Readings (Track 1)

Looking back at God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, one of the psalms: “Your way was in the sea, / and your paths in the great waters, / yet your footsteps were not seen” (77:19). One reader summarizes: “God makes a way where there is no way.” God makes a way where there is no way: that’s perhaps the most important thing to learn from our first reading.

The story gives us something of both God’s and Abraham’s perspectives; let’s look at both.

God’s perspective. “After these things God tested Abraham.” Why a test, and why such an extreme test? Recall the project as announced in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s future with the human family is riding on Abraham. As Mark Twain put it, “Some folk say not to put all your eggs in one basket. I say: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!”

Why such an extreme test? Well, recall Abraham’s servant’s words: “The LORD has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.” So is Abraham serving God for God’s sake, or for the flocks and herds? Throughout the history of Israel and the Church this has been one of the recurrent core questions. Pick your favorite worst moment in the Church’s history, and this issue is probably at the core. What was the bottom line in the Spanish conquest of the Americas: God or Gold? We have “In God we trust” on our currency. Really? And in which god are we trusting? As the Book of Job frames the question, is God worth serving for nothing? At least, please God, may Abraham, the Father of the faithful, get it right.

So I think we hear sheer relief on God’s part toward the end of the story: “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.’”

No less intense, of course, was the experience from Abraham’s perspective.

Our issue, how God could command human sacrifice, would not have been Abraham’s. While prohibited in the Law of Moses, it does not seem to have died out in popular religion until the destruction of the Temple in the 6^th Century BC.

Rather, the issue both for Abraham and the Bible itself: what happens when the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict. “I will make of you a great nation;” and just how is the sacrifice of Isaac part of that?

Gideon —one of the judges—with God’s promise to deliver Israel from the Midianites. And what does God command? Get rid of most of your army.

Ahaz —King of Judah— caught between a very hungry Egyptian Empire and an equally hungry Assyrian Empire. Isaiah the prophet issues God’s command: call all your ambassadors home, tear up the mutual assistance treaties, trust in God alone.

Jesus, with “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” ringing in his ears. If there was ever a mandate for action, there it was. And so he meets the tempter in the wilderness, and the command of God as recorded in the Law of Moses vetos all the tempter’s suggestions for putting the Kingdom on the fast track.

If Jesus is not going to turn stones into bread, not going to let the angels deliver him very miraculously & very publicly, not going to negotiate with the one credible power broker this side of heaven, what future does Jesus’ Kingdom have?

God has given us some breathtaking promises. An almost inevitably —that’s why there are so many stories of this in the Bible— we encounter situations in which the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict.

In countries where it’s dangerous to be a Christian, Christian parents face this challenge. Raise our son or daughter as a Christian, or let the local mosque/temple/party headquarters handle their formation? In other contexts there’s still the challenge captured by Thomas More in Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons: “But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought…” Nevertheless we raise our children to be more like Thomas More than, say, Richard Rich, whose perjury at More’s trial greased the skids for his execution.

Sometimes it’s more narrowly focused, some version of the warning with which last week’s Gospel ended: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

In these situations the rationale for the command may be opaque, without rhyme or reason. We need the parish around us in such moments, not only to keep us confusing God’s command with our own fears, but also, when it is God’s command, to remind us that Abraham, Gideon & Jesus don’t make bad company.

So we pick up the knife, pick up the fire, and walk with Isaac up the hill. What happens when we get there is not in our control. Abraham got a divine voice and a ram. Gideon sent the Midianites packing. Hezekiah, Ahaz’ son, was rescued from the Assyrian army. Jesus got three nails, a cross, and a crown to go with it. And on the third day that turned out to be the case of God making a way where there was no way. What is in our control is our obedience, our witness.

All well and good —some of us may be thinking— unless you’re the ram. The Jews, out of their generations of experience in serving God “for nothing” have a story about this.

Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said: Nothing of this sacrifice was lost. The ashes were dispersed in the Temple’s sanctuary; the sinews David used as cords for his harp; the skin was claimed by the prophet Elijah to clothe himself; as for the two horns, the smaller one called the people together at the foot of Mt Sinai, and the larger one will resound one day announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[1]

And so we follow this God who makes a way where there is no way into the coming week.

[1] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.

Readings

Sam Kamaleson, a pastor from the Indian subcontinent with whom I worked at World Vision, used to talk about God’s story (one hand) and my story (the other hand) becoming one story (fingers interlaced). Easier said than done; today’s lessons give us an opportunity to think about it.

God’s story. Three weeks ago (Trinity Sunday) our first lesson was the creation story, seven days of God declaring this is good, that is good, the whole thing very good. It’s a very different perspective than the Babylonian (creation itself and humans in particular formed from the corpses of defeated gods of chaos) or the Greek (only a second-rate deity would be fool enough to deal with matter). No: creation is good, the material world is good.

We can pick up the story in Eucharistic Prayer C:

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

We should be, I think, surprised that the prayer doesn’t continue with “And so You pulled the plug on the whole thing” or “And so You decided to hang out with the dolphins for the next few thousand years.” Surprisingly, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the beginning of a pilot project aimed at what the Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world. God comes to Abraham and Sarah: what might we do together? God’s story + their story becoming one story. That’s the story contained in the Old Testament, the story rebooted when God takes on human flesh in Jesus, the story we enter with our baptism.

It’s probably fair to say that from Sarah’s perspective the project didn’t start out well. She had not borne Abraham an heir, to the point that, bowing to custom, she presented Abraham with her Egyptian slave Hagar so that she might produce an heir by proxy. Hagar conceived, and, understandably, passed up no chance to remind everyone that she was the birth mother of Abraham’s heir. So Sarah had an enemy, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Until, finally, God promised her a son, and delivered on that promise Now Sarah can do something about her enemy. Foreshadowing the treatment her people will receive from the Egyptians some generations later, she demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. And Abraham does so—only after receiving God’s promise to look after Hagar and Ishmael.

