Lent 4: God is in the details

The story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 is a tiny literary masterpiece. It reminds me of an elegant miniature such as one might see in an illustrated manuscript such as the Hours of the Duc de Berry. Every detail is pregnant with meaning. But the first detail to note is not the text itself but the context. In John 3 Jesus had a long and involved theological discussion with Nicodemus, an articulate, learned leader of the Pharisees. In chapter 4, Jesus has another long and involved theological discussion, but this time it is with a Samaritan woman. Nicodemus was a person of high standing in his community, but this woman (as we shall see) had absolutely no standing. And yet Jesus treats her with the same respect and consideration he showed for Nicodemus.

Second, note the time of day. John tells us that it was "about noon" when Jesus stopped to rest and the woman came out to the well. This is strange, because women did not come to the well in the hottest part of the day. Rather, they came out at dawn or dusk because it was easier to carry home the heavy jars of water when it was cool out. Apparently, this woman does not want to associate with other women, or they do not want to associate with her.

Thirdly, Jesus speaks to her: "Give me a drink." In the first century Jewish men did not even speak to their wives in public, much less would they speak to women outside their own family. Here Jesus addresses a women to whom he is not related, a Samaritan, and (as emerges in their conversation) a woman of dubious reputation. More than anything else, this little story of the Samaritan woman illustrates Jesus' willingness to transgress social boundaries.

But the most telling and poignant detail for me is this: "the woman left her water jar." Of course, this could just be accidental. In her excitement she could have forgotten the heavy jar. But I believe that the author is telling us something. This nameless Samaritan woman had asked Jesus for living water. How appealing that must have sounded to a woman who day after day had to go to the well at a time when she could avoid the company of others. I believe that she left the heavy jar behind because she did not need it any longer; she had received the gift Jesus promised -- living water.

Lent 2: Born again? What was wrong with the first time?

One of the things about Christians that puzzled the Romans is that Christians were not an ethnos, a people. Jews were a people; Persians were a people; but Christians could be from any ethnic background.

In the first century, one worshiped the gods of one's family. Christianity involved a deliberate choice to worship the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, rather than the gods of one's family. In the case of Jews who became followers of Jesus, it involved a decision to recognize that the God revealed in the Torah was now fully and completely revealed in Jesus. In either case, one's ties to one's family were at least attenuated or (more often) completely severed.

These things hover in the background to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus. "No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above." Jesus' words astonished Nicodemus because it was precisely through his birth, his connection to his family, that he hoped to see God's kingdom, and he had a firm Biblical basis for believing this. That was exactly what God had promised to Abram long, long ago. God's promise to Abram was not that the earth would be blessed through him or even that all human beings would be blessed but that the families of the earth would be blessed through him.

Paul was confused about this, too. In writing to the Christians at Rome, he argued that what God meant was not that the blessing would fall upon the physical descendants of Abraham but to those who shared his faith, in other words, his spiritual children. But that is not really what Genesis says.

Jesus' words to Nicodemus are still startling. "You must be born from above (or in the more familiar version, "born again")". They tell us that like Abram we, too, have to strike out into the unknown and if necessary, to leave family behind. But they may be especially good news in an age of alienation and estrangement. Jesus invites us into a new family. He tells us that there is a place for us, a community where we will be at home.

The Apostles' Creed is the basic baptismal statement. In the early church, the bishop would ask the shivering catechumen standing in the cold, running water, "Do you believe in God?" And she would reply, "I believe in God the Father" as the bishop poured water over her head. Three times the bishop would ask and three times the catechumen replied, "I believe." However, when the church decided to include the Nicene Creed in the liturgy, the faithful stated their faith not as "I believe" but as "WE believe". We enter the waters of baptism as individuals but we emerge from them as a new people, God's own people. We go into the font an I; we emerge a WE.

Lent 1: Temptations

Today's reading from Genesis is the account of the so-called "fall". I say "so-called" because the word "fall" never appears in it. For that matter, neither does the word "sin". According to Genesis, the cause for the breach in the divine/human relationship is disobedience. Another key category in this story is "knowing." The forbidden tree is the tree of "knowledge"; the serpent says that if they eat of the tree God "knows" that their "eyes will be opened"; "knowing good and evil" makes one "like God"; and finally, the human couple "know" that they are naked.

It might be more interesting if the lectionary included verses 18 through 25 of chapter 2. Three things happen in those verses. First, God acknowledges the human being's need for companionship. Up until this point God has declared everything to be good, but for the first time, God declares something to be NOT good: "It is not good for adam to be alone." (NB: The NRSV translates adam as "the man", but this is a little misleading. The Hebrew word adam does not specify gender. The human being is not differentiated as male and female until Eve is created.)

Second, God brings the animals before adam one by one. This is one of the most humorous episodes in the Bible. The text implies that God wants to see if adam will pick one of the other animals to be his partner, but alas, none of them is suitable.

Finally, God creates a partner for adam. Now, humankind is differentiated into male (ish) and female (ishah).

It would be good to include these omitted verses because the irony of the story of the fall is that no sooner has God given adam a helper than the helper becomes the catalyst for disaster. Presumably, the serpent was one of the animals God offered to adam as a helper. So the helper especially created for adam and an animal who was a potential helper instigate the event that brings about exile from Eden.

If we include the omitted verses, then it becomes plainer than ever that Augustine was right about evil. According to Augustine, evil is privative. Rather than being the opposite of good, evil is good that has been twisted. Eve sees that the fruit is "good for food" and a "delight" and a source of wisdom. The crime is not inherent in the fruit; the crime is the misuse of the good. Furthermore, neither Eve nor the serpent is bad. Eve is the partner God created to remedy the problem of human loneliness, and the serpent is also God's good creation.

Similarly, the Tempter does not offer Jesus anything that we would regard as a sin or a crime. He offers him bread, world rule, and popularity. Does anyone doubt that Jesus would have used the bread to feed the hungry or that he would have ruled wisely and well? And surely he would have used his status as a celebrity to promote his teaching. But in each case there was a catch; Jesus could only acquire the good ends (bread, power, and fame) by using questionable means. Sometimes the end justifies the means; more often it does not. An idealistic politician influences legislation on behalf of a generous contributor, thinking that she is on the side of the angels on most issues. A police officer uses a little muscle to get a criminal to confess. Once we set out on the wrong path toward good ends, the path tends to diverge more and more from our goal.

The Reformers spoke of the Christian life as being simul justus et peccator ("simultaneously justified and sinful"). Calvinism is notorious for claiming that human nature is "totally depraved". The phrase is unfortunate, but the idea behind it is worth rehabilitating. Calvin's idea was that even at our best we are still estranged from God, and that is a good thing to keep in mind.

The meaning I take away from this is that our greatest temptations come not from the shadows but from the light. A friend of mine is fond of saying that an excess of virtue is worse than an excess of vice because there are no restraints on virtue. The greatest evils are not done by those notorious criminals but by the "brightest and best" who have convinced themselves and a few others that they know what is best.

At every moment we are confronted with the situation that Adam and Eve faced. The greatest temptations are not grotesquely evil. They are things that may be in and of themselves just as the fruit appeared to Eve: wise, good, and "a delight to the eyes". But take care: one choice leads to paradise and the other to exile.

