Readings [Isaiah, Acts, Luke]

Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

How do we celebrate Easter? That’s the question that brought the preacher up short looking at today’s lessons. Let’s wonder together.

That we need new heavens and a new earth is painfully obvious, Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine being simply the latest reminder. “No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.… They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.” In my years working for World Vision I was constantly reminded how simple this vision is, and how difficult to attain for so many of the world’s people. Build houses, plant vineyards—and then some guy from the capital drives up with a piece of paper that says it’s all his, not yours. So simple, but attaining it, nothing less than “new heavens and a new earth.”

How do we get from here to there? That’s the question to which Easter is the answer.

The same stone which the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone.

How do we celebrate Easter? We acknowledge how badly we need new heavens and a new earth.

How do we get from here to there? Consider the second reading from Acts.

Here’s Peter the Jew in the home of Cornelius the Roman centurion, something like a Ukrainian in the home of a Russian Captain. It took a heavenly vision to get Peter there, but that’s for another sermon. What’s astonishing is what doesn’t happen: Peter doesn’t unload on Cornelius, Peter and his friends don’t try to slip various interesting toxins into Cornelius’ kitchen. He describes Jesus’ activity: “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.” When he gets to Good Friday, he passes on the opportunity to talk about Pilate, the Roman hospitality, the Roman cross and nails. “But God raised him on the third day… everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” From the context it’s clear that forgiveness of sins includes forgiving others’ sins. If the story is about the conversion of Cornelius, it’s first about the conversion of Peter. Breaking the cycles of violence, recrimination, payback: looks like that’s core to getting from here to there.

How do we celebrate Easter? After the Acts reading there’s some logic in standing next to Peter and renewing our commitment to our continual conversion.

What about our Gospel reading? The thing about Good Friday is that that’s the world we know. That’s what happens to good people: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., too many civilians in the Ukraine. Not easy to believe that that world can be cracked open. “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” The apostles. Being slow on the uptake is apostolic. I find that encouraging.

How can we believe that God can crack this familiar world open? The text points us in two directions: “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Remember! We’re really good at forgetting, forgetting what Jesus said, what Jesus did. Remember: God’s cracking this familiar world open: that’s not been a short-term project, that’s why the Bible is a big book. Second, “Peter got up and ran to the tomb…” He gets up, doesn’t assume he already has all the information he needs. The older I get the easier it is to assume that I have all the information I need. I don’t.

How do we celebrate Easter? We might try listening to the women more often, and, with them, various other voices regularly ignored.

How do we celebrate Easter? Not—with all due respect to Madison Avenue—by cueing up “Happy days are here again.” There are still too many people driven from their homes and vineyards, still too many thriving oppressors, and at least some of us thinking some days of the week that payback still sounds like a really good idea. Jesus’ resurrection “an idle tale”? That would be so much simpler.

So, in the name of the Church, simpler is overrated. Christ is risen. Those cracks in our world: that’s how the light gets in. Let’s see together where that risen Christ would lead us.

Readings

One of things I treasure about our tradition is that on our High Holy Days our liturgies pretty much preach themselves. They carry us; we can relax into them.

With some exceptions, and today I’ll use the sermon slot to focus on one of them. Toward the end of the service there’s the Veneration of the Cross. What do we do with that?

There may be, I suppose, parishes in which everyone comes forward, and there the pastoral advice would be to resist group pressure. Don’t worry about what they’ll think of you if you don’t come forward. I’m told that’s not the problem here.

So what do we do with it? There are many possible answers. Here are a few; perhaps they’ll spark better ones.

Some of us are carrying burdens, some out of faithfulness, some because of the cards dealt. We might come to the cross for company. Jesus is no stranger to heavy burdens. As the Lord put it in Isaiah, “even to your old age I am he, / even when you turn gray I will carry you. / I have made, and I will bear; / I will carry and will save.”

Some of us: the language of 1928/Rite I comes too easily (“there is no health in us…miserable offenders;” “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table”). We might come to the cross to hear—as clearly as Jesus can say it—you are worth it. Jesus: “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?”

Some of us carry some anger at God’s choices that seem to bring on apparently unnecessary suffering for God or us. We might come to the cross to remind God that we’re still here, that the anger is still here, even if we have no idea how the conversation can productively go forward. From Isaiah again: “Come now, let us argue it out, / says the Lord.”