And in the story we’ve just heard God keeps that promise to Hagar, preserving Ishmael’s imperiled life as God will preserve Isaac’s imperiled life in the next story. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

The Jews, descended from Isaac, and the Arabs, descended from Ishmael, already in the OT are often at odds. And here Sarah’s God is providing a well for Ishmael. The Jews have a legend about that: “the angels appeared against Ishmael before God. They said, ‘Wilt Thou cause a well of water to spring up for him whose descendants will let Thy children of Israel perish with thirst?’ And God: “well, yes.”

God’s story + my story = one story. For Sarah in this episode, not so much, because she’s hit one of the really difficult bits: that someone is my enemy doesn’t mean they’re God’s enemy, that God listens to me when I pray Ps 86 (today’s psalm) and listens to my enemy when they pray Ps 86.

This is a difficult enough bit that the OT keeps coming back to it. Here are a couple more stories.

Some generations later Moses has led Israel out of Egypt, and Joshua has just brought the people across the Jordan to take possession of the promised land. Reading from the fifth chapter of Joshua:

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (Jos 5:13-14)

“Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” “Neither.”

Some centuries later the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Aram (modern Syria) are at war. In a legend from that period, the king of Aram learns that his recent raids have been unsuccessful because the prophet Elisha has been warning the Israelite king about them. He sends out a large force to surround Elisha’s city and capture Elisha. Elisha sees the force, and asks God to blind the soldiers. God does so, and Elisha leads them to the Israelite capital. At this point the Israelite king enters. Reading from the sixth chapter of 2 Kings:

When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” He answered, “No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.” So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. (2Ki 6:21-23)

So when Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies as an integral part of what God’s kingdom is about, this isn’t new. Jesus is simply reporting how he’s observed the Father acting “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—not to mention Hagar, the reply to Joshua, Elisha’s treatment of the Aramean raiders.

So when Jesus sends his disciples out to announce this kingdom, he understandably anticipates opposition, because everyone knows that right-thinking people try to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Right-thinking people will take Barabbas over Jesus any day.

“But this love of enemies business can’t be that important to God. If it were, God would impose it.” But that takes us back to the creation story. God thinks that human freedom is good. God thinks that the church’s freedom is good. So God does what God can do, like the woman in one of Jesus’ parables, putting leaven in the dough in the hope of the whole thing rising. God continues to stretch out the now nail-pierced hand to us: how can we make My story and your story one story?

God’s story; my story; one story. There are many ways that invitation will come to us in the coming week. Some of them may have to do with how we choose to respond to our enemies. May our choices bring God joy.

Readings (Track 1)

As summer fast approaches, our lakes become inviting in a new way. For, what do you need to swim? [Water.] What happens if you don’t have any water? [You don’t swim.] So if God came to me and said “You’re going to be a great swimmer,” a fair question would be “Where’s the water?”

This is more or less the situation Abraham was in at the beginning of today’s text. At the beginning of Abraham’s story God promised “I will make of you a great nation.” He was 75 then, and that was 24 years ago. Since then he and Sarah have had exactly…zero children. To make matters worse, his name would have been a sort of standing joke. God had insisted on changing his name to “Abraham,” which was explained as “father of a multitude of nations.”

How many of us have been praying for something for a long time? St. Paul called Abraham the father of all who believe, and he’s also our father in this sense, that he knows what it is to pray for something for a very long time. And one of the reasons this story’s here is to remind us that God regularly works with time frames that we find uncomfortable, painful, and completely inexplicable.

This is particularly difficult for us in this culture, which demands everything now, if not yesterday. So living as a Christian in this culture means being more than a little counter-cultural, being willing to live sometimes for long stretches in the tension between what we are asking God to do and what God is doing.

Anyhow, back to Abraham. After all this waiting, all this predictable scorn, we might expect someone more than a little anti-social. So it might surprise us a little to watch Abraham receiving the three strangers. On the one hand, he is showing the hospitality that custom demands. The frontier between the town and the steppe demands that sort of hospitality, or else no one lasts very long. On the other hand, it is hospitality beyond what convention required, generous hospitality, extravagant hospitality. Watching Abraham and Sarah swing into action we’re given a glimpse as to why God chose them to start a new and decisive chapter in human history.

The narrator has told us what Abraham doesn’t know: these aren’t any three men, but the Lord God. (The narrative, incidentally, goes back and forth between Abraham relating to three and Abraham relating to one, which has lead Christians to see here an early revelation of the Holy Trinity.) Watching Abraham relate to the Stranger or Strangers, we’re reminded of a theme we meet repeatedly in Scripture: how we relate to other people determines how we relate to God. We human beings are simply not designed so we can run one program for relating to people, and another program (a much better program) for relating to God. We’ve got one program that runs for persons, God & others included, so the Judeo-Christian tradition has always encouraged us to pay careful attention to it. This, by the way, is the pragmatic reason for the command to love our enemies. How we treat our enemies spills over into how we treat those we love.

The meal conversation transitions into a conversation about a son, and Sarah, offstage, cannot contain her laughter. The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” That’s a question the text puts pretty directly to Abraham and Sarah and us.

It’s easy to answer that question in the abstract. But the important questions are never abstract. That situation, that wound, I’ve been praying about for years, if not decades: is it too difficult for the Lord? It’s so tempting to reduce the tension: God doesn’t care. The situation doesn’t matter. We don’t matter. And any of these moves erode the generosity displayed in our first reading.

You may recall how Scott Peck began his classic The Road Less Traveled. “Life is difficult.” But, Peck observes, since we don’t like difficult, we often opt for work-arounds that end up compounding the difficulty. You may remember the sitcom Cheers. In a frequent story line a difficulty appears, the regulars opt for an avoidance strategy, that strategy consumes increasing amounts of energy and resources until it all comes crashing down, the final scene including tacit agreement to learn nothing from the experience. Sounds rather like last week’s “She’s my sister” episode.