A New Light: The Last Sunday in Epiphany

“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.

We hear the gospel story of the Transfiguration twice every year: Once on the the last Sunday in Epiphany and the second time on the Feast of the Transfiguration. 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.

Epiphany 4A: Serious Gospel Foolishness

Today’s readings contrast folly and wisdom. Paul puts it to us most directly. The message of Christ crucified is folly to the Greeks and a scandal to the Jews, but it is the very wisdom of God. The gospel illustrates the point. Jesus’ message in the Sermon on the Mount appears to be sheer foolishness. “Blessed are the poor in spirit… the meek… the mournful… those who are persecuted…” The poor blessed? The meek inherit the earth? The mournful will rejoice? In human terms, Jesus’ words make no sense. They are the folly of which Paul spoke.

Micah does not employ the categories of wisdom and folly but they are implied in his words. Wisdom would tell us that the proper worship of God involves elaborate sacrifices and impressive ritual but instead what God desires is humility and justice.

We resist folly. Appearing foolish exposes us and makes us feel embarrassed. That’s what comedy is all about. Why do we laugh at the clown who slips on a banana? One explanation is that we feel relief that we are not in the clown’s place. But too many times we have been in the clown’s place, and we don’t like it. We have slipped on that very banana peel or fumbled the words when we had to speak in public or spilled a plate of spaghetti down the front of our best dress and heard the choked laughter and seen the stifled smiles of the people around us. It didn’t seem funny to us, but the clown’s purpose is to make it safe for us to laugh at our own misfortune.

One of the principal difficulties of the Christian faith for me is that it exposes me and makes me vulnerable; it makes me look silly, stupid, foolish.

Following graduation from college I took a year off to figure out if I wanted to become a priest. I had not done a good job of planning what I would do during that year, so I pieced together a few part-time jobs and more or less made ends meet. My classmates were in law school or med school or working for senators on Capitol Hill or interning at Goldman Sachs. I was teaching piano to children, playing the organ for a small church, and supervising high school kids in a boarding school dormitory. Around Christmastime, my mother, an elementary school principal, asked if I would play the piano for the school’s Christmas program. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Harvard graduates did not play Christmas carols in the lunch room of a rural elementary school! But my mother has a knack for making you offers you can’t refuse, so I went. Sullenly, I played for the first part of the program. Then the special education class came on stage to perform. These children beamed as they stumbled through a few Christmas chestnuts. “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” had never sounded worse… or better, because these children had caught the essence of Christmas. They knew that Christmas (and for that matter Christianity) is not about looking good; it’s about love. And they were singing for love’s sake. I was suitably chastened but learned a lot about Christmas.

If we follow Christ faithfully, we will often look foolish. We will look foolish when we drop what we are doing to play for the special education kids to sing Christmas carols. We will look foolish if we take time to listen to the homeless guy on the sidewalk in front of our office to tell us his story. We will look foolish if try to do justice and walk humbly with God. We will look foolish if we hunger and thirst for righteousness. But that kind of foolishness is the very wisdom and power of God.

Like the clown, Jesus allows himself to be an object of contempt and ridicule. He takes our place. He makes it safe for us to follow him, to endure shame and ridicule for the sake of the gospel. But the joke is on the powers and principalities who nailed him to the cross. Did you hear the one about the empty tomb?

Epiphany 4A: Quarrels and Community

The four gospels agree that at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry he summoned the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, to follow him. We have heard this story so often that we assume it was inevitable, but imagine alternative ways Jesus could have begun his public ministry. Jesus could have gone by himself to Jerusalem and proclaimed the advent of God’s kingdom; he could have simply gone around healing and teaching without summoning anyone to follow him; or perhaps he could have transmitted his teachings by writing them down on a papyrus scroll. But he started out by inviting four fishermen to follow him.

We could dwell at length on the significance of Jesus’ choice of fishermen to be his first disciples. They were simple men with little, if any, education, and no doubt there is much significance of Jesus’ choice of the poor and simple to be his first followers. But what interests me most is not whom he chose but that he chose at all.

By summoning these fishermen to follow him, Jesus was telling us three things: First, the Christian faith is a communal enterprise. You can pray and read the Bible in the privacy of your own home, but you cannot be a Christian alone. Someone taught you to pray and read the Bible. Someone baptized you. And holy communion is not like a frozen chicken pot pie; it involves breaking bread with others, not grabbing a snack in front of the TV.

Second, it follows that love is central to the Christian faith, because community is impossible without love. One of my favorite quotations is from The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Nothing we do however virtuous can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” Love is essential to community, because love is a verb, not a noun. Love is what we do, not just a nice feeling. Love is necessary for the creation and maintenance of community because community (as Parker Palmer reminds us) is “that place where the person you least want to live with always lives!" Love is what enables us to smile when the head of the Flower Guild rearranges the flowers we have placed on the altar. Love is what a pastor needs when an angry parishioner takes her to task for her sermon on the Iraq war. Love is what a lot of us need when our old and well-loved hymns are replaced by a five word, three chord chorus, and the words are projected on the wall via PowerPoint.

Finally, Jesus’ choice of three fishermen to be his followers means that there will be quarrels and divisions in the church, because wherever two or three are gathered there will be at least three or four different opinions. And this has been the case from first century Palestine to twenty-first century Philadelphia or London or Rome. Today’s reading from First Corinthians illustrates the point: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you…”

Counselors frequently say that married couples need to learn how to have healthy fights, because there is no couple that will not occasionally have a sharp disagreement. Similarly, the church needs to learn how to have healthy fights. We need to learn how to be frank and straightforward with each other; to challenge points of view that we believe to be in error; to confront one another in love when we see inappropriate behavior. We are wrong if we either rush to consensus on a topic or if we never take a stand for fear of alienating a faction within the church. A church that engages in spirited debate not only needs to know how to fight, it also needs to know how to ask for forgiveness.

One of my favorite prayers in the Book of Common Prayer is in the wedding ceremony. We pray that the newly married couple would have the grace “when they hurt each to seek each other’s forgiveness” as well as God’s forgiveness. Note that the prayer says “when they hurt each other” not “if they hurt each other,” because life in community, even a community of two people who are in love with each other, will inevitably lead at some point to pain and the need to say “I’m sorry.”

We make two equally disastrous mistakes in the Christian church. The first is to over-emphasize doctrine and the second is to under-emphasize it. Some of our more progressive leaders, e.g., Bishop Spong, argue that our unity is constituted exclusively by becoming Christ’s disciples through baptism. For them, fidelity to historic doctrinal principles is virtually tantamount to idolatry. The second group argues that the Christian faith is constituted by close adherence to a set of propositions that have been passed down through the centuries, especially the creeds and holy scripture.

The truth is somewhere in between. The progressive group is right about the bedrock of our unity. Ultimately, we are Christians because we have been incorporated in Christ in baptism. But the more conservative group is right to emphasize doctrine because, while doctrines are not the path itself, they are (if you will) the signs that help us stay on the path of faithful discipleship.