Some of us: there are no words to adequately express the gratitude we sometimes feel. We might come to the cross to say—with our body—thank you. We come up every week to receive Jesus’ Body and Blood; this time to say thank you. Jesus, the New Temple: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, / and his courts with praise.”

Some of us: well, as the years have gone by we’re more puzzled than we used to be, and not obviously in a good way. There’s something good here—that’s why we’re here—but bringing it into focus… We might come to the cross to say something like “Jesus, I’m not sure why you’re there, what it’s all about. But I’m here.” From Luke’s Passion narrative that we heard last Sunday: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

As I said, many possible answers. There’s no obligation, but perhaps the Veneration can be a means of expressing something important in your heart.

Readings (With the 1 Corinthians reading extended to this)

Getting Israel out of Egypt is half the battle; the other half is getting Egypt out of Israel. The Maundy Thursday readings, with their Passover setting, invite us to contemplate that.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: The first reading tells of the institution of the Passover, a feast the Jews have celebrated every year since that night in Egypt.

Each family was to select an unblemished lamb, the Passover lamb, and to kill it at twilight. Some of the blood went on the doorposts and the lintel of the house and the lamb was eaten, with the family prepared to leave at any moment. That very night God would pass through the land, and Pharaoh would finally let the people go.

Until Jesus’ arrival, no other night was of such importance in the world’s history, for it was one of the defining actions of the true God, announcing that God desires not the obedience of slaves, but rather of free sons and daughters. In our country, African American slaves heard in this story God’s passion for their own freedom.

And every year since the Exodus the Jews have continued to celebrate the Passover to remember their liberation and —often— to reaffirm their confidence in God’s power to free them again from new oppressors.

As the Gospels tell us, Jesus. the night before his death, celebrated the Passover with his disciples and reinterpreted its meaning. The meal had used bread and wine to celebrate the liberation from Egypt; Jesus reinterpreted the bread and wine in terms of his coming self-offering: this is my body; this is my blood.

Every Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist, when we say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” we are remembering this definitive reinterpretation. And to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” reminds us of how deeply God desires our liberty, and what God was willing to pay to achieve it. God desires that we be free from both our exterior and interior oppressors, free—in the language of our Gospel reading—to love.

Getting Egypt, that is, getting the enslaving seeking and maintenance of status, out of Israel turns out to be at least as hard. It’s the focus of our New Testament readings. In Luke’s account of the Last Supper even that night the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. So Jesus tries to get at it by washing the disciples’ feet. It horrifies Peter, not so much (I think) that Jesus is washing his feet, as that Peter has already figured out where Jesus is going to take this: “if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Our Prayer Book encourages—but does not demand—a reenactment of the foot washing. These days it’s problematic; we’re not doing it tonight; perhaps you’ll do it next year. But the reenactment is less important than its point: a love that is oriented not by my comfort level or preferences, but by the needs of my brother or sister. Love oriented by my comfort level or preferences: that lets Egypt in through the back door. Love oriented by the needs of my brother or sister: that’s the liberty for which Moses struggled and Jesus died.

This business of washing each other’s feet—metaphorically speaking—shows up in that paragraph from Paul’s letter from which our reading was taken. The Lectionary assigns vv.23-26, in which Paul recounts Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist. But why recount it? For that we need the surrounding context. In those days—also at Corinth—we often celebrated the Eucharist as part of a dinner. But what happened, what scandalized Paul, was that each family ate and drank from their own basket. The rich, baskets to go from one of the upscale restaurants; the poor, whatever they could find at a local food pantry. Egypt has not only entered through the back door; Egypt is running the place! So Paul recounts the institution to remind them that the Eucharist is about a New Covenant, a life given for others, so that celebrating the Eucharist selfishly and as though it’s “business as usual” badly misses the point.

Notice how Paul unpacks this. “For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.” Notice: “the body” isn’t the Eucharistic bread; it’s the living Body of Christ composed of the brothers and sisters gathered around a common table but not —alas— around a common basket. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner…” “In an unworthy manner” is not about whether I’ve properly confessed before Mass, or whether I have the right sacramental theology, but about whether I’m showing love to my Christian brothers and sisters.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Washing each others’ feet, celebrating the Eucharist in a way that takes Jesus’ Body seriously: two first Century examples of where Jesus’ new commandment needs to kick in, given to us to get us wondering where that new commandment needs to kick in here and now.

