How good is your vision? If you’re like most middle-class Americans, you visit the optometrist once a year. You get your glaucoma test and your retinal scan. If you’re nearsighted or farsighted you get glasses or contact lenses. When you become a woman – or a man – of a certain age, you get reading glasses or bi- or even trifocals. When you start seeing haloes around stop lights, it’s off to the eye surgeon for cataract surgery. With any kind of luck, your vision is restored or even improved from what it was before the surgery.
And your inward vision? How good is your spiritual vision? How good are you at seeing the world as God might see it? “Not so good,” you say? If so, you’re in good company. In two of our Scripture lessons for today, people had a hard time seeing beyond the ordinary. We might say they couldn’t think out of the box. Take the story of Elisha and his servant. Do you identify with the servant? Elisha had already demonstrated his prophetic powers through a series of miraculous acts. Now in this time of famine a generous man came to Elisha offering his tithe of barley loaves and grain. When Elisha commanded the servant to distribute the token offering to all the starving people, what did the servant say? “This is way too little for a hundred people.” But Elisha had a different vision. He trusted in a compassionate God, a God who cares enough to reap an abundant harvest out of people’s meager offerings. Can’t you hear Elisha thundering, “Give it to the people and let them eat!” And they ate and even had leftovers.
Not surprisingly, the story repeated itself in the Gospel. We’ve now returned to the Gospel according to John, where we will remain from now until the end of August. All our Gospel lessons will come from the sixth chapter. As you may remember, most of the narrative in the first part of John consists of Jesus’ doing something, followed by Jesus’ attempt to explain the significance of his action to this friends, then disputes with the religious leadership over what he has done and said, and finally a resolution at the end of the chapter. See if you can hear that movement as we progress through the chapter. Now in this story of Jesus’ feeding of the crowd, the people around Jesus didn’t seem to have any better spiritual vision than Elisha’s servant. Philip and Andrew had already seen Jesus do many extraordinary things: heal people, turn water into wine at Cana, and face down the religious leaders. Why were they so clueless about what Jesus might do on the hills beside the Sea of Galilee? They might have wondered why Jesus felt so compelled to feed people – did you wonder the same thing – but how come they didn’t have any idea about what Jesus might do? Philip got out his calculator and assured Jesus there was no way they had enough to take care of everyone. Andrew scared up a tiny donation, but he could have been quoting Elisha’s servant when he said, “What are these barley loaves and fish among so many?” However, like Elisha, Jesus looked through a different lens. Although he didn’t thunder, he did create some order out of the chaos – can’t you imagine all those people milling around wondering what was coming next? He made the people sit down. Then, after blessing the little he had, Jesus himself began to give it out. And what did the clueless disciples do? Perhaps they gathered up the leftovers. Or perhaps they joined all those who misunderstood what Jesus had done for them and set about to proclaim Jesus as a political leader.
Is that how we humans are, unable to think out of the box, unable to see the world from God’s perspective, unable to imagine that a God of compassion and abundance might be eager to transform our meager offerings into something much greater? Shouldn’t we as Jesus’ friends be able to do better than Elisha’s servant, Philip, and Andrew? Shouldn’t we be able to recognize God at work – or willing to be at work – in our midst? Shouldn’t we who been baptized into the Body of Christ be able to “comprehend … what are the breadth and length and height and depth, …?”
Maybe it’s understandable that we find it so difficult to see with God, to think out of the box. Despite being Jesus’ friends, we are so rooted in this world. Most of us, in our daily lives, as individuals and as a parish, are really Elisha’s servant or Philip or Andrew. Haven’t we looked at the vast sea of human need, the people all crowding around us with their hands out, to say nothing of the requests that come in by post and e-mail. Haven’t we thought or said, “I can’t. I can’t help you. I can’t afford to help you; there are too many of you. I haven’t got time to help you.” And haven’t we said the same thing as a parish? “We can’t. We’re a small parish. What are our meager resources in the face of such deep world need? We have so little. There’s so much need: what do we have to offer as a cell in the Body of Christ? What do we have to offer as a church?” Why is it so difficult to see past our own vision of scarcity and contemplate the possibility of God’s abundance?
Perhaps the better questions are, “How do we learn to see more clearly? How do we align our vision of the possible with God’s vision? How do we recognize God at work among us and get some glimpse of what God might do if we gave God even some of our admittedly meager resources?” Let’s look again at Jesus our mentor and model. Jesus did something surprising in this story. No, not feeding all those people, not even walking on the sea. Go back to the crowd’s reaction to his feeding of them. They exclaimed “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” However, they misunderstood just what sort of messiah Jesus was destined to be. His response? “He withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” After a period of extremely intense ministry to others, Jesus took off. He withdrew not only to escape the crowds who wanted to anoint him as king but, more importantly, to seek some rest for his soul, to renew his relationship with the Father, and to align his will with the will of the Father. In other words, he withdrew in order to strengthen his ability to see the world as God sees it.
Isn’t this the lesson for us? We too engage in periods of intense ministry in our personal lives, our work, and in the church. We will do so here today at our Loaves and Fishes dinner. After such intense ministry we too must withdraw for a bit, to seek rest and consolation, to seek nourishment for our souls, to renew our relationship with God, and ultimately, to align our wills with God’s will. We are surely called to minister to others, but without the time away from ministry, without the intentional commitment to deepening our relationship with God, we will have a hard time seeing our ministry through God’s eyes. We will have a harder time letting God take our meager resources and do more with them than we could ever ask or imagine. In the week ahead, take some time with God, even if it’s only five minutes of mid-day prayer. Ask God to nourish and refresh you. Ask God to help you think out of the box and show you how much good God might do with your meager resources and with the resources of this parish.
For this is also our call as a parish. Our participation in the Common Ministry program gives us some time away just to focus on ourselves as a parish and on what God might be calling us to do. Perhaps we also need some quiet time together as a parish. I propose a Quiet Morning here at St. Peter’s focused on our identity and mission as a parish. Will you join me in that?
It’s true that our resources are meager. They always are. In the face of the great human need around us, just in this county, to say nothing of the rest of the state, country, and world, any sane person would say, “What is that among so many?” But our compassionate, loving, inclusive God does not operate out of a politics of scarcity. The God in whom we trust is a God of abundance, if we could but see it. The God we profess is prepared to take whatever we have and use it for the life of the world. Do you need examples? Holy women and men surround us, both on earth and in heaven. Here’s only one. Mother Theresa confronted Calcutta, a city teeming with severely disabled people, with homeless people, and with people dying on the streets in broad daylight. What could one Albanian nun do in the face of such need? Mother Theresa picked up one dying person at a time. Today, the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, Brothers, Lay missionaries, and associates operate 600 missions, schools, and shelters in 120 countries. We too have walked with Jesus. We too have seen the signs. Now may God enable us to deepen our ability to see with God’s eyes. May God work within us and turn our limited and meager selves into the means of blessing for the world.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
He had Compassion for Them
“God hates the world!” So proclaimed a poster that Noah Phelps-Roper, 12, held up, as he and family members from Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church picketed outside the U.S. Naval Academy. Brother Gabriel, 8, held up a poster declaring that “You’re going to Hell.”1 Do you remember these people? The Westboro Baptist Church was established in 1955 by lawyer Fred Phelps. It claims to be a Primitive Baptist Church, although it has been disowned by that denomination. The reason? Westboro boasts of having conducted over 47,000 demonstrations since 1991, most of them shouting out a gospel of hate. The church made international news when its pastor threatened to burn a Qur’an, and, to the sorrow of the families of soldiers, when the Supreme Court upheld its members’ right to picket military funerals. Holding to an extreme form of Calvinist theology, the members of Westboro believe that only a tiny percentage of people are saved, essentially themselves and others who agree with them, and that all others are damned to an eternity in Hell. Since they have no desire to evangelize or convert others, their principle work as a church is to support each other and witness to their beliefs by picketing and harassing others, especially lesbian and gay people.
Does our own view of God come anywhere close to that of the Westboro Baptist Church? Do any of us believe in an angry God, who damns us to eternal punishment if we don’t strictly toe the mark? If not, then we would do well to ask ourselves the two most important questions that any thinking person can ask. How do we see God? And, what do we think God expects us to do? The answer to the first question that orthodox Christians can – or ought to – give is embedded in our Gospel passage for today. Our answer stands in stark contrast to the view of God promulgated by the Westboro Baptist Church: “… he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd ….” Compassion, literally suffering with us. It’s a word used at least eight times in the Gospel, and it is implicit in Jesus’ entire life. We see Jesus’ compassion especially in all the healing stories in the Gospels. Indeed, one might say that the healing stories demonstrate not so much that Jesus was a medical magician, but that he cared deeply enough about people to attend even to their physical ills. We also see Jesus’ compassion in all the stories about people being fed. We see it in his willingness not only to heal and feed a person here or there but to minister to great crowds of people, seemingly never tiring. And of course we see Jesus’ compassion for humanity in his own Passion, his suffering on the Cross for our sake. Since we Christians believe that Jesus was God incarnate, God visible as a human being, it follows that the compassion for all that Jesus showed us is the essence of God, our creator and judge. As we watch Jesus relate to the people around him in the Gospels, we can be sure that not only does God not hate the world, but that God loved and continues to love the world that God has made.
