Under the sign of the question mark and the cross (J. Barry Vaughn, June 24, 2012)

“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, or to use the more appropriate and specific Biblical word, 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 no reason to believe that Job was not 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 frus trating, 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.

I don’t know if “Uncle” Bob Richard asked the kinds of questions that Job asked, but I suspect he did. I suspect that at one time or another all of us want to grab God by the lapels (if God has lapels) and say, “Are you listening? Are you paying attention?” But I also believe that Bob knew what it meant to be in a relationship with God even if God doesn’t answer our questions.

Uncle Bob was not with us long. He began attending St. Alban’s about the time that I became your priest. He had retired after a long career as a lawyer in Montgomery. He came back home because both he and his sister Joy Ebaugh had grown up in Birmingham.

One thing that drew Bob to St. Alban’s was music. As a boy Bob sang in the boys’ choir at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, under the direction of Herb Grieb, a towering figure in the Birmingham music community, directing the music not only for the Advent but also for Temple Emanuel.

Janet and the choir felt a special affection for him because he always came early and listened to us warm up. He must have liked us to come and listen to us squeak and squawk and hit wrong notes and go BZZZZZZZ with our lips to get warmed up. And we must have liked him to pull out our copies of Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus in the middle of the summer and hit all those high notes!

A few years ago when my favorite uncle, Cecil Roper, died, I gave a homily at his funeral and said that I believed that Uncle Cecil would try to teach the heavenly choir to sing the psalm settings that the earliest Protestant churches had sung because he loved them so much. However, I wasn’t sure that the heavenly choir would like them as much as Uncle Cecil liked them! However, I am sure that the heavenly choir will feel just as much affection for Uncle Bob as St. Alban’s choir feels if he will sit on the front pew and listen to them warm up.

Job and Uncle Bob weren’t the only ones who had questions for God. The disciples did, too. “Master, do you not care if we perish?”

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 question mark and the period.

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.

Indian culture and modernity

One of the reasons that I wanted to see India is that it is rapidly modernizing and (along with China) many expect it to be one of the economic giants of the coming century. I know nothing of China, but I foresee a rocky road ahead for India.

India has great resources: Thanks to a long coastline and thousands of miles of railway laid down by the British, it has an enviable transportation infrastructure. Its people are energetic, friendly, and intelligent. It seems that everyone speaks at least two languages.

The Indians I have met and talked with may be exceptions to the rule, but I doubt it. They are warm, kind, and have a passion for education. It seems that every other billboard advertises some kind of school. Most offer English classes, and many also offer courses in business and information technology.

The India people seem infinitely adaptable. They have survived invasions by the Greeks (Alexander the Great in the 3^rd c. BCE), several waves of Muslim invasion, and finally 200 years of rule by Great Britain. Each encounter has changed them in some way, but I believe the core of their culture has remained the same.

 I suspect that India today is facing its greatest challenge: the encounter with modernity. India has changed more in the last 40 years than in the preceding 400 years. Forty years ago Julian McPhillips, an Alabama businessman turned Episcopal priest (he was rector of St. Luke’s, Mountain Brook, for 2 years in the early 60s) came to Calcutta to serve as director of the Peace Corps for eastern India. I do not know if the Peace Corps is still active in India, but the conditions that McPhillips faced when he came here have changed. Today India can feed its people. Education is more available than ever. And clean, safe water may still be a problem in some places, but waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhus seem to be under control. One interesting fact is that in India today non-communicable diseases such as cancer and heart disease are on the rise while communicable diseases are on the decline. In other words, in terms of health India is starting to look more and more like the United States.

Most definitions of modernity include the following features: (1) separation of state and religion; (2) the use of reason as the principal tool for controlling the world around us; (3) industrialization and urbanization; and (4) individual autonomy.

The U.S. had the good fortune to come into being as modernity was on the rise. Because we were from the beginning a nation with many different religious bodies, we rightly chose not to give any one religious group a privileged status. There is a very vague and general sense that the U.S. is influenced by Judeo-Christian values. This may be true, but such values are broad and tolerant enough to accommodate all religions and none.

Very early in American history there was a struggle between a vision of the U.S. as a rural, agrarian society, on the one hand, and as an urban, industrial society, on the other. The agrarian vision was associated with Thomas Jefferson and was part of his reason for acquiring the vast tract of land from France that we know as the “Louisiana Purchase.” The land Jefferson acquired was to provide enough land for every family to have a farm. Jefferson’s nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, however, foresaw an urban, industrial America, and by and large, Hamilton’s views have prevailed. Interestingly, the appeal to an idealized, pre-urban, pre-industrial America of nuclear families and small towns still has a strong grip on the American imagination.

America is also profoundly modern in that it is a society that exalts the individual above the community. People come to America to escape their communities, whether those are religious, ethnic, or familial. Oddly, though, the same people who invoke the image of small town America are often the same ones who also praise rugged American individualism, even though in small communities there is enormous social pressure on individuals to conform to community values and standards.

What does all this have to do with India? India is an ancient culture. Its climb from an agrarian, pre-industrial past to the modern world will take infinitely more energy than did America’s rise.

Americans have no experience of transforming an ancient culture into a modern one. America began with a more or less a blank slate; India is beginning not with a blank slate but with an entire library of cultural, religious and social values, norms, and customs. India’s culture is thousands of years old. It is written indelibly on the hearts and minds of its people. It is implicit in their thoughts and feelings, and is a part of their DNA. All of us react in unconscious ways because of our culture, but Indian culture is not only far more ancient than our own, it is also unimaginably different.

I believe that separating religion and state in India will be an enormous challenge. Officially, India is a secular state that does not privilege any religion. In reality, India is Hindu. Frequently during my time here I have been told that India and the Hindu faith are one and the same. Two of our guides told us that there is no such thing as Buddhism. The Buddha, they told us, was a reformer of the Hindu faith. I am certain that this would come as a great surprise to millions of Buddhists in China, Thailand, Japan, and elsewhere who experience their faith as quite different from Hinduism.

It has been said that India is the world’s most religious country, and I believe this is true. Wherever one looks there are temples, and every home and place of business contains a shrine. I am not sure what a well-educated Indian would say if pressed about the 30 million gods and goddesses of India, but I believe the practice of honoring these deities is deeply written on the India soul and will re-assert itself even if belief in the gods is challenged.

Indian religion seems much like the religion of ancient Rome. The Romans feared and persecuted the Jews (to a degree) and Christians (even more than the Jews) because they refused to honor the Roman deities. Why was this? Because the deities guaranteed the stability of Rome. Refuse the deities their ancient honors and the fabric of Roman society would start to unravel. And so it did.

What will happen in India as the acid of modern skepticism starts to work on its religious life? I suspect there will be a powerful resurgence of traditional Hinduism and a reaction against modernity. Indeed, this seems to be happening with the rise of the BJP, the Hindu national party.

India is also still a culture in which the community takes precedence over the individual. For example, most marriages are still arranged. What could be more contrary to modernity than not letting people choose their own life partners?

