What is faith? Is faith agreeing with a set of intellectual statements? Do you have faith if you can recite – and understand – all the statements of the Apostles and Nicene creeds? Is faith conscientious observance of all the traditional spiritual disciplines and practices? Do you demonstrate great faith if you receive communion every Sunday, fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, or dress up in fancy vestments? I think our reading from the prophet Isaiah this morning had something to say about that! Is faith being able to quote Scripture? Do you show great faith if you can win an argument by proof-texting your opponents by referring to verses in the Bible – or the Torah, or the Qur’an, or the Bhagavad Gita?
If you were listening to the reading this morning from the Letter to the Hebrews, you already know the answers to those questions. You already know that the answer to each one is “No.” Actually, all four of our readings have something to say about what faith is. Our reading from Isaiah, from whom we will hear again next week, and our psalm warn us about relying on religious rituals alone, especially when our rituals don’t connect with how we live our lives outside the temple – or on the other side of the red doors. In our reading from the gospel of Luke, we hear Jesus encouraging us to hang in there, stay alert, and keep on doing what we discern God has called us to do – words that strengthened Luke’s community and still comfort us.
However, it is the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews that provides us the most compelling description of the nature of faith. Actually, we don’t often hear from the Letter to the Hebrews in worship – and probably less in preaching! Most of us would rather preach about Jesus! Hebrews was probably written sometime after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem, i.e., after 70 AD. Although its author is anonymous, we are virtually certain that it was not written by Paul – its language and subject matter are very different from those of the rest of Paul’s letters. Actually, it’s not really a letter. Rather, it’s an extended sermon – and far longer than most Episcopal priests would dare to preach! And despite its traditional title, it was probably addressed to a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles, not to an exclusively Jewish Christian community. Even so, clearly its author expected that his hearers knew about the details of temple worship, and that they were well acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures.
One thing we can surmise from reading this sermon is that it was addressed to a community facing hostility and conflict with the wider culture around them, and that its members were ridiculed and shamed for professing to be followers of an itinerant rabbi who had been executed as a common criminal. These early followers were not subject to martyrdom yet, but they were possibly also wondering when Jesus’ promise to return would be fulfilled. So this sermon was written to console and encourage them and to bolster their commitment to Jesus. The writer sought to reassure them that, despite their hardships, they had made the right decision to follow him.
Much of the early part of this sermon deals with various aspects of temple worship. The writer argues that Jesus is the fulfillment of all sacrifices, the final sacrifice, and that sacrificial worship is now no longer needed. At the end of chapter 10, just before today’s reading begins, he gives his hearers a charge: “Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised” (10:35-36). Chapter 11, some of which we have just heard, is his attempt to flesh out that endurance, by offering a definition of faith and examples from the Hebrew Scriptures of faithful people.
Our passage opens with that definition a faith – actually a definition that is often quoted but not well understood, since the Greek uses words that are extremely difficult to translate accurately. Essentially, what the writer is telling us is that faith is absolute assurance that God is real, that there is a spiritual dimension to the ground of life, that there is a deeper reality to life than we can see on the surface of things. Faith is the conviction that all that we see and know, the cosmos, all creation, has been brought into being by God and is sustained by God. Faith is the deepest possible trust that God has made promises to us, that God has fulfilled God’s promises to us in the past, and most especially in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that God will continue to fulfill God’s promise to renew all things. Most important of all, the writer is certain that faith is a dynamic force that leads us to answer God’s call to us, even when we are not certain where God might be leading us.
The writer then provides examples from Scripture to illustrate his definition and encourage his hearers. In the verses omitted from today’s reading, the writer mentions Abel, Enoch, and Noah, who especially displayed trust in God by heeding God’s warning and building the ark – even under cloudless skies. However, for this writer, Abraham is the primary example of faithful response to God’s call. The early chapters of the book of Genesis tell us in detail how God called Abraham and Sarah to leave their ancestral home in Ur and to journey to a completely new land. God also promised that Abraham and Sarah would have thousands of descendants, even though they had reached old age without any children. For new followers of Jesus, who were hearing this sermon, Abraham and Sarah must have been truly encouraging and apt examples of faith in their willingness to follow God’s leading and trust God’s promises, even when they could see the end of their journey only in the distance.
And so they are for us too. We too trust in God’s leading, even when we are not sure where we are going. Certainly anyone who has agreed to go back to school, take a new job, have another child, retire, or discern for ordained ministry, has faced that moment when we say, “Are you sure, God? Is this right?” Even Thomas Merton, a deeply contemplative Trappist monk, knew such moments, when he said, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end…. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
Like Merton, who in his last years also developed a profound respect for Buddhist contemplation, we too are called to continue our spiritual journey. We know that the font was just the beginning of the journey. We acknowledge that we are called to not stop permanently at any stage of spiritual practice or understanding, but to “live in tents,” to continue to grow in wisdom and compassion. We too understand that we are called to put our faith into action, to embrace others, and to work to make God’s promises real in our own time.
And do we too have examples of faith in action? Certainly, like the hearers of the sermon to the Hebrews, we can find models of faith in the Bible, in Isaiah and Jeremiah, who struggled with the political movements of their own days, and in Jesus’ friends and followers, who sought him out for healing, and who witnessed his death and resurrection. The Apostles creed reminds us that we believe in a “communion of saints.” Open a copy of Holy Women, Holy Men. Examples of faith in action, both of people traditionally on the calendar of saints, and those closer to us in time, will leap off the pages for you.
And we also have examples of faith right in the world around us. Twice a week, volunteers from All Saints Episcopal Church near Brussels, Belgium travel twenty miles to the central Brussels trains station. There they serve a meal and deliver much-needed clothing, toiletries, and sleeping gear to the refugees flooding into Belgium, people often arriving with only the bare minimum: the clothes they are wearing, and their only link to home – a cell phone. In support of this ministry, members of All Saints donate some of the food supplies to serve approximately 100 people at each meal, supplemented with additional food purchased with parish funds and special fundraising efforts. Like the volunteers, who have ventured forth trusting that God would bless their efforts, the refugees, most of whom have come from Syria and other war-torn areas, have also been people of faith, who have left everything in search of a better life. For the refugees, “The Episcopal community in Europe has been inspiring in its compassionate effort to bring safety, comfort and fellowship to those who are displaced,” said a program officer for Episcopal Relief & Development, which helps support this ministry. “The people of All Saints’ Church in Waterloo especially have taken initiative, continuing to increase their activities and motivating the wider community to get involved in outreach efforts as well.”
We have not been refugees. We have not been tortured or murdered for our faith. Most of us have not been ridiculed for our faith. Even so, as we continue to commit ourselves to following God’s leading, we too are called to faith. We too are called to live our lives knowing that the ground of all is love, that Jesus has shown us the nature of that love, and that there is a divine spark within each of us that helps us to trust the promises of Scripture and work to bring nearer the reign of God.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
All Things Come of Thee
“How much Land Does a Man Need?” That is the title of a story by the nineteenth-century writer Leo Tolstoy. In the story a peasant makes a deal. He can buy all the land he can circle on foot in one day for only 1,000 rubles. However, if he doesn’t return to his starting place by sunset, he gets no land – and he loses his money. The greedy peasant frantically races the sun as he tries to cover as wide a circle as he can. Just short of his starting point, he drops dead of exhaustion. He is buried in an ordinary grave, only six feet long. In his death, Tolstoy thus gives us the ironic answer to the question posed in the title of the story.
How much is enough? What do we, as Jesus’ followers, truly need? What do we, as people called to seek the “things that are above,” truly require? Be warned: I am about to cross a great taboo. No, I’m not about to preach about sex or politics! I am about to talk about money, in the church – and maybe more than once between now and All Saints Day. We in the church are so reluctant to talk about money! Like most Americans, we think of our use of money as strictly our own affair – not something a preacher should be addressing. Many of us might even secretly agree with Gordon Gekko, the corporate raider in Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street,” who told a group of stockholders that greed is good. Alan Greenspan, the billionaire Koch brothers, and other influential business and political leaders openly follow the philosophy of author Ayn Rand, who titled one of her books The Virtue of Selfishness. You may not be a follower of Rand. Even so, Jesus’ talk about money might still make you uncomfortable, especially his decided preference for the poor in Luke’s Gospel. But we’d better listen to Jesus, because our use of our money is at least as much an expression of our faith as anything else we do. Show me your checkbook, and I’ll know what you really believe!
Indeed, our lessons today offer sobering perspectives on wealth and possessions. In our gospel reading, Jesus minces no words as he explicitly inveighs against greed and the stockpiling of possessions. “Be on your guard,” he thunders, “against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he tells the neat parable of the rich fool. Does the rich man in the parable remind you of anyone you know? Make no mistake: Jesus reminds us that, because death strips us of all our possessions, we must instead be “rich toward God.”
