Was Jesus Mr. Nice Guy? If pictures of Jesus cradling sheep, or embracing children came to mind, no doubt you thought, “Sure, he was.” Or perhaps you heard Jesus intoning, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow….” Was Jesus Mr. Nice Guy? Or, does today’s gospel reading make you think again?
We have switched to the Gospel according to John for this and the next two Sundays. We return to the Gospel according to Mark on Palm Sunday, at the very end of the month, when we hear Mark’s story of Jesus’ death. Since the three-year Revised Common Lectionary does not set aside a year for the Gospel of John, as it does for the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it interweaves readings from John into the various seasons of the liturgical year. We’ll hear a lot more from John during Easter tide.
John takes a very different approach to Jesus’ story from that of the synoptic gospels. Although it may contain earlier material, the gospel of John assumed its final form about 90 AD, thus making it the last of the four gospels. The Temple had been destroyed about twenty years earlier, and Jesus had been gone nearly sixty years. This gospel was written for a community of mostly Jewish Christians, most of whom were fighting with leaders of the mainline Jewish community around them. Each of the evangelists had a decided purpose for writing down Jesus’ story, and that purpose is reflected in the how the story is told. The writer of this gospel wanted especially to reassure the members of this beleaguered Christian community that they had made the right choice in separating themselves from the mainstream. We hear right at the beginning of this gospel how the evangelist views Jesus, that Jesus is the Word of God become human. At the end, the evangelist again states the purpose for the gospel: “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:31).
So was Jesus Mr. Nice Guy? At this point in the story, Jesus has just come down from Galilee to celebrate the Passover. In Galilee he had attended a wedding in the village of Cana, where he offered the first sign of who he was to a small group of friends and relatives. When Jesus came into the great temple in Jerusalem, which Herod the Great had begun rebuilding forty-six years before, was Jesus tempted to be just another ordinary pilgrim, blending into the crowd with all the others? Apparently not. Instead, Jesus became angry. He flipped out, he lost it. Why? The evangelist is not clear. The commerce that was taking place in the Court of the Gentiles wasn’t really wrong. In order to follow the 610 commandments of the law, especially the laws regarding sacrifice, pious Jews had to offer unblemished animals, which they typically bought just as they entered the temple. They could not pay for those animals with ordinary coins, the coins with Caesar’s head on them, but had to exchange the Roman coins for Palestinian shekels. Both the animal sellers and the money changers were thus necessary for the required sacrifices to take place. The gospel doesn’t say that either the vendors or the money changers were gouging the pilgrims, or cheating them, or colluding with the Romans, or doing anything against the law. Why do we need to see Jesus call them to account and demonstrate his anger at them?
Perhaps the reason is that the evangelist was less interested in the pilgrims or the vendors and money changers and more interested in Jesus. Perhaps the evangelist wanted his readers to remember that one of the roles of the messiah, of God’s anointed one, was to be God’s prophet, to speak God’s truth, to challenge those in authority, even when those around him don’t want to hear him or face him. A long line of prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures had spoken God’s truth to leaders who resisted hearing it. Jeremiah, in particular, spoke hard truths to the king and was put down in a cistern, and then subjected to house arrest for his trouble. In the opposition that Jewish Christians were confronting, perhaps the evangelist wanted to remind his hearers that speaking God’s truth is dangerous. Most important, perhaps the evangelist wanted his hearers to remember, long before the story comes to Calvary, that, although Jesus’ story culminated in his death, it did not end there.
Was Sam Dodson Mr. Nice Guy? Sure he was. He was a well-regarded Methodist minister in a white congregation in Nashville Tennessee.1 It was the early 1960s. Dodson had been born in a small town in Tennessee, gone to Vanderbilt University, and earned his divinity degree at Yale. He had come to Calvary United Methodist Church in 1958 at the age of 43. Although they didn’t always agree with his sermons, his parishioners knew that Dodson generally supported sit-ins and racial integration. In 1963 he accepted the governor’s appointment as chair of the Tennessee Human Relations Commission, which had been formed to work on civil rights issues. A few members of Dodson’s congregation bristled at the appointment. Then came the unthinkable. On May 5, 1964 Dodson joined 150 seminarians and other members of the clergy, marched to the city hall, and presented the mayor with four demands: immediate desegregation of the public schools, ordinances assuring complete access to all public spaces, full access to recreational facilities, and equal employment opportunities in city government.
The hate mail poured into Dodson’s office during May and June. Most of the letters chastised him for his involvement with “politics.” His board wrote to his bishop asking that he be demoted to assistant pastor. Dodson stayed for another year, then in the spring of 1965 he and his family left for Athens, Greece, where he became the pastor of St. Andrew’s American Church.
Sam Dodson’s story culminated in his leaving Nashville in disgrace, but it didn’t end there. About ten years ago or so, people rediscovered his work in Nashville. Those who left Calvary Church because of Dodson have returned and apologized. When Dodson died in 2002, he was eulogized on the front page of the church newspaper. In 2013, a committee at Calvary began working on a permanent memorial to his work and courage. Today, on the wall outside the senior pastor’s office is a colorful timeline and display. Written across the top of the display are the words, “Dr. Rev. Samuel R. Dodson, Jr.: Man of Courage.”
And what about us? The evangelist has shown us Jesus’ prophetic actions. Jesus spoke out and demonstrated against what he considered unacceptable practice. He did so knowing full well that wearing the prophet’s mantle would not endear him to the authorities. Sam Dodson spoke and publicly demonstrated against practices he knew to be unacceptable and unjust. What about us? Lent calls us to “self-examination and repentance.” What do we need to face in ourselves, our parish, and our community? What wrong or injustice do we need to speak and work against?
In ourselves, do we need to forgive? Do we need to confess a wrong and seek forgiveness? Do we need to put aside anger, hurt, or indifference, and reconcile with someone? Do we need to forego gossip? Do we need to listen to someone’s story more attentively? Do we need to free ourselves of addictions, even harmless ones? Do we need to quit making excuses for ourselves and find time for prayer? Do we need to take our Christian commitment more seriously? I invite you, between now and Palm Sunday, to look at your way of life and find one thing that you know needs changing.
In this parish, what needs facing and changing? Are there conflicts that need to be resolved? Do we need to be more attentive to one another? Do we need to be more serious about supporting the parish with our resources? Is our ministry truly serving the needs of those around us? How else might we serve Jesus in our neighbors?
In the community and the world, are we taking seriously our commitment to work for justice and peace? Do we support elected leaders who work for the welfare of the poor and seek to defuse, rather than exacerbate, conflicts? Are we serious about addressing climate change, and especially about looking at our own consumption habits? Do we ever speak out for issues close to our hearts and support organizations seeking change? Between now and Palm Sunday, I invite you to find one issue about which you can be passionate and educate yourself on that issue, whether it be food insecurity, adequate access to healthcare, literacy education, clean water, climate change, opposition to capital punishment, or whatever calls out to you. Educate yourself and make a commitment to doing what you are called to do.
Jesus did not call us to be nice. Jesus called us to follow him and take up the prophet’s mantle, to seriously and intentionally follow his lead as one who actively critiqued the powers that be. Jesus called us to stand with the truth as we see it and to actively work against oppression and injustice. He did not promise that the way would be easy. Like Sam Dodson, we may indeed find ourselves with Jesus at the cross. And, like Sam Dodson, all our hope on God is founded. As Jesus’ story did not end with the cross, neither does ours.
1. The following is based on Erin E. Tocknell, “The Cost of Discipleship,” Sojourners, March 2015, 31-33.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Where He Leads Me, I will Follow
Did Jesus really die? When I was a dean, I often ate my brown-bag lunch at a table in my office. During Lent, as often as I could, after I was finished eating, I would close my door and take a little time to pray and write in my spiritual journal. One year it was Good Friday. As I sat in my office after lunch, I began to meditate on the passion story. Much as we did in the session on Ignatian prayer last Wednesday, I put myself into the story, taking the role of Mary. Then I began to feel the story as if I were watching my own son being cruelly executed for a crime he did not commit. In that moment, I felt the stab in my own heart, and I understood the painful reality of Jesus’ death in a new way.
Every church has a cross in one form or another. For most of us, the cross has lost its power to shock us, the way a representation of a gallows or electric chair would – or should. In most Roman Catholic churches, the crucifix, the cross with Jesus’ body on it, overshadows the altar. Seeing the crucifix, you can’t forget that Jesus died. By contrast, most Orthodox churches depict Christ in glory, often surrounded by saints and angels. Most Protestant churches, including this one, have a plain cross. Gathering here, we are reminded neither of Jesus’ death, nor his return to heavenly realms. Certainly, you will say, we hear the Passion stories, on Palm Sunday, complete with dramatic reading, and again on Good Friday. But, in a liturgical setting, do we really get it that Jesus died? It’s still so easy to forget that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being, who enjoyed life just as we do, and that he was tragically executed by the state for no discernible crime. That is not the story we want to hear. It is so easy to overlook Jesus’ death!
We’ve come to a turning point in Mark’s story. Jesus was baptized by John. Having retreated into the wilderness, Jesus discerned his vocation. He has preached the good news, taught, and healed. He has called some close friends into his inner circle. He has drawn crowds and has caught the attention of the authorities. Probing how much his friends understood of his mission, he asked, “Who do people say that I am?” More pointedly, he asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am?” Hothead Peter blurted out, “You are the messiah. You are God’s anointed one.”
Now Jesus must explain the meaning of being God’s anointed one and remind his followers what their commitment to him might mean for them. So Jesus says quite plainly – not in parables but plainly – what the plan is: that Jesus will be rejected by the religious leadership, and that the political authorities will execute him. Jesus will be a messiah who will lead through suffering, weakness, and death. This is clearly not the messiah that Peter had in mind: Peter expected Jesus to be another David, able to drive the hated Romans out of Israel. “Nope, you’ve got it wrong,” Jesus says, “God’s plan is different.”
And then, to be absolutely plain and open – no false advertising here – Jesus spells it out for all his friends and hangers-on. “I will be executed,” he says. “If you want to really be one of my followers, you’d better be prepared to die also. That’s what following me involves. If you’re one of mine, you don’t lord it over others, you don’t cling as tightly as you can to your possessions and wealth, you don’t expect to get your own way in everything that you do. Ultimately, you let go of everything that is important to you, including your very life – for my sake. Despite what you might think,” he says, “the way of the Cross isn’t contrary to God’s will, it is God’s will.”