The summons Jesus issued to the fishermen long ago he still issues to us today: “Come, follow me.” He did not promise that we would like our fellow disciples or that we would always get along with each other. Indeed, if the New Testament’s picture of the early church is to be believed, then we are in for occasional black eyes and bloody noses. But after we have had our say and heard each other out, then we need to hear Paul’s admonition again: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (A prayer for the unity of the Church from the Book of Common Prayer)

Dr. King Remembered

I grew up in Alabama in the age of the civil rights movement. I was born in 1955, the year that the Montgomery bus boycott catapulted Dr. King to national prominence. I was eight years old in 1963, the year of Dr. King's Birmingham campaign and the horrific bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the deaths of four little girls who were waiting for Sunday school to begin.

I would like to be able to tell you that I have vivid memories of these events, but I don't. I remember some fear and anxiety in my family over the demonstrations that were going on in Birmingham. I am embarrassed to admit that I remember seeing separate drinking fountains and rest rooms and being told by my grandmother not to drink from the so-called "colored" drinking fountain. I remember that I was not allowed to take swimming lessons at the newly-integrated Birmingham YMCA because of fear of … well, I'm not really sure what the fear was about. And I remember being nervous when my elementary school was integrated, although I am certain I was not nearly as afraid as the black children who suddenly found themselves in a room full of white children.

Even though I don't personally remember much about the Birmingham campaign, the Selma march, and so on, I had the good fortune many years later to know some persons who did know a lot about these events from their personal experience. At two different universities in Birmingham I taught a course on religion and American history. Each of the three years that I taught the course, I invited a speaker to the class who had been personally involved in the movement. The first speaker was the Rev. John Porter, pastor of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, who had been Dr. King's associate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. The second speaker was Rabbi Milton Grafman, the rabbi emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, and the third was David Vann, who had been city attorney for the city of Birmingham during the Birmingham campaign.

The most illuminating speaker by far was Rabbi Grafman. A good and gracious man, Rabbi Grafman led Birmingham's Temple Emanu-El wisely and well for many years. However, he will forever be remembered as one of the seven white clergymen who wrote to Dr. King urging him to delay his protests in Birmingham. Dr. King replied to them in his best-known essay, "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail". When Rabbi Grafman and his colleagues urged King to wait, he replied, "To the Negro, 'wait' has meant 'never'. We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights". Rabbi Grafman came to my class and gave my students and me a very persuasive explanation for why he urged Dr. King to wait. After he had left, I asked my students to tell me who they thought had been right: Rabbi Grafman or Dr. King. Every one of the students in my class was white, middle-class, and southern, and unanimously they said that Rabbi Grafman had been wrong and Dr. King had been right.

Undoubtedly, Dr. King's greatest accomplishment was his role as a leader in the civil rights' movement and a catalyst who must be given a large share of responsibility for the civil rights' legislation of the 1960s. However, I want to mention two other accomplishments for which he should be remembered.

Dr. King came to national prominence in the late 1950s. We remember the 50s as the age of Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and "I like Ike". Historian of religion Mark Noll argues that complacency characterized American religion the 50s: "Conservative evangelicals... translated the gospel into forms of entertainment that looked as much like versions of youthful diversion as alternatives to it. Mainline Protestants… were also busy creating a religion of the lowest common denominator with less and less that was distinctly Christian". (Noll, p. 441) And then suddenly, in this decade of complacency, Martin Luther King appeared.

One of King’s greatest accomplishments was to be a "public Christian". What I mean is that Dr. King brought the teachings of the Christian faith to bear on public issues, especially the most important issue of the 50s and 60s, full and equal civil rights for African Americans. In doing so, Dr. King gave new credibility to the Christian faith. Many American intellectuals thought of the Christian faith as intellectually bankrupt and as having little or nothing to say about the great issues of the day. Dr. King never spoke simply as a politician; he spoke as a prophet. That is to say, he spoke as one who could see God's hand at work in human history and who gave voice to God's demands upon human life, both individual and corporate. In his very first public statement as leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, he said, "We must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all of our action." The protestors must not hate their white opponents, but be guided by Christian love while seeking justice… "Love is one of the pinnacle parts of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation". (Garrow, p. 24)

At the same time that Dr. King gave new credibility to the Christian faith to those who regarded it with suspicion and skepticism, he also provided a model for Christians to speak out on the great issues of the day. His example inspired and encouraged any number of other Christians to apply the Christian faith to the great issues of the day, especially the anti-war movement. In other words, Dr. King stood on that blurry line dividing the sacred and the secular, the church and the world. He reminded the world that God is active in its history, whether the world recognizes God's presence or not, and he reminded the church that God created and loves the world and calls us to engagement in the world on behalf of the poor and the powerless.

Enough of history… the purpose of celebrating Dr. King's life should not be just about praising a great man. Charles Willie, one of Dr. King's classmates at Morehouse College, said, "By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. By exalting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr., into a legendary tale that is annually told, we fail to recognize his humanity - his personal and public struggles-that are similar to yours and mine. By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise". (Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 625)

I am certain that Dr. King himself would urge us not to dwell on his accomplishments. Ever a Baptist preacher, King would invite us to turn our attention from the messenger to the message and to invite the God whom Dr. King served to work as redemptively and powerfully in our own lives as God did in Dr. King's life.

What I take away from Dr. King is this: God has a mission for each of us. It will often be a mission that is difficult to bear, but God will give us strength. Dr. King put it better than I could. He said, "I pray that recognizing the necessity of suffering we will make of it a virtue…. To suffer in a righteous cause is to grow to our humanity's full stature. If only to save ourselves, we need the vision to see the ordeals of this generation as the opportunity to transform ourselves and American society…. We have … a responsibility to set out to discover what we are called to do. And after we discover that, we should set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we can muster…. One knows deep down with there is something in the very structure of the cosmos that will ultimately bring about fulfillment and the triumph of that which is right. And this is the only thing that can keep one going in difficult periods."

Several years ago I read A.N. Wilson's biography of the English writer C.S. Lewis. It was a very controversial biography because it revealed many of Lewis' weaknesses and failings. However, I came away from it with greater respect for Lewis, because I discovered that he struggled with many of the same temptations that plague me. I feel much the same way about Dr. King. Did Dr. King have feet of clay? Of course, he did. Do all of us have feet of clay? Of course we do. But the message of Dr. King's life, as St. Paul reminds us, is that "God's strength is made perfect in weakness." Dr. King accepted the burden, the mission, that God gave him, even though the cost was great, even though it led to death. It was God's power in Dr. King's life that made him great, in spite of his weaknesses. And so it is in our lives. Our weaknesses are the very stuff which God uses to build a new world.

Epiphany 1, Year C: A Tall Tale

I want to give a personal two thumbs up to the movie Big Fish. Big Fish is the story of a father and a son that begins and ends at a river. The father, Edward Bloom, is larger than life. On the day of his son William's birth he catches the biggest catfish in Alabama's Blue River. The catfish is so big that… well, it's so big that it furnishes the material for stories that Edward tells for the rest of his life, including the night of William's engagement party when he makes himself the center of attention rather than his son and his son's fiancée.

William comes to believe that his father's life has just been one big fish story, and when Edward lies dying, William becomes determined to know what his father was "really like." But whenever William asks his father a question- about his childhood in tiny Ashland, Alabama; his college days; how he met his wife, William's mother; how he got his start in business - his father responds with another tall tale.