The writer of the letter to the Christians at Colossae couldn’t agree more. Here too we hear a caution against greed – as well as other behaviors that attach us to this world. I wonder. As you heard the catalogue of sins, did you also hear that greed is idolatry? And did you remember that idolatry – worship of false gods – is just what the Israelites were doing to anger God in our reading from Hosea? What is more important, the writer to the Colossians reminds us that, as Jesus’ disciples, as people who have been dressed in the new clothes of baptism, we are to live a new and different kind of life from that which we lived previously. We are to direct our lives toward God, and we are to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is….”
How are we to do this? What does it mean to be “rich toward God,” or to set our minds on “things that are above?” The reading from Hosea reminds us of God’s great love and compassion for us, but offers us no alternative to a life of idolatry and fleeting pursuits. Jesus, in our Gospel reading, implicitly condemns the rich man for his self-centered intent to build bigger barns and live a life of ease. However, Jesus does not tell us what the rich man should have done instead, nor does he tell us what being “rich toward God” means. The writer to the Colossians lists the bad habits we need to give up. However, other than suggesting that Christ has overcome all ethnic divisions, he does not tell us what habits and virtues we need to cultivate. How shall we give up our attachment to earthly things and seek the “things that are above?”
Beginning in the fourth century, women and men sought to follow Jesus’ teachings about possessions by withdrawing from society and living in isolated communities. In Egypt and North Africa, communities sprang up in the desert, dedicated to the simple life. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia wrote his famous Rule for monastic communities that stressed living the simple life in common, forsaking most pleasures of the flesh, respecting the needs of others, and committing oneself to remaining in community. Benedict’s Rule proved to be so influential that it still provides the template for the rule of almost every Roman Catholic and Anglican vowed community. Most of us are not prepared to join monastic communities. Even so, there are ways to create a “monastery of the heart,” to use the phrase of Benedictine sister Joan Chittister. And as her commentary on Benedict’s Rule so insightfully suggests, it is possible for Benedict to guide even us secular twenty-first century followers of Jesus.
What are some ways we might begin becoming “rich toward God” and seeking “things that are above?” For starters, we can be honest about the source of our wealth. The rich man in Jesus’ parable behaved as if he alone were responsible for the abundant produce of the land. In truth, it was the fertile soil, good weather, hard work of his farmhands, and domestic support of his womenfolk that produced the abundance. The same is true for us – all of us. None of us is self-made. If you are sitting here, you have been gifted – even if you received no inheritance from your parents, even if you struggled to finish school with scholarships and loans, even if you’ve worked hard every day of your life. Many of us were fortunate to have had supportive families, enough food, and an education provided by other people’s taxes. Our parents took us to the doctor and dentist. We’ve had roads, and street lights, police and fire protection, hospitals and churches. We’ve been fortunate to live in a web – a village if you will – that has helped make us what we are and enabled us to enjoy much good fortune and comparative wealth. None of us lives on the streets, and all of us have a good idea of where our next meal is coming from. Understanding that it is by good fortune that we have our houses, clothing, food, Kindles, Ipads, and whatever, and that we are alive and able to do God’s work, is the first step towards being “rich towards God.”
Second, we can look at our checkbook. Where are we actually using our resources? Do we have a balanced life? Or are we tied down by possessions? Can we simplify our lives? In her commentary on the Benedictine Rule, Chittister reminds us that our possessions tie us to the earth. “They clutter our space; they crimp our hearts; they sour our souls. Benedict says that the answer is that we not allow ourselves to have anything beyond life’s simple staples….” What areas of our lives can we declutter and simplify? What are we no longer using that we can give to others?
And then we need to actively consider how we might share our wealth with others. In the first half of life, that may mean especially providing for the needs of our own families. However, in the second half of life, sharing our wealth should mean considering the needs of others outside our families. In both halves of life, we need to be intentional in our use of our resources. We need to be intentional in our gifts to the church, as well as to other institutions that we support. John Wesley is reported to have admonished his followers, “Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?” Ultimately, being “rich toward God” and using our wealth to seek the “things that are above” mean using our resources to benefit others. If we want to leave a lasting legacy, if we want to ensure that our lives are more than “vanity,” then we must have a plan for how that is to be done – a will. The Book of Common explicitly directs me to instruct you to make wills, younger people to ensure that their dependents are properly provided for, and older people to ensure that their legacy honors God.
Finally, we need to remember that concern for possessions – of any kind – makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to be open to God. Ultimately, we are all naked and empty-handed before God. We begin our lives naked and empty-handed, and we end them that way. In between our birth and death we thank God for God’s great love and compassion. We seek to learn how we can become rich toward God. We ask God to help us to travel light, to help us to let go of all that gets in between ourselves and God. Then we pray to know how to intentionally use our possessions to further God’s agenda in the world. Truly blessed are those who can say, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”
How much is enough? What do we, as Jesus’ followers, truly need? What do we, as people called to seek the “things that are above,” truly require? Be warned: I am about to cross a great taboo. No, I’m not about to preach about sex or politics! I am about to talk about money, in the church – and maybe more than once between now and All Saints Day. We in the church are so reluctant to talk about money! Like most Americans, we think of our use of money as strictly our own affair – not something a preacher should be addressing. Many of us might even secretly agree with Gordon Gekko, the corporate raider in Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street,” who told a group of stockholders that greed is good. Alan Greenspan, the billionaire Koch brothers, and other influential business and political leaders openly follow the philosophy of author Ayn Rand, who titled one of her books The Virtue of Selfishness. You may not be a follower of Rand. Even so, Jesus’ talk about money might still make you uncomfortable, especially his decided preference for the poor in Luke’s Gospel. But we’d better listen to Jesus, because our use of our money is at least as much an expression of our faith as anything else we do. Show me your checkbook, and I’ll know what you really believe!
Indeed, our lessons today offer sobering perspectives on wealth and possessions. In our gospel reading, Jesus minces no words as he explicitly inveighs against greed and the stockpiling of possessions. “Be on your guard,” he thunders, “against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he tells the neat parable of the rich fool. Does the rich man in the parable remind you of anyone you know? Make no mistake: Jesus reminds us that, because death strips us of all our possessions, we must instead be “rich toward God.”
The writer of the letter to the Christians at Colossae couldn’t agree more. Here too we hear a caution against greed – as well as other behaviors that attach us to this world. I wonder. As you heard the catalogue of sins, did you also hear that greed is idolatry? And did you remember that idolatry – worship of false gods – is just what the Israelites were doing to anger God in our reading from Hosea? What is more important, the writer to the Colossians reminds us that, as Jesus’ disciples, as people who have been dressed in the new clothes of baptism, we are to live a new and different kind of life from that which we lived previously. We are to direct our lives toward God, and we are to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is….”
How are we to do this? What does it mean to be “rich toward God,” or to set our minds on “things that are above?” The reading from Hosea reminds us of God’s great love and compassion for us, but offers us no alternative to a life of idolatry and fleeting pursuits. Jesus, in our Gospel reading, implicitly condemns the rich man for his self-centered intent to build bigger barns and live a life of ease. However, Jesus does not tell us what the rich man should have done instead, nor does he tell us what being “rich toward God” means. The writer to the Colossians lists the bad habits we need to give up. However, other than suggesting that Christ has overcome all ethnic divisions, he does not tell us what habits and virtues we need to cultivate. How shall we give up our attachment to earthly things and seek the “things that are above?”
Beginning in the fourth century, women and men sought to follow Jesus’ teachings about possessions by withdrawing from society and living in isolated communities. In Egypt and North Africa, communities sprang up in the desert, dedicated to the simple life. In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia wrote his famous Rule for monastic communities that stressed living the simple life in common, forsaking most pleasures of the flesh, respecting the needs of others, and committing oneself to remaining in community. Benedict’s Rule proved to be so influential that it still provides the template for the rule of almost every Roman Catholic and Anglican vowed community. Most of us are not prepared to join monastic communities. Even so, there are ways to create a “monastery of the heart,” to use the phrase of Benedictine sister Joan Chittister. And as her commentary on Benedict’s Rule so insightfully suggests, it is possible for Benedict to guide even us secular twenty-first century followers of Jesus.
What are some ways we might begin becoming “rich toward God” and seeking “things that are above?” For starters, we can be honest about the source of our wealth. The rich man in Jesus’ parable behaved as if he alone were responsible for the abundant produce of the land. In truth, it was the fertile soil, good weather, hard work of his farmhands, and domestic support of his womenfolk that produced the abundance. The same is true for us – all of us. None of us is self-made. If you are sitting here, you have been gifted – even if you received no inheritance from your parents, even if you struggled to finish school with scholarships and loans, even if you’ve worked hard every day of your life. Many of us were fortunate to have had supportive families, enough food, and an education provided by other people’s taxes. Our parents took us to the doctor and dentist. We’ve had roads, and street lights, police and fire protection, hospitals and churches. We’ve been fortunate to live in a web – a village if you will – that has helped make us what we are and enabled us to enjoy much good fortune and comparative wealth. None of us lives on the streets, and all of us have a good idea of where our next meal is coming from. Understanding that it is by good fortune that we have our houses, clothing, food, Kindles, Ipads, and whatever, and that we are alive and able to do God’s work, is the first step towards being “rich towards God.”