I sincerely hope that India will successfully negotiate its transition to the modern world. The world will be a stronger and safe place if India modernizes. But I am certain that there will be a profound, probably violent, and lengthy period of turmoil before India is fully modernized. India’s ancient culture will fiercely resist the encroachment of modernity. And I believe the element that will resist modernity most strenuously will be Indian religion.

Prophets behaving badly - the role of religion in the public square (J. Barry Vaughn, June 17, 2012)

He was tall and handsome. In the hour of crisis he had unified his people. When anarchy nearly brought down the country his calm and cool leadership saved the day, and as a result, he was brought to power on an overwhelming wave of popular support. However, people still had questions. For one thing, he was associated with a controversial religious leader. Some questioned his religious affiliation. He had been seen in the company of an extremist religious group and some said that he had participated in their rituals.

Now he was being challenged by a newcomer. Many of those who had supported him were going over to the new candidate. The religious leadership of the country turned against him and gave their blessing to the good-looking newcomer. They said that the former leader had failed

This is not the story of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney; it is the story of Saul and David. But in a way it is the story of any change in leadership, any election.

The difference between the story of Saul and David and the story of Barack and Mitt has to do with the role of the prophet Samuel.

Samuel first anoints Saul as king over Israel, and then when Saul disobeys God and keeps for himself some of the loot he has acquired in the battle against the Amalekites, God tells Samuel to reject Saul as king and anoint David instead.

Now, put aside for a moment the fact that we know that Samuel is acting on instructions from God. The fact is that we only know that Samuel is acting on instructions from God because he tells us.

The important thing for us to note is that the prophet Samuel is the one who either betstows or removes legitimacy from Israel’s king. In other words, in ancient Israel there was no separation between religion and the state.

This was the norm in ancient Israel, and to a surprising degree it is still the norm.

Even in Great Britain, America’s closest ally, there is a state religion. The queen is head of both the state and the Church of England. But although there is no separation between church and state in principle, there IS separation between church and state in practice. What many people fear about the United States is that although IN PRINCIPLE there is separation between church and state in principle; in PRACTICE there is far too much coordination between church and state. But I’ll come back to that.

Look around the world. Many countries, especially Muslim countries, do not separate religion and the state.

In the ancient and even not so ancient world, this was the norm.

So when the U.S. Constitution enshrined separation of church and state in the first amendment, it was doing something radically new.

Now, many people will point out that the words “separation of church and state” are not found in the constitution, and that is absolutely correct. What the first amendment guarantees is that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But what that means in practice is separation of church and state.

If the government can “make no law” establishing a religion or “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, then there is a separation of church and state. The constitution guarantees that the state will not play favorites. The state cannot endorse Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, nor Christianity. The state cannot choose between Catholics and Protestants, much less any of the denominations that have sprung from Protestantism. Furthermore, the state cannoteven give a privileged status to belief in God above non-belief in God. Before the state, the atheist and the believer are absolutely equal. The state has its sphere, and religion or the church has its sphere.

But that is where the problem lies: What is the relationship between those two spheres? Do they ever overlap or are they completely separate? And with great fear and trembling, that is what I want to talk about: the relationship between church and state or religion and politics.

There are three possibly models for the relationship between religion and politics.

The first is a more or less complete identity. In other words, the two circles overlap completely or nearly completely. This is the model of some but not all Muslim countries. It was the model followed in Afghanistan when it was dominated by the Taliban. It is more or less the model followed in Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, some Muslim countries, such as Turkey, have discovered that they become more successful when they make a sharp distinction between religion and the state and do not allow one to interfere in the other.

What is surprising to many Americans is that it was also, to a great degree, the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England also believed that the circles of church and state should overlap more or less perfectly. Many believe that the Puritans came to America to establish freedom of religion. And that is true: they DID come to establish freedom of religion… for themselves, but not for anyone else.

The Puritan ideal was this: a godly church in a godly commonwealth. It was the ideal that the 16^th c. Reformer John Calvin favored. That’s why he insisted that the church council and city council of 16^th c. Geneva should be one and the same.

Very few people in 21^st century America believe that the circles of church and state or religion and politics should perfectly overlap (although there are a few extremists who believe this).

The danger of having the circles of religion and the state overlap perfectly is the danger of the theocracy. It is the danger of Muslim or sharia law. It is the danger of imposing rules and rulers against which there is no appeal.

It is the danger (to borrow from today’s OT reading) of believing that Samuel or some other prophet is always right when they tell us that they are speaking on behalf of God.

But where the circles of religion and the state overlap perfectly, there is little freedom. “God said it; I believe it; that settles it” is the rule.

More dangerously, it gives too much power to those who claim to speak for God, to prophet, priests, and other religious leaders. It also forgets that religious leaders are human, that we are finite, that we are no less sinful than other people. That is why I believe this model is wrong.

The second model is of perfect separation between the circle of religion and politics.

There are many today who believe that the two circles can be completely separated; that there should be no overlap.

There are many who believe that this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s” but I don’t think that’s what he meant.

They tell us that religion has no place in the public square, that the voices of faithful women and men have no place in public discourse.

I have to give them their due. They point out a real problem, namely, how do we evaluate religious truth claims? In other words, when Samuel or some other prophet anoints Saul or some other leader and says, “thus says the Lord” or “God told me that this man or woman should lead us”, how do we evaluate that statement? How do we know that Samuel is accurate reporting a message from God?

The answer is that we cannot a claim such as that. By definition, a message from God is beyond and above human reason. Its truth cannot be evaluated in the usual way by testing it and measuring it and comparing it to the things we already know to be true.

But I do NOT believe that that means that religious statements and values have no place in the public square or in public discourse.

I am impatient with people who say that we cannot legislate morality.

If they mean that we cannot legislate the intimate behavior of couples in committed relationships or who are legally married, then I agree with them. But our laws are not purely utilitarian. What I mean is this: We have laws against murder, theft, and so on, not just because we think these are good ideas and not even because they are necessary for the smooth functioning of society (although they are). We have these laws because we believe that they are founded on moral principles that are part of the very fabric of the universe.

Imagine this: Let’s suppose that scientists and scholars were able to prove to their satisfaction that the cold-blooded murders of SOME would actually make the world a better place. In a sense, this is what happened in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia and during the “cultural revolution” in China.

Even if it could be proved that some murder was justified, it would still be wrong.

Now, I don’t believe that such a thing could ever be proved. I am certain that good science and good scholarship would never arrive at such a conclusion. The Nazis used science to serve their ideology. They did not adapt their ideology to reality. Instead, they tried to bend reality to their ideology, and that’s a big part of the reason that they failed.

So, to summarize what I’m saying: A community’s laws have to be founded in universal moral principles. The reason that we are constantly changing our laws is that humans are flaws, finite, and sinful. We will never perfectly administer our laws, but that does not mean that we should stop trying.