Getting Israel out of Egypt: that’s God’s “yes” to our freedom, celebrated in the Passover and transposed—put on steroids—for all people in Jesus’ death as celebrated in the Holy Eucharist. Getting Egypt out of Israel, living freely: that turns out to be an ongoing project. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” May some of Jesus’ passion for our freedom rub off on us.

Habrá varias oportunidades de contemplar los eventos de Semana Santa en la semana entrante. Buena cosa, porque hay mucho de contemplar.

Hoy me llaman la atención dos elementos. Primero, los gritos del pueblo:

¡Que muera este hombre! Déjanos libre a Barrabás.

¡Crucifícalo, crucifícalo!

Como nos enseña la liturgia, es nuestro grito. Basta con la mentira “¡Es el grito de los judíos!” Es el grito del pueblo de Dios. Y esto es importante en nuestro contexto tan polarizado, donde es tan fácil suponer que la maldad habita entre ellos. Nosotros los justos, ellos…

Y—entre paréntesis—Jesús anticipa este error:

Señor, yo estoy dispuesto a ir contigo a la cárcel y a la muerte.

Te digo, Pedro, que hoy antes de que cante el gallo habrás negado tres veces que me conoces.

Por la gracia del Señor nuestras historias no terminan aquí. Sin embargo, creo que es bien importante recordar este “Crucifícalo,” reconocer nuestra solidaridad hasta con nuestros enemigos.

Segundo, este “Padre, perdónalos, porque no saben lo que hacen.” La consecuencia, la integridad de Jesús es francamente temible. Antes, en una situación más calma: “Perdónanos nuestros pecados, porque también nosotros perdonamos a todos los que nos han hecho mal.” Y aquí está. Pero, ¡ojo! No dice “Les perdono yo a Ustedes¨ sino “Padre, perdónalos. ¨ Quizá en este momento no es capaz de perdonar, pero hace lo que puede: ¨Padre, perdónalos. ¨

Tenemos enemigos. A veces nos no es posible perdonar. ¿Quizá podemos orar por ellos? Me ayuda mucho el rezo en nuestro LOC:

Oh Dios y Padre de todos, cuyo Hijo nos mandó amar a nuestros enemigos: Guíanos a nosotros y a ellos del prejuicio a la verdad; líbranos del odio, la crueldad y la venganza; y, a tu debido tiempo, capacítanos para llegar reconciliados a tu presencia; por Jesucristo nuestro Señor. Amén.

Cómo dije, hay tanto que contemplar esta semana. En el centro, Jesucristo, quien, en las palabras de la Gran Plegaria “Extendió sus brazos sobre la cruz y se ofreció en obediencia a tu voluntad, un sacrificio perfecto por todo el mundo.” Y precisamente este Jesús estando en el centro me impulsa ver parte de mi carácter (“Crucifícalo”), y parte de mi vocación como su seguidor (“Perdónanos nuestros pecados, porque también nosotros perdonamos a todos los que nos han hecho mal.”). Y cuando no puedo perdonar, por lo menos puedo—debo—orar.

Readings

What a table today’s readings set! Let’s notice, briefly, a couple of the entrees before moving to Jesus’ parable.

Toward the end of Revelation John hears this from the throne: “See, I am making all things new” (21:5). All things new: not a bad heading for our readings from Joshua and 2^nd Corinthians. Joshua: the transition from the wilderness to the promised land, with the celebration of Passover making a fitting bookend with the first Passover on the night of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. 2^nd Corinthians: “everything has become new!”

‘New’ has mostly positive connotations in our culture. Ironically, the opposite is true for ‘change’. “How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?” “CHANGE???” We like ‘new’, we dislike ‘change’, and that makes most areas of our life more complicated than necessary. Minimally, it might help to recognize that the change to which God invites us in Lent is in service of achieving the new.

Repentance. Our psalm highlights its importance. When we set the psalm next to Jesus’ parable two things become, I think, evident. First, first while repentance is necessary, the decisive element is God’s/the Father’s character. All the repentance we could muster wouldn’t do any good unless our Father were disposed to run to it. That repentance is necessary, consider what would have happened had the younger son gone to the distant country, made a killing, and swaggered back: “Dad, this place is really a dump; let me help you out.” That would have required a different response from the father.