Second, we can look at our checkbook. Where are we actually using our resources? Do we have a balanced life? Or are we tied down by possessions? Can we simplify our lives? In her commentary on the Benedictine Rule, Chittister reminds us that our possessions tie us to the earth. “They clutter our space; they crimp our hearts; they sour our souls. Benedict says that the answer is that we not allow ourselves to have anything beyond life’s simple staples….” What areas of our lives can we declutter and simplify? What are we no longer using that we can give to others?
And then we need to actively consider how we might share our wealth with others. In the first half of life, that may mean especially providing for the needs of our own families. However, in the second half of life, sharing our wealth should mean considering the needs of others outside our families. In both halves of life, we need to be intentional in our use of our resources. We need to be intentional in our gifts to the church, as well as to other institutions that we support. John Wesley is reported to have admonished his followers, “Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?” Ultimately, being “rich toward God” and using our wealth to seek the “things that are above” mean using our resources to benefit others. If we want to leave a lasting legacy, if we want to ensure that our lives are more than “vanity,” then we must have a plan for how that is to be done – a will. The Book of Common explicitly directs me to instruct you to make wills, younger people to ensure that their dependents are properly provided for, and older people to ensure that their legacy honors God.
Finally, we need to remember that concern for possessions – of any kind – makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to be open to God. Ultimately, we are all naked and empty-handed before God. We begin our lives naked and empty-handed, and we end them that way. In between our birth and death we thank God for God’s great love and compassion. We seek to learn how we can become rich toward God. We ask God to help us to travel light, to help us to let go of all that gets in between ourselves and God. Then we pray to know how to intentionally use our possessions to further God’s agenda in the world. Truly blessed are those who can say, “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”
Monday, July 4, 2016
Where Does God Show Up?
Have you ever wondered about the people in the town that doesn’t welcome Jesus’ friends? Why would they not welcome these people who were bringing a message of good news, good news that the reign of God was close to them? Was there something about Jesus’ friends, or the way they proclaimed Jesus’ message, that would turn off the people in such a town? Would they expect that a message about God could only be delivered by one of the religious leaders? Or perhaps they would think, “How could a rag-tag bunch of people, including even women, have anything to say to us about God’s reign?” Would these naysayers think that God could show up only in certain people, places, or ways?
We might ask the same questions after hearing the story of the healing of the Aramean general Naaman. As most of you know, the Episcopal Church follows a three-year cycle of readings for the Sunday Eucharist. We are currently in the third year of the cycle, Year C. In year A, the gospel readings are mostly from Matthew, in year B from Mark, and this year from Luke. During the summers of all three years, we read some of Paul’s letters more or less straight through. For example, for the last several weeks we’ve been hearing from Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians. Today we heard the very end of that letter. Next week, we’ll begin Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae. With the readings from the Hebrew Bible, the lectionary gives us two choices, either to read some of the books sequentially, track 1, or to read lessons that complement the gospel, track 2. As you can see from your bulletin insert, we are reading track 1, the semi-continuous readings. Today we come to the end of a cycle of readings from first and second Kings, which describe the ministries of the great prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha. Starting next week, you’ll be hearing from the book of Amos.
In this last reading about Elisha, we hear an ancient story about the healing of Naaman. Ancient though it may be, this story makes me ask the same questions as the gospel reading does. Did the characters in this story think that God could show up only in certain people, places, or ways? Our general, Naaman, was so highly regarded by his king, because the Arameans, had bested the Israelites in battle, and, indeed, had killed Ahab, who, as we heard a few weeks ago, had acceded to Jezebel’s stealing of Naboth’s vineyard. Yet this great general is clueless about how to cure his skin disease – which probably was not Hansen’s disease, i.e., true leprosy, but something more like psoriasis. Instead, he had to learn from a captured servant girl, the lowest possible person in his household, that an Israelite prophet might cure him.
Of course, instead of following the servant girl’s suggestion, Naaman heads to the Aramaen king, who is also clueless. He sends Naaman off with a delegation to the king of Israel. The king of Israel, rightly fearing another Aramean raid, is also clueless and seemingly unaware of the great prophet in his own city. Naaman is so full of self-importance, that when Elisha finally steps in and, through his servant, asks Naaman to perform a simple ritual, Naaman cannot do it. It takes Naaman’s own servants to save the day, by urging their arrogant master to do what he must do to be cured. Is it possible that Naaman misses the saving action of God, because he has preconceived ideas about through whom, where, and how God will show up? To his credit, Naaman, as we learn in the verses following the ones we just heard, acknowledges the action of the God of Israel and thereafter continues to worship God, even after returning to Aram.
Let’s stay with the ancient story a little longer. Yes, this story suggests that we can miss God’s appearance because we expect God to show up in certain ways. The story of Naaman reminds us that God often makes Godself known in unexpected ways. Often the powerless perceive God’s presence, here, for example the servant girl and Naaman’s own servants, while the powerful miss God’s appearance. Low social or economic status does not mean that one is spiritually poor. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament suggest that often the opposite is the case. Amos was a dresser of sycamore trees before God called him. David was the youngest of Jesse’s sons and was out tending the sheep when Samuel came to anoint a king over Israel to follow Saul. Jesus was born in a no-account village in the conquered part of the Roman Empire to the young wife of a carpenter. Many of Jesus’ earliest followers were low on the social scale, fisherman, tax collectors, and prostitutes. Yet it was they who were able to sense God’s presence. It was they who were able to hear Jesus’ message and act on it, not the rich people or the political and religious leaders who were wedded to their wealth and positions.
What is more important, the story of Naaman reminds us that when God shows up God can work through anyone. God was able to work through a servant girl, the servant of a prophet, even a general’s servants, to bring about the healing of Naaman. The same is true of the seventy who were sent out by Jesus. The people to whom they were sent no doubt expected that you had to be learned in the ancient texts like the rabbis, in order to heal, preach, or drive out demons. Jesus’ friends were largely unlettered, certainly lay people without any special training. God was able to work through them. Sent by Jesus, bearing his authority so to speak, the seventy could also be instruments of God, in healing, driving out demonic spirits, and proclaiming God’s realm.
So do the stories of Naaman’s healing or of Jesus’ sending out seventy followers have anything to say to us? Do we believe that God only works through certain people, or in certain ways or places? How many times have we said, for example, “We’ve always done it that way?” Episcopalians are very good at saying that! Or “We tried that once, and it didn’t work?” Do we longtime Episcopalians think that the only prayers that God will hear are those contained within the Book of Common Prayer? The Book of Common Prayer is a liturgical treasure house, to be sure, and we trust that God will be present to us in the sacraments. But doesn’t God also respond to the prayers of Baptists, or Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims? Don’t Buddhists or Hindus also have something to teach us about how and where God shows up?
Are we among the powerful and well-off? Do we think we have nothing to learn from those of a lower social or economic status than ourselves? For example, don’t the folks who come to Loaves and Fishes also have something to teach us about faith? I am always struck by the people who give me the slips of paper on which they have requested prayers. They remind me again and again that, somehow, they have faith that our prayers will help their relatives or friends.
Now here’s a risky thought: is it possible that we could be instruments of God’s action? Might you stand in the place of Naaman’s wife’s servant girl, of Elisha’s servant, or of Naaman’s servants? Might you be sent, like one of the seventy, to heal and to preach the nearness of God’s realm? Oh, perish the thought! For so many of us, the good news of God, the nearness of God’s realm, especially as we experience God’s nearness in this church, is a well-kept secret. Or at least, we think that you have to be wearing a collar in order to be God’s instrument for others.
So here’s another story, a true story. A woman lay in a hospital bed. She had a cancerous tumor in her brain. She had been given two different kinds of treatments, the best that her doctors had in their arsenal, and both had failed. The tumor was not shrinking. Plus, she had had a mild stroke. As she lay in her hospital bed, now exhausted by the physical and occupational therapy that had followed the stroke, she began to wonder if it was time to abandon aggressive treatment and consider hospice. The attending nurse asked her if she had a pastor. The woman hesitated. The pastor of the church she had attended was leaving that church. However, she had a devoted husband, who had taken a leave of absence from his job to care for her. She had a network of friends who visited her almost daily. Other friends wrote encouraging letters and notes and commented on her Facebook posts. Yet other friends let her know that they were praying for her. Did she have a pastor? Finally, the woman said, “I have many pastors. God is caring for me.”
So here’s the real point, the good news, of the stories of Naaman and of the sending of the seventy. We are all sent. We can all be God’s instruments. You don’t have to be powerful, rich, learned, pious, good-looking, well-educated, or anything else. You don’t have to have studied the ancient texts. You don’t have to wear a collar. God shows up, unexpectedly perhaps, through us, whoever we are, whenever we care for each other – whoever that other is. God can and will work through us, perhaps when we least expect it, to heal and comfort others.
God’s energy is here now, ready to work through you. Dust off your sandals, speak your piece, visit those in need, work for peace and justice, and partner with God in bringing God’s reign nearer.