Don’t you shudder at least a little when you hear those words? Who wants to give up everything for Jesus? Actually, Jesus’ message – and this is just the first of three times in Mark’s gospel that Jesus predicts his execution – would have resonated with the first hearers of this Gospel. They were Gentile believers who were suffering and dying at the hands of the Roman Empire. They knew what oppressive systems did to people, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In these words of Jesus, they would have heard encouragement. They would have understood that by faithfully enduring persecution they were sharing in Christ’s sufferings. African Americans in this country took strength and courage from Jesus’ death on a tree, even as they watched members of their own community being tortured and lynched. Surely today’s besieged Christians, in Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, or Palestine also identify with Jesus and understand their own sufferings as part of their call to follow him. In Juba, in southern Sudan, where Christians were a minority community, the faithful often sang, “With the cross before me and the world behind me, I will follow wherever he leads me, I will follow wherever he leads me. There’s no turning back, no turning back.”1
But what of us privileged North American Christians? Aren’t we faithful followers of Jesus? What does it mean for us to take up our cross and follow him? Where and to what are we following him? Surely not to persecution or execution? One kind of answer comes as we look around at our churches. Historic church communities in Europe and North America are shrinking. In the UK, the home of our mother church, average church attendance stands at about 6% of the population. The same is true on the Continent. Average attendance in North America is higher, but we too are seeing our communities shrink in size, we too are closing buildings, and we too are contracting our ministries. Some years ago, Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall wrote The Cross in our Context, a book that continues to attract a wide readership. Hall begins by reminding his readers that, like Jesus, the church began in weakness. Christians only became powerful and influential in the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire. Now we are seeing what Hall calls the “disestablishment” of Christianity, as the institutional church grows weaker and the church ceases to be a major cultural force. And yet, contrary to what we might think, in losing its power, prestige, and wealth, in again becoming dissociated from the social and political rulers, the church is – finally – following more closely in the footsteps of its founder.
And what of ourselves? Where is Jesus leading us? How do we take up our cross and follow him? In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan writer whose work I admire greatly, suggests that, in the first half of our lives, our task is to create a strong self-identity. We immerse ourselves in finding our vocations, our life partners, our preferred religious communities, our ethical systems, and our places in the world. But there comes a time, for most people as they approach the second half of life, when we must endure what Rohr calls “necessary suffering.”2 We come to realize that the life we have fashioned for ourselves is insufficient and shallow. We can try to duplicate or strengthen our old lives – an effort that is exhausting and ultimately futile. Or we can let ourselves be pruned by God. Pruning is surely painful for trees and for us. But, with Jesus, we can embrace our losses, gratefully let go of what has been, and open ourselves to becoming the larger person that God has created us to be. We can let God enable us to give up our self-centeredness, embrace weakness, and begin giving ourselves freely in service of others. We can give up all that we thought we knew or were and let ourselves be transformed by God into something very different.
For that is exactly the good news in Jesus’ explanation of what being his disciple means. Did you hear that last phrase in Jesus’ teaching? “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Perhaps nobody really heard that part of Jesus’ teaching. Certainly, as we watch the behavior of Jesus’ first disciples, as Mark portrays them, it is clear that they did not understand what Jesus was saying. We are on the other side of Easter, yet we too most likely miss Jesus’ promise that death must always give way to new life. Many church historians believe that the church is not merely declining but is beginning to arise in new forms. Just as those who lived through the Reformation could not see what the outcome of that great movement would be, we do not as yet know what the church will look like a hundred years from now. We only know it will be reborn and different. It is the same for us. God willing, as we continue to let God do God’s work within us, as we let go of old certainties and embrace new uncertainties, we can be sure that, by God’s grace, we are becoming the people God created us to be.
Following Jesus is the work of a lifetime. There will be pain, there will be pruning, there will be the death of much of what we hold dear. We have been forewarned. Only let our prayer continue to be, “Where he leads me I will follow, I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way.”
1. Marsha Snulligan Haney, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Gospels, Mark, Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 250.
2. Richard Rohr, Falling Upward (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 11, quoted in Thomas R. Steagald, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Gospels, op.cit., 253.
Every church has a cross in one form or another. For most of us, the cross has lost its power to shock us, the way a representation of a gallows or electric chair would – or should. In most Roman Catholic churches, the crucifix, the cross with Jesus’ body on it, overshadows the altar. Seeing the crucifix, you can’t forget that Jesus died. By contrast, most Orthodox churches depict Christ in glory, often surrounded by saints and angels. Most Protestant churches, including this one, have a plain cross. Gathering here, we are reminded neither of Jesus’ death, nor his return to heavenly realms. Certainly, you will say, we hear the Passion stories, on Palm Sunday, complete with dramatic reading, and again on Good Friday. But, in a liturgical setting, do we really get it that Jesus died? It’s still so easy to forget that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being, who enjoyed life just as we do, and that he was tragically executed by the state for no discernible crime. That is not the story we want to hear. It is so easy to overlook Jesus’ death!
We’ve come to a turning point in Mark’s story. Jesus was baptized by John. Having retreated into the wilderness, Jesus discerned his vocation. He has preached the good news, taught, and healed. He has called some close friends into his inner circle. He has drawn crowds and has caught the attention of the authorities. Probing how much his friends understood of his mission, he asked, “Who do people say that I am?” More pointedly, he asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am?” Hothead Peter blurted out, “You are the messiah. You are God’s anointed one.”
Now Jesus must explain the meaning of being God’s anointed one and remind his followers what their commitment to him might mean for them. So Jesus says quite plainly – not in parables but plainly – what the plan is: that Jesus will be rejected by the religious leadership, and that the political authorities will execute him. Jesus will be a messiah who will lead through suffering, weakness, and death. This is clearly not the messiah that Peter had in mind: Peter expected Jesus to be another David, able to drive the hated Romans out of Israel. “Nope, you’ve got it wrong,” Jesus says, “God’s plan is different.”
And then, to be absolutely plain and open – no false advertising here – Jesus spells it out for all his friends and hangers-on. “I will be executed,” he says. “If you want to really be one of my followers, you’d better be prepared to die also. That’s what following me involves. If you’re one of mine, you don’t lord it over others, you don’t cling as tightly as you can to your possessions and wealth, you don’t expect to get your own way in everything that you do. Ultimately, you let go of everything that is important to you, including your very life – for my sake. Despite what you might think,” he says, “the way of the Cross isn’t contrary to God’s will, it is God’s will.”
Don’t you shudder at least a little when you hear those words? Who wants to give up everything for Jesus? Actually, Jesus’ message – and this is just the first of three times in Mark’s gospel that Jesus predicts his execution – would have resonated with the first hearers of this Gospel. They were Gentile believers who were suffering and dying at the hands of the Roman Empire. They knew what oppressive systems did to people, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In these words of Jesus, they would have heard encouragement. They would have understood that by faithfully enduring persecution they were sharing in Christ’s sufferings. African Americans in this country took strength and courage from Jesus’ death on a tree, even as they watched members of their own community being tortured and lynched. Surely today’s besieged Christians, in Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, or Palestine also identify with Jesus and understand their own sufferings as part of their call to follow him. In Juba, in southern Sudan, where Christians were a minority community, the faithful often sang, “With the cross before me and the world behind me, I will follow wherever he leads me, I will follow wherever he leads me. There’s no turning back, no turning back.”1
But what of us privileged North American Christians? Aren’t we faithful followers of Jesus? What does it mean for us to take up our cross and follow him? Where and to what are we following him? Surely not to persecution or execution? One kind of answer comes as we look around at our churches. Historic church communities in Europe and North America are shrinking. In the UK, the home of our mother church, average church attendance stands at about 6% of the population. The same is true on the Continent. Average attendance in North America is higher, but we too are seeing our communities shrink in size, we too are closing buildings, and we too are contracting our ministries. Some years ago, Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall wrote The Cross in our Context, a book that continues to attract a wide readership. Hall begins by reminding his readers that, like Jesus, the church began in weakness. Christians only became powerful and influential in the fourth century, when the emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman Empire. Now we are seeing what Hall calls the “disestablishment” of Christianity, as the institutional church grows weaker and the church ceases to be a major cultural force. And yet, contrary to what we might think, in losing its power, prestige, and wealth, in again becoming dissociated from the social and political rulers, the church is – finally – following more closely in the footsteps of its founder.
And what of ourselves? Where is Jesus leading us? How do we take up our cross and follow him? In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan writer whose work I admire greatly, suggests that, in the first half of our lives, our task is to create a strong self-identity. We immerse ourselves in finding our vocations, our life partners, our preferred religious communities, our ethical systems, and our places in the world. But there comes a time, for most people as they approach the second half of life, when we must endure what Rohr calls “necessary suffering.”2 We come to realize that the life we have fashioned for ourselves is insufficient and shallow. We can try to duplicate or strengthen our old lives – an effort that is exhausting and ultimately futile. Or we can let ourselves be pruned by God. Pruning is surely painful for trees and for us. But, with Jesus, we can embrace our losses, gratefully let go of what has been, and open ourselves to becoming the larger person that God has created us to be. We can let God enable us to give up our self-centeredness, embrace weakness, and begin giving ourselves freely in service of others. We can give up all that we thought we knew or were and let ourselves be transformed by God into something very different.
For that is exactly the good news in Jesus’ explanation of what being his disciple means. Did you hear that last phrase in Jesus’ teaching? “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Perhaps nobody really heard that part of Jesus’ teaching. Certainly, as we watch the behavior of Jesus’ first disciples, as Mark portrays them, it is clear that they did not understand what Jesus was saying. We are on the other side of Easter, yet we too most likely miss Jesus’ promise that death must always give way to new life. Many church historians believe that the church is not merely declining but is beginning to arise in new forms. Just as those who lived through the Reformation could not see what the outcome of that great movement would be, we do not as yet know what the church will look like a hundred years from now. We only know it will be reborn and different. It is the same for us. God willing, as we continue to let God do God’s work within us, as we let go of old certainties and embrace new uncertainties, we can be sure that, by God’s grace, we are becoming the people God created us to be.
