Walking by faith, anticipating sight (4th Sunday after Pentecost, 6/16/2024)

Leave a reply

Lessons (Track 1)

“…for we walk by faith, not by sight.” You can get a decent sermon out of that line from Paul. But some care is needed, since it’s vulnerable to misunderstanding and abuse. Misunderstanding: thinking that the invisible per se is more valuable than the visible. Abuse: recall Orwell in 1984: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Bluntly, when we talk about faith, what distinguishes us from the folk who wear aluminum foil hats to keep the aliens from controlling their minds?

It turns out that appeals to the senses show up at some key moments in Scripture. For example:

Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” (Matt. 11:4-6)

[From the beginning of John’s first letter:] We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– (1 Jn. 1:1)

Not to mention the very visible harvest and fully-grown plant in Jesus’ parables. In the middle of the last century the then Archbishop of Canterbury captured it well: “Christianity is the most avowedly materialistic of all the great religions.”

So when does sight or, more broadly, the senses, become problematic?

First, in our lesson from the Book of Samuel, the prophet Samuel anoints David. Working through the line of older brothers we hear:

“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

Appearances can give incomplete information. This is a point the Book of Proverbs, solidly empirical in orientation, makes repeatedly. You see a wealthy person. Wealthy through hard work or through theft? Can’t judge by appearances. You see a poor person. Poor through sloth or oppression? Can’t judge by appearances.

(Paul uses the same outward appearance/heart contrast in v.12. I wonder if he is alluding to the David story, which might align Paul with David and “those who boast in outward appearance” with David’s older—and rejected—brothers.)

Second, we’re in a story, and where we are in the story can determine what’s visible or invisible. That appears to be what’s in play in that line from Paul with which we started. Here it is in context: “So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord–for we walk by faith, not by sight.” In this part of the story the Lord’s out of sight, so, faith.

In the previous chapter, “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18). The glory is now invisible—but still worth attending to!

And story (time) is central to the logic of both of Jesus’ parables. Someone scatters seed, and for a good stretch nothing seems to be happening. But, oh, the harvest. Again, the proverbial mustard seed. Looking at the seed, we’d write it off. But just wait!

So, reliance on sight can be problematic because it gives incomplete information or because what’s visible depends on where we are in the story. The third reason is more profound—and more challenging. God coming in Jesus’ vulnerable flesh which climaxes in Jesus’ death and resurrection profoundly recasts what it means to see glory. So in the Gospel of John’s vocabulary Jesus being glorified and Jesus being crucified can be synonymous.

Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn. 12:23-24).

And this in turn shapes Paul’s understanding of glory. Recall what we heard earlier:

…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:10-11)

When I cited this earlier I focused on the “visible” part. Now notice what is visible: a cross-shaped combination of death and life. If the Corinthians aren’t paying attention they’ll conclude that Paul isn’t to be taken seriously because there’s little worldly glory in his ministry. But that’s to miss the point. If the crucified Jesus is the central revelation of God’s glory, then what we look for when we look for glory needs serious readjustment.

Where does this leave us? Briefly:

First, “the Lord looks on the heart.” We do well to remember the limits of our perceptions. And faced with decisions we pray for guidance.

Second, where we are in the story can determine what we can see or not. As often as not I find this very good news. With the problems we face “you can’t get there from here” can haunt me. Jesus’ parable reminds me that there are situations in which I not only don’t need to see—I don’t need to understand. “…and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

Third, Paul’s cross-shaped combination of death and life: the losses, the deaths we experience: united to Jesus’ story these can also make life visible. This isn’t a matter of technique; it can encourage our hope and patience.

Earlier in the letter to the Corinthians the issue of letters of recommendation comes up, and Paul doubles down on the visible: “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.” Paraphrasing slightly, “We don’t need no stinking letters.” That’s Paul’s hope for Corinth…and for North Lake. “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all.”

Love complicates things (3rd Sunday after Pentecost)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1)

In the middle of Jesus’ argument with the scribes he tells this short parable: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Plunder: that’s an intriguing image for what Jesus is about. For what God’s about, for that matter. The Exodus: plunder on a national scale. The mob stirred up by Paul and Silas’ presence in Thessalonica didn’t get it entirely wrong: “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). No wonder Paul’s regularly in trouble—as we heard in our second reading.