And that brings me to the third model of the relationship between religion and politics: the two circles sometimes overlap and sometimes do not overlap.

I believe that religion has a place in the public square, that religious people should speak up and speak out. I believe that public discourse is better and richer and fuller when it is informed by the opinions of religious people even when I do not agree with their opinions.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

The first is the abolitionist movement. There were many reasons to believe that slavery was necessary for the smooth functioning of society. Many, it not most, people in the south even believed that slavery was endorsed and blessed by the Bible.

But the abolitionists said, “Not so.” They argued and fought for the point of view that human beings are made in the image of God, that God did not distinguish between Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free, African and European. They fought and thank God they won that argument. But if their arguments had been ruled inadmissible because they were making religious arguments, then they would never have won.

Or consider the civil rights movement. Again, strong arguments were made that there should be legal separations between people of different races. But Dr. King and other civil rights leaders made some of the same arguments made by the abolitionists a century earlier. Dr. King said that we should judge people by the “content of their character, not the color of their skin.” And again, thank God, public discourse was swayed by religious opinions.

The first amendment of the U.S. constitution tells us neither that religious opinion should be given a privileged status nor that it should be excluded from the public square. What it tells us is that all opionions, like alll people, have a place in the public square, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, or Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, atheist or believer.

And if some Samuel today should tell you that God has withdrawn his blessing from one leader and given that blessing to another, do not believe him!

You will be like God (St. Alban's, June 10, 2012)

Sin is an ugly word. A lot of us grew up conservative churches that talked about sin a lot. Quite a few of us grew up in conservative Protestant churches. Some of us grew up in conservative Roman Catholic churches. But in a lot of cases they had the same attitude toward sins.

These churches had long lists of sins: drinking, smoking, dancing, and –to put it delicately– associated behaviors were at the top of the list (although drinking, smoking, and dancing weren’t nearly as problematic for Roman Catholics, which may be part of the reason that I found Roman Catholicism so attractive when I was much younger!).

Probably the most important thing I can say about sin is this: Sin cannot be reduced to a list of behaviors. I am not a moral relativist. The Ten Commandments are an excellent guide for living our lives. If we follow them, we will be better people. If we follow them, we will not only lead good lives; we will lead satisfying lives, lives that are fully human.

 But these things are not sin itself; they are symptoms of sin. The story from Genesis we heard this morning tells us what sin really is.

“…the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die;  for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." “You eyes will be opened… and you will be like God…”

That is what sin is – the desire to be God. Sin is the desire to be like God, to take the place of God. Even if we never again take the Lord’s name in vain or drink to excess or do any of the numberless things that our parents and clergy told us not to do, we will still sin.

That is why the most dangerous sins are the sins associated not with bad people but with the best people. That sounds paradoxical and it is a little paradoxical. But keep in mind that the sins that Jesus most often condemned were the sins of the good.

One of the problems I have with the gospels is their treatment of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were one of the sects or parties of Judaism in the age of Jesus. In a sense, they were the most liberal of the Jewish parties, and I use “liberal” in the best sense of the word. They were looking for new and creative ways to understand, interpret, and apply the Torah or Jewish law.

The word we most often hear associated with the Pharisees is “hypocrite.” In the gospels Jesus calls them hypocrites, so we believe this means that they said one thing and did another. But we don’t have to believe that this is true of all the Pharisees. Undoubtedly it was true of some of them, but of course, it is true of some Christians as well.

My late friend Peter Gomes used to say that an excess of virtue is worse than an excess of vice because there are no constraints on virtue. I had a hard time understanding that at first, but it finally made sense to me.

Look around the world today or think of history. One of the criticisms of religion is that it has made the world worse, not better. There’s some support for this. Think of the Crusades or of present day “jihadism”, that is, Muslim extremism. The problem with deeply religious people is that sometimes they think they can do no wrong. And it is precisely when we think we can do no wrong that we are at our most dangerous.

The Crusades were launched by a decree of the pope himself, and they did so much damage to the people of the middle east that they are still remembered. Some people in the middle east still refer to all Europeans as “Franks” because most of the Crusaders were Franks. They killed Muslims, Jews, and eastern Orthodox Christians indiscriminately.

Protestants are not immune from committing violent acts in the name of God. When the English civil war brought the puritans to power, one of the first things they did was to try and execute England’s King Charles I, a man who was guilty of nothing but stupidity.

Jesus’ criticism of some of the Pharisees was a criticism that could be leveled against some, perhaps many, Christians, too. The temptation of deeply religious people is that we set the bar high and fail to live up to it. Then we rationalize our behavior.

This is exactly the behavior we see in Genesis. When God says to Adam, “Did you eat from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”, Adam says, “the woman you gave me tricked me and so I ate.” And when God asks Eve the same question, she says that the serpent tricked her.

We always blame someone else.

I still vividly remember one Sunday School class. I could not have been more than ten years old. My mother was the teacher and the lesson was this story from Genesis. My friend Ronny Armstrong had poked me with his pencil, so I poked him out, and my mother fixed me with her death ray stare. “But he started it,” I said, thus proving the truth of today’s story from Genesis.

Many of you have probably read Angela’s Ashes, the autobiography of writer Frank McCourt. McCourt also wrote an account of a time he spent as a teacher. In it he tells the story of the excuses many of students gave for not handing in assignments. Many of them were allegedly by the parent of his student, but they were plainly forged.

"Arnold doesn't have his work today because he was getting off the train yesterday and the door closed on his school bag and the train took it away.  He yelled to the conductor who said very vulgar things as the train drove away.  Something should be done about this."

"A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up all Roberta's homework on the table."

"Her big brother got mad at her and threw her essay out the window and it flew away all over Staten Island which is not a good thing because people will read it and get the wrong impression unless they read the ending which explains everything."

"We were evicted from our apartment and the mean sheriff said if my son kept yelling for his notebook he'd have us all arrested."

McCourt reflects, "Isn't it remarkable, I thought, how they resist any kind of writing assignment in class or at home.  They whine and say they're busy and it's hard putting two hundred words together on any subject.  Why?  I have a drawer full of excuse notes that could be turned into an anthology of Great American Excuses."

But the essence of sin is not blaming other; it is putting ourselves in the place of God. And this brings me to the final thing I want to say.

There are some things Jesus said that I wish he had not said. I’m sure that if only he’d thought more carefully, he would not have said them. Probably the most problematic thing Jesus said is in today’s gospel reading.

"Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"

Every religious leader knows people, usually with some mental or emotional illness, who believe they have committed or afraid they are going to commit the unforgiveable sin.

Let me set your minds and hearts at ease: There is no such thing as the unforgiveable sin.

I believe that Jesus is talking about the nature of sin. Remember that the nature of sin is to put one’s self in the place of God. That was exactly what the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to do: Eat this fruit and you will be LIKE God.

The paradox is this: If we put ourselves in the place of God, then who is going to forgive us? Strangely, many of us are less willing to forgive ourselves than God is.