Following Jesus is the work of a lifetime. There will be pain, there will be pruning, there will be the death of much of what we hold dear. We have been forewarned. Only let our prayer continue to be, “Where he leads me I will follow, I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way.”
1. Marsha Snulligan Haney, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Gospels, Mark, Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 250.
2. Richard Rohr, Falling Upward (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 11, quoted in Thomas R. Steagald, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Gospels, op.cit., 253.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Into the Wilderness
Suppose you decided to take a solo camping trip in a remote area. You needed to get away – don’t we all sometimes? Or you wanted to see another part of the country. Or you needed to test yourself. Suppose that you decided to walk the Appalachian Trail by yourself. The AT is 2200 miles long and runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. People who commit to walking the entire trail, “through-hikers,” as they are called, usually start out at the southern end in late March or early April and reach Mt. Katahdin in late summer or early fall.
So suppose you decided to walk the AT by yourself. When would you go? Would you try to hike the whole trail or just a section? What would you take? Remember, you’d have to carry everything on your back. You’d need some shelter, a tent or lean-to perhaps, a sleeping back, stove, and light. Would you take food or count on buying what you needed along the trail? How about books or extra clothes? Would want a small MP3 player with your favorite music? What about batteries? As your backpack starts to get heavy, would you begin to wonder, “What’s really essential?” Would seeing a bear or a bobcat make you leave the trail? Could you handle the silence? Would you use all that time to think about the choices you’d made in your life? Would God be more present to you along the trail than at home?
Did Jesus face some of these questions on his own solo camping trip? As if Jesus were a unique and mysterious person, the writer of the Gospel of Mark provides few details about Jesus’ decision to go off into the hills of Judea or of his experiences over the weeks he spent walking those hills. Jesus had already had two powerful spiritual experiences. He had followed the Spirit’s urging and sought John’s baptism. He had plunged into the Jordan River along with all those from Jerusalem who were there confessing their sins. Coming up from the water, he had felt deeply God’s affirmation of him, and he knew himself to be connected to God in a new and different way. Was his whole life about to change? He had scarcely climbed up the river bank and changed into his dry clothes when the Spirit, now not a gentle nudge in his ear or a dove on his shoulder, but an arm of surprising strength, gripped him and led him up into the bleak hills.
Did Jesus know how long he would stay out in the hills? Did he have time to pack a kit bag or a backpack, to decide what to take with him? Did he have a blanket to wrap around himself during the chilly Judean nights? Did he take a cloak or second tunic? A knife? A lantern? Did he eat wild roots or leaves? Perhaps there were wild apples or other fruit up there. What did Jesus do when he met a wild animal? Did he see it as a threat, or as a creature that also shared God’s life? What did he think about, pray about, or wonder about, during those long, silent hours? Perhaps he knew himself to be in a “thin” place, where the veil between earth and heaven gives way, and deeper communion with the Holy One becomes possible. Did his heightened sense of nearness to God clarify God’s call to him? Did he understand that a ministry of preaching God’s good news, teaching, and healing would be bitterly opposed by the religious and political authorities and would ultimately lead to his death? How did Jesus know when to come back down? Was he ready for the arduous labor that now lay ahead of him? Did the Spirit warn Jesus that the political leaders who had had John arrested were after him as well, and that he should begin his ministry in Galilee instead Judea?
Jesus was not the only one in Scripture to feel the powerful grip of the Holy Spirit. After Samuel had identified David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, as the next king of Israel, Scripture tells us that, “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (1Samuel 16:13). As the exiles began to return to Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah knew that, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me…. 61:1). At the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus would apply that very declaration of Isaiah to himself. Other prophets report encountering God in desolate places, in deserts, and in mountains.
Throughout the centuries, serious followers of Jesus have sought out mountains and deserts, or have been driven into them by the Holy Spirit, in order to experience God’s presence more deeply. Beginning as early as the third century AD, holy men and women left behind the temptations and rich life of Egyptian cities. They settled in small desert communities and lived simple lives, dedicated to contemplative prayer, charity, and forgiveness. As they wrestled with God, they wrote about their experiences, hoping to share their insights with their followers. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they are now known, are rich source of spiritual wisdom to this day. Following his vision of Jesus in the country chapel of San Damiano, St. Francis renounced his identity as a prosperous cloth merchant’s son and lived as a beggar in the hills of Assisi. After much careful discernment, Teresa of Avila left the settled, relatively relaxed life of Carmelite nuns in 16th century Spain to found a new order that allowed for periods of silence and contemplation. Closer to our own day, Trappist monk Thomas Merton led us into the contemplative desert through his book The Wisdom of the Desert, while Belden Lane, Kathleen Norris, and Terry Tempest Williams recount their own experiences of being drawn by the Spirit into secluded places.
My friends, in Lent we too are invited to go on a solo camping trip, to venture into a spiritual wilderness. This year we were not able to confront once again our mortality, in the imposition of ashes. Nor did we hear the exhortation for Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless our work for this season, as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, is to observe a holy Lent "by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” For most of us, given our 24/7 overly busy lives, the only way to fulfill that charge is to let the Spirit drive us into the wilderness, to find some time and place apart where we may truly listen to the Spirit and discern God’s direction for our lives. What do you need for such a solo camping trip? Perhaps you need to commit to a definite time of prayer, perhaps first thing in the morning, over the noon hour, last thing at night, or on a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon. How many minutes will you give to God? Ten, twenty, thirty? You may need to commit to particular place, where you can pray without interruption for some brief period, a room where you can shut the door, or even a basement or attic. You might consider joining a quiet morning or day, where you may hear God in the silence of contemplative prayer. Do you need anything special? A book of Lenten devotions perhaps? A notebook or tablet for keeping a spiritual journal? Perhaps you can create your own “thin place” by lighting a candle, wearing a prayer shawl, or using Anglican prayer beads. Perhaps an icon, a window, or a painting will lead you into God’s silence. What else do you need to take with you? The support and help of family and friends, perhaps? What do you need to leave behind? Expectations of “what’s in it for me” or what the outcome of prayer should be? Can you let the Spirit work her will in you, giving you glimpses of God’s affirmation of you and leading you to a clearer sense of vocation?
If you let yourself be led by God’s Spirit, you may well be surprised. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised by what happened to him in the Judean hills. Perhaps he came down from the hills surer of his vocation, clearer about his role in God’s design, less fearful of what lay ahead, and more confident in God’s love for him. We too are invited into a process of transformation. When we return from our solo camping trip, our time apart with God, we too may find ourselves surer of God’s call to us, less fearful of what life may hold for us, less afraid of death, and more confident of God’s love for us.
Perhaps too we will be empowered for greater ministry. When Jesus’ retreat came to an end, the Spirit lured him from the silence of the hills to the noise of the needs of his people. Jesus went public with the message of God’s good news for all of humankind, indeed for all of creation. For us, too, time spent in the wilderness leads to transformation, to seeing ourselves and others in new ways, to understanding ourselves as members of God’s realm, and to sharing God’s healing and welcoming touch with others. As we sojourn more closely with Jesus, we understand that contemplation must always lead to outreach, introspection must always lead to action. Jesus has been there before us. Jesus is with us still, assuring us in the wilderness that we too will find divine refreshment and spiritual insight. God bless us all during this most holy season.
So suppose you decided to walk the AT by yourself. When would you go? Would you try to hike the whole trail or just a section? What would you take? Remember, you’d have to carry everything on your back. You’d need some shelter, a tent or lean-to perhaps, a sleeping back, stove, and light. Would you take food or count on buying what you needed along the trail? How about books or extra clothes? Would want a small MP3 player with your favorite music? What about batteries? As your backpack starts to get heavy, would you begin to wonder, “What’s really essential?” Would seeing a bear or a bobcat make you leave the trail? Could you handle the silence? Would you use all that time to think about the choices you’d made in your life? Would God be more present to you along the trail than at home?
Did Jesus face some of these questions on his own solo camping trip? As if Jesus were a unique and mysterious person, the writer of the Gospel of Mark provides few details about Jesus’ decision to go off into the hills of Judea or of his experiences over the weeks he spent walking those hills. Jesus had already had two powerful spiritual experiences. He had followed the Spirit’s urging and sought John’s baptism. He had plunged into the Jordan River along with all those from Jerusalem who were there confessing their sins. Coming up from the water, he had felt deeply God’s affirmation of him, and he knew himself to be connected to God in a new and different way. Was his whole life about to change? He had scarcely climbed up the river bank and changed into his dry clothes when the Spirit, now not a gentle nudge in his ear or a dove on his shoulder, but an arm of surprising strength, gripped him and led him up into the bleak hills.
Did Jesus know how long he would stay out in the hills? Did he have time to pack a kit bag or a backpack, to decide what to take with him? Did he have a blanket to wrap around himself during the chilly Judean nights? Did he take a cloak or second tunic? A knife? A lantern? Did he eat wild roots or leaves? Perhaps there were wild apples or other fruit up there. What did Jesus do when he met a wild animal? Did he see it as a threat, or as a creature that also shared God’s life? What did he think about, pray about, or wonder about, during those long, silent hours? Perhaps he knew himself to be in a “thin” place, where the veil between earth and heaven gives way, and deeper communion with the Holy One becomes possible. Did his heightened sense of nearness to God clarify God’s call to him? Did he understand that a ministry of preaching God’s good news, teaching, and healing would be bitterly opposed by the religious and political authorities and would ultimately lead to his death? How did Jesus know when to come back down? Was he ready for the arduous labor that now lay ahead of him? Did the Spirit warn Jesus that the political leaders who had had John arrested were after him as well, and that he should begin his ministry in Galilee instead Judea?
Jesus was not the only one in Scripture to feel the powerful grip of the Holy Spirit. After Samuel had identified David, the youngest of Jesse’s eight sons, as the next king of Israel, Scripture tells us that, “the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward” (1Samuel 16:13). As the exiles began to return to Jerusalem, the prophet Isaiah knew that, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me…. 61:1). At the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus would apply that very declaration of Isaiah to himself. Other prophets report encountering God in desolate places, in deserts, and in mountains.
