How many of you know a shepherd? How many of you have ever tended sheep? How many have even SEEN a sheep? I suppose most of us have seen sheep and even watched shepherds tend them, but today’s Psalm and Gospel reading, illustrate one of the big problems people have with the Bible – it seems so removed from the way we live life now. Most school children in the developed world have never even seen a sheep, much less have any idea what it takes to be a good shepherd.
If we go a little further down this road, we can easily imagine why so many men and women in the developed world dismiss religion. It seems at best a quaint relic of days gone by and at worst seems dangerously out of touch with modern reality.
The Good Shepherd seems not far removed from Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. The child who professes to believe in any of these receives an amused, sympathetic, and perhaps slightly wisful grin. Ah, to be seven years old again and capable of believing in childhood magic!
The indulgent and amused adult who encounters such a child may feel a pang or two of nostalgia for his or her childhood but more than likely has no wish to be that age again.
“I am the good shepherd…” Jesus said. Was he saying that he was the only slightly more believeable equivalent of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy – an appealing and fuzzy belief with which we comfort children, all the while knowing the universe to be cold, inhospitable and finally meaningless.
I wonder if perhaps Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are figures that were invented to fill in the gap, to take up the slack in a world in which God was beginning to play a smaller part.
Obviously, shepherd was a powerful image in ancient Israel. The Old Testament often speaks of God as shepherd, and the best known example of this is, of course, Psalm 23.
Why shepherd? What is there about shepherds that made them an appropriate image for God?
If we were to choose an image for God that might be more appropriate for our day, where would we look? The image that comes to my mind immediately are the men and women of the New York City Fire Dept who rescued the victims of the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, the image of a rescue worker carrying a wounded person out of the World Trade Center bears a remarkable resemblance to images of the Good Shepherd bringing the lost lamb back to the fold.
But where, we might ask, is the Good Shepherd when the world comes crashing down? When bad things happen to good people?
Rabbi Harold Kushner in his commentary on Psalm 23 points out how realistic this psalm is. It doesn’t promise us that there will be no death but promises us that God walks with us through the valley of death’s dark shadow. It doesn’t say that we will have no enemies but assures us that God is with us in the presence of our enemies.
Where is God when the shadows grow dark and our enemies seem to be all around? Where was God when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center? In the ancient world God was the Good Shepherd but in our world God may be the “Good Fireman or woman”. God is the one who goes into the burning building even as it falls down around us and carries us out safely.
Perverse and foolish oft I strayed
But yet in love God sought me
And on his shoulders gently laid
And home rejoicing brought me.
Amen.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
What's in a name?
“What’s in a name?” Juliet asks in Romeo and Juliet. She could not understand how the mere fact that she was a Capulet and Romeo a Montague was a strong enough reason to keep them apart. But Shakespeare knew just how powerful names can be. In Othello the villain Iago says, “Good name in man or woman is the immediate jewel of their souls…. But he that filches from me my good name / Robs me of that which not enriches him / And makes me poor indeed...”
Names were even more important in the ancient world. Ancient Israel believed that to name a thing was to acquire mastery over it and to learn a person’s name was to acquire power over them. In the first chapter of Genesis God names each component of creation: “God called the dry land earth … and the waters that were gathered together he called seas…” But in the second chapter of Genesis, God brings all the creatures of the earth before Adam who then names them. Genesis 1 is telling us that the world is God’s artifact, God’s creature, but Genesis 2 tells us that God has entrusted us with the power to name and authority over creation.
Today’s readings touch on this idea of naming. Called before the Jewish authorities Peter asserts that the lame man was healed by faith in the name of Jesus. And in the gospel reading the Risen Christ tells the disciples that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.”
For Peter to stand before the Jewish authorities and tell them that faith in the name of Jesus had healed the lame man was tantamount to telling them that Jesus was not just an intinerant prophet but that he was God. As Paul put it in the second chapter of Philippians, “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow…” To Jews then and now there is only one name in which we are to have faith, only one name to which every should bow, and that is the name of God.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not only applicable to today’s readings because of Juliet’s meditation on the significance of names. Shakespeare’s Verona was divided between the Capulets and the Montagues. Take Verona and multiply it a thousand times, and you have the 21st century. Our world is fragmented a thousand different ways. Muslims and Christians, developed and developing countries, rich and poor, north and south, black and white. And religion seems to be responsible for some of the deepest, bitterest, and most dangerous divisions. As Jonathan Swift once said, “We have enough religion to make us hate one another but not enough to make us love.”
The world’s great religions generally agree that we should care for the poor, the hungry, and the homeless; that we should treat all people with respect; and so on. But as soon as we move away from ethics and start to talk about belief, all unity vanishes. From the very beginning Christians have maintained that to know Jesus is to know God and that the name of Jesus is also the name of God. Jews and Muslims cannot wrap their minds around this. Both Judaism and Islam believe that between the divine and the human is an enormous wall that cannot be penetrated. God is God and humans are humans.
If we continue to insist that the name of Jesus and the name of God are one and the same are we engaging in a dangerous spiritual and intellectual parochialism that will simply further divide the world? Is the only alternative a sort of mindless multi-culturalism that maintains that one truth is as good as another? I have no easy answers but I want to suggest a way forward.
First and foremost, I want to say that I am a Christian. I believe that. The Christian faith is the conviction that to encounter Christ is to encounter God. The followers of Jesus were convinced that the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and gave the Torah to Moses on Sinai – the very same God had spoken to them in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. How did they know this? Workers of miracles and tellers of parables were common in first century Palestine. Many wandering teachers other than Jesus assembled and taught groups of disciples. None of these things is sufficient to explain why Peter, James, John, and the rest were so certain that the name of Jesus and the name of God were one and the same. What convinced them was the resurrection. They had seen Jesus die on the cross; they had placed his body in a tomb; but on the first day of the week he appeared among them again. He appeared not as a vision, dream, illusion, or phantom. They found him to be as real after his death as before it. He ate with them, walked with two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and the wounds in his hands, feet, and side convinced Thomas and others that he was indeed the Jesus they had known prior to his execution.
Christianity is the belief that to know Jesus is to know God. It is NOT the belief that Christians have a monopoly on the truth; it is NOT the belief that everyone else must be wrong. It is not the belief that Christians are morally and spiritually superior because of their faith.
One of my favorite definitions of the Christian faith comes from David Jenkins, now the retired bishop of Durham, England. Bp Jenkins was a famous or notorious liberal depending on your point of view, but he once remarked to my friend, Alan Webster, then Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “The Christian faith is very simple: God IS as God is in Christ. Therefore, we have hope.” Note the present tense: not God WAS but God IS. We worship a Christ who is in the present tense, not the past.
And there’s the rub: If you believe as I do that God was (and is) in Christ reconciling the world, that Israel’s God was fully and uniquely present in Jesus of Nazareth, then is there any room at all for acknowledging the validity of other religions? Must we maintain that Christianity not only has a monopoly on the truth but even a monopoly on God?
Many would say yes. Apparently, this is the conviction of our president and many of his strongest supporters. And many would say that this is a dangerous position in a world as fragmented as ours is.
However, I think Jesus himself offers us a way out of this dilemma.
I always tell my students that the only way to understand the New Testament is to hold firmly to the fact that Jesus, Paul, and others were Jews. This helps us make sense of the things Jesus did and said. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exegetes three traditional mitzvot or commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery, and you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. At the very beginning, he says, “I have not come to destroy the Torah but to fulfill (or complete) it.”
I think we may have put too much emphasis on the end of that statement and too little on the beginning. To be sure, we believe that to understand God’s word, God’s guidance for our lives, we need to look to Jesus. I believe that that is what he meant by saying that he came to fulfill the commandments of the Torah.
But what did he mean by saying that he did not come to destroy the Torah? For much of the last 2000 years, Christians have acted as though Jesus DID come to destroy the Torah. We have persecuted the Jewish people, driven them out of so-called Christian countries, and finally, Christian indifference allowed (some would say caused) the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
But Jesus did not set aside the Torah. He never denied its wisdom. And most significantly, he never denied that it was a genuine revelation of God.
I wonder if we might extrapolate from Jesus’ refusal to set aside the Torah, his insistence that he did not come to destroy what had come before but to fulfill it. Would Jesus say that he did not come to destroy the Qu’ran? Might he say that he did not come to destroy but to fulfill the wisdom of Buddhism? Would Jesus of Nazareth refuse to set aside the scriptures of the Hindu tradition?
I do not have a final answer, but I do believe that the God I encounter in Christ is comprehensive and broad rather than narrow and partisan. I cannot say how God is encountered in other great religions but I find it hard to believe that a God as big as the God of Jesus could be revealed only to a small part of the human race and completely hidden to all the rest.
I don’t think this makes me any less Christian. I still believe that God is in Christ reconciling the world. I still believe that hope and health, joy and salvation come to those who call on the name of Jesus. I still believe that you and I have a responsibility to proclaim these things. But I also believe that the kingdom is broader than the limits of my mind and I dare not limit the gracious hospitality of God.
“What’s in a name?” Juliet asked. In Shakespeare’s great play the division between the Capulets and Montagues led to tragedy. Clinging to those things which divide rather than unite us in our world could lead to catastrophes that even Shakespeare could never have imagined. I believe that when I call upon the name of Jesus, I am calling upon God, but it is not for me to say that God might be known by other names.
Freshman year I was part of a fairly conservative Bible study group, and at the end of the year one of our members decided to attend Harvard Divinity School. We were a little worried about what might become of Betsy at this great bastion of liberal religion. After a semester at the div school I asked Betsy what she had learned. She smiled and said, “I have discovered that the kingdom is far broader than I thought.”
God has invited you and me to a heavenly feast. The invitation was written in Greek and went out 2000 years ago. . We call it the New Testament. But I believe that God has also sent invitations to the banquet in Arabic and Chinese and Sanskrit and Hebrew. God invites all his children to the eternal banquet, regardless of their language and regardless of the name by which they know him. Amen.
Names were even more important in the ancient world. Ancient Israel believed that to name a thing was to acquire mastery over it and to learn a person’s name was to acquire power over them. In the first chapter of Genesis God names each component of creation: “God called the dry land earth … and the waters that were gathered together he called seas…” But in the second chapter of Genesis, God brings all the creatures of the earth before Adam who then names them. Genesis 1 is telling us that the world is God’s artifact, God’s creature, but Genesis 2 tells us that God has entrusted us with the power to name and authority over creation.
Today’s readings touch on this idea of naming. Called before the Jewish authorities Peter asserts that the lame man was healed by faith in the name of Jesus. And in the gospel reading the Risen Christ tells the disciples that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.”
For Peter to stand before the Jewish authorities and tell them that faith in the name of Jesus had healed the lame man was tantamount to telling them that Jesus was not just an intinerant prophet but that he was God. As Paul put it in the second chapter of Philippians, “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow…” To Jews then and now there is only one name in which we are to have faith, only one name to which every should bow, and that is the name of God.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not only applicable to today’s readings because of Juliet’s meditation on the significance of names. Shakespeare’s Verona was divided between the Capulets and the Montagues. Take Verona and multiply it a thousand times, and you have the 21st century. Our world is fragmented a thousand different ways. Muslims and Christians, developed and developing countries, rich and poor, north and south, black and white. And religion seems to be responsible for some of the deepest, bitterest, and most dangerous divisions. As Jonathan Swift once said, “We have enough religion to make us hate one another but not enough to make us love.”
The world’s great religions generally agree that we should care for the poor, the hungry, and the homeless; that we should treat all people with respect; and so on. But as soon as we move away from ethics and start to talk about belief, all unity vanishes. From the very beginning Christians have maintained that to know Jesus is to know God and that the name of Jesus is also the name of God. Jews and Muslims cannot wrap their minds around this. Both Judaism and Islam believe that between the divine and the human is an enormous wall that cannot be penetrated. God is God and humans are humans.
If we continue to insist that the name of Jesus and the name of God are one and the same are we engaging in a dangerous spiritual and intellectual parochialism that will simply further divide the world? Is the only alternative a sort of mindless multi-culturalism that maintains that one truth is as good as another? I have no easy answers but I want to suggest a way forward.
First and foremost, I want to say that I am a Christian. I believe that. The Christian faith is the conviction that to encounter Christ is to encounter God. The followers of Jesus were convinced that the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, the God who brought Israel out of Egypt and gave the Torah to Moses on Sinai – the very same God had spoken to them in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. How did they know this? Workers of miracles and tellers of parables were common in first century Palestine. Many wandering teachers other than Jesus assembled and taught groups of disciples. None of these things is sufficient to explain why Peter, James, John, and the rest were so certain that the name of Jesus and the name of God were one and the same. What convinced them was the resurrection. They had seen Jesus die on the cross; they had placed his body in a tomb; but on the first day of the week he appeared among them again. He appeared not as a vision, dream, illusion, or phantom. They found him to be as real after his death as before it. He ate with them, walked with two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and the wounds in his hands, feet, and side convinced Thomas and others that he was indeed the Jesus they had known prior to his execution.
Christianity is the belief that to know Jesus is to know God. It is NOT the belief that Christians have a monopoly on the truth; it is NOT the belief that everyone else must be wrong. It is not the belief that Christians are morally and spiritually superior because of their faith.
One of my favorite definitions of the Christian faith comes from David Jenkins, now the retired bishop of Durham, England. Bp Jenkins was a famous or notorious liberal depending on your point of view, but he once remarked to my friend, Alan Webster, then Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “The Christian faith is very simple: God IS as God is in Christ. Therefore, we have hope.” Note the present tense: not God WAS but God IS. We worship a Christ who is in the present tense, not the past.
And there’s the rub: If you believe as I do that God was (and is) in Christ reconciling the world, that Israel’s God was fully and uniquely present in Jesus of Nazareth, then is there any room at all for acknowledging the validity of other religions? Must we maintain that Christianity not only has a monopoly on the truth but even a monopoly on God?
Many would say yes. Apparently, this is the conviction of our president and many of his strongest supporters. And many would say that this is a dangerous position in a world as fragmented as ours is.
However, I think Jesus himself offers us a way out of this dilemma.
I always tell my students that the only way to understand the New Testament is to hold firmly to the fact that Jesus, Paul, and others were Jews. This helps us make sense of the things Jesus did and said. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus exegetes three traditional mitzvot or commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery, and you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. At the very beginning, he says, “I have not come to destroy the Torah but to fulfill (or complete) it.”
I think we may have put too much emphasis on the end of that statement and too little on the beginning. To be sure, we believe that to understand God’s word, God’s guidance for our lives, we need to look to Jesus. I believe that that is what he meant by saying that he came to fulfill the commandments of the Torah.
But what did he mean by saying that he did not come to destroy the Torah? For much of the last 2000 years, Christians have acted as though Jesus DID come to destroy the Torah. We have persecuted the Jewish people, driven them out of so-called Christian countries, and finally, Christian indifference allowed (some would say caused) the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
But Jesus did not set aside the Torah. He never denied its wisdom. And most significantly, he never denied that it was a genuine revelation of God.
I wonder if we might extrapolate from Jesus’ refusal to set aside the Torah, his insistence that he did not come to destroy what had come before but to fulfill it. Would Jesus say that he did not come to destroy the Qu’ran? Might he say that he did not come to destroy but to fulfill the wisdom of Buddhism? Would Jesus of Nazareth refuse to set aside the scriptures of the Hindu tradition?
I do not have a final answer, but I do believe that the God I encounter in Christ is comprehensive and broad rather than narrow and partisan. I cannot say how God is encountered in other great religions but I find it hard to believe that a God as big as the God of Jesus could be revealed only to a small part of the human race and completely hidden to all the rest.
I don’t think this makes me any less Christian. I still believe that God is in Christ reconciling the world. I still believe that hope and health, joy and salvation come to those who call on the name of Jesus. I still believe that you and I have a responsibility to proclaim these things. But I also believe that the kingdom is broader than the limits of my mind and I dare not limit the gracious hospitality of God.
“What’s in a name?” Juliet asked. In Shakespeare’s great play the division between the Capulets and Montagues led to tragedy. Clinging to those things which divide rather than unite us in our world could lead to catastrophes that even Shakespeare could never have imagined. I believe that when I call upon the name of Jesus, I am calling upon God, but it is not for me to say that God might be known by other names.
Freshman year I was part of a fairly conservative Bible study group, and at the end of the year one of our members decided to attend Harvard Divinity School. We were a little worried about what might become of Betsy at this great bastion of liberal religion. After a semester at the div school I asked Betsy what she had learned. She smiled and said, “I have discovered that the kingdom is far broader than I thought.”