As Christians, life is difficult also because we confess “God is faithful” and “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). To live as daughters and sons of Abraham and Sarah is to guard this tension: it’s part of our identity.

Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?  The answer for Abraham and Sarah comes the next year and its narrative is included in the Old Testament reading. Sarah —well, Abraham and Sarah, but particularly Sarah— has a son who is named “Isaac,” which simply means “Laughter.” The laughter of Sarah’s incredulity has become the laughter of her joy, the sort of joy we also see when a child’s put in a bathtub or a swimming pool. Yes, this family is going to become a family of excellent swimmers.

Now, having heard again this rather bracing story that moves from desolation and barrenness to joy and fertility and in the process challenges us to more faith, more faithfulness, we could easily stop.

But the combination of this story and the Gospel suggests a further step. I’ve read the Old Testament lesson as an invitation to learn from Abraham and Sarah: learn from them the wonderful things that God can do, and imitate their faith, their faithfulness. The Gospel reading with the commissioning of the disciples suggests that we go back to the Genesis story and wonder about how we’re called to imitate the three Strangers. Because that’s what Jesus is sending them and us out to do: go to those who’ve had every reason to give up hope with the words of power and deeds of power that will free them to hope and believe. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. And we proclaim this good news in hope, for not all the sick among us are cured, and, barring Jesus’ return, these bodies too will die. This is part of what it means to be sons and daughters of Abraham. And even as we proclaim the good news, we keep the welcome mat out for the Three Strangers who—often in ways beyond our imagination—continue to show up at our doorstep.

Readings (Track 1)

Today’s readings pretty much set the preacher’s agenda: faith—the faith of Abraham Paul celebrates, the faith shown by the woman with the hemorrhages in the center of Matthew’s story. So let’s attend to how Genesis chooses to start the story.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”

Genesis opens with the creation story we heard last week. The following chapters narrate the repeated human distrust (lack of faith) that results in the expulsion from the Garden, Cain’s murder of Abel, the violence that brings on the flood, the tower of Babel project thwarted by God’s confusing their language. A fellow named Lamech captures it:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

Our world. And, as the flood story made clear, simple punishment does nothing to change the human heart. What can God do?

Parenthesis: religion is often described as trying to answer our questions: Why do we live? Why do we die? What are we supposed to do? What may we hope? Holy Scripture has a different starting point. It speaks of God and the challenge God faces: a world of beauty filled with creatures bearing God’s own image—often acting as though they’re set on auto-destruct. How to heal this world? If we have questions for which we want answers, so does God!

In God’s initial address to Abraham there’s a fundamental shift in God’s strategy, from dealing with the whole human race, to focusing in a particular way on one family: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham and Sarah are the beginning of a pilot project, not because God doesn’t care about the world, but because God’s strategy is to influence, to bless the world through this family. As in any pilot project the point is to show that something can and does work, in this case, God’s vision for what authentically human life looks like. This is what a human community looks like that isn’t set on self-destruct. The reason for Israel’s existence—and for the Church’s existence, for that matter—is the healing of the world. As William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940s said, “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”

But back to Abraham. Almost the first event after that divine call is…a famine. The folk preaching a simple theology of prosperity (obey God and God will make you rich) really do need to read their own Bibles. Abraham obeys God and arrives in Canaan just in time for…a famine.

So they continue south to Egypt in search of food.

When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.” (Vv. 11-13)

That really should have worked. As the brother, Abraham can control access to Sarah, stringing along suitors until they give up or the famine is over. But Murphy’s Law kicks in: Pharaoh takes an interest in Sarah, and what Pharaoh wants, Pharaoh gets.

Now at this point the silences in the text are truly remarkable. We aren’t told what Abraham makes of the situation: he’s lost Sarah; he’s gained a lot of wealth. We aren’t told what Sarah makes of the situation: Abraham or Pharaoh? Nor are we told how long this goes on. But as the story continues, it’s clear that what is decisive is not what Abram or Sarai make of the situation, but what God makes of it.

But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.” (Vv. 17-19)

We began our reading with that extraordinary divine call. At the end of our reading both God and Abraham have new problems. Abraham: this divine call apparently does not mean that life’s going to be a bed of roses. There’s still plenty of room for famines and rapacious rulers. “Would it have been that difficult for God to have put me in a less hostile environment?” How am I supposed to trust a God who apparently leaves me so unprotected?

But if Abraham has a problem, God has an equally serious problem. God’s made this promise to Abraham: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” But it turns out that Abraham is quite prepared to lie and offer up his own wife to save his own skin, putting at risk not only his own reputation, but God’s. All those plagues on Pharaoh’s house are not a very promising beginning to “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I’ve described it as God’s problem; today’s Gospel gives us another possible angle. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Sinners—like Matthew the tax collector, like Abraham, like us.

What do we see in the Egypt story? A God whose call does not translate into an easy life for God’s people, a people of God who can cause profound embarrassment for God. How much does God love us? Enough to be this vulnerable…and we’re only at the 12^th chapter of the Bible. And it’s in this context that our faith can grow.

Readings

The Sunday after Pentecost is, by tradition, the Feast of the Holy Trinity. As feasts go, it’s relatively late (14^th Century). There is, I suppose, some logic to it liturgically: with the Holy Spirit cleary onstage (Pentecost), we pause to recall what the language we use throughout the year means.

• In the Eucharistic Prayer, we pray to the Father, asking that by the action of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine become for us the Body and Blood of Jesus.

• We baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

• We bless in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Let me come at this from three directions.

