Seeing Jesus Again for the Very First Time

Text: Mark 10.46-52

Sometimes what the Bible does not say is as interesting as what it does say. For example, how many gallons of ink have been spilled in wondering about what Jesus was doing in the twenty or so years before he began his public ministry. The public ministry of Jesus began (Luke tells us) when he was “about thirty years old” (Luke 3.23). The next earliest story we have of Jesus (also from Luke) is his visit to the Temple when he was about twelve years old (Luke 2.42). Twenty years of Jesus’ life pass in silence. Did he spend the time quietly working as a carpenter in Nazareth? Did he travel beyond Palestine? Was he abducted by aliens? But the New Testament leaves with nothing but silence.

I’m even more intrigued by the story of the woman caught in adultery. When she is brought before Jesus, he stoops to the ground and writes in the dirt with his finger. (John 8.6) It’s the only account the Bible gives us of Jesus writing. What do you suppose he wrote? One preacher suggested that Jesus wrote the names of the men in the crowd who had committed adultery themselves!

Today’s gospel also leaves us with an intriguing silence. “Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Mark tells us that Jesus and his disciples arrived in Jericho and that they left, but tells us nothing of what happened in between. How long were they there? Did Jesus teach and preach? Did he weave any new tales of prodigal sons and good Samaritans? Of lost sheep and priceless pearls? And above all, I wonder, did he work any miracles? But undoubtedly something happened while Jesus and the disciples were in Jericho.

But before we get to what might have happened in Jericho, consider the significance of Jericho itself. Jericho, now as then, is an important town. It is situated in an oasis in the desolate wasteland between Jerusalem and the Jordan River. It is about 15 miles east of Jerusalem, just on the other side of the hills that stand between Jerusalem and the Jordan. It was an important commercial center and trading post on the principal road that connected Jerusalem with the Jordan Valley and points east. But its religious significance outweighed even its commercial significance. Jericho was the point at which the Israelites had entered the Promised Land. Jericho symbolized God’s fulfillment of the divine promise to Israel that they would enter and possess a land flowing with milk and honey.

Thus Jesus’ choice of routes into Jerusalem was full of significance. He could have traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem via the flat coastal plain, passing along near the sites of modern-day Haifa and Tel Aviv. But instead he chose the rougher, more arid interior route of the Jordan Valley. Jesus’ journey recapitulated Israel’s journey. But there was a difference: Israel journeyed from the wilderness to the promised land, but Jesus journeyed from the promised land to the cross. However, each went via Jericho.

So, what do you supposed happened between the first and second sentences of today’s gospel reading? Between “they came to Jericho” and “as he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving”? That something happened is beyond doubt. Something happened that came to the attention of blind Bartimaeus.

Imagine Bartimaeus’ world. Marks tells us that Bartimaeus said to Jesus, “Let me see again”. Bartimaeus is different from the blind man whose healing is recounted in the 9th chapter of John’s gospel who was blind from birth. Bartimaeus had once had sight but had lost it. I imagine that Bartimaeus’ desire for healing was greater, much greater, than the blind man in John’s gospel. He had had something precious and had lost it. The loss of sight must cause inconceivable anguish. I imagine that Bartimaeus had had to struggle with bitterness because of his enormous loss.

It is somewhat redundant to refer to Bartimaeus as a “blind beggar”. He was blind, so of course, he was a beggar. He had no alternative. He sat beside the road and begged for spare change. However, Mark portrays Bartimaeus as a man of decisiveness and action, not as a passive victim. Rather than passively accept his fate, Bartimaeus refuses to be ignored. He shouts. He makes a scene. He shouts Jesus’ name. The crowd hushes him. “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet…” But Mark tells us that Bartimaeus “cried out even more loudly” and shouted Jesus’ name again.

A detail I find especially poignant is that when Jesus notices Bartimaeus and calls for him to come to him, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak. What do you suppose that cloak represented to Bartimaeus? Just how many cloaks would a blind beggar of the first century possess? Perhaps he had a begging bowl and a staff, but I doubt he would have much else. That cloak may have represented anywhere from 25% to 50% of Bartimaeus’ possessions. It is even more powerful when we think of the story of the rich man who came to Jesus earlier in the tenth chapter of Mark’s gospel. When Jesus told him to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor, he “went away grieving, for he had many possessions”. What a contrast with Bartimaeus who, with joyful abandon throws away his cloak, perhaps his most expensive possession!

As a sightless man Bartimaeus’ only way of learning about the world was via his other senses, mainly his sense of hearing. What Bartimaeus knew about Jesus he would have learned by listening. So whatever Jesus did during his visit to Jericho, Bartimaeus must have learned about it by listening to the buzz of the crowds. He could not observe directly.

From the few remarks of Bartimaeus that Mark records, it is plain to me that Bartimaeus knew two things about Jesus. First, he believed that Jesus was the Messiah. As Jesus is leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus shouts, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” “Son of David” is a messianic title. The Messiah was thought of as the heir of the throne of David, the one who would re-establish a united kingdom of Israel and Judah, as David had. Secondly, Bartimaeus knew that Jesus could heal. When he and Jesus come face to face, Bartimaeus poignantly says, “My teacher, let me see again”.

So much for what Bartimaeus knew about Jesus. What do you suppose Jesus knew about Bartimaeus? Again, we don’t know how long Jesus had been in Jericho or what he had done there. Perhaps he had taught extensively. Undoubtedly, he had healed. Otherwise, why would Bartimaeus have begged Jesus to heal him? More than likely, Jesus was tired. But most importantly, Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross, to his death. There must have been much on his mind and heart. And then suddenly, as he was leaving Jericho, faintly, from the edge of the crowd that thronged around him closely, he heard a noise, some kind of disturbance. And then it came again, and the second time, he could make out the words, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus told the crowd to bring to him the man who was calling out for him.

Perhaps the most powerful detail in this story is the question that Jesus asks Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” It is powerful because it is almost word-for-word what Jesus had said to James and John in the story immediately preceding the healing of Bartimaeus. “James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’” (Mark 10.35-37)

What a contrast! James and John had wanted glory, power, fame, and perhaps riches. They had wanted the choicest seats in the Kingdom of God. In contemporary terms, they had wanted Jesus to choose them as his running mates! But Bartimaeus had only wanted his sight; he only wanted Jesus to restore the ability he had once had to see the orange sunset, the petals of a daisy, the smile of a loved one.

Mark forces us to ask the questions: Who was really blind? And who really received their sight? Plainly, the rich man whose great wealth had kept him from “inheriting eternal life” was blind when he came to Jesus and blind when he left. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, threw away the greatest part of his worldly possessions. Can you see his cloak flying from his hand as he runs toward Jesus as fast as his blindness would permit him?

James and John were at least as blind as the rich man who could not part with his great possessions. They understood the kingdom of God in terms of power and status; for them the kingdom was about who was in and who was out; who had front row seats and who was in the “nosebleed” section. In contrast, Bartimaeus asked for nothing more (and nothing less) than God’s first creation and gift to the world: light.

How do we know that Bartimaeus was healed? That’s obvious, isn’t it? Mark says that “immediately, he regained his sight…” Nothing could be clearer. However, there is more, much more. Bartimaeus could have regained his sight and remained blind.

Mark has placed the story of Bartimaeus’ healing in a very significant place. It takes place immediately before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. It takes place just before the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. Jesus, as I said earlier, is on his way to Jerusalem, to the cross, to death. Everything in Mark’s gospel leads up to this point. Although Mark tells us of only one other blind man that Jesus heals, it could be argued that virtually everyone in Mark’s gospel is blind, especially the disciples. The disciples consistently fail to understand what Jesus is all about. Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah but is horrified when Jesus foretells his death on the cross. James and John ask Jesus to give them preferential treatment.

Blind Bartimaeus is one of the few people in Mark’s gospel who really see. And we know this by the last five words in chapter ten. “Immediately he regained his sight, and followed him on the way”.

Mark presents us with a stark choice: Will we be like the rich man and let our possessions or accomplishments come between Jesus and us? Will we be like James and John and think of the service of God as a means for self-advancement? Or will we be like Bartimaeus? Will we let nothing keep us from crying out in prayer to God? Will we toss aside whatever gets in our way and run as fast as we can toward Jesus? And above all, will we “follow him on the way”, even though we know that it is the way of the cross?

Looking Glass Ethics

Text: Mark 10.35-45
Looking Glass Ethics

In Through the Looking Glass, the author Lewis Carroll takes his character Alice on a series of adventures in “Looking Glass Land,” where you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in one place and where the Red King practices believing six impossible things before breakfast.

Looking glasses or mirrors are helpful for more than practicing posture and putting on make-up. They enable us to see ourselves as others see us. However, looking glass land is different from our everyday world in a fundamental way: looking glass land is our world backwards and inverted. In other words, looking glass world is not a photograph. The world we see in the looking glass appears to be our world but as we begin to explore, we find that it operates by a different set of rules.