Second, our prejudices can make it really hard for us to recognize who needs to repent. That, ironically, is baked into the traditional title for the parable, “The Prodigal Son,” for even a cursory reading reveals that it’s the older son who needs to repent. But no: put them in a line-up and we predictably point to the younger son as the one needing repentance. And this despite Luke’s stage-setting: “all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling.” Anyhow, if we’re looking for an opportunity midst the solemnity of Lent to take ourselves less seriously, here’s an opportunity.

Jesus’ parable. This morning I’m hearing the parable in the company of Ken Bailey and George Caird. Ken Bailey’s Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes helps me hear the parable more clearly. “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” In that culture, hard to think of more insulting words, for property is divided after the owner’s death, so that the son’s request says, essentially, you’re of more value to me dead than alive. And later in the parable: “his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran…” Middle Eastern fathers don’t run. In a pinch one might walk sedately, but, more appropriately, remain unmoved as the lower-status party approaches. How this father humbles himself, and doesn’t seem to mind a bit!

The father in the parable is one of Jesus’ clearest pictures of our heavenly Father. And it’s worth noticing that Jesus here is simply echoing his Scripture’s (our Old Testament’s) pictures. Some of us have been reading Isaiah in these weeks; here are two quick excerpts from the divine speeches:

You have not bought me sweet cane with money,
or satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices.
But you have burdened me with your sins;
you have wearied me with your iniquities. (Isa. 43:24)

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
even when you turn gray I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. (Isa. 46:3-4)

As today’s psalm ends:

Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord;
shout for joy, all who are true of heart.

And what is it to be “righteous” or “true of heart” if not to be increasingly recognizing and reflecting God’s character? I’ve snuck a couple ideas into that question: here they are; see what you think of them. First, “increasingly recognizing and reflecting:” “righteous” and “true of heart” don’t do well standing still. They involve growth, newness, even the c-word (‘change’). Second, “righteous” and “true of heart” are relational, depending on our relationship with the Lord. Without that relationship, strange things can happen. Which brings us to the older brother.

We naturally feel some sympathy for the older brother. After the division of the property in a sense it’s his fattened calf that’s being served. And yet, oddly enough, the figure the older brother most closely resembles is the accuser, the satan. That demands, I think, a bit of a digression.

We first meet the Adversary (‘satan’ is simply a transcription of that Hebrew word) at the beginning of Job. It’s a good guess that he’s patterned after the agent provocateur in the Persian court whose role was to sniff out disloyalty before it became dangerous. He plays a similar role in one of Zechariah’s visions: “Then he showed me the high priest Joshua [dressed, we learn, in filthy cloths] standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him” (3:1). He’s all about justice. Here’s George Caird in his New Testament Theology:

Yet even at this early stage of his history we can see where his one-sided emphasis on justice is to lead him. In both stories he is found arguing against God, whose holiness he is so anxious to defend. It cannot be said of him that he does not will the death of sinners, or that he is hoping that they would turn from their wickedness and live. He is a rigorous legalist, a prosecuting attorney, who must have a conviction, and who is satisfied only with a capital sentence. If the evidence does not give him a good case, he is prepared to manufacture new evidence by provoking Job into mortal sin.

And like the Adversary the older brother wants justice, and this single-minded focus turns him against the father.

What if Caird’s description governed our use of words like ‘diabolical’ or ‘satanic’—the single-minded pursuit of justice without compassion?

We imagine the Adversary encouraging people to do bad things, and that’s true enough. The Bible’s portrayals might encourage us to imagine him spending as much time saying things like “If you did that you can’t be worth much!” or “That person/that group doesn’t deserve compassion,” that is, channeling the older brother.

I wonder if the Bible doesn’t talk about the Adversary also to help us bring God’s character into focus. Justice is important to God, but not at the expense of compassion. The psalmist is counting on that! Gustavo Gutiérrez gets it right: “The world of retribution—and not of temporal retribution only—is not where God dwells; at most God visits it.” And one important reason that the Bible repeatedly says “Fear not” and “Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord” is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not this Adversary.

We Christians use the word ‘God’ a lot. But what images accompany that word? Today’s parable invites us to let Jesus’ image of God sink deep into our imaginations.