First, the doctrine of the Trinity guards against misunderstanding our Scripture and liturgy. We confess God as the Creator. So the fundamental divide is between Creator and creation. Where do we put Jesus? Jesus’ actions and words, actions like forgiving sins and words like “I and the Father are one” pointed towards either Jesus being fully divine, or the Jews having been right to hand him over to Rome as a blasphemer. The description favored by many today, Jesus as a very good person, was simply not in play. Good people don’t go around pardoning sins committed against other people, or identifying themselves with God; they’re too aware of their distance from God. So, one of the early desert fathers on his deathbed. His disciples are assuring him that his holiness makes him a shoo-in; he responds: “Oh my brothers, I’ve not yet begun to repent.”Scripture and our liturgy are only coherent if we confess Jesus as fully divine.

And the Spirit? Likewise on the Creator side of the Creator/creation divide. Texts like today’s Epistle and Gospel become really strange if we give another answer.

Why does it matter that Jesus and the Spirit are on the Creator side of the Creator/creation divide? I’ll grossly simplify. Jesus says to Philip “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). So we don’t need to fear a hidden god behind Jesus, good cop/bad cop on a cosmic scale. Jesus: “Come to me, all you that are weary…”; the Father: “But not the preacher!” Jesus leaves and the Spirit comes. So now we’re stuck with the B-team? No: the Spirit is fully divine.

So Christians worship three gods? No. All the New Testament writers were Jews, and the Shema was firmly written into their DNA: “HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE” (Deut. 6:4 JPS).

Do we know how Father, Son, and Spirit are one? No. Remember the Creator/creation divide. We’re on the creation side, and our analogies only get us so far. The technical language in the Nicene Creed (“of one substance with the Father”) serves to guard the mystery, rather than explain the mystery. Some of the church fathers spoke of the Son and the Spirit as the two hands of God, and, as metaphors go, that’s not a bad one.

The Doctrine of the Trinity: rather than having a very distant and uninvolved god off there somewhere, we have a loving Father extending his two hands. One hand: Jesus Christ, who has taken on our flesh, who knows well what it is to live as a human being. The other hand: the Holy Spirit, God moving in our midst, not only empowering the Church, but also working throughout the world to spread the knowledge of God’s love made known in Jesus.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So God is more like a man than a woman? No; God is beyond gender, and Scripture uses both masculine and feminine images. But. The conduct of too many men, some hijacking “God the Father” to justify their violence and violations, have desecrated this language, leaving deep wounds. With the psalmist:

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance;
they have profaned your holy temple;
they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble. (79:1)

So when Paul says we “groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:23), that’s also about the damage done to the language God’s given us.  Who would have guessed that Paul’s “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7) is understatement?

Second. We say “God is love.” But what possible sense does this sentence have before the creation? The confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit responds to this question with unexpected beauty. God is love, because love has existed eternally between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The fundamental reality of the universe is not a solitary god, but the Unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, an eternal community of love. From this community God created us. We are created for this community. So as God invites us into community this is not about forming a new community, but about entering into the Dance that has been going on for all eternity.

Third, in today’s Gospel reading Jesus prescribes the form of baptism: “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This command, this use of the Divine Name, is primarily not an invitation to contemplation nor to writing thick theological tomes, but to action. It’s like the revelation of the Divine Name ‘Yahweh’ to Moses from the burning bush. What Yahweh wants of Moses is neither contemplation nor theologizing, but to return to Egypt to bring out the people. Here, on another mountain, Jesus employs the Divine Name, and again in the context of mission. He commissions the disciples—and with them, ourselves—to a task which encompasses all our lives: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

At various points we naturally wonder what we’re going to do with our lives. Today’s reading reminds us that we Christians don’t ask this question in a vacuum. How can I best respond to this commission? How is my life—in whatever form it currently takes—also going to be about making disciples? We’re always already witnessing to something; how is my life witnessing to my participation in that Community which is the Holy Trinity?

I began this homily by recalling the ways our weekly worship is profoundly trinitarian in form. So the Trinity exists only within these four walls? No. We speak to and through the Trinity here also so that we can recognize the work of the Trinity everywhere.

And this is the invitation that this day presents: to live the coming week with the senses fully awake to the presence of this Triune God. The loving Father continues extending the two arms—the Son and the Holy Spirit—to embrace us and to draw us into a dance which has no end.

Readings (Acts, 1 Corinthians, John 20)

The Spirit has arrived. Alleluia? Alleluia!

Let’s start with the simplest. Pentecost, like all our major feasts, celebrate God keeping God’s promises. Jesus promised the Spirit; the Spirit arrived. Living, as our Bishop reminded us last week, in the inbetween, that God keeps God’s promises is something to remember. In a typical week it’s something I need to remember multiple times.

We heard today’s Gospel reading also on the second Sunday of Easter. The part relevant to today’s feast comes towards the end: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That, in passing, is the basis for the Absolution that follows the Confession. The bishop—or priest under the bishop’s authority—isn’t improvising, but doing what Jesus has authorized.

OK, so how will Peter use this power on—say—the Day of Pentecost? Recall Luke’s earlier story: Jesus and the disciples are headed to Jerusalem, and a village refuses to receive them. “When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’” (Lk 9:54) That’s for refusing a night’s hospitality; what when Jesus is arrested, tortured, and executed?

We heard the beginning of Peter’s sermon in today’s reading; we heard the rest of it in the second through fourth Sundays of Easter. Right after that lengthy quote from Joel, “Jesus of Nazareth…you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up.” The crowd asks “what should we do?” And how does Peter answer? “Do? You’re toast. Remember John the Baptist? ‘The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire’” (Matt. 3:12).

The Spirit has arrived. The Spirit has given Peter the freedom not to default to “eye for eye.” But how to respond is in Peter’s hands. And thank God he remembers the “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” part. And how did the Father send Jesus? With “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). So Peter offers forgiveness to everyone present. So for that reason the Day of Pentecost is a day of celebration rather than a day of mourning.