God has invited you and me to a heavenly feast. The invitation was written in Greek and went out 2000 years ago. . We call it the New Testament. But I believe that God has also sent invitations to the banquet in Arabic and Chinese and Sanskrit and Hebrew. God invites all his children to the eternal banquet, regardless of their language and regardless of the name by which they know him. Amen.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Christmas maturity and the "Peter Pan syndrome"
“When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.’ And Elisha said, ‘I pray you, let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’ And he said, ‘You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.’ And as they still went on and talked, behold a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he creid, ‘My father, my father! the chiariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ And he saw him no more.” (2 Kings 2.9-12)
“I don’t want to grow up... I don’t want to grow up...” So sang Mary Martin in Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie’s play about the boy who didn’t want to grow up. It was one of my favorite shows when I was a little boy. I wanted to be one of the children that were sprinkled with fairy dust and flew with Peter out of the nursery window to Never-never Land... “east of the sun and west of the moon”. But ultimately, Peter Pan is a very sad story. Wendy and her brothers and the Lost Boys who return with them do grow up, but Peter never does.
Human beings are programmed to grow up. We’re not supposed to remain children forever. And that is as true spiritually as it is physically.
Do you know the wonderful story of the prophet Elijah’s departure for heaven via a fiery chariot? Have you noticed the recent obsession with aliens and flying saucers? A few summers ago one of the season’s most popular movies was Contact, a tale of a human meeting with an alien civilization. The summer that Contact appeared was also the 50th anniversary of the so-called Roswell, New Mexico, incident, the site of an alleged UFO crash. It wouldn’t take much for a Hollywood producer to get hold of the story of Elijah and the fiery chariot and dress it up as the first account of an alien abduction.
I bring up the superficial similarity between the fiery chariot and a UFO to point out that when we read this story, we tend to emphasize the wrong thing. What is important about this story is not the amazing story of “the chariots of Israel and their horsemen”; what is important is the relationship between Elijah and Elisha. This story is not about a trip on a fiery chariot; it is about coming of age and becoming an adult.
Elisha was Elijah’s disciple or pupil. Elisha insisted on following Elijah around. Elijah went to Bethel and told Elisha to stay in Gilgal, but Elisha responded, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you”. Twice more Elijah tried to move on by himself, but Elisha insisted on following him. It took divine intervention in the form of a fiery chariot to separate the prophet and his disciple.
I think this story tells us something very important about the relationship between a teacher and a student or a parent and a child. A student is not supposed to remain with his or her teacher forever, nor a child with a parent. There comes a time when the student and the child must strike out on their own, and if this time never comes, then something is wrong: Either the teacher or parent is clinging to the student or child in an unhealthy way, or the student or child continues to remain in an immature relationship with their teacher or parent.
The great sign of maturity is that we have learned those things that we were supposed to learn from our teachers and parents and have incorporated those in our lives. When that happens then we are supposed to strike out on our own. It is a difficult, even painful moment, for both the child and the parent, but it is a necessary and inevitable pain.
The story ended happily. After Elijah ascended into heaven, Elisha picked up his master’s mantle or coat and wrapped it around himself. Then, like Elijah before him, he was able to command the Jordan to part as he walked across it. He had learned the lessons Elijah had to teach him, or to use the Bible’s phrase, he had received the “double share” of Elijah’s spirit that he asked for.
Whose mantle have you picked up and put on? Whose spirit have you been given a double portion of? If we are lucky, we have had parents who have taught us their lessons and given us their spirit. There may also have been teachers who have done the same for us. If we have really learned those lessons, then we will be capable of standing on our own. We will be capable of performing those deeds that we saw our parents and teachers doing during our childhood or apprenticeship.
Just as we grow up physically, so we grow up spiritually. Like small children who have had a marvelous time at a picnic, the disciples in today's gospel reading don't want the wonderful experience on the mountain top to end. But one of the most important things we learn as we mature is how to let go, and that it is as pathological to try to make "mountain top experiences" last forever as it is to hold on to negative experiences.
The lesson for the disciples and for us in the story of the Transfiguration is that the mountaintop is a place of learning and refreshment but not our home. Life moves from peak to valley and back again. What we learn on the mountain top is put to work in life's valleys, and the lessons we learn in the valleys prepares us for those mountain top moments when God's glory shines all around us.
After Elisha picked up Elijah’s mantle and received Elijah’s spirit, he was able to do the miracles that Elijah had done. Can we expect to do the works that Jesus did if we learn his lessons faithfully? Will we find ourselves multiplying loaves and fishes and walking on water? I don’t know about the loaves and fishes or walking on water, but there are deeds of power that every Christian should be able to do. If we have been faithful in the school of Christ, then we should find ourselves loving our neighbors, forgiving our enemies, returning good for evil, trusting God for our daily needs, and giving of ourselves to others.
For like Elijah, we, too, have been given a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, through whom Jesus becomes our “Eternal Contemporary”, the unseen guest at every meal and the invisible companion on every journey.
“I don’t want to grow up... I don’t want to grow up...” So sang Mary Martin in Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie’s play about the boy who didn’t want to grow up. It was one of my favorite shows when I was a little boy. I wanted to be one of the children that were sprinkled with fairy dust and flew with Peter out of the nursery window to Never-never Land... “east of the sun and west of the moon”. But ultimately, Peter Pan is a very sad story. Wendy and her brothers and the Lost Boys who return with them do grow up, but Peter never does.
Human beings are programmed to grow up. We’re not supposed to remain children forever. And that is as true spiritually as it is physically.
Do you know the wonderful story of the prophet Elijah’s departure for heaven via a fiery chariot? Have you noticed the recent obsession with aliens and flying saucers? A few summers ago one of the season’s most popular movies was Contact, a tale of a human meeting with an alien civilization. The summer that Contact appeared was also the 50th anniversary of the so-called Roswell, New Mexico, incident, the site of an alleged UFO crash. It wouldn’t take much for a Hollywood producer to get hold of the story of Elijah and the fiery chariot and dress it up as the first account of an alien abduction.
I bring up the superficial similarity between the fiery chariot and a UFO to point out that when we read this story, we tend to emphasize the wrong thing. What is important about this story is not the amazing story of “the chariots of Israel and their horsemen”; what is important is the relationship between Elijah and Elisha. This story is not about a trip on a fiery chariot; it is about coming of age and becoming an adult.
Elisha was Elijah’s disciple or pupil. Elisha insisted on following Elijah around. Elijah went to Bethel and told Elisha to stay in Gilgal, but Elisha responded, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you”. Twice more Elijah tried to move on by himself, but Elisha insisted on following him. It took divine intervention in the form of a fiery chariot to separate the prophet and his disciple.
I think this story tells us something very important about the relationship between a teacher and a student or a parent and a child. A student is not supposed to remain with his or her teacher forever, nor a child with a parent. There comes a time when the student and the child must strike out on their own, and if this time never comes, then something is wrong: Either the teacher or parent is clinging to the student or child in an unhealthy way, or the student or child continues to remain in an immature relationship with their teacher or parent.
The great sign of maturity is that we have learned those things that we were supposed to learn from our teachers and parents and have incorporated those in our lives. When that happens then we are supposed to strike out on our own. It is a difficult, even painful moment, for both the child and the parent, but it is a necessary and inevitable pain.
The story ended happily. After Elijah ascended into heaven, Elisha picked up his master’s mantle or coat and wrapped it around himself. Then, like Elijah before him, he was able to command the Jordan to part as he walked across it. He had learned the lessons Elijah had to teach him, or to use the Bible’s phrase, he had received the “double share” of Elijah’s spirit that he asked for.
Whose mantle have you picked up and put on? Whose spirit have you been given a double portion of? If we are lucky, we have had parents who have taught us their lessons and given us their spirit. There may also have been teachers who have done the same for us. If we have really learned those lessons, then we will be capable of standing on our own. We will be capable of performing those deeds that we saw our parents and teachers doing during our childhood or apprenticeship.
Just as we grow up physically, so we grow up spiritually. Like small children who have had a marvelous time at a picnic, the disciples in today's gospel reading don't want the wonderful experience on the mountain top to end. But one of the most important things we learn as we mature is how to let go, and that it is as pathological to try to make "mountain top experiences" last forever as it is to hold on to negative experiences.
The lesson for the disciples and for us in the story of the Transfiguration is that the mountaintop is a place of learning and refreshment but not our home. Life moves from peak to valley and back again. What we learn on the mountain top is put to work in life's valleys, and the lessons we learn in the valleys prepares us for those mountain top moments when God's glory shines all around us.
After Elisha picked up Elijah’s mantle and received Elijah’s spirit, he was able to do the miracles that Elijah had done. Can we expect to do the works that Jesus did if we learn his lessons faithfully? Will we find ourselves multiplying loaves and fishes and walking on water? I don’t know about the loaves and fishes or walking on water, but there are deeds of power that every Christian should be able to do. If we have been faithful in the school of Christ, then we should find ourselves loving our neighbors, forgiving our enemies, returning good for evil, trusting God for our daily needs, and giving of ourselves to others.
For like Elijah, we, too, have been given a new spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, through whom Jesus becomes our “Eternal Contemporary”, the unseen guest at every meal and the invisible companion on every journey.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Christmas 2: In the Beginning was the Word
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth...” (John 1.1, 14)
“In the beginning was the Word...” I’m not talking about the opening of John’s gospel. I’m not talking about the word that God spoke that brought the world into being. I’m talking about your word and my word.
In the beginning is the word, the sound, the cry of each of us. wailing at the top of our lungs. Angry to have been torn from the safe, warm womb. And for the longest time that’s all there is. There’s just our voice. Then, gradually, we begin to recognize there are others, much bigger than us who are talking to us. We don’t know what they are saying but we figure out that if we yell and cry loud enough and long enough and frequently enough we can get them to do what we want: feed us, change our diaper, or just hold us.
And ever so gradually we begin to understand what they are saying. Before they put us to bed they put is in this stuff called “water”. And we quickly learn how to tell them if it’s too hot or too cold!!
“Milk”—now there’s an important word! It doesn’t take long at all to figure out the name of that delectable substance.
But the most important words probably come the most quickly—Mommy and Daddy. The big creatures who hold us and feed us and change us and teach us all these words that we are learning.
If there were only our own voices crying in the emptiness, if there were no voices responding to us, how could we know what to call water or milk, much less Mommy and Daddy? And if we could not name the world around us, how could we even know who we are? For it is only by responding to others, it is only in the give and take with others that we learn who we are.
We come to learn who we are by encountering others and the primary way we encounter others is through language. We talk and I learn that you like brussel sprouts and I like broccoli. You are a morning person and I am a night person. You are Jewish and I am Christian. You squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom and I squeeze from the middle.
If there were no language, no medium for communication, then how could we ever know who we are? Communication is essential for learning who we are because communication enables community and it is in community that we take on the unique characteristics that make us who we are.
And so the world goes... sometimes communication enables very good things to take place. Great artists can take words and create poems and plays and novels and reflect life back to us so that we can understand it more fully. Music is another form of communication. Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert and a thousand others take melody and harmony and rhythm and reflect an infinite variety of subtle gradations of human feelings.
But sometimes communication is used destructively. “Words mean exactly what I want them to mean”, said Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Through the Looking Glass. And so tyrants have taken words and twisted them. The Nazis called their extermination of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others the “final solution”. “Anti-social tendencies” was the excuse the Soviets gave for sending millions to the prison camps in Siberia. “Re-education” was what Mao said he was doing to dissidents and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, when he was really sending them to camps where they were worked to death. “Not one of us”, an innocent sounding phrase, is given as an excuse for excluding those of different races, religions, and nationalities from our communities. Harmless sounding phrases can be used to mask profound evil.
“In the beginning was the Word...” So, the human race went for hundreds of thousands of years talking to itself. And then, Someone else spoke. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.” Israel, a tiny and seemingly insignificant people, suddenly found its internal conversation rudely and abruptly interrupted by a word from Beyond. And so the real dialogue began. A Voice broke in offering a radically new perspective. The Voice said, “You are not alone. You did not create yourselves. You have responsibilities to me and I to you. And because I am a just God and will deal justly with you, you must deal justly with one another. And oh, by the way, I love you with an everlasting love and will never, never leave you.”
And Israel took up the challenge of dialogue with God. The dialogue was conducted through prophets—men and women who always began what they had to say with “The word of the Lord came to me...”
Like a child, Israel learned new words. They learned justice and righteousness which meant (and still means) to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, and care for the sick and dying. They learned chesed, “lovingkindness”, the quality of God’s love for them which was also to be the quality of their love for one another.
But it was difficult to remember what the prophets said, so they wrote it down. Hundreds of yards of papyrus was used to write down the words of the prophets. And weekly on Friday night and Saturday morning they read the words of the prophets. Scribes pored over the scrolls, interpreting what the prophets had said, trying to help people live according to the teachings of the prophets, which is to say, according to the words of God.
But it was still difficult to remember, much less to do, what God had said to the prophets. You had to be able to read and few could do that. Or you had to go to the Temple or the synagogue and that was difficult to do every week. And the Israelites were like us. They had their own agendas. There were other gods who were less demanding, who asked no more than a pinch of incense or an occasional lamb on the altar and a quickly muttered incantation. So, the prophets spoke less and less frequently and their words grew faint and people neglected to read the words on the scrolls.
So if you were God, what would you do? You or I would probably try to speak more loudly. If we had divine powers we might borrow the booming voice of the thunder and speak in that way. That would get people’s attention, but that would only work for a short time. People would get accustomed to that and tune that out, too. We might send earthquakes and natural disasters to underscore the importance of what we had to say. That gets people’s attention for a while, and then they go back to doing whatever they were doing before the catastrophe.
So God spoke in an entirely different way. There had been enough words, and there had been enough flashy miracles. God’s strategy was brilliant. It was counter-intuitive. We expect an announcement from God to be like an announcement from the President. “We now interrupt this program to bring you a speech from the Oval Office...” Or we expect a word from God to be announced like the announcement of a dire catastrophe. “There will now be a test of the emergency broadcast network...” Or at least there would be a legion of trumpeters and drummers and maybe even bagpipes preceding a major announcement from God.
But instead God slipped quietly and unobtrusively into the world. God’s message came wrapped in the flesh of a baby born to an unwed mother who had travelled far from her home and could find shelter only in a cattle shed. Talk about counter-intuitive!
Oh sure, there were some shepherds who saw and heard a few angels, but who believed them? There were some astrologers who found a strange conjunction of stars and set off for Bethlehem. And even Joseph and Mary were somewhat unsure of what God was trying to say.
A popular phrase of the 1960s expresses exactly what God was doing: “The medium is the message”. God’s message was not just what Jesus said; the life of Jesus was the message of God. The message was that this is how God chooses to love. God’s love is vulnerable and non-coercive. The message is that we have several choices. We can ignore it, and that’s what most did. There weren’t many who had “ears to hear”. We can scoff and condemn: “This man receives sinners and eats with them”. Or we can follow: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately they dropped their nets and followed him”.
We can also take God’s love and betray him and give him a mock trial and turn him over to the authorities and nail him to a cross and watch while for six hours he dies and then take God’s love and put it in a borrowed tomb and then we can all go home to our houses and think, “Well, it was a lovely dream, but it wasn’t very realistic, was it? The world is a tough place. God should have sent his love in a stronger package. Maybe next time God should try sending a warrior or a king or something big and flashy that will get people’s attention. God needs to send a guy who’ll knock a few heads together. The human race is a pretty tough audience. Maybe God learned his lesson this time. The very idea of sending a baby who grew into a man who never owned a home and who hung out with lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors.... what was God thinking?”
But then God’s love burst out of the borrowed tomb. God’s love showed that it was stronger than Roman legions; stronger than the thousand year Reich; stronger than the Iron Curtain; stronger than death.
The laugh is on us. We had to learn we were still infants when it comes to learning God’s language. We had to learn that there are some kinds of weakness that are stronger than what we think of as strength. We had to learn that life is about more than just accumulating things and pushing to the front of the line and looking out for number one. We had to learn that you can’t kill God’s love. It comes back again and again and again.
Above all we had to learn a new meaning for the word love. Love means reaching out to and including lepers and the homeless and persons with AIDS and persons who struggle with addiction. Love means giving without expecting anything in return. Love means trusting that God who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds of the air will care for us, too.
And what happens if we put our trust in God’s love? What happens if we take the radical risk of loving as God loves? Well, God left us a story about what happens if we do that and we heard the beginning of that story tonight. If we really love as God loves then what happened to Jesus will happen to us. A few will listen; most will be indifferent; and a few may try to kill us. But the story also tells us that those who love as God loves can never, never be separated from God.
“In the beginning was the Word...” I’m not talking about the opening of John’s gospel. I’m not talking about the word that God spoke that brought the world into being. I’m talking about your word and my word.