Readings

Today’s lessons invite us to contemplate and enact repentance from a variety of perspectives. Before diving in, a reminder: repenting, turning, changing course, involves more than feelings. If I’ve got my foot on someone’s back, repentance isn’t simply about feeling badly. (“Oh, what a terrible person I am to have my foot on their back!”) It’s about moving my feet. So in the spirit of those old public service announcements “It’s 10:00 pm; do you know where your children are?” during Lent the Church asks us: “It’s Lent; do you know where your feet are?”

The Gospel: Jesus’ fig tree parable is a riff on Isaiah’s vineyard parable: the Lord looking for fruit and coming away empty handed.
“For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry!”
God engages with us for our own sake and for the sake of our neighbors. Isaiah’s “justice and righteousness:” we might understand this as describing a community that is life-giving for all its participants, in contrast to the communities our world tends to create, where “life-giving” varies depending on where we are on the totem pole. The last thing God needs is another totem pole, this one with a cross on the top. Lent reminds us that fruit is important, that folk experiencing our parishes as life-giving is important, that our neighbors encountering here an alternative to our society’s disfunctions is important.

The Epistle: it would be easy for Paul’s words to conjure up memories of touchy disciplinarians: behave or God’s gonna wop you. But what’s at stake here is the Corinthians’ and our capacity to remember what story we’re in: we really are bound for the promised land. And if that’s where we’re bound, the detours Paul lists (idolatry, immorality, etc.) lose their attraction. Lent invites us to recall that what story we’re in is an important question, and that every day we’re barraged by competing answers. “God helps those who help themselves.” “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” This is why the Book of Common Prayer begins with the Daily Office, readings and prayers for use throughout the day: remembering which story we’re in takes mindfulness. “The earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Ps. 24:1). Not Russia’s or America’s or Coca Cola’s or Google’s. Perhaps I need to hear that in the morning before turning to CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Lent’s a time to experiment with ways of nurturing that mindfulness.

Exodus: To hear this story in Lent means, I think, to pay attention to the backstory. Why is Moses tending sheep in Midian? Moses, a Hebrew, had been raised in the Egyptian court. At some point he figured out that he’s a Hebrew, and since the Egyptians had the Hebrews enslaved, knowing that he was a Hebrew must have been a constant source of strong and conflicting emotions: shame, anger… One day he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew—and kills the Egyptian. The deed becomes known, Moses has to flee, and that’s how this prince of Egypt ends up herding sheep in Midian far from Egypt. If Moses’ career in Egypt were rated the way hotels are rated, he might end up with half a star.

And here’s God telling Moses to go back. That is, of course, for Israel’s sake. But it’s also for Moses’ sake. In Midian Moses has an important part of himself walled off, the key thrown away. There’s unfinished business. This may have been the sort of thing Henry David Thoreau was thinking about when he said “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”—and maybe also in our parishes. And God comes to Moses: let’s revisit that; let’s see what we can do together. Lent is about noticing the occasional burning bush that might signal God inviting us to return to those sites of failure and loss, those sites we have under strict quarantine. That returning can be some of the more difficult work of Lent.

Finally, our psalm.
“O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.”
Our culture encourages us to imagine God as the one who’s always saying “no.” That’s not a god we’re going to seek, thirst for, faint for. But, as Paul reminds us elsewhere, in Jesus “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1:20). This God desires for us more than we can ask or imagine. Lent is about reencountering this God.

The psalmist’s “Under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice:” the psalmist may have had a static image in mind. But between God’s call to Moses to go back to Egypt and Paul’s evocation of Israel traveling through the wilderness, we might recognize that “the shadow of your wings” is often a moving shadow. To stay under that shadow we may need to get up and move.

Readings

I wonder how Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna, John and Jesus (the folk in Luke’s first chapters) heard our reading from Deuteronomy. It’s a celebration of a good harvest and of God’s deliverance in the exodus and gift of the good land. But that was hardly their experience: Israel had spent centuries in the belly of foreign empires. In Ezra’s words: “Here we are, slaves to this day– slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. Its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins; they have power also over our bodies and over our livestock at their pleasure, and we are in great distress” (Neh. 9:36-37).