Where does that leave us? There’s a necessary role for confrontation in our playbook, what John Lewis called “good trouble.” Peter names what has happened. But it’s subordinate to the primary message, that God desires the prosperity of those who are currently our enemies. This is the “gentleness and reverence” we heard Peter talking about in his letter two Sundays ago. On the other hand, Peter’s sermon is the definitive “no” to our recurrent temptation to weaponize the Spirit’s coming. God’s with us, and therefore against our enemies. Christian nationalism as practiced in Russia and this country come to mind, the voices that shout “I have no need of you.” But the clarity with which I see these specks in my brothers’ eyes does give me pause. Surely there are no logs in mine…

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives us a second look at how we respond to the Spirit’s arrival. Corinth was a proverbially competitive place, and from Paul’s letter it’s clear that some of the Corinthians have taken the Spirit’s arrival as another opportunity for one-upmanship. There are different gifts; some must be more important than others; if my gift is more important then I’m more important. So, later in the chapter: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (v.21). So Paul encourages them—pleads with them—to understand themselves as a body in which the different gifts are given for “the common good.”

The frightening thing about using the Spirit’s gifts for the one-upmanship game is that it probably didn’t involve any conscious decision. If I’ve got something that I can use as an advantage, I use it.

This is where God’s love for us, love for our freedom is—depending on your mood—overwhelming or frightening. God gives us gifts. God doesn’t control how we use those gifts.

Last Sunday our Bishop spoke of prayer as paying attention. So if Paul tells us to pray without ceasing (1 Th 5:17), perhaps we need to pay attention without ceasing. The Spirit has arrived. (Alleluia? Alleluia!) The Spirit gives us freedom. The Spirit doesn’t—typically—mess with our default settings, our habits, our ingrained patterns of behavior. That’s our work. The Spirit has given me this gift, this moment, this opportunity: how am I going to use it?

Readings (Psalm 93; Daniel 7:1-14 in place of Ephesians 1:15-23)

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Today’s Feast does add an additional layer to that, doesn’t it! But what does it mean? If all we had were these two texts from Luke, it would be like having our experience with weddings reduced to watching the bride or groom head off for the ceremony. Fortunately, we have Daniel’s vision.

Daniel’s vision. In one of Charles Schulz’ cartoons Snoopy is chasing leaves, only to be stopped when a large rack slams down right in front of him. He concludes “The one with the biggest teeth wins.” So in Daniel’s vision: something lionish, something bearish, something leopardish, then something that defied description. And if the vision had stopped there, we would have the despair powerfully captured in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera: “A man just keeps alive by completely / Being able to forget that he’s a human being, too.” “Grub first, then ethics.” So Great Britain’s mascot is the lion, Russia’s the bear, ours the eagle. And so the statement attributed to Roosevelt about the brutal Nicaraguan dictator Anastastio Somoza García: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” (If we want to understand what’s happening at our southern border, that might not be a bad place to start.)

And then in the vision, the unexpected. The Ancient One appears, and “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” Human history is finally human, not bestial.

Psalm 8 asked the question:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Ps. 8:3-4)

What are human beings? Oh, the ways that question gets answered! “The one who dies with the most toys wins!” That’s one of the more popular answers, and our economy would probably collapse without it. Macbeth, facing his own death: human life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing” (V.5.25-27). The prophet Isaiah cries out in near despair “All people are grass, / their constancy is like the flower of the field” (40:6). The good news of today’s feast: Jesus’ ascension is the definitive answer to that question: human beings are those destined for “dominion and glory and kingship.” For that the Father created us; for that Jesus took on our flesh; for that the Spirit empowers us.

Today’s texts give us two additional ways of approaching this what are human beings question. In Luke’s texts what isn’t said is as important as what is said. There’s no hint of Jesus shedding our humanity (“Finally!”) to return to being, well, simply divine. Jesus in all his humanity—including those wounds he’d invited Thomas to probe—ascends. The Greeks got it wrong: progress isn’t about distancing ourselves from the body, from matter; these are part of God’s good creation. Nor is progress about erasing the hard, painful, or even dumb moments in our pasts. Jesus ascends with those scars, and they’re part of his glory. So, whether it’s that strange assortment of voices that is my self, or the equally strange combination of events and circumstances that constitutes daily life, there’s nothing that God isn’t out to touch and transform.

What are human beings? Our answer to that is inevitably shaped by our experiences with those more powerful than ourselves. “Children should be seen, not heard.” “Yes, you can come in, but don’t touch anything!” Is that what our humanity comes to before divine grandeur? We focus too much, I think, on divine grandeur and too little on divine generosity. Recall last week’s Gospel: “we will come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23). The God revealed in both the Old and New Testaments desires to share as much of God’s self as we can take in, to share as much of God’s love, God’s joy, God’s peace as we can take in.

What are human beings? Invitees to a celebration that has no end. And all this underwritten in Jesus’ ascension.

Deep breath, and on to a much shorter part two.

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” That’s a real break: Jesus is there; we’re here. It’s an unnerving enough break that our two collects do their best to dance around it. The first collect: “give us faith to perceive that…he abides with his Church on earth.” The second collect: “so we may also in heart and mind there ascend and with him continually dwell.” Absence, what absence?

Now in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says “I am with you always” (28:20). So how is this absent Jesus present? The short answer is through the Holy Spirit—in an astonishing variety of ways. For one of the more important ways, let’s recall that story in Luke just before today’s Gospel. On Easter Sunday two disciples are walking to Emmaus and a stranger joins them. They talk about the week’s events and…

“Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he [the stranger] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight” (24:27-31).