Seeing our world reflected in the looking glass can be helpful but it can also be misleading. We’ve all had the experience of trying to tie a tie while watching ourselves in the mirror. The hand in the mirror goes in one direction and our hand goes in another, and we end up with a Gordian knot instead of a bow tie. On the other hand, the mirror can help us untangle puzzles. Scientist and artist Leonardo Da Vinci famously learned how to write backwards and his notebooks can only be deciphered when they are viewed “though the looking glass.”

The gospels hold up a mirror to our world. At first, the world we see in the gospels seems much like the world in which we live. People are born and they die; they hunger and thirst; they marry and have children. But when we look more closely we see that the looking glass land of the gospels is so very different from the world we inhabit.

For example, we celebrate the wealthy, famous, and powerful but the gospels tell us that the poor and persecuted are the special objects of God’s favor. As the Song of Mary says, “God has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich empty way; God has brought down the mighty and has lifted up the lowly.” We live in a world that measures success by the bank accounts, houses, and cars that we possess but the gospels tell us that in God’s kingdom the only thing that matters is our capacity to love. Our world is all about getting more and climbing higher but the gospels tell us that God evaluates us by how much we give and by our willingness to serve those who occupy the world’s lowest places.

Today’s gospel reading is a perfect illustration. James and John come to Jesus and say, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." They made the mistake that everyone makes when they look at the world through the looking glass; they assumed that it was exactly the same as the world in which they lived. They assumed that greatness would be rewarded with power and prestige. They didn’t realize that in looking glass world (that is, the kingdom of God) that which is high in this world becomes low; that which is valuable in this world is worthless on the other side of the looking glass.

Wherever Jesus’ followers have successfully practiced his “looking glass ethics,” they have mystified the world and the world has predictably responded with hostility. The Romans did not know what to make of the early Christians. The Romans valued honor above everything else. “Love of honor” or philotimia above everything else. They defined honor much like we define honor. Military victory was honorable (provided the fight was fair) and defeat was dishonorable or shameful. Athletic prowess was honorable. Holding high political office or coming from a good family were also honorable. The Christian faith inverted Rome’s values, because at the heart of Christianity is the story of Jesus who voluntarily submitted to die the most dishonorable death imaginable in the Roman world – death on a cross. Not only did Jesus die on the cross, he went to his death without any resistance. In the Roman mind, Jesus died a shameful death in a shameful way, that is, without putting up a good fight.

James and John assumed that the values of this world operate on the other side of the looking glass in the kingdom of God, but Jesus quickly corrected them. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

It ran contrary to common sense in the first century and runs contrary to common sense in the twenty first century. The headlines of our newspapers and lead stories on the news celebrate presidents and prime ministers, CEOs and senators.

The Christian has the difficult task of practicing looking glass ethics on the wrong side of the mirror. The best illustration I can give is to tell a story by Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Imagine, he said, a thief who breaks into a jewelry store, but strangely he doesn’t steal anything. Rather, he rearranges the price tags so that what had been valuable becomes cheap and what had been cheap becomes valuable.

Sisters and brothers, our task is to value the things Jesus values and to love those whom Jesus loves; to seek the place of service rather than the place self-aggrandizement, to fill the hungry with good things and to love the poor, the hungry, the homeless. And to remember that what seems high on this side of the looking glass is low on the other side and what seems cheap here is of infinite value in Jesus’ upside down kingdom. Our mission is to be subversive: to put the price tags back where they belong .

The Impossible Possibility

Text: Mark 10.17-31

“A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound… money makes the world go round.” So sings the Emcee in Cabaret, but it’s not a new idea. Karl Marx was wrong about almost everything, but he was right about one thing: Consciously or unconsciously, we usually act in accordance with our economic self-interest. But long before Marx Jesus said much the same thing.

Jesus had a lot to say about money. He told us that hearts would be found in the same place as our treasure. He told us that the measure of a life well-lived is how much we give, not how much we receive. He said, “Blessed are the poor, but woe to you who are rich.”

Today’s gospel reading contains two of Jesus’ “hard sayings.” The first one is obvious: Jesus’ command to the affluent young man to sell all his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. But there is another even harder saying hidden in today’s gospel reading that we will get to in a few minutes.

Britain’s former Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher, is one of my heroes. When I was studying in Britain she was in her second term and was elected to a third term during my time there. However, she was incredibly unpopular with British intellectuals, including most of the clergy, although I think there is little doubt that her policies laid the foundation for the prosperity most Britons are enjoying today. A key element of “Thatcherism” was the sale of state-owned industries, such as British Petroleum, British Aerospace, and so on. I ran into a friend one evening, a priest, who was out walking his dog. He began to rail at Mrs. Thatcher and her lack of compassion for the poor. Finally, I said, “But John, the Prime Minister is just doing what Jesus told us to do…. Go and sell all that you have.”

Seriously, though, was Jesus telling us that we must sell all that we have? Was he saying that unless we embrace poverty, we cannot follow him? The quick and easy answer is to point out that Jesus requires only one person in all the gospels to make this sacrifice. When he dines with the corrupt tax collector Zacchaeus, Jesus does not tell him to sell all that he has. Zacchaeus offers to give half of his possessions to the poor and to reimburse anyone from whom he has stolen by a factor of four, and Jesus appears to give Zacchaeus his blessing.

So are we off the hook? Can we keep our houses and cars and bank accounts, unless Jesus personally requires us to sell it all or unless, like Zacchaeus, we need to make amends for a life of crime?

When he was on his deathbed, comedian W.C. Fields asked for a Bible. Fields had never displayed any interest in religion, and his friends were astonished. ”Why do you want a Bible?” they asked. “I’m looking for loopholes,” Fields replied.

Like Fields, we want to find loopholes. We want to believe that there is some fine print in the Bible that says that we can amass great wealth and also follow Jesus. We want to believe that Jesus was talking about someone else when he said, “where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.” But the sad fact is that all of us have our hearts in the wrong place. All of us are too firmly tied to this world by chains of money and possessions.

Jesus can’t possibly be talking about me, can he? If I were a corporation I wouldn’t make the Fortune 500 list; I wouldn’t even make it if they expanded it to a thousand or a million. When it comes to wealth, I’m not only not in the same category as Bill Gates, I’m barely on the same planet. Wealth, however, is relative. To be wealthy in the world of Jesus, was to have a roof over one’s head and enough food to eat. When I taught New Testament at Samford University, I had to work hard to convince my students that when Jesus talked about the rich, he was talking about them (and their teacher, too, of course). The average student at an American university is fabulously wealthy, not only in comparison with the average person in the world of Jesus but even in comparison with about two-thirds of the people in the world today.

All of us want to negotiate with Jesus. I know I do. “Jesus, I’ll follow you… I’ll give up everything I have, except…” What? What is the one thing you would not give up to follow Jesus? I know that if a heavenly voice roused me from my sleep at 3 am and said, “Go and sell the Steinway grand your parents bought for you in high school” I would ask for a second opinion. What would you not give up? The money you have saved for retirement? The vacation house at the lake or the beach? But Jesus does not negotiate. Matthew’s version of this story read, “If you would be perfect, sell your possessions and give everything to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.”

I have to give the young man a lot of credit. He did not try to negotiate with Jesus. He may not have been willing to pay the cost of discipleship but he understood it. In fact, he understood it so well Mark tells us that he was “shocked and went away grieving.”

The first “hard saying” of Jesus is his challenge to the young man who was seeking to “inherit eternal life:” “sell what you own and give the money to the poor.” The second (and, I think, harder) saying comes in the discussion Jesus has with his disciples after the young man’s departure.

He tells them that it will be as hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Now, it is sometimes argued that the “eye of a needle” was a narrow gate in the wall around Jerusalem. That is not correct. The gate known as the “needle’s eye” was built long after the time of Jesus. Jesus meant a real camel and a real needle. In other words, he was saying that it’s impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. His disciples were astonished. They assumed that the rich would have an easier time of getting into God’s kingdom because they could do so much good with their wealth. So they asked, “Then who can be saved?” And Jesus’ reply to that question is today’s second and harder saying: “For mortals it is impossible…”

“For mortals it is impossible” is a hard saying because deep down most of us believe that if we really, really try, then we will be to enter the kingdom, to get into heaven. We won’t even have to sell our possessions as Jesus asked the affluent young man to do, because unlike him, we know that we will do so much good with our wealth. We’ll give to our church, the United Way, our college alumni fund, support political candidates who will write good legislation and enact wise policies. Of course, we won’t be able to do this all by ourselves. We will need God’s help. But isn’t that what the very next verse says: “With God’s help all things are possible”?

Ah, now that’s a problem, because the new translations have corrected a mistranslation in the earlier versions. The King James’ Version reads, “With God all things are possible.” “All things are possible with God” is the RSV’s translation. But the New Revised version translates the Greek correctly: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

“With God all things are possible” implies that all that we need is to get God on our side and try a little harder. It’s like the old bumper stickers that said, “God is my co-pilot” which always made me wonder why the less qualified person was in the pilot’s seat.