In a sense, the gospels are also the story of a father and a son that begins at a river. The gospels tell us that Jesus went down to the river along with the crowds drawn by the preaching of John the Baptist. And at the river, something happened. Something happened that sounds a bit like one of Edward Bloom's tall tales. Some say that the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and descended upon Jesus and that a heavenly voice spoke, saying, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

The Bible might be regarded as a tall tale, and indeed some scholars look at it that way. Water into wine? A handful of loaves and fish multiplied to feed five thousand? Sight restored to the blind? The lame leaping and walking? The dead raised? Impossible, they say. The products of naïve, unsophisticated and primitive people, or else willful distortions of the truth.

Perhaps they are right. What would we have seen and heard if we had been present at the baptism of Jesus? Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that there was a dove that descended upon Jesus and a heavenly voice that announced that he was God's Son, the beloved one.

What if we had been there and had seen and heard nothing? What if years later someone told us this story of the Spirit taking the form of a dove and God's voice resounding like thunder? Would we be like the son in Big Fish? Would we dismiss the impossible story and say, "No, tell me what REALLY happened?" Or would we understand that sometimes a tall tale conveys the truth more effectively than the who, what, when, and where of a so-called factual account.

I liked the movie so much that I went right out and bought the novel on which it was based, which I enjoyed just as much as the movie. A scene in the novel Big Fish but not in the movie tells of the day that people heard that Edward Bloom was dying and began to gather in front of his house. First just a few and then more and more until dozens of people were in the front yard - treading on the shrubbery, trampling on the monkey grass. Finally, William's mother tells him to ask them all to leave. As they leave, one man says to William, "We all have stories, just as you do. Ways in which he touched us, helped us, gave us jobs, lent us money, sold it to us wholesale. Lots of stories, big and small. They all add up. Over a lifetime it all adds up. That's why we're here, William. We're a part of him, of who he is, just as he is a part of us."

Like the friends of Edward who gathered on the lawn when he was dying, we, too, have stories to tell about One who helped us. "Ways in which he touched us… Over a lifetime it all adds up… We're a part of him, of who he is, just as he is a part of us." We have been incorporated into a story that sounds an awful lot like a tall tale. A father blessed his son and sent him out on a great quest. He had adventure after adventure along the way: the angels sang at his birth; mighty kings brought rich gifts to him; a wicked ruler tried to slay him; at his word plain water became rich wine; his touch brought sight to the blind and raised the dead to life again; although he was a simple man the wise and learned marveled at his words. He undertook great trials and surpassed all expectations. Finally, a close friend betrayed him; he was given a mock trial and executed. But then the greatest marvel of all happened. He outwitted even death itself. And he returned to the father, having completed the quest, and his father and all his household rejoiced once again over the beloved Son with whom he was well pleased.

In a sense, our stories, too, are about a Father and a Son and they begin at a river, or at least they begin with water. As children or as adults we were brought to the water, and just as the Spirit descended upon Jesus, so the Spirit descended upon us. And just as the Father announced that Jesus was his beloved Son with whom he was well pleased, so the Father announced that we were his beloved daughter or son and that he was well-pleased with us, too. Does that sound like a tall tale to you? Is it easier to believe that your parents dressed you in a christening gown that had been handed down from great, great, great, great Aunt So-and-so and brought you to church where a doddery old man held you over a stone basin, mumbled a few words, and splashed water on your head? So be it, but personally, I prefer the Bible's tall tale and believe that there's more truth in it than in a "just the facts, ma'am" account of what happened.

The Bible's tall tale is our story. You are the Father's beloved daughter or son; he loves you and is well-pleased with you. And he has sent you out to have marvelous adventures and accomplish great tasks: to love your enemies, to return good for evil, to bring wholeness to the sick, to stand up and speak out for those ignored and despised by others - the poor, hungry, and homeless. And at the end of the quest you will have such stories to tell. "You're not going to believe this, but let me tell you about the time…"

Christmas 2: What star is this?

The story is told of a Christmas pageant in a small church. It was so small that one child – a girl – represented all three magi. She proudly carried all three gifts on a pillow to the manger, and when she arrived, she announced, “Lo, I bring rich gifts to the baby Jesus – gold, circumstance, and mud.”

Most of us would be very glad to have the kind of supernatural guidance that the magi were given. Matthew’s account of the magi tells us that they were guided by a star. “We observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage”. And later the star that led them to Jerusalem also led them to Bethlehem. “Ahead of them went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.”

There are few stars to guide us in the world in which we live. What guides you?

All of us are sometimes guided by the star of self-interest, and some people are guided by nothing else.

The Scottish philosopher and economist, Adam Smith, famously remarked that self-interest is “the invisible hand” that guides a free market to produce goods and services beneficial to all. Generally, I think Adam Smith was right, but I believe that we should be guided by more than self-interest.

It would be wrong for a business owner to neglect her bottom line. She has employees to pay, and a publicly-held business must also produce dividends for its stockholders. However, there is a time and place for business to consider the well-being of the community, as well as the bottom line.

Several years ago I taught an introductory ethics course for a group of so-called “mature students”. These were students who worked all day and could attend courses only in the evening. I decided that I would ask them to make brief presentations to the class on ethical dilemmas they encountered at work. This was the year that the controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ came out, and one of my students worked for a chain of movie theatres. She did a report on whether or not her company should show this film and concluded that it would be OK to screen the film if it made money for the theatre chain. Other class members challenged her, saying that the theatre chain had a responsibility to the community not to present obscene and sacrilegious films.

Another class member worked for the largest electrical utility in the state of Alabama, and she talked to the class about the ethical dilemma posed by those who could not afford to pay their power bills during the coldest months of the year. She concluded that Alabama Power had a responsibility to its shareholders to produce a profit and so should cut off power when people could not pay. The class generally agreed with her. So, I said, “What is the difference between the theatre chain’s responsibility to the community not to show objectionable movies and the power company’s responsibility to the community not to leave the poor without electricity during cold weather?” And the class was silent. They saw that self-interest is not always a good guide for behavior.

Some claim to be guided by the voice of God speaking within their hearts.

Several years ago The New Yorker ran a story about a prominent journalist named John McCandlish Phillips, Jr. It seems that Phillips got his start in journalism when he was traveling by train from Baltimore to Boston. Phillips says that when the train stopped at New York’s Penn Station God spoke to him, saying, “Get off the train.” In New York, Phillips saw an ad for an editorial trainee at the New York Times and God spoke to him again saying that it was his mission to get a job at the Times.

I don’t want to disparage this man’s experience, but God doesn’t speak to me in that way. I think that such experiences of direct divine communication are few and far between. However, I do believe that God guides us.

Most of the time God guides us by the light of reason. Seventeenth century English theologians were fond of quoting this verse from the Book of Proverbs: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” (Prov. 20.27) Those theologians identified the “candle of the Lord” as human reason.

Many times God guides me by opening or closing doors. It seems an inefficient way of providing guidance, and running into those closed doors is often terribly painful! However, this has been the way I have often experienced God’s guidance.