Nor should we be surprised or shocked to be reminded that the God we trust is a God of compassion. All our Scripture bears witness to God’s compassion for humanity. Remember all those covenants with Israel that we talked about during Lent? All of them speak to God’s care and concern for Israel, God’s unfailing attempts to heal first Israel and then ultimately all humanity. The prophets witness to God’s compassion in even clearer tones. Almost all of the prophecy of Isaiah speaks to the return from Exile of the Jews and the re-establishment of Jerusalem. Ezekiel too speaks to God’s care for Israel, giving us that wonderful image of the dry bones of the House of Israel coming back to life through God’s breathing on them. God’s compassion shines through even in today’s reading from Jeremiah. Dismissing the bad shepherds, the stupid and venal religious and political leaders, who “destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture,” God promises restoration and return for his people. God promises to raise up new shepherds, so that the people will no longer be afraid and upset. Most important, God promises a new age of justice and righteousness, of safety and salvation.
And here’s the really good news. God’s compassion, especially as it is exemplified by Jesus, is extended to all, to people of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, and genders, to all of humanity. The prophetic tradition and Jesus’ own interaction with people bear witness to God’s ultimate desire to include all people in the salvation first extended to Israel. As Christians we believe that indeed in Jesus the inclusion of all in God’s promises has been accomplished. We hear that message clearly in the Letter to the Ephesians. Writing primarily to Gentiles, the writer reminds the new Christians at Ephesus that they “who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Christ has broken down the wall separating Israel and other nations, “that he might create in himself one new humanity ….” If we were stand toe to toe with the Westboro Baptist folks, this would be our ringing claim, shouted and painted in letters a foot high: God’s compassion for the world is so deep that no one is excluded from God’s saving love.
Theologian Douglas John Hall asks us whether, as Christians, “We have grasped the full radicality of belief in a compassionate God. He reminds us of the warning in the first letter of Peter, “the time has come for the judgment to begin with the household of God (4:17), and asks us “whether as a church we are ready to live that compassion in our profoundly threatened world.”2 We who have committed ourselves to the Episcopal Church might particularly ask ourselves that question. In the wake of our just-completed General Convention, some national commentators took the Episcopal Church to task, either for dealing with what some deemed as trivial issues or for being too progressive and “liberal.” Some of you may have seen the most scurrilous of these articles, Jay Akasie’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which was nothing more than an opinionated diatribe, and Ross Douthat’s piece last Sunday in the New York Times, which suggested that liberal Christianity, epitomized by the Episcopal Church, was on its deathbed. Many far better writers than I have refuted both these pieces. However, as I look at all that General Convention accomplished in eight days, I see, rather, a church that is striving to live out its vision of God’s compassionate, inclusive love. We commended and continued our eleven-year relationship of full communion with the ELCA. We approved a provisional liturgy for the blessing of same-sex unions. We created an “HIV Welcoming Parish Initiative.” We welcomed trans-gender people into the ordination process. We affirmed positive investment in the Palestinian Territories and in the peace process in the Middle East. We faced squarely the decline in membership in the Episcopal Church – a fact of life for all mainline denominations and the Roman Catholic Church – by agreeing to slim down our organization and restructure, so that we can more effectively live out our commission as evangelists, as those who are charged with proclaiming the good news.
Thank God for the Episcopal Church! Thank God we can offer a different view of God’s relationship with the world from that offered by the folks at Westboro. Yes, the church is changing. Yes, we are no longer the establishment church, whose membership represented the rich and powerful of most communities. But we are not done for! Pastor Robert LaRochelle reminds us that the mainline church “has the potential to be a voice for an inclusive, welcoming Christian vision in neighborhoods and towns.”3 Bishop Stacy Sauls gives us an even more empowering vision of the kind of church we strive to be. In his response to the Wall Street Journal article, Bishop Sauls says that,
"The Episcopal Church is on record as standing by those the culture marginalizes whether that be nonwhite people, female people or gay people. The author [of the Wall Street Journal article] calls that political correctness hostile to tradition.
I call it profoundly countercultural but hardly untraditional. In fact, it is deeply true to the tradition of Jesus, Jesus who offended the "traditionalists" of his own day, Jesus who was known to associate with the less than desirable, Jesus who told his followers to seek him among the poor. It is deeply true to the tradition of the Apostle Paul who decried human barriers of race, sex, or status (Galatians 3:28).
What ails the Episcopalians is that this once most-established class of American Christianity is taking the risk to be radically true to its tradition. There is a price to be paid for that. There is also a promise of abundant life in it."4
As we live out our lives here in this parish, may God enable us to welcome all and to live into that abundant life.
1. Joanie Eppinga, “The Face of Hate,” Sojourners (41,6, June 2012), 14ff.
2. Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 264.
3. Part-Time Pastor, Full Time Church (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2010), 35.
4. The Wall Street Journal, Letters, July 19, 2012, accessed at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577534993658282250.html?KEYWORDS=episcopal
Does our own view of God come anywhere close to that of the Westboro Baptist Church? Do any of us believe in an angry God, who damns us to eternal punishment if we don’t strictly toe the mark? If not, then we would do well to ask ourselves the two most important questions that any thinking person can ask. How do we see God? And, what do we think God expects us to do? The answer to the first question that orthodox Christians can – or ought to – give is embedded in our Gospel passage for today. Our answer stands in stark contrast to the view of God promulgated by the Westboro Baptist Church: “… he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd ….” Compassion, literally suffering with us. It’s a word used at least eight times in the Gospel, and it is implicit in Jesus’ entire life. We see Jesus’ compassion especially in all the healing stories in the Gospels. Indeed, one might say that the healing stories demonstrate not so much that Jesus was a medical magician, but that he cared deeply enough about people to attend even to their physical ills. We also see Jesus’ compassion in all the stories about people being fed. We see it in his willingness not only to heal and feed a person here or there but to minister to great crowds of people, seemingly never tiring. And of course we see Jesus’ compassion for humanity in his own Passion, his suffering on the Cross for our sake. Since we Christians believe that Jesus was God incarnate, God visible as a human being, it follows that the compassion for all that Jesus showed us is the essence of God, our creator and judge. As we watch Jesus relate to the people around him in the Gospels, we can be sure that not only does God not hate the world, but that God loved and continues to love the world that God has made.
Nor should we be surprised or shocked to be reminded that the God we trust is a God of compassion. All our Scripture bears witness to God’s compassion for humanity. Remember all those covenants with Israel that we talked about during Lent? All of them speak to God’s care and concern for Israel, God’s unfailing attempts to heal first Israel and then ultimately all humanity. The prophets witness to God’s compassion in even clearer tones. Almost all of the prophecy of Isaiah speaks to the return from Exile of the Jews and the re-establishment of Jerusalem. Ezekiel too speaks to God’s care for Israel, giving us that wonderful image of the dry bones of the House of Israel coming back to life through God’s breathing on them. God’s compassion shines through even in today’s reading from Jeremiah. Dismissing the bad shepherds, the stupid and venal religious and political leaders, who “destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture,” God promises restoration and return for his people. God promises to raise up new shepherds, so that the people will no longer be afraid and upset. Most important, God promises a new age of justice and righteousness, of safety and salvation.
And here’s the really good news. God’s compassion, especially as it is exemplified by Jesus, is extended to all, to people of all races, ethnicities, nationalities, and genders, to all of humanity. The prophetic tradition and Jesus’ own interaction with people bear witness to God’s ultimate desire to include all people in the salvation first extended to Israel. As Christians we believe that indeed in Jesus the inclusion of all in God’s promises has been accomplished. We hear that message clearly in the Letter to the Ephesians. Writing primarily to Gentiles, the writer reminds the new Christians at Ephesus that they “who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Christ has broken down the wall separating Israel and other nations, “that he might create in himself one new humanity ….” If we were stand toe to toe with the Westboro Baptist folks, this would be our ringing claim, shouted and painted in letters a foot high: God’s compassion for the world is so deep that no one is excluded from God’s saving love.
Theologian Douglas John Hall asks us whether, as Christians, “We have grasped the full radicality of belief in a compassionate God. He reminds us of the warning in the first letter of Peter, “the time has come for the judgment to begin with the household of God (4:17), and asks us “whether as a church we are ready to live that compassion in our profoundly threatened world.”2 We who have committed ourselves to the Episcopal Church might particularly ask ourselves that question. In the wake of our just-completed General Convention, some national commentators took the Episcopal Church to task, either for dealing with what some deemed as trivial issues or for being too progressive and “liberal.” Some of you may have seen the most scurrilous of these articles, Jay Akasie’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which was nothing more than an opinionated diatribe, and Ross Douthat’s piece last Sunday in the New York Times, which suggested that liberal Christianity, epitomized by the Episcopal Church, was on its deathbed. Many far better writers than I have refuted both these pieces. However, as I look at all that General Convention accomplished in eight days, I see, rather, a church that is striving to live out its vision of God’s compassionate, inclusive love. We commended and continued our eleven-year relationship of full communion with the ELCA. We approved a provisional liturgy for the blessing of same-sex unions. We created an “HIV Welcoming Parish Initiative.” We welcomed trans-gender people into the ordination process. We affirmed positive investment in the Palestinian Territories and in the peace process in the Middle East. We faced squarely the decline in membership in the Episcopal Church – a fact of life for all mainline denominations and the Roman Catholic Church – by agreeing to slim down our organization and restructure, so that we can more effectively live out our commission as evangelists, as those who are charged with proclaiming the good news.