In the beginning is the word, the sound, the cry of each of us. wailing at the top of our lungs. Angry to have been torn from the safe, warm womb. And for the longest time that’s all there is. There’s just our voice. Then, gradually, we begin to recognize there are others, much bigger than us who are talking to us. We don’t know what they are saying but we figure out that if we yell and cry loud enough and long enough and frequently enough we can get them to do what we want: feed us, change our diaper, or just hold us.
And ever so gradually we begin to understand what they are saying. Before they put us to bed they put is in this stuff called “water”. And we quickly learn how to tell them if it’s too hot or too cold!!
“Milk”—now there’s an important word! It doesn’t take long at all to figure out the name of that delectable substance.
But the most important words probably come the most quickly—Mommy and Daddy. The big creatures who hold us and feed us and change us and teach us all these words that we are learning.
If there were only our own voices crying in the emptiness, if there were no voices responding to us, how could we know what to call water or milk, much less Mommy and Daddy? And if we could not name the world around us, how could we even know who we are? For it is only by responding to others, it is only in the give and take with others that we learn who we are.
We come to learn who we are by encountering others and the primary way we encounter others is through language. We talk and I learn that you like brussel sprouts and I like broccoli. You are a morning person and I am a night person. You are Jewish and I am Christian. You squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom and I squeeze from the middle.
If there were no language, no medium for communication, then how could we ever know who we are? Communication is essential for learning who we are because communication enables community and it is in community that we take on the unique characteristics that make us who we are.
And so the world goes... sometimes communication enables very good things to take place. Great artists can take words and create poems and plays and novels and reflect life back to us so that we can understand it more fully. Music is another form of communication. Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert and a thousand others take melody and harmony and rhythm and reflect an infinite variety of subtle gradations of human feelings.
But sometimes communication is used destructively. “Words mean exactly what I want them to mean”, said Humpty Dumpty to Alice in Through the Looking Glass. And so tyrants have taken words and twisted them. The Nazis called their extermination of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others the “final solution”. “Anti-social tendencies” was the excuse the Soviets gave for sending millions to the prison camps in Siberia. “Re-education” was what Mao said he was doing to dissidents and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, when he was really sending them to camps where they were worked to death. “Not one of us”, an innocent sounding phrase, is given as an excuse for excluding those of different races, religions, and nationalities from our communities. Harmless sounding phrases can be used to mask profound evil.
“In the beginning was the Word...” So, the human race went for hundreds of thousands of years talking to itself. And then, Someone else spoke. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.” Israel, a tiny and seemingly insignificant people, suddenly found its internal conversation rudely and abruptly interrupted by a word from Beyond. And so the real dialogue began. A Voice broke in offering a radically new perspective. The Voice said, “You are not alone. You did not create yourselves. You have responsibilities to me and I to you. And because I am a just God and will deal justly with you, you must deal justly with one another. And oh, by the way, I love you with an everlasting love and will never, never leave you.”
And Israel took up the challenge of dialogue with God. The dialogue was conducted through prophets—men and women who always began what they had to say with “The word of the Lord came to me...”
Like a child, Israel learned new words. They learned justice and righteousness which meant (and still means) to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, and care for the sick and dying. They learned chesed, “lovingkindness”, the quality of God’s love for them which was also to be the quality of their love for one another.
But it was difficult to remember what the prophets said, so they wrote it down. Hundreds of yards of papyrus was used to write down the words of the prophets. And weekly on Friday night and Saturday morning they read the words of the prophets. Scribes pored over the scrolls, interpreting what the prophets had said, trying to help people live according to the teachings of the prophets, which is to say, according to the words of God.
But it was still difficult to remember, much less to do, what God had said to the prophets. You had to be able to read and few could do that. Or you had to go to the Temple or the synagogue and that was difficult to do every week. And the Israelites were like us. They had their own agendas. There were other gods who were less demanding, who asked no more than a pinch of incense or an occasional lamb on the altar and a quickly muttered incantation. So, the prophets spoke less and less frequently and their words grew faint and people neglected to read the words on the scrolls.
So if you were God, what would you do? You or I would probably try to speak more loudly. If we had divine powers we might borrow the booming voice of the thunder and speak in that way. That would get people’s attention, but that would only work for a short time. People would get accustomed to that and tune that out, too. We might send earthquakes and natural disasters to underscore the importance of what we had to say. That gets people’s attention for a while, and then they go back to doing whatever they were doing before the catastrophe.
So God spoke in an entirely different way. There had been enough words, and there had been enough flashy miracles. God’s strategy was brilliant. It was counter-intuitive. We expect an announcement from God to be like an announcement from the President. “We now interrupt this program to bring you a speech from the Oval Office...” Or we expect a word from God to be announced like the announcement of a dire catastrophe. “There will now be a test of the emergency broadcast network...” Or at least there would be a legion of trumpeters and drummers and maybe even bagpipes preceding a major announcement from God.
But instead God slipped quietly and unobtrusively into the world. God’s message came wrapped in the flesh of a baby born to an unwed mother who had travelled far from her home and could find shelter only in a cattle shed. Talk about counter-intuitive!
Oh sure, there were some shepherds who saw and heard a few angels, but who believed them? There were some astrologers who found a strange conjunction of stars and set off for Bethlehem. And even Joseph and Mary were somewhat unsure of what God was trying to say.
A popular phrase of the 1960s expresses exactly what God was doing: “The medium is the message”. God’s message was not just what Jesus said; the life of Jesus was the message of God. The message was that this is how God chooses to love. God’s love is vulnerable and non-coercive. The message is that we have several choices. We can ignore it, and that’s what most did. There weren’t many who had “ears to hear”. We can scoff and condemn: “This man receives sinners and eats with them”. Or we can follow: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately they dropped their nets and followed him”.
We can also take God’s love and betray him and give him a mock trial and turn him over to the authorities and nail him to a cross and watch while for six hours he dies and then take God’s love and put it in a borrowed tomb and then we can all go home to our houses and think, “Well, it was a lovely dream, but it wasn’t very realistic, was it? The world is a tough place. God should have sent his love in a stronger package. Maybe next time God should try sending a warrior or a king or something big and flashy that will get people’s attention. God needs to send a guy who’ll knock a few heads together. The human race is a pretty tough audience. Maybe God learned his lesson this time. The very idea of sending a baby who grew into a man who never owned a home and who hung out with lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors.... what was God thinking?”
But then God’s love burst out of the borrowed tomb. God’s love showed that it was stronger than Roman legions; stronger than the thousand year Reich; stronger than the Iron Curtain; stronger than death.
The laugh is on us. We had to learn we were still infants when it comes to learning God’s language. We had to learn that there are some kinds of weakness that are stronger than what we think of as strength. We had to learn that life is about more than just accumulating things and pushing to the front of the line and looking out for number one. We had to learn that you can’t kill God’s love. It comes back again and again and again.
Above all we had to learn a new meaning for the word love. Love means reaching out to and including lepers and the homeless and persons with AIDS and persons who struggle with addiction. Love means giving without expecting anything in return. Love means trusting that God who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds of the air will care for us, too.
And what happens if we put our trust in God’s love? What happens if we take the radical risk of loving as God loves? Well, God left us a story about what happens if we do that and we heard the beginning of that story tonight. If we really love as God loves then what happened to Jesus will happen to us. A few will listen; most will be indifferent; and a few may try to kill us. But the story also tells us that those who love as God loves can never, never be separated from God.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Christmas needs more Jesus
Note: This article by my friend Rabbi Jonathan Miller appeared recently in The Birmingham News, and I am reproducing it here by his permission.
It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without the trees strapped to the tops of SUVs. It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without crowded parking lots and lines at the cash register. It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without a month of the same music year after year wafting its way down the aisles of the SuperCenter or the shopping mall or the grocery store. And it sure wouldn’t be Christmas without the specter of some kind of Grinch who is out to spoil the holiday fun.
As a rabbi, I don’t celebrate Christmas. Christmas celebrates the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus, the Messiah of all the earth. Jews don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah of all the earth, and neither do Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus or Atheists nor any of the other people in our country who are not Christians. Even the Eastern Orthodox Church, a large part of the Christian world, does not celebrate Christmas on December 25. So Christmas, although it is ubiquitous here in America, is not universally observed.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like Christmas. I do, really. I like the lights, the food, and the return of hope and promise that permeates our society. I enjoy listening to some of the less campy Christmas music. I even smile as I find myself humming Christmas melodies. Even as I watch from the sidelines as everyone scurries around to get everything in place for their perfect Christmas day, most people have good cheer and hopeful spirits, and they share that with everyone. And I like that, I really do.
But this year, I have turned on the television and the radio and read about Christmas in the newspapers, and I have learned that suddenly I, because I don’t celebrate Christmas have become this year’s Grinch. I don’t like being the Grinch. I really don’t.
It seems that some of the more mean spirited people in our society are picking on people who don’t celebrate Christmas. After all, what is Christmas without a Grinch? These Grinch hunters take great offense at the people in the stores who tell their customers to have a happy holiday without specifically mentioning Christmas. They feel as though we non-Christmas celebrators are removing the baby Jesus from our society. But we haven’t done anything new. Last year we non-Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas. And next year, no matter how much hollering there is, I don’t suspect that we will be celebrating Christmas even then.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t like Christmas. It means that we don’t celebrate Christmas. The non-Christians I know are rooting for Christmas. Deck your halls, by all means. Put up your lights and your mistletoe, enjoy your hats and stuff your stockings, be generous to the people you love and to the poor among us. Open your hearts to the joy and the hope that your belief brings you, and let some of that joy and hope permeate your lives all year long. What a blessing you will be as good Christians to all of us! Only don’t make me your Grinch.
I am not at all offended if some store clerk wishes me a “Merry Christmas”, and neither should anyone. I know these people are wishing good things for me, because Christmas is good for them. I have taught my children to say, “Thank you” to those who wish us a merry Christmas. But what could possibly be offensive about anyone wishing anyone else “Happy Holidays”? Christians know that that means Christmas. And others know that that means, “Even if you happen to be different from me, I wish you the very best at the festive season.” Those are hardly fighting words. They actually seem like Christian words. These words should represent the Christmas spirit that all Christian believers cherish. Even a true Grinch, (not me!) would be offended by someone saying, “Happy Holidays.” A true Grinch would be offended by anyone saying happy anything!
Like some of you, I am concerned that there is not enough Jesus in Christmas. I am also concerned that there is not enough Jesus in Christianity. I am concerned this year that non-Christians are made to be society’s enemies. I can’t believe that Jesus would endorse this view. I am concerned that some Christians see their numerical majority as the right to bully the rest of us. I can’t believe that Jesus would endorse this view. Jesus was kind and was open and was generous in spirit. At least that’s the way I have experienced him through the eyes of true Christians who have shared their faith with me. And true Christians, I have learned, don’t need a megaphone to make their faith known. If these media bullies are really concerned about Jesus and Christmas, let them call to task those Churches which plan to close on Sunday morning, December 25 because too many Christians will choose to stay home to open their presents. Let them call to task those who buy for themselves and take for themselves, but do not share enough from their bounty with those in need. Let them emulate Jesus’ generosity of spirit, which curiously they seem to lack this year. Christians, please bring Jesus back to Christmas. And if this wish makes me your Grinch, well I guess that is the burden that I bear for you. And I do it with love.
Jonathan Miller is the senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, AL. He has served congregations in New Zealand, Los Angeles, and Birmingham.
It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without the trees strapped to the tops of SUVs. It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without crowded parking lots and lines at the cash register. It sure wouldn’t be Christmas without a month of the same music year after year wafting its way down the aisles of the SuperCenter or the shopping mall or the grocery store. And it sure wouldn’t be Christmas without the specter of some kind of Grinch who is out to spoil the holiday fun.
As a rabbi, I don’t celebrate Christmas. Christmas celebrates the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus, the Messiah of all the earth. Jews don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah of all the earth, and neither do Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus or Atheists nor any of the other people in our country who are not Christians. Even the Eastern Orthodox Church, a large part of the Christian world, does not celebrate Christmas on December 25. So Christmas, although it is ubiquitous here in America, is not universally observed.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like Christmas. I do, really. I like the lights, the food, and the return of hope and promise that permeates our society. I enjoy listening to some of the less campy Christmas music. I even smile as I find myself humming Christmas melodies. Even as I watch from the sidelines as everyone scurries around to get everything in place for their perfect Christmas day, most people have good cheer and hopeful spirits, and they share that with everyone. And I like that, I really do.
But this year, I have turned on the television and the radio and read about Christmas in the newspapers, and I have learned that suddenly I, because I don’t celebrate Christmas have become this year’s Grinch. I don’t like being the Grinch. I really don’t.
It seems that some of the more mean spirited people in our society are picking on people who don’t celebrate Christmas. After all, what is Christmas without a Grinch? These Grinch hunters take great offense at the people in the stores who tell their customers to have a happy holiday without specifically mentioning Christmas. They feel as though we non-Christmas celebrators are removing the baby Jesus from our society. But we haven’t done anything new. Last year we non-Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas. And next year, no matter how much hollering there is, I don’t suspect that we will be celebrating Christmas even then.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t like Christmas. It means that we don’t celebrate Christmas. The non-Christians I know are rooting for Christmas. Deck your halls, by all means. Put up your lights and your mistletoe, enjoy your hats and stuff your stockings, be generous to the people you love and to the poor among us. Open your hearts to the joy and the hope that your belief brings you, and let some of that joy and hope permeate your lives all year long. What a blessing you will be as good Christians to all of us! Only don’t make me your Grinch.
I am not at all offended if some store clerk wishes me a “Merry Christmas”, and neither should anyone. I know these people are wishing good things for me, because Christmas is good for them. I have taught my children to say, “Thank you” to those who wish us a merry Christmas. But what could possibly be offensive about anyone wishing anyone else “Happy Holidays”? Christians know that that means Christmas. And others know that that means, “Even if you happen to be different from me, I wish you the very best at the festive season.” Those are hardly fighting words. They actually seem like Christian words. These words should represent the Christmas spirit that all Christian believers cherish. Even a true Grinch, (not me!) would be offended by someone saying, “Happy Holidays.” A true Grinch would be offended by anyone saying happy anything!
Like some of you, I am concerned that there is not enough Jesus in Christmas. I am also concerned that there is not enough Jesus in Christianity. I am concerned this year that non-Christians are made to be society’s enemies. I can’t believe that Jesus would endorse this view. I am concerned that some Christians see their numerical majority as the right to bully the rest of us. I can’t believe that Jesus would endorse this view. Jesus was kind and was open and was generous in spirit. At least that’s the way I have experienced him through the eyes of true Christians who have shared their faith with me. And true Christians, I have learned, don’t need a megaphone to make their faith known. If these media bullies are really concerned about Jesus and Christmas, let them call to task those Churches which plan to close on Sunday morning, December 25 because too many Christians will choose to stay home to open their presents. Let them call to task those who buy for themselves and take for themselves, but do not share enough from their bounty with those in need. Let them emulate Jesus’ generosity of spirit, which curiously they seem to lack this year. Christians, please bring Jesus back to Christmas. And if this wish makes me your Grinch, well I guess that is the burden that I bear for you. And I do it with love.
Jonathan Miller is the senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, AL. He has served congregations in New Zealand, Los Angeles, and Birmingham.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Advent 2: Songs of Exile
My sermon for Advent 2 is featured on the Episcopal Church's "Worship that Works" site. Here's the link:
Songs of Exile
Songs of Exile
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Advent 1B: Remembering the Future
One of the most popular Christmas specials of recent years has been the dramatization of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory". The very title of that wonderful program tells us something important about the season we have just entered. Advent and Christmas are seasons of memory. All of us have memories of Advents and Christmases past. I hope we remember how the liturgy of the church changes at the beginning of Advent. One of the great advantages of our traditions as Episcopalians is that worship involves our senses. At the beginning of Advent we see that green gives way to purple; we notice the Advent wreath and its four candles, knowing that when all four are lit Christmas is finally at hand; we smell the Advent greenery on the altar and Advent wreath; we hear the lovely, haunting Advent hymns -- "Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel".
But I'm afraid that our memories are more shaped by the popular media than by the traditions of the church.
Perhaps one artist above all seems to have caught the popular imagination with his scenes of American life, especially his depictions of Christmas and other holidays, and that artist is Norman Rockwell. I remember seeing a Rockwell print that would be for many the ideal scene of Christmas festivity.
It depicts an older man and two boys (apparently a father and his sons) are dragging an evergreen, snow still clinging to it, into a well-appointed living room. A fire burns in the fireplace, and a woman and young girl (surely the mother and daughter) clap their hands together in delight.
Well, as Yogi Berra once remarked, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be".