We might ask the same questions after hearing the story of the healing of the Aramean general Naaman. As most of you know, the Episcopal Church follows a three-year cycle of readings for the Sunday Eucharist. We are currently in the third year of the cycle, Year C. In year A, the gospel readings are mostly from Matthew, in year B from Mark, and this year from Luke. During the summers of all three years, we read some of Paul’s letters more or less straight through. For example, for the last several weeks we’ve been hearing from Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians. Today we heard the very end of that letter. Next week, we’ll begin Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae. With the readings from the Hebrew Bible, the lectionary gives us two choices, either to read some of the books sequentially, track 1, or to read lessons that complement the gospel, track 2. As you can see from your bulletin insert, we are reading track 1, the semi-continuous readings. Today we come to the end of a cycle of readings from first and second Kings, which describe the ministries of the great prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha. Starting next week, you’ll be hearing from the book of Amos.
In this last reading about Elisha, we hear an ancient story about the healing of Naaman. Ancient though it may be, this story makes me ask the same questions as the gospel reading does. Did the characters in this story think that God could show up only in certain people, places, or ways? Our general, Naaman, was so highly regarded by his king, because the Arameans, had bested the Israelites in battle, and, indeed, had killed Ahab, who, as we heard a few weeks ago, had acceded to Jezebel’s stealing of Naboth’s vineyard. Yet this great general is clueless about how to cure his skin disease – which probably was not Hansen’s disease, i.e., true leprosy, but something more like psoriasis. Instead, he had to learn from a captured servant girl, the lowest possible person in his household, that an Israelite prophet might cure him.
Of course, instead of following the servant girl’s suggestion, Naaman heads to the Aramaen king, who is also clueless. He sends Naaman off with a delegation to the king of Israel. The king of Israel, rightly fearing another Aramean raid, is also clueless and seemingly unaware of the great prophet in his own city. Naaman is so full of self-importance, that when Elisha finally steps in and, through his servant, asks Naaman to perform a simple ritual, Naaman cannot do it. It takes Naaman’s own servants to save the day, by urging their arrogant master to do what he must do to be cured. Is it possible that Naaman misses the saving action of God, because he has preconceived ideas about through whom, where, and how God will show up? To his credit, Naaman, as we learn in the verses following the ones we just heard, acknowledges the action of the God of Israel and thereafter continues to worship God, even after returning to Aram.
Let’s stay with the ancient story a little longer. Yes, this story suggests that we can miss God’s appearance because we expect God to show up in certain ways. The story of Naaman reminds us that God often makes Godself known in unexpected ways. Often the powerless perceive God’s presence, here, for example the servant girl and Naaman’s own servants, while the powerful miss God’s appearance. Low social or economic status does not mean that one is spiritually poor. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament suggest that often the opposite is the case. Amos was a dresser of sycamore trees before God called him. David was the youngest of Jesse’s sons and was out tending the sheep when Samuel came to anoint a king over Israel to follow Saul. Jesus was born in a no-account village in the conquered part of the Roman Empire to the young wife of a carpenter. Many of Jesus’ earliest followers were low on the social scale, fisherman, tax collectors, and prostitutes. Yet it was they who were able to sense God’s presence. It was they who were able to hear Jesus’ message and act on it, not the rich people or the political and religious leaders who were wedded to their wealth and positions.
What is more important, the story of Naaman reminds us that when God shows up God can work through anyone. God was able to work through a servant girl, the servant of a prophet, even a general’s servants, to bring about the healing of Naaman. The same is true of the seventy who were sent out by Jesus. The people to whom they were sent no doubt expected that you had to be learned in the ancient texts like the rabbis, in order to heal, preach, or drive out demons. Jesus’ friends were largely unlettered, certainly lay people without any special training. God was able to work through them. Sent by Jesus, bearing his authority so to speak, the seventy could also be instruments of God, in healing, driving out demonic spirits, and proclaiming God’s realm.
So do the stories of Naaman’s healing or of Jesus’ sending out seventy followers have anything to say to us? Do we believe that God only works through certain people, or in certain ways or places? How many times have we said, for example, “We’ve always done it that way?” Episcopalians are very good at saying that! Or “We tried that once, and it didn’t work?” Do we longtime Episcopalians think that the only prayers that God will hear are those contained within the Book of Common Prayer? The Book of Common Prayer is a liturgical treasure house, to be sure, and we trust that God will be present to us in the sacraments. But doesn’t God also respond to the prayers of Baptists, or Catholics, or Jews, or Muslims? Don’t Buddhists or Hindus also have something to teach us about how and where God shows up?
Are we among the powerful and well-off? Do we think we have nothing to learn from those of a lower social or economic status than ourselves? For example, don’t the folks who come to Loaves and Fishes also have something to teach us about faith? I am always struck by the people who give me the slips of paper on which they have requested prayers. They remind me again and again that, somehow, they have faith that our prayers will help their relatives or friends.
Now here’s a risky thought: is it possible that we could be instruments of God’s action? Might you stand in the place of Naaman’s wife’s servant girl, of Elisha’s servant, or of Naaman’s servants? Might you be sent, like one of the seventy, to heal and to preach the nearness of God’s realm? Oh, perish the thought! For so many of us, the good news of God, the nearness of God’s realm, especially as we experience God’s nearness in this church, is a well-kept secret. Or at least, we think that you have to be wearing a collar in order to be God’s instrument for others.
So here’s another story, a true story. A woman lay in a hospital bed. She had a cancerous tumor in her brain. She had been given two different kinds of treatments, the best that her doctors had in their arsenal, and both had failed. The tumor was not shrinking. Plus, she had had a mild stroke. As she lay in her hospital bed, now exhausted by the physical and occupational therapy that had followed the stroke, she began to wonder if it was time to abandon aggressive treatment and consider hospice. The attending nurse asked her if she had a pastor. The woman hesitated. The pastor of the church she had attended was leaving that church. However, she had a devoted husband, who had taken a leave of absence from his job to care for her. She had a network of friends who visited her almost daily. Other friends wrote encouraging letters and notes and commented on her Facebook posts. Yet other friends let her know that they were praying for her. Did she have a pastor? Finally, the woman said, “I have many pastors. God is caring for me.”
So here’s the real point, the good news, of the stories of Naaman and of the sending of the seventy. We are all sent. We can all be God’s instruments. You don’t have to be powerful, rich, learned, pious, good-looking, well-educated, or anything else. You don’t have to have studied the ancient texts. You don’t have to wear a collar. God shows up, unexpectedly perhaps, through us, whoever we are, whenever we care for each other – whoever that other is. God can and will work through us, perhaps when we least expect it, to heal and comfort others.
God’s energy is here now, ready to work through you. Dust off your sandals, speak your piece, visit those in need, work for peace and justice, and partner with God in bringing God’s reign nearer.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Gotta Serve Somebody
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed/ You’re gonna have to serve/ somebody/ Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Those of you who look like me might remember Bob Dylan’s song about making choices. Dylan says, we may be a state trooper, a construction worker, or a preacher, we might wear cotton or silk, drink whiskey or milk, but we all have to make choices. God calls us all. We can turn our backs and refuse to hear God’s call, or we can fall in with God’s people and follow God’s lead. It’s our choice, but “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” This week we have begun our road trip with Jesus. Jesus has made his choice, no question there. He has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He has agreed to endure all that will take place there. However, despite all of Jesus’ teaching, his disciples have yet to understand what following him really means. On the way to Jerusalem, they pass through hostile Samaritan country. When the Samaritans realize that Jesus is headed for Jerusalem, where they would not be welcome, the Samaritans refuse to follow Jesus. Even so, Jesus has to remind his followers that his way involves compassion not retribution. The group then encounters three wannabe disciples. All three in their different ways suggest to Jesus’ friends – and to us – something about the choices that Jesus’ disciples and we must make.
The first wannabe must have been following Peter’s play book, as he naively declares that he will follow Jesus “wherever you go.” “Oh, yeah?” says Jesus, “do you realize that if you do you may not know where or when you’ll sleep, or where your next meal will come from?” It’s a warning, perhaps a suggestion that the wannabe disciple needs to discern some more. People who discern whether they are called to ordained ministry often hear a similar warning. Yet the message is clear for any disciple. You have to choose to follow Jesus, but you can’t expect worldly security if you make that choice. You might even end up homeless! Jesus’ way of life is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for you if you value personal safety and comfort above all.
On to the next wannabe disciple. When Jesus calls him, this one asks to first bury his father. Isn’t that a reasonable request? Making sure that proper burial rites were carried out, especially for one’s parents, was an important duty in the ancient world. Yet Jesus’ request carried some urgency. And his response suggests that those who are spiritually alive must choose to answer God’s call now. There can be no procrastination in responding to God’s demands. Jesus’ response also reminds wannabe disciples that traditional relationships are reordered in the Kingdom of God. Relationships within the Body of Christ must be more important than family ties. Later Christian martyrs understood this aspect of discipleship fully, as they went to their deaths in Roman arenas, despite the pleas of their families to give up the new faith. Sometime read the story of Perpetua, a Roman matron who even turned her back on her newborn infant and went instead to her death as a Christian.