The great Protestant theologian Karl Barth called the Christian faith the “impossible possibility.” A virgin give birth to the savior of the world? Impossible. The infant in the manger God incarnate? Impossible. An executed criminal who rises from the dead on the third day? Impossible. The rich enter the kingdom of heaven? Impossible. The poor enter the kingdom of heaven? Also impossible. But that is God’s business: turning impossibilities into possibilities.

The French mystic Blaise Pascal said, “Those who seek God have already found God.” Those who seek God have already found God because the desire for God is a gift. I think the young man who asked Jesus what more was necessary to inherit eternal life was sincere, but I think he wanted to have eternal life AND riches. There is a great fascination with spirituality in our age. There is much good in this but the danger is that spirituality life will become just one more hobby. For example, Madonna has become interested in Qabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition. I can imagine an interviewer saying, “Now, Madonna, tell us about some of your interests.” “Well, I do yoga, support animal rights, and .. uh… oh , yeah… I’m getting into Qabbalah.”

I think a story from the Buddhist tradition may help us understand why Jesus made the young man an offer he COULD refuse and why the man went away grieving. Like Jesus, people routinely came to Buddha seeking spiritual help. “Master,” the man said, “I know that you have attained enlightenment. What must I do to become enlightened?” The Buddha looked at the young man, and said, “Do you really want to be enlightened?” The man said, “Yes, I really do.” “Come with me, then.” The Buddha and the man walked down to the lake. “Lean over and look into the lake,” the Buddha said. As the man leaned over the surface of the lake, the Buddha seized the man’s head and held it beneath the water until he was half-drowned and then released him. “Now, when you want enlightenment as badly as you wanted air, come and see me again.”

The kingdom of God is not our achievement; it is God’s gift. It is only by grace that we will be able to seek the kingdom with all our hearts, to think nothing of giving up everything and following Christ; to be as desperate for God as a drowning man is for air. Amen.

Greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven

I think it was an episode of the TV medical series ER that included a scene in which two little boys were engaged in a fierce argument. One of the doctors asked them what they were arguing about, and they said that they were arguing about who would win if Superman and Batman got in a fight. One little boy argued that Superman would certainly win because he was the "man of steel" and is "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound". The other little boy said that Batman would win because he would use kryptonite to disable Superman.

Well, that's the kind of thing that little boys argue about. Older boys (and men) argue about which football, baseball, or basketball team is the greatest, and sometimes they argue about which country is the greatest. We call those latter arguments wars.

It is difficult to imagine grown men having the kind of discussion described in today's reading from Mark. "...when he was in the house, Jesus asked them, 'What were you discussing on the way?' But they were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest".

Unless we are Muhammad Ali, we don't usually go around chanting, "I'm the greatest", and I think that even Ali said that a little tongue in cheek. No, we aren't usually so open in asserting our superiority over others. But we do have subtle ways of doing it. There is something in human nature that makes us want to let others know that we think we are superior. We call it drive or ambition. It makes some seek political office; it makes others work to become CEO of their company. And others demonstrate that they are ahead of others by amassing wealth or possessions.

Now, there is nothing wrong with ambition per se. There is something healthy in a degree of competition. There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to do the best one can in one's job or in athletics or in school.

The problem comes when we start comparing ourselves with others. If on some level we are saying, "I want to show that I am better or stronger or smarter than Sam or Mary", then something is wrong with our competitiveness.

That appears to be why Jesus rebuked his disciples. They had one idea of greatness; Jesus had another. Their idea of greatness seems to have been about having more -- more money, more success, more power. Jesus' idea of greatness seems to have been about giving more. "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise."

Jesus' own life represented a different standard of greatness. And as if that weren't enough, Mark says, "he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me".

True greatness, Jesus seems to be saying, is not in having but in giving. It is not in stepping on others in order to climb the ladder but in being attentive to the needs and concerns of others.

Now, that was really a kind of strange thing to do. Notice that Jesus said nothing about childlike innocence. You are probably more familiar with the way this same story is told in Matthew's gospel. It is Matthew, not Mark, who adds the famous line, "Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven". Matthew appears to be saying that Jesus was urging his followers to become innocent and pure again, like little children.

But Mark does not include that line, and I prefer Mark's account of this story. Now, don't misunderstand me; I like children (really, I do!!). But children can be remarkably quarrelsome. They can come to blows when they argue about the relative superiority of Batman and Superman. We don't enter the world as innocent, unselfish creatures. We enter the world as selfish creatures and have to learn unselfishness by sharing our toys and cookies with others.

Jesus says that true greatness is found in being a servant. And he showed them what he was talking about by picking up a child. Jesus picked up the child and set him in the midst of the disciples not because he was urging the disciples to become childlike (nor, as pop psychologists of our day might say, to urge them to "get in touch with their inner child"). The child is not the model of greatness; the child and those like the child are the ones we are to serve. The child represents the weak and the helpless, those who cannot take care of themselves.

"Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but hiim who sent me".

Service to the weak and the helpless, then, is service to Christ. Receiving children, visiting the sick, praying with the dying, giving food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless -- that is the test of greatness.

I'm not good at it. If I had been among Jesus' disciples, I might not have been openly discussing who was the greatest, but I probably would have been wondering about it and trying to figure out how to get Jesus to notice and praise me.

However, I know that it has been in those moments when I have been the servant rather than the one being served that I have felt the presence of God most strongly.

I remember the Christmas of 1978. I had graduated from Harvard the previous June and still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. My mother was the principal of a rural elementary school, and she asked if I would play the piano for the Christmas program. That was about the last thing I wanted to do. Harvard graduates weren't supposed to play upright pianos in the cafeterias of rural elementary schools. They were supposed to work for large investment firms on Wall St. or for senators in Washington or be trying to make partner in prestigious law firms. But I was playing Christmas carols for school children.

I went with a bad attitude and played sullenly, until the special education students started to sing. "Special ed" is, of course, a euphemism. These are the physically and mentally handicapped children. But in spite of their handicaps, or maybe because of them, these children sang with joy. Christmas really meant something to them. They felt special as they stood on the stage and people listened to them and their parents and relatives beamed with pride. And I felt ashamed that I had been so reluctant to be there and play for an hour or so. And then I started to feel a kind of warmth or contentment, call it the "spirit of Christmas". The presence of God, maybe? But I was glad I was there.

Just after Mother Teresa’s death The New Yorker featured an article by a physician who had worked with her. He concluded by saying, "As for the ending of her own life, I think she would have found something wastful in any sort of mass tribute to mark her death. 'Get on with it', she might have said. 'There is work to do.' She might have said, as she did say to many who visited her, 'Make your life something beautiful for God.'"

And that is a pretty good paraphrase of what Jesus said to the disciples who were discussing which of them was the greatest, and what he might say to those of us worrying about making more money or getting promoted, "Get on with it! There’s work to do. Make your life something beautiful for God".

When words ARE enough

“Word, words,” sang Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, “I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do? Don't talk of stars burning above; if you're in love, show me!” Probably all of us are sympathetic with Eliza Doolittle’s complaint about her suitor’s failure to match deeds with words. Words by themselves seem puny and anemic. Words hardly seem adequate when death and disaster strike. What good are words when terrorists crash airplanes into skyscrapers or a city and tens of thousands of its citizens practically disappear beneath the waters of the Gulf of Mexico? However, in today’s gospel reading, Peter tells Jesus that he has “the words of eternal life.” What do you suppose these words are, and is there any justification for Peter’s outrageous claim?

Words, both spoken and written, are central to the Christian faith. From the beginning to the end of the Bible words play a central role. In Genesis God speaks the heavens and the earth into existence: “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light…” The prophets prefaced their oracles by saying, “This is the word of the Lord.” And when the Spirit breathed new life into Jesus’ discouraged followers, the great sign of the Spirit’s visitation was the gift of words: “…they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2.4)

Words are powerful; they can create, and they can destroy. When a couple stand in the presence of God and their family and friends and pledge to love and be faithful to each other, their “I do’s” summon a new world into being. But just as surely, when love dies and a couple who have shared a life together grow distant and hostile, a whole world is destroyed when one spouse says, “I want a divorce.”

Sometimes words take on a life of their own. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, “all men” meant “all free, white, male property owners above a certain age,” but his words accomplished more than he intended or could have imagined. They not only severed the ties between America and England and brought a new nation into existence, they eventually brought freedom and equality to enslaved Africans and women, as well. When Franklin Roosevelt declared that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” a nation haunted by unemployment and hunger began to regain its confidence. And when Ronald Reagan stood atop the Berlin Wall and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he was sowing the seeds that would yield a harvest of freedom for the Soviet people and their allies in only a few years.

But of all the words ever spoken, only Jesus’ words are said to be “the words of eternal life.” In teaching his disciples to pray, “Our Father…” Jesus changed the relationship between humanity and God from estrangement to reconciliation. Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount radically challenged our belief that life is about gaining, getting, and keeping; rather, he suggested that it is not the winners but the losers on whom God’s favor rests. In the face of death itself, Jesus demonstrated that real power is not in the hands of those who sit in judgment on the innocent and condemn them to death but in the hands of the one who can summon the power to forgive: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Finally, he told us that meaningful life is found not in security but in risking everything for the sake of the gospel: “…those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it…”

Jesus’ words are not pious platitudes; rather, they are flares that arc across the night sky, showing us the way across a perilous landscape. His words are food and water in the wilderness. Each of Jesus’ words is a time bomb that may at any minute go off in the midst of the enemy’s fortress.

