make ends meet? Do you have to have the latest gadgets, go on the best vacations, regardless of how far into debt you go? Do you have to hold on to the social and political convictions you had as a teenager? To what are you yoked?

Jesus assures us that, whether our own yokes are externally or internally imposed, we don’t have to submit to them. We can let go of all that binds us and let Jesus be our guide. One way to do that is to team up with others in the spiritual quest. We can enter into a traditional relationship of spiritual direction. Or perhaps we can let Jesus guide us through shared Christian formation. Or we may find Jesus’ guidance through different forms of prayer. Christians have long known that prayer and meditation enable us to get free of the burdensome yokes that bind us. Prayer and meditation help us to hear Jesus’ guidance and follow his lead. Ironically contemplative prayer has many elements in common with classical yoga. As we relax our bodies, focus on our breath, and let go of our preoccupations as we enter the silence, we open ourselves to God’s indwelling. By God’s grace, we are then able to sense Jesus’ deeper presence in our live. There are many different paths to experiencing God in this way. In the quiet day I plan to offer later this summer, I’d like to help us experience one or two of them. For now, though, listen to what one writer experienced in a form of prayer called “walking meditation.” Poet Tess Gallagher walked with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen monk. In her poem about the experience, she describes slowly following the monk up a mountain with about fifty other people. She says,

Our meditations
waver and recover us, waver
and reel us in to our bodies
like fish willing at last to take on the joy
of being fish, in or out of the water.
When we gather at last at the summit
and sit with him
we know we have moved the mountain
to its top as much as it carried us
deeply into each step.

Going down is the same.
We breathe and step. Breathe,
and step. A many-appendaged being
in and out of this world. No use
telling you about peace attained.
Get out of your feet.
Your breath. Enter
the mountain.2

Walking meditation, such as Gallagher experienced, centering prayer, lectio divina, Ignatian meditations, body prayer, saying the daily offices, and many other ways of praying all have the same goal: to free us from the yokes that bind us. All prayer ultimately enables us to open ourselves to Jesus’ presence in our lives and to follow his leading instead. And as we follow his guidance more closely, our lives change, for as so many of the saints remind us, as we pray, so also do we live. God willing, our lives are led by Jesus and none other.

1. John N. Sheveland, ”Is yoga religious?”, Christian Century, June 14, 2011, 22-25.

2. Accessed at http://being.publicradio.org/programs/thichnhathanh/poems-walkingmeditation/ .

Your Faith Has Saved You

In the summer of 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for kidnapping, torturing and murdering seventeen men. Even though there wasn’t the shadow of a doubt that he had not committed these crimes, in court he pled – as was his legal right – not guilty. In 1995 those who had bombed the Murrah office building in Oklahoma City denied their guilt, as did a former football player accused of murdering his wife. On a much larger scale, Serbian leader Slobadan Milošević, charged with organizing and executing a mass “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia, pled not guilty at his trial at the Hague, and even presented evidence to justify his actions. “Not guilty” is what many of our political leaders claim when the web of lies and evasions they have created unravels, and their marital infidelity comes to light. Mark Sandford on the Appalachian Trail? Right. And just in Thursday’s newspapers, we learned that BP’s 2009 regional response plan, which was approved by the federal government, vastly understated the dangers of a spill and overstated BP’s ability to respond. The answer of BP’s spokesman to queries about the plan’s glaring lies? The company is “reviewing” the plan. What’s wrong with this picture? Don’t any of our public figures accept responsibility for what they’ve done? Don’t any of them demonstrate humility and integrity?

Was St. Paul anything like these notorious public figures? Was Simon the Pharisee in today’s Gospel lesson? Surely not, you would answer. Wasn’t Paul a Pharisee of Pharisees, a highly educated member of his community? Neither Paul nor Simon had murdered anyone. As far as we know, they didn’t cheat on their taxes, they weren’t unfaithful to their wives, and they didn’t terrorize their servants. Indeed, if Paul and Simon were observant Pharisees, they worshipped regularly, tithed meticulously, kept away from notorious sinners, avoided any chance of ritual defilement, and followed a complicated rule of personal conduct. Sounds like some people that we know. Like me, you probably haven’t murdered anyone, cheated on your taxes, abused those who work for you, been unfaithful to your spouses, or knowingly broken the law. We worship regularly, support the church and worthy charitable organizations, engage in outreach to those less fortunate, do our best to follow Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbors, and know how to behave in various social situations. Clearly we’re not like Jeffrey Dahmer, Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, or Mark Sandford. So, like Paul and Simon, having followed all the rules, are we righteous in God’s sight? Are we acceptable to God? Have we bought our way into heaven?