Think about that for a moment: Have you ever done anything that you fretted over, worried over, loast sleep over? All of us have done that. But there is a cure for that: Ask God’s forgiveness. Ask the person you have wronged to forgive you and try to make amends. However, we often go for years and sometimes even for a lifetime, worrying over something we have done wrong. And when we do that, then we have put ourselves in the place of God. We cut ourselves off from the source of forgiveness. But the psalmist tells us that God is always ready to forgive us:

Out of the depths have I called to you, O LORD;
O LORD, hear my voice; *

If you, LORD, were to note what is done amiss, *
O Lord, who could stand?

For there is forgiveness with you; *

6

O Israel, wait for the LORD, *
for with the LORD there is mercy;

7

With him there is plenteous redemption, *
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

We are so ready to believe that we are the biggest sinners in the world and so reluctant to seek God’s forgiveness. But with the Lord “there is mercy, and with God there is plenteous redemption.” Amen.

"Born again:" A sermon for Trinity Sunday (St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Hoover, Alabama, June 2, 2012)

Sometimes I believe that the industry producing magic markers and poster paper would go out of business if it were not for the 3rd chapter of John’s gospel. Wherever large groups of people are gathered together, you nearly always see people waving signs that say “You must be born again” and “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” or just “John 3:16.” But people hardly ever try to figure out how the two verses fit together.

On the surface there is no apparent connection between the two verses. One is an invitation to new life, the other is a powerful statement about God’s love. But both give Episcopalians a lot of trouble.

First, what about this “born again” business? Why do we need to be born again? I think that Episcopalians probably have as much trouble with this as Nicodemus did. Imagine Nicodemus’ reaction when Jesus told him that he needed to be born again. Nicodemus was a Jew, and then as now Jewishness was a matter of birth not choice. Under normal circumstances one is born a Jew, one does not convert to Judaism, and there is certainly no such thing as a “born again Jew.” Nicodemus could probably trace his ancestry back generations. He certainly knew to which tribe of Israel he belonged. Paul certainly did. In Philippians he reminds his readers that he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. But if he were born again, he would have to give up all of that. If he were born again, there’s no telling who he would be. And that’s the problem. If he were born again, he might be a nobody! But Nicodemus was important; he was SOMEbody. John says that he was a “ruler of the Jews.” So why would he want to be born again?

Episcopalians have much the same problem with being born again. Do you know how many Episcopalians it takes to change a light bulb? Why, my grandmother gave that light bulb to the church. That’s a perfectly good light bulb. Why do you want to change it? First, the prayer book, then women priests and bishops, and now the light bulb!

Like Nicodemus, many of us can probably trace our ancestry back generations. We know that we are descended from great-great-great grandmother so and so who left England or France or Poland in the 18th or 19th century and came to America and married so and so who made a great fortune selling hot chestnuts on the streets of Manhattan and then lost it all in the crash of 1891 but they were all good Episcopalians and I don’t care if I’m born again or not but by golly I will always be an Episcopalian.

Part of the problem with Nicodemus, I think, is that he didn’t really hear what Jesus was saying. Jesus said, “You must be born again,” and Nicodemus took it too literally. “Must I return to my mother’s womb?” Nicodemus said with wonder and confusion and maybe some repugnance.

And when we hear Jesus say, “You must be born again,” we seem to think that Jesus is giving us a chance to live our lives all over again. Sometimes there seems to be a whole industry devoted to movies that exploit this idea of getting the chance to living our lives all over again. Think of the “Back to the Future” movies. Michael J. Fox’s character, Marty McFly, doesn’t exactly get to live his life over again, but he gets to go back and fix the things that were wrong in his life.  Or think of the movie “Groundhog Day,” in which Bill Murray lives the same day over and over again until he gets it right.

But Jesus is not talking about living your life all over again; he’s talking about living a new life. “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit." In other words, being born all over again means new life, a life that God chooses for us, a life that we don’t expect, but a life that is better. It means trusting God, a God who is full of surprises, a God who does new things. It means that the new life to which God raises us will be surprising; it may even be uncomfortable; but we know that it will be good.

And that’s where the other verse comes in. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son that who ever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life.”

This verse also gives Episcopalians a lot of trouble, and again part of the problem is caused by the way we read it or hear it. When we hear “perish,” we think that “hell.” We think Jesus is saying that whoever does NOT believe in him will be sent to eternal punishment. But that may not be what Jesus is saying. This is not the time or place to discuss the idea of eternal punishment. I may deal with that in another sermon. But then again, I may not!

The fact is, all of us perish. Every Ash Wednesday, I impose ashes on your forehead and say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” We are dust and we will return to the dust. But Jesus tells us that dust and ashes and death do not have to have the last word. Jesus promises that we can have everlasting life. And I would add that everlasting life is not just something that starts when we die; it starts right now. It is part of the promise of being born again. But I will come back to that.

Another problem that Episcopalians have with John 3.16 is with the idea of God giving “his only begotten Son.” This causes all kinds of problems for people who believe that God somehow sentenced his Son to an agonizing death by being nailed to the Cross. I have a problem with that. I believe that everyone with a heart has a problem with that. I do not believe that in some sense God sentenced Jesus to die or that Jesus was a payment, a sacrifice that God demanded for the propitiation and expiation of human sin.

Here’s what I believe: I believe that Jesus was God’s Son, that in Jesus God chose to live a fully human life and that Jesus lived a life that led to the Cross. His path led to the Cross so that he could experience everything that we experience – darkness, betrayal, abandonment, suffering, and finally death.

I DO believe that Jesus chose to give up his life. I believe that he freely released his life, and I also believe that the Cross represents some kind of mysterious cosmic exchange – life given that life might be received.

And here is where the two verses come together.

The verse that Nicodemus misunderstood – “You must be born again” – does NOT mean that we can go back and live life all over again and fix all the things that we got wrong the first time. It means that new life can start any time. It can start right now. It means that God gives us a second chance and a third chance and as many chances as we need. But this new life that God gives us will surprise us. It may not be at all what we expect. God will ask us to do all kinds of new and unexpected things, even difficult and uncomfortable things, such as loving our neighbor, especially the neighbor we dislike. God asks us to love our Muslim neighbor. God asks Democrats to love their Romney-supporting neighbor. And God asks Republicans to love their Obama-supporting neighbor.

It also means that the perfect and eternal life that Jesus released on the Cross can be ours, that we can have new life, a life that does not end when the priest at our funeral says “dust to dust and ashes to ashes.” Now, I think that’s good news, don’t you?

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 29, 2012

My trip began and ended with music. At the beginning I played a recital of music by Haydn, Schumann, Debussy, Ben-Haim, Liszt, and Chopin at Kehillat Yozma, a progressive Jewish congregation in Modi'in, Israel. It ended with a program of music for choir and organ at Harvard University's Memorial Church (about which I will have more to say). It also began and ended in places that were and are holy, at least to me - Israel and Harvard.  But I'm getting ahead of the story...