Throughout the centuries, serious followers of Jesus have sought out mountains and deserts, or have been driven into them by the Holy Spirit, in order to experience God’s presence more deeply. Beginning as early as the third century AD, holy men and women left behind the temptations and rich life of Egyptian cities. They settled in small desert communities and lived simple lives, dedicated to contemplative prayer, charity, and forgiveness. As they wrestled with God, they wrote about their experiences, hoping to share their insights with their followers. The sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they are now known, are rich source of spiritual wisdom to this day. Following his vision of Jesus in the country chapel of San Damiano, St. Francis renounced his identity as a prosperous cloth merchant’s son and lived as a beggar in the hills of Assisi. After much careful discernment, Teresa of Avila left the settled, relatively relaxed life of Carmelite nuns in 16th century Spain to found a new order that allowed for periods of silence and contemplation. Closer to our own day, Trappist monk Thomas Merton led us into the contemplative desert through his book The Wisdom of the Desert, while Belden Lane, Kathleen Norris, and Terry Tempest Williams recount their own experiences of being drawn by the Spirit into secluded places.
My friends, in Lent we too are invited to go on a solo camping trip, to venture into a spiritual wilderness. This year we were not able to confront once again our mortality, in the imposition of ashes. Nor did we hear the exhortation for Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless our work for this season, as the Book of Common Prayer reminds us, is to observe a holy Lent "by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” For most of us, given our 24/7 overly busy lives, the only way to fulfill that charge is to let the Spirit drive us into the wilderness, to find some time and place apart where we may truly listen to the Spirit and discern God’s direction for our lives. What do you need for such a solo camping trip? Perhaps you need to commit to a definite time of prayer, perhaps first thing in the morning, over the noon hour, last thing at night, or on a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon. How many minutes will you give to God? Ten, twenty, thirty? You may need to commit to particular place, where you can pray without interruption for some brief period, a room where you can shut the door, or even a basement or attic. You might consider joining a quiet morning or day, where you may hear God in the silence of contemplative prayer. Do you need anything special? A book of Lenten devotions perhaps? A notebook or tablet for keeping a spiritual journal? Perhaps you can create your own “thin place” by lighting a candle, wearing a prayer shawl, or using Anglican prayer beads. Perhaps an icon, a window, or a painting will lead you into God’s silence. What else do you need to take with you? The support and help of family and friends, perhaps? What do you need to leave behind? Expectations of “what’s in it for me” or what the outcome of prayer should be? Can you let the Spirit work her will in you, giving you glimpses of God’s affirmation of you and leading you to a clearer sense of vocation?
If you let yourself be led by God’s Spirit, you may well be surprised. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised by what happened to him in the Judean hills. Perhaps he came down from the hills surer of his vocation, clearer about his role in God’s design, less fearful of what lay ahead, and more confident in God’s love for him. We too are invited into a process of transformation. When we return from our solo camping trip, our time apart with God, we too may find ourselves surer of God’s call to us, less fearful of what life may hold for us, less afraid of death, and more confident of God’s love for us.
Perhaps too we will be empowered for greater ministry. When Jesus’ retreat came to an end, the Spirit lured him from the silence of the hills to the noise of the needs of his people. Jesus went public with the message of God’s good news for all of humankind, indeed for all of creation. For us, too, time spent in the wilderness leads to transformation, to seeing ourselves and others in new ways, to understanding ourselves as members of God’s realm, and to sharing God’s healing and welcoming touch with others. As we sojourn more closely with Jesus, we understand that contemplation must always lead to outreach, introspection must always lead to action. Jesus has been there before us. Jesus is with us still, assuring us in the wilderness that we too will find divine refreshment and spiritual insight. God bless us all during this most holy season.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Be Silent and Come Out
“My ‘insanity’ messes with people’s lives…. It’s just the way it is.”1 Perhaps you too recoiled in horror from this statement. In an article in Friday’s Athens Messenger, convicted murderer and self-styled prophet Daniel Lafferty described his role in the suicides of Kristi and Benjamin Strack and their murder of their three children. Incarcerated in Utah for almost thirty years, Lafferty considers himself another Elijah, one who is charged with preparing the world for the second coming. Although he can only be visited behind a thick Plexiglass window in the Utah State Prison, Lafferty still has a few followers who accept his beliefs that the world is controlled by the devil, and that the apocalypse is near.
Tragically for her and her family, Kristi Strack came under Lafferty’s influence in 2003. After reading Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which depicted Lafferty’s murder of his sister-in-law and fifteen-month old niece, Strack began visiting and writing to Lafferty in prison. Although it appears that her contact with him came to an end a few years ago, investigators believe that Lafferty’s beliefs continued to influence her. Tragically, his destructive view ultimately led her, her husband, and their children to down a lethal concoction of methadone and cold medicine. Although Lafferty believes that the Stracks are “in paradise now,” Rick Ross, executive director of the Cult Education Institute, considers Lafferty a dangerous cult leader – even from behind prison walls. “With Lafferty and those that pose as prophets,” said Ross, “they all created a kind of doomsday, a crisis mentality where people felt there was nothing in the world left to live for.”
Why do such “prophets” attract a following? What demons drive such prophets and their followers to such tragic self-destruction? Who can forget David Koresh? In April 1993, Koresh set afire his Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas and took the lives of seventy-five of his followers along with his own. How many of you remember Jim Jones, the cult leader who established “Jonestown” in northern Guyana? In November, 1978, after Jones’ followers murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, who had come on a fact-finding mission, 918 of Jones’ followers, including 276 children, died in his compound, of apparent cyanide poisoning. How about Fred Phelps, the late leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas? His followers, mostly members of his extended family, have not, to my knowledge, committed suicide. However, his organization has spewed out hate messages and added to the grief of many families participating in military funerals. Most of you can think of other similarly destructive cult leaders whose stories have come to light.
We may never know what demons drive such cult leaders or their obviously mentally ill followers. But we do know this: as members of the Body of Christ, we do not follow a cult leader who leads us to grief and tragedy. We are called to follow a very different prophet and leader. We are called to follow a leader who accepts us, showers us with God’s love, actively demonstrates his care for those who are poor, marginalized, and oppressed, and continues to drive out the demons that threaten to destroy us and our world.
We are still in Epiphany tide, the time when the many facets of Jesus’ identity are made manifest. We have seen Jesus at his baptism, and we have heard God’s affirmation of him – and, by extension, of us. We have heard Jesus call Nathanael, promising him wonderful visions of Jesus in glory. With the command “metanoeite” ringing in our ears, we have heard Jesus call us to a change of life and his friends to partner with him in drawing us into his net of love. Now at the beginning of what some have called the “eventful day in Capernaum,” we are treated to yet another glimpse of Jesus’ identity.
Make no mistake: whatever the headings in your Bible are, the focus of our gospel reading for today is not a deranged man or his demonic spirit. This is a story about Jesus – and ultimately about God. Having travelled to Capernaum, a Roman outpost on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus entered a synagogue, an assembly hall for pious Jews, and began to teach. He didn’t lead his hearers into demonic self-destructiveness or hatred, as did Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Fred Phelps. He didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way most everyone else did: by looking at the context, parsing the words, and consulting other scholars. This was what the Scribes did in Jesus’ day, what orthodox rabbis do to this day, and indeed what most scholars of Scripture continue to do.
Rather, Jesus taught “with authority.” He taught out of his own identity and understanding of Scripture. For Mark, Jesus was thus not one of many credible teachers. He was the one above all teachers of Scripture, the only one qualified to instruct and command us. He was the one who had fulfilled God’s promise articulated in Deuteronomy, in which God promised those in Exile that God would raise up a prophet like Moses, able to lead them into liberty and life. For Mark, Jesus was the one who ultimately spoke out of his own relationship with God the Creator, through God the Spirit.
Most important, for Mark, Jesus was the one who demonstrated his authority to teach, his status as one who spoke God’s word. But Jesus did not demonstrate his authority through special effects – or even a miracle. For Mark, because the reign of God had already come near in Jesus, the powers of evil and destruction were already defeated as Jesus began his ministry. In this scene, as scholar Eugene Boring reminds us, “There are no incantations, no magic words, no props, no ceremonials or rituals. It is important to see that there is no struggle. From the very first, Jesus stands before a defeated enemy.”2 And what did Jesus command, in order to demonstrate his godly power? He commanded the demonic spirit to “Be silent and come out of him.” Instead of bringing the forces of evil to life, as did the Joneses and Koreshes of this world, Jesus silenced them, by commanding them to muzzle themselves. Most important of all, after his death and resurrection, Jesus empowered his followers – and by extension all of us – to do the same: the follow him in announcing God’s reign and to silence and muzzle the forces of evil and hate among us.
“Be silent and come out of him.” Jesus still speaks with power and authority. He still commands our demons to be silent and come out. We may not always hear him, but he still commands those who incite us and lead us into war to be silent and leave us. Through those who speak his words, he still commands those who engage in acts of terror and those who harm and abuse the innocent to be silent and come out. He still commands those who traffic in women and children to be silent and cease their trade. He still commands those who look down on the mentally ill and blame the poor for their poverty to be silent and to work for change. And to those who rape and pillage the earth out of greed and with scarcely any regard for those who must follow them he thunders, “Stop lobbying and come out.” And as his followers we believe and hope that the demonic powers are already defeated, even if we cannot see Jesus’ victory over them.
“Be silent and come out of them.” Jesus still commands our own private demons – if we would but hear him. To all our negative self-judgments, all the messages of our consumerist culture that tell us that we are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too old, too young, too poor, of the wrong skin color or ethnicity, of the wrong sexual orientation, not sufficiently able-bodied, not educated enough, or not rich enough – to all these demonic voices, Jesus continues to call, “Be silent and come out.” To our busyness and 24/7 noise, Jesus commands, “Be silent.” To the demons who whisper that we can never please God, who tempt us to forget that God has searched us out and knows us, and who lead us to doubt God’s unconditional love for us all, Jesus shouts, “Be silent and come out.” And over and over, Jesus calls us saying, “Stay awhile in prayer. Be silent. Listen for my words of love.”