But God also guides us subtly and indirectly through prayer. I believe that if we are silent and open ourselves to God in prayer, then a star will arise in the skies and guide us on our journeys just as surely as the magi were guided on theirs. However, note this important fact: the stars are unimaginably far away and we receive only a tiny amount of light from them. In other words, the traveled in the darkness and received only the faintest of lights to show them the way. We, too, travel in the darkness, and the guidance we receive is seldom brighter than a star.

You and I are on the same journey as the magi, the most important journey of all – the journey to God. It is in that quest above all that we should be looking for God’s star to guide us. And God never fails to guide faithful seekers.

"Silent Night" A Christmas Meditation

Recently, a parent found “Silent Night” offensive because of its religious nature, and a New Jersey school deleted it from its holiday music program (although they later reinstated it). My first reaction was “How silly;” the school’s program was admirably PC (politically correct), including songs celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. But then after more reflection, I thought that perhaps this was a good thing. Maybe the parent who found “Silent Night” offensive understood a little more about Christmas than the teachers who put together the holiday music program.

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin, mother and child,
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace

What’s so offensive about that? Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never been a big fan of “Silent Night.” It seems to belong to the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” school of hymnody. However, the Christmas story is there in shorthand. A mother who is also a virgin… a holy infant. I wonder about the “heavenly peace,” though. If we follow Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem was anything but peaceful. It was so crowded with weary travelers that the only place a very pregnant woman could find to rest was a cattle stall. Matthew’s version is even less peaceful. Joseph is tempted to “put away” his fiancée when she becomes pregnant before their wedding. And after the magi alert one king (Herod) that another king (Jesus) has been born, he has all the children in the region put to death.

We have let culture co-opt Christmas for so long that we no longer appreciate the hard and dangerous edge of the Christmas story. Christmas is both offensive and subversive. It offends our reason by celebrating a God who embraces human weakness so completely that we confess that the “holy infant” was in the most literal sense “God in the flesh”. And Christmas is subversive because the true King came to his kingdom to reign, and the “kingdoms of this world” were out to get him from beginning to end. Herod tried to use brute violence to kill Jesus and failed, but Pilate succeeded by using the tried and true method of getting rid of troublemakers: Try ‘em; convict ‘em; string ‘em up.

Some would argue that Christmas is a holiday for everyone, not just Christians. Perhaps it is. Certainly, the circle around the manger is wide enough to include all of us. But the marriage between Christmas and culture has blurred its distinctiveness. The Christmas story is a dazzling tale of daring adventure. It is about a rescue mission in hostile territory. Imagine parachuting into an occupied country during a bitterly fought war. That is a poor metaphor but it gives some sense of what God did at Christmas.

So this Christmas, by all means let’s sing “Silent Night” at the elementary school holiday program. But the words of Robert Southwell (1561-1595) that Benjamin Britten set in his Ceremony of Carols give us a better sense of the grandeur and mystery of Christmas:

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmed wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

Glory to God in the highest!

Advent 4A: Christmas according to Paul

For a couple of years I taught Old and New Testament survey to college students at a small liberal arts college in the deep South. It was a great experience because I finally learned all those things that Brevard Childs and Luke Johnson had tried to teach me, but even more because I had some wonderful students. Every teacher has a list of his or her favorite wrong answers. On a New Testament final I asked my students to list three of the symbolic animals in the Book of Revelation. One student wrote, “The lion, the dragon, and the seal.” I asked her, “Seal? There are no seals in the Book of Revelation.” And she replied, “Of course there are. It talks about the seven seals, doesn’t it?’ Another question was “’BLANK and BLANK to you’ was Paul’s characteristic greeting.” Instead of “grace and peace,” one student wrote, “Hello and how are you?”

One of my favorite thought-provoking questions to my students was “Just what did Paul know about Jesus?” and watch their faces grow puzzled. St. Paul may have known a great deal about Jesus’ earthly life, but his letters give us very little information about him. Paul tells us that Jesus gathered with his friends for a ritual meal the night before his death; he gives us Jesus’ teaching on divorce (1 Cor 7); and of course, he knew that Jesus died and was raised from the dead. But other than that, Paul says very little about the historical Jesus. There is nothing about the miracles and the parables. All that Paul tells us about the birth of Jesus is that “…when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4.4) And he adds in the epistle for Advent 4A that Jesus was “descended from David according to the flesh”.

It would seem that if we want to “hear again the message of the angels, and in heart and mind … go even unto Bethlehem”, then we need to look somewhere other than the letters of Paul. But Paul’s letters are the oldest documents in the New Testament. What would Paul tell us if we asked him to tell us the Christmas story?

One clue is in the first verses to Paul’s letter to the Romans. Notice that Paul collapses Jesus life into two events: Paul tells us that Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection”. That’s a breathtaking example of the Bible’s way of compressing an extensive narrative into a few words. Paul moves from Jesus’ earthly lineage to his resurrection without pausing to tell us anything that happened in between.

For Paul, Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection were everything. To borrow a metaphor from science, Jesus’ death and resurrection were Paul’s Hubble telescope. For Paul, the perspective of the cross and the empty tomb brought everything else into sharp focus. For Paul all of human life was lived under the sign of the cross and in the light of the resurrection. Another way of saying this is that the New Testament was written backward; it was written from the perspective of the resurrection. Just ask yourself: what would we know about Jesus of Nazareth if it were not for the resurrection? To be sure, he was a remarkable man. He healed the sick, spoke eloquently of God’s love for us and our obligation to love others, and boldly denounced religious hypocrisy. But the same could be said of any number of great religious leaders. What set Jesus apart is that he rose from the dead. Christmas shines with the brightness of the resurrection. The “Gloria” that the angels sang to the shepherds echoed the Easter “alleluia”.

So this Christmas let us go again “in heart and mind …even unto Bethlehem” and “hear again the message of the angels”. But this year, let’s ask Paul to tell us the Christmas story which is also the Easter story, the story of One who moved from borrowed manger to borrowed tomb. And because his story did not end with a borrowed tomb, we, too, can sing the angel’s song of Christmas glory and Easter triumph.

Advent 3A: Are you the one who is to come?

In almost every Eastern Orthodox Church the apse, that is, the space behind the altar, is covered with an enormous fresco of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus out toward the world. For the Orthodox, Mary is an icon or image of the church. The painting in the apse is visual shorthand for what the church is supposed to be about: conceiving Christ within us by the power of the Holy Spirit and presenting him to the world. Mary seems to be seeing, “Look here! Here is one we have all been waiting for! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

The readings for Advent 3A bring together two figures who point toward Jesus: Mary and John the Baptist. The painter Matthias Grünewald also brings them together in his Isenheim altarpiece. One one side of the altarpiece we see the Beloved Disciple supporting Mary the Mother of Jesus. Although devastated by grief, she is looking at her son’s body on the cross. Her gaze guides us to the cross, so in a sense, she is fulfilling the function that Orthodox iconography assigns to her. On the other side of the cross is John the Baptist pointing his bony finger at the Crucified Christ and holding a book on which is written the words, Ecce Agnus Dei – “Behold, the Lamb of God.”

Theologian Karl Barth had a reproduction of Grünewald’s painting of John the Baptist on the wall above his desk. He said that it perfectly exemplified the task of a theologian: to point the way toward the Crucified Christ. Perhaps if Barth had been a little more Catholic and a little less Reformed, he would have had a reproduction of the entire altarpiece above his desk, because Mary, no less than John, points us toward her son.