“To whom shall we go?” Peter asked. There are many places we can go for easier words. The marketplace tells us that “Greed is good” and will not reproach us for filling up our bank accounts while our neighbors are in need. The cult of power and success all around us rewards our innate competitiveness and mocks the gospel’s reminder that the poor are blessed. Rather than dying to self and being raised by God to new life in Christ, the prevailing culture promises us perpetual youth if we will drink this, eat that, or drive the latest model from Detroit.

What is it that gives Jesus’ words such power? He was not the most eloquent rabbi of first century Palestine and far from the most learned. Scholars have demonstrated that he was not even very original; many of Jesus’ sayings are similar to or even the same as some of his contemporaries. I think the explanation for Peter’s claim that Jesus spoke “words of eternal life” can be found at the very first beginning of John’s gospel. “ The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” There was a perfect correspondence between Jesus’ words and his life. When he said, “Blessed are the poor,” he lived out its meaning by sharing his life with the poor. When he prayed “Our Father,” his disciples could believe that God was their Father, too, because of Jesus’ own intense intimacy with God. When he said, “Father, forgive them” to the soldiers who nailed him to the cross, his words rang true because he had lived out that forgiveness in his life. And when he died, his disciples finally understood what he had meant by calling on them to lose their lives for the sake of the gospel.

His words have eternal significance because they were not just spoken in Palestine long ago, he speaks them to us today. When he blessed the “poor in spirit,” he was blessing us, for we are all poor in spirit. When he prayed “Our Father,” he was inviting us into greater intimacy with God. When he invited his disciples to give up their lives for the sake of the gospel, he was inviting us to let go of our false security and launch out in the great adventure to which God invites us. And when he forgave the soldiers who nailed him to the cross, he was forgiving us, for all of us have stood by and allowed the innocent to be punished.

Jesus’ words are words of eternal life because he is God’s word and his life was the very image of God’s love for us – the poor, the fearful, the estranged, and the bystanders at the cross.

When life falls apart (and eventually, life falls apart for everyone), there is only one to whom we can go, only one whose words are “spirit and life,” only one who has the words of eternal life. As Albert Schweitzer reminded us, “He comes to us as one unknown as of old by the lake-side he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands, and to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.” (Concluding paragraph, The Quest for the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer.)

The "Medicine of Immortality"

The heart of today’s gospel reading is a contrast. “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” In other words, your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and died, but those who eat “the bread that came down from heaven” will live forever. What is astonishing about this promise is not just the assurance of eternal life, but the fact that Jesus joins the promise of eternal life to the most mundane of human activities – eating.

I would like to look at both the promise – eternal life – and the means to achieve it – eating the bread that came down from heaven.

First, the desire for life after death seems to be fundamental to human nature. The eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume once said, "It is a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist forever,” but I am not sure that many people agree with him. Indeed, in 21st century American culture there seems to be an almost desperate need to believe that there is life after death. Suddenly there seem to be a half dozen new TV shows that deal with the idea of life after death and the possibility of communicating with the dead.

Eternal life is not an “unreasonable fancy;” it is at the very heart of the Christian faith. To divorce eternal life from the Christian faith is to render the faith anemic and puny. In today’s gospel reading Jesus reminds us that “the living Father” sent him. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about life, both here and hereafter. To accept that death has the last word is to accept that God’s power is limited, but that is not what the Bible teaches. Jesus promises that he will raise up those who are nourished by his body and blood.

It is just as true, however, that the Christian faith is about more than life after death. It is just as much about life in the here and now. Indeed, there is a continuity between life in this world and life in the next. As priest and poet John Donne put it, “… all the way to heaven is heaven… so that soul that goes to heaven meets heaven here… the true joy of a good soul in this world is the very joy of heaven…” (“Sermon LXVI” in Herschel Baker, ed., The Later Renaissance in England, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin (1975), p. 561.)

The promise that eternal life belongs to those who eat and drink Christ’s body and blood grounds us in this world. The promise of eternal life is not annexed to some elaborate ritual; we are not asked to bathe in a sacred river or to offer sacrifices or to repeat a magic formula. Instead, we are invited to a meal.

But (I imagine someone asking) can it be that simple? Can we really receive eternal life by eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table? To answer that question, first imagine how we come to the Lord’s Table. In the world of Jesus, bathing was relatively uncommon, but if one was invited to a dinner party, one bathed and anointed oneself with oil. Similarly, before we come to the Lord’s Table, we are washed in the waters of baptism. Also, to sit down at table in first century Palestine implied that the guests were at peace with the host and with one another. Jesus admonishes us to be reconciled with one another before “offering our gift at the altar.” (Matthew 5.23-24)

The 16th century Protestant Reformers condemned the mass because the consecrated bread and wine had become isolated from the other parts of the liturgy; they had become ends in themselves. However, when we properly celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Table, then we will have met Jesus all along the way. We will have been baptized into his death and resurrection; we will hear him speak in the voice of scripture; we will be reconciled with those we have sinned against; we will be nourished on his body and blood; and finally, we will hear him command us to go into the world to do his will.

The late 2nd century theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons called the sacrament of the Lord’s Table, “the medicine of immortality.” Jesus did not employ the metaphor of medicine, but he did promise that if we are nourished on his body and blood we will have eternal life. The meal we share with believers on earth is the heavenly banquet in earthly guise. Saints and angels gather around whenever we set the table, whether the sacrament is celebrated with all the pomp and ceremony they can muster at St. Peter’s in Rome or with loaf bread and jug wine at summer camp, because it is the earthly extension of the marriage feast of the Lamb.

Being "pushy" for justice's sake

My sermon for Sept 10 is available at the Episcopal Church's website.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_77229_ENG_HTM.htm?menu=undefined

In a New Light

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... and God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light”. Have you ever thought about the fact that God created light before God created the stars, the givers of light?
A thread of light connects all three texts this meditation is based on: There was the mysterious light shining from Moses’ face that frightened the Israelites. In 2 Peter the author speaks of the “prophetic message” he delivers as a “light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts”.
And finally, there is the story of the Transfiguration, the story of Jesus’ journey to the top of a high mountain, accompanied by Peter, James, and John. While there the disciples saw Jesus transformed into a being of light: “While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white”. And they saw Jesus talking with the long-dead prophets Moses and Elijah.
I am inclined to think that the transfiguration of which we speak today was not so much in Jesus as it was in Peter, James, and John. The light that they saw pouring from Jesus had always been there; they just had not seen it before.
The life of Jesus had already shed a radically new light on the world. The poor had been regarded as unloved and unwanted by God, but in the light that Jesus brought they came to be seen as special objects of God’s favor. “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. Tax collectors and prostitutes were shunned, but Jesus cast an entirely new light on their status when he shared meals with them. “He receives sinners and eats with them”. (Luke 15.2)
To the learned Pharisee Nicodemus, who came to him “by night”, Jesus brought light. “Very truly, I tell you, Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3.3). “This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light...” (John 3.19) Jesus saw that Nicodemus’ real need was not a theological discussion but a radically new way of seeing. And Nicodemus, who arrived in the dark, left amidst God’s blazing light.
And then there was the “man blind from birth” (John 9.1) that Jesus and his disciples encountered in Jerusalem. But even the disciples were in darkness, for they saw this sightless man as nothing more than a theological dilemma: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9.2)
However, Jesus saw the man and his blindness as an opportunity to do the work God has been doing ever since the first chapter of Genesis: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him”. (John 9.3) And taking the dust from which God had made Adam and the water with which he makes the new Adam, Jesus gave that man blind from birth God’s first creation and gift to the world—light.
Today’s gospel retells the story of a moment when Peter, James, and John suddenly saw Jesus for who he was—a man filled with God’s light, the light that God created even before he hurled stars and moons and planets into the inky void.
The New Testament speaks of a world hovering between light and darkness. According to 2 Peter we are in that dim moment just before “the day dawns and the morning star rises” (2 Peter 1.19).
According to John’s Gospel Jesus is “the light of the world” (John 9.5). The darkness has not overcome the Light, but neither has the Light quite overcome the darkness. There are still those who, like Nicodemus, prefer to do their business by night. There are still those who saw not a great and wondrous miracle when the blind man was healed, but merely a sinner violating the Sabbath code.
The light of which the New Testament speaks is not so much about heavenly bodies or luminous filaments; it is about opening our eyes and stepping out of the shadows. It is about taking the risk of adopting a new perspective.
There is darkness in every life. There is an unwillingness to see in each one of us.
A child who awakens from a nightmare may see the face of a monster on her wall, but when Mother switches on the light, it becomes the laughing face of a clown in a picture.
The Bible tells us of Saul who became Paul, blinded on the road to Damascus, who had seen the followers of Jesus as enemies, but suddenly came to see them as brothers and sisters.
By eerie and unsettling coincidence the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, is also the anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. The overwhelming light generated by that nuclear explosion was quite different from the light that shone from Moses’ face or the light of Peter’s message, much less the light that frightened Jesus’ disciples atop the Mount of Transfiguration.
My father served in the Pacific, and I am deeply grateful that the destruction of Hiroshima prevented an invasion of Japan in which he would have fought. But even though the bombing of Hiroshima brought a terrible war to a quick end and probably saved the lives of thousands of troops, both Japanese and American, nevertheless it took the lives of thousands of men, women, and children.
For over forty years men and women saw the world in the light of nuclear destruction. The light that Jesus brought invites us to see the world in a radically different perspective.
Years after hostilities between the U.S. and Japan and its allies ended American veterans of World War II returned to the sites of mighty battles and so did their German and Japanese counterparts. Men who once saw each other as enemies, now see each other as neighbors.
A little over a hundred years ago here many in this country saw black people as slaves. But now we have learned and are still learning that black and white people alike are “created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...”
According to the Talmud, a Jew must pray at dawn. But that begs the question, when is dawn?
It is said that a young student came to his teacher and asked, “Rabbi, when is dawn? Is dawn the moment when the last star fades from the sky, or is it when the sun creeps above the horizon?”
The wise old teacher replied, “No, my son. Dawn is the moment when you can look at the face of another and see not an enemy but a friend.”
In the light of Hiroshima we came to see half the world as our enemies, dedicated to our destruction. And we saw ourselves as their enemies, and dedicated ourselves to their destruction.
But in the light of the Transfiguration God invites us to see the poor as heirs of heaven; to see sickness not as divine punishment but as an opportunity to do God’s work; and to see each other as sons and daughters of God.