The "Christmases past" of most "baby boomers" were urban or suburban in nature. We had artificial trees or perhaps dried up sticks of trees we bought from Boy Scouts in the church parking lot.
The message of much popular media seems to be that we should try to remember a past that never was or at least was not our past.
Like us, the writer of Isaiah 64 struggled with the problem of memory. The memories recalled in Isaiah 64 are not of a "Norman Rockwell Christmas"; they are better, truer, and deeper memories. They are memories of the mighty acts of God. The writer remembers a God who came down from heaven and at whose presence the mountains quaked. Isaiah recalls a God who "kindled brushwood" and caused the waters of the earth to steam and boil.
The writer of Isaiah 64 did not have personal memories of these things. When the writer of Isaiah 64 spoke of the mountains quaking at God's presence he was alluding to Israel's encounter with God at Sinai. That was an event in the distant past, something which no one alive had personally witnessed. And yet Israel remembered, for the event was embedded deeply in their corporate memory and that memory was kept alive in their stories.
More than likely, the author of Isaiah 64 was an exile who had returned to Jerusalem about fifty years after Babylon had invaded and burned and destroyed Israel's holy city. But the prophet and the refugees who returned from Babylon had kept alive the memory of what their God had done; they had told the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel. They had recounted Israel's great deliverance at the Red Sea and of the awe their mothers and fathers had felt before Sinai when Moses delivered God's great precepts: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt... you shall have no other Gods before me." The memories of Israel's God were just as real to the prophet, as if had seen them with his own eyes. For they were a part of Israel's corporate memory. In fact, they were what gave existence and identity to Israel.
And so they gathered, prophet and people, amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, among the rubble of the Temple to tell the story of the God who had done "awesome deeds that we did not expect". They gathered to remember and to wait. To tell the story surrounded by the destruction Babylon had visited upon Israel and its capital took courage and boldness. It could even be seen as an act of defiance. It was counter-cultural. To remember what God has done in the past is to hope for and anticipate what God may do in the future.
We gather in our warm homes and churches, not in the ruins of the Temple. But our world, too, often seems a wasteland, a land in which we have forgotten God and God has forgotten us. Like Isaiah and the Israelites, we gather in the cold and dark; we light candles and sing songs and tell again the story of the God who came and who comes, of that which has been and is yet to be.
Like the prophet who penned Isaiah 64 we must confess that we, too, have not seen or heard the God who made the mountains tremble, who "did awesome deeds that we did not expect". The memory of a Norman Rockwell Christmas is lovely but unreal. The memory of a God who comes down, who meets whose who "gladly do right" is very real indeed.
Like the prophet we, too, can tell the story, Israel's story, of a God who came down with majesty and fire. But we can also tell the story of a God who came with meekness and gentleness in the form of a baby.
And we can tell the story of how God comes among us even now, who "meets whose who gladly do right, those who remember [God] in their ways".
What we remember and await is not a Norman Rockwell Christmas. It is a lovely picture, but the day after we would be left with a feeling of emptiness. Instead, we wait for something infinitely better - for the skies to pour down righteousness upon those who hunger and are cold, for fire to fall upon dry and drowsy hearts, which is to say, upon us. We assemble and tell the story as we remember that which is yet to be and anticipate what has already happened -- the advent of our God.
But I'm afraid that our memories are more shaped by the popular media than by the traditions of the church.
Perhaps one artist above all seems to have caught the popular imagination with his scenes of American life, especially his depictions of Christmas and other holidays, and that artist is Norman Rockwell. I remember seeing a Rockwell print that would be for many the ideal scene of Christmas festivity.
It depicts an older man and two boys (apparently a father and his sons) are dragging an evergreen, snow still clinging to it, into a well-appointed living room. A fire burns in the fireplace, and a woman and young girl (surely the mother and daughter) clap their hands together in delight.
Well, as Yogi Berra once remarked, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be".
The "Christmases past" of most "baby boomers" were urban or suburban in nature. We had artificial trees or perhaps dried up sticks of trees we bought from Boy Scouts in the church parking lot.
The message of much popular media seems to be that we should try to remember a past that never was or at least was not our past.
Like us, the writer of Isaiah 64 struggled with the problem of memory. The memories recalled in Isaiah 64 are not of a "Norman Rockwell Christmas"; they are better, truer, and deeper memories. They are memories of the mighty acts of God. The writer remembers a God who came down from heaven and at whose presence the mountains quaked. Isaiah recalls a God who "kindled brushwood" and caused the waters of the earth to steam and boil.
The writer of Isaiah 64 did not have personal memories of these things. When the writer of Isaiah 64 spoke of the mountains quaking at God's presence he was alluding to Israel's encounter with God at Sinai. That was an event in the distant past, something which no one alive had personally witnessed. And yet Israel remembered, for the event was embedded deeply in their corporate memory and that memory was kept alive in their stories.
More than likely, the author of Isaiah 64 was an exile who had returned to Jerusalem about fifty years after Babylon had invaded and burned and destroyed Israel's holy city. But the prophet and the refugees who returned from Babylon had kept alive the memory of what their God had done; they had told the stories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; of Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel. They had recounted Israel's great deliverance at the Red Sea and of the awe their mothers and fathers had felt before Sinai when Moses delivered God's great precepts: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt... you shall have no other Gods before me." The memories of Israel's God were just as real to the prophet, as if had seen them with his own eyes. For they were a part of Israel's corporate memory. In fact, they were what gave existence and identity to Israel.
And so they gathered, prophet and people, amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, among the rubble of the Temple to tell the story of the God who had done "awesome deeds that we did not expect". They gathered to remember and to wait. To tell the story surrounded by the destruction Babylon had visited upon Israel and its capital took courage and boldness. It could even be seen as an act of defiance. It was counter-cultural. To remember what God has done in the past is to hope for and anticipate what God may do in the future.
We gather in our warm homes and churches, not in the ruins of the Temple. But our world, too, often seems a wasteland, a land in which we have forgotten God and God has forgotten us. Like Isaiah and the Israelites, we gather in the cold and dark; we light candles and sing songs and tell again the story of the God who came and who comes, of that which has been and is yet to be.
Like the prophet who penned Isaiah 64 we must confess that we, too, have not seen or heard the God who made the mountains tremble, who "did awesome deeds that we did not expect". The memory of a Norman Rockwell Christmas is lovely but unreal. The memory of a God who comes down, who meets whose who "gladly do right" is very real indeed.
Like the prophet we, too, can tell the story, Israel's story, of a God who came down with majesty and fire. But we can also tell the story of a God who came with meekness and gentleness in the form of a baby.
And we can tell the story of how God comes among us even now, who "meets whose who gladly do right, those who remember [God] in their ways".
What we remember and await is not a Norman Rockwell Christmas. It is a lovely picture, but the day after we would be left with a feeling of emptiness. Instead, we wait for something infinitely better - for the skies to pour down righteousness upon those who hunger and are cold, for fire to fall upon dry and drowsy hearts, which is to say, upon us. We assemble and tell the story as we remember that which is yet to be and anticipate what has already happened -- the advent of our God.
Thanksgiving Day: Errand into the Wilderness
The feeding of the five thousand is arguably the most famous meal in western history. A meal of bread and dried fish was probably typical for first century Palestine. But even though the fare was spartan, the crowds who dined on the miraculously multiplied picnic couldn’t get enough. They even followed Jesus to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The crowds did what crowds always do; they followed someone who gave them “bread and circuses”. And Jesus rebuked them: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." (John 6.26-27)
The crowds that followed Jesus into the wilderness following the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes made two mistakes. First, they were seeking “the food that perishes” rather than “the food that endures for eternal life”. Secondly, they assumed that what Jesus was offering came with a price tag attached: "What must we do to perform the works of God?"
This dialogue between Jesus and the crowd in the aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand seems an odd gospel reading for Thanksgiving Day. No doubt about it -- Thanksgiving is about “the food that perishes”. Say “Thanksgiving” and my mind turns immediately to turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin and pecan pie. But Thanksgiving should also remind us of the pilgrims and puritans who came to the northeastern shores of North America in the seventeenth century, seeking to found a godly church in a godly commonwealth. Perry Miller, one of the greatest scholars of American puritanism, entitled one of his books Errand into the Wilderness. That’s a good way of describing what the pilgrims and Puritans were up to. It’s also not a bad way of describing the scene in today’s gospel reading. Jesus was on an errand into the wilderness and so were the crowds who followed him. But Jesus was in the wilderness to offer “the food that endures for eternal life” and the crowds were seeking the “food that perishes”.
Thanksgiving also seems to be about working hard and enjoying the rewards of our labor. The question the crowd asked Jesus, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" has an American ring to it. Sixteenth century Reformer John Calvin observed that the command to refrain from work on the Sabbath means that we should work hard the other six days! But we live in the age of “24/7”; even the 24 hours of the Sabbath seem stressful. Bill Gates famously remarked that an hour spent in church seemed to be an inefficient use of time.
Human life is mostly about seeking the “food that perishes”. It has to be. Someone once observed that we do not live by bread alone, but we don’t live very long without it, either. Like Jesus and the crowds and like the pilgrims and puritans, we, too, are on an “errand into the wilderness”. Human life is a journey through uncharted, difficult, and often dangerous territory. The constant temptation is to make it nothing but a quest for “food that perishes”. But the paradox is that if we seek only to fill our bellies, we will die of malnourishment.
Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a colleague who said to a member of his congregation, “Whenever I see you, you’re always in a hurry. Tell me, where are you running all the time?” The man answered, “I’m running after success, I’m running after fulfillment, I’m running after the reward for all my hard work.” And Kushner’s colleague replied, “That’s a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to elude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn’t it possible that those blessings are behind you, that they are looking for you, and the more you run, the harder you make it for them to find you?” Kushner observed that God may have all kinds of blessing in store for us – “good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves turning in the fall – but we in our pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that God can’t find us at home to deliver them”! (Lawrence Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (New York, 1986), pp. 146-147)
Perhaps the feeding of the five thousand isn’t such a bad reading for Thanksgiving Day after all. It reminds us that life and the food that sustains life are not our accomplishment; they are God’s gift. At the end of the great Danish film Babette’s Feast, a distinguished general rises to propose a toast and says, "Man, my friends is frail and foolish. We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness we imagine God's grace to be limited...But we are wrong; grace is infinite. Grace demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.”
So, this Thanksgiving I encourage you to pause and remember a feast two thousand years ago in Palestine, when Jesus took and blessed and broke and gave the loaves and fishes to five thousand. The cuisine would hardly have impressed Julia Child, but it was a potent reminder that a little is enough when it is given and received with love and gratitude. Enjoy the turkey and cranberry sauce and all the other “food that perishes”, but save some room for the “food that endures for eternal life” because that’s what we really need to sustain us on our “errand into the wilderness”.
The crowds that followed Jesus into the wilderness following the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes made two mistakes. First, they were seeking “the food that perishes” rather than “the food that endures for eternal life”. Secondly, they assumed that what Jesus was offering came with a price tag attached: "What must we do to perform the works of God?"
This dialogue between Jesus and the crowd in the aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand seems an odd gospel reading for Thanksgiving Day. No doubt about it -- Thanksgiving is about “the food that perishes”. Say “Thanksgiving” and my mind turns immediately to turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin and pecan pie. But Thanksgiving should also remind us of the pilgrims and puritans who came to the northeastern shores of North America in the seventeenth century, seeking to found a godly church in a godly commonwealth. Perry Miller, one of the greatest scholars of American puritanism, entitled one of his books Errand into the Wilderness. That’s a good way of describing what the pilgrims and Puritans were up to. It’s also not a bad way of describing the scene in today’s gospel reading. Jesus was on an errand into the wilderness and so were the crowds who followed him. But Jesus was in the wilderness to offer “the food that endures for eternal life” and the crowds were seeking the “food that perishes”.
Thanksgiving also seems to be about working hard and enjoying the rewards of our labor. The question the crowd asked Jesus, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" has an American ring to it. Sixteenth century Reformer John Calvin observed that the command to refrain from work on the Sabbath means that we should work hard the other six days! But we live in the age of “24/7”; even the 24 hours of the Sabbath seem stressful. Bill Gates famously remarked that an hour spent in church seemed to be an inefficient use of time.
Human life is mostly about seeking the “food that perishes”. It has to be. Someone once observed that we do not live by bread alone, but we don’t live very long without it, either. Like Jesus and the crowds and like the pilgrims and puritans, we, too, are on an “errand into the wilderness”. Human life is a journey through uncharted, difficult, and often dangerous territory. The constant temptation is to make it nothing but a quest for “food that perishes”. But the paradox is that if we seek only to fill our bellies, we will die of malnourishment.
Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of a colleague who said to a member of his congregation, “Whenever I see you, you’re always in a hurry. Tell me, where are you running all the time?” The man answered, “I’m running after success, I’m running after fulfillment, I’m running after the reward for all my hard work.” And Kushner’s colleague replied, “That’s a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to elude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn’t it possible that those blessings are behind you, that they are looking for you, and the more you run, the harder you make it for them to find you?” Kushner observed that God may have all kinds of blessing in store for us – “good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves turning in the fall – but we in our pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that God can’t find us at home to deliver them”! (Lawrence Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (New York, 1986), pp. 146-147)
Perhaps the feeding of the five thousand isn’t such a bad reading for Thanksgiving Day after all. It reminds us that life and the food that sustains life are not our accomplishment; they are God’s gift. At the end of the great Danish film Babette’s Feast, a distinguished general rises to propose a toast and says, "Man, my friends is frail and foolish. We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness we imagine God's grace to be limited...But we are wrong; grace is infinite. Grace demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude.”
So, this Thanksgiving I encourage you to pause and remember a feast two thousand years ago in Palestine, when Jesus took and blessed and broke and gave the loaves and fishes to five thousand. The cuisine would hardly have impressed Julia Child, but it was a potent reminder that a little is enough when it is given and received with love and gratitude. Enjoy the turkey and cranberry sauce and all the other “food that perishes”, but save some room for the “food that endures for eternal life” because that’s what we really need to sustain us on our “errand into the wilderness”.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Christ the King: The Kingdom of Love
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, in inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world... Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels...” (Matthew 25.34, 41)
“Christ is the King, O friends upraise anthems of joy and holy praise…” Thus begins a wonderful hymn by Bishop G.K.A. Bell of Chichester, England. “King” is a favorite title of Christ employed in many Christian hymns. We sing, “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne” or “The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now”. And on the last Sunday in Pentecost we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, when in addition to singing about Christ the King, we have to start thinking about what it really means to say that Jesus of Nazareth is king, and that can give us pause.
Kings and queens have mostly disappeared from modern, western countries. Oh sure, we hear a great deal about the “woes of the Windsors”, the British royal family, and it often makes for entertaining reading. But where there are kings and queens, they are usually figureheads, useful for making inspiring remarks and opening shopping centers, but having little real power. We are more comfortable, or at least familiar, with presidents and prime ministers.
However, there remains a fascination with kingship. British journalist Katharine Whitehorn attributes our fascination with kings to the popularity of fairy tales. “Whoever heard,” she asked, “of someone kissing a frog and it turning into a handsome senator?” President Jesus" just doesn't have the same ring as "King Jesus". A trendy, leftist minister once referred to Jesus as "Chairman Jesus", but that won't quite do either. Like it or not, we are stuck with King Jesus. So, on this Christ the King Sunday we are given the salutary reminder that we are subjects of a leader for whom we did not cast a vote; rather we are the subjects an absolute monarch whom we did not choose. Scary? The words “absolute monarch” bring to mind images of dungeons and royal thugs. But keep this in mind: Although we did not choose this King, he chose us. There is one law in this Kingdom and one banner waves in its skies: the law and the banner of love.
But more disturbing than the idea of kingship is the way King Jesus exercises his rule in the parable of the sheep and goats. “The king will say to those at his right hand… ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’… [but] he will say to those at his left hand, …’I was hungry and you gave me no food…’” The righteous sheep are told that they will “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”, but the “accursed” goats are told to “depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.
Applied literally and unimaginatively, this parable would seem to say that we are to give food, drink, and hospitality to everyone who asks. To deny to serve the needs of even one hungry and homeless person would seem to be justification for being sent into eternal torment.
However, note the way the king speaks and the way the sheep and the goats answer him. The king says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” And both the righteous sheep and the “accursed” goats reply, “When was it that we saw you hungry?” The king asks in the singular, but both the sheep and the goats reply in the plural.
We are not expected to do the work of feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the imprisoned, or healing the sick alone. We are expected to belong to communities that will exercise compassion and mercy. Does this excuse us from individual responsibility? Not necessarily; the community acts through its members, as well as corporately. Unfortunately, not only have all of us, time and time again, passed by the hungry and homeless on the streets, our churches are usually more concerned with maintenance than with mission.