In the gospel reading for Advent 3A, John's disciples asked Jesus an intriguing question: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" And even more intriguingly, Jesus did not directly answer the question. Instead, Jesus told them what they would see when the true Messiah came: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” The Magnificat, the canticle of Mary that we may use in place of the psalm on Advent 3, also tells us what to look for. When the Messiah comes, he will “scatter the proud in their conceit… cast down the mighty from their thrones… [lift] up the lowly… [fill] the hungry with good things… [send the rich] empty away.”

Perhaps Jesus did not give John’s disciples a simple yes or no answer because he wanted to keep us on our toes. That’s what Advent is about: staying on our toes, being awake and alert, and watching for the signs that the Messiah is drawing near. And if we really long for the Messiah to return, then we will not only be like Mary and John, pointing the world in the direction of the Crucified and Risen One, we will also find that we are the ones opening the eyes of the blind, helping the lame walk again, and filling the hungry with good things. Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come!

The Next Christendom

I promise that my weblog will not be just a forum for reviews of New York Times' columns and books, but the David Brooks' column that I touted in my last blog reminded me of a terrific book I read about a year ago that I want to encourage everyone to read. In his book The Next Christendom (Oxford, 2003) Penn State professor Philip Jenkins argues four propositions convincingly.

1. The center of gravity of the Christian faith has already or soon will shift decisively to the southern hemisphere.
2. Most Christians are now or soon will be non-white.
3. The most important influences on the 21st century church will be evangelicalism and pentecostalism.
4. The conflict between the church and Islam will intensify.

There is no doubt that he is correct. I used to say almost exactly the same thing to my church history students at the conclusion of my course on church history from the Reformation to the present. I wish I'd written a book about it! The only thing I added that Jenkins doesn't mention is the significance of the ordination of women at all levels of the church, but this is a largely First World phenomenon and not accepted by the largest Christian body - the Roman Catholic Church.

Jenkins spins out some of the implications of these changes. One is that the churches of the global south are coming north. Walk down the streets of almost any large city, and you will see that he is correct. In every major city there are numerous and growing Spanish-speaking churches; there are Korean and Chinese churches and African churches from every part of the African continent. Jenkins points out that the largest church in London was founded by a Nigerian pastor. The southern hemisphere churches are not just founding congregations for their expatriates; they are sending missionaries to evangelize the secularized northern hemisphere.

However, Jenkins' theses have economic and political consequences, too. Take oil-rich Nigeria, for example. Imagine that a repressive Christian regime came to power and began to persecute Muslims systematically. It is entirely likely that Muslim countries would intervene to protect their fellow Muslims, and it is not hard to imagine other African states or even European states being drawn into a larger conflict. Or consider this: Although China is still an officially Marxist state, Chinese communities around the Pacific rim are often characterized by vibrant and growing Christian churches. What would happen if Chinese Christians in (for example) Muslim Indonesia were oppressed by the Indonesian government? Is it possible that China would intervene to protect Chinese Christians from Muslim persecution? It's a scenario both ironic and frightening, but it could happen.

Jenkins argues that the church is undergoing a transformation as momentous as the Reformation. I believe he's right. His book is the 21st century's equivalent of the 95 Theses Martin Luther nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

Just who IS John Stott, anyway?

Has the New York Times gotten religion or what? Last week I was impressed by Nicholas Kristof's excellent article, "Apocalypse (Almost) Now." Today Jewish columnist David Brooks has an equally fine article, "Who is John Stott?" Brooks starts with a mini-review of last Sunday's Meet the Press, a disaster encounter between Jerry Falwell and the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land on the right and Al Sharpton and Sojourners' magazine editor Jim Wallis on the left. The only one of the four who had anything to say that was worth hearing was Wallis. Brooks aptly summarizes the encounter by saying that inviting these four guys to the table to discuss politics was like "inviting Britney Spears and Larry Flynt to discuss D. H. Lawrence. " Then Brooks makes the point that the media elite should pay attention to, namely, that in their quest for ratings and readers, the media misrepresent evangelical Christians by focusing on the "Elmer Gantry-style blowhards" instead of the responsible and important figures such as John Stott. As Brooks says in his column, most people do not know who Stott is. I would guess that even most Episcopalians (and perhaps even a majority of members of evangelical churches) do not know who he is. Brooks does an excellent job of outlining Stott's significance, so I won't repeat it here. But, in short, Stott is unquestionably the most important Anglican evangelical of the last 25 or 30 years. Now, make no mistake: I'm somewhere to Stott's left, but I respect Stott and regard him as an evangelical who holds reasonable and respectable views (unlike Falwell, Robertson, and the SBC's Land).

Brooks' point about the importance of presenting a balanced portrayal of conservative religious leaders can hardly be overemphasized. I would second it and amplify it by saying that the media need to do a better job of presenting responsible voices from all points on the religious spectrum. Too often the media call on Bishop Spong and those like him to represent the Christian left without realizing just how far beyond the pale Spong's views really are. To borrow a metaphor from politics, to believe that Spong is a responsible representative of the Christian left is like believing that Ralph Nader is a responsible representative of the political left. And believing that Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson is a good representative of the religious right is like believing that Pat Buchanan is a good representative of the political right.

Brooks' last few sentences bear quoting in full:

"Politicians, especially Democrats, are now trying harder to appeal to people of faith. But people of faith are not just another interest group, like gun owners. You have to begin by understanding the faith. And you can't understand this rising global movement if you don't meet its authentic representatives.

Not Falwell, but Stott."

Eschatology Today

When I was a student at Yale Divinity School, some wits put out an occasional satirical journal entitled "Eschatology Today." The title still makes me chuckle. Nothing seems to change more dramatically than fundamentalist versions of eschatology, that is, the doctrine of last things, e.g., the second coming, final judgment, the end of the world, and so on. As New York Times' journalist Nicholas Kristof points out in his outstanding article, "Apocalypse (Almost) Now," Hal Lindsay's The Late, Great Planet Earth seemed to anticipate that the Second Coming would occur before the end of the 20th century. Kristof also references William Miller's prediction that the world would end in 1845 which brought hundreds or even thousands of people to hills and mountain tops all over America to await the event. Well, Miller's followers had to go back home while he recalculated his predictions, and Lindsay's readers are still waiting. And one could cite hundreds of similar stories throughout the history of the church.

I bring this up not to ridicule either conservative Christians or Christian eschatology per se. Eschatology is an important element in the Bible and in Christian theology, and liberal Christians are seriously mistaken if they either dismiss it or misconstrue it. For example, in her weblog, "Sarah Laughed", the Rev. Sarah Dylan Breuer writes that "We're in the season of Advent, and time of prayerful reflection and keen watching for Christ's coming. This is not the second coming of Christ. We call that one 'Easter.'" (link) Huh? Easter the second coming? I don't THINK so! I'm not aware of any Christian theologian from St. Paul to Rosemary Radford Ruether who would equate Easter with the second coming of Christ. When the Risen Christ leaves his followers, the heavenly messenger tells them, "This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1.11) And the Nicene Creed is pretty clear that we're still waiting for a fairly significant event: "He will come again in power and great glory."