Eat and drink as friends

Note: This is an introduction I wrote to the forthcoming cook book of St. Luke's Episcopal Church of Jacksonville, AL, entitled, Eat and Drink as Friends.

A bishop (who shall remain nameless) remarked to me recently that Sam’s Club had ruined Episcopalian coffee hours and receptions. Seeing the puzzled expression on my face, he elaborated, saying, that easy access to things such as frozen “mini-pizzas”, miniature quiches, and egg rolls has caused many an Episcopalian matron to stray from the time-honored ways of her foremothers who would have excommunicated her without a second thought for serving anything frozen, canned, or instant. My anonymous purple-shirted friend noted that there are still Episcopalian church women who are keeping the faith, most notably in the smaller and older towns of the deep South. This is also the theme of the recent book Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral According to the authors the real divisions between Episcopalians and other denominations are not theological or liturgical but gastronomical: “Episcopalians are snooty because they spurn cake mixes and canned goods, without which there would be no such thing as Methodist cuisine…The casserole is the most characteristically Methodist foodstuff.”

My own unscientific and unsystematic research supports the conclusions arrived at independently by my episcopal friend and Metcalfe and Hayes. Having served congregations in Alabama’s Black Belt, two suburban parishes in San Francisco, an urban parish in Philadelphia, and St. Luke’s, Jacksonville, I can attest that the cooks in Alabama are head and shoulders above the rest. Hospitality just seems to be a part of the DNA of Episcopalian churchwomen in the Deep South, and they can throw grand parties at the drop of a hat.

My parishioners at St. Stephen’s, Eutaw, Alabama, love to tell the story of the wedding that the caterer forgot. The reception was to be at Kirkwood, a magnificent antebellum house at the north end of town. On the way to the wedding people who passed Kirkwood thought it strange that the caterer was not unloading food from her van. After the wedding they discovered that the caterer had forgotten the wedding! Fortunately, however, this was the Black Belt. Parishioners rushed home, yanked open drawers, and snatched up china, crystal, silver, and linen. Women pulled homemade rolls, crawfish etoufee, caramel cake, and cheese straws out of refrigerators and freezers. Men raided their liquor cabinets for champagne and wine. Within an hour the bride and groom were being feted at a reception that was good enough for a presidential inauguration.

Southern hospitality is real and its roots are deep. In 1838 English naturalist Philip Henry Gosse came to Alabama to teach. In one letter back to England he wrote of the “generous, almost boundless hospitality, [of] the southern planter.” Perhaps one reason for Southern hospitality is that there were few cities in the South in the early 19th century; towns were small and widely separated; and only primitive roads connected the plantations with each other. Like the ancient Near East, this placed a premium on hospitality. Travelers had to depend on “the kindness of strangers” in an era when travel was difficult, time-consuming, and often dangerous.

But there is also a theological reason for Christian hospitality. We believe that the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, is a sacrament, that is, that in some sense the bread and wine are instruments through which we are objectively connected with Christ and incorporated into him. There is, however, a simpler way to understand what happens when the community gathers to share bread and wine at the Lord’s Table. What was or is your grandmother’s favorite dish? What does she always bring to Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner? Is it turkey and dressing? Ambrosia? Chicken and dumplings? Regardless of what it is, there is something of her in the food. You experience her again every time you prepare and eat her favorite dish.

Every meal we eat is so much more than just food. It is the labor of those who raised the raw ingredients; it is the skill of the cook; it is the cultural traditions embodied in the recipes. The Eucharist, then, is a special example of this general principle. At the Lord’s Table, Jesus himself is the host. We set the table with our best linen and silver, light candles, and mind our manners, and Christ is among us again just as surely as he was with his disciples at a Passover seder long ago in Jerusalem. How he comes again, we know not, but as a great hymn puts it, “Thou art here, we know not how; thou art here, we know not how.” Christ solemnly promised us that he would be present when we take, bless, and give bread and wine in his Name, but something of the love embodied in the Eucharistic meal is present whenever a meal is prepared and served with care and love.

Much love is embodied in these recipes from St. Luke’s. It is a community that welcomes strangers and is as open to new ideas as it is to new people. For more than one hundred and fifty years St. Luke’s has proclaimed the gospel at the corner of Church and Ladiga in Jacksonville. I hope that you will have the opportunity to come and join these good people as they gather around the Lord’s Table on Sunday, but if you can’t visit St. Luke’s, then as you prepare the recipes in this book, say a prayer for them that they would continue to bear luminous witness to God’s love that took human form and lived among us and continues to be embodied in bread and wine. And open your heart to the gracious gift of hospitality expressed in the delights of the table that St. Luke’s cooks have shared in this book.

Fully Alive

We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep and there is no health in us…

These words, no longer in the General Confession, imply a certain view of human nature. They suggest that the default position for human nature is illness; that the paradigm or model for Christian salvation is recovery from illness. Therefore, clergy are practitioners of spiritual medicine, the church is a kind of hospital, and the sacraments are a sort of medicine. There is much to be said for this view.

After all, healing is a persistent, perhaps even central, theme in the Bible. Healing was central to Jesus’ ministry and today’s gospel reading is a good example. Mark tells us of two miracles of healing: a woman was healed after a 12 year illness and a little girl appears to have been raised from the dead. However, I think these two stories actually illustrate another often overlooked theme in Jesus’ ministry, but I’ll come back to that later.

It is a serious misunderstanding to believe that the fundamental human condition is sickness rather than health. It follows that it is equally wrong to believe that Jesus’ ministry was mostly about healing diseases. Rather, I believe that the fundamental human condition is one of health and Jesus’ ministry was more about promoting health than healing illnesses. The word “health” is related to the word “wholeness.” Christ’s mission and ministry were not just to heal those who suffered from diseases but to bring wholeness, to allow human life to flourish. As Jesus says in John’s gospel, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

With that in mind, let’s go back to today’s gospel reading. Notice that in the two stories Jesus does more than just heal. When the woman who had been ill for 12 years touches Jesus clothing, she was instantly healed. If Jesus’ ministry was just about healing, that would be the end of the story, but Jesus stopped and spoke to the woman. Mark says that she “came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.”

What was her whole truth? We don’t know but based on what we know about Jesus’ world, we can make some reasonable guesses. Her illness seems to have been some kind of dysmenorrhea. Such a condition would have rendered her ritually unclean. More than likely she had been married, but her medical condition would have been more than enough reason for her husband to divorce her, and divorced women often had no alternative but to turn to prostitution. So, the “whole truth” that she told Jesus was probably a long tale of illness, divorce, and perhaps even prostitution. After she had finished, Jesus says to her, “Woman, your faith has made you well, go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” But she had already been healed when she touched Jesus’ garment. I believe that she found more than healing; she found wholeness.