Examine your check book. What percentage of your money do you spend on yourself and your family and what percentage do you give to the hungry and homeless? Examine your church’s budget, too. The great majority of churches that I know anything about give a small fraction of their money to the poor. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” what will he have to say to us and to our churches? Christ the King Sunday is an invitation to us individually and corporately to let Christ reign in our hearts and lives by serving him in the person of the poor.
In the dark days of Stalin’s rule, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge worked for the British newspaper, the Guardian, as a correspondent. One day while walking in the woods outside of Moscow he came across a small church and noted that someone had given the church a fresh coat of bright, blue paint. Muggeridge writes that he felt that he ”belonged to the little disused church [the painter] had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. 1, The Green Stick (1972), pp. 226-227.)
We, too, are invited to live in the “kingdom of love”, to give to the hungry and homeless, not in order that we might sit among the sheep when the Son of Man comes in glory, but because the King (who is also the Good Shepherd) sought and found us when we were hurt and hungry and lost and alone.
“Christ is the King, O friends upraise anthems of joy and holy praise…” Thus begins a wonderful hymn by Bishop G.K.A. Bell of Chichester, England. “King” is a favorite title of Christ employed in many Christian hymns. We sing, “Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne” or “The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now”. And on the last Sunday in Pentecost we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, when in addition to singing about Christ the King, we have to start thinking about what it really means to say that Jesus of Nazareth is king, and that can give us pause.
Kings and queens have mostly disappeared from modern, western countries. Oh sure, we hear a great deal about the “woes of the Windsors”, the British royal family, and it often makes for entertaining reading. But where there are kings and queens, they are usually figureheads, useful for making inspiring remarks and opening shopping centers, but having little real power. We are more comfortable, or at least familiar, with presidents and prime ministers.
However, there remains a fascination with kingship. British journalist Katharine Whitehorn attributes our fascination with kings to the popularity of fairy tales. “Whoever heard,” she asked, “of someone kissing a frog and it turning into a handsome senator?” President Jesus" just doesn't have the same ring as "King Jesus". A trendy, leftist minister once referred to Jesus as "Chairman Jesus", but that won't quite do either. Like it or not, we are stuck with King Jesus. So, on this Christ the King Sunday we are given the salutary reminder that we are subjects of a leader for whom we did not cast a vote; rather we are the subjects an absolute monarch whom we did not choose. Scary? The words “absolute monarch” bring to mind images of dungeons and royal thugs. But keep this in mind: Although we did not choose this King, he chose us. There is one law in this Kingdom and one banner waves in its skies: the law and the banner of love.
But more disturbing than the idea of kingship is the way King Jesus exercises his rule in the parable of the sheep and goats. “The king will say to those at his right hand… ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’… [but] he will say to those at his left hand, …’I was hungry and you gave me no food…’” The righteous sheep are told that they will “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world”, but the “accursed” goats are told to “depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”.
Applied literally and unimaginatively, this parable would seem to say that we are to give food, drink, and hospitality to everyone who asks. To deny to serve the needs of even one hungry and homeless person would seem to be justification for being sent into eternal torment.
However, note the way the king speaks and the way the sheep and the goats answer him. The king says, “I was hungry, and you gave me food.” And both the righteous sheep and the “accursed” goats reply, “When was it that we saw you hungry?” The king asks in the singular, but both the sheep and the goats reply in the plural.
We are not expected to do the work of feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the imprisoned, or healing the sick alone. We are expected to belong to communities that will exercise compassion and mercy. Does this excuse us from individual responsibility? Not necessarily; the community acts through its members, as well as corporately. Unfortunately, not only have all of us, time and time again, passed by the hungry and homeless on the streets, our churches are usually more concerned with maintenance than with mission.
Examine your check book. What percentage of your money do you spend on yourself and your family and what percentage do you give to the hungry and homeless? Examine your church’s budget, too. The great majority of churches that I know anything about give a small fraction of their money to the poor. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” what will he have to say to us and to our churches? Christ the King Sunday is an invitation to us individually and corporately to let Christ reign in our hearts and lives by serving him in the person of the poor.
In the dark days of Stalin’s rule, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge worked for the British newspaper, the Guardian, as a correspondent. One day while walking in the woods outside of Moscow he came across a small church and noted that someone had given the church a fresh coat of bright, blue paint. Muggeridge writes that he felt that he ”belonged to the little disused church [the painter] had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. 1, The Green Stick (1972), pp. 226-227.)
We, too, are invited to live in the “kingdom of love”, to give to the hungry and homeless, not in order that we might sit among the sheep when the Son of Man comes in glory, but because the King (who is also the Good Shepherd) sought and found us when we were hurt and hungry and lost and alone.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
All Saints: Saints and Sinners
All Saints’ Day begs the question, “What is a saint?” There are a number of ways we could define saint. The simplest and earliest definition of saint is found in the New Testament. Paul begins most of his letters by greeting the “saints” – the saints at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Galatia, and so on. In the New Testament “saint” means simply any baptized person, any Christian. The word translated as “saint” in the New Testament is hagios or its plural hagioi, a Greek word that means “holy”. The saints are the holy ones, not holy because of anything intrinsic to them, but holy because of the holy presence of Christ within them.
A second, more common, use of the word “saint” is to denote one of the heroes or heroines of the Christian faith. Thus, we speak of St. Peter or St. Francis, St. Mary Magdalene or St. Clare.
For a long time I was puzzled about why the gospel reading for All Saints’ Day was the Beatitudes from Luke or Matthew. However, I think I know why that is. The Beatitudes are, if you will, Jesus’ definition of a saint.
Let’s look at a few of the characteristics of the saints as defined by Jesus.
First of all, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. We are a society obsessed by money, financial success, accumulation of things. For Jesus, wealth was not a sin, but it was a problem. The wealthy person, Jesus warned, was likely to have his priorities in the wrong place. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be”. The saints are those persons who have their hearts fixed upon God’s kingdom, not earthy riches.. The saints do not determine their own worth or the worth of others on the basis of financial success.
Secondly, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”. We live in a world where feelings, in general, and sadness and depression, in particular, are suspect and not exhibited in public. Men, especially, are schooled to show little expression and feeling.
We also live in a "feel good" culture. "Drink this, eat that, smoke a certain brand of cigarette and you will feel good and be happy". Fairy tales end "and they all lived happily ever after", but that isn't the way life works. But what if the ability to feel deep sadness is a prerequisite for feeling great joy? The saints are complete persons who feel the full range of human emotions. The saints are those who can "weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice".
Thirdly, "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth". A popular bumper sticker back in Alabama where I grew up reads, "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch" As a culture we exalt the big dogs, the hot shots, the powerful. Assertiveness, even aggressiveness, is highly valued. But what if the race is not to the swift, nor the contest to the strong? What if the truly great in the world are not the Donald Trumps but the Mother Teresas? The saints are those who choose not to run with the big dogs. They are the ones who choose service above self-aggrandizement.
Finally, the saints are those who long for righteousness.. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied". Jesus was a Jew, and to a Jew, righteousness, zedeqah, meant something very specific.. Righteousness was literally "to do right by", especially to do right by the poor and hungry, widows and orphans. So when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, he was literally saying, "Blessed are those who long for the hungry to be fed and the homeless to be housed, for in the end, they will not be disappointed". Of all Jesus' claims, this may be the most extraordinary. Righteousness is not at home in the world in which you and I live, but Jesus announces the coming of a new world of righteousness and justice. The saints are those who long for the appearing of such a kingdom, who never lose heart and are never satisfied with anything less.
Another definition for saint that I want to offer involves a very concrete example of holiness. In the early part of this century, Henry Joel Cadbury came to teach New Testament at Harvard Divinity School. Cadbury was one of the great New Testament scholars of our century and was at work on what became the Revised Standard Version of the Bible when World War I broke out. A pacifist, Cadbury would not fight in the war but instead volunteered to work with the Quakers caring for the wounded and dying on the battle fields of Europe. In the midst of the war, one of Cadbury’s students came across his professor bandaging a wounded soldier. “Dr. Cadbury,” the student exclaimed, “Why aren’t you back at Harvard translating the New Testament?” “I am translating the New Testament,” Cadbury replied. He was translating the New Testament not from Greek into English but from the printed page into human life. I think that may be the best definition of saint. A saint is one who translates the New Testament into a life of love and service.
In conclusion, I want to offer you the devil’s definition of “saint”, or at least the definition from the Devil’s Dictionary. American humorist Ambrose Bierce once wrote a book entitled The Devil’s Dictionary. In it he defined saint as “a dead sinner, revised and edited”. To give the devil (or at least Ambrose Bierce) his due, there’s much to be said for that definition. A few years ago A.N. Wilson wrote a biography of C.S. Lewis, a man who is a saint to me and to many, many others. Wilson’s biography shocked some C.S. Lewis’ fans by painting a revealing picture of Lewis, warts and all, but I came away appreciating Lewis more, not less, for knowing that he struggled and fought against many weaknesses and temptations. Sometimes he battled them successfully; sometimes he did not. But I think that a saint’s light shines more brightly, not less, for their struggles. The life of Christ in a saint is displayed more vividly in contrast to the saints’ all-too-human failures. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once remarked that “…that the saints in heaven rejoice over their sins, because through them they have been brought to greater and greater understanding of the endless endurance of God's love, to the knowledge that beyond every failure God's creative mercy still waits.” (A Ray of Darkness, p. 52)
All Saints’ Day exhausts and unsettles me. However, you define saint, I find it difficult to imagine myself among those “saints triumphant [who] rise in bright array”. More often than not, I choose self-aggrandizement over service; my heart and mind go in a thousand different directions, rather than being fixed on God’s kingdom; and if my life is a translation of the New Testament, then it must be in an unknown tongue. But I have to keep reminding myself and keep reminding you that sainthood is not our accomplishment; it is God’s gift. We follow where Christ and the saints lead, knowing all the while that we will stumble and fall. You see, the Devil’s Dictionary had it partly right: Some saints are dead sinners revised and edited, but all saints are forgiven sinners, just like us. The saints remind us of what we are capable of if we will only open ourselves to the power of God who makes all things new and raises us from death to life abundant and everlasting.
A second, more common, use of the word “saint” is to denote one of the heroes or heroines of the Christian faith. Thus, we speak of St. Peter or St. Francis, St. Mary Magdalene or St. Clare.
For a long time I was puzzled about why the gospel reading for All Saints’ Day was the Beatitudes from Luke or Matthew. However, I think I know why that is. The Beatitudes are, if you will, Jesus’ definition of a saint.
Let’s look at a few of the characteristics of the saints as defined by Jesus.
First of all, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. We are a society obsessed by money, financial success, accumulation of things. For Jesus, wealth was not a sin, but it was a problem. The wealthy person, Jesus warned, was likely to have his priorities in the wrong place. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be”. The saints are those persons who have their hearts fixed upon God’s kingdom, not earthy riches.. The saints do not determine their own worth or the worth of others on the basis of financial success.
Secondly, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”. We live in a world where feelings, in general, and sadness and depression, in particular, are suspect and not exhibited in public. Men, especially, are schooled to show little expression and feeling.
We also live in a "feel good" culture. "Drink this, eat that, smoke a certain brand of cigarette and you will feel good and be happy". Fairy tales end "and they all lived happily ever after", but that isn't the way life works. But what if the ability to feel deep sadness is a prerequisite for feeling great joy? The saints are complete persons who feel the full range of human emotions. The saints are those who can "weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice".
Thirdly, "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth". A popular bumper sticker back in Alabama where I grew up reads, "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch" As a culture we exalt the big dogs, the hot shots, the powerful. Assertiveness, even aggressiveness, is highly valued. But what if the race is not to the swift, nor the contest to the strong? What if the truly great in the world are not the Donald Trumps but the Mother Teresas? The saints are those who choose not to run with the big dogs. They are the ones who choose service above self-aggrandizement.
Finally, the saints are those who long for righteousness.. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied". Jesus was a Jew, and to a Jew, righteousness, zedeqah, meant something very specific.. Righteousness was literally "to do right by", especially to do right by the poor and hungry, widows and orphans. So when he said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, he was literally saying, "Blessed are those who long for the hungry to be fed and the homeless to be housed, for in the end, they will not be disappointed". Of all Jesus' claims, this may be the most extraordinary. Righteousness is not at home in the world in which you and I live, but Jesus announces the coming of a new world of righteousness and justice. The saints are those who long for the appearing of such a kingdom, who never lose heart and are never satisfied with anything less.
Another definition for saint that I want to offer involves a very concrete example of holiness. In the early part of this century, Henry Joel Cadbury came to teach New Testament at Harvard Divinity School. Cadbury was one of the great New Testament scholars of our century and was at work on what became the Revised Standard Version of the Bible when World War I broke out. A pacifist, Cadbury would not fight in the war but instead volunteered to work with the Quakers caring for the wounded and dying on the battle fields of Europe. In the midst of the war, one of Cadbury’s students came across his professor bandaging a wounded soldier. “Dr. Cadbury,” the student exclaimed, “Why aren’t you back at Harvard translating the New Testament?” “I am translating the New Testament,” Cadbury replied. He was translating the New Testament not from Greek into English but from the printed page into human life. I think that may be the best definition of saint. A saint is one who translates the New Testament into a life of love and service.
In conclusion, I want to offer you the devil’s definition of “saint”, or at least the definition from the Devil’s Dictionary. American humorist Ambrose Bierce once wrote a book entitled The Devil’s Dictionary. In it he defined saint as “a dead sinner, revised and edited”. To give the devil (or at least Ambrose Bierce) his due, there’s much to be said for that definition. A few years ago A.N. Wilson wrote a biography of C.S. Lewis, a man who is a saint to me and to many, many others. Wilson’s biography shocked some C.S. Lewis’ fans by painting a revealing picture of Lewis, warts and all, but I came away appreciating Lewis more, not less, for knowing that he struggled and fought against many weaknesses and temptations. Sometimes he battled them successfully; sometimes he did not. But I think that a saint’s light shines more brightly, not less, for their struggles. The life of Christ in a saint is displayed more vividly in contrast to the saints’ all-too-human failures. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once remarked that “…that the saints in heaven rejoice over their sins, because through them they have been brought to greater and greater understanding of the endless endurance of God's love, to the knowledge that beyond every failure God's creative mercy still waits.” (A Ray of Darkness, p. 52)
All Saints’ Day exhausts and unsettles me. However, you define saint, I find it difficult to imagine myself among those “saints triumphant [who] rise in bright array”. More often than not, I choose self-aggrandizement over service; my heart and mind go in a thousand different directions, rather than being fixed on God’s kingdom; and if my life is a translation of the New Testament, then it must be in an unknown tongue. But I have to keep reminding myself and keep reminding you that sainthood is not our accomplishment; it is God’s gift. We follow where Christ and the saints lead, knowing all the while that we will stumble and fall. You see, the Devil’s Dictionary had it partly right: Some saints are dead sinners revised and edited, but all saints are forgiven sinners, just like us. The saints remind us of what we are capable of if we will only open ourselves to the power of God who makes all things new and raises us from death to life abundant and everlasting.
Reformation Sunday: Truth is a Who
If Reformation Sunday is about anything, surely it is about truth. Weren’t competing truth claims were at the very heart of the revolution launched by Luther and continued by Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, and others? Either the pope is the vicar of Christ or he is not; either the eucharistic bread and wine literally become the body of Christ or they do not; either we are saved by divine grace unaided by human effort or we participate in our salvation through good works.
But as the great theologian Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” We know that the Reformation did not succeed on the basis of its truth claims alone; in large part it succeeded because of complex economic and political reasons. The emerging nation-states of Europe supported Luther and the other Reformers in order to gain economic and political power at the expense of the papacy.
When Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians discuss the great issues of the Reformation -- the status of the papacy, justification by grace through faith, and transubstantiation – there is more agreement than disagreement. This is not to diminish the wide gulf that divided Wittenberg and Geneva from Rome in the sixteenth century and continues to divide Protestants and Catholics today, but the temptation of Reformation Sunday is to make that gulf far wider and deeper than it is or ever has been.
The common confession of Christ as Lord binds all Christians together, and in a post-Christian age that fundamental confession is more than enough for us to make common cause against the widespread indifference and even hostility toward all expressions of faith.
So what is Reformation Sunday if it is not a chance to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate one another that Luther was right and Popes Julius II and Leo X were wrong? Is Reformation Sunday anything more than a chance for Lutherans to sing “A mighty fortress” and Presbyterians to repeat some of the more exciting passages from the Westminster Confession?