There are at least five main strands of eschatological thought in the Bible: the prophets, the synoptic evangelists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the letters of Paul, John's gospel, and the Book of Revelation. And they do not speak with a single voice. The prophets anticipate that God will vindicate Israel and establish a reign of justice centered upon Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty, although they hint that this will have a cosmic dimension. For example, Isaiah writes, "A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.... He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth...Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." Isaiah seems to anticipate a world redeemed and restored under the direction of a ruler from the Davidic line. Second, the synoptic evangelists present the teaching of Jesus about his second coming in terms heavily influenced by the prophets, especially the Book of Daniel and the later prophets. The classic statement is the so-called "little apocalypse" in Mark: "In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory." (Mark 13.24-26) Third, John's gospel has little if any eschatological horizon. The closest John gets to a prediction of the second coming is Jesus' statement in 15.26 that "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. " Fourth, Paul has an eschatology deeply influenced by first century Jewish thought, although his unique contribution was to associate the resurrection of the faithful with the second coming: "Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." (1 Cor. 15.51.52) Finally, the Bible's most highly developed eschatology is in the Book of Revelation. Its vision is profoundly informed by first century Jewish apocalyptic thought which (in turn) evolved out of the ideas put forward in the Book of Daniel and similar documents. Needless to say, the Book of Revelation is far too complex to be summarized in a few sentences.

Conservatives too often over-emphasize eschatology and under-appreciate the Bible's divergent eschatological views. On the other hand, liberals often use those divergent views as an excuse to dismiss eschatology altogether. However, the Bible is consistent in its overall eschatological message.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells us that the universe is finite. It had a beginning and will have an end. Thus far, science and faith agree. But what faith tells us (and science does not) is that the universe is God's good creation and that whether it ends in a bang or a whimper, God will both judge and redeem all that God created.

Christian eschatology has undergone a rebirth, thanks primarily to the towering figure of Jürgen Moltmann, who "rehabilitated" eschatology in his book Theology of Hope and subsequent volumes. But the eschatology we need is one which puts the emphasis where it belongs: on the God who comes to establish justice in the sense in which Israel's prophets used that word. That is to say, the future anticipated by Biblical eschatology will bring good news to the poor and bad news to their oppressors. The question for us is not about how to interpret all the complex and confusing symbolic language of the Book of Revelation. It is far more important to be attentive and alert, ready to open the accounts of our lives to the One who will come to judge and redeem those for whom he died and rose again, and as far as possible to build God's realm upon earth. The question is not, Who is the anti-Christ? There have been anti-Christs from the time of Nero to the present, and they will continue to the very end. And the question is certainly not, When will Jesus come again? No one knows. The question is, What did we do when the homeless Christ needed shelter and the thirsty Christ needed a drink of water? (cf. Matthew 25.31-46)

Advent 2A (December 5, 2004)

The vision recorded in chapter 2 of Isaiah is remarkable. The prophet appears to envision a restoration of the harmony between human and non-human creation that existed in Eden:

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
…
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;

But the prophet’s vision is not just Eden restored but Eden amplified. The tree of which Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat was the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil and after they had eaten, the Holy One acknowledged that they had “become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” But the world of which Isaiah dreams is one in which humankind will be saturated with divine knowledge “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Knowledge of one kind was the exit from paradise; knowledge of another kind is the way back into the garden. Henry Kissinger once remarked that the problem that the problem with some students was that they knew everything. “But, unfortunately,” he continued, “they don’t know anything else.” Apparently, his enigmatic remark referred to the kind of person many of us know: a person who knows all about a vast range of subject but who lacks spiritual depth.

The English language has only one word for knowing but most other languages have at least two. The French have savoir and connaitre; Germans have wissen and kennen. In both cases, the first word refers to intellectual and scientific knowing; the second to personal, intimate knowledge. The first is the word we would use to say we know the multiplication tables, and the second is the word we would use to say we know someone whom we love with all our being.

The knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve acquired from the forbidden fruit was good as far as it went, but it was only knowledge about. The knowledge of the Lord that will cover the earth when God restores paradise is of a different kind altogether. As Paul says in First Corinthians 13.12, “Now we know in part, but then we will know fully, even as we have been known.”

November 14, 2004

In the 1979 Prayer Book the following wonderful prayer floats around in the last few Sundays before Advent instead of finding the home it deserves:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, p. 236)

The Rev. Prof. Peter J. Gomes, Harvard’s university chaplain, likes to tease his Episcopalian friends by saying that the Episcopal Church should really be called the Bible church because of the amount of scripture that is read in most Episcopal churches on Sunday: an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a portion of one of the Gospels. And yet you rarely hear a sermon about the Bible.

What do Episcopalians believe about the Bible? Every Episcopal priest is required at his or her ordination to sign a statement affirming that the Bible is the word of God. But that simply begs the question, What do we mean by the word of God?

We are fairly clear about what do NOT believe about the Bible. We are not fundamentalists and do not believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. But I believe that we need to move from a negative position to a positive one.

Most Episcopalians either tacitly or quite openly believe that there are portions of the Bible that are certainly not the word of God, and the lectionary aids and abets us in this by omitting many of the Bible’s “hard sayings” from our cycle of eucharistic propers. For example, the eucharistic lectionary omits chs 13-18 of the Book of Revelation. The problem with this is that by omitting sections of the Bible progressives are ceding interpretation of these passages to conservatives. Like explorers we need to stake our claim to what Karl Barth called “the strange new world of the Bible.”

Has the Bible been used as a stick to beat up women, African Americans, and gays and lesbians? Of course it has. Does this mean that something is wrong with the Bible? Not at all. Any good gift can be abused. Food, drink, and sexuality are all God’s good gifts and all of them can be and often are abused. The way to deal with bad interpretations of difficult texts is not to pretend that they aren’t in the Bible but to do a better job of interpreting them.

Here are some things that I believe we mean when we say that the Bible is the word of God:

First, the Bible tells God’s story. No where else can we read the story of how God created the world, called Israel to be God’s covenant people, and sent prophets to proclaim the divine word of justice and grace. Only the Bible tells us the story of how God came among us as one of us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible contains the unique record of Jesus’ ministry and teaching. And only the Bible contains Paul’s witness to the Spirit’s work in spreading the Gospel from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the “ends of the earth.” This is not to say that other faiths do not have great treasures in their holy books. Far from it. There is much wisdom in the Qu’ran, the Upanishads, and the Buddhist sutras. But the Bible’s story is unique. And when we are baptized the Bible’s story becomes our story. When we are baptized we become one of the Hebrew slaves whom God brought safely across the Red Sea. When we are baptized we are (quite literally) buried and raised again with Christ. And we learn this story no where else but in the Bible.

Second, to read the Bible is to invoke the very power of God’s to change the world, for the Bible is arguably the most subversive book in human history. There’s a reason that slaveowners didn’t want captive Africans to learn to read and the Soviets did their best to keep Bibles out of the Soviet Union. From beginning to end the Bible promises that God will overthrow the powerful and will exalt the humble. The Bible not only comforts the oppressed; it might also inspire them to rise up.