Thank God for the Episcopal Church! Thank God we can offer a different view of God’s relationship with the world from that offered by the folks at Westboro. Yes, the church is changing. Yes, we are no longer the establishment church, whose membership represented the rich and powerful of most communities. But we are not done for! Pastor Robert LaRochelle reminds us that the mainline church “has the potential to be a voice for an inclusive, welcoming Christian vision in neighborhoods and towns.”3 Bishop Stacy Sauls gives us an even more empowering vision of the kind of church we strive to be. In his response to the Wall Street Journal article, Bishop Sauls says that,
"The Episcopal Church is on record as standing by those the culture marginalizes whether that be nonwhite people, female people or gay people. The author [of the Wall Street Journal article] calls that political correctness hostile to tradition.
I call it profoundly countercultural but hardly untraditional. In fact, it is deeply true to the tradition of Jesus, Jesus who offended the "traditionalists" of his own day, Jesus who was known to associate with the less than desirable, Jesus who told his followers to seek him among the poor. It is deeply true to the tradition of the Apostle Paul who decried human barriers of race, sex, or status (Galatians 3:28).
What ails the Episcopalians is that this once most-established class of American Christianity is taking the risk to be radically true to its tradition. There is a price to be paid for that. There is also a promise of abundant life in it."4
As we live out our lives here in this parish, may God enable us to welcome all and to live into that abundant life.
1. Joanie Eppinga, “The Face of Hate,” Sojourners (41,6, June 2012), 14ff.
2. Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 264.
3. Part-Time Pastor, Full Time Church (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2010), 35.
4. The Wall Street Journal, Letters, July 19, 2012, accessed at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577534993658282250.html?KEYWORDS=episcopal
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Speaking Truth
Are you sure you want to continue being a disciple of Jesus? Do you really feel safe sitting in these pews? In the ancient world, deciding to become a Christian was a risky undertaking. You just didn’t walk up to the presbyter and present yourself. The earliest Christians wanted to make sure that people really knew what they were getting into when they asked for baptism, so they instituted a lengthy period of instruction and preparation for those intending to be baptized. Even today, adults ideally have some form of instruction before they are baptized, and the Book of Occasional Services even provides a liturgy for admission as a catechumen, i.e., someone preparing for baptism. Even with instruction, after hearing today’s Scripture readings, you still might wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into. I wouldn’t blame you if, right now, you got up out of your pew, fled through the red doors, and went out to become a Zen Buddhist!
You’re still sure you want to follow Jesus? You’re not alarmed by what happened to Amos? It was the eighth century B.C. Amos was a shepherd and a specialist in the care of fig trees. Although he lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, God sent him to the northern kingdom of Israel. God’s message was tough to deliver: God told Amos to warn Israel about the deep disparities in the nation between rich and poor. He further instructed Amos to use the image of a plumb line to make his point. Do you know what a plumb line is? In the ancient world, it was a weighted string or rope against which it could be seen whether a wall was straight or not. God thus commanded Amos to tell the leadership of Israel that Israel’s religious and political institutions did not meet God’s standards, and that consequently the temple, the king, and all the leaders of the kingdom would be destroyed. Of course, the king refused to hear such warnings. Do those in power ever really want to hear the truth? So the king sent his lackey, the priest Amaziah, to warn Amos that his life was in danger, and to command him to quit prophesying, at least in Israel.
Worse yet is the story of John the Baptist. Here we hear eerie echoes of Amos’s fate. We tend to remember John as Jesus’ cousin, whose mother Elizabeth was in the sixth month with him when the angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus to Mary. Or we remember that John called himself Jesus’ forerunner and baptized Jesus just before the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. But we tend to forget that John was also a fiery prophet in his own right who suffered for telling those in power things they did not want to hear. The ruler in question here was Herod Antipas, the grandson of Herod the Great, who figures in the story of the Magi. In truth, Herod Antipas was a lackey of Rome, but he had delusions of grandeur. John had publicly denounced him for unlawfully marrying Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. More important, John’s popularity with ordinary people posed a potential threat to Herod’s ability to control Galilee. Not surprising, through the clever scheming of Herodias, as we have heard, John ended up paying with his life for his proclamation of God’s word and his outspoken condemnation of Antipas and Herodias.
Why are we hearing about the death of John the Baptist now? Why does Mark place his story here in his Gospel, since presumably this is a flashback to an earlier event? Last week’s reading, which immediately preceded this section, depicted Jesus’ sending out of his first missionaries, the first people called by Jesus to extend his message to others. In next week’s reading, which immediately follows this section, we will hear of the return of those first missionaries. Why would Mark sandwich the story of the death of the John the Baptist between these two events?
To answer that question we have to remember that Mark’s Gospel was the first Gospel, and that it was written in about the late ‘60s for a community that was being persecuted by the religious and political leaders. The Gospel writer sandwiched the story of John’s death between the sending and return of the first messengers, first of all, to remind his hearers of Jesus’ death. Indeed, the parallels between the two deaths are striking. Both John and Jesus were killed by those exercising political power. In both cases, the rulers seemed reluctant to carry out the death sentence, but both succumbed to the pressure of the people around them, Herod to his courtiers, and Pilate to the crowd. After their deaths, both John’s and Jesus’ followers were able to give them respectful burials. However, what is far more important is the Gospel writer’s implied reminder to his hearers that the fates of John the Baptist and Jesus might well be their own. In electing to follow Jesus, in choosing to flout social custom and political authority, these new disciples too might pay with their lives.
So where is the good news in this grim reminder? Maybe the good news is that we no longer face persecution and discrimination for allowing the Holy Spirit to draw us into Christ’s Body. Is that because we play it safe and carry out only the easy and obvious ministries, the ones that don’t upset anyone? Are we safe because we refuse to name injustice when we see it, or we sit back and let others speak out for peace, sound immigration policies, gay rights, and equitable access to health care? Do we let others blow the whistle on corruption, sexual predators, and insider trading? Do we let others minister to those in prison?
Actually, there is good news hidden in this story of John’s murder. The good news is tucked into Herod’s question about John. Just as they later identified Jesus, people had said that John was Elijah, and that he was “like one of the prophets of old.” But Herod, knowing that he had had John killed, declared, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” And in Herod’s fearful confession there is a glimmer of hope for Mark’s hearers, for all the oppressed, and for us. For in that confession, Mark reminds us that indeed Jesus was raised, and that because of Jesus’ resurrection all the prophets who have been killed throughout the ages are alive in Jesus. Indeed, in that confession is the gospel writer’s promise that whenever we speak truth to power, whenever we follow Jesus’ call to proclaim the good news to others, whatever our fate, we too can expect to be raised with Jesus. Are we not then called to witness to justice, to “speak truth to power,” in the company of all those who have done so in God’s name?
In March, 1955, members of the board of the American Friends Service Committee published a pamphlet entitled Speak Truth to Power. This nation was deep into the Cold War, and nuclear weaponry was developing in earnest. The writers of the pamphlet were following in the footsteps of their eighteenth century counterparts, who accepted the charge of speaking from the deepest insights of their faith. These twentieth-century Friends felt compelled to speak to those in positions of power against nuclear proliferation and for peace. Without denying the reality of evil and our obligation to confront it, they outlined a non-violent approach to political conflict. More important, they grounded their desire for peace in a “politics of eternity,” knowing full well how risky and contrary to all that is reasonable it is to speak from such a perspective. Clearly, today’s politicians have yet to embrace the position of the AFSC writers. However, the pamphlet quickly became a major statement of Christian pacifism and inspired such figures as Martin Luther King and Mennonite John Howard Yoder. The AFSC continues to work for peace and justice around the world, united by "the unfaltering belief in the essential worth of every human being, non-violence as the way to resolve conflict, and the power of love to overcome oppression, discrimination, and violence."1
Last week, we were reminded that we are sent out by Jesus to be evangelists, to tell others of our relationship with Jesus. This week the writer of the Gospel of Mark has upped the ante: like Amos and the other ancient prophets, like John the Baptist, like Jesus, and like Jesus’ earliest followers, we too are called to “speak truth to power.” We too are called to confront evil, injustice, violence, and hatred. We too are called to work for justice, peace, and love. And we have God’s promise: whatever the risks we are called upon to take, ultimately we are in good company, for we will be in the blessed company of all those who have dared to be heralds of God’s realm. With them, we give thanks for the life and witness of John the Baptist. We pray for all who have been imprisoned for their faith, for all who face persecution or danger, and for all who stand firmly for freedom and justice. Lord, make us to be numbered among them.
1. http://afsc.org/our-work
2. Based on David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: 1999), 99.
You’re still sure you want to follow Jesus? You’re not alarmed by what happened to Amos? It was the eighth century B.C. Amos was a shepherd and a specialist in the care of fig trees. Although he lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, God sent him to the northern kingdom of Israel. God’s message was tough to deliver: God told Amos to warn Israel about the deep disparities in the nation between rich and poor. He further instructed Amos to use the image of a plumb line to make his point. Do you know what a plumb line is? In the ancient world, it was a weighted string or rope against which it could be seen whether a wall was straight or not. God thus commanded Amos to tell the leadership of Israel that Israel’s religious and political institutions did not meet God’s standards, and that consequently the temple, the king, and all the leaders of the kingdom would be destroyed. Of course, the king refused to hear such warnings. Do those in power ever really want to hear the truth? So the king sent his lackey, the priest Amaziah, to warn Amos that his life was in danger, and to command him to quit prophesying, at least in Israel.