Absolutely not, says Paul! He was writing to new Christians in Galatia, a region of Asia Minor, in about 55 AD. The early church was still struggling with the question of whether new Gentile Christians had to in effect become Jews and adopt all the tenets of Mosaic law. Before his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road, Paul himself was sure that following every jot and tittle of the Mosaic law and the Pharisaic code would make him right with God. After that life-changing experience, Paul learned that salvation was God’s gift to all. In the strongest possible terms he reminded the Galatian Christians that all have been made acceptable to God, not through observance of the law, of rules and regulations, but through Jesus’ death and resurrection. It wasn’t that Paul denigrated the law, it was rather that he realized that it wasn’t sufficient to make us acceptable to God. On our own, however closely we follow all the rules, we cannot meet God’s standards. But by God’s grace and with faith and trust in God, Christ transforms us, so that we begin to become the people we were truly created to be, not through our own actions, but through Christ’s power working within us.

In our story of Simon the Pharisee we have a vivid example of what Paul was talking about. As we see him in today’s story, although Simon had invited Jesus to his house, he seems to have treated Jesus disrespectfully. Simon seems to have believed that in his scrupulous observance of the law and the customs of the Pharisees he was righteous in God’s sight. In contrast to Simon, the unnamed woman who barged into this all-male gathering knew that she was not righteous in God’s sight, that she was desperately in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Unlike Simon, she threw herself at Jesus’ feet and ministered lovingly to him, showing her repentance with her streaming tears. In turn, Jesus praised her great love, the love that sprang out of her realization that God had accepted and forgiven her. Jesus’ assurance to her that her sins had indeed been forgiven, and her faith had saved her, were spoken to Simon and his guests as well as to her. Salvation, he reminded them cannot be earned, even by the holiest and most righteous men. Rather, forgiveness and salvation are God’s gifts to us, gifts which we receive when we acknowledge our sins and weaknesses and accept God’s forgiveness in faith. The story doesn’t tell us what happened to Simon and the woman after this encounter. But we can hope that both of them, and the other guests as well, were transformed by Jesus’ declaration of God’s forgiveness and grace.

That message is for us too. We may not be murderers or thieves. We may not be drug addicts or prostitutes. We may not have cheated on our spouses or our taxes. But the truth is, whether we admit it or not, whether we think about it from one Ash Wednesday to another, we are all sinners. We are all as capable as Paul, Simon, and the “woman of the city” of greed, sloth, lust, avarice, gluttony, wrath, envy, and pride, to say nothing of others not included in the Seven Deadly sins list. Collectively, we may be doing as much harm to the environment as BP. But the good news is that we are already forgiven for our “manifold sins and offenses.” Whenever we acknowledge our sins and weaknesses, we discover that in Christ God has already forgiven us. What is more important, when we acknowledge who we are, and have faith in God’s saving power to heal and strengthen us, God begins to work in us. God begins to change our lives from the inside out, so to speak. God begins to transform us more and more into Christ’s likeness.

This is our proclamation as a church. This is the message we need to share with the world: that we don’t have to buy our way into heaven, that there are no sins we can commit that will make God hate us, and that through Christ’s action we have all been made acceptable to God. Is this what the rest of the world hears from us? Sometimes I wonder. With our wrangling over property, sexuality, abortion, and God knows what else, I wonder whether a message about God’s unconditional acceptance of us ever gets through. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone else thinks that the church is a place of forgiveness and acceptance.

Here’s what I would like our message to be. Evangelical writer Tony Campolo tells the story of a trip to Hawaii for a conference.1 Jet-lagged and hungry, he woke up at 3:00 AM and decided to leave his hotel and go out looking for something to eat. The only place open at that hour was a hole-in-the wall dive. Tony quickly found out that at that hour most of the patrons were streetwalkers. That particular night, one of them, a woman named Agnes, mentioned that the next day would be her 39th birthday, and that she had never ever had a birthday party. The counter man confirmed that all the women were regulars. So Tony came back at 2:30 the next night. He decorated the joint and put up a big sign saying “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” The counter man had found a cake and told all the girls. Right at 3:30, in walked Agnes. Everyone shouted “Happy Birthday,” and Agnes nearly fainted. Then Tony suggested that they all pray. With half the prostitutes in Honolulu listening, Tony prayed that Agnes’s life would be changed, and that God would bless her. When he had finished, the counter man said somewhat angrily, “Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?” The Holy Spirit must have been at Tony’s elbow when he said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” “No you don’t,” said the man. “There ain’t no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. Yep, I’d join a church like that.”

You and I did join a church like that. God help us to be that church.


1The story is from Campolo’s The Kingdom of God Is a Party. It was retold by David E. Leininger in Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2009).