Hearing that Deuteronomic text probably involved some combination of pain over what had been lost and hope that God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm could again intervene. That’s the hope for a new exodus, a new Davidic heir, a new deliverance expressed in Mary’s Magnificat and Simeon’s prayer.

I wonder how they heard Psalm 91. “…my God in whom I put my trust.” Trust is tricky. Encouraged by Isaiah, King Hezekiah trusted, and God delivered Jerusalem from the Assyrian army. Just over a century later Jerusalem, ignoring Jeremiah’s calls to stop exploiting the poor, trusted that God would again deliver Jerusalem (“The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord!”), and watched the Babylonian army destroy Jerusalem and dethrone the Davidic dynasty. The Maccabean heroes started out proclaiming their trust in God, and ended up as fat and happy clients of the Roman Empire. Trust is tricky.

Over to Jesus. Luke tells us that while Jesus was praying after his baptism “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (3:21-22), which rather sounds as though it’s heralding that new exodus, that new Davidic heir, that new deliverance. So, no pressure.

What does trust mean for Jesus? That, after forty days of fasting, begins to be sorted out in an interview with the diabolos, the ‘accuser’ or ‘slanderer’, that cynic who assumes the worst about humanity.

There are many ways of unpacking what’s going on in that interview, what’s at stake, and over the years you’ve probably heard many of them. So, with no interest in reinventing the wheel, let me simply recall a couple of them.

“Son of God.” If we focus on its Davidic/Messianic dimension, the interview is about how this son of David will operate. The editors of the David stories in Samuel noticed the moments in which David had the choice of receiving or grasping. The former, receiving, e.g., kingship, turned out well. David let the kingship come to him on God’s terms, and repeatedly refused to kill Saul.  The latter, grasping, e.g., Bathsheba, not so well. The interview easily reads as offering Jesus the same choice: are the kingdoms of the world something Jesus is going to grasp, or receive from the Father—in the Father’s time and way?

Grasp or receive. A question for Jesus, but also for Jesus’ followers. So there’s some logic to reading this text the first Sunday of Lent. Where might we notice that we’re grasping? “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD” (Isa. 55:8). What are the situations in which we judge that to be a defect in God?

Let’s pull back the camera a little. “The devil is in the details,” we say. And in this interview the devil wants to get the details right, because with a little fine tuning even the presence of Jesus, the Son of God, need not disturb the status quo. And as long as Jesus’ church doesn’t disturb the status quo, doesn’t embody an alternative to the lies and jockeying for power that deform our institutions, the devil’s content.

We might put it this way. I imagine Jesus hearing Mary’s song repeatedly as he was growing up:

He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;

Jesus recognizes—with the help of Deuteronomy, the source of all his replies—that the devil’s suggestions would put him on a sidetrack, set him up to be no more than an improved model of King Herod. From this perspective, the text—with the Magnificat as the audio bed—invites us to remember our calling. God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm—Jesus—intervenes not simply so that we survive, but so that we help heal our world.

Not simply so that we survive, but so that we help heal our world.

Readings

What might the Spirit be saying to us in these readings?

Some initial observations:

On the one hand, Paul’s praise and description of the virtue of love. On the other hand, Jeremiah’s commission (“to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant”) and Jesus’ words to the Nazareth congregation. Whatever love is, it’s not about being nice. Whatever love is—well, that’s the focus of this sermon.

Jeremiah’s commission and Jesus with the synagogue congregation: a visual that might accompany these is that scene from early in Genesis: Adam and Eve hiding in the trees and the Lord calling “Where are you?” There, as in Jeremiah’s time, Jesus’ time, our time, the Lord trying for a conversation. That’s love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” in spades. Any other god would have thrown in the towel long ago.

Jeremiah’s commission: specific to Jeremiah, yes, but also representative of the prophetic task. “Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” Not hard to imagine Jesus feeling some solidarity with Jeremiah. Again, “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant:” not a bad partial description of the prophetic task. If we wonder why four verbs for the destruction and two for the creation, Abba Nestoros (one of the Egyptian desert fathers around the end of the 4^th century) noted that “it is twice as hard to drive out vice as to acquire virtue” (so Cassian, cited in Goldingay The Book of Jeremiah).

Anyhow, let’s move to the Gospel. Last Sunday we heard Jesus reading from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And, as we heard this morning “All spoke well of him.”