Consider the second healing miracle. Jairus, the “ruler of the synagogue”, was a very important person. He was not a rabbi, rather he was the chief lay official of the synagogue. A synagogue was more than just a place of worship; it was more like a community center. It was where children came for instruction; legal proceedings took place there; the scrolls of the Torah and the prophets were kept there so it was even a kind of library. And Jairus was responsible for its upkeep, as well as for seeing that the rabbis who presided were orthodox in their teaching. When his 12 year old daughter became ill, he urgently sought out Jesus. Can you imagine how distraught he must have been when Jesus stopped, not only to heal the nameless woman, but to hear her long tale of woe? Finally, when they arrived at Jairus’ house, it appeared to be too late. The professional mourners had arrived and had begun their keening cries of grief. When Jesus insisted on seeing the little girl, even though they thought she was dead, they laughed at him. And with a word and a touch, he woke her from death’s long sleep. Again, as with the woman previously, Jesus did not stop with healing. He ordered them to give her food. Over and above healing, Jesus was concerned with wholeness.

Human nature is not riddled with spiritual illness and in need of medicine; however, it is partial and fragmentary and in need of wholeness. The difference between the two positions is very important. The first position, that human nature is diseased and in need of spiritual medicine, is the position of most conservative churches. The problem with this position is that to communicate the gospel we have to convince people that they are spiritually sick, that they are morally contaminated. Churches that embrace this, then have to spread the bad news before they can spread the good news.

But if we start out with the belief that human beings are not spiritually ill by nature, then our message is not “you are sick and need radical surgery.” Rather our message is “you are God’s beloved daughter or son and God wants to take you on an amazing adventure.” We don’t have to convince people that they are bad; rather we have to invite them to join us on a journey to wholeness.

Perhaps C.S. Lewis’ least read book is his novel Till We Have Faces. The main character asks the enigmatic question, “How can we see the gods until we have faces?” I understand the meaning of the question to be this: we see the world in a partial and fragmentary way. By and large, we have enough information to navigate through life. We go to school, we have jobs, we take care of ourselves and our families. But what if there is so much more to life, so much more to the universe, than we are able to see or know? What if our five senses show us only a tiny fraction of reality? What if God wants us to have not just life but abundant life? What if God wants to give us a whole new way of perceiving the universe, to expand our senses beyond our wildest imaginations?

Consider your pet dog or cat. Its perceptions of the world are fairly limited. We may quarrel over this point, but most scientists would argue that an animal has no self-consciousness. It has feelings but no thoughts. It avoids pain and seeks pleasure and that’s about the extent of its mental life. In contrast, humans are capable of producing great art and music; we don’t just mate and produce offspring, we fall in love, court our beloved, marry and have families with all kinds of both comic and tragic consequences. We have sciences that have plumbed the depths of the cosmos. If our perceptions of the world are so much deeper and larger than our pets, how much greater must God’s perceptions be than ours?

Athanasius, the 4th century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, wrote, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” That is what God desires for all us: full and abundant life, wholeness, and glory unspeakable and full of wonder.

Under the sign of the question mark and the cross

“Have you considered my servant Job?” God asked the Adversary. (Job 1.8) And that was the fateful question, the catalyst, the push that set in motion a train events that would leave Job near despair.
Job had seven sons and three daughters, and his livestock numbered in the hundreds. He was not only prosperous, he was good. Job belonged to the Rotary Club and was a member of the vestry; he gave to the United Way and voted Republican. To use the correct Biblical word to describe Job, he was righteous. In defending himself before God, Job declared, “I delivered the poor who cried, and the orphan who had no helper... I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me...” (Job 29.12 14) and we have every reason to believe that Job was telling the truth.
But disaster overcame this man of righteousness and prosperity. The livestock were killed by marauders and natural disaster, and his children were all killed when a tornado struck the house in which they were having a party. Finally, Job himself was afflicted with a chronic, painful, debilitating illness.
However, Job still had his wife and his friends, though he may have wished more than once that they, too, had been in the house with his children. “Curse God and die,” his wife urged. And his friends were no better: “Who that was innocent ever perished?...happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” (Job 4.7 and 5.17) In short, these friends insisted that Job was in the wrong and God was in the right.
When Job could take it no longer, he burst out, “God has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me... God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces... though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.” (Job 16.9, 12). What kind of God is this, Job asked, who allows “the wicked [to] live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power... How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?” (Job 21.7, 17)
The story of Job, of course, is the human story. His misfortunes were more dramatic than the misfortunes most of us will encounter, but they were different from ours only in degree, not in kind. Life is tragic, and to fail to appreciate the tragedy of human life is to fail to be fully human.
But what makes Job most like us are his questions. Job’s questions went on and on and on until he was worn out and his friends were worn out and God was just about worn out. To be human and to be thoughtful at all is to question much. Job’s questions are our questions: Why do the wicked prosper and the innocent suffer? Other questions, less momentous but no less persistent, linger at the corner of our awareness: Does the one I love also love me? What can I do with my life that will give me happiness and fulfillment? Will I have enough resources to live on in old age? And above all we wonder: Why must I suffer and die? Why must those I love suffer and die?
At times these questions spin about us like a whirlwind. Job’s questions were like that, too, until finally, one day, Someone spoke to Job from the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?... Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Job’s questions got answered with more questions. In asking Job these questions, God seemed to be saying that there is no answer to Job’s questions, or at least, there is no answer that Job can understand. The point of the Book of Job appears to be that there are some questions to which there are no answers, or no answers that the human mind can wrap itself around. That’s frustrating, especially to me. I like to believe that any question can be answered, any problem solved, if we apply reason to it and study it and do research.
So, is Job merely a rebuke to human reason, to the quest to make sense of life and answer unanswerable questions? Or does Job offer us some comfort in those sleepless nights when our mind just won’t stop asking questions?
I want to suggest that the answer of Job is more, much more, than the mere assertion that life’s big questions are unanswerable. Job got more than just a rebuke; he got God. And so do we. In the midst of the questions, in the midst of the whirlwind and turmoil, there is God. Just as surely as God came to Job, God comes to us.
Furthermore, this God who came to Job and comes to us is a God who hears our questions and speaks to us. God doesn’t always answer our questions, for perhaps we do not even know enough to ask the right questions, much less to understand the answer. But this God who speaks in the midst of the whirlwind is a God who chooses to be in relationship to us.
Consider another Biblical tale that we heard this morning. Jesus and the disciples boarded a fifteen foot fishing boat to cross from west to east across the Sea of Galilee. It should have been a short, uneventful journey, but instead they encountered a fierce storm. The comparison to human life is irresistible. Job, too, had every reason to think that his journey across life’s sea would be uneventful, that he would grow old and die in prosperity, with the comfort of his wife and family around him. What more can any of us wish for? But storms arise. Like Job, the disciples questioned, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” It is a question that we are bound to ask time and time again on life’s journey.
Human life is lived under the sign of the question mark, and if that were the only sign over human life, we might well despair. For atheists and agnostics life has only two punctuation marks: the period and the question mark. However, the Christian faith asserts that there is another sign over human life and another punctuation mark in life’s story: the Cross. For we have not only to do with the God who spoke out of a whirlwind and replied to Job’s unanswerable questions with more unanswerable questions. We have also to do with the God who spoke out of a whirlwind on the sea of Galilee: “Peace! Be still!” In the tempest of questions that fly about us, God comes to speak peace. And when we ask the question that the disciples asked, “Who is this, that even wind and sea obey him?” there is an answer: He is the Crucifed and Risen Lord who is with us in the storm and the calm, on sea and on land, when we have all the answers and when we have nothing but questions.

Buried Treasure

The story of the quest is one of the most basic plots in all of literature. Homer’s Odyssey is a quest, as is Vergil’s Aeneid. In a sense, so is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. One of the forms that the quest narrative often takes is the hunt for buried treasure, and that, I think, partly accounts for the enormous success of The Da Vinci Code.

What accounts for the popularity of quest or buried treasure narratives? The answer, I think, is in the way that God constructed the human heart. St. Augustine famously remarked that in each human heart there is a God-shaped hole. There is a yearning inside each of us that we spend our whole lives trying to satisfy. You might say that God pre-programmed each of us to go on his or her own quest. For some the quest to satisfy that yearning results in lives devoted to public service. These people become presidents and prime ministers. For others the quest takes the form of artistic accomplishment, and these people become great artists or musicians. Still others display heroic sanctity; these are the Mother Teresas and the John Paul II’s. Tragically, some try to satisfy the yearning with alcohol, drugs, or sexual gratification, but the addict’s desperate attempt to get another fix is a twisted form of the quest narrative.

One way to think about the Bible is to see it as an enormous quest narrative. It begins with Adam and Eve who possess the treasure – intimacy with God – but who then lose it. The rest of the Bible is the story of humankind’s quest to regain that perfect relationship with God that the first humans enjoyed.

Two of today’s readings are about hidden treasure. First Samuel tells us of the treasure of kingship or leadership hidden in the unlikely person of Jesse’s youngest and smallest son, David. And the gospel reading also tells us that the seeds of the kingdom that God sowed long ago are quietly and inconspicuously growing.

The two treasure stories have at least two things in common: First, in both cases the treasure is hidden in small packages. David was the youngest, smallest, and least likely of Jesse’s sons to become King of Israel. Jesus’ parables of the sower and mustard seed both tell us of tiny seeds that will yield the rich harvest of the kingdom, even though there is no outward sign that they will yield anything at all.