Our last day in Israel was Yom HaAtzmaut - Independence Day. It began with a visit to Israel's version of Independence Hall on Rothschild Blvd in Tel Aviv. That was where Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, proclaimed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, and where the Israeli Declaration of Independence was signed. The room where the signing took place is not very large. Our guide told us that because there was no room for the musicians of the Palestine Orchestra, they assembled in an upstairs room and had to be signaled to play the national anthem - Ha Tikvah - at the appropriate moment. We also heard a recording of Ben Gurion's speech (in Hebrew) announcing the declaration of independence. I have to admit it was quite moving. The audacity of Ben Gurion and his fellow Zionists declaring Israel's independence was, if possible, even more remarkable than that of Washington, Jefferson, et al, in 1776. Both groups faced certain war and overwhelming odds - the Israelis from Arab states on three sides and the Americans from the greatest military power of the 18th century - Great Britain. And in both cases, audacity paid off. 


After visiting Independence Hall, we walked down Rothschild Blvd. One of the most interesting buildings we saw contained an investment firm on the ground floor and the offices of a Marxist student organization on an upper floor!


Then we reboarded the bus for a visit to Yafo, the biblical city of Joppa, site of the prophet Jonah's flight to Tarshish and of Peter's vision of clean and unclean animals in Acts 10. I talked for a few minutes about Peter's vision and how the decision by early Christians to dispense with the Jewish dietary laws and circumcision allowed Christianity to become a universal faith. I also talked a little about Paul and his sense of his "Jewishness." 


In the afternoon we gathered for a "debriefing." Julian asked each of us to share a "meaningful moment." I talked about Judy Miller's question, asking if the trip had changed my perceptions. I said that it hadn't changed my perceptions but had deepened them. I regard myself as both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian, but anti-violence and terror. In Nazareth I went into a shop to buy a cross. The woman in the shop was a Christian Palestinian. When I told her that I was an Anglican priest, she said, "Please pray for us. Nobody cares for us - not the Israelis, not the Palestinians, not even the Vatican." How can you not be on the side of people like that?


Our last night in Israel we had dinner in a marvelous restaurant - the Social Club. Afterward, most of our group went to the airport for their flight home, but some of us with flights the next day went back to the hotel. I had a flight the next morning at 8 am, so I was up by 4 to catch a taxi at 5. I had to change planes in London and after nearly 24 hrs of traveling I got to Atlanta.


I stayed over night with my friends David and Duane and left way too early the next morning, Sat., Apr. 28, for a flight to Boston. My reason for flying to Boston was to attend a concert honoring my dear, late friend, the Rev. Prof. Peter J. Gomes, who for 40 years was the Harvard University chaplain. Some friends from my graduating class and I had planned to commission a piece for the chapel choir in his honor. The last conversation Peter and I had was about the text for the piece and the composer. When I asked him to suggest a composer, he said, "Well, I suppose Elgar is dead..." So he turned over the selection of the composer to the university organist, Edward Jones, and me, and we decided on Craig Phillips, the director of music at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills. The text was Peter's confirmation verse: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a livingsacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed tothis world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is thatgood, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." And, of course, Peter insisted that we use the King James' version. 


Phillips' setting of the piece is beautiful, and I have to admit that tears were running down my cheek when the choir finished singing it. It may just be my imagination, but the choir seemed moved, too.


Tomorrow I go home after a long, exhausting, and incredibly rewarding journey. As I said at the top of this post, I ended as I began, in a holy place. Harvard and its Memorial Church are not holy the way that Israel is holy, but they are special places to me. As Israel demonstrates, holy places are not always peaceful, but they are places that challenge us, and both Israel and Harvard have done that for me many times. They are also places where we connect to God, to each other, and to ourselves in new, unexpected, and often uncomfortable ways. 

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 26, 2012

Our guide, Julian Resnick, is a transplanted South African Jew. He became involved in the Socialist Zionist movement in South Africa (he says that socialism is not a dirty word for him), and moved to Israel in response to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. We like to give Julian a hard time because everything is "complicated" and "extraordinary" and every place or situation "asks a question." But that's Julian. He is a man of wide learning and strong passions.

On our way down to Tel Aviv from the Galilee, we went first to Yemin Ord, a community that works with children from difficult backgrounds. Our guide there was Raquel, an Ethiopian Jew who speaks 3 languages - Amharic (her native tongue), Hebrew, and English. She told us of the covert operation that Israel undertook to remove hundreds of Jews from Ethiopia and transfer them to Israel. It has not been an easy transition, because most of them had never seen a toilet, much less an airplane.

Next we went to Caesaria, the seaport that Herod the Great built to honor the Roman emperor Augustus. The Israelis have renovated a large theatre there that overlooks the Mediterranean. A member of our group was thrilled when we asked her to go up on the stage and sing so that we could check out the acoustics.

In the evening we went to Julian's own community, Kibbutz Tzora, for dinner and conversation with some of the young people. It was also the eve of Israel's "Memorial Day", a time for remembering those who have been killed in Israel's wars. The simple outdoor ceremony was moving, especially the singing of Israel's national anthem, "Ha Tikvah".

The next day we went first to a museum containing the works of Reuven Rubin, an Israeli artist from the early part of the 20th century. We were all intrigued by his painting, "First Seder in Jerusalem", which depicts Jesus sitting at a table with a group of Israelis, including the painter Rubin himself.

I went off on my own after that to visit a music library and museum dedicated to the pianist Felicia Blumenthal.

In the evening we celebrated the beginning of Israeli's Independence Day at the "Punchline", a restaurant/club/bar. I can say confidently that Israelis know how to have a good time. They can even get a middle aged Episcopal priest up and on his feet to dance to "Hava Nagila."

Today we went to Joppa and I talked briefly about Peter's vision of clean and unclean food and the heavenly voice telling him to give up the dietary restrictions and divisions between Christians and Jews. I also talked about Paul's insistence in Philippians that he was Jewish.

Last night after dinner several of us took a taxi back to the hotel. I walked up the beach for a hundred yards or so. The moon was a slender reddish crescent hanging just above the sea, and Venus was a brilliant point of light about 5 degrees to the right. I looked out at the "wine dark" water of the Mediterranean and thought about all the warriors and explorers who have crossed it - Achilles, Ulysses, Alexander the Great, the Romans, Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and so on.

The modern state of Israel is only 64 years old, but is built on an ancient foundation. Israelis have built a state where there is real political freedom and diversity, although (like every nation) it has flaws. As we sing in the U.S., so may it be for Israel: May God "mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 23, 2012

The Muslim holy day is Friday; the Jewish holy day is Saturday; and the Christian holy day is Sunday. So since we are in the Jewish state, we were looking forward to the arrival of Shabbat (the Sabbath) on Friday evening.