Ignoring the proverbial “Quit while you’re ahead,” Jesus tries for a conversation. To unpack Isaiah’s words there are any number of Old Testament stories Jesus could have cited that the congregation would have loved: Moses to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”, Samson killing a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the Lord delivering Jerusalem from the Assyrian army in the time of Isaiah. But Jesus chose two stories of prophets aiding Israel’s enemies—and the congregation goes homicidal.

It’s an understandable reaction. The Jews have been under the Gentile heel for centuries, Rome being simply the latest to fill that role. And to think that Isaiah’s God—Israel’s God—cares as much about them as about us, loves them as much as us…

What’s at stake here? On the one hand, our image of God. We might have thought that the Book of Jonah had settled that question (“O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing,” gracious and merciful even with the Assyrians! But it turns out that whether then or now we’re remarkably slow learners.

On the other hand, it doesn’t take theological training to realize that if God loves our enemies, the other shoe’s about to drop, this God expecting us to love these enemies.

“Love your enemies.” That’s the obvious deal breaker in Jesus’ good news, and it gives us plenty to work on. Here I’m thinking not of our actions or our words, which we usually have under control, but of our gut reactions to moments in our daily lives or news stories. “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you:” I’m not even close to these being habitual.

But “love your enemies” is only the tip of a larger iceberg, which offers us the option of coming at the challenge sideways. And for this I’m drawing on Rowan Williams’ description of the eastern monastic perspective in his book Looking East in Winter.

Williams writes: “Our problem…is not that we are embodied spirits, but that we are incompletely embodied spirits – that is, that we are as yet unable to live in this material and mutable world without clinging to our impressions, distorting our impressions, or compulsively marking out our territory. The things of the world – and our human neighbours in the world – appear either as food or as threat to the ego. Unless we become able to receive the truth of what is before us as it stands in relation to God, not to us, we are failing to be embodied in the sense of being properly part of creation: we are caught in an implicit idolatry, the effort to separate ourselves from the order of which we are a part” (p.32).

We might hear this perspective as unpacking Paul: love “does not insist on its own way,” is not trapped in the habit of seeing everything and everybody in terms of how they might threaten or benefit me. Again, this is prior to my speech or action: it’s about what my eyes or ears attend to.

This, is probably why Paul starts his description of love as he does. One can get very far in the church—in any institution for that matter—with the ego comfortably in the driver’s seat, assessing in others the potential for threat or exploitation. And as long as the ego is calling the shots, no room for love.

What do we do about this? Within this perspective, Williams again: “the dual habits of contrition and gratitude keep before us the nature we had almost lost and preserve us from defeat by the passion of lust and anger” (p.25). Contrition: genuine sorrow over my failures; gratitude: joyful recognition of all that I nevertheless continue to receive. Contrition and gratitude, in other words, aid us in living truthfully.

So, back to Jeremiah, “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” become ongoing disciplines, part, with God’s help, of living mindfully. Here the focus is usually not on our enemies—no need to start with the hardest cases—but with family members, neighbors, colleagues. Where are my impulses to defend or use clouding my perceptions of them? Those impulses are the ones to pluck up and pull down.

Two final observations. First, Paul’s description of love is part of his advice on how to live together as a congregation that we heard last Sunday. So “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” is not about some self-standing altruism, but about what’s necessary so that congregational life doesn’t simply mirror our society’s dysfunctional patterns.

More, recall last Sunday’s Psalm 19. The psalm celebrates the life-giving power of the Law. But toward the end it takes an unexpected turn: “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” For all the power of the Law—or the Gospel, for that matter—it’s pretty much powerless against my blind spots. So how does God answer this prayer for cleansing? Until preparing last week’s sermon I’d always assumed that God answered through some sort of ethereal surgery. But reading the psalm together with Paul’s description of how Christ’s Body works… If I only listen to folk who think like me, my blind spots stay undisturbed. So God answers the prayer for cleansing by putting me in this Body with Jews, Greeks, men, women, folk all over the spectrums, many of whom I have no inclination to listen to. I can pretty much count on one of them to tell me about my secret faults. So this love that listens turns out to be necessary for my own healing.

Second, Paul’s description of love is a description of God’s behavior. Why does God keep seeking us out, trying for a conversation, sometimes directly, sometimes through another human being? God is love.