The request of the third wannabe disciple also seems reasonable: he wants to bid his family farewell. However, Jesus warns the man not to have a divided heart. There will always be some reason to delay following Jesus, some obligation pulling you back into the old life. What Jesus tells him – and all of us – is that once we commit ourselves to following Jesus we must not look back to what we had, what we gave up, or what was better about our old life. In the Rule of St. Benedict, new entrants to a monastery are required to surrender every one of their possessions, including their clothing, so as to be able to grow wholeheartedly into the new life of the community. When Jesus calls us, we must set our faces to the work that God is calling us to do, to the transformations that God is inviting us to undergo, and to the new family that God is bidding us to join.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” Even Paul had to make a choice. He had had an experience of Jesus’ presence on the road to Damascus. He could have chosen to reject that experience and return to his old life. Instead, he said, “Who are you, Lord?” When he heard Jesus’ answer, he made the fatal choice: to make a radical break with his own past. He then let himself be led into the city where he was baptized by Ananias. Some years later, after proclaiming the gospel to several gentile communities, here he is writing to the newbie Christians in Galatia. In most of this letter he has been rebuking them for following those who want to circumcise them and make them into Jews. Paul reminds them that in Christ they have been freed from the demands of the law. They are not Jews, and they don’t need to be circumcised or do anything else that the law requires. However, they still face a critical choice. They can revert to their old, self-centered pagan ways, or they can live as those who are members of God’s kingdom. They can discipline themselves so that the fruits of the Spirit will grow among them. It is a choice: to be guided by the Spirit or not.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Dolores Hart was a beautiful and talented actress. At the age of ten, she had joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1956, at the age of only eighteen, she was signed to play a supporting role as the love interest to Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Loving You. Thereafter, Hart was in frequent demand, and she made two more films before playing with Presley again in 1958's King Creole. Hart went on to make her debut on Broadway. She won a 1959 Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination. In 1962, she starred in the film The Inspector, in which she played Lisa, a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although she was engaged to be married, she had begun to hear the invitation to a different kind of life. She had been in Rome, filming Francis of Assisi. While there she met Pope John XXIII. She told him, "I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clare." The Pontiff replied, "Tu sei Chiara!" ("No, you are Clare!"). Francis’s sister, Clare too had been beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Yet she followed Francis into a life dedicated to God, even founding her own order, the Poor Clares. Now Dolores herself heard God’s call. In 1963, at the age of twenty-four, Dolores entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, taking her final vows in 1970. In 2001, she was elected the prioress of the abbey. Dolores was profiled in the documentary God Is the Bigger Elvis, which was nominated for an academy award in 2012. In her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, released three years ago, she describes her inspiring journey from a full life in Hollywood to an even fuller life in the monastery.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Choosing to follow Jesus is never easy – despite our Scripture lessons, or even Dolores Hart’s story. When we hear God’s call, we rightly fear that our lives will be destabilized, we wonder what might be coming next, we fear that we will lose status, and we fear our choices may make life more difficult for those who are dear to us. Those who think they are called to the ordained ministry must undergo a lengthy period of discernment, involving members of a regional discernment group and a diocesan commission. In the Wellstreams program, that program that trained me as a spiritual direction, at the end of the first year I spent a full day discerning whether I felt called to continue in the program. Discernment is healthy and appropriate – and there are many different aids to discernment – so long as we understand that ultimately we must make a choice.
What choices do you face in your lives? Most often, when we face difficult choices, it is because the Spirit has called us to look hard at our lives and ask whether we are truly following Jesus or someone or something else. Turning to God in prayer and seeking counsel from other Christians are good ways for all of us to discern God’s call to us.
We don’t know what the wannabes in the Gospel decided to do, but, even if they all turned their backs on Jesus, that was a choice. Dolores Hart had to choose. Even I had to sign my name to a piece of paper committing myself to the next phase of the Wellstreams program.
Our lives constantly call us to make choices, to answer God’s call or to fall back into a comfortable status quo. “You gonna have to serve someone.” Who will it be?
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” This week we have begun our road trip with Jesus. Jesus has made his choice, no question there. He has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He has agreed to endure all that will take place there. However, despite all of Jesus’ teaching, his disciples have yet to understand what following him really means. On the way to Jerusalem, they pass through hostile Samaritan country. When the Samaritans realize that Jesus is headed for Jerusalem, where they would not be welcome, the Samaritans refuse to follow Jesus. Even so, Jesus has to remind his followers that his way involves compassion not retribution. The group then encounters three wannabe disciples. All three in their different ways suggest to Jesus’ friends – and to us – something about the choices that Jesus’ disciples and we must make.
The first wannabe must have been following Peter’s play book, as he naively declares that he will follow Jesus “wherever you go.” “Oh, yeah?” says Jesus, “do you realize that if you do you may not know where or when you’ll sleep, or where your next meal will come from?” It’s a warning, perhaps a suggestion that the wannabe disciple needs to discern some more. People who discern whether they are called to ordained ministry often hear a similar warning. Yet the message is clear for any disciple. You have to choose to follow Jesus, but you can’t expect worldly security if you make that choice. You might even end up homeless! Jesus’ way of life is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for you if you value personal safety and comfort above all.
On to the next wannabe disciple. When Jesus calls him, this one asks to first bury his father. Isn’t that a reasonable request? Making sure that proper burial rites were carried out, especially for one’s parents, was an important duty in the ancient world. Yet Jesus’ request carried some urgency. And his response suggests that those who are spiritually alive must choose to answer God’s call now. There can be no procrastination in responding to God’s demands. Jesus’ response also reminds wannabe disciples that traditional relationships are reordered in the Kingdom of God. Relationships within the Body of Christ must be more important than family ties. Later Christian martyrs understood this aspect of discipleship fully, as they went to their deaths in Roman arenas, despite the pleas of their families to give up the new faith. Sometime read the story of Perpetua, a Roman matron who even turned her back on her newborn infant and went instead to her death as a Christian.
The request of the third wannabe disciple also seems reasonable: he wants to bid his family farewell. However, Jesus warns the man not to have a divided heart. There will always be some reason to delay following Jesus, some obligation pulling you back into the old life. What Jesus tells him – and all of us – is that once we commit ourselves to following Jesus we must not look back to what we had, what we gave up, or what was better about our old life. In the Rule of St. Benedict, new entrants to a monastery are required to surrender every one of their possessions, including their clothing, so as to be able to grow wholeheartedly into the new life of the community. When Jesus calls us, we must set our faces to the work that God is calling us to do, to the transformations that God is inviting us to undergo, and to the new family that God is bidding us to join.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” Even Paul had to make a choice. He had had an experience of Jesus’ presence on the road to Damascus. He could have chosen to reject that experience and return to his old life. Instead, he said, “Who are you, Lord?” When he heard Jesus’ answer, he made the fatal choice: to make a radical break with his own past. He then let himself be led into the city where he was baptized by Ananias. Some years later, after proclaiming the gospel to several gentile communities, here he is writing to the newbie Christians in Galatia. In most of this letter he has been rebuking them for following those who want to circumcise them and make them into Jews. Paul reminds them that in Christ they have been freed from the demands of the law. They are not Jews, and they don’t need to be circumcised or do anything else that the law requires. However, they still face a critical choice. They can revert to their old, self-centered pagan ways, or they can live as those who are members of God’s kingdom. They can discipline themselves so that the fruits of the Spirit will grow among them. It is a choice: to be guided by the Spirit or not.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Dolores Hart was a beautiful and talented actress. At the age of ten, she had joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1956, at the age of only eighteen, she was signed to play a supporting role as the love interest to Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Loving You. Thereafter, Hart was in frequent demand, and she made two more films before playing with Presley again in 1958's King Creole. Hart went on to make her debut on Broadway. She won a 1959 Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination. In 1962, she starred in the film The Inspector, in which she played Lisa, a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although she was engaged to be married, she had begun to hear the invitation to a different kind of life. She had been in Rome, filming Francis of Assisi. While there she met Pope John XXIII. She told him, "I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clare." The Pontiff replied, "Tu sei Chiara!" ("No, you are Clare!"). Francis’s sister, Clare too had been beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Yet she followed Francis into a life dedicated to God, even founding her own order, the Poor Clares. Now Dolores herself heard God’s call. In 1963, at the age of twenty-four, Dolores entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, taking her final vows in 1970. In 2001, she was elected the prioress of the abbey. Dolores was profiled in the documentary God Is the Bigger Elvis, which was nominated for an academy award in 2012. In her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, released three years ago, she describes her inspiring journey from a full life in Hollywood to an even fuller life in the monastery.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Choosing to follow Jesus is never easy – despite our Scripture lessons, or even Dolores Hart’s story. When we hear God’s call, we rightly fear that our lives will be destabilized, we wonder what might be coming next, we fear that we will lose status, and we fear our choices may make life more difficult for those who are dear to us. Those who think they are called to the ordained ministry must undergo a lengthy period of discernment, involving members of a regional discernment group and a diocesan commission. In the Wellstreams program, that program that trained me as a spiritual direction, at the end of the first year I spent a full day discerning whether I felt called to continue in the program. Discernment is healthy and appropriate – and there are many different aids to discernment – so long as we understand that ultimately we must make a choice.