However, before we rested, we had to work! Friday began with a visit to Ammunition Hill, a site critical to the Six Day War in 1967. Remember that prior to June, 1967, Jerusalem was part of the kingdom of Jordan. In 1947, the U.N. proposed the establishment of 2 states - one Jewish and one Palestinian. Israel accepted the plan, but the Palestinians did not. The 1947 borders established a very narrow state, mostly on the coastal that slopes down to the Mediterranean. In the 1948 War of Independence, Israel also seized land in the Galilee that would otherwise have gone to the Palestinians. In response to war-like acts by Syria, Jordan, and Egypt in 1967, Israel also attacked and seized Jerusalem and the west bank of the Jordan River.

Following our visit to Ammunition Hill, we visited one of the disputed settlements on the west bank - Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. It may or may not be part of a future Palestinian state, but for now it makes wonderful wine and we had a terrific lunch there.

The lunch put us in a properly reflective mood for Shabbat which we celebrated seated on the southern steps of the Temple platform where Jews "went up" to Herod the Great's temple 2000 years ago. We were joined by Adam, a rabbinical student from San Francisco, and his girl friend, Emma, a cantorial student from San Diego. Emma led the music and Adam accompanied her on his guitar, and they could not have been nicer. They are here for a year studying Hebrew. Afterward, we went back to our hotel for an enormous Shabbat dinner.

Although it was meant to be a day of rest, Saturday was busy. Several of us went to the Israel Museum in the morning, and in the afternoon we were off to Bethlehem, which is now administered by the Palestinian Authority. There we visited the Church of the Nativity, founded by the Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, in the 4th c. While there we watched and listened as Orthodox monks and priests sang evening prayer amid clouds of incense. Saturday evening I walked up to BenYehuda street for falafel and watched as the streets filled with people as Shabbat ended, enjoying themselves before going back to work or school the next day.

Sunday morning we were up early for our 2 hour trip to the Galilee. First, we went to Banias, near the site of the Biblical city Caesarea Philippi, where Peter acclaimed Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God. In Roman times it was also a place for the worship of Pan. It's easy to see why it was a place of worship. It is where the River Jordan originates and the water flows down and over a series of dams with green plants growing just beneath the surface. Then, we went to Capernaum at the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum is where Jesus called his first disciples, worked his first miracle (according to Mark he freed a man from a demonic spirit), and it may have been Jesus' home for a time. Standing in the ruins of a 4th c. synagogue, I talked about Capernaum's significance in the gospels.

Then we drove to one of the loveliest and (to Christians, at least) most important spots in Israel - the Mount of the Beatitudes. There Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is remembered in a church overlooking the Sea of Galilee and set in the midst of glorious gardens. The Christians in our group gathered for a short worship service, inviting our Jewish friends to join us. I led the service and talked about how the Beatitudes demonstrate Jesus' "Jewishness". Like Psalm 1 ("Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly..."), Jesus employes a Jewish literary form. And like the prophets, Jesus puts God firmly on the side of the poor and disenfranchised. At the conclusion of the service, Rabbi Miller blessed us in Hebrew and I translated into English.

We spent the evening at a lovely hotel run by Kibbutz Lavi.

Today we went first to Jesus' boyhood home - the town of Nazareth. It is an Arab village that was formerly mostly Christian but is becoming more and more Muslim. Roman Catholics remember the story of the angel Gabriel's "annunciation" of Jesus' birth to Mary in a modern and beautiful basilica that is built over the ruins of a first century house that might have belonged to Jesus' family. A very special feature of the basilica is a series of depictions of Mary done in the styles of cultures from around the world. There is a Chinese Mary and an Uruguayan Mary and so on.

After Nazareth we went to the town of Tsafed very close to the Lebanese border. Tsafed was the home of Rabbi Jacob Luria, one of the founders of the Jewish mystical tradition known as "Qabbalah". It is really one of my favorite places in Israel. Set on the top of a hill, the narrow, windy streets and views of the valley down below remind me of Assissi in Italy.

We ended the day on a completely different note, visiting a "high tech" incubator and learning about some exciting biotech inventions being developed there.

Tomorrow we are off to the last leg of our journey in Tel Aviv.

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 20, 2012

Night before last was a highlight of this trip. Really, it was a highlight of all the trips I've made to Israel. First, some background: Last summer, my clergy group met Dr. Susanna Kokkonen when we were here. She is a Finn with a Ph.D. in Holocaust studies from Hebrew Univ in Jerusalem, and is director of the Christian Friends of Yad vaShem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. Jonathan subsequently brought her to Birmingham, where she spoke at Temples Emanu-El and Beth-El, Southside Baptist Church, and Samford Univ. She arranged for all of us to go to the state of Israel's official Holocaust memorial service at Yad vaShem.

Because of security we had to arrive 2 hours ahead of time. Keep in mind that this is a desert country and that Jerusalem is fairly high up in the hills, so it was quite cold and there was a wind. Although the official temperature was 60-something Fahrenheit, it felt like the 40s. I was wearing a dark suit and my clerical collar, but I was freezing. Both Israel's president, Shimon Peres, and prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke. There were also presentations by several Holocaust survivors, the reading of psalms by the chief rabbi and the praying of the "Kaddish" (the Jewish prayer for mourners), and Israel's national anthem - "Ha Tikvah"- was beautifully sung by a young soldier.

I have to say that I was more moved by Pres. Shimon Peres than by Netanyahu. He has been involved in Israeli politics from the very beginning and led the Labour Party for many years, including a brief stint as prime minister. Half the Jews from the Polish village where he was born came here and the other half were murdered in the Holocaust. He said that he went back there a few years ago and there are no Jews there any longer. I was also deeply moved by the story of a Holocaust survivor who is also an author of children's books who said that she wants children to maintain their faith in humanity. If anyone has earned the right to lose her faith in humanity, it is she, but she has not lost her faith in her fellow human beings.

After the ceremony, we were invited to the reception in the museum. There was quite a rush for the hot coffee and tea. In spite of the bitter cold, I'm deeply grateful for the experience.

The next day we toured Hadassah hospital. It is a hospital built by members of Hadassah, a world-wide Jewish women's organization. Particularly impressive was the children's wing. It was greatly expanded a few years ago with a gift from New York mayor Michael Blumberg in honor of his mother. All the doctors and nurses are required to speak both Hebrew and Arabic and they care for Jews and Palestinians alike. They also require that family members stay with the children at all times, so in addition to the hospital beds, there are futons in every room.

Hadassah hospital is also famous because of the windows that Marc Chagall created for the hospital's synagogue. There are 12 windows, one for each of the tribes of Israel. I had never seen them before, and they are magnificent.

Following our visit to Hadassah, we went back to Yad vaShem for a tour of the museum itself. Twice I visited the original Holocaust museum, but the present museum was built only a few years ago. This was my second time to go through it. But the exhibits are so extensive that I think you could spend years there and not see everything. There is no way to wrap your mind around the murder of 6 million Jews, plus the murders of 5 million others - Romany (Gypsies), the mentally and physically handicapped, Slavs, Communists, and homosexuals. Yad vaShem does a marvelous job of conveying not only information but a feeling for this unique historically event. In the original Holocaust museum I saw this quotation from the Baal Shem Tov, a 17th c. Jewish mystic: "Remembrance is the path to redemption but forgetfulness is the way to exile." Following our tour, Jonathan led us in a brief but moving service.