But it’s not plunder for the sake of plunder (“My pile of loot’s bigger than yours!”), but, whether at the Exodus or in Galilee, for human freedom, restoring it so that it can be used well. Pulling back the camera to take in all of Mark’s Gospel, whether in the exorcisms, the healings, the conversations or the proclamation, that plundering is about restoring human freedom and encouraging us humans to use it well. The first thing out of Jesus’ mouth in that Gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15).

The kingdom/reign of God, with two divine desires in play: that we be free, that we choose well. Either one of these would be easy to fulfill; both—that quickly gets complicated. Consider our first reading from Samuel’s time, a few centuries after the Exodus. The people have repeatedly used their freedom badly, and now they want a human king. A king: they’d celebrated the Lord as their king back at the Exodus (Exodus 15:18). But now, no, a human king “so that we also may be like other nations.” If God’s desire were simply that the people choose well, well, so much for freedom: no human king. But God desires both that they be free and that they choose well. So God tells Samuel to give the people what they want; we’ll do it the hard way.

That’s a pretty good illustration of God’s love. God loves us too much either to compromise our freedom or to stop caring about our choices. Love—as any parent knows—complicates things. God can bring good out of our bad choices (the king is the template for the Messiah), but the price is high (“King of the Jews” was the sign on Jesus’ cross).

Does God always get what God wants? Since what God wants is that we be free and that we choose well, the answer is pretty clearly no. (That’s one of the main reasons why the Bible is a lengthy book!) And one of the recurrent challenges in worshipping this God is to respect both of these divine desires. If we think the people are choosing badly is their freedom really all that important?

Bad choices bring death. Adam and Eve choose badly in Genesis chapter 3; only one of their sons (Cain and Abel) is alive by the end of chapter 4. Death ends the story; death ends all stories. In the psalms one of the most frequent arguments the psalmists make for deliverance: rescue me, because in Hades no one praises you; that’s the lose-lose option. Shakespeare nails it in MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

So if there were ever a game-changer, it’s Jesus’ resurrection (the motor for Paul’s reflections in our second reading). Death isn’t the end. Jesus’ transformed body grounds our hope for a similarly transformed body, “an eternal weight of glory,” as Paul put it.

How to tie this together? At least three ways come to mind. “God desires our freedom and that we use it well.” That, of course, is only one of many ways we might summarize what God’s up to. But play with it; wonder how it might serve to guide our outreach budget and activities.

Second. God desires our freedom and that we use it well. Because neither desire is negotiable God’s history with us is as messy as it is (recall, again, Holy Week) and Mick Jagger’s “You can’t always get what you want” turns out to apply to God as well. So we don’t know how all this will play out in the end. Will all be saved? We do know that it comes down to a fairly simple question: is my character such that I’d enjoy spending eternity with this God who keeps making hard choices and who loves my enemies as much as me?

In this respect heaven and hell reflect who we are. Recall that old analogy: a large banquet hall, the tables loaded. The complication is that our arms no longer bend at the elbows. At some tables, despair: despite increasingly acrobatic strategies no one can feed themselves. At other tables, delight: everyone feeding their neighbor.

A third way of tying this together: C. S. Lewis’ luminous sermon “The Weight of Glory” that draws on our second reading. After imagining what this weight of glory might mean, he pivots:

…it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.… It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.…There are no ordinary people.

God, in love, desires our freedom and that we use it well, for our choices really matter. That doesn’t make it easy for God or for us. Easy, apparently, is not the point.

Postscript to June 2 Sermon

Leave a reply

Interpreting Psalm 139 starts with a moral decision: are vv.19-22 (vv.18-21 in the Book of Common Prayer) templates for our prayers? Some traditions in both Testaments would support an affirmative answer (the imprecatory psalms, Jehu’s religious purge [2 Kings 10:18ff], Paul’s comments regarding his opponents in Galatians [1:9; 5:12 etc]). Others in both Testaments a negative answer (psalms like 143 [“for no one living is righteous before you”], Jesus’ command to love the enemy  [Mt 5:44]).