Jesus opens the Scripture; Jesus breaks the Bread. It’s a one-off event; it’s the pattern of every Eucharist. Through the Holy Spirit in every Eucharist Jesus is present. “The Word of the Lord.” “This is my Body…This is my Blood.” All very material: ears, mouths, bread, wine. God likes matter; God created it.

Jesus with us in the Eucharist: it’s a hinge in time. We hold up our recent past: praise, offerings, confession. The Scripture, the Bread, the Wine: these propel us into the new week. The Scripture: how do we incarnate this Word on Monday morning, Wednesday midafternoon with the clock moving at glacial speed, Friday night? The Bread and Wine: Jesus’ Body and Blood, and the model for everything our hands touch during the week. How do I lift this moment, this situation up to God so that God can do something extraordinary with it? The good news: we’re not alone in any of this. Jesus—through the Spirit—let’s do this together. “I am with you always.”

Ascension Day: the glad proclamation that also when Jesus’ way is hard, it is the human way, and it leads to unending joy—for all peoples, nations, and languages.

Readings

If the resurrection of Jesus is a crisis for the world and its institutions—a theme that ran through last week’s readings—the ascension of Jesus is a crisis for the disciples. Since the Feast of the Ascension is this Thursday (Mass at 7 PM), it’s worth listening to what Jesus might have to say about this.

The Ascension is a crisis for the disciples and for us. We know where Jesus is: at the right hand of the Father. That’s the center; we’re not centerstsage. So how about us: how can we live, how should we live, in Jesus’ absence? (“Jesus went to heaven; all I got was this t-shirt”?) Doesn’t this leave us orphans, left to ourselves to figure out how to put our identity and calling into practice?

It’s precisely in the context of this fear, this terror of being abandoned, that Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, the Spirit of Truth. The very breath of God, which gives life to all creation, which inspired the prophets, now will be the means by which the Father and the Son take up residence in the Church and in every believer. As Jesus says, “we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Now, of the three Persons of the Trinity, the Spirit is the One that often remains a sort of blur. It helps to go back to the Hebrew, where ruah, the word we translate as ‘spirit’ is used for both breath and wind. Few things more intimate than breath; few things more powerful than wind. Ruah, spanning everything from the softest breath to the strongest wind—that’s not a bad image to keep in mind when we speak the word ‘spirit’.

The Spirit, in the words of our Catechism (BCP 852), “leads us into all truth and enables us to grow in the likeness of Christ.” That is, the Spirit enables us to receive the Word of God and the Sacraments, and transforms us over time into the image of Christ. The Spirit functions as a sort of catalyst in the chemical sense, not adding anything to the chemical reaction, but making it happen.

How am I supposed to recognize the presence of the Spirit in my life? Pentecostal and charismatic Christians emphasize the extraordinary gifts, such as speaking in unknown languages. We don’t discount these gifts, but we don’t demand to see them in order to recognize the Spirit’s presence. Again from the Catechism: “We recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit when we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and are brought into love and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation.”

That’s a useful answer because it makes clear that the Spirit enables not just my relationship to God, but a thick web of relationships that extend to all creation. As the ecologists remind us, everything is eventually connected to everything, and the Spirit is concerned with nothing less.

It’s also an answer that needs some unpacking, because confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and achieving harmony with ourselves and our neighbors don’t always converge in the short term. Paul’s witness in Athens (our first reading) is met with scoffing, and the backdrop of Peter’s letters (our second reading) is that faithful witness regularly meets with persecution. This doesn’t mean that we stop confessing Jesus. It does mean that because our desire is for harmony, there’s no place for arrogance in our witness. Recall Peter’s words from today’s reading: “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

If we have been baptized, we have received this gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the confidence that we have as Christians: a loving Father before us, Jesus Christ our brother beside us, and the Holy Spirit among and within us, enabling us to respond with Jesus to the Father.

Let’s continue in the Catechism (BCP 853): “Q. How do we recognize the truths taught by the Holy Spirit? A. We recognize truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in accord with the Scriptures.” The Spirit is not going to contradict the Scriptures. The Spirit is going to stretch our understanding of the Scriptures, show us the inadequacies of our current ways of reading Scripture—recall the Spirit drafting Peter into preaching to the Gentiles. Do I ever get to the point where the Spirit doesn’t need to stretch my understanding of the Scriptures? Probably not.

So far the Catechism. But what of personal experience, on which our culture puts a great deal of value? There doesn’t seem to be much about personal experience in these lines from the Catechism. Isn’t there more to say?

Well, yes. Recall the second lesson. Peter is talking about the Noah story and says: “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience.” That phrase “an appeal to God” reminds us of the central role of desire in our Christian life. The Christian life is a life marked by desire.

My baptism is not simply something in my past, but equally the definition of my identity now: a desire to live, to live as a human being, to live as Jesus lived (three ways of saying the same thing).

We think of God as characteristically telling us what to do. But God equally characteristically asks us what we want, what we desire. A knitter will save a lot of effort if she decides at the start whether she’s knitting a scarf or a stocking cap, rather than figuring it out later. We save a lot of effort—God knows—if we decide what we want, who we want to be sooner rather than later—and stick to it.

Staying clear on this desire in this sense is easier said than done in our culture, which specializes in inciting in us unlimited contradictory desires. We periodically fall for it—so confession is a regular part of our worship. So we need to be in the habit of asking ourselves: are my decisions and patterns of life nurturing and protecting this desire, or letting the world sidetrack it?

Meanwhile, Jesus in the Gospel speaks of guarding his commandments or words. Do we desire to experience the Spirit working in our life? Obey Jesus. It’s a cycle: the Spirit enables us to obey Jesus; obedience opens us to the power of the Spirit. Is there a limit to the effects of this cycle? It would appear not. In last week’s Gospel reading we heard: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.”

This is one of the reasons why our tradition speaks so frequently of the importance of a daily encounter with Scripture. How are we supposed to guard Jesus’ words if we don’t know them? If I’ve got CNN on my Smartphone, I probably want the Daily Office there too.