Just as Jesus transmitted his power and authority to his disciples after his resurrection, so too does he transmit them to us, who are now members of his Body. As we are nourished by him in the Eucharist, in word and sacrament, in speech and action, we are commanded to go out and share his message with others. We are commanded to say to the demons of hate and self-hatred, “Be silent and come out. Accept and share God’s love, for the reign of God has indeed come near to us.”
1. The Associated Press, “Killer says his ideas influenced Utah family suicide,” Athens Messenger, January 30, 2015, p.2.
2. M.Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 65, quoted in Gary W. Charles, “Homiletical Perspective,” in Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. Feasting on the Gospels Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 35.
Tragically for her and her family, Kristi Strack came under Lafferty’s influence in 2003. After reading Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which depicted Lafferty’s murder of his sister-in-law and fifteen-month old niece, Strack began visiting and writing to Lafferty in prison. Although it appears that her contact with him came to an end a few years ago, investigators believe that Lafferty’s beliefs continued to influence her. Tragically, his destructive view ultimately led her, her husband, and their children to down a lethal concoction of methadone and cold medicine. Although Lafferty believes that the Stracks are “in paradise now,” Rick Ross, executive director of the Cult Education Institute, considers Lafferty a dangerous cult leader – even from behind prison walls. “With Lafferty and those that pose as prophets,” said Ross, “they all created a kind of doomsday, a crisis mentality where people felt there was nothing in the world left to live for.”
Why do such “prophets” attract a following? What demons drive such prophets and their followers to such tragic self-destruction? Who can forget David Koresh? In April 1993, Koresh set afire his Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas and took the lives of seventy-five of his followers along with his own. How many of you remember Jim Jones, the cult leader who established “Jonestown” in northern Guyana? In November, 1978, after Jones’ followers murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, who had come on a fact-finding mission, 918 of Jones’ followers, including 276 children, died in his compound, of apparent cyanide poisoning. How about Fred Phelps, the late leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas? His followers, mostly members of his extended family, have not, to my knowledge, committed suicide. However, his organization has spewed out hate messages and added to the grief of many families participating in military funerals. Most of you can think of other similarly destructive cult leaders whose stories have come to light.
We may never know what demons drive such cult leaders or their obviously mentally ill followers. But we do know this: as members of the Body of Christ, we do not follow a cult leader who leads us to grief and tragedy. We are called to follow a very different prophet and leader. We are called to follow a leader who accepts us, showers us with God’s love, actively demonstrates his care for those who are poor, marginalized, and oppressed, and continues to drive out the demons that threaten to destroy us and our world.
We are still in Epiphany tide, the time when the many facets of Jesus’ identity are made manifest. We have seen Jesus at his baptism, and we have heard God’s affirmation of him – and, by extension, of us. We have heard Jesus call Nathanael, promising him wonderful visions of Jesus in glory. With the command “metanoeite” ringing in our ears, we have heard Jesus call us to a change of life and his friends to partner with him in drawing us into his net of love. Now at the beginning of what some have called the “eventful day in Capernaum,” we are treated to yet another glimpse of Jesus’ identity.
Make no mistake: whatever the headings in your Bible are, the focus of our gospel reading for today is not a deranged man or his demonic spirit. This is a story about Jesus – and ultimately about God. Having travelled to Capernaum, a Roman outpost on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus entered a synagogue, an assembly hall for pious Jews, and began to teach. He didn’t lead his hearers into demonic self-destructiveness or hatred, as did Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Fred Phelps. He didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way most everyone else did: by looking at the context, parsing the words, and consulting other scholars. This was what the Scribes did in Jesus’ day, what orthodox rabbis do to this day, and indeed what most scholars of Scripture continue to do.
Rather, Jesus taught “with authority.” He taught out of his own identity and understanding of Scripture. For Mark, Jesus was thus not one of many credible teachers. He was the one above all teachers of Scripture, the only one qualified to instruct and command us. He was the one who had fulfilled God’s promise articulated in Deuteronomy, in which God promised those in Exile that God would raise up a prophet like Moses, able to lead them into liberty and life. For Mark, Jesus was the one who ultimately spoke out of his own relationship with God the Creator, through God the Spirit.
Most important, for Mark, Jesus was the one who demonstrated his authority to teach, his status as one who spoke God’s word. But Jesus did not demonstrate his authority through special effects – or even a miracle. For Mark, because the reign of God had already come near in Jesus, the powers of evil and destruction were already defeated as Jesus began his ministry. In this scene, as scholar Eugene Boring reminds us, “There are no incantations, no magic words, no props, no ceremonials or rituals. It is important to see that there is no struggle. From the very first, Jesus stands before a defeated enemy.”2 And what did Jesus command, in order to demonstrate his godly power? He commanded the demonic spirit to “Be silent and come out of him.” Instead of bringing the forces of evil to life, as did the Joneses and Koreshes of this world, Jesus silenced them, by commanding them to muzzle themselves. Most important of all, after his death and resurrection, Jesus empowered his followers – and by extension all of us – to do the same: the follow him in announcing God’s reign and to silence and muzzle the forces of evil and hate among us.
“Be silent and come out of him.” Jesus still speaks with power and authority. He still commands our demons to be silent and come out. We may not always hear him, but he still commands those who incite us and lead us into war to be silent and leave us. Through those who speak his words, he still commands those who engage in acts of terror and those who harm and abuse the innocent to be silent and come out. He still commands those who traffic in women and children to be silent and cease their trade. He still commands those who look down on the mentally ill and blame the poor for their poverty to be silent and to work for change. And to those who rape and pillage the earth out of greed and with scarcely any regard for those who must follow them he thunders, “Stop lobbying and come out.” And as his followers we believe and hope that the demonic powers are already defeated, even if we cannot see Jesus’ victory over them.
“Be silent and come out of them.” Jesus still commands our own private demons – if we would but hear him. To all our negative self-judgments, all the messages of our consumerist culture that tell us that we are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too old, too young, too poor, of the wrong skin color or ethnicity, of the wrong sexual orientation, not sufficiently able-bodied, not educated enough, or not rich enough – to all these demonic voices, Jesus continues to call, “Be silent and come out.” To our busyness and 24/7 noise, Jesus commands, “Be silent.” To the demons who whisper that we can never please God, who tempt us to forget that God has searched us out and knows us, and who lead us to doubt God’s unconditional love for us all, Jesus shouts, “Be silent and come out.” And over and over, Jesus calls us saying, “Stay awhile in prayer. Be silent. Listen for my words of love.”
Just as Jesus transmitted his power and authority to his disciples after his resurrection, so too does he transmit them to us, who are now members of his Body. As we are nourished by him in the Eucharist, in word and sacrament, in speech and action, we are commanded to go out and share his message with others. We are commanded to say to the demons of hate and self-hatred, “Be silent and come out. Accept and share God’s love, for the reign of God has indeed come near to us.”
1. The Associated Press, “Killer says his ideas influenced Utah family suicide,” Athens Messenger, January 30, 2015, p.2.
2. M.Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 65, quoted in Gary W. Charles, “Homiletical Perspective,” in Cynthia A. Jarvis and Elizabeth Johnson, eds. Feasting on the Gospels Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 35.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Playgrounds instead of War Zones
Metanoeite! Metanoeite! “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here.” Metanoeite and believe God’s Message. Can you hear the urgency in Jesus’ words? Can you hear the call to change? Of course we can’t you say, we don’t speak Koine Greek. What’s that Greek work Jesus used? Well, Jesus didn’t speak Greek either, he spoke Aramaic, but, since Mark was writing for a community that did speak Greek, he quoted what Jesus said in Greek instead of Aramaic. And he used the word metanoeite to convey something important about Jesus’ opening message.
So what does this word mean, and why should we take it seriously? To be honest – and I risk sounding pedantic here – “repent,” the word used by the NRSV, the translation of the Bible that we Episcopalians commonly use, does not begin to convey what the evangelist thought Jesus was saying. “Repent” sounds like something we do on Ash Wednesday, as we let the priest put an ash cross on our foreheads and say the Litany of Penitence. Or perhaps “repent” suggests confessing your sins to a priest and receiving absolution. That’s not what metanoeite means at all! The Message, a very contemporary translation of the Bible, comes a little closer to its meaning. “Change your life,” Jesus says in The Message.
Metanoeite. Let’s see if we can hear a little more clearly what Jesus actually said. First of all, metanoeite, is an imperative verb. Did you need to dust off your high school English? Remember that an imperative verb is a command. Jesus was commanding people to do something. He was not asking, requesting, inviting, or suggesting. He did not say, “If you have time,” or “when you feel like it,” or “if it interests you.” He commanded. And what did he command? He commanded people to change direction, to stop doing what they had always done and start behaving differently. He commanded them to stop looking back to old ways and old laws, to face forward, and to look to the future. He commanded people to realize that, with his coming, everything has to change, and, indeed, everything has already changed. He commanded people to embrace that change and to realize that God is doing a new thing.
Metanoeite. Secondly, metanoeite is in the present tense. In Greek that means an action that continues to go on. So Jesus was telling people that the kind of change he was calling for in their lives was not a one-off thing. It was not something they did once and never had to do again. It was a continuous process. Jesus was commanding people to reassess God’s work every day, and to accept and embrace daily the kinds of changes God was bringing about in the world.
And thirdly, and maybe most important, metanoeite is a plural verb. Jesus wasn’t commanding individual people to change, he wasn’t talking about “me and sweet Jesus,” he was commanding everyone, people everywhere to change their way of life, and to do it together. Hearing Jesus use that word, Mark’s community understood that being followers of Jesus meant that they were to follow Jesus together, that their new lives as Jesus’ disciples would always comprise both their relationship with him and their relationship with one another.
Can you hear the same call for change in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth? Paul was writing a few years before Mark. He and the community to whom he was writing believed that Jesus would return within their own lifetimes, and that belief colors what he says in this part of the letter. We no longer share Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ return, but we still hear his call – his urgent call – to change. Paul himself had experienced the most radical possible change of perspective in his own life after encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now, as he wrote to the fledgling disciples in Corinth, he understood that, because God had acted, because the Word had become flesh in Jesus, because God has established God’s reign, the Corinthians too were called to metanoeite, they too could no longer live as they once had. They were called, urged because the time is short, to see their lives differently. Paul called them to see their lives in a wider context, to understand, in the words of one of our wonderful old hymns, that “God is working God’s purpose out.” Because the Corinthian Christians had committed themselves to following Jesus, they needed to see their lives differently. They were put their relationship with Jesus above all earthly relationships. Consequently, Paul told them, they were to regard nothing and no one, not spouses, not possessions, not business associates, not rituals, not anything, as more important than their relationship with Jesus.