I think the key to Reformation Sunday is in Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Truth is a central category in John’s gospel. At the very beginning the author tells us that when the divine Word took flesh and lived among us that “we [saw] his glory… full of grace and truth.” Later, Jesus declared himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” The great accomplishment of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Cranmer was to issue a thunderous call to western Christians to return to the Word made flesh, the Word spoken by Israel’s prophets, the Word that “above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth.”
But if the great work of the sixteenth century Reformers was to summon the church to return to the Word made flesh and the Word of the prophets, then that implies that the church had drifted away, that there was a great gulf between the position of the Reformers and the position of the Roman Catholic Church. Let there be no misunderstanding here: there were and are issues that separate Roman Catholics and Protestants. We do not serve the gospel well if we are not honest about our differences. But I think we are somewhat misled by the categories historians have given us. It might be better to re-christen Luther’s great movement the sixteenth century REVIVAL rather than the REFORMATION.
Of course, Luther, Calvin, and the others did reform the church. They were convinced that the church of the sixteenth century was a very different church than that of the apostles, and they believed that their work was to return the church as far as possible to the apostolic model. But that was also the goal of many who remained within the Roman Catholic Church. What Luther, Calvin, and the rest accomplished was a great revival, a movement that bore fruit not only in the Protestant churches they founded but also in the Roman Catholic Church that they left. They awakened the entire western church to its need to “continue” in Christ’s word and to let that word set them free.
Part of our problem on Reformation Sunday is with the word “truth”. Without sounding too much like former President Clinton, much depends on how you define “truth”. If truth is a thing that is fixed, unchanging, and static, then we might as well give up all hope of reconciliation with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers. But is that what Jesus meant by “truth”? In John’s gospel truth is never a set of propositions such as mathematical formulas. The truth is always a Person. The Truth is the one who said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.”
Physicist Niels Bohr said, “There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.” That sounds like it relativizes truth completely out of existence, but if the truth is not a thing but a Person then Bohr may have been right. If Truth is a person, then perhaps both Luther and his opponents can be comprehended in Truth’s embrace.
So in a post-denominational, indeed, a post-Christian age, can we continue to celebrate Reformation Sunday or has it become an embarrassment that we should discard? I think the Reformation still has something to say to us that should be celebrated, because what the Reformers said in the sixteenth century is just as valid today. The church of the 21st century, the churches that the Reformers left behind, need reformation and revival as badly as the creaky, sinful, and tradition-bound late medieval church. As Fred Pratt Green’s great hymn puts it, “The church of Christ in every age / beset by change but Spirit-led, / must claim and test its heritage /and keep on rising from the dead.” In every age, we need reformers to summon us to return to the truth with a lower case t but even more, to Truth with an upper case T. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the truths that the Reformers taught, but we always need to be reminded to return to the Truth who became flesh and dwelt among us, whom we saw to be full of glory, who invites us to abide in him, and who will set us free indeed.
But as the great theologian Oscar Wilde said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” We know that the Reformation did not succeed on the basis of its truth claims alone; in large part it succeeded because of complex economic and political reasons. The emerging nation-states of Europe supported Luther and the other Reformers in order to gain economic and political power at the expense of the papacy.
When Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians discuss the great issues of the Reformation -- the status of the papacy, justification by grace through faith, and transubstantiation – there is more agreement than disagreement. This is not to diminish the wide gulf that divided Wittenberg and Geneva from Rome in the sixteenth century and continues to divide Protestants and Catholics today, but the temptation of Reformation Sunday is to make that gulf far wider and deeper than it is or ever has been.
The common confession of Christ as Lord binds all Christians together, and in a post-Christian age that fundamental confession is more than enough for us to make common cause against the widespread indifference and even hostility toward all expressions of faith.
So what is Reformation Sunday if it is not a chance to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate one another that Luther was right and Popes Julius II and Leo X were wrong? Is Reformation Sunday anything more than a chance for Lutherans to sing “A mighty fortress” and Presbyterians to repeat some of the more exciting passages from the Westminster Confession?
I think the key to Reformation Sunday is in Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." Truth is a central category in John’s gospel. At the very beginning the author tells us that when the divine Word took flesh and lived among us that “we [saw] his glory… full of grace and truth.” Later, Jesus declared himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” The great accomplishment of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Cranmer was to issue a thunderous call to western Christians to return to the Word made flesh, the Word spoken by Israel’s prophets, the Word that “above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth.”
But if the great work of the sixteenth century Reformers was to summon the church to return to the Word made flesh and the Word of the prophets, then that implies that the church had drifted away, that there was a great gulf between the position of the Reformers and the position of the Roman Catholic Church. Let there be no misunderstanding here: there were and are issues that separate Roman Catholics and Protestants. We do not serve the gospel well if we are not honest about our differences. But I think we are somewhat misled by the categories historians have given us. It might be better to re-christen Luther’s great movement the sixteenth century REVIVAL rather than the REFORMATION.
Of course, Luther, Calvin, and the others did reform the church. They were convinced that the church of the sixteenth century was a very different church than that of the apostles, and they believed that their work was to return the church as far as possible to the apostolic model. But that was also the goal of many who remained within the Roman Catholic Church. What Luther, Calvin, and the rest accomplished was a great revival, a movement that bore fruit not only in the Protestant churches they founded but also in the Roman Catholic Church that they left. They awakened the entire western church to its need to “continue” in Christ’s word and to let that word set them free.
Part of our problem on Reformation Sunday is with the word “truth”. Without sounding too much like former President Clinton, much depends on how you define “truth”. If truth is a thing that is fixed, unchanging, and static, then we might as well give up all hope of reconciliation with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers. But is that what Jesus meant by “truth”? In John’s gospel truth is never a set of propositions such as mathematical formulas. The truth is always a Person. The Truth is the one who said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.”
Physicist Niels Bohr said, “There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.” That sounds like it relativizes truth completely out of existence, but if the truth is not a thing but a Person then Bohr may have been right. If Truth is a person, then perhaps both Luther and his opponents can be comprehended in Truth’s embrace.
So in a post-denominational, indeed, a post-Christian age, can we continue to celebrate Reformation Sunday or has it become an embarrassment that we should discard? I think the Reformation still has something to say to us that should be celebrated, because what the Reformers said in the sixteenth century is just as valid today. The church of the 21st century, the churches that the Reformers left behind, need reformation and revival as badly as the creaky, sinful, and tradition-bound late medieval church. As Fred Pratt Green’s great hymn puts it, “The church of Christ in every age / beset by change but Spirit-led, / must claim and test its heritage /and keep on rising from the dead.” In every age, we need reformers to summon us to return to the truth with a lower case t but even more, to Truth with an upper case T. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the truths that the Reformers taught, but we always need to be reminded to return to the Truth who became flesh and dwelt among us, whom we saw to be full of glory, who invites us to abide in him, and who will set us free indeed.
Monday, October 17, 2005
The Great and First Commandment
Matthew tells us that the Pharisees "came together". Presumably, they came together to try to find a question that would trip Jesus up, that would expose him for the charlatan they believed him to be.
What were the Pharisees trying to do? Were they trying to expose Jesus' lack of knowledge or trying to trap him into uttering some blasphemy or heresy which would reveal once and for all what a bad Jew he was and alienate his followers?
Why, then, did they give Jesus such an easy question? "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
I know a lot of questions harder than that one, don't you? Those of you with children know that a five year old can ask harder questions than a Pharisee any day. Where did God come from? Is God married? How old is God?
Why didn't they ask something difficult, such as, What was God doing before God created the heavens and the earth?
But they asked Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Jesus' answer was remarkably conventional. "’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets".
Note that Jesus did more than they asked him to do. The question was "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” But Jesus cited two commandments in reply, "’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets".
There was nothing in Jesus' reply to which the Pharisees could have taken exception. In fact, one of their own, Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, gave a similar answer to a similar question.
The story is told that a pagan came to Rabbi Hillel, one of the greatest of the Pharisees, and said, "Rabbi, I will become a Jew if you can recite the entire Torah while standing on one leg." Hillel stood on one leg and said, "That which is hateful to you, do it not to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah; everything else is commentary. Now, go and learn it."
The rabbis taught that there were 613 commandments in the Old Testament. In terms of order "Love God with all your heart" is certainly not the first commandment. The first actual commandment in the Old Testament is "Be fruitful and multiply".
However, the Hebrew word that we translate "first" means not just numerically first but also first in importance. Jesus clarified his answer by saying that to love God with all your heart is not only the first but also the "greatest" commandment.
William Muehl, who taught me preaching at Yale Divinity School, assigned his upper level preaching students the task of preaching a sermon on the most difficult in the Bible. Students commonly chose "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" or "Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect". But I'm inclined to think that the hardest text in the New Testament is "Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Anyone who preaches on this text (and this preacher, especially) should begin by admitting that he or she is a hypocrite. More often than not, I do not love my neighbor, and I am bad about holding grudges. I agree with Frederick Buechner: "Of all the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.” But hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, so here goes.
Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees begs two questions: First, what did he mean by “love”? And secondly, what did he mean by “neighbor”? If you remember nothing else from this sermon, if you remember nothing else from any of the sermons I’ve preached, remember these two points.
First, today’s gospel employs perhaps the most dangerous four letter word in the English language. The word is “love”.
What makes the word “love” so dangerous is the fact that it’s repeated a thousand times a day on radio and television, and yet most of the time, those who use it don’t really mean love at all. Usually when television programs, movies, and popular music use the word love they mean infatuation or sexual attraction. But when Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, he used the word agape. Agape is the sort of love with which God loves us. Feelings are secondary; behavior is everything. We could paraphrase Jesus’ commandment in this way: You shall act in a loving way toward your neighbor. You shall behave toward your neighbor in the way that you want her to behave toward you.
But notice that love of God precedes love of neighbor. Isn't loving our fellow men and women the only way to love God?
There was a time when I would have said that it was redundant to say "Love God and love your neighbor", but I'm no longer sure about that.
I think that Jesus identified the "great and first commandment" as "love God" and then followed quickly with "and love your neighbor as yourself" because it is possible to love others or at least be concerned with the needs of others without taking into account the spiritual, the transcendent, dimension of human life.
There are those who are passionately concerned with the care of the hungry and the homeless who nevertheless have no awareness of the spiritual nature and spiritual needs of human beings. I honor them for their actions and fierce commitment to justice. However, I think that they are making an error which will prove very costly in the long run.
Rabbi Harold Kushner points out that "the difference between a person who relies only on himself and a person who has learned to turn to God for help... is not that one will do bad things while the other will do good things. The self-reliant atheist may be a fine, upstanding person. The difference is the atheist is like a bush growing in a desert. If he has only himself to rely on, when he exhausts his internal resources he runs the risk of running dry and withering.
"But the man or woman who turns to God is like a tree planted by a stream. What they share with the world is replenished from a source beyond themselves, so they never run dry." (Who Needs God? quoted in The Reader's Digest, Nov. '96, p. 90)
Finally, note what Jesus did not say. He did not say "serve God" or "obey God"; he said "love God".
From first to last the Bible is a love story. It is first the story of God's love for Israel and then of God's love for the church. First, God's covenant people are wooed and then they are invited into relationship.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind" is less commandment and more invitation. It is an invitation to love One who has always loved us. It is, in fact, an invitation to become more human. For we were created in the image of God for one reason above all others -- that we might love God and others as God loves us.
The second main point I want you to remember is this: who are these neighbors that Jesus wants us to love?
Another biblical story supplies us with the answer to that question. Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan? On some other occasion a Pharisee asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus told the tale of a man beaten by thieves and left for dead who was assisted by a Samaritan. At the end of the story, Jesus asked his questioner, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The Pharisee replied, “The one who showed him mercy”, in other words, the Samaritan.
The conclusion I draw is that our neighbor is any person who has needs that we are aware of and whom we can help.
I don't know about you, but all this leaves me feeling uncomfortable. My reaction to Jesus' radical challenge to love our neighbors is to feel discouraged and even a little depressed. I am tempted to say that Jesus sets before us an impossible ideal, but that would be too easy. It would let us off the hook. The trick is to aim at loving our neighbors, really try to do that, and at the same time to know that we will fail. And to realize that God sends sun and rain on the just and unjust, gives life and health to those we love and those we despise, that you and I and all of us need God's mercy as much as anyone in the whole creation.
Perhaps W.H. Auden said it best,
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.
God does not ask us to love our neighbors with the perfect love of perfect hearts because God knows (how well God knows!) that we do not have perfect hearts. It is the crooked love of crooked hearts that God asks us to share with our neighbors.
But we might find in trying to love that we succeed in loving. And we will find, in the end, that loving our neighbors is not an accomplishment, it is God's gift, for only by the grace of God are we able to love at all.
What were the Pharisees trying to do? Were they trying to expose Jesus' lack of knowledge or trying to trap him into uttering some blasphemy or heresy which would reveal once and for all what a bad Jew he was and alienate his followers?
Why, then, did they give Jesus such an easy question? "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
I know a lot of questions harder than that one, don't you? Those of you with children know that a five year old can ask harder questions than a Pharisee any day. Where did God come from? Is God married? How old is God?
Why didn't they ask something difficult, such as, What was God doing before God created the heavens and the earth?
But they asked Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Jesus' answer was remarkably conventional. "’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets".
Note that Jesus did more than they asked him to do. The question was "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” But Jesus cited two commandments in reply, "’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets".
There was nothing in Jesus' reply to which the Pharisees could have taken exception. In fact, one of their own, Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, gave a similar answer to a similar question.
The story is told that a pagan came to Rabbi Hillel, one of the greatest of the Pharisees, and said, "Rabbi, I will become a Jew if you can recite the entire Torah while standing on one leg." Hillel stood on one leg and said, "That which is hateful to you, do it not to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah; everything else is commentary. Now, go and learn it."
The rabbis taught that there were 613 commandments in the Old Testament. In terms of order "Love God with all your heart" is certainly not the first commandment. The first actual commandment in the Old Testament is "Be fruitful and multiply".
However, the Hebrew word that we translate "first" means not just numerically first but also first in importance. Jesus clarified his answer by saying that to love God with all your heart is not only the first but also the "greatest" commandment.
William Muehl, who taught me preaching at Yale Divinity School, assigned his upper level preaching students the task of preaching a sermon on the most difficult in the Bible. Students commonly chose "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" or "Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect". But I'm inclined to think that the hardest text in the New Testament is "Love your neighbor as yourself”.
Anyone who preaches on this text (and this preacher, especially) should begin by admitting that he or she is a hypocrite. More often than not, I do not love my neighbor, and I am bad about holding grudges. I agree with Frederick Buechner: "Of all the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.” But hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, so here goes.
Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees begs two questions: First, what did he mean by “love”? And secondly, what did he mean by “neighbor”? If you remember nothing else from this sermon, if you remember nothing else from any of the sermons I’ve preached, remember these two points.
First, today’s gospel employs perhaps the most dangerous four letter word in the English language. The word is “love”.
What makes the word “love” so dangerous is the fact that it’s repeated a thousand times a day on radio and television, and yet most of the time, those who use it don’t really mean love at all. Usually when television programs, movies, and popular music use the word love they mean infatuation or sexual attraction. But when Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, he used the word agape. Agape is the sort of love with which God loves us. Feelings are secondary; behavior is everything. We could paraphrase Jesus’ commandment in this way: You shall act in a loving way toward your neighbor. You shall behave toward your neighbor in the way that you want her to behave toward you.
But notice that love of God precedes love of neighbor. Isn't loving our fellow men and women the only way to love God?
There was a time when I would have said that it was redundant to say "Love God and love your neighbor", but I'm no longer sure about that.
I think that Jesus identified the "great and first commandment" as "love God" and then followed quickly with "and love your neighbor as yourself" because it is possible to love others or at least be concerned with the needs of others without taking into account the spiritual, the transcendent, dimension of human life.
There are those who are passionately concerned with the care of the hungry and the homeless who nevertheless have no awareness of the spiritual nature and spiritual needs of human beings. I honor them for their actions and fierce commitment to justice. However, I think that they are making an error which will prove very costly in the long run.
Rabbi Harold Kushner points out that "the difference between a person who relies only on himself and a person who has learned to turn to God for help... is not that one will do bad things while the other will do good things. The self-reliant atheist may be a fine, upstanding person. The difference is the atheist is like a bush growing in a desert. If he has only himself to rely on, when he exhausts his internal resources he runs the risk of running dry and withering.
"But the man or woman who turns to God is like a tree planted by a stream. What they share with the world is replenished from a source beyond themselves, so they never run dry." (Who Needs God? quoted in The Reader's Digest, Nov. '96, p. 90)
Finally, note what Jesus did not say. He did not say "serve God" or "obey God"; he said "love God".