A final observation. In our world, as in Athens in Paul’s time, there are plenty of philosophic and religious traditions about God. How to distinguish between the true and the false? Recall Jesus’ answer to this question. It’s not simply: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” but (from John 8) “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Follow Jesus’ teaching and see for yourself what happens. If the bumblebee started by trying to work out the aerodynamics of its flight, it’d never get off the ground. So in following Jesus: walking on the water doesn’t look like it’s going to work—until we’re doing it. And this is a lesson some of us have to learn over and over. And this is simply another way of saying what we’ve heard in today’s Gospel: guarding Jesus’ commandments, Jesus’ words, opens us to the life-giving and transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

With Jesus’ ascension we are not left orphans. The ascended Jesus has sent us the Holy Spirit. Keeping Jesus’ words, we open ourselves to that Spirit’s presence and power. Alleluia.

Readings

“Like living stones,” writes Peter, “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” “Spiritual sacrifices:” what is Peter going to talk about? Not, as we might expect, the Holy Eucharist as celebrated every Sunday, but “For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution” (2:13). So Peter goes on to talk about the empire, slavery, and marriage. Most of that is omitted by our lectionary, maybe because Peter’s words have been too often abused. But if Peter wants to talk about “spiritual sacrifices,” let’s let him talk, and we might be surprised at what he has to say. But for that we’ll need a running start, which we’ll get through the other readings.

In our Gospel we hear these well-known words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through me.” These words continue to play a role in our conversations about what Christian mission is about. After we’ve said all that we need to say about God’s Spirit creatively reaching out to all peoples in all times and places—and sometimes we need to say a great deal more than we have said—if anyone is to come to the Father, it is through Jesus.

But in our text Jesus says “no one comes to the Father, except through me” not to start talking about evangelism, but to emphasize how closely the Father, Son, and Spirit intertwine, and that the disciples’ life depends on staying intertwined in this divine life. “The way, and the truth, and the life:” this isn’t about life in the world to come, but about this life, how one might live humanly now. And the claim is that Jesus is central to this human life now. Let’s see how that plays out in the other readings.

Our psalm is a cry for deliverance, assuming a world that we know too well. We may lack many things, but we don’t lack enemies, folk whose pursuit of their goals doesn’t translate into good news for us. As the wag rewrote the beginning of Kipling’s “If”: “‘If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs…’ you obviously don’t understand the situation.” Yep, our world.

Now, if we start with that psalm, how is Stephen’s trial going to turn out? Stephen had been giving powerful testimony to Jesus, he’d been hauled before the high priest’s council, he’d delivered a powerful but not very conciliatory defense, and now our text. If anyone needed deliverance, it was Stephen. But, the text tells us, he was stoned to death.

Now, our psalm reading ended with “Make your face to shine upon your servant, / and in your loving-kindness save me” and Acts reports Stephen saying “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.” So it sounds like Stephen was not feeling short-changed.

We may be. Some days I’d prefer an ending in which Stephen is whisked away by a squad of heavily-armed angels, and if they leave the temple leadership with a bad case of hemorrhoids, so much the better.

But here’s the thing. God’s not about just delivering Stephen. God’s about delivering the high priest, the folk who dragged Stephen before the council, and even that young man Saul who took charge of the executioners’ outer garments so they could carry out the stoning…vigorously. God’s going for all the marbles, and that, as Peter’s letter makes clear, even includes our institutions, like, say, the empire, slavery, marriage.

After what Jesus and followers like Stephen experienced, it would be very easy to write off the world’s institutions—like the Essenes who withdrew to the edge of the Dead Sea. If we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,” why should we bother with all these worldly institutions?

Nevertheless, here’s Peter saying “For the Lord’s sake accept the authority of every human institution.” Is Peter selling out? No. Peter understands Jesus being the Way, the Truth, and the Life to mean that Jesus is about transforming human institutions from the inside out. Peter could have talked about any number of institutions; he focuses on three: the empire, slavery, and marriage. Here’s an institution: what is Jesus going to do with it?

Empire. The core of what Peter wants to say about the Empire is contained in the following lines with their careful choice of verbs. “Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” “Honor the emperor.” Honor: give him neither less nor more than his due. Not “love the emperor”—the object of love is the brotherhood, that is, other Christians. Not “fear the emperor”—fear is reserved for God. So worship of the emperor is out, and Christians would pay for that exclusion with their lives until Constantine’s conversion some 300 years later. No, “honor the emperor”—the honor we owe any other human being.

Slavery. “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh.” Peter is breaking new ground. In first Century moral discourse there was plenty of advice and instruction to owners regarding how to handle their slaves. But one didn’t speak to the slaves themselves, for they were not considered moral agents (and the same logic applied to women). So, simply to address the slaves and address them as moral agents, as full members of this chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, is already to begin shaking the foundations.

And it is for the slaves that Christ’s conduct serves as an example: “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” The owner may think that the slave obeys out of fear; the Christian slave obeys as a way of imitating Jesus.

Do you see how Peter is rearranging our mental worlds? Where do we encounter the following of the resurrected Christ, so glorious, so splendid? Not in the glory and splendor of the owners, but in the obedience of the slaves. It is not that God is any friend of slavery—the exodus from Egypt should put that fear to rest—but, says Peter, if we want to watch the followers of the glorified Christ—watch the slaves.

Over time Peter’s rearranging of our mental worlds combined with Genesis’ affirmation of all bearing God’s image helped us realize that the transformation Jesus wished to make to the institution of slavery was its abolition.

There’s much more we could say, but let’s at least remember this: these words to the slaves speak to all persons in a subordinate position in any social or economic arrangement. Are you suffering unjustly in your work? You have Jesus Christ as your companion.