What choices do you face in your lives? Most often, when we face difficult choices, it is because the Spirit has called us to look hard at our lives and ask whether we are truly following Jesus or someone or something else. Turning to God in prayer and seeking counsel from other Christians are good ways for all of us to discern God’s call to us.
We don’t know what the wannabes in the Gospel decided to do, but, even if they all turned their backs on Jesus, that was a choice. Dolores Hart had to choose. Even I had to sign my name to a piece of paper committing myself to the next phase of the Wellstreams program.
Our lives constantly call us to make choices, to answer God’s call or to fall back into a comfortable status quo. “You gonna have to serve someone.” Who will it be?
Monday, June 13, 2016
Justice with Compassion
“…that … we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion….”
Naboth’s vineyard: it’s one of the most terrifying stories in Scripture. How could this story possibly be good news? Really, it’s more like a tragic opera. In the first act, we are introduced to the characters and their relationships with each other. First, there’s poor Naboth, the tragic victim. He has the misfortune to own a vineyard abutting a palace belonging to King Ahab. Naboth and his ancestors have kept the vineyard in their family, as the Law of Moses prescribed, and have worked hard to make it productive. Enter King Ahab. If we are serious opera buffs, we know that Ahab has done more evil than any king before him. Disregarding God’s commandment not to covet another person’s property, Ahab desires Naboth’s ancestral land. For a vegetable garden? When law-abiding Naboth rightly refuses to sell, Ahab goes home and sulks. Enter Ahab’s wily, foreign-born wife Jezebel, who assures Ahab that she has the power to wrest the vineyard from Naboth and give it to Ahab.
The second act is the tragic act. Jezebel misuses the king’s authority and initiates her scheme. Law-abiding Naboth keeps the fast and attends the assembly. The covenant between God and Israel is further set aside, and another commandment is broken, as the scoundrels perjure themselves and give false testimony. On the most questionable evidence, poor innocent Naboth receives the supreme penalty and dies an extremely painful and ignominious death. Triumphant, Jezebel bids the king, who is fully complicit in what has happened, to take possession of the vineyard. Was there anyone even there to weep over Naboth’s death? Perhaps we are the only ones, as we head out to intermission.
It’s a very old story, isn’t it? But we live in a society of laws, and things like that don’t happen anymore. Are you sure? How about this opera? It was 1948. Florida's orange industry was exploding. Citrus barons got rich through the labor of poor African-Americans, who worked under Jim Crow laws, had not been able to vote since the turn of the century, and struggled for justice in a state controlled by whites. The rich planters knew that Sheriff Willis V. McCall would keep order in Lake County. The blacks knew that McCall was a sadistic tyrant. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl said she had been raped by blacks, McCall soon arrested four young African-American men: Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of World War II.
Now the tragic act. Thomas was killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were taken to jail and were beaten to force them to confess. Irvin refused to confess falsely. The three surviving men were convicted by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the event; the other two were sentenced to death. A retrial was ordered by the United States Supreme Court after hearing their appeals, led by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1951, as a new trial was underway, Sheriff McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody. He said they tried to escape. Shepherd died immediately. Irvin told investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood. At the second trial, Irvin was convicted again and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life by the governor in 1955. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later.
Intermission is over. We now return to Naboth’s vineyard. Will anyone be punished for the death of the innocent Naboth? Naboth wasn’t even cold when Ahab goes to seize his vineyard. Enter the last character: Ahab’s nemesis, the prophet Elijah. Elijah has heard God’s command and confronts Ahab. Elijah names Ahab’s crime and pronounces God’s punishment, a disastrous death, in which dogs will lick Ahab’s and Jezebel’s blood. God is still a God of righteousness, evildoers will be punished, and God’s justice will be served. And as opera buffs know, Ahab died in battle. When his body was brought back to Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, and prostitutes washed themselves in it. Jezebel was thrown out a window of the palace and was trampled to death by horses. Dogs licked her blood as well. Naboth was avenged. We can leave the theater affirming the psalmist’s assertion that God hates “all those who work wickedness.”
Were the deaths and imprisonment of the Groveland Four, as the men in Lake County, Florida came to be called, ever avenged? Sheriff McCall was investigated numerous times on civil rights violations but was never convicted.
So here’s another story. The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other first-world country. A disproportionately high number of those imprisoned are poor and African American or Latino. Thirty-one states, including Ohio, have the death penalty. Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American, was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 1985. Bullets that the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home were the only evidence against him. There were no fingerprints. Neither was there eyewitness testimony linking Hinton to the murders. Even so, Hinton was sent to death row. Two years ago, after years of appeals by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. A year ago, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullets from the robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Two months shy of his 59th birthday, Hinton was finally a free man. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he was the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row. Many of those 152 people owe their lives to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ohio Innocence Project, and other similar organizations.
Given that you are more likely to be condemned to death if you are poor, African American, or Latino, is it time for the U.S. to rethink the death penalty? Is it time for Ohio to set aside the death penalty? We profess to be followers of one who was condemned to death on the testimony of false witnesses, and who was executed by the state. Is it time for us as Christians to work for the abolition of the death penalty? Admittedly, Christians do differ on this issue. However, the Episcopal Church has been unequivocally against the death penalty since 1959. At General Convention last year, deputies and bishops passed a resolution that reaffirmed our longstanding call to put an end to the death penalty. The resolution also encouraged us to lobby our respective state governments to support legislation to abolish the death penalty, and directed bishops to appoint task forces of clergy and lay people to develop a witness to eliminate the death penalty. In Oklahoma, Bishop Robert Moody has asked parishes to ring bells at 6 p.m. on days of executions, or hang black drapery on an outside door, or tie ribbons around trees or utility poles. "I recognize that Christian men and women differ on this issue," he said. "However, as your bishop, I ask you to prayerfully address this issue anew. For me, I have concluded that capital punishment contributes nothing that betters our society, and I cannot imagine our Lord condoning capital punishment."
And we Episcopalians are not alone. Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty. In 1956, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation officially declaring the church’s opposition to the death penalty. In 1980 and 2000, the UMC passed resolutions reaffirming its opposition and encouraging its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment. Although the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last resort, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances. If you’ve seen the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking,” you know about the work of Sr. Helen Prejean CSJ. Through her organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sr. Helen has worked tirelessly to save the condemned and bring about abolition of the death penalty, which she calls “one of the great moral issues facing our country.”
So like the story of Naboth, many of our contemporary operas do not end happily. We weep both for the innocent victims and for the accused. We weep most especially for those who are falsely accused and spend countless wasted years on death row, often receiving little compensation or support when they are finally released.
And yet, we are people of faith. We trust in God. We trust that God’s justice will triumph. We trust that good will triumph over evil. We remember that we are an Easter people, and we trust that life triumphs over death. We work to bring the good news of God’s victory to others, as we also work to change unjust structures that bring about injustice and death. We pray, as followers of the one who was crucified and raised, that we might be in the vanguard of those working for justice with compassion.
Naboth’s vineyard: it’s one of the most terrifying stories in Scripture. How could this story possibly be good news? Really, it’s more like a tragic opera. In the first act, we are introduced to the characters and their relationships with each other. First, there’s poor Naboth, the tragic victim. He has the misfortune to own a vineyard abutting a palace belonging to King Ahab. Naboth and his ancestors have kept the vineyard in their family, as the Law of Moses prescribed, and have worked hard to make it productive. Enter King Ahab. If we are serious opera buffs, we know that Ahab has done more evil than any king before him. Disregarding God’s commandment not to covet another person’s property, Ahab desires Naboth’s ancestral land. For a vegetable garden? When law-abiding Naboth rightly refuses to sell, Ahab goes home and sulks. Enter Ahab’s wily, foreign-born wife Jezebel, who assures Ahab that she has the power to wrest the vineyard from Naboth and give it to Ahab.
The second act is the tragic act. Jezebel misuses the king’s authority and initiates her scheme. Law-abiding Naboth keeps the fast and attends the assembly. The covenant between God and Israel is further set aside, and another commandment is broken, as the scoundrels perjure themselves and give false testimony. On the most questionable evidence, poor innocent Naboth receives the supreme penalty and dies an extremely painful and ignominious death. Triumphant, Jezebel bids the king, who is fully complicit in what has happened, to take possession of the vineyard. Was there anyone even there to weep over Naboth’s death? Perhaps we are the only ones, as we head out to intermission.
It’s a very old story, isn’t it? But we live in a society of laws, and things like that don’t happen anymore. Are you sure? How about this opera? It was 1948. Florida's orange industry was exploding. Citrus barons got rich through the labor of poor African-Americans, who worked under Jim Crow laws, had not been able to vote since the turn of the century, and struggled for justice in a state controlled by whites. The rich planters knew that Sheriff Willis V. McCall would keep order in Lake County. The blacks knew that McCall was a sadistic tyrant. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl said she had been raped by blacks, McCall soon arrested four young African-American men: Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of World War II.