Even our reading from the strange and satirical book of Jonah embodies a call to change. First, Jonah was called by God to change. After refusing to do as God had asked him to do, he finally, grudgingly, accepted God’s call to “Get up, go to Nineveh … and proclaim.” Jonah’s proclamation did not explicitly call the Ninevites to change their ways. Nevertheless, hearing that their great city would be destroyed in forty days, the Ninevites understood their need to beg God’s forgiveness and reform their way of life. And, as Jonah had predicted, in response to the Ninevites’ repentance, God himself demonstrated a change of heart in refraining from destroying Nineveh after all.
Metanoeite. Do you hear the urgency in it? Do you hear the call to change? Is this the time to truly commit yourself to turning around, to changing your orientation, to following Jesus more closely? The time is short: now is the time to accept Jesus’ command. Is faith just an add-on to your life? Now is the time to commit to letting Christ nourish you in the Eucharist regularly, not just when you feel like it, or when you have time. Now is the time to pay attention to your spiritual life – regularly, daily, throughout the day. Now is the time to have what Buddhist monks call “a beginner’s mind,” or to follow the Franciscans in their commitment to always begin again. Now is the time to acknowledge that nothing and no one have a higher claim on you than Jesus and your relationship to him – not your spouse, not your relatives, not your work, not your play, not your politics, not your business. Now is the time to change your life and act as if you believe that God’s reign has already begun.
Can you change the way you see things, can you look to the future and see the possibilities for change that the full coming of God’s reign might bring? “Listen to a young Cambodian, Chath Piersath, praying for his country: There will be playgrounds instead of war zones. There will be more schools instead of brothels and nightclubs. The children will sing songs of joy instead of terror. They will learn how to read love instead of hate.”1
Or hear the story of small farmers in Nicaragua. They too have embraced change. In a recent post for Episcopal Relief and Development, Sara Delaney described attending a workshop on sustainable agricultural development in Nicaragua sponsored by ERD and the Council of Protestant Churches.2 As part of the program, Juana Francisa Saldaña and Octavio Delgadillo have learned new techniques in planting and in soil and water management. They then have shared the new techniques with five “disciples” among their group, staying with them as they try out the methods on their own farms. Everyone involved in the program could see that patience was needed before they could see change. But change did happen! One of the women had lost her land when her husband unexpectedly died. “Undeterred, she has worked to slowly build up her new land, digging trenches, using compost and planting fruits and vegetables. She told [Sara] that she is hoping for the day, in two or three years, when – ‘I can see the fruits on the trees, my children can go and eat, and we can share in solidarity with our brothers and sisters.’
What would it take to bring Chath Piersath’s vision closer to reality? What would it take to help the Nicaraguans continue to change their way of life to develop more sustainable agricultural practices? More important, what are our visions? How is Jesus calling us to change ourselves, our families, this parish, our community? I have visions of a people nourished by Jesus and sent out to be Christ for the world. I have visions of adequate food and healthcare for all and of people of different races, ethnicities, and faith communities working and living in harmony with each other. I have visions of the increased use of sustainable agricultural techniques in this country and the development of sustainable energy sources, so that we may stop our rape of the earth. I look forward to the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Metanoeite! “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
1. Elizabeth Rogers and Elias Amidon, eds. Prayers for a Thousand Years (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 4-5, quoted in Synthesis, January 25, 2015, 3.
2. “The Art of Patience – From the Garden to the Subway Platform,” http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=671f8d0cc20ebfcdbef7f9c19&id=b4671f08c4&e=74e7ab0bc8, January 23, 2015.
So what does this word mean, and why should we take it seriously? To be honest – and I risk sounding pedantic here – “repent,” the word used by the NRSV, the translation of the Bible that we Episcopalians commonly use, does not begin to convey what the evangelist thought Jesus was saying. “Repent” sounds like something we do on Ash Wednesday, as we let the priest put an ash cross on our foreheads and say the Litany of Penitence. Or perhaps “repent” suggests confessing your sins to a priest and receiving absolution. That’s not what metanoeite means at all! The Message, a very contemporary translation of the Bible, comes a little closer to its meaning. “Change your life,” Jesus says in The Message.
Metanoeite. Let’s see if we can hear a little more clearly what Jesus actually said. First of all, metanoeite, is an imperative verb. Did you need to dust off your high school English? Remember that an imperative verb is a command. Jesus was commanding people to do something. He was not asking, requesting, inviting, or suggesting. He did not say, “If you have time,” or “when you feel like it,” or “if it interests you.” He commanded. And what did he command? He commanded people to change direction, to stop doing what they had always done and start behaving differently. He commanded them to stop looking back to old ways and old laws, to face forward, and to look to the future. He commanded people to realize that, with his coming, everything has to change, and, indeed, everything has already changed. He commanded people to embrace that change and to realize that God is doing a new thing.
Metanoeite. Secondly, metanoeite is in the present tense. In Greek that means an action that continues to go on. So Jesus was telling people that the kind of change he was calling for in their lives was not a one-off thing. It was not something they did once and never had to do again. It was a continuous process. Jesus was commanding people to reassess God’s work every day, and to accept and embrace daily the kinds of changes God was bringing about in the world.
And thirdly, and maybe most important, metanoeite is a plural verb. Jesus wasn’t commanding individual people to change, he wasn’t talking about “me and sweet Jesus,” he was commanding everyone, people everywhere to change their way of life, and to do it together. Hearing Jesus use that word, Mark’s community understood that being followers of Jesus meant that they were to follow Jesus together, that their new lives as Jesus’ disciples would always comprise both their relationship with him and their relationship with one another.
Can you hear the same call for change in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Corinth? Paul was writing a few years before Mark. He and the community to whom he was writing believed that Jesus would return within their own lifetimes, and that belief colors what he says in this part of the letter. We no longer share Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ return, but we still hear his call – his urgent call – to change. Paul himself had experienced the most radical possible change of perspective in his own life after encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus. Now, as he wrote to the fledgling disciples in Corinth, he understood that, because God had acted, because the Word had become flesh in Jesus, because God has established God’s reign, the Corinthians too were called to metanoeite, they too could no longer live as they once had. They were called, urged because the time is short, to see their lives differently. Paul called them to see their lives in a wider context, to understand, in the words of one of our wonderful old hymns, that “God is working God’s purpose out.” Because the Corinthian Christians had committed themselves to following Jesus, they needed to see their lives differently. They were put their relationship with Jesus above all earthly relationships. Consequently, Paul told them, they were to regard nothing and no one, not spouses, not possessions, not business associates, not rituals, not anything, as more important than their relationship with Jesus.
Even our reading from the strange and satirical book of Jonah embodies a call to change. First, Jonah was called by God to change. After refusing to do as God had asked him to do, he finally, grudgingly, accepted God’s call to “Get up, go to Nineveh … and proclaim.” Jonah’s proclamation did not explicitly call the Ninevites to change their ways. Nevertheless, hearing that their great city would be destroyed in forty days, the Ninevites understood their need to beg God’s forgiveness and reform their way of life. And, as Jonah had predicted, in response to the Ninevites’ repentance, God himself demonstrated a change of heart in refraining from destroying Nineveh after all.
Metanoeite. Do you hear the urgency in it? Do you hear the call to change? Is this the time to truly commit yourself to turning around, to changing your orientation, to following Jesus more closely? The time is short: now is the time to accept Jesus’ command. Is faith just an add-on to your life? Now is the time to commit to letting Christ nourish you in the Eucharist regularly, not just when you feel like it, or when you have time. Now is the time to pay attention to your spiritual life – regularly, daily, throughout the day. Now is the time to have what Buddhist monks call “a beginner’s mind,” or to follow the Franciscans in their commitment to always begin again. Now is the time to acknowledge that nothing and no one have a higher claim on you than Jesus and your relationship to him – not your spouse, not your relatives, not your work, not your play, not your politics, not your business. Now is the time to change your life and act as if you believe that God’s reign has already begun.
Can you change the way you see things, can you look to the future and see the possibilities for change that the full coming of God’s reign might bring? “Listen to a young Cambodian, Chath Piersath, praying for his country: There will be playgrounds instead of war zones. There will be more schools instead of brothels and nightclubs. The children will sing songs of joy instead of terror. They will learn how to read love instead of hate.”1
Or hear the story of small farmers in Nicaragua. They too have embraced change. In a recent post for Episcopal Relief and Development, Sara Delaney described attending a workshop on sustainable agricultural development in Nicaragua sponsored by ERD and the Council of Protestant Churches.2 As part of the program, Juana Francisa Saldaña and Octavio Delgadillo have learned new techniques in planting and in soil and water management. They then have shared the new techniques with five “disciples” among their group, staying with them as they try out the methods on their own farms. Everyone involved in the program could see that patience was needed before they could see change. But change did happen! One of the women had lost her land when her husband unexpectedly died. “Undeterred, she has worked to slowly build up her new land, digging trenches, using compost and planting fruits and vegetables. She told [Sara] that she is hoping for the day, in two or three years, when – ‘I can see the fruits on the trees, my children can go and eat, and we can share in solidarity with our brothers and sisters.’
What would it take to bring Chath Piersath’s vision closer to reality? What would it take to help the Nicaraguans continue to change their way of life to develop more sustainable agricultural practices? More important, what are our visions? How is Jesus calling us to change ourselves, our families, this parish, our community? I have visions of a people nourished by Jesus and sent out to be Christ for the world. I have visions of adequate food and healthcare for all and of people of different races, ethnicities, and faith communities working and living in harmony with each other. I have visions of the increased use of sustainable agricultural techniques in this country and the development of sustainable energy sources, so that we may stop our rape of the earth. I look forward to the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Metanoeite! “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
1. Elizabeth Rogers and Elias Amidon, eds. Prayers for a Thousand Years (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 4-5, quoted in Synthesis, January 25, 2015, 3.