From first to last the Bible is a love story. It is first the story of God's love for Israel and then of God's love for the church. First, God's covenant people are wooed and then they are invited into relationship.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind" is less commandment and more invitation. It is an invitation to love One who has always loved us. It is, in fact, an invitation to become more human. For we were created in the image of God for one reason above all others -- that we might love God and others as God loves us.
The second main point I want you to remember is this: who are these neighbors that Jesus wants us to love?
Another biblical story supplies us with the answer to that question. Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan? On some other occasion a Pharisee asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus told the tale of a man beaten by thieves and left for dead who was assisted by a Samaritan. At the end of the story, Jesus asked his questioner, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The Pharisee replied, “The one who showed him mercy”, in other words, the Samaritan.
The conclusion I draw is that our neighbor is any person who has needs that we are aware of and whom we can help.
I don't know about you, but all this leaves me feeling uncomfortable. My reaction to Jesus' radical challenge to love our neighbors is to feel discouraged and even a little depressed. I am tempted to say that Jesus sets before us an impossible ideal, but that would be too easy. It would let us off the hook. The trick is to aim at loving our neighbors, really try to do that, and at the same time to know that we will fail. And to realize that God sends sun and rain on the just and unjust, gives life and health to those we love and those we despise, that you and I and all of us need God's mercy as much as anyone in the whole creation.
Perhaps W.H. Auden said it best,
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.
God does not ask us to love our neighbors with the perfect love of perfect hearts because God knows (how well God knows!) that we do not have perfect hearts. It is the crooked love of crooked hearts that God asks us to share with our neighbors.
But we might find in trying to love that we succeed in loving. And we will find, in the end, that loving our neighbors is not an accomplishment, it is God's gift, for only by the grace of God are we able to love at all.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
What's left for Caesar?
Today’s gospel reading is about drawing lines. Where do we draw the line between Caesar and God? Between the state and the church?
The Anglican tradition has generally had a close relationship with the state. We came out of a great conflict between church and state when England’s Henry VIII defied the church and insisted that the king should have authority over the church in his realm. There was a great deal of justification for Henry’s position, but it should make us a little uneasy. The church often has to say things to kings that they do not want to hear, and it can be difficult to rebuke a king who pays your salary.
The American revolution changed the relationship between church and state, and the Episcopal church became independent of the state. That, I think, makes for a healthier relationship between church and state.
A vivid symbol of the relationship between church and state is the presence of the American flag in most Episcopal churches. I have no objection to the presence of the flag in the church, but I would strenuously object to having a flag flying ABOVE a church. Having a flag flying above a church indicates that the church is under the authority of the state, but a flag inside a church says that the state is beneath the sacred canopy, that we owe our ultimate loyalty to God and not to Caesar.
The New Testament gives us conflicting messages about church and state. On the one hand, Paul acknowledges that God has appointed earthly rulers to maintain order. So far, so good. Caesar provides a police force to enforce the laws and restrain criminals. The state maintains roads and delivers the mail. But the New Testament also warns us against the creeping sacralization of the state. What I mean by that is that every state in human history from ancient Rome to the United States in our own day has a tendency to seek divine honors, and we often find ourselves giving honor to the state that belongs to God.
In today’s gospel reading Jesus asks his opponents for a coin. The coin they gave him had an image on it, probably the image of Tiberius, the Roman ruler who assumed power after the death of Augustus in 14 AD. “Whose image is this and what is the inscription?” Jesus asked the Pharisees and Herodians, and they replied, “The emperor’s.” But notice that they did not answer the second part of Jesus’ question, “What is the inscription?” To have quoted the inscription would have been to commit the sin of blasphemy, because the inscription read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, great high priest”.
Jesus’ question put his opponents on the defensive because it not only made them confront the fact that they were dealing with a state that claimed divine honors but it also reminded them of another image – the divine image that is stamped on every human life.
So where does that leave us? What are the things that we are to give back to Caesar and what are the things that belong to God? Where do we draw the line between church and state? Caesar’s image, then and now, is on our coins, but God’s image is on our lives. Caesar has a claim to at least some of our coins, but he does not have a claim on our lives.
Christians have to live with the uneasy knowledge that God and Caesar may at any moment come into conflict. We are right to pray our president and other political leaders but we also pray “thy kingdom come”. We pray that all of earth’s kingdoms, including the United States, may one day yield to God’s kingdom. We acknowledge that no earthly kingdom perfectly reflects the divine justice, that all stand under God’s judgment.
Jesus’ devastating non-answer to the Pharisees’ trick question – “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” – throws the burden back on us. What belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? I think we can get some help in solving the puzzle if we look at the context in which Matthew has set today’s gospel reading.
The question about taxes and tribute was the first of three controversy stories in the 22nd chapter of Matthew. In the third story, the Pharisees ask Jesus which of the laws is the greatest, and he replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” I think that solves the dilemma posed in the first story, the one we heard today. What do we owe Caesar and what do we owe God? We owe God all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Caesar can have everything else.
The Anglican tradition has generally had a close relationship with the state. We came out of a great conflict between church and state when England’s Henry VIII defied the church and insisted that the king should have authority over the church in his realm. There was a great deal of justification for Henry’s position, but it should make us a little uneasy. The church often has to say things to kings that they do not want to hear, and it can be difficult to rebuke a king who pays your salary.
The American revolution changed the relationship between church and state, and the Episcopal church became independent of the state. That, I think, makes for a healthier relationship between church and state.
A vivid symbol of the relationship between church and state is the presence of the American flag in most Episcopal churches. I have no objection to the presence of the flag in the church, but I would strenuously object to having a flag flying ABOVE a church. Having a flag flying above a church indicates that the church is under the authority of the state, but a flag inside a church says that the state is beneath the sacred canopy, that we owe our ultimate loyalty to God and not to Caesar.
The New Testament gives us conflicting messages about church and state. On the one hand, Paul acknowledges that God has appointed earthly rulers to maintain order. So far, so good. Caesar provides a police force to enforce the laws and restrain criminals. The state maintains roads and delivers the mail. But the New Testament also warns us against the creeping sacralization of the state. What I mean by that is that every state in human history from ancient Rome to the United States in our own day has a tendency to seek divine honors, and we often find ourselves giving honor to the state that belongs to God.
In today’s gospel reading Jesus asks his opponents for a coin. The coin they gave him had an image on it, probably the image of Tiberius, the Roman ruler who assumed power after the death of Augustus in 14 AD. “Whose image is this and what is the inscription?” Jesus asked the Pharisees and Herodians, and they replied, “The emperor’s.” But notice that they did not answer the second part of Jesus’ question, “What is the inscription?” To have quoted the inscription would have been to commit the sin of blasphemy, because the inscription read, “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus, great high priest”.
Jesus’ question put his opponents on the defensive because it not only made them confront the fact that they were dealing with a state that claimed divine honors but it also reminded them of another image – the divine image that is stamped on every human life.
So where does that leave us? What are the things that we are to give back to Caesar and what are the things that belong to God? Where do we draw the line between church and state? Caesar’s image, then and now, is on our coins, but God’s image is on our lives. Caesar has a claim to at least some of our coins, but he does not have a claim on our lives.
Christians have to live with the uneasy knowledge that God and Caesar may at any moment come into conflict. We are right to pray our president and other political leaders but we also pray “thy kingdom come”. We pray that all of earth’s kingdoms, including the United States, may one day yield to God’s kingdom. We acknowledge that no earthly kingdom perfectly reflects the divine justice, that all stand under God’s judgment.
Jesus’ devastating non-answer to the Pharisees’ trick question – “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” – throws the burden back on us. What belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? I think we can get some help in solving the puzzle if we look at the context in which Matthew has set today’s gospel reading.
The question about taxes and tribute was the first of three controversy stories in the 22nd chapter of Matthew. In the third story, the Pharisees ask Jesus which of the laws is the greatest, and he replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” I think that solves the dilemma posed in the first story, the one we heard today. What do we owe Caesar and what do we owe God? We owe God all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Caesar can have everything else.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Our Party Best
Are you familiar with the phrase “A list”? The A list is the cream of the crop. They are the people we all want to associate with, whether they are TV and movie stars, politicians, business leaders, or celebrities of some other kind. Most of us have a personal A list, a list of people whom we like to associate with, and if we’re honest, we also have what (for want of a better phrase) I’ll call the X list, that is, the list of people we’d rather not associate with under any circumstances.
Jesus told a story about a king who threw a party to celebrate the wedding of his son. He invited all the people on his A list. The day and time of the wedding feast came, but no one showed up. So he sent his servants to remind them, thinking that perhaps they had overslept or had written it down on the wrong page of their day planners or palm pilots. But each of the A list invitees refused to come. The king was astonished, and sent his servant back to find out the reason for this outrageous behavior. The people on the A list had lame excuses. One was on her way to the lake for the weekend. Another was about to close a big deal that would double his business. Some of them just slammed the door in the face of the king’s servants or gave them a kick in the seat of their pants. Now this king was not the kind of pleasant, inoffensive monarch we find in the 21st century. He was a Middle Eastern potentate. He kept a fulltime staff of thugs who liked nothing more than beating the living daylights out of those who got on the wrong side of this king. So he sent them out to all the people on the A list, and those folks didn’t know what hit them. The words “Old Testament justice” barely begin to describe their fates. But the king still had a problem on his hand: his son was getting married and their was no one to come to the party. Furthermore, the caterers had a truck-full of shrimp mousse and a huge ice sculpture that were starting to get warm. So just to get some warm bodies in the chairs, he sent his servant out to collect the street people, and out they went again. So the wedding took place and the caterers served the shrimp mousse and everyone admired the elaborate ice sculpture of Cupid. The guests looked kind of uncomfortable in their ill-fitting rented tuxedoes and ball gowns that had been found for them at the last minute. Then the king spotted one guy who had sneaked in in his old army jacket with a knitted cap pulled down over his ears. “You! Yeah, I’m talking to you! How’d you get in here without a tux? Throw the bum out!” And his thugs grabbed the guy and tossed him out the door, giving him a few bruises just for good measure.
It’s a strange story, one of the strangest Jesus ever told. But I think it’s good news for all of us. From beginning to end, Jesus made it clear that he had come to bring good news to those who did not expect it and did not deserve it, and he was not well-received and seems not to have liked those who DID expect it and thought they deserved it. He made a point of seeking out and was sought out by those who were not on anyone’s A list: the poor, the sick, the leprous, crooks, and women of dubious morals.
But most of us are none of those things. We generally play by the rules, go to church on Sunday, pay our taxes, and are probably on somebody’s A list. But the fact is that all of us are needy. All of us are afraid. God meets us at that point of greatest need. It is when we come to that point of greatest fear and greatest need that we are most in touch with God. There comes a point in every life when we realize that we have been passed by, overlooked, excluded… it may be a critical illness, a divorce, a financial setback, or just plain getting old. And at that point God reaches out to us, graciously inviting us to the wedding feast.
But what of the guest who showed up without a tuxedo? Is there any special requirement for coming to the feast? I believe that the only requirement is a grateful heart. And if we keep in mind that the invitation to the feast is God’s gift and not our achievement, that we are invited not because WE are good but because GOD is good, then how can we not have grateful hearts.
Isak Dinesen retold the story of the wedding feast in her story "Babette's Feast," subsequently made into a film in Denmark. At the end of the film the title character throw an elaborate feast for the simple people of a remote Danish fishing village. Also present at the meal was a distinguished Danish military leader. At the meal's conclusion, the general raises his glass in a toast and says, "Man, my friends is frail and foolish. We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness we imagine God's grace to be limited..."
"But we are wrong; grace is infinite. Grace demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular." Gratitude is the dress code for the wedding feast.
But I want to let English poet George Herbert have the last word:
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
Jesus told a story about a king who threw a party to celebrate the wedding of his son. He invited all the people on his A list. The day and time of the wedding feast came, but no one showed up. So he sent his servants to remind them, thinking that perhaps they had overslept or had written it down on the wrong page of their day planners or palm pilots. But each of the A list invitees refused to come. The king was astonished, and sent his servant back to find out the reason for this outrageous behavior. The people on the A list had lame excuses. One was on her way to the lake for the weekend. Another was about to close a big deal that would double his business. Some of them just slammed the door in the face of the king’s servants or gave them a kick in the seat of their pants. Now this king was not the kind of pleasant, inoffensive monarch we find in the 21st century. He was a Middle Eastern potentate. He kept a fulltime staff of thugs who liked nothing more than beating the living daylights out of those who got on the wrong side of this king. So he sent them out to all the people on the A list, and those folks didn’t know what hit them. The words “Old Testament justice” barely begin to describe their fates. But the king still had a problem on his hand: his son was getting married and their was no one to come to the party. Furthermore, the caterers had a truck-full of shrimp mousse and a huge ice sculpture that were starting to get warm. So just to get some warm bodies in the chairs, he sent his servant out to collect the street people, and out they went again. So the wedding took place and the caterers served the shrimp mousse and everyone admired the elaborate ice sculpture of Cupid. The guests looked kind of uncomfortable in their ill-fitting rented tuxedoes and ball gowns that had been found for them at the last minute. Then the king spotted one guy who had sneaked in in his old army jacket with a knitted cap pulled down over his ears. “You! Yeah, I’m talking to you! How’d you get in here without a tux? Throw the bum out!” And his thugs grabbed the guy and tossed him out the door, giving him a few bruises just for good measure.
It’s a strange story, one of the strangest Jesus ever told. But I think it’s good news for all of us. From beginning to end, Jesus made it clear that he had come to bring good news to those who did not expect it and did not deserve it, and he was not well-received and seems not to have liked those who DID expect it and thought they deserved it. He made a point of seeking out and was sought out by those who were not on anyone’s A list: the poor, the sick, the leprous, crooks, and women of dubious morals.
But most of us are none of those things. We generally play by the rules, go to church on Sunday, pay our taxes, and are probably on somebody’s A list. But the fact is that all of us are needy. All of us are afraid. God meets us at that point of greatest need. It is when we come to that point of greatest fear and greatest need that we are most in touch with God. There comes a point in every life when we realize that we have been passed by, overlooked, excluded… it may be a critical illness, a divorce, a financial setback, or just plain getting old. And at that point God reaches out to us, graciously inviting us to the wedding feast.
But what of the guest who showed up without a tuxedo? Is there any special requirement for coming to the feast? I believe that the only requirement is a grateful heart. And if we keep in mind that the invitation to the feast is God’s gift and not our achievement, that we are invited not because WE are good but because GOD is good, then how can we not have grateful hearts.
Isak Dinesen retold the story of the wedding feast in her story "Babette's Feast," subsequently made into a film in Denmark. At the end of the film the title character throw an elaborate feast for the simple people of a remote Danish fishing village. Also present at the meal was a distinguished Danish military leader. At the meal's conclusion, the general raises his glass in a toast and says, "Man, my friends is frail and foolish. We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness we imagine God's grace to be limited..."
"But we are wrong; grace is infinite. Grace demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular." Gratitude is the dress code for the wedding feast.
But I want to let English poet George Herbert have the last word:
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
A fully human life (Proper 22A)
Episcopalians and the Ten Commandments do not seem to be concepts that naturally belong together. I am reminded of a cartoon I saw of a church. The sign in front said, “The Lite [L-I-T-E] Church – five minute sermons, 45 minute services, and only eight commandments – your choice”. That’s the way many think of the Episcopal Church—heavy on pomp and ceremony but rather light on the commandments.
When I say “Episcopalian” what comes to your mind first? Sherry? Prep school? Trust fund? And yet there is a long and intimate association between Anglicans and the Ten Commandments. When Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, came to the throne of England in 1547, he ordered that the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments should be painted on the walls of every church in his realm. We might question his interior decorating skills, but theologically he had it right. From the earliest days of the Christian church every newly baptized person was taught the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments before they were taught anything else. Furthermore, from 1552 to 1979 every service of Holy Eucharist began either with a recitation of the Ten Commandments or with Jesus’ summary of them: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself”.
Now when I say “Ten Commandments” what pops into your mind? People of my generation and older may well think of Cecil B. deMille or Charlton Heston, but more than likely when we think of the Ten Commandments we think of them as negative and restrictive. After all, eight out of ten are phrased in the negative, “thou shalt not” and only two are phrased positively. There is something in the very words “law” and “commandment” that gets our backs up. Do you know the story of the little girl who said, “Mother, when you say ‘You must’, I feel ‘I won’t’ all over”.