Second, in both cases the treasure is in plain sight but most people fail to notice it.

There is no doubt that God hides treasure in the most unlikely places and people. God’s greatest gifts are frequently disguised with plain and ordinary packaging. It would be easy to preach a sermon about how God chooses unlikely, overlooked, and unexpected things and people to accomplish his purposes. That is certainly true. Instead of choosing mighty Babylon or eternal Rome to be his people, God chose the tiny kingdom of Israel. God chose to come among us in the person of a first century Palestinian peasant, not a great king. And Jesus did not choose wise rabbis or mighty warriors to be his disciples but simple fishermen.

So far, so good, but I’m left thinking “So what? Where do I fit in the story? Where is the treasure for me to find?”

I think there is another way to read today’s two stories of hidden treasure. They are not just about the treasure out there somewhere in the world; they are also about the treasures hidden within each of our lives and hearts.

The story most applicable to today’s readings is not the Da Vinci Code’s tale of a chase across the great cities of Europe that takes us from St. Peter’s in Rome to the Louvre to Westminster Abbey. The more applicable fable is The Wizard of Oz.

I know we all remember the story of Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow. Each was hunting a treasure. Dorothy wanted to find a way to go home; the Tin Man wanted a heart; the Lion wanted courage; and Scarecrow wanted a brain. They were told that the only one who could grant their hearts’ desires was the “great and powerful Wizard of Oz.” And so they went “off to see the Wizard” and “followed the yellow brick road”. They went through at least as many dangers and adventures as the hero and heroine of The Da Vinci Code and at last they found the wizard and forced him to grant their wishes. But the wizard, although he was pure humbug, was wise enough to tell Dorothy and her friends that the treasures they had been seeking had been in their possession all along. The Lion displayed courage, the Tin Man compassion, the Scarecrow wisdom, and Dorothy only needed to click her heels together three times and say “There’s no place like home” to be whisked back to Kansas.

That is the secret of the quest on which God sends all of us. The treasure that we seek is already inside us, in our hearts. But that is often the place that we look last and when we do look there we fail to see what is right in front of our eyes.

When Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, confirms young people, he tells them that God has given each of them a unique gift for the church, a gift that no one else possesses. I believe he is right. Each of us has a unique gift, a unique contribution to make to God’s kingdom. But the trick, the twist in the story, is that the treasure is buried, hidden. We may not even be aware of what it is that God wants us to contribute to the kingdom.

What I mean is this: The person who devotes her whole life to financial achievement and amasses great wealth may believe that her gift is to her talent for making money; her role is to be a donor or benefactor. Make no mistake: the kingdom needs people like this. But what if her real gift is her compassion. What if her greatest contribution to the kingdom is not her financial resources but the kindness with which she treated others?

I was struck this week with the story of Bill Gates’ decision to leave Microsoft and devote himself to his philanthropic work. Up until this point, it would seem that his quest was to amass great wealth, but it may be that his wealth was not his greatest achievement but only the means to an end. In a century or two, will Bill Gates be remembered as the founder of Microsoft or as the person who helped bring an end to the AIDS crisis in Africa?

The final lesson I take away from today’s readings is that our greatest and most important gifts may not be those parts of ourselves that we are proud of and that we display for all the world to see. They may, actually, be the parts of ourselves that we keep hidden and would rather no one saw.

Put your self in the prophet Samuel’s place, but instead of questing for a new king for Israel, go on a quest for the hidden parts of your personality. Invite each of your qualities to come out into the light. Invite your courage, your kindness, your strength, your intelligence. Thank God for each one and honor yourself for having it, but keep going. Look for those darker parts of yourself – your fear, anger, hurt, and paint. Be grateful for your fear, because it may have kept you alive. Give thanks for anger because it helped you stand up for yourself. And thank God for the pain and hurt because they give you empathy with others.

Thornton Wilder in one of his three-minute plays, The Angel that Troubled the Waters, tells of a man who stood on a day by the pool of Bethesda, praying in fierce agony that God would touch his tortured soul into health. But the angel, coming, whispered in his ear saying, "Stand back; healing is not for you. Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. Not the angels themselves in Heaven can persuade the wretched and blundering children of earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love's service only the wounded soldiers can serve". (emph added) And in that moment the angel stepped down into the waters and troubled them. As the lone sufferer drew back, a lame old neighbor, smiling his thanks, made his painful way into the pool and was healed. Joyously, with a song on his lips, he approached the other, still standing there like a statue of grief, thinking of the things which might have been. "Perhaps", said he, "it will be your turn next! But meanwhile come with me to my house. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I do not understand him. Only you have ever lifted his mood. And my daughter, since her child died, sits in the shadow. She will not listen to us. Come with me but an hour!" (Quoted by Paul Scherer in We Have This Treasure.)

The paradox of the quest is that it takes us full circle. We set out for distant, exotic lands but we end up at home. We look for gold and precious jewels buried deep in the earth but find that the real treasure was in our hands along. For “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."

Fighting fire with fire

In the first lecture I give to my students in the history of western civilization I ask them what is the fundamental difference between the way modern men and women perceive the world and the way ancient men and women perceived the world. For example, think of Hurrican Katrina. When it was approaching the Gulf coast, our televisions were full of talking heads telling us how fast its winds were, what time it would make landfall, and so on. But in the ancient world when natural disasters happened, people had little or no access to scientific information about hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on. Instead, they simply attributed these events to God or the gods. Instead of stockpiling water, medicine, and batteries, they prayed and offered sacrifices.

We are heirs to a scientific world view that promises us that reason can prevent or alleviate almost any event that befalls uss. It was not so in the ancient world. The ancient world understood the world in terms of myth, symbol, ritual, superstition, and magic. Is a volcano about to explode? Toss in a maiden!

There is much to be said for the scientific world view. Antibiotics, satellites, and central heat and air have transformed human life mostly for the better, but the scientific world view has limits. Human life (as Shakespeare said) is “rounded with a sleep.” We come from and are destined for mysteries that science cannot penetrate.

Isaiah takes us into the heart of such a mystery. We cannot know the exact nature of the experience that the Prophet Isaiah had, but he hints in the opening verse that his world had been shaken to the very foundations. Uzziah, the king of Judah, died in 742 BC, and whenever there is a sudden transition from one ruler to another, it can be unsettling, especially if there is an international crisis. About the same time that Uzziah died, the Assyrians were threatening Judah’s sister kingdom of Israel in the north, and Judah itself was very much at risk. So how did Isaiah respond? He could not read about it in the New York Times or turn on Fox News for a “fair and balanced” account of the situation. He did what ancient men and women did in such situations. He went to the temple..

Disasters have a way of opening us up. For a brief time after 9/11 churches and synagogues were full. When our world trembles, we realize our need for something more than our own strength, answers that satisfies us at a deeper level than reason.. Something opened Isaiah’s eyes quite literally, and he found himself staring into the very heart of the universe. “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” Isaiah felt himself small, weak, and inconsequential before this vast Being.

Amidst swirling incense, seraphim, the highest order of angels, swooped and flew. Don’t think of cute, pink-cheeked Renaissance angels. Some have suggested that the seraphim were actually winged-serpents. Whatever they were, these were terrifying creatures with not one or two but three pairs of wings. The presence of the seraphim emphasize the vast distance between God and humanity. The wings tell us that the distance is so great that they must fly through that vast space. They tell us that God is infinitely far above us. And they tell us that they do God’s bidding with great speed.

But the seraphim perform another function. Think of them as (in a sense) a heavenly Secret Service. But unlike the president’s Secret Service detail their job is not to protect God from us but to protect us from God. Not in the sense that God wishes to do us harm but in the sense that the divine energy will reduce us to nothingness if we approach too closely. Isaiah realized this immediately. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!.” Isaiah was too close to the divine fire. He was at ground zero for a power greater than any nuclear explosion. The power that had shaken the temple to its foundations would surely reduce Isaiah to fine, dry powder.

What would you or I do in a similar situation? Imagine waking in the middle of the night and finding oneself face to face with the Power that spoke the world into existence. Imagine the heavenly beings swirling around that Power. Hear their voices chanting praises in unearthly music. Feel the neergy surging from the divine throne. What would you do? Take an aspirin and call the doctor in the morning? Run to the fridge and eat the rest of the chocolate chicp ice cream? Grab the telephone and call 911?

The remedy for Isaiah’s dilemma was strong medicine. One of the seraphim took a coal from the sacred fire on the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips. He was literally fighting fire with fire. To see God, to meet God face to face, we need some of the divine fire in our hearts. So God transmitted divine energy through the sacrificial fire and the seraphic hands to the prophet’s lips.

Imagine Isaiah’s thoughts at seeing one of the seraphim zooming down toward him with a handful of redhot coals. Nothing about this story is nice or safe. Isaiah went to the temple because of his fear that the Assyrians might destroy Judah, but in the temple he confronted a far greater fear: the possibility that he might be reduced to ashes in the divine fire. Some cures can kill. Isaiah’s only hope was that the altar fire might harden him to bear the divine fire.