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 19, 2012

Although this is only the third day of our study tour it feels as though we have been here a week or longer.

The day before I left Modi'in one of Michael and Nechama's dogs chowed down on my CPAP mask - part of the apparatus I wear that helps me breathe while I'm sleeping. The Nemals were terribly apologetic, but I wasn't too bothered by it. The dogs were just being dogs, and I figured that I could get another one overnighted from the US. Worst case I would have to sleep a couple of nights more or less sitting up in a chair. But Michael and Nechama made several phone calls and thought that we could find a replacement in Modì 'in. First, they took me to the Israeli national health facility that they use. Frankly, it was amazing. It is bright, shiny, brand new, and everything is up to date. Their primary doctor, dentist, and pharmacy are in a single building. Of course, taxes pay for it, but Israelis don't pay anything out of pocket for health care. The Nemals told me of a friend who had moved there from the Netherlands. He needed a lung transplant, but because he was 63, he could not get on the transplant waiting list in Holland. However, in Israel he was given a new lung. Anyway, the people at the national health pharmacy were very nice but did not have a replacement. Then we went to an organization called Yad Sarah (Sarah's Hand) that provides free medical equipment to those who cannot afford it. They were also extremely nice but did not have one. Finally, the next day Nechama drove me to Tel Aviv (30 mins or less), and I got a replacement there. Unless my insurance in the US reimburses me, it will be the most expensive souvenir I buy on this trip!

After our scenic tour of lovely downtown Tel Aviv, Nechama took me back to Modi'in to get the "sherut" (shared taxi) that would take me to Jerusalem. After I checked into the hotel I came back down to the lobby to check email, and I ran into Rabbi Miller, Donald and Ronne Hess and other members of our group.

At 6.30 we all walked from the hotel just a couple of blocks to a spot just across the street from the walls of the old city. Our guide, Julian Resnick, is a South African Jew by birth, who "made aliyah" in 1976. Julian left South Africa on July 3, the day that Israeli commandos freed the airliner that had been hijacked by terrorists and forced down in Entebbe. The only Israeli soldier killed on that mission was Yoni Netanyahi, the current prime minister's brother and (I'm proud to say) an alumnus of Harvard. Julian told us that as the airplane he was on lifted off, the pilot spoke to the passengers, urging them not to be concerned. Julian looked out the window and saw that his plane was being accompanied by Israeli fighter jets. It turns out that Libya's dictator, Qaddafi, had ordered that a plane en route to Israel be shot down in retaliation for the Entebbe raid, and Julian's plane was the one marked for destruction. Julian gave us a quick but thorough orientation to Jerusalem and then we went to dinner.

The next morning we were up early for a talk by Rabbi Daniel Gordis (American by birth but an Israeli for many years). I have to tell you that my own thoughts and feelings about Israel have evolved a great deal. After my first trip here in 1985 I came back very pro-Palestinian. Every subsequent trip has made me less pro-Palestinian. I like to say that I am pro-justice, and that is true, but the Palestinians (as former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban said) "never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity". There are no simple solutions or simple answers to anything here, however if there were a simple solution, this would be it: If the Palestinians would engage in the kind of non-violent resistance that Dr. King and Gandhi practiced, they would have their own state in a matter of months or sooner. But unfortunately, that is not what is happening.

Anyway, Rabbi Gordis made the most persuasive case for Israel that I have ever heard. He rehearsed the history that led up to Israel's founding and said that Jews should not fully trust anyone who says that they will take care of them. During the Holocaust, the entire world, with only a few minor exceptions, turned its back on the Jews. Gordis said that Israel is a guarantee that that will never happen again. Gordis' talk was particularly effective because this is the week of Yom HaShoah - the day that Jews remember the Holocaust.

After Gordis' talk we began our tour with a visit to the southern steps of the Temple platform. The Temple platform was built by Herod the Great in the years before the birth of Jesus. It was a part of Jordan until the 1967 war, and the excavations have been going on for years. This was the first time that I have been able to go there. We continued around the southwest corner of the platform to the most famous spot in Jerusalem - the Western Wall of the Temple platform where Jews have prayed since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. All of us took a moment to go there and say our own prayers.

Then we visited the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mt of Olives and the adjacent Church of All Nations. I said a few words about the garden and the Last Supper and had one of the other Christians on the trip read Mark's account of Jesus' prayer in the garden. I also introduced the next location we were going to - the Via Dolorosa.

Everyone who has visited Jerusalem, especially every western Christian, is quite shocked by the noise, bustle, dirt, and commercialism that lines the Via Dolorosa, but do we really think it was any different 2000 years ago when a relatively obscure Palestinian peasant named Jesus of Nazareth was tried on charges of treason by the Roman governor Pilate and given his cross to take out to the place of execution? I imagine that most people went about their business as Jesus walked the way of the cross. And it is still the same today...

At the end of the Via Dolorosa is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We stopped by the Ethiopian chapel on the roof of the church and I gave people a brief orientation to it, explaining that the correct name is the Church of the Anastasis or Resurrection, that the original church was built by the Emperor Constantine's mother Helen in the 4th c., and that the church we see today was built by the Crusaders after they destroyed Helen's church in the 11th c. I also cautioned people that the church would not conform to our western and North American ideas of holiness. Like most of Jerusalem, it is noisy, dirty, and crowded. It is also a witness to Christian disunity. It is controlled by Greek and Russian Orthodox, the Armenian Church, Ethiopian and Egyptian Copts, and the Roman Catholic Church, and frequently these various groups disagree, sometimes violently. They cannot even agree who will maintain the church, so the key of the church is held by one Muslim family but another Muslim family is responsible for opening and closing the church.

The only time that the Anastasis or Holy Sepulchre feels holy is early in the morning, especially on Sunday. Even though there are many competing Christian groups who worship at different altars, I enjoy hearing the different melodies and languages in which they sing God's praises.

Enough for now... more soon...

Friendship journey to Israel - Apr. 15, 2012

Shalom and salaam from Israel! Several months ago Rabbi Jonathan Miller asked if I would help him lead a group of Jews and Christians (mostly from Birmingham) on a trip to Israel. It was being organized by my friends Donald and Ronne Hess. I was honored and feel grateful to be a part of this wonderful group.

I actually set out several days ahead of the rest of the group. Last summer the clergy group that Jonathan and I are part of were in Jerusalem and we met and talked with Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon,, one of Jonathan's seminary classmates and the first woman to function as a rabbi in Israel. She and I discovered a mutual love of music, and I asked if I could perform in her synagogue - Kehillat Yozma in Modi'in, a town between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Our trip began right after an exhausting but good Holy Week and Easter. Starting on the Mon. after Easter I began to pack and clean frantically. By the time I left on Wed. my house was so clean I was reluctant to leave! And in the little spare time I had I was practicing for my performance. So on Wed., Apr. 11, I set out. I took the van from the Birmingham airport to the Atlanta airport. The only other passenger in the van was an Arabic speaker, and just for a moment, I wondered, "What if...?" but that thought is not worth finishing. Will we ever get beyond our suspicion of Arabs and Muslims?