Third, we learn God’s own language when we read the Bible faithfully. Muslims insist that the Qu’ran can only properly be read in Arabic. Christians do not say that the Bible can only properly be read in its original Hebrew and Greek, but we do believe that the Bible has a unique grammar. To know God aright, we must learn the Bible’s grammar. The grammar of the Bible is not a matter of proper nouns and irregular verbs. When we learn the Bible’s grammar then we become fluent in turning the other cheek, returning good for evil, taking up our cross, standing on the side of the poor and persecuted, and so on.

In the Gospel reading appointed for Proper 28, Year C, Jesus promises his disciples that when they are “brought before kings and governors” he will give them the words they need to speak. (Luke 21.12-13). He’s already given us most of the words we need to speak. They are between the covers of the book we call the Holy Bible.

BTW, check out former Sen. Gary Hart’s terrific article about faith and politics in the Nov. 8, New York Times.

Christ the King (November 21, 2004)

Three random thoughts:

First, a wonderful story from Malcolm Muggeridge's autobiography:

In the dark days of Stalin’s rule, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge worked for the British newspaper, the Guardian, as a correspondent. One day while walking in the woods outside of Moscow he came across a small church and noted that someone had given the church a fresh coat of bright, blue paint. Muggeridge writes that he felt that he ”belonged to the little disused church [the painter] had embellished, and that the Kremlin with its scarlet flag and dark towers and golden spires was an alien kingdom. A kingdom of power such as the Devil had in his gift, and offered to Christ, to be declined by him in favour of the kingdom of love. I, too, must decline it, and live in the kingdom of love.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Vol. 1, The Green Stick (1972), pp. 226-227.)

Second, an observation about one of the gospel readings for Christ the King:

One of the gospel readings assigned today is Luke 25.35.43. It contains the poignant story of the "good thief." In it the penitent thief says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” What do you suppose he was thinking? Was he holding out hope that Jesus would be rescued and set up some sort of earthly kingdom? Did he hope that when he was dead and gone that someone would say, “I remember old so and so”? Or did he use the word “remember” with the meaning it has in the Torah and the Prophets? The imperative “remember” (zakhor) appears 169 times in the Old Testament. When God remembers something, things change. Exodus tells us that God heard the “groaning” of the Israelites “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Ex. 2.24) To be remembered by God is to be held in life.

Yale’s Miroslav Volf writes, “The remembrance of suffering is not turned in upon itself and self-enclosed; rather, it is a hopeful remembering, a remembering open to a transformed future. As Christ was raised, so also those who suffer will be raised with him. They are not locked in their past, unable to free themselves from it. Rather, they are on the path through death to resurrection along with Christ, and what happened to him will also happen to them. (link to Volf article)

Third random thought:

Oremus.org is a terrific source for selecting hymns. It's especially rich in recently written hymns. Here are a few good ones for Christ the King:

"To mock your reign, O Dearest Lord" and "Lord, who left the highest heaven" both by Timothy Dudley-Smith, former Suffragan Bishop of Norwich (England) and author of "Tell out, my soul", as well as many other good hymns (http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/t/t747.html)
http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/l/l506.html

"Lord Christ, we praise your sacrifice" http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/l/l252.htmlby Alan Gaunt, a pastor of the United Reformed Church of Great Britain. He's a wonderful hymn writer. See his communion hymn "Come to me," says Jesus". (http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/c/c317.html)

Thanksgiving Day (November 25, 2004)

Rabbi Harold Kushner is one of my favorite theological writers. Here's a great story from one of his books.

Rabbi Kushner tells the story of a colleague who said to a member of his congregation, “Whenever I see you, you’re always in a hurry. Tell me, where are you running all the time?” The man answered, “I’m running after success, I’m running after fulfillment, I’m running after the reward for all my hard work.” And Kushner’s colleague replied, “That’s a good answer if you assume that all those blessings are somewhere ahead of you, trying to elude you and if you run fast enough, you may catch up with them. But isn’t it possible that those blessings are behind you, that they are looking for you, and the more you run, the harder you make it for them to find you?” Kushner observed that God may have all kinds of blessing in store for us – “good food and beautiful sunsets and flowers budding in the spring and leaves turning in the fall – but we in our pursuit of happiness are so constantly on the go that God can’t find us at home to deliver them”! (Harold Kushner, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough (New York, 1986), pp. 146-147)

Have a look at this hymn by Charles Wesley with a surprisingly contemporary feeling: Glory, love, and praise, and honor
(http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/g/g072.html)

Advent 1A (November 28, 2004)

Literary critic George Steiner makes the following thought-provoking comment:

"Man alone can construct and parse the grammar of hope... Of all evolutionary tools towards survival, it is the ability to use future tenses of the verb – when, how did the psyche acquire this monstrous and liberating power? – which I take to be foremost." (quoted in Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist, p. 16.)

Advent invites us to "parse the grammar of hope," to exercise the 'liberating power" of the future tense. All of today's readings draw our attention to the horizon, to that which is coming. Isaiah writes, "In days to come..." Paul tells us that "the night is far gone, the day is near..." And in Matthew's gospel Jesus speaks of "the coming of the Son of Man" on a "day and hour no one know."

Twenty-first century Americans are inclined to have a love/hate relationship with the future. My generation grew up on the Jetsons, Disney's Tomorrowland, and any number of popular constructions of the future, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and so on. However, we also grew up with the possibility of nuclear catastrophe or eco-catastrophe.

The Enlightenment predicted a hopeful future, because it was based on the idea of the inherent goodness of human nature. Darwin's theory of evolution appeared to give scientific support to the idea of the inevitability of human improvement. But the Enlightenment was given a staggering blow by the violence of World War I and was more or less finished off by World War II, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima. Rather than being a location of hope, the future of humanity after 1945 looked bleak. Popular constructions of the future were more likely to include nuclear war than utopias.

Advent directs us toward an entirely different set of possible futures. Advent challenges both the naive optimism of the Enlightenment and the superficial pessimism of the late twentieth century. Unaided by grace, human perfectibility is not an option. As the collect for Advent I reminds us, we need to "cast away the works of darkness," and in every life, there is plenty of darkness to cast away. The future is a location of hope rather than despair, not because of the basic goodness of human nature or its inevitability perfectibility but because Advent tells us that the future is in God's hands.

At times Christians, especially conservative ones have also projected a future of despair rather than hope. The conservative reading of Christian eschatology has too often been a matter of "Jesus is coming again... and he sure is mad!" From The Late, Great Planet Earth to the Left Behind series, the focus has been on the more spectacular (and peripheral) elements of Biblical eschatology.

However, from beginning to end, the Bible speaks of God's future in hopeful terms. Isaiah's familiar words project a future in which weapons of destruction become instruments of creation and cultivation, "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Paul encourages the Christians of Rome to "lay aside the works of darkness" not for fear of punishment but because "salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers."

Jesus, on the other hand, sounds a note of judgment. He compares the present age with the age of Noah and warns that when the Son of Man returns the process will be as comprehensive and violent as the Flood had been. We must not ignore or diminish the note of judgment. There is much that needs to be "swept away." But Jesus' apocalyptic teaching was in response to his disciples' question, "What will be the sign of your coming?" They were looking and longing for the return of one they loved and had followed. Like Jesus' first disciples, his disciples today, too, long and look for the return of the One who has invited us into his fellowship and walks with us on our journey.