Now the tragic act. Thomas was killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were taken to jail and were beaten to force them to confess. Irvin refused to confess falsely. The three surviving men were convicted by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the event; the other two were sentenced to death. A retrial was ordered by the United States Supreme Court after hearing their appeals, led by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1951, as a new trial was underway, Sheriff McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody. He said they tried to escape. Shepherd died immediately. Irvin told investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood. At the second trial, Irvin was convicted again and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life by the governor in 1955. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later.
Intermission is over. We now return to Naboth’s vineyard. Will anyone be punished for the death of the innocent Naboth? Naboth wasn’t even cold when Ahab goes to seize his vineyard. Enter the last character: Ahab’s nemesis, the prophet Elijah. Elijah has heard God’s command and confronts Ahab. Elijah names Ahab’s crime and pronounces God’s punishment, a disastrous death, in which dogs will lick Ahab’s and Jezebel’s blood. God is still a God of righteousness, evildoers will be punished, and God’s justice will be served. And as opera buffs know, Ahab died in battle. When his body was brought back to Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, and prostitutes washed themselves in it. Jezebel was thrown out a window of the palace and was trampled to death by horses. Dogs licked her blood as well. Naboth was avenged. We can leave the theater affirming the psalmist’s assertion that God hates “all those who work wickedness.”
Were the deaths and imprisonment of the Groveland Four, as the men in Lake County, Florida came to be called, ever avenged? Sheriff McCall was investigated numerous times on civil rights violations but was never convicted.
So here’s another story. The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other first-world country. A disproportionately high number of those imprisoned are poor and African American or Latino. Thirty-one states, including Ohio, have the death penalty. Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American, was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 1985. Bullets that the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home were the only evidence against him. There were no fingerprints. Neither was there eyewitness testimony linking Hinton to the murders. Even so, Hinton was sent to death row. Two years ago, after years of appeals by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. A year ago, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullets from the robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Two months shy of his 59th birthday, Hinton was finally a free man. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he was the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row. Many of those 152 people owe their lives to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ohio Innocence Project, and other similar organizations.
Given that you are more likely to be condemned to death if you are poor, African American, or Latino, is it time for the U.S. to rethink the death penalty? Is it time for Ohio to set aside the death penalty? We profess to be followers of one who was condemned to death on the testimony of false witnesses, and who was executed by the state. Is it time for us as Christians to work for the abolition of the death penalty? Admittedly, Christians do differ on this issue. However, the Episcopal Church has been unequivocally against the death penalty since 1959. At General Convention last year, deputies and bishops passed a resolution that reaffirmed our longstanding call to put an end to the death penalty. The resolution also encouraged us to lobby our respective state governments to support legislation to abolish the death penalty, and directed bishops to appoint task forces of clergy and lay people to develop a witness to eliminate the death penalty. In Oklahoma, Bishop Robert Moody has asked parishes to ring bells at 6 p.m. on days of executions, or hang black drapery on an outside door, or tie ribbons around trees or utility poles. "I recognize that Christian men and women differ on this issue," he said. "However, as your bishop, I ask you to prayerfully address this issue anew. For me, I have concluded that capital punishment contributes nothing that betters our society, and I cannot imagine our Lord condoning capital punishment."
And we Episcopalians are not alone. Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty. In 1956, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation officially declaring the church’s opposition to the death penalty. In 1980 and 2000, the UMC passed resolutions reaffirming its opposition and encouraging its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment. Although the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last resort, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances. If you’ve seen the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking,” you know about the work of Sr. Helen Prejean CSJ. Through her organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sr. Helen has worked tirelessly to save the condemned and bring about abolition of the death penalty, which she calls “one of the great moral issues facing our country.”
So like the story of Naboth, many of our contemporary operas do not end happily. We weep both for the innocent victims and for the accused. We weep most especially for those who are falsely accused and spend countless wasted years on death row, often receiving little compensation or support when they are finally released.
And yet, we are people of faith. We trust in God. We trust that God’s justice will triumph. We trust that good will triumph over evil. We remember that we are an Easter people, and we trust that life triumphs over death. We work to bring the good news of God’s victory to others, as we also work to change unjust structures that bring about injustice and death. We pray, as followers of the one who was crucified and raised, that we might be in the vanguard of those working for justice with compassion.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
It's a Miracle
It’s a miracle! How often we have all said that! And yet I wonder. Have any of us seen a real miracle, an event that seems so out of the ordinary that we can only attribute it to divine intervention?
Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.
Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”
Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!
And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.
Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”
No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”
Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.
Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.
Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.
Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?
Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.
Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”
Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!
And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.
Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”
No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”
Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.
Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.
Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.
Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?
Sunday, May 29, 2016
All are Included
In another life, I taught a large introductory course at the University of Arizona called Oriental Humanities. It covered the art, literature, and religions of the Middle East and India. Because it had the dubious distinction of satisfying two categories of General Education requirements at the same time, it often attracted more than 300 students. I always announced my own religious affiliation at the outset. I told the students that I was a member of the Episcopal Church and a committed Christian. However, I also wanted them to know that I would try to teach about Islam and Hinduism from an insider’s perspective, i.e., as sympathetically as I could, as an outsider to both traditions. Invariably, at the end of the course, one or more of the comments in my student evaluations would read something like, “How can she, as a committed Christian, teach as if these other religions are also true?”
That’s a real question, and one that is still very much alive today in today’s religiously plural world. Often we fall on one side of the question or the other. On one side, like the students questioning my stance in the Oriental Humanities class, we assume that commitment to one faith means that there is nothing good in other faiths, and that we must reject those who hold those faiths. On the other hand, we might think that, in the interest of tolerance, we must deny our own beliefs and focus only on what we hold in common with other faiths. Neither stance is helpful. Despite all the current political rhetoric, the real challenge for us as people committed to Christ is how can we remain grounded in our own tradition while, at the same time, showing sympathy for others and respecting – perhaps even learning from – others’ unique traditions.
If the only Scripture reading you heard this morning was the lesson from 1 Kings, you might say that there is no challenge, that we must reject all other faith traditions. Elijah has been sent to Ahab’s kingdom. In an attempt to bring the people of Israel back into covenant with God, Elijah engages in a fierce competition with 450 priests who serve the pagan god Baal. As the priests of Baal dance up and down and wail their pleas, the people stand by watching mutely while nothing happens. Then Elijah, after having upped the ante by dousing the altar three times, calls upon God to consume the burnt offering. And, of course God does! Seeing this, the people finally find their voices as they fall on their faces and cry out, “The Lord indeed is God.” Israel had a long history of flirting with the religions of the other nations around it. So perhaps it is justifiable that Scripture would portray yet another story in which God, through Elijah, seeks to again call Israel back to the God of their ancestors. Rather than wholesale rejection of other faith communities, perhaps the contest for us in this story is between apathy and commitment to God. And perhaps the lesson for us should be that, unlike the people who stood by mutely, we are called to understand our faith as a serious and demanding commitment.
Our gospel story begins to suggest what mutual respect between people of different faith communities might look like. Here we see a Roman centurion, a member of the hated occupying forces in Israel, who has yet been a benefactor of the local synagogue. The centurion’s slave is mortally ill. Seeking help for the slave, the centurion is willing to approach the Jewish rabbi, whose fame as a healer has been spreading. However, the centurion respects the boundaries between himself as a gentile and Jesus as a Jew. Therefore the centurion does not approach Jesus directly, but sends emissaries. Nor does he force Jesus to enter his house, but rather sends the message that he understands that Jesus’ healing power will work at a distance, just as the centurion’s authority does. The Jewish elders are grateful for the centurion’s respect for the Jews and his gift of a synagogue, and they willingly approach Jesus on his behalf. And, of course, the centurion’s slave is healed.
More clues, though perhaps a little less obvious, are in this opening section of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. If you think Paul is testy in this opening part, wait till we get to chapter 3! The issue here is that the majority of these new Galatian Christians are gentiles. They have not been circumcised, and they do not follow Jewish law. To many observant Jews, their way of life was extremely distasteful. After Paul had evangelized them, the so-called “Judaizers” visited them, i.e., evangelists who told the Galatians that they had to be circumcised and follow Jewish law in order to join the fellowship of Jesus’ followers. Paul is livid. For him, the gospel that he preached was an inclusive gospel, i.e., that fellowship in the Christian Way is open to all, that Christ died for all, and that God’s love extends to all. The “different gospel” that Paul rails against in this letter is one that makes the Christian way into an exclusive Jewish sect, one that “restricts, narrows, or limits the love of God to an exclusive few, i.e., those gentiles willing to live as Jews. “The ‘true gospel’ that Paul defends is one that expands the love of God in Christ to all people without exception…. Through the one particular man Jesus, the love of God embraces all the world.”1 Reiterating this argument, Paul says later in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus, that God is the father of all fatherhood, the father of the whole human family, even of the entire unseen world.