On the way to Atlanta I reviewed the music that I was going to play. Sometimes I become so familiar with pieces of music that I can play them in my head. I'm also ready to work on something new! But I still like these pieces and enjoy playing them.

The Atlanta airport was full of young men and women in military uniforms. I wonder what it will look like when the US withdraws from Afghanistan? I hope we 're not involved in a new war by then.

From Atlanta I flew to London. The flight was long, boring and exhausting. I read from my Kindle and listened to music on my iPod and was struck with wonder at the thought of listening to Schubert at 35,000 feet. I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and the world pretty much dropped away. My iPod contains all of Beethoven's symphonies and piano sonatas, all of Mozart's piano concertos, Haydn's masses, every note Chopin composed for the piano, Stravinsky's ballets and on and on. My Kindle has the Bible, the Prayer Book, the complete Shakespeare, and all of Dickens and Twain. And it is available to me as I fly from Atlanta to London to Tel Aviv.

I really like to fly British Airways but that means changing planes in London. I had a long layover in London and managed to sleep a few hours at the Yotel - a kind of mini-hotel - in Heathrow. Then I flew on to Tel Aviv. All in all I traveled about 2 days to get here by ground and air (including 2 overnight flight).

I've never seen Ben Gurion airport so empty. I didn't check any bags, so I whizzed through passport control and was out to the taxi stand in just a few minutes. Modi'in is about half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I think the taxi ride was only about 20 mins, and I arrived at Kinneret's house around 6.30 am. She was awake and made me some tea, but most of her family were still asleep. However, her mother, Marilyn, who lives in Sun City West in Arizona, was visiting. Marilyn and I really hit it off. At the synagogue that evening I asked if I could be her "date" and she got a kick out of that.

I learned a little more about Kinneret, too. She has wanted to be a rabbi since she was 15 or 16, but that was before they started ordaining women. Also, she grew up in a Conservative synagogue. (Note: Most Jews in the U.S. belong to one of 3 "denominations": Orthodox (most conservative), Conservative (middle of the road), and Reform (liberal). Today both Conservative and Reform traditions ordain women.) Anyway, she switched to Reform Judaism and she met my friend Jonathan Miller at seminary in New York.

Kinneret's husband, Baruch, and her 2 youngest children, Amichai (son) and Inbar (daughter) were also at home. Inbar is an art student in Jerusalem, and Amichai is in the army but almost finished with his service. He studied music seriously in high school and wants to continue his musical studies after the army. He is a guitarist and interested in jazz.

After resting for a while, Kinneret took me to Kehillat Yozma. Their building includes not only the synagogue, but also a K-6 school. In Israel, synagogues, rabbis, and religious schools are state-supported, EXCEPT for the ones that belong to liberal or progressive Jews, so Kinneret's group receives no state funds.

After showing me around, Kinneret left me to practice for a couple of hours. Even though I was dead tired I went through my entire program and worked on a few problem areas. When I was through I called her and she brought me back to her home.

The Friday evening service was lovely, especially the music. Baruch plays the guitar very well, and the singing was lively. Although people helped me follow along in the prayer book, I was only able to pick out the occasional word. However, when a phrase was sung more than once, I could begin to sing along.

After the service, I went back to Kinneret and Baruch's house for sabbath dinner with them and Amichai and Inbar and Marilyn. However, I stayed that evening with another couple from Yozma - Nechama and Michael Nemal. The Nemals "made aliya" (that is, they are Jews who elected to move to Israel) a few years ago. They are also really wonderful people. They have a nice apartment and two terrific Shar Peis - Zimra ("singer" in Hebrew) and Coltrane.

On Sat. the Nemals took me to Bet Guvrin where there are a series of "bell caves" that were used for various purposes (food storage, burial, etc.) from the 3rd c. BCE to the 6th c. CE. I had never been there before and found it fascinating. On the way back we stopped at Emmaus, another place I had not visited before. We returned around 2 pm, and after lunch, I showered and got ready for my program.

The program began with a "chavdalah" service, that is a way of marking the end of the sabbath and is very brief, but my program did not begin until about 8.30 pm. Because it started rather late in the evening I shortened the program I have been playing. I played the Sonata in B flat major (H XVI-41) by Haydn; Kinderszenen by Schumann; The Children's Corner by Debussy; 3 of Paul Ben-Haim's Five Pieces, Op. 34; and Chopin's Ballade in A flat. Everything went quite well. I had a little memory slip in the Haydn but it wasn't too noticeable. The applause at the end was enthusiastic, and when someone asked for an encore, I played Liszt's "Waldesrauschen."

On Sunday, the Nemals took me to the "shuq" or market in Ramle and then we went to lunch in Abu Ghosh, an Arab village near Emmaus. Tomorrow, everyone else on Friendship Journey 2 arrives, and I look forward to catching up with them at the David Citadel Hotel in the late afternoon.

Beating up on Harvard

In his column today, David Brooks (whom I usually like) said that that "the country doesn't want an election that is Harvard Law versus Harvard Law." Brooks' column took a very favorable view of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. I have never liked Santorum, because it seems that he can't open his mouth without saying something offensive about gay people or blacks or some other group.

Brooks' point was that people are looking for a candidate who embodies some of Santorum's more admirable qualities, e.g., someone who has triumphed over adversity and worked his way up from a humble background. However, Brooks implied that people are NOT looking to elect the kind of "bloodless technocrat" that he implied that Harvard and similar universities produce.

I beg to differ.

I don't want to go into this in great detail, but I do want to say that for many of us Harvard was not only the gateway to a great intellectual adventure, it was also a place of great spiritual vitality. I hasten to add that the late, great Peter Gomes had a lot to do with Harvard's spiritual vitality when I was there, but Peter was not the only reason that Harvard was and is a spiritually vital place. In one of the last talks I heard Peter give he said that Harvard's spiritual diversity was one of the reasons for its spiritual health. He said that a Christian student who encountered a Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu student who practiced her faith and had a strong spiritual life would be encouraged to practice his Christian faith.

There were other Harvard faculty and administrators who were good examples of healthy spirituality. William Hutchinson, master of Winthrop House, was a practicing Quaker, and Master Kiely of Adams House was a practicing Roman Catholic. Several faculty members regularly attended the 8.30 am Morning Prayer service at Memorial Church.

What was true of Harvard was also true of Yale. While doing my M.Div. at Yale, I got to know several faculty members who were members of the Battell Chapel congregation. And I'm sure that the rest of the Ivy League universities have vital spiritual communities.

So, Mr. Brooks, spiritually, at least, a presidential campaign of "Harvard versus Harvard" might not be a bad thing at all.