Marriage. Here Peter addresses both wives and husbands, recognizing both as moral agents. The wives are called to submission, the husbands to considerate living and to bestowing honor on their wives.

Christians at the “conservative” end of the spectrum take Peter’s words as expressing God’s will for marriages today. They’re probably making the same mistake the folk who thought God liked slavery made. Given what Peter’s already done with empire and slavery, I think it’s much more likely that Peter is simply starting with the institution as it then existed and pushing it in the direction of God’s will.

In a discussion of the same institution in Ephesians, Paul speaks of being subject to each other. Peter does not use that language, but his call on the husbands to considerate living and to bestowing honor on their wives comes to pretty much the same thing. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

From our cultural context we hear Peter’s words as hopelessly hierarchical. What we forget is that in most times and places Peter’s words (and similar words elsewhere in the New Testament) are plenty revolutionary. What calls to “considerate living” and “bestowing honor on their wives” can do is begin to conform male desires to female priorities. Less money on the mistress; more money for school clothes.

My favorite story about this comes from a town Elizabeth Brusco encountered during her doctoral field work in Colombia. Like many towns one of its major festivals was that of its patron saint, and at that festival the town insured that no one went thirsty (free beer). Plenty of scores would be settled, and typically the birth rate would spike about nine months later, the father of most of the newborn designated as St. So-and-So. One year they had elected an evangelical mayor, whose church devoted considerable attention to texts like 1 Peter. So at the festival he announces: this year in honor of our patron saint the children will have all the milk they want. The milk will flow like rivers. Of course the wives are submitting—but to priorities that have more to do with their interests.

I do not imagine for a minute that I’ve addressed all the issues that come up with regard to Christian participation in these institutions. I haven’t tried; nor did Peter, and I think he’d be horrified at the suggestion that his words were the only words that would ever need to be spoken regarding these institutions. Rather, what Peter has done is give us an overall strategy: rather than withdraw from these institutions, or check our Christian identities at the door when we participate in them, participate in them as Christians and let that yeast ferment the whole loaf. This is a strategy for the long haul in which whether we are “successful” individually is less important than whether we are faithful. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life also with regard to our life in these very imperfect but transformable institutions.

“The kingdom of heaven—Jesus said—is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

Readings

Today’s readings: such a tapestry! Let’s look at three of the threads.

First thread: “The LORD is my shepherd” sings David; in the verse just after today’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus: “I am the good shepherd.” “Shepherd” in David’s time was a potent political metaphor. The LORD is shepherd of Israel; the king is shepherd of the people.

The kings liked to portray themselves as good shepherds. Israel’s prophets, particularly Jeremiah and Ezekiel, heard a different divine verdict. Here’s Ezekiel: “Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel…  Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.” This goes on for a good bit. Then, “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD.” (Ezek. 34:2-15) When we hear Jesus’ “I am the good shepherd” we know that Ezekiel’s words were not empty.

Peter, later in the letter our lectionary has us reading, will say “Honor the emperor,” not because the emperor’s doing such a fine job shepherding, but because Peter has just said “Honor everyone,” and the emperor is included in “everyone.” When the emperor and his lackeys overreach, Jesus’ “I am the good shepherd” translates into Peter’s “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29). We may have the political leaders we deserve; the good news of the Gospel is that the Good Shepherd has arrived, and Jesus bats last.

Second thread: what do we expect of this Good Shepherd? Two weeks ago I talked about how the petition psalms struggle to hold God, the enemies, and the psalmist in the same frame, appealing to God to do something. Sometimes the psalmist’s confidence that God is doing something takes over the psalm, as in today’s psalm. It wouldn’t take much adjustment for it to sound like a generic petition psalm: “Lord, I’m in the middle of the valley of the shadow of death.” “Lord, I can’t even take a bite without those who trouble me crowding around.” But the psalmist understands—in the gut, not simply in the head—that “you are with me,” and that’s bedrock.

By the way, it isn’t better to pray Psalm 23 than one of the “Get me out of here now!” psalms. The Psalter is such a large collection because we can be in so many places, and wherever we are, we’ll need some words. As the saying goes, “pray as you can; don’t pray as you can’t.”

Nevertheless, the psalmist’s “[nevertheless] you are with me” sets us on a trajectory towards Jesus’ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (v.11, just past today’s reading). The LORD is Jesus’ Good Shepherd, and “with me” turns out to include, not exclude, the cross. Peter in our second reading applies this pastorally: following this Shepherd can mean suffering.

If we wonder what, if anything, our suffering accomplishes, Peter is silent, but we have his colleague Paul. In his letter to the Colossians we hear “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (1:24). There’s no description of the “how,” but it’s clear that the LORD can employ also our suffering for the healing of the world. This in turn shapes what we expect of Jesus, our Good Shepherd.

Third thread. Up to this point we’ve been assuming that we’re the known factor as we attempt to understand God’s conduct. But then there’s that verse in the Gospel: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” The rabbis have a story we might want to think about.[1]

Rabbi Yehuda of Prague dreamt that he had died and was outside the gates of heaven. An angel read the names of those invited to enter, but he did not hear his name. He begged the angel for an explanation. The angel replied: “But many come here who have never heard their true names on the lips of man or angel. They have lived believing that they know who they really are, but they don’t know. And so when they’re called to heaven by their names as who they really are, they don’t recognize themselves. They don’t realize that it’s for them that the gates of heaven are opened. So they must wait until they know their true selves and so recognize their true names.” At this Rabbi Yehuda woke and, rising from his bed with tears, he lay prostrate on the ground and prayed, “Master of the Universe! Grant me once before I die to hear my own true name as who I really am.”

When Jesus calls me by name will I recognize that name? Holy Scripture thinks that’s a serious question, and so invites us to follow, also so that in the following we make some progress in knowing our own names.

[1] Adapted from a story attributed to Rowan Williams on a now inaccessible website.