My answer is negative, placing the verses in a position analogous to the many eloquent but wrong-headed speeches of Job’s friends. But why in God’s providence is it still there? A reminder, I think, that all of us remain capable of sentiments and acts good, bad, and ugly. Once we start cancelling what we don’t like we end up—if we’re consistent—cancelling ourselves (recall the guillotine). Better: that God got the divine hands dirty dealing with the author(s)/editor(s) of Psalm 139 gives me hope that God’s hands will keep dealing with me.

The Japanese have a custom of repairing pottery in a way that highlights the fractures with precious metals (kintsugi). Perhaps Psalm 139 is an exercise in kintsugi (like ourselves?).

Does our theology survive contact with the enemy? (2nd Sunday after Pentecost, 6/2/2024)

Leave a reply

Readings (Track 1); Psalm 139 (complete; versification differing slightly from the BCP version cited)

The Lectionary included part of Psalm 139 (Verses 1-5, 12-17) in today’s readings; what are we supposed to do with that psalm? The Lectionary offers one answer: read the parts you like; don’t read the parts you don’t like. Well, whatever text we’re reading, that doesn’t sound like a promising strategy for learning something new. So what are we supposed to do with it?

There certainly is an abrupt change in tone between vv. 17 and 18. The best way of making sense of that is to recall that some judicial processes in Israel involved a divine decision, the accused subject to divine examination (guilty or innocent?) with the decision announced, presumably, by a priest. “Presumably” because all our evidence is indirect: multiple psalms whose combination of themes is best explained by such processes. This psalm reflects such a process: the accused speaks to God regarding God’s thorough knowledge of the accused, and then calls for God’s judgment on the “wicked,” those who’d brought charges against the accused.

I say “This psalm reflects” because it’s hardly a transcript of the speech of a particular accused person. In fact, this theme of divine knowledge has expanded far beyond what the judicial process would involve, nevertheless preserving the flow from the accused affirming that just God’s knowledge of them, to crying out for that just God to punish the deserving. And in the process the psalm becomes—in its entirety—a sort of mirror for us. Let’s walk through it.

Verses 1-5 focus on God’s complete—astounding—knowledge of the speaker. It’s not that the psalmist is assuming divine omniscience. It’s more personal than that, putting experiences together. You know me, know all my tells. A game of poker against you would be folly. This knowledge: wonderful, incomprehensible. Peterson paraphrases “This is too much, too wonderful—I can’t take it all in.” But, such knowledge, welcome or unwelcome? Today, with all these databases collecting everything possible about us, increased use of facial recognition: good news? Is God having all this knowledge good news? The verses don’t say. The text invites us to wonder how we experience this knowledge.

Verses 6-11 provide a sort of answer: the speaker inventories all the possible places to escape this knowledge. But there’s no place to hide. Again, it’s not as though the psalmist is assuming omnipresence. It’s more like a wide receiver talking to a cornerback: “Just when I think I’m open, you’re there. You seem to know when I’m going to cut before I do.” Good news or bad news? The verbs in v.9 sound like good news, but then we can be lead where we want to go or where we don’t want to go.

Surprisingly, the light/darkness contrast in vv.10-11 provides a way forward, reminding the speaker of what God accomplished for the speaker in complete darkness: the speaker’s own bodily existence (vv.12-17). Verse 13: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Scripture’s well aware that our bodies can malfunction in horrific ways, but the uniform response is to call on God to make them work again, rather than to abandon the project. So Paul repeatedly speaks of a new body, and John’s Gospel notes that Jesus’ resurrected body is no barrier to enjoying a good serving of fish and chips. (Ketchup not mentioned because tomatoes hadn’t yet made it over from the Americas.)