Worse yet is the story of John the Baptist. Here we hear eerie echoes of Amos’s fate. We tend to remember John as Jesus’ cousin, whose mother Elizabeth was in the sixth month with him when the angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus to Mary. Or we remember that John called himself Jesus’ forerunner and baptized Jesus just before the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. But we tend to forget that John was also a fiery prophet in his own right who suffered for telling those in power things they did not want to hear. The ruler in question here was Herod Antipas, the grandson of Herod the Great, who figures in the story of the Magi. In truth, Herod Antipas was a lackey of Rome, but he had delusions of grandeur. John had publicly denounced him for unlawfully marrying Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. More important, John’s popularity with ordinary people posed a potential threat to Herod’s ability to control Galilee. Not surprising, through the clever scheming of Herodias, as we have heard, John ended up paying with his life for his proclamation of God’s word and his outspoken condemnation of Antipas and Herodias.
Why are we hearing about the death of John the Baptist now? Why does Mark place his story here in his Gospel, since presumably this is a flashback to an earlier event? Last week’s reading, which immediately preceded this section, depicted Jesus’ sending out of his first missionaries, the first people called by Jesus to extend his message to others. In next week’s reading, which immediately follows this section, we will hear of the return of those first missionaries. Why would Mark sandwich the story of the death of the John the Baptist between these two events?
To answer that question we have to remember that Mark’s Gospel was the first Gospel, and that it was written in about the late ‘60s for a community that was being persecuted by the religious and political leaders. The Gospel writer sandwiched the story of John’s death between the sending and return of the first messengers, first of all, to remind his hearers of Jesus’ death. Indeed, the parallels between the two deaths are striking. Both John and Jesus were killed by those exercising political power. In both cases, the rulers seemed reluctant to carry out the death sentence, but both succumbed to the pressure of the people around them, Herod to his courtiers, and Pilate to the crowd. After their deaths, both John’s and Jesus’ followers were able to give them respectful burials. However, what is far more important is the Gospel writer’s implied reminder to his hearers that the fates of John the Baptist and Jesus might well be their own. In electing to follow Jesus, in choosing to flout social custom and political authority, these new disciples too might pay with their lives.
So where is the good news in this grim reminder? Maybe the good news is that we no longer face persecution and discrimination for allowing the Holy Spirit to draw us into Christ’s Body. Is that because we play it safe and carry out only the easy and obvious ministries, the ones that don’t upset anyone? Are we safe because we refuse to name injustice when we see it, or we sit back and let others speak out for peace, sound immigration policies, gay rights, and equitable access to health care? Do we let others blow the whistle on corruption, sexual predators, and insider trading? Do we let others minister to those in prison?
Actually, there is good news hidden in this story of John’s murder. The good news is tucked into Herod’s question about John. Just as they later identified Jesus, people had said that John was Elijah, and that he was “like one of the prophets of old.” But Herod, knowing that he had had John killed, declared, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” And in Herod’s fearful confession there is a glimmer of hope for Mark’s hearers, for all the oppressed, and for us. For in that confession, Mark reminds us that indeed Jesus was raised, and that because of Jesus’ resurrection all the prophets who have been killed throughout the ages are alive in Jesus. Indeed, in that confession is the gospel writer’s promise that whenever we speak truth to power, whenever we follow Jesus’ call to proclaim the good news to others, whatever our fate, we too can expect to be raised with Jesus. Are we not then called to witness to justice, to “speak truth to power,” in the company of all those who have done so in God’s name?
In March, 1955, members of the board of the American Friends Service Committee published a pamphlet entitled Speak Truth to Power. This nation was deep into the Cold War, and nuclear weaponry was developing in earnest. The writers of the pamphlet were following in the footsteps of their eighteenth century counterparts, who accepted the charge of speaking from the deepest insights of their faith. These twentieth-century Friends felt compelled to speak to those in positions of power against nuclear proliferation and for peace. Without denying the reality of evil and our obligation to confront it, they outlined a non-violent approach to political conflict. More important, they grounded their desire for peace in a “politics of eternity,” knowing full well how risky and contrary to all that is reasonable it is to speak from such a perspective. Clearly, today’s politicians have yet to embrace the position of the AFSC writers. However, the pamphlet quickly became a major statement of Christian pacifism and inspired such figures as Martin Luther King and Mennonite John Howard Yoder. The AFSC continues to work for peace and justice around the world, united by "the unfaltering belief in the essential worth of every human being, non-violence as the way to resolve conflict, and the power of love to overcome oppression, discrimination, and violence."1
Last week, we were reminded that we are sent out by Jesus to be evangelists, to tell others of our relationship with Jesus. This week the writer of the Gospel of Mark has upped the ante: like Amos and the other ancient prophets, like John the Baptist, like Jesus, and like Jesus’ earliest followers, we too are called to “speak truth to power.” We too are called to confront evil, injustice, violence, and hatred. We too are called to work for justice, peace, and love. And we have God’s promise: whatever the risks we are called upon to take, ultimately we are in good company, for we will be in the blessed company of all those who have dared to be heralds of God’s realm. With them, we give thanks for the life and witness of John the Baptist. We pray for all who have been imprisoned for their faith, for all who face persecution or danger, and for all who stand firmly for freedom and justice. Lord, make us to be numbered among them.
1. http://afsc.org/our-work
2. Based on David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: 1999), 99.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Who's Afraid of Evangelism?
Are you afraid of evangelism? Does the idea of “proclaiming the good news” strike terror in your heart? Do you think that talking about Jesus was OK for St. Paul and a few other gifted souls but is definitely not for you?
If even thinking about the E-word makes you quake, you’re in good company! All our lections for today remind us that proclaiming the good news, speaking for God, and calling others to change their ways are difficult and mostly thankless tasks. Take Ezekiel. Although he was in exile, far away from the temple in Jerusalem, he had an overwhelming vision of God’s glory. Then God commissioned him to go and speak for God to the people of Israel. God also warned Ezekiel: he was likely to be rejected by the Israelites, his words unheard, “for they are a rebellious house.” Or take Jesus. He had begun his proclamation of the good news in Galilee. Like Ezekiel, he had called people to repentance. He had also commissioned followers, had calmed a storm, and had had a successful healing mission, including the healing of the daughter of Jairus the synagogue leader. Yet when Jesus returned home to Nazareth to preach in the local synagogue the home folks were scandalized. Flinging back at them an old proverb, Jesus turned his back on them. What of St. Paul? Both his letters to the Christians at Corinth rebuke them for their arrogance, their prizing of rhetorical skill, and their confidence in their spiritual superiority. In answer to their jibes, not only did Paul take refuge in Jesus, he also felt it necessary to remind them of his own spiritual credentials.
Are we afraid that, if we speak for God, if we talk about our relationship with Jesus, we too will be rejected? I still remember Brother Jed, who spewed out hell fire and brimstone on the College Green at Ohio University. Most people dismissed him as insane. Those of you who remember altar calls may fear that you will be seen as manipulative if you so much as breathe a word about Jesus. Or perhaps you fear being seen as pushy or offensive. Most of us members of mainline churches are just too nice and polite to let anyone else know that we are Jesus’ followers. Indeed, most of us would rather talk about anything else, sex, money, politics, anything but our relationship with God. Perhaps you see yourself in this story told by Michael Lindvall.1 A woman member of the Episcopal Church was a clerk in a bookstore. One morning she came to work and found a man who appeared to be a Hasidic Jew. When she asked how she could help him, he whispered, “I would like to know about Jesus.” She showed him where all the books about Jesus were. As she turned to go, he said, “No, don’t show me any more books, tell me what you believe.” “My Episcopal soul shivered,” the woman later recalled. Yet she bravely went ahead and told the man all that she could. Would you do the same, or would you stammer and turn away?
My friends, stammering and turning away are not options. Our lections also remind us that once God calls, we must respond. Ezekiel faced down opposition from religious leaders and continued cogently and persuasively to proclaim God’s word for the rest of his life. The initial twelve took up Jesus’ commission, swallowed their fears, and went out to extend Jesus’ ministry into the surrounding countryside. They followed Jesus’ instructions by going in pairs and travelling light. Knowing what had happened to Jesus at Nazareth, they were prepared for rejection. Together with their proclamation of the good news, they called people to repentance, healed the sick, and drove out the demons of resistance to Jesus’ authority. Despite the Corinthians’ arrogance, despite God’s unwillingness to heal Paul’s physical ailment – what it was we still don’t know – Paul and his companions continued to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles and found new Christian communities in Asia Minor.
Despite our fears of rejection, despite our potential embarrassment, despite our anxiety, we too are called to talk about our relationship with Jesus. Yes, we are an incarnational religion. Yes, we are called to perform concrete acts of mercy. But we are also called to talk about our faith: despite our fears and anxieties, despite our sense that “nice people” don’t talk about religion, Jesus also calls us to tell our faith story to others. And this is also true: evangelism is not about filling our pews or bringing in new members, much as we might welcome a fuller sanctuary. Evangelism is not about getting people to agree with everything that the Episcopal Church stands for, desirable, from our perspective, as that might be. Evangelism is about telling others about the God who means so much to us and about all that God had done for us. Evangelism is about love for others, love that impels us to share with others the abundant life we have received in Jesus. When we are truly sharing our own experiences of God’s love, we don’t need to worry about words. We don’t need high-flown rhetoric, sophisticated theology, or well-articulated dogma to speak about faith. All we are called to do is speak from the heart of what we ourselves have experienced of God’s love and the ways we have tried to reflect God’s love in our own lives.