One of the first things we need to understand about the Ten Commandments is that most of them are phrased negatively for a good reason. It is impossible to legislate for every contingency. The commandments say “You shall not commit murder” rather than saying, “You shall protect and preserve human life by driving the speed limit, not polluting the atmosphere, using firearms carefully or not at all, wearing your seat belt...” and so on. The list would be endless. So by phrasing the commandments in the negative, God gives scope to human freedom. God trusts us to use our reason, guided by scripture and the church, to decide how to apply the commandments, for we encounter situations which the ancient Israelites could not have envisioned. And yet these ten ancient admonitions have guided humankind from an age of camels and caravans to an age of cloning and computers.
Another issue we face as we begin to consider the Ten Commandments is whether or not they are to be understood as absolutes which can never be set aside or modified. One of the most important Anglican theologians of the 20th century was Joseph Fletcher. Fletcher wrote the enormously popular and influential book Situation Ethics. His position is easily summarized: The only law that applies to followers of Jesus is the law of love: “Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself”. We can know what to do in every situation simply by asking ourselves “What is the loving thing to do now?” There is a vast gulf between the Ten Commandments and Fletcher’s situation ethics. I think we can close or at least narrow the gap this way. The commandments are absolutes but some are more important than others. For example, it is more important to preserve life than to tell the truth, so we may lie if it is necessary to save a life. There is finally no conflict between the commandments and the law of love. The Ten Commandments are practical applications of the law of love.
The 16th century French Protestant leader John Calvin said that every negative commandment implies a positive. In other words, “Thou shalt not kill” implies that we are to cherish, nurture, and preserve life. “Thou shalt not steal” means that we are to respect the property of others. There is no doubt that he was right. The commandments lay down the minimum standards that are necessary for human life to flourish. The commandments establish a perimeter within which humans are free to be fully human. Daily we fail to do things that cherish and preserve life and fail to respect the property of others, but at a minimum we must not murder or steal or else a truly human life will be impossible.
The Ten Commandments begin not with a law but with a story: “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage...” From the very beginning this clears up a misunderstanding about the commandments. Notice that no punishments are attached to the commandments. The commandments say, “You shall not commit murder” but do not add, “or you will suffer the same fate”. There is no “or else” attached to the commandments. The commandments are given to us not as a precondition for pleasing God, much less as something we must do in order to be saved. The commandments begin with the announcement that God has already redeemed us, brought us up out of Egypt, delivered us from bondage. That is just as true for Christians as it was for Israel. You have been baptized, redeemed, named as God’s own; you are “forgiven, loved, and free”. The commandments are our response to God’s love and care not things we must do to merit God’s favor.
So, if the commandments are not requirements we must fulfill in order to be accepted, why should we pay any attention to them at all? The commandments are important because they are the conditions for living a fully human life. If we go through the commandments one by one, we find that each one establishes a condition that allows human life to flourish. For example, a fully human life is one that acknowledges the God who has created and redeemed us; honors the sacredness of other lives; and reverences the truth without which communication is impossible.
The commandments begin at the very beginning. “You shall have no other gods before me”. Acknowledge and honor the God who has created and redeemed us. Why is this important? Is it not possible to live a fully human life without acknowledging and honoring God? All of us know very fine people who are agnostics or even atheists, and sometimes their ethics and integrity put Christians to shame. Rabbi Harold Kushner said something wise about this: "...the difference between a person who relies only on himself and a person who has learned to turn to God for help... is not that one will do bad things while the other will do good things. The self-reliant atheist may be a fine, upstanding person. The difference is the atheist is like a bush growing in a desert. If he has only himself to rely on, when he exhausts his internal resources he runs the risk of running dry and withering. But the man or woman who turns to God is like a tree planted by a stream. What they share with the world is replenished from a source beyond themselves, so they never run dry."
In light of the opening words of the commandments, we may wonder how Israel could possibly give honor to any other gods. The Holy One had delivered them from slavery in Egypt, inflicted plagues and disasters upon their Egyptian masters, parted the Red Sea, and given them food and water in the wilderness. And yet at the first opportunity, they made a golden calf and worshiped it. Later, Israel’s rulers would set up the statues of pagan gods in the very Temple itself. And we are no different. In his sermon on the first commandment, the 16th century German Reformer Martin Luther says that “To whatever you give your heart and entrust your being, that, I say, is really your God.” (Luther’s Large Catechism, Samuel Janzow, trans., St. Louis: Concordia (1978), p. 13)
To what have we given our hearts? In what or in whom do we entrust our being? It has become commonplace to point out that all too often we worship financial success or professional achievement or physical pleasure rather than the God who redeemed us from bondage. Now if I were playing devil’s advocate I might point out that those who worship financial success and professional achievement are very often rewarded by their gods. They become rich, famous, and successful. But do we want to put our trust in wealth, success, and celebrity? Will they sustain us when the world comes crashing down around us (and eventually the world comes crashing down around all of us)?
The post 9/11 world makes the question more acute. On a beautiful morning in the very heart of American economic and political power, a small band of fanatics demonstrated that no amount of political or economic or military power can protect us. It is a lesson we should have known, a lesson as old as the Ten Commandments. “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me,” says the Holy One of Sinai. It is a word every age needs to hear, because daily the demigods of wealth, power, and pleasure invite us to worship at their altars and put our trust in them. But there is only One in whom we can entrust our being, the One who spoke long ago upon Sinai: “I am the Lord your God... you shall have no other gods before me”.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image”. Look around you. Christianity is a religion rich in images. There is the cross, the dove, the eagle-shaped lectern we see in many Episcopal churches. There are these magnificent windows portraying Christ the Good Shepherd, his birth, and his death and resurrection. Even Judaism understood this commandment primarily in terms of not making any images of God. Jewish art is full of portrayals of Old Testament scenes and Jewish life. When Islam began to grow and spread in the seventh century, Muslims reacted against the images they saw in Christian churches and completely forbade the making of images of any human or animal.
How, then, do we reconcile the visual richness of Christian worship with the stark absoluteness of the second commandment? “you shall not make for yourself a graven image”.
First, we must distinguish between idol and icon. The second commandment is a prohibition of idols. The peoples of the ancient near east (and most other civilizations, for that matter) made idols of wood and gold, stone and precious jewels. These idols were (and are) thought to have power in and of themselves. An icon is quite different. An icon is an image that points beyond itself to a transcendent reality. The Eastern Orthodox churches have a far more sophisticated understanding of icons than we do. The icons in Orthodox churches are highly stylized, even distorted images. The eyes are larger than normal to show that the person portrayed in the icon is looking upon heavenly things. The Orthodox do not speak of painting icons but of writing them. They don’t merely look upon icons; they read them. An icon always tells a story, always refers beyond itself to heavenly realities.
Secondly, the Christian understanding of icons is founded upon our experience of God in Christ. Exodus tells us that when God spoke from Sinai the mountain was surrounded by thick clouds and smoke. Of course, this meant that God was too holy to look upon. Indeed, the Old Testament says that no one may look upon God and live. But the Christian faith tells us that in Christ God stepped out of the clouds for a brief period. As the New Testament says “we have seen...” [1 John] The invisible God of Sinai became visible in Jesus. While we must never confuse image with reality, the God who became flesh in Jesus is appropriately imaged in visual art. We worship a visible God, a God with a history. Christian art rightly portrays God’s history in scenes from the life of Jesus.
Finally, the commandment not to make any graven images reminds us that God cannot be contained or controlled. If we have an image of God (and this is as true of Christians as anyone else), there is the temptation to believe that we can make God do our bidding. God can neither be captured in an image nor harnessed to human purposes. The God of the Ten Commandments is radically free.
We ignore the commandments at our peril, not because God is ready to hurl thunderbolts at us if we step out of line, but because the Ten Commandments give us the outline of a fully human life.
Make no mistake: the Ten Commandments set the bar high and daily we fall short. Our hearts and lives are fragmented and we put our trust in many things besides God. But the God who spoke from Sinai still speaks, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”. But even in our disobedience, God seeks us out, saying, “You are mine and I have redeemed you”.
When I say “Episcopalian” what comes to your mind first? Sherry? Prep school? Trust fund? And yet there is a long and intimate association between Anglicans and the Ten Commandments. When Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, came to the throne of England in 1547, he ordered that the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments should be painted on the walls of every church in his realm. We might question his interior decorating skills, but theologically he had it right. From the earliest days of the Christian church every newly baptized person was taught the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments before they were taught anything else. Furthermore, from 1552 to 1979 every service of Holy Eucharist began either with a recitation of the Ten Commandments or with Jesus’ summary of them: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself”.
Now when I say “Ten Commandments” what pops into your mind? People of my generation and older may well think of Cecil B. deMille or Charlton Heston, but more than likely when we think of the Ten Commandments we think of them as negative and restrictive. After all, eight out of ten are phrased in the negative, “thou shalt not” and only two are phrased positively. There is something in the very words “law” and “commandment” that gets our backs up. Do you know the story of the little girl who said, “Mother, when you say ‘You must’, I feel ‘I won’t’ all over”.
One of the first things we need to understand about the Ten Commandments is that most of them are phrased negatively for a good reason. It is impossible to legislate for every contingency. The commandments say “You shall not commit murder” rather than saying, “You shall protect and preserve human life by driving the speed limit, not polluting the atmosphere, using firearms carefully or not at all, wearing your seat belt...” and so on. The list would be endless. So by phrasing the commandments in the negative, God gives scope to human freedom. God trusts us to use our reason, guided by scripture and the church, to decide how to apply the commandments, for we encounter situations which the ancient Israelites could not have envisioned. And yet these ten ancient admonitions have guided humankind from an age of camels and caravans to an age of cloning and computers.
Another issue we face as we begin to consider the Ten Commandments is whether or not they are to be understood as absolutes which can never be set aside or modified. One of the most important Anglican theologians of the 20th century was Joseph Fletcher. Fletcher wrote the enormously popular and influential book Situation Ethics. His position is easily summarized: The only law that applies to followers of Jesus is the law of love: “Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself”. We can know what to do in every situation simply by asking ourselves “What is the loving thing to do now?” There is a vast gulf between the Ten Commandments and Fletcher’s situation ethics. I think we can close or at least narrow the gap this way. The commandments are absolutes but some are more important than others. For example, it is more important to preserve life than to tell the truth, so we may lie if it is necessary to save a life. There is finally no conflict between the commandments and the law of love. The Ten Commandments are practical applications of the law of love.
The 16th century French Protestant leader John Calvin said that every negative commandment implies a positive. In other words, “Thou shalt not kill” implies that we are to cherish, nurture, and preserve life. “Thou shalt not steal” means that we are to respect the property of others. There is no doubt that he was right. The commandments lay down the minimum standards that are necessary for human life to flourish. The commandments establish a perimeter within which humans are free to be fully human. Daily we fail to do things that cherish and preserve life and fail to respect the property of others, but at a minimum we must not murder or steal or else a truly human life will be impossible.
The Ten Commandments begin not with a law but with a story: “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage...” From the very beginning this clears up a misunderstanding about the commandments. Notice that no punishments are attached to the commandments. The commandments say, “You shall not commit murder” but do not add, “or you will suffer the same fate”. There is no “or else” attached to the commandments. The commandments are given to us not as a precondition for pleasing God, much less as something we must do in order to be saved. The commandments begin with the announcement that God has already redeemed us, brought us up out of Egypt, delivered us from bondage. That is just as true for Christians as it was for Israel. You have been baptized, redeemed, named as God’s own; you are “forgiven, loved, and free”. The commandments are our response to God’s love and care not things we must do to merit God’s favor.
So, if the commandments are not requirements we must fulfill in order to be accepted, why should we pay any attention to them at all? The commandments are important because they are the conditions for living a fully human life. If we go through the commandments one by one, we find that each one establishes a condition that allows human life to flourish. For example, a fully human life is one that acknowledges the God who has created and redeemed us; honors the sacredness of other lives; and reverences the truth without which communication is impossible.
The commandments begin at the very beginning. “You shall have no other gods before me”. Acknowledge and honor the God who has created and redeemed us. Why is this important? Is it not possible to live a fully human life without acknowledging and honoring God? All of us know very fine people who are agnostics or even atheists, and sometimes their ethics and integrity put Christians to shame. Rabbi Harold Kushner said something wise about this: "...the difference between a person who relies only on himself and a person who has learned to turn to God for help... is not that one will do bad things while the other will do good things. The self-reliant atheist may be a fine, upstanding person. The difference is the atheist is like a bush growing in a desert. If he has only himself to rely on, when he exhausts his internal resources he runs the risk of running dry and withering. But the man or woman who turns to God is like a tree planted by a stream. What they share with the world is replenished from a source beyond themselves, so they never run dry."
In light of the opening words of the commandments, we may wonder how Israel could possibly give honor to any other gods. The Holy One had delivered them from slavery in Egypt, inflicted plagues and disasters upon their Egyptian masters, parted the Red Sea, and given them food and water in the wilderness. And yet at the first opportunity, they made a golden calf and worshiped it. Later, Israel’s rulers would set up the statues of pagan gods in the very Temple itself. And we are no different. In his sermon on the first commandment, the 16th century German Reformer Martin Luther says that “To whatever you give your heart and entrust your being, that, I say, is really your God.” (Luther’s Large Catechism, Samuel Janzow, trans., St. Louis: Concordia (1978), p. 13)
To what have we given our hearts? In what or in whom do we entrust our being? It has become commonplace to point out that all too often we worship financial success or professional achievement or physical pleasure rather than the God who redeemed us from bondage. Now if I were playing devil’s advocate I might point out that those who worship financial success and professional achievement are very often rewarded by their gods. They become rich, famous, and successful. But do we want to put our trust in wealth, success, and celebrity? Will they sustain us when the world comes crashing down around us (and eventually the world comes crashing down around all of us)?
The post 9/11 world makes the question more acute. On a beautiful morning in the very heart of American economic and political power, a small band of fanatics demonstrated that no amount of political or economic or military power can protect us. It is a lesson we should have known, a lesson as old as the Ten Commandments. “I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me,” says the Holy One of Sinai. It is a word every age needs to hear, because daily the demigods of wealth, power, and pleasure invite us to worship at their altars and put our trust in them. But there is only One in whom we can entrust our being, the One who spoke long ago upon Sinai: “I am the Lord your God... you shall have no other gods before me”.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image”. Look around you. Christianity is a religion rich in images. There is the cross, the dove, the eagle-shaped lectern we see in many Episcopal churches. There are these magnificent windows portraying Christ the Good Shepherd, his birth, and his death and resurrection. Even Judaism understood this commandment primarily in terms of not making any images of God. Jewish art is full of portrayals of Old Testament scenes and Jewish life. When Islam began to grow and spread in the seventh century, Muslims reacted against the images they saw in Christian churches and completely forbade the making of images of any human or animal.
How, then, do we reconcile the visual richness of Christian worship with the stark absoluteness of the second commandment? “you shall not make for yourself a graven image”.
First, we must distinguish between idol and icon. The second commandment is a prohibition of idols. The peoples of the ancient near east (and most other civilizations, for that matter) made idols of wood and gold, stone and precious jewels. These idols were (and are) thought to have power in and of themselves. An icon is quite different. An icon is an image that points beyond itself to a transcendent reality. The Eastern Orthodox churches have a far more sophisticated understanding of icons than we do. The icons in Orthodox churches are highly stylized, even distorted images. The eyes are larger than normal to show that the person portrayed in the icon is looking upon heavenly things. The Orthodox do not speak of painting icons but of writing them. They don’t merely look upon icons; they read them. An icon always tells a story, always refers beyond itself to heavenly realities.
Secondly, the Christian understanding of icons is founded upon our experience of God in Christ. Exodus tells us that when God spoke from Sinai the mountain was surrounded by thick clouds and smoke. Of course, this meant that God was too holy to look upon. Indeed, the Old Testament says that no one may look upon God and live. But the Christian faith tells us that in Christ God stepped out of the clouds for a brief period. As the New Testament says “we have seen...” [1 John] The invisible God of Sinai became visible in Jesus. While we must never confuse image with reality, the God who became flesh in Jesus is appropriately imaged in visual art. We worship a visible God, a God with a history. Christian art rightly portrays God’s history in scenes from the life of Jesus.
Finally, the commandment not to make any graven images reminds us that God cannot be contained or controlled. If we have an image of God (and this is as true of Christians as anyone else), there is the temptation to believe that we can make God do our bidding. God can neither be captured in an image nor harnessed to human purposes. The God of the Ten Commandments is radically free.
We ignore the commandments at our peril, not because God is ready to hurl thunderbolts at us if we step out of line, but because the Ten Commandments give us the outline of a fully human life.
Make no mistake: the Ten Commandments set the bar high and daily we fall short. Our hearts and lives are fragmented and we put our trust in many things besides God. But the God who spoke from Sinai still speaks, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”. But even in our disobedience, God seeks us out, saying, “You are mine and I have redeemed you”.
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