We want a safe, domestic deity. We want the Good Shepherd of the 23rd Psalm, a kindly grandfather, an old, bearded, and slightly forgetful senior citizen. In short, we want Santa Claus without the list of who’s naughty or nice.. But the God of Isaiah and Paul and Jesus is not that kind of deity. Isaiah’s encounter with God left him with second and third degree burns. When he spoke with Nicodemus, Jesus employed the metaphor of birth. “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (or again).” Think of that: nine months of pregnancy, morning sickness, and a long, painful, and potentially dangerous labor and delivery in which the lives of both mother and child may be at risk.

But what about Paul’s promise that the Spirit will unable us to call God Abba or Daddy? That’s certainly a comforting thought, but listen again to what Paul says before that: “if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” The Spirit only comes to us after we have “put to death the deeds of the body”, that is, all that separates us from God.

The poet Annie Dillard famously asked, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?… The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”(Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk)

Trinity Sunday is a good time to bethink about the “power we so blithely invoke,” because the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us of what a strange and incomprehensible God we worship. A God who is both three and one. A God who is a community of three persons who are identical in their nature and diverse in their functions. A God who came among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. A God who dwells in glory incomprehensible and is without beginning or end and yet was born in a stable in Bethlehem. A God who dwells outside of time and cannot suffer but who died on a cross on a Judean hillside, was placed in a borrowed tomb, and rose triumphant on the third day.

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that the God of prophets and seraphs, of new births and skeptical rabbis, is not somewhere else. This God does not dwell in the splendor of distant galaxies or in the vast, cold darkness of space. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that the God who commanded seraphim to sear Isaiah’s lips with coals of fire is right here among us.. There is no escaping this God, no place where God does not see and hear, no place where we cannot hear the seraphic song or be singed with the divine fire. Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit is as omnipresent and as unpredictable as the wind. It can be a gentle, cooling breeze or it can bring destruction on our cities.

When the children visit Narnia in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, they are told that only the great lion Aslan can free Narnia from the witches’ spell. “A lion!” Lucy exclaimed, “Is he safe?” To which Mr. Beaver replied, “Oh, no. He’s not safe, but he’s good.” Amen.

Do you understand what you are reading?

Reading the Bible is one of the most important spiritual disciplines that Christians practice. Deacons, priests, and bishops all receive Bibles when they are ordained. Our baptismal vows include the promise to “continue in the apostles’ teaching.” The New Testament is our primary source for the apostles’ teaching. And one of the great collects in the Prayer Book tells us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the holy scripture so that we may “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”

Some Christians maintain that prayer and Bible reading and virtually the only spiritual disciplines that Christians need to practice. The Protestant Reformers of the 16th c. are said to have taught 3 things: sola gratia, sola fide, and sola scripture – grace alone, faith alone, and scripture alone.

What I want to say this morning (and say as emphatically as possible) is that grace, faith, and above all scripture are never alone. There may be exceptions, but by and large grace, faith, and scripture all come to us through others, that is, they come to us in community.

Consider two questions in today’s reading: Philip approaches the Ethiopian court official who is reading from the prophet Isaiah and says, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and he responds with another question, “How can I unless someone guides me?”

Now before we delve into those questions, let’s step back and look at some of the details of this story. First, note that the Ethiopian was reading aloud. That’s what one did in the ancient world. Reading silently is a relatively recent phenomenon. Reading was not normally a private activity because books were scarce and expensive. Of course, when I say “book” I don’t mean books as we know them. Books in the ancient world were written on scrolls. Judaism has preserved the tradition of the scroll. A central feature of every synagogue is a large cabinet called an “ark” that contains the Torah written on a scroll. Torah scrolls are always written by hand and they take about a year to produce. Thus, they are enormously expensive. Books as we know them, that is individual leaves of paper or animal skin bound together along their left edge, came into being around the same time that the Christian faith came into being. You will notice that icons of Christ frequently show him holding a book, but Jewish art invariably portrays the Torah as a scroll.

That the Ethiopian was reading tells us a great deal about him. First, he was better educated than the average person in the ancient world. He had to be because the text tells us that he was the treasurer of the queen of Ethiopia. Second, he was a person of considerable power and status. The text tells us that he invited Philip to sit in his “chariot” with him. This was probably not the kind of chariot that was portrayed in the film Ben Hur but something more like a coach. There was not only room for two passengers but room for the Ethiopian to open and read a bulky scroll. Third, he was a man of wealth because he could afford his own copy of the scrolls on which Isaiah was written. More than likely, Isaiah was written on several scrolls. Finally, the fact that he was reading Isaiah and had been to Jerusalem for the feast of Weeks or Pentecost is a fascinating detail. Many ancient peoples were strongly drawn toward Judaism and admired it but did not go through the conversion ritual and become Jews. They were called God-fearers. The Ethiopian may have been one of these. On the other hand, there were Jews in Ethiopia from before the time of Christ. Indeed, legend has it that the stone tablets on which Moses recorded the Ten Commandments were taken to Ethiopia and are still there. It is possible that the Ethiopian was a Jew.

However, that is all to set the scene for the conversation between Philip and the Ethiopian. Philip hears him reading from the prophet Isaiah. “"Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth,” and asks “Do you understand what you are reading?” and the Ethiopian replies, “How can I understand unless someone guides me?”

In many ways, the Bible is a simple book. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” That’s pretty straightforward. It’s comforting to us at every age, from infancy to senility. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” “What can separate us from the love of God in Christ?” So far, so good. These verses are pretty straightforward, although when we begin to unpack them, we find that they have layers upon layers of meaning.

My main point this morning is not that the Bible is a complex book written over many centuries in at least two languages that requires years of training to understand. My point is slightly different. Rather, my point is this: No one has ever read the Bible alone. When you are alone in your home (or your chariot!) and open your Bible and start to read aloud, you are not alone. The Holy Spirit is there, to be sure, but what we should all realize is that whenever we read our Bibles we are a part of an enormous conversation that began long before we were born and will continue long after we die. We always read the Bible in conversation with every minister, Sunday School teacher, and Bible study leader we have ever encountered. We read the Bible in conversation with every book or article we have read about the Bible. We read the Bible in conversation with everyone we have ever talked to about the Bible. Scripture is never sola; it is never alone.

We do not exist in isolation and neither does the Bible. The Bible is a product of a community and always comes to us in community. The Bible was given to us by someone – our parents, our church, a friend. Even if we went down to the bookstore by ourselves and bought a Bible, someone or something planted the idea in our minds that we wanted to read the Bible and know more about what it said. The individual in his or her hotel room who picks up the Gideon Bible and reads it is reading a Bible that was placed there by a community.

And that takes us to the second question in today’s reading. The Ethiopian said to Philip, “How can I understand unless someone guides me?” The community is the correct environment in which to read the Bible. The more we isolate ourselves from community, the less likely we are to read the Bible correctly.

Sophomore year in college 2 strangers showed up at a Bible study group I was a part of. My friend Jim was also a part of that group. Jim was lonely, unhappy, and probably clinically depressed. He was doing badly in school and probably should not have been at Harvard. The two strangers took Jim aside and he spent the entire night talking to them. The next day Jim was gone. He spent the next year or two in a cult, until he finally came to his senses. But if Jim had come back to our group after talking to these strangers, if he had asked the rest of us what we thought of their interpretations of the Bible, there’s a good chance that he might not have gone off with them. Enormous harm is done when self-appointed prophets isolate themselves and a few followers from the rest of the world. Think of Jim Jones and Jonestown and David Koresh and Waco.

The church tells us that God guides us through scripture, reason, and tradition. Tradition is the conversation that we are a part of whenever we read the Bible. It is the eternal dialogue. It is the counterpoint, the polyphony of voices all the way from St. Paul to your first Sunday School teacher, St. Thomas Aquinas to Father So and So who baptized you and routinely put you to sleep with his sermons.

Finally, and briefly, there is another question. The Ethiopian was captivated by the story that Philip told and wanted to be baptized. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Scripture is not our only spiritual practice. Christian spiritual practices include the sacraments, and this even more vividly demonstrates how Christianity is not a solitary enterprise. We cannot baptize ourselves. We cannot feed ourselves at the Lord’s Table. We are baptized and fed by others, by a community. Just as scripture is never sola, neither are grace and faith ever sola, alone. Grace and faith come to us in, with , and among others.

We do not know what happened to the Ethiopian court official, but tradition tells us that he founded the Ethiopian church. Community begets community. Philip, a member of the church in Jerusalem, encountered the Ethiopian, who, in turn, carried the faith from Jerusalem to Ethiopia.

The Christian faith is a story, a story we tell whenever we sit down at table together. Every child knows that the story begins “Once upon a time…” and ends “happily ever after”, but as soon as we say “happily ever after” someone else wants to hear the story, and so we begin again, “Once upon a time…” So tell the story and do not tire of telling it. Tell it straight through from “Once upon a time” to “happily ever after.” You and I are part of a great conversation. Someone told you the story and someone wants you to tell them the story. “Once upon a time…” Amen.