Lindvall tells another story about someone who shared God’s love. Hugh Thompson2 had dropped out of college to join the army. Yet some years ago he was awarded an honorary degree by Emory University. Addressing the graduates, Thompson told them of the routine patrol he was flying in Vietnam on March 16, 1968. He just happened to fly over the village of My Lai at the time when American soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley were massacring unarmed men, women, and children. Thompson set down his helicopter between the troops and the villagers, told the tail gunner to point the helicopter’s guns at the American soldiers, and ordered the soldiers to stop their slaughter of the villagers. Although his orders saved the lives of dozens of people, he was nearly court-martialed for his actions. It took the Army thirty years to award him the Soldier’s Medal. Standing at the microphone, Thompson began to speak of his faith. He spoke about how his parents had taught him to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” His simple words of Christian testimony brought the previously bored and rowdy students to their feet.
Most of us will not be awarded honorary degrees, nor is it likely that a stranger will walk up to us and ask to hear about Jesus. Most of us will still be afraid of rejection or embarrassed to share our faith. Yet, didn’t we promise in baptism to “proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?” How do we begin to tame our fears so as to fulfill our part of the Great Commission? One way, perhaps, to begin sharing our faith is to offer to pray for people. If you hear that someone is starting a new venture, moving, getting married, getting divorced, is sick, is having surgery, or has had a death in the family, for example, offer to pray for that person. If nothing else, you let that person know that you care about them, that you have faith in God, and that you are entrusting their wellbeing to a God who also cares about them. Here’s another way. Our Wednesday classes in Eastertide gave us an introduction to different forms of Christian spirituality. One of these was sharing your faith story. You might begin with someone you already know well and trust and begin talking with that person about your faith. The other person might do the same. You both might be surprised by how helpful such an exchange can be for both people. And here’s one more possibility. Every month, our parish hall is filled with our Loaves and Fishes diners. While we ask them to write down their prayer requests, might we share our faith with them in some other way? Might we hear their stories, or share our own? Might they hear that it is our love of Jesus that impels us to welcome them to St. Peter’s?
If all this sounds like a great burden, here’s the good news. Ezekiel was rejected by the Israelites. Jesus was rejected by the folks in his home town. The Corinthians thought Paul was a poor speaker, and that his message was “a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Yet, as Ezekiel persisted in his proclamation, as Jesus persisted in his ministry of healing and teaching, as the twelve cast out demons and healed the sick, as Paul continued in his ministry, we too are commanded to persist in our work of making Christ known to others. The good news is that we are not held responsible for the response of others to our ministries in Christ’s name. All God asks of us is faithfulness. With that assurance, we may witness boldly and faithfully.
1. In Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 216.
2. Ibid., 214. The story was told by Tom Long in Pulpit Resources 32 (January-March, 2004), 39.
If even thinking about the E-word makes you quake, you’re in good company! All our lections for today remind us that proclaiming the good news, speaking for God, and calling others to change their ways are difficult and mostly thankless tasks. Take Ezekiel. Although he was in exile, far away from the temple in Jerusalem, he had an overwhelming vision of God’s glory. Then God commissioned him to go and speak for God to the people of Israel. God also warned Ezekiel: he was likely to be rejected by the Israelites, his words unheard, “for they are a rebellious house.” Or take Jesus. He had begun his proclamation of the good news in Galilee. Like Ezekiel, he had called people to repentance. He had also commissioned followers, had calmed a storm, and had had a successful healing mission, including the healing of the daughter of Jairus the synagogue leader. Yet when Jesus returned home to Nazareth to preach in the local synagogue the home folks were scandalized. Flinging back at them an old proverb, Jesus turned his back on them. What of St. Paul? Both his letters to the Christians at Corinth rebuke them for their arrogance, their prizing of rhetorical skill, and their confidence in their spiritual superiority. In answer to their jibes, not only did Paul take refuge in Jesus, he also felt it necessary to remind them of his own spiritual credentials.
Are we afraid that, if we speak for God, if we talk about our relationship with Jesus, we too will be rejected? I still remember Brother Jed, who spewed out hell fire and brimstone on the College Green at Ohio University. Most people dismissed him as insane. Those of you who remember altar calls may fear that you will be seen as manipulative if you so much as breathe a word about Jesus. Or perhaps you fear being seen as pushy or offensive. Most of us members of mainline churches are just too nice and polite to let anyone else know that we are Jesus’ followers. Indeed, most of us would rather talk about anything else, sex, money, politics, anything but our relationship with God. Perhaps you see yourself in this story told by Michael Lindvall.1 A woman member of the Episcopal Church was a clerk in a bookstore. One morning she came to work and found a man who appeared to be a Hasidic Jew. When she asked how she could help him, he whispered, “I would like to know about Jesus.” She showed him where all the books about Jesus were. As she turned to go, he said, “No, don’t show me any more books, tell me what you believe.” “My Episcopal soul shivered,” the woman later recalled. Yet she bravely went ahead and told the man all that she could. Would you do the same, or would you stammer and turn away?
My friends, stammering and turning away are not options. Our lections also remind us that once God calls, we must respond. Ezekiel faced down opposition from religious leaders and continued cogently and persuasively to proclaim God’s word for the rest of his life. The initial twelve took up Jesus’ commission, swallowed their fears, and went out to extend Jesus’ ministry into the surrounding countryside. They followed Jesus’ instructions by going in pairs and travelling light. Knowing what had happened to Jesus at Nazareth, they were prepared for rejection. Together with their proclamation of the good news, they called people to repentance, healed the sick, and drove out the demons of resistance to Jesus’ authority. Despite the Corinthians’ arrogance, despite God’s unwillingness to heal Paul’s physical ailment – what it was we still don’t know – Paul and his companions continued to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles and found new Christian communities in Asia Minor.
Despite our fears of rejection, despite our potential embarrassment, despite our anxiety, we too are called to talk about our relationship with Jesus. Yes, we are an incarnational religion. Yes, we are called to perform concrete acts of mercy. But we are also called to talk about our faith: despite our fears and anxieties, despite our sense that “nice people” don’t talk about religion, Jesus also calls us to tell our faith story to others. And this is also true: evangelism is not about filling our pews or bringing in new members, much as we might welcome a fuller sanctuary. Evangelism is not about getting people to agree with everything that the Episcopal Church stands for, desirable, from our perspective, as that might be. Evangelism is about telling others about the God who means so much to us and about all that God had done for us. Evangelism is about love for others, love that impels us to share with others the abundant life we have received in Jesus. When we are truly sharing our own experiences of God’s love, we don’t need to worry about words. We don’t need high-flown rhetoric, sophisticated theology, or well-articulated dogma to speak about faith. All we are called to do is speak from the heart of what we ourselves have experienced of God’s love and the ways we have tried to reflect God’s love in our own lives.
Lindvall tells another story about someone who shared God’s love. Hugh Thompson2 had dropped out of college to join the army. Yet some years ago he was awarded an honorary degree by Emory University. Addressing the graduates, Thompson told them of the routine patrol he was flying in Vietnam on March 16, 1968. He just happened to fly over the village of My Lai at the time when American soldiers under the command of Lt. William Calley were massacring unarmed men, women, and children. Thompson set down his helicopter between the troops and the villagers, told the tail gunner to point the helicopter’s guns at the American soldiers, and ordered the soldiers to stop their slaughter of the villagers. Although his orders saved the lives of dozens of people, he was nearly court-martialed for his actions. It took the Army thirty years to award him the Soldier’s Medal. Standing at the microphone, Thompson began to speak of his faith. He spoke about how his parents had taught him to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” His simple words of Christian testimony brought the previously bored and rowdy students to their feet.
Most of us will not be awarded honorary degrees, nor is it likely that a stranger will walk up to us and ask to hear about Jesus. Most of us will still be afraid of rejection or embarrassed to share our faith. Yet, didn’t we promise in baptism to “proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?” How do we begin to tame our fears so as to fulfill our part of the Great Commission? One way, perhaps, to begin sharing our faith is to offer to pray for people. If you hear that someone is starting a new venture, moving, getting married, getting divorced, is sick, is having surgery, or has had a death in the family, for example, offer to pray for that person. If nothing else, you let that person know that you care about them, that you have faith in God, and that you are entrusting their wellbeing to a God who also cares about them. Here’s another way. Our Wednesday classes in Eastertide gave us an introduction to different forms of Christian spirituality. One of these was sharing your faith story. You might begin with someone you already know well and trust and begin talking with that person about your faith. The other person might do the same. You both might be surprised by how helpful such an exchange can be for both people. And here’s one more possibility. Every month, our parish hall is filled with our Loaves and Fishes diners. While we ask them to write down their prayer requests, might we share our faith with them in some other way? Might we hear their stories, or share our own? Might they hear that it is our love of Jesus that impels us to welcome them to St. Peter’s?