2. “The Art of Patience – From the Garden to the Subway Platform,” http://us8.campaign-archive2.com/?u=671f8d0cc20ebfcdbef7f9c19&id=b4671f08c4&e=74e7ab0bc8, January 23, 2015.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Baptized in Water
Let’s travel back in memory a ways. I want you to remember your baptism. If you were baptized as an older child or adult, this shouldn’t be too difficult. If you were baptized as an infant and can’t remember your own baptism, then think back to the baptism of someone close to you, or perhaps a baptism in which you participated, or one you witnessed in this church. Where did your baptism take place? Was it outside, perhaps in a river, pond, or stream? Or was it inside, perhaps in a tub or pool. Was it in a church like this one, with a font and pitcher? When you were baptized were you fully immersed, or were you sprinkled on the head with water from the font? When did your baptism take place? How old were you? Who was there? Were you surrounded by family, friends, and parish members? And what did you feel when it was all over? A friend of mine who was baptized as an adult said that afterwards he felt as if he had “the holiest head in town.” Did you feel like that?
We have begun Epiphany tide. You can see the change from the celebratory time of Christmas tide to the growing time of Epiphany tide reflected in the change from the joyful white and gold paraments of Christmas to the calmer green paraments of Epiphany. Epiphany is an important season in the liturgical year. Epiphany gives us the chance to focus on several key occasions in which those around Jesus began to see who he really was. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke we hear of the circumstances surrounding the births of John the Baptizer and Jesus, and in Luke we even hear of an incident from Jesus’ early adolescence. The gospel according to John begins with statements about Jesus identity couched in the language of Greek philosophy. However, the writer of the gospel according to Mark, much of which we will hear during this liturgical year, begins his account with the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. This event, at the beginning of Jesus’ work as an adult, is for the evangelist, as it should be us, an important first sign, among many that are to come, of who Jesus really is.
The community to whom Mark was writing learned several things from Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism. First, they learned that what happened to Jesus that day in the Jordan River was not a private event. Jesus did not come out under cover of darkness and have John immerse him secretly. Instead, Jesus’ baptism was a public event, witnessed by many. Second, Jesus slipped into the gathering along the river without any fanfare and was baptized along with many other people. All the others allowed themselves to be baptized as a sign of repentance after confessing their sins. Although we believe that Jesus had no need to repent, he allowed himself to be baptized to demonstrate his solidarity with those around him. In so doing, he experienced all that other human beings of his day were experiencing.
The evangelist’s community also came to realize through Jesus’ baptism – and perhaps through their own – that God’s grace does not come to us out of the air. It is not something ethereal. Rather, God’s grace is always mediated to us through concrete people. You could not get more concrete and down to earth than John the Baptizer: dressed in camel’s hair, eating locusts and honey, proclaiming God’s word. More important, God’s grace comes to us through the things of nature, through water, earth, light, and sky. The evangelist’s community also learned that by God’s grace Jesus was empowered by God’s Spirit and affirmed by God as both anointed ruler and prophet. God’s declaration, “You are my beloved Son,” echoes psalm 2:7, a psalm of David addressed to a king. God’s declaration that God is “well pleased” with Jesus echoes Isaiah 42:1, and suggests that Jesus is also destined to assume the prophetic role of speaking out for and caring for those who are poor, marginalized and victims of injustice. Finally, the evangelist’s community learns from Mark’s account that in baptism God has called Jesus into ministry. Immediately after his baptism, God’s Spirit drove Jesus into the desert surrounding Jerusalem where he wrestled with how to make real the vision which God had given him.
Fast forward twenty centuries. Are there lessons for us, as Jesus’ followers, in Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism? Go back again to your own baptism or that of someone close to you. Like Jesus’ baptism, our baptisms too are – or should be – public events. The Book of Common Prayer, always our standard for appropriate practice, is clear that, “Holy Baptism is appropriately administered within the Eucharist as the chief service on a Sunday or other feast.” The BCP also notes that the most appropriate days on which to administer baptism are today, i.e., the Sunday of the Baptism of our Lord, the vigil of Easter, the vigil of Pentecost, All Saints Day, and the Sunday following All Saints Day. Just as Jesus demonstrated solidarity with his own people, our practice of baptism reminds us that baptism welcomes us into a community, that we are all part of a Body, and that the Christian life is always lived in common – even by monks, nuns, and hermits!
As in Jesus’ baptism, God’s grace is mediated to us through people and things. Some of you may have come from traditions where baptism was only offered to children old enough to consent to it. Nevertheless, most of us did not walk up to a river, pool, or font, and immerse ourselves. Someone brought us to the water, and someone poured it over us. And, of course, God continues to supply us with more grace than we can possibly imagine, through the people around us, through the sacraments, and through God’s good creation.
Perhaps more important, just as God did with Jesus, God also affirms us in our baptisms. God acknowledges and accepts our imperfection, our brokenness, and our incompleteness as God’s creatures. But God also empowers us by God’s Spirit. It’s not so much that we receive God’s Spirit – as people created in God’s image, we already share in God’s Spirit. We have what Quakers call “that of God in every man.” I like to think instead that in baptism God awakens God’s Spirit within us, so that we can then be open to God’s presence in our lives. God also affirms as God’s beloved children. Henri Nouwen, the great Dutch spiritual teacher, tells us that the the spiritual life, our life, is a “life of the beloved.” Pause a minute. Hear God saying to you, “You are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son.”
And here’s the most important lesson for us. In our baptisms, God also calls us to discern our ministries, to ask how we too are called to help bring God’s reign nearer. And we too are warned that we might end up following Jesus to the cross. Indeed, one writer suggests that we should issue warnings with our baptismal certificates: “This is a passport to places you never thought you would go, to be an emissary of the living God in the desert and the wilderness, to plant seeds of hope and healing and life.”1
Are there concrete ways we can continue the process begun by God in our baptisms? To begin with, we can remember that we have been baptized. Most of you know that there is blessed water in our font. I invite you, as you enter the church, to dip your fingers into it and either touch your forehead or make the sign of the cross to remind yourself of what God has done to you and for you in baptism. I invite you also to remember the anniversary of your baptism. Light a candle, thank God for those who brought you to baptism, and pray for them. Let the Spirit drive you into the wilderness. No, I don’t mean backpacking in the mountains – although for some people, that might be just the right place to listen to God. Find some time, even just a few minutes, for silence in your life. Read Morning or Evening Prayer, or any other material that turns you back to God, and then let God’s Spirit speak to you. Consider a more formal quiet day, a day in which you can join others in learning some prayer practices and awakening more fully to God’s presence. I would even invite you to consider a silent retreat at a convent, monastery, or retreat center – they are not just for clergy! Continue to let God’s grace become part of your physical body in the Eucharist and to allow God to lead you more deeply into God’s life. Finally, continue to pray for a vision of the ministry to which God is calling you. Anne Lamott has a lovely little book on prayer entitled Help, Thanks, Wow. After bringing your needs before God, thanking God, and praising God, add one more word: “how.” Ask God, “How can I continue to know myself as beloved, how can I share your love with others, and how can I follow in Jesus’ footsteps?”
Then trust that God has indeed awakened God’s Spirit within you, and rejoice that God has empowered you to bring God’s love to the world.
1. Diane Roth, “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century, January 7, 2015, 20.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Seekers
I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. It was a long time ago, but I can still remember it all: the journey, Herod, the house, the child. There are days when I still can’t believe we really did it, really actually saw the child, especially since we had such a hard time finding him. But it was all worth it. My life has never been the same since. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
We were astrologers. Well, I was really an apprentice, but I was far enough along that my master slipped me into the travelling party. We lived in Persepolis, in the eastern part of the Persian Empire. We were Zoroastrians at that time. As astrologers, we diligently studied the skies. We read all the old treatises and knew exactly where all the stars, comets, and galaxies were. We knew how the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Buddhists had mapped out the constellations. About that time, we’d had some inkling that some kind of shift or transformation was about to take place in the cosmos, but no one was sure what it was, or how we would know that it had happened.
One night my master came running in from the observation room. “The House of the Jews,” he shouted, “It’s in the house of the Jews!” “What is, master?” I asked. “It’s a star I’ve never seen before in that constellation,” he shouted. “Call the others!” After the others had studied the House of the Jews, they tentatively agreed that there seemed to be a new star there. None of them could say for sure the meaning of such a sign. My master, though, was sure that this star was the sign of the transformation we had been expecting. He said, “I feel a stirring, deep down. Some of us most go to Jerusalem, to the center of the land of the Jews and find out what this star means.” Most of the others looked at my master doubtfully. Jerusalem? Travel a thousand miles just because you think you see a new star?
My master was determined. He doggedly pursued his friends, and finally a few other astrologers agreed to go with him. They had to raise funds for the trip. They had to buy the provisions and equipment. They had to arrange for the camels and the camel drivers. My master had to get a letter of introduction to the government in Jerusalem. Finally, we were able to leave Persepolis. It should have taken us about two months to get to Jerusalem. Even though my master had maps, we got lost several times. Some of the roads were washed out. The camels got sick, and one even died. And the camel drivers demanded that we spend longer than just one night whenever we stopped at a caravanserai. And, of course, none of us knew exactly where we were going. My master had figured out that we were looking for “the king of the Jews,” but he had no idea where this king might actually be.
At last we reached Jerusalem. We took our letters of introduction to Herod’s palace. We knew that Herod was an evil king – people said he had actually murdered members of his own family – but we asked for an audience with him anyway. My master asked him point blank, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” Herod and his courtiers went white. Herod actually trembled. Then he called for his priestly advisors. His voice shook as he asked them what Scripture had foretold about the birth of the Messiah. “Bethlehem,” they said, “the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem.” With that, Herod sent us on our way, reminding us to come back and let him know where this child was, so that he too could worship him. I was skeptical. Herod had called himself the “king of the Jews.” Would he really let someone else, even a child, usurp his power?