Political rhetoric aside, perhaps this isn’t so difficult for Americans to understand. Ethnic and cultural diversity is the very bedrock of our country. Even before the various waves of Europeans arrived here, there were diverse communities of Native Americans speaking mutually unintelligible languages and following very different ways of life. Once in this country, the various immigrant communities from Europe founded Roman Catholic parishes, Protestant churches of various denominations, Eastern Orthodox parishes, and Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Hasidic synagogues. In fact, now forty percent of all Jews in the world live in the United States. Some African slaves may originally have been Muslims. Muslims from the Middle East have been in this country since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Immigrants from Asia, especially after the end of the Asian Exclusion Act, have brought Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to this country. Near Pittsburgh, you can see the Sri Venkateshwara temple, built in 1975. In my Oriental Humanities course, I used to show a film depicting how the temple was built, with the help of Hindu priests, according to precise Hindu specifications. The first Sikh gurdwara, i.e., Sikh temple, was built in Stockton, California in 1912.
We are, and have been, a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities in this country, as are most other countries now. That is why I cringe when I hear the rhetoric calling for contraction of immigration or restrictions on the rights of Muslims or any other community. Certainly, we want to guard against terrorists from abroad, even as we remember that we have our own strain of domestic terrorism. But thanks be to God, the diverse communities that have come here have flourished here, and all of us have benefited from their courage in leaving their ancestral homes to come here. A story earlier this month in the Columbus Dispatch detailed the miraculous recovery from lung and kidney failure of Scott Hamilton of Mt. Sterling, Ohio. He was fortunate to receive the first lung-kidney transplant ever at OSU hospital. The name of the leader of his surgical team: Ashraf El-Hinnawi. What do you think Dr. El-Hinnawi’s religion was?
So, as faithful followers of the one who reached out to all people, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, how indeed do we remain faithful to our own commitment while respecting those of others? The first step, so wonderfully exemplified by Jesus’ treatment of the centurion, is to see the goodness in the other, to accept that others are as worthy of respect and compassion as we ourselves are. Consider reading Brian McLaren’s insightful book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Or consider these few simple principles. Speak honestly about your own faith and allow others to do the same. Understand what contributions different faiths have made to the religious landscape. Be critical both about your own faith and those of others. Consider what you might learn from another tradition and what questions you have about your own tradition. Most especially, open your “hands, hearts, and minds to receive the gift of the other for who the other is, finding ways to serve one another and with one another.”
Egyptian Christian Safwat Marzouk reminds us that, “When people take both their own faith and the other person’s faith seriously, when they find healthy ways to both cross boundaries and maintain them, then they can turn their differences into a source of theological enrichment. They can join together to bring healing, well-being, and peace to our broken world.”2 Are you ready to join with others in the repair of the world? Are you ready to let the gospel be good news for all, even for those who journey to God on different paths?
1. Dan Clendenin, “No other Gospel, Journey with Jesus, May 29, 2016
2. “Living by the Word, Christian Century, May 10, 2016
That’s a real question, and one that is still very much alive today in today’s religiously plural world. Often we fall on one side of the question or the other. On one side, like the students questioning my stance in the Oriental Humanities class, we assume that commitment to one faith means that there is nothing good in other faiths, and that we must reject those who hold those faiths. On the other hand, we might think that, in the interest of tolerance, we must deny our own beliefs and focus only on what we hold in common with other faiths. Neither stance is helpful. Despite all the current political rhetoric, the real challenge for us as people committed to Christ is how can we remain grounded in our own tradition while, at the same time, showing sympathy for others and respecting – perhaps even learning from – others’ unique traditions.
If the only Scripture reading you heard this morning was the lesson from 1 Kings, you might say that there is no challenge, that we must reject all other faith traditions. Elijah has been sent to Ahab’s kingdom. In an attempt to bring the people of Israel back into covenant with God, Elijah engages in a fierce competition with 450 priests who serve the pagan god Baal. As the priests of Baal dance up and down and wail their pleas, the people stand by watching mutely while nothing happens. Then Elijah, after having upped the ante by dousing the altar three times, calls upon God to consume the burnt offering. And, of course God does! Seeing this, the people finally find their voices as they fall on their faces and cry out, “The Lord indeed is God.” Israel had a long history of flirting with the religions of the other nations around it. So perhaps it is justifiable that Scripture would portray yet another story in which God, through Elijah, seeks to again call Israel back to the God of their ancestors. Rather than wholesale rejection of other faith communities, perhaps the contest for us in this story is between apathy and commitment to God. And perhaps the lesson for us should be that, unlike the people who stood by mutely, we are called to understand our faith as a serious and demanding commitment.
Our gospel story begins to suggest what mutual respect between people of different faith communities might look like. Here we see a Roman centurion, a member of the hated occupying forces in Israel, who has yet been a benefactor of the local synagogue. The centurion’s slave is mortally ill. Seeking help for the slave, the centurion is willing to approach the Jewish rabbi, whose fame as a healer has been spreading. However, the centurion respects the boundaries between himself as a gentile and Jesus as a Jew. Therefore the centurion does not approach Jesus directly, but sends emissaries. Nor does he force Jesus to enter his house, but rather sends the message that he understands that Jesus’ healing power will work at a distance, just as the centurion’s authority does. The Jewish elders are grateful for the centurion’s respect for the Jews and his gift of a synagogue, and they willingly approach Jesus on his behalf. And, of course, the centurion’s slave is healed.
More clues, though perhaps a little less obvious, are in this opening section of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. If you think Paul is testy in this opening part, wait till we get to chapter 3! The issue here is that the majority of these new Galatian Christians are gentiles. They have not been circumcised, and they do not follow Jewish law. To many observant Jews, their way of life was extremely distasteful. After Paul had evangelized them, the so-called “Judaizers” visited them, i.e., evangelists who told the Galatians that they had to be circumcised and follow Jewish law in order to join the fellowship of Jesus’ followers. Paul is livid. For him, the gospel that he preached was an inclusive gospel, i.e., that fellowship in the Christian Way is open to all, that Christ died for all, and that God’s love extends to all. The “different gospel” that Paul rails against in this letter is one that makes the Christian way into an exclusive Jewish sect, one that “restricts, narrows, or limits the love of God to an exclusive few, i.e., those gentiles willing to live as Jews. “The ‘true gospel’ that Paul defends is one that expands the love of God in Christ to all people without exception…. Through the one particular man Jesus, the love of God embraces all the world.”1 Reiterating this argument, Paul says later in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus, that God is the father of all fatherhood, the father of the whole human family, even of the entire unseen world.
Political rhetoric aside, perhaps this isn’t so difficult for Americans to understand. Ethnic and cultural diversity is the very bedrock of our country. Even before the various waves of Europeans arrived here, there were diverse communities of Native Americans speaking mutually unintelligible languages and following very different ways of life. Once in this country, the various immigrant communities from Europe founded Roman Catholic parishes, Protestant churches of various denominations, Eastern Orthodox parishes, and Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Hasidic synagogues. In fact, now forty percent of all Jews in the world live in the United States. Some African slaves may originally have been Muslims. Muslims from the Middle East have been in this country since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Immigrants from Asia, especially after the end of the Asian Exclusion Act, have brought Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to this country. Near Pittsburgh, you can see the Sri Venkateshwara temple, built in 1975. In my Oriental Humanities course, I used to show a film depicting how the temple was built, with the help of Hindu priests, according to precise Hindu specifications. The first Sikh gurdwara, i.e., Sikh temple, was built in Stockton, California in 1912.
We are, and have been, a mosaic of ethnic and religious communities in this country, as are most other countries now. That is why I cringe when I hear the rhetoric calling for contraction of immigration or restrictions on the rights of Muslims or any other community. Certainly, we want to guard against terrorists from abroad, even as we remember that we have our own strain of domestic terrorism. But thanks be to God, the diverse communities that have come here have flourished here, and all of us have benefited from their courage in leaving their ancestral homes to come here. A story earlier this month in the Columbus Dispatch detailed the miraculous recovery from lung and kidney failure of Scott Hamilton of Mt. Sterling, Ohio. He was fortunate to receive the first lung-kidney transplant ever at OSU hospital. The name of the leader of his surgical team: Ashraf El-Hinnawi. What do you think Dr. El-Hinnawi’s religion was?
So, as faithful followers of the one who reached out to all people, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, how indeed do we remain faithful to our own commitment while respecting those of others? The first step, so wonderfully exemplified by Jesus’ treatment of the centurion, is to see the goodness in the other, to accept that others are as worthy of respect and compassion as we ourselves are. Consider reading Brian McLaren’s insightful book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Or consider these few simple principles. Speak honestly about your own faith and allow others to do the same. Understand what contributions different faiths have made to the religious landscape. Be critical both about your own faith and those of others. Consider what you might learn from another tradition and what questions you have about your own tradition. Most especially, open your “hands, hearts, and minds to receive the gift of the other for who the other is, finding ways to serve one another and with one another.”
Egyptian Christian Safwat Marzouk reminds us that, “When people take both their own faith and the other person’s faith seriously, when they find healthy ways to both cross boundaries and maintain them, then they can turn their differences into a source of theological enrichment. They can join together to bring healing, well-being, and peace to our broken world.”2 Are you ready to join with others in the repair of the world? Are you ready to let the gospel be good news for all, even for those who journey to God on different paths?
1. Dan Clendenin, “No other Gospel, Journey with Jesus, May 29, 2016
2. “Living by the Word, Christian Century, May 10, 2016
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