If all this sounds like a great burden, here’s the good news. Ezekiel was rejected by the Israelites. Jesus was rejected by the folks in his home town. The Corinthians thought Paul was a poor speaker, and that his message was “a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Yet, as Ezekiel persisted in his proclamation, as Jesus persisted in his ministry of healing and teaching, as the twelve cast out demons and healed the sick, as Paul continued in his ministry, we too are commanded to persist in our work of making Christ known to others. The good news is that we are not held responsible for the response of others to our ministries in Christ’s name. All God asks of us is faithfulness. With that assurance, we may witness boldly and faithfully.
1. In Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 216.
2. Ibid., 214. The story was told by Tom Long in Pulpit Resources 32 (January-March, 2004), 39.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Here are My Mother and My Brothers!
In another life, I had the privilege of studying American women missionaries in north India. After graduating from college I taught English for a year at a college in the northwestern part of India that had been founded by Presbyterian missionaries. So when I became interested as a scholar in women’s work during the heyday of American missions, i.e., from about 1870 to 1930, I naturally turned back to those intrepid Presbyterians. I learned to read the elegant handwriting of Midwestern teachers, physicians, and wives. I pored over miles of letters, reports, newspaper articles, and mission magazines. I was surprised when I read the missionaries’ condemnations of the Hindu and Muslim religious practices I had found so intriguing during my own time in India. I cheered when the writers opened clinics and dispensaries, taught girls how to read, and brought a breath of fresh air to the mostly secluded women of elite Hindu and Muslim families. And I shook my head in disbelief as one after another of the missionaries wondered why the women they visited, who seemed to find the Christian message so attractive, were unable to leave their families and be baptized. Didn’t they know anything about patriarchal families? Didn’t they realize that the patriarchal family was the basic social unit, for both Hindus and Muslims? Didn’t they understand that no one but the senior males of the family, and most certainly not the women, had any power or freedom? Couldn’t they see that if the women they befriended were to be baptized they would be shunned forever by their kin?
The hearers of the Gospel of Mark certainly understood the risks they had taken in becoming Christians in a world that despised them. Jesus too understood full well the power of the patriarchal family. Instead of following the family trade of carpenter, like all the other males in his family, he had gone off to be an itinerant preacher and healer. Even when he came back home, all the riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells, the blind and the lame, those possessed by demons, and the loose women – who knows where their husbands and fathers were – crowded around him. His family was sure he was insane, and they were moving in to silence him. At the same time, the scribes and Pharisees had begun to take notice of him, and they came down from Jerusalem to challenge and spar with him. When we catch up with Jesus in today’s reading, we hear the religious leaders accuse him of working hand in hand with demonic forces. But he roundly defeats them at their own game. He presses home the point that he is indeed from God – a running motif in Mark’s gospel – and even obliquely suggests that unlike the religious leaders, he has come to offer freedom to those who become his disciples.
Then Jesus turns back to that pesky family, those brothers and sisters and mother, who have joined the religious leaders outside the house and are trying to pull Jesus away from his mission. Surely their jaws drop when they hear what he says. Even though the hearers of Mark’s Gospel, forty years later, themselves faced persecution, perhaps what Jesus said even shocked them. Looking at the faces eagerly waiting to hear more of his teaching, Jesus declares, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” No more patriarchal family, no more domination by senior males or by religious leaders. Jesus declares that his followers, who have been released from demonic powers, are now part of a new and different family, a family united not by blood, nor by allegiance to the eldest male, but by faith in him. That was truly a radical declaration in the ancient world!
Does such a declaration shock us? Can we hear the challenge to patriarchal structures in such a declaration? Most of us no longer live in extended patriarchal families, with multiple generations in the same house or compound, all ruled over by the senior male. To be sure we still have extended families, especially in this part of Ohio. Not a week goes by without a five-generation photo in our local newspapers, though in our culture the senior members are more likely women. However, in contrast to the ancient world, such families are increasingly rare. Even nuclear families, father, mother, and children in the same household, are less common than they were a generation or two ago. Now we have single parent families, gay couples adopting children, grandparents raising grandchildren, and even unrelated people living together as family. In even sharper contrast with the ancient world, marriage in our culture has become more egalitarian, and women have full legal rights with men.
So does Jesus’ new definition of family – “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” – still shock us laid back, egalitarian twenty-first century Americans? It should! As Jesus’ disciples we are still called to be part of a new and different family. We are called to be part of a family not defined by blood ties. Perhaps to the dismay of some, we are called to put our commitment to Jesus’ family above our commitments even to our own blood families. We are also called to be part of a family not defined by geography. Our heritage from the Church of England is of village parishes about three or four miles apart, each with its own vicar and local congregation. In effect our county seat parishes, each with its own distinct community, reflect that same understanding. Even today, orthodox Jews still live in close communities within walking distance of their synagogues. By contrast, we are called instead, to recognize that our family ultimately embraces the entire world, and we are called to care about our friends, our Loaves and Fishes diners, and our sisters and brothers in Cincinnati, Columbus, and even Port au Prince.
We are also called to be a family not defined by race or ethnicity. The Episcopal Church never split apart during the Civil War, but we still had segregated parishes. In this very diocese, we still have historically black parishes, whose roots go back to the time when ethnically diverse parishes were virtually nonexistent. We are also called to be a family not defined by socio-economic class. It was perhaps only a generation or two ago, when the Episcopal Church in this country was the church of the wealthy, of professionals and business people, of the managers and owners, not of working class and poor people. Is that true for this parish? Who is welcome in our parish family?
And finally we are called to be a family committed to doing “the will of God.” In this green season of growth in discipleship, all of us – not just those of us wearing a collar – are called to deepen our relationship with Jesus, to listen more intently to his teaching, and to attend to the family into which he has called us. We are called to understand ourselves as irrevocably bound together with this family and with all other Christians through our baptisms. We are called to welcome the stranger, and to love and care for each other, whoever and wherever we are.
Perhaps some of those Presbyterian missionaries might have been less discouraged by the inability of the women they visited to break out of their patriarchal families if they had known of Pandita Ramabai, a Christian activist in western India. Ramabai was born in 1858 into a Brahmin family, i.e., into the priestly and highest caste. Unusual for the time, Ramabai’s father believed in women’s education and saw to it that she was educated in both Sanskrit texts and contemporary subjects. Independent and forward-thinking, Ramabai married a man of another caste, who died soon after their daughter was born. In Ramabai’s time, most Hindus considered widows to be extremely inauspicious, and even child widows were condemned to a life spent in prayer and fasting in the back corners of their families’ homes. However, Ramabai was fortunately befriended by women of another kind of family, English sisters of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin who had founded a school and convent in the provincial city of Pune. Ramabai and her daughter thrived under the sisters’ gracious care. With their help she was able to do a lecture tour in the U.S. about Hindu women and to study education and social service in England. In 1885 she was baptized in the sisters’ mother house in Wantage, England. Just as Jesus and the CSMV sisters had welcomed Ramabai into a new kind of family, on her return to India in 1889 Ramabai herself created new Christian families. She established the Mukti, or Liberation, Mission in Pune, which serves to this day as a refuge and a Gospel witness for young widows deserted and abused by their families. She also established Krupa Sadan, a home for destitute women, and Sharda Sadan, which provided housing, education, vocational training and medical services for the needy, and she was active in the Arya Mahila Sabha, India’s first feminist organization. Ramabai died in 1922 and is venerated today by Indian Christians, who still seek to continue her work of inclusion of all into a blessed Christian family, regardless of caste, class, language, or ethnicity.
Can we do any less? Methodist scholar Will Willimon reminds us that, “every time the family of God gathers for Holy Communion … or a covered-dish fellowship supper or serves up soup to the homeless on the street corner, the world looks at this odd family and says, ‘Jesus is hanging out with the same reprobates that got him crucified.’ And we say, ‘Thank God.’”1
1. Day 1, preached October 24, 2010, quoted in Synthesis June 10, 2012, 3.
The hearers of the Gospel of Mark certainly understood the risks they had taken in becoming Christians in a world that despised them. Jesus too understood full well the power of the patriarchal family. Instead of following the family trade of carpenter, like all the other males in his family, he had gone off to be an itinerant preacher and healer. Even when he came back home, all the riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells, the blind and the lame, those possessed by demons, and the loose women – who knows where their husbands and fathers were – crowded around him. His family was sure he was insane, and they were moving in to silence him. At the same time, the scribes and Pharisees had begun to take notice of him, and they came down from Jerusalem to challenge and spar with him. When we catch up with Jesus in today’s reading, we hear the religious leaders accuse him of working hand in hand with demonic forces. But he roundly defeats them at their own game. He presses home the point that he is indeed from God – a running motif in Mark’s gospel – and even obliquely suggests that unlike the religious leaders, he has come to offer freedom to those who become his disciples.
Then Jesus turns back to that pesky family, those brothers and sisters and mother, who have joined the religious leaders outside the house and are trying to pull Jesus away from his mission. Surely their jaws drop when they hear what he says. Even though the hearers of Mark’s Gospel, forty years later, themselves faced persecution, perhaps what Jesus said even shocked them. Looking at the faces eagerly waiting to hear more of his teaching, Jesus declares, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” No more patriarchal family, no more domination by senior males or by religious leaders. Jesus declares that his followers, who have been released from demonic powers, are now part of a new and different family, a family united not by blood, nor by allegiance to the eldest male, but by faith in him. That was truly a radical declaration in the ancient world!