Although Bethlehem was only six miles away from Herod’s palace, again we got lost. We couldn’t find the right gate out of the city. When we got to Bethlehem we wandered around for a while. Then we reached a small house on the street of the carpenters. “This is it!” my master shouted. “Are you sure?” the others said. “This little house? We thought we were looking for another king.” My master gingerly knocked. I held my breath. A man ushered us in. And there he was, the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a toddler, maybe eighteen months old or so, sitting on his mother’s lap. Seeing us, he leapt up and ran to us. He laughed and crowed and opened his arms to welcome us. We were awe-struck. For several minutes we couldn’t do anything but kneel there gazing at him. Then he laughed some more. We unfroze and began to unpack our bags and pull out the gifts we had carefully carried all the way from Persepolis, gold, incense and myrrh. Even now, I wonder how my master actually found the child. I wonder if the child knew who we were. The gifts we had brought were what one would bring to a new king, but I wonder what his mother thought when she saw them.
We found a place to stay for a few days. Then we knew it was time to go back. The night before we were to leave my master had a dream. “We’re not going back to Herod,” he said, “that old fox is up to no good.” My master consulted his maps and figured out how to get back to Persia without going through Jerusalem. Later, I shuddered as I heard that Herod, instead of worshipping the holy child, had ordered his soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. “Don’t worry,” said my master. “Herod didn’t find him. His parents had already taken him to safety in Egypt.”
I’m an old man now. I have children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. They are all wonderful people. But something about that child made him more wonderful than any other child I’ve ever known. And my life changed forever the day I saw him. I knew myself as loved and accepted by God in a way I had never known before. I knew that the covenant God had made with the Jews now included all people, even us Zoroastrians. How grateful I am that my master saw that miraculous sign and persuaded us all to join him on that wondrous journey.
Only Matthew tells us this story. And what a wonderful story it is. How can it be that foreigners, people from Iran, a country from which the U.S. is currently estranged, were the first to sense the true identity of the holy child? Could it be that God’s revelations sometimes come to outsiders, not only to faithful Christians or Jews? Is it possible that God’s revelations even come to our enemies or to those we think undeserving of God’s love? How could it be that the Persian astrologers were led not by Scripture, but by a celestial phenomenon? Could it be that God speaks through the non-human world as well as through the human world? Could it be that birds and fish and bears and deer, even our own companion animals, reveal something to us of God? And how could it be that God spoke to the astrologers through dreams? Could God be speaking to us too through our dreams, through our hopes, wishes, fears, and joys?
How could it be that the astrologers trusted God to lead them back home by an alternate route? As 2015 begins, many of us are not where we thought we might be. Perhaps unexpected changes have occurred in our families, in our health, and in our relationships. Perhaps someone has lost a loved one or been forced to change living arrangements. Perhaps good things have happened. Perhaps we’ve changed jobs, joined a new church community, or taken on new roles. Perhaps we have a deeper sense of God’s love for us. At the very least, by virtue of being a year older, we are travelling by a different road than we travelled last year. Even so, like the Persian astrologers we too can trust God to continue to reveal Godself to us and to lead us on the challenging alternate roads of our lives.
Laura Sumner Truax reminds us that, “The Magi are traveling companions for us in our information-rich age and especially good for us to emulate as we put one year to bed and once again hold out hope for the new one.”1 We may think we know where we are headed, but just as 2014 took many of us in new directions, so will 2015. And as we set forth, we may not have any better information than the astrologers. Even though we have diligently read the Bible, faithfully worshipped, and fervently prayed, we still may have only a dim sense of who God is and what God desires for us. We still may not know exactly where God is leading us. We still may get stuck or discouraged and wonder who can give us accurate directions. We still may encounter detours and alternate routes, even to return home. We still may have to endure losing companions along the way.
Here is the good news: God is with us. Wherever we are on our spiritual journey, beginner, wanderer, wonderer, or old soul, God is with us. God will lead us, sustain us, and bring us home. And we can be sure that, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century, 130, 26, Dec. 25, 2013, p. 19.
We were astrologers. Well, I was really an apprentice, but I was far enough along that my master slipped me into the travelling party. We lived in Persepolis, in the eastern part of the Persian Empire. We were Zoroastrians at that time. As astrologers, we diligently studied the skies. We read all the old treatises and knew exactly where all the stars, comets, and galaxies were. We knew how the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Buddhists had mapped out the constellations. About that time, we’d had some inkling that some kind of shift or transformation was about to take place in the cosmos, but no one was sure what it was, or how we would know that it had happened.
One night my master came running in from the observation room. “The House of the Jews,” he shouted, “It’s in the house of the Jews!” “What is, master?” I asked. “It’s a star I’ve never seen before in that constellation,” he shouted. “Call the others!” After the others had studied the House of the Jews, they tentatively agreed that there seemed to be a new star there. None of them could say for sure the meaning of such a sign. My master, though, was sure that this star was the sign of the transformation we had been expecting. He said, “I feel a stirring, deep down. Some of us most go to Jerusalem, to the center of the land of the Jews and find out what this star means.” Most of the others looked at my master doubtfully. Jerusalem? Travel a thousand miles just because you think you see a new star?
My master was determined. He doggedly pursued his friends, and finally a few other astrologers agreed to go with him. They had to raise funds for the trip. They had to buy the provisions and equipment. They had to arrange for the camels and the camel drivers. My master had to get a letter of introduction to the government in Jerusalem. Finally, we were able to leave Persepolis. It should have taken us about two months to get to Jerusalem. Even though my master had maps, we got lost several times. Some of the roads were washed out. The camels got sick, and one even died. And the camel drivers demanded that we spend longer than just one night whenever we stopped at a caravanserai. And, of course, none of us knew exactly where we were going. My master had figured out that we were looking for “the king of the Jews,” but he had no idea where this king might actually be.
At last we reached Jerusalem. We took our letters of introduction to Herod’s palace. We knew that Herod was an evil king – people said he had actually murdered members of his own family – but we asked for an audience with him anyway. My master asked him point blank, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” Herod and his courtiers went white. Herod actually trembled. Then he called for his priestly advisors. His voice shook as he asked them what Scripture had foretold about the birth of the Messiah. “Bethlehem,” they said, “the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem.” With that, Herod sent us on our way, reminding us to come back and let him know where this child was, so that he too could worship him. I was skeptical. Herod had called himself the “king of the Jews.” Would he really let someone else, even a child, usurp his power?
Although Bethlehem was only six miles away from Herod’s palace, again we got lost. We couldn’t find the right gate out of the city. When we got to Bethlehem we wandered around for a while. Then we reached a small house on the street of the carpenters. “This is it!” my master shouted. “Are you sure?” the others said. “This little house? We thought we were looking for another king.” My master gingerly knocked. I held my breath. A man ushered us in. And there he was, the most beautiful child I had ever seen, a toddler, maybe eighteen months old or so, sitting on his mother’s lap. Seeing us, he leapt up and ran to us. He laughed and crowed and opened his arms to welcome us. We were awe-struck. For several minutes we couldn’t do anything but kneel there gazing at him. Then he laughed some more. We unfroze and began to unpack our bags and pull out the gifts we had carefully carried all the way from Persepolis, gold, incense and myrrh. Even now, I wonder how my master actually found the child. I wonder if the child knew who we were. The gifts we had brought were what one would bring to a new king, but I wonder what his mother thought when she saw them.
We found a place to stay for a few days. Then we knew it was time to go back. The night before we were to leave my master had a dream. “We’re not going back to Herod,” he said, “that old fox is up to no good.” My master consulted his maps and figured out how to get back to Persia without going through Jerusalem. Later, I shuddered as I heard that Herod, instead of worshipping the holy child, had ordered his soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger. “Don’t worry,” said my master. “Herod didn’t find him. His parents had already taken him to safety in Egypt.”
I’m an old man now. I have children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. They are all wonderful people. But something about that child made him more wonderful than any other child I’ve ever known. And my life changed forever the day I saw him. I knew myself as loved and accepted by God in a way I had never known before. I knew that the covenant God had made with the Jews now included all people, even us Zoroastrians. How grateful I am that my master saw that miraculous sign and persuaded us all to join him on that wondrous journey.
Only Matthew tells us this story. And what a wonderful story it is. How can it be that foreigners, people from Iran, a country from which the U.S. is currently estranged, were the first to sense the true identity of the holy child? Could it be that God’s revelations sometimes come to outsiders, not only to faithful Christians or Jews? Is it possible that God’s revelations even come to our enemies or to those we think undeserving of God’s love? How could it be that the Persian astrologers were led not by Scripture, but by a celestial phenomenon? Could it be that God speaks through the non-human world as well as through the human world? Could it be that birds and fish and bears and deer, even our own companion animals, reveal something to us of God? And how could it be that God spoke to the astrologers through dreams? Could God be speaking to us too through our dreams, through our hopes, wishes, fears, and joys?
How could it be that the astrologers trusted God to lead them back home by an alternate route? As 2015 begins, many of us are not where we thought we might be. Perhaps unexpected changes have occurred in our families, in our health, and in our relationships. Perhaps someone has lost a loved one or been forced to change living arrangements. Perhaps good things have happened. Perhaps we’ve changed jobs, joined a new church community, or taken on new roles. Perhaps we have a deeper sense of God’s love for us. At the very least, by virtue of being a year older, we are travelling by a different road than we travelled last year. Even so, like the Persian astrologers we too can trust God to continue to reveal Godself to us and to lead us on the challenging alternate roads of our lives.
Laura Sumner Truax reminds us that, “The Magi are traveling companions for us in our information-rich age and especially good for us to emulate as we put one year to bed and once again hold out hope for the new one.”1 We may think we know where we are headed, but just as 2014 took many of us in new directions, so will 2015. And as we set forth, we may not have any better information than the astrologers. Even though we have diligently read the Bible, faithfully worshipped, and fervently prayed, we still may have only a dim sense of who God is and what God desires for us. We still may not know exactly where God is leading us. We still may get stuck or discouraged and wonder who can give us accurate directions. We still may encounter detours and alternate routes, even to return home. We still may have to endure losing companions along the way.
Here is the good news: God is with us. Wherever we are on our spiritual journey, beginner, wanderer, wonderer, or old soul, God is with us. God will lead us, sustain us, and bring us home. And we can be sure that, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
1. “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century, 130, 26, Dec. 25, 2013, p. 19.
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