Does such a declaration shock us? Can we hear the challenge to patriarchal structures in such a declaration? Most of us no longer live in extended patriarchal families, with multiple generations in the same house or compound, all ruled over by the senior male. To be sure we still have extended families, especially in this part of Ohio. Not a week goes by without a five-generation photo in our local newspapers, though in our culture the senior members are more likely women. However, in contrast to the ancient world, such families are increasingly rare. Even nuclear families, father, mother, and children in the same household, are less common than they were a generation or two ago. Now we have single parent families, gay couples adopting children, grandparents raising grandchildren, and even unrelated people living together as family. In even sharper contrast with the ancient world, marriage in our culture has become more egalitarian, and women have full legal rights with men.
So does Jesus’ new definition of family – “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” – still shock us laid back, egalitarian twenty-first century Americans? It should! As Jesus’ disciples we are still called to be part of a new and different family. We are called to be part of a family not defined by blood ties. Perhaps to the dismay of some, we are called to put our commitment to Jesus’ family above our commitments even to our own blood families. We are also called to be part of a family not defined by geography. Our heritage from the Church of England is of village parishes about three or four miles apart, each with its own vicar and local congregation. In effect our county seat parishes, each with its own distinct community, reflect that same understanding. Even today, orthodox Jews still live in close communities within walking distance of their synagogues. By contrast, we are called instead, to recognize that our family ultimately embraces the entire world, and we are called to care about our friends, our Loaves and Fishes diners, and our sisters and brothers in Cincinnati, Columbus, and even Port au Prince.
We are also called to be a family not defined by race or ethnicity. The Episcopal Church never split apart during the Civil War, but we still had segregated parishes. In this very diocese, we still have historically black parishes, whose roots go back to the time when ethnically diverse parishes were virtually nonexistent. We are also called to be a family not defined by socio-economic class. It was perhaps only a generation or two ago, when the Episcopal Church in this country was the church of the wealthy, of professionals and business people, of the managers and owners, not of working class and poor people. Is that true for this parish? Who is welcome in our parish family?
And finally we are called to be a family committed to doing “the will of God.” In this green season of growth in discipleship, all of us – not just those of us wearing a collar – are called to deepen our relationship with Jesus, to listen more intently to his teaching, and to attend to the family into which he has called us. We are called to understand ourselves as irrevocably bound together with this family and with all other Christians through our baptisms. We are called to welcome the stranger, and to love and care for each other, whoever and wherever we are.
Perhaps some of those Presbyterian missionaries might have been less discouraged by the inability of the women they visited to break out of their patriarchal families if they had known of Pandita Ramabai, a Christian activist in western India. Ramabai was born in 1858 into a Brahmin family, i.e., into the priestly and highest caste. Unusual for the time, Ramabai’s father believed in women’s education and saw to it that she was educated in both Sanskrit texts and contemporary subjects. Independent and forward-thinking, Ramabai married a man of another caste, who died soon after their daughter was born. In Ramabai’s time, most Hindus considered widows to be extremely inauspicious, and even child widows were condemned to a life spent in prayer and fasting in the back corners of their families’ homes. However, Ramabai was fortunately befriended by women of another kind of family, English sisters of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin who had founded a school and convent in the provincial city of Pune. Ramabai and her daughter thrived under the sisters’ gracious care. With their help she was able to do a lecture tour in the U.S. about Hindu women and to study education and social service in England. In 1885 she was baptized in the sisters’ mother house in Wantage, England. Just as Jesus and the CSMV sisters had welcomed Ramabai into a new kind of family, on her return to India in 1889 Ramabai herself created new Christian families. She established the Mukti, or Liberation, Mission in Pune, which serves to this day as a refuge and a Gospel witness for young widows deserted and abused by their families. She also established Krupa Sadan, a home for destitute women, and Sharda Sadan, which provided housing, education, vocational training and medical services for the needy, and she was active in the Arya Mahila Sabha, India’s first feminist organization. Ramabai died in 1922 and is venerated today by Indian Christians, who still seek to continue her work of inclusion of all into a blessed Christian family, regardless of caste, class, language, or ethnicity.
Can we do any less? Methodist scholar Will Willimon reminds us that, “every time the family of God gathers for Holy Communion … or a covered-dish fellowship supper or serves up soup to the homeless on the street corner, the world looks at this odd family and says, ‘Jesus is hanging out with the same reprobates that got him crucified.’ And we say, ‘Thank God.’”1
1. Day 1, preached October 24, 2010, quoted in Synthesis June 10, 2012, 3.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Here Am I, Send Me
“‘The swiftest horse cannot overtake a word once spoken’…. A Chinese saying … take it to heart.” So begins Tom Gordon’s story about Georgina, a student in Mr. Bannerman’s English class.1 The students all called Mr. Bannerman “Proverb Professor,” because of his frequent use of proverbs to drive home his counsel to them. That day, the subject was gossip. On other days Professor Proverb had expressed gratitude for a volunteer (“One volunteer is worth two pressed men”), noted when the class arrived at a similar conclusion from different starting points (“All roads lead to Rome”), or announced a new topic in the syllabus (“There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world; and that is an idea whose time has come”). Often he would challenge the students to search out the origin of a proverb. Of course, his advice went in one ear and out the other for most of the students, including Georgina.
Until the day that Georgina learned she had done badly in the practice exams for the A-levels, the final exams needed in the UK for high school graduation and university entrance. There were surely extenuating circumstances, but even so Georgina dreaded the proverbs Mr. Bannerman would fling at her (“‘You’ve made your bed, so you can lie in it’ … English – 16th century,…”; or “‘Sow much, reap much; sow little, reap little… Chinese’ – you understand what I’m getting at?”). She nervously stepped into his office. To her surprise Mr. Bannerman was sympathetic and helpful. He told her about someone who had visited a wise teacher. “You have to be born again,” the teacher had said. The visitor didn’t get it: he knew that no one could be born again physically. “No,” the teacher had said, “You have to be born again on the inside, you have to begin again from the inside out.” Mr. Bannerman then said to Georgina, “Of course the visitor was confused and had to go away and work it all out. And you can do the same. You can start again from the inside, you can get another chance. You’ll see. Now I know you students call me ‘Professor Proverb,’ and really, I don’t mind. I quite like it. And since I know that you were expecting a proverb, here’s one to help you remember that you can change, you can start again, ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight …’ Japanese – 7th century …”
Transformation from the inside out. As we enter the long growing season following Pentecost, today’s readings give us some clues as to how God’s transformation of us might happen. For some of us, God’s transformation begins with an overwhelming experience of God’s glory and transcendence, a mystical experience, if you will. Often such experiences happen at worship, at times and in places when we know instinctively that we are in God’s presence. Isaiah had a vision of the hem of God’s robe – about all any mortal could see of the incomprehensible, unknowable, mysterious God and survive. Utterly shattered by the experience, Isaiah was painfully aware of his own and his people’s sinfulness. In the twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen similarly experienced God’s presence in especially intense ways. Julian of Norwich, through her visions, sensed more deeply God’s love for us. Francis of Assisi was called to a life of holy poverty by a vision in the Church of San Damiano. The first time I knelt at the altar rail of an Episcopal church, I felt as if I had been struck by a bolt of lightning. A friend of mine walked into an old church, breathed in the scent of the incense that had seeped into the wood there over the centuries, and knelt down in the pew, knowing he was in God’s presence.
For others of us, God’s transformation is more gradual. In a night of confusion and doubt, we approach Jesus, but, like Nicodemus, we don’t understand what he has to say: the message seems garbled – or lost in translation! We question Jesus and hear only more riddles, then perhaps even a long speech! Perhaps we may sense that inner transformation is possible, but we’re still doubtful and confused. Yet, through the work of the Holy Spirit, we begin to work things out. Jesus’ words take root in us, gradually begin to flower, and eventually bear fruit. Both ways of transformation are common and valid. In a lifetime, many of us will experience God’s presence in both ways, perhaps more than once. For, as the designation of this Sunday as Trinity Sunday reminds us, God is transcendent, wholly mysterious other, God is incarnate Word, i.e., God with a human face, and God is Holy Spirit, God living within us. Whatever way we need to encounter God, God will come to us – of that we may be sure. And we may be sure that God’s encounter with us will produce growth and fruit.
Growth and fruit: God’s working of our transformation, whether shattering or gradual, always has a purpose. Like Isaiah and Nicodemus, we may be disoriented by our encounter with God. But, God willing, we are also reoriented and ready to be remade into God’s instruments. Isaiah’s response to God’s commission is immediate: “Who’s willing to speak for me?” God asks. Isaiah doesn’t consult a soothsayer, or his family, or his financial advisor, or his discernment committee, nor does he ponder the pros and cons of responding to God. He just blurts out, “Here am I; send me!” Some of us have had that experience: we open our mouths and say, “I’m thinking of …” and off we go, led into a merry dance by the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, perhaps we are more like Nicodemus. It took Nicodemus longer to accept God’s commission. He disappears from the story we hear this morning, but he turns up two more times in John’s Gospel, first to defend Jesus against the charges of the rest of the religious leaders, and then to anoint Jesus’ body after Jesus’ death. We don’t know Nicodemus’s fate after that, but we can guess that his life was never the same after that first conversation with Jesus. Perhaps the same is true for some of us. After our first encounter with Jesus, we know that God has called us, but the Holy Spirit has to work in us a while before we can see what our gifts and abilities are, before we can understand just what God has commissioned us to be or do.
Today we have a God-given opportunity to let God continue our transformation as Jesus’ friends and disciples. During the coffee hour we will, through a very user-friendly, non-threatening exercise, ponder our spiritual gifts and the ways in which God might be leading us. The focus of most of today’s exercise will be on our individual personal gifts. But I’d like to plant a few seeds of a different kind. I’d like us to begin thinking about our transformation as a parish community. This parish has existed in this county since at least 1841. This building has stood on this spot since 1858. What should we be offering this county? How might we be distinctive as Episcopalians in Gallia County? Yes, we have a distinctive liturgy. On May 29th, those following the Church calendar celebrated the first Book of Common Prayer, which came into use on Pentecost, June 9, 1549. Largely the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Book gave the English church, and ultimately the entire English-speaking world, new offices through which clergy and laity alike could enrich their spiritual lives and felicitous translations and paraphrases of the old Latin Mass. Might God be helping us to transform this gift, so that we may speak more clearly twenty-first century people?
We also have a proud tradition of service and outreach. The Church of England and the Episcopal Church have long histories of serving the needy. In England, nineteenth-century “slum priests,” moved by their devotion to Jesus in the sacrament of communion, went out into the poorest neighborhoods. In the East End of London, long a working class and immigrant area, St. John’s Bethnal Green still has a lively ministry to drug addicts and prostitutes. In this country at the turn of the twentieth century, lay people like Vida Dutton Scudder founded settlement houses. Religious communities like the Community of the Holy Spirit and the Community of the Transfiguration founded schools, nursing homes, and retreat centers. Parishes in this diocese minister to the homeless, provide worship services for those in nursing homes and mental hospitals, feed the hungry, support overseas ministries, care for the earth, and advocate for the poor. This our legacy too. Yet I wonder: is God transforming our heritage of service? Might God be leading us, as Episcopalians, to some new work in Gallia County? Into what kind of a Christian community is God waiting to transform us? Where do we need to change in order to become even more effective instruments of God in this place and time?
My brothers and sisters, the good news is that God continues to work in us, through us, and among us. God continues to work God’s transforming power on us. Holy God, holy and Strong One, holy and Mighty One, You give us life, you give us love, you give us yourself; help us to give our lives, our love, and ourselves to you. Amen.2
1. "Starting Over," With an Open Eye (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2011), 205-08.
2. David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 82
Until the day that Georgina learned she had done badly in the practice exams for the A-levels, the final exams needed in the UK for high school graduation and university entrance. There were surely extenuating circumstances, but even so Georgina dreaded the proverbs Mr. Bannerman would fling at her (“‘You’ve made your bed, so you can lie in it’ … English – 16th century,…”; or “‘Sow much, reap much; sow little, reap little… Chinese’ – you understand what I’m getting at?”). She nervously stepped into his office. To her surprise Mr. Bannerman was sympathetic and helpful. He told her about someone who had visited a wise teacher. “You have to be born again,” the teacher had said. The visitor didn’t get it: he knew that no one could be born again physically. “No,” the teacher had said, “You have to be born again on the inside, you have to begin again from the inside out.” Mr. Bannerman then said to Georgina, “Of course the visitor was confused and had to go away and work it all out. And you can do the same. You can start again from the inside, you can get another chance. You’ll see. Now I know you students call me ‘Professor Proverb,’ and really, I don’t mind. I quite like it. And since I know that you were expecting a proverb, here’s one to help you remember that you can change, you can start again, ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight …’ Japanese – 7th century …”
Transformation from the inside out. As we enter the long growing season following Pentecost, today’s readings give us some clues as to how God’s transformation of us might happen. For some of us, God’s transformation begins with an overwhelming experience of God’s glory and transcendence, a mystical experience, if you will. Often such experiences happen at worship, at times and in places when we know instinctively that we are in God’s presence. Isaiah had a vision of the hem of God’s robe – about all any mortal could see of the incomprehensible, unknowable, mysterious God and survive. Utterly shattered by the experience, Isaiah was painfully aware of his own and his people’s sinfulness. In the twelfth century Hildegard of Bingen similarly experienced God’s presence in especially intense ways. Julian of Norwich, through her visions, sensed more deeply God’s love for us. Francis of Assisi was called to a life of holy poverty by a vision in the Church of San Damiano. The first time I knelt at the altar rail of an Episcopal church, I felt as if I had been struck by a bolt of lightning. A friend of mine walked into an old church, breathed in the scent of the incense that had seeped into the wood there over the centuries, and knelt down in the pew, knowing he was in God’s presence.
For others of us, God’s transformation is more gradual. In a night of confusion and doubt, we approach Jesus, but, like Nicodemus, we don’t understand what he has to say: the message seems garbled – or lost in translation! We question Jesus and hear only more riddles, then perhaps even a long speech! Perhaps we may sense that inner transformation is possible, but we’re still doubtful and confused. Yet, through the work of the Holy Spirit, we begin to work things out. Jesus’ words take root in us, gradually begin to flower, and eventually bear fruit. Both ways of transformation are common and valid. In a lifetime, many of us will experience God’s presence in both ways, perhaps more than once. For, as the designation of this Sunday as Trinity Sunday reminds us, God is transcendent, wholly mysterious other, God is incarnate Word, i.e., God with a human face, and God is Holy Spirit, God living within us. Whatever way we need to encounter God, God will come to us – of that we may be sure. And we may be sure that God’s encounter with us will produce growth and fruit.
Growth and fruit: God’s working of our transformation, whether shattering or gradual, always has a purpose. Like Isaiah and Nicodemus, we may be disoriented by our encounter with God. But, God willing, we are also reoriented and ready to be remade into God’s instruments. Isaiah’s response to God’s commission is immediate: “Who’s willing to speak for me?” God asks. Isaiah doesn’t consult a soothsayer, or his family, or his financial advisor, or his discernment committee, nor does he ponder the pros and cons of responding to God. He just blurts out, “Here am I; send me!” Some of us have had that experience: we open our mouths and say, “I’m thinking of …” and off we go, led into a merry dance by the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, perhaps we are more like Nicodemus. It took Nicodemus longer to accept God’s commission. He disappears from the story we hear this morning, but he turns up two more times in John’s Gospel, first to defend Jesus against the charges of the rest of the religious leaders, and then to anoint Jesus’ body after Jesus’ death. We don’t know Nicodemus’s fate after that, but we can guess that his life was never the same after that first conversation with Jesus. Perhaps the same is true for some of us. After our first encounter with Jesus, we know that God has called us, but the Holy Spirit has to work in us a while before we can see what our gifts and abilities are, before we can understand just what God has commissioned us to be or do.
Today we have a God-given opportunity to let God continue our transformation as Jesus’ friends and disciples. During the coffee hour we will, through a very user-friendly, non-threatening exercise, ponder our spiritual gifts and the ways in which God might be leading us. The focus of most of today’s exercise will be on our individual personal gifts. But I’d like to plant a few seeds of a different kind. I’d like us to begin thinking about our transformation as a parish community. This parish has existed in this county since at least 1841. This building has stood on this spot since 1858. What should we be offering this county? How might we be distinctive as Episcopalians in Gallia County? Yes, we have a distinctive liturgy. On May 29th, those following the Church calendar celebrated the first Book of Common Prayer, which came into use on Pentecost, June 9, 1549. Largely the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Book gave the English church, and ultimately the entire English-speaking world, new offices through which clergy and laity alike could enrich their spiritual lives and felicitous translations and paraphrases of the old Latin Mass. Might God be helping us to transform this gift, so that we may speak more clearly twenty-first century people?
We also have a proud tradition of service and outreach. The Church of England and the Episcopal Church have long histories of serving the needy. In England, nineteenth-century “slum priests,” moved by their devotion to Jesus in the sacrament of communion, went out into the poorest neighborhoods. In the East End of London, long a working class and immigrant area, St. John’s Bethnal Green still has a lively ministry to drug addicts and prostitutes. In this country at the turn of the twentieth century, lay people like Vida Dutton Scudder founded settlement houses. Religious communities like the Community of the Holy Spirit and the Community of the Transfiguration founded schools, nursing homes, and retreat centers. Parishes in this diocese minister to the homeless, provide worship services for those in nursing homes and mental hospitals, feed the hungry, support overseas ministries, care for the earth, and advocate for the poor. This our legacy too. Yet I wonder: is God transforming our heritage of service? Might God be leading us, as Episcopalians, to some new work in Gallia County? Into what kind of a Christian community is God waiting to transform us? Where do we need to change in order to become even more effective instruments of God in this place and time?
My brothers and sisters, the good news is that God continues to work in us, through us, and among us. God continues to work God’s transforming power on us. Holy God, holy and Strong One, holy and Mighty One, You give us life, you give us love, you give us yourself; help us to give our lives, our love, and ourselves to you. Amen.2
1. "Starting Over," With an Open Eye (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications, 2011), 205-08.
2. David Adam, Traces of Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 1999), 82
Monday, May 28, 2012
Can These Bones Live?
“Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, I hear the word of the Lord…. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, I hear the word of the Lord!” [sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys and played on Ipod deck.] It’s a great song, a great spiritual, isn’t it? But, do you believe it? Are dem bones really gonna walk aroun’?
Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.
Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.
The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.
Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.
Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?
Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.
Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.
Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”
Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.
Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.
The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.
Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.
Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?
Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.
Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.
Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”
Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
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