God’s involvement with the psalmist started from the moment of conception. Amazing—but also in need of a sidebar. We’d misuse the psalmist’s testimony by dragging it into the current arguments about abortion. The psalmist is celebrating the care and continuity. The psalmist is not asking when this “unformed substance” (so the NRSV in v.15; “limbs” in the BCP) became a legal person. In Scripture that question is only implicitly addressed in the Exodus law dealing with fight between men that injures a woman that results in a miscarriage (Exod. 21:22ff). There the Greek translation introduces a distinction between a child not fully formed and a child fully formed, with personhood implied only in the latter case. So Thomas Aquinas’ position that the fetus received a soul 40 or 80 days after conception is representative. In the Roman Catholic Church ascription of personhood from the moment of conception may first appear in the 19th Century. Among the Evangelicals, as late as 1968 their flagship magazine, Christianity Today, sponsored a consultation on abortion. Participants disagreed on many points but reported “about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord.”[1] But back to the text.

As in the previous sections, the psalmist is overwhelmed by the qualitative difference between God’s knowledge and theirs, and this becomes the focus of the section’s concluding verses (16-17):

How deep I find your thoughts, O God!
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

But all that doesn’t derail the train of thought from God the judge examining the accused to calling on God to give the accusers what they deserve (vv.18-21).

What’s striking is that the intensity of the psalm seems to increase at v.18. God’s innumerable thoughts (vv.16-17) are important; God doing something about the enemies is really important. Somehow, once the enemies come on stage, all that celebration of God’s knowledge and creativity goes into the background and God’s role is reduced to destruction, to doing what the speaker can understand very well, thank you very much.

That’s the mirror that I think’s important here. We’re happy to celebrate God’s knowledge and the life-giving ways that God’s knowledge surpasses our own. But when the enemies come on stage, too often all that recedes, and what we want from God is that God do things we understand very well.

We remember Jesus’ “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). But sometimes we’re not there yet, and in those cases better to pray all of Psalm 139, than stop at v.17, hoping to convince ourselves that we’re farther along than we are.

To come at it from a different angle, the enemies provide an unwelcome helpful reality check: my talk of God’s amazing knowledge and competence: quarantined in the distant past, or the ground for trust and confidence in the present? That’s the recurrent challenge for God’s people in both Testaments: can the celebration of God’s past actions translate into trust now? Our enemies—alas—help us sort that out.

The last two verses attempt a sort of summary of the psalm. And they can serve as a sort of summary for our interaction with the psalm.

“Search me out, O God, and know my heart;
try me and know my restless thoughts.”

“Search” and “know”: verbs from the beginning of the psalm. So God should keep doing what God’s been doing, despite our recurrent ambivalence about whether that knowledge is good for us (“restless thoughts”).

“Look well whether there be any wickedness in me”

Perhaps that petition was originally formulaic, spoken assuming that of course God’s going to find me innocent. But after all the attention to God’s qualitatively superior knowledge, perhaps at least for us it can destabilize the assumption of a firm distinction between us and the wicked.[2]

“And lead me in the way that is everlasting.”

And in particular, “when the enemies come onstage, don’t let our vision shrink to what we’re capable of imagining you doing.” The military has a proverb: no plan survives encounter with the enemy. We might ask: does our theology survive encounter with the enemy? That’s the challenge Psalm 139 poses to us.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-history-right-white-evangelical-1970s-00031480, accessed 5/30/2024.

[2] The Pharisees as portrayed in Mark’s Gospel would have had no problem praying Ps 139 straight through and understanding their conspiring against Jesus as assisting God in the fulfillment of vv.18-21.

Postscript to the Trinity Sunday Sermon

Leave a reply

The Lectionary readings opened more doors than could be entered in the sermon. I could for example have spent much more time exploring the Trinity at work for our salvation in John’s Gospel. Hence this postscript.

One of the sermon’s primary themes was the Trinity as eternal community/fiesta/banquet/dance of love—hat tip to Leonardo Boff (Holy Trinity, Perfect Community) and C. S. Lewis (the Great Dance in Perelandra, chapter 17). But what of the buzzkill at the end of the Romans reading, Paul’s reference to sharing Jesus’ suffering?

The mediation between these themes was “The Prodigal Son” parable. (Is that parable a retelling of the Cain and Abel story?) The father wants both the younger “prodigal” son and the older self-righteous son at the banquet. But that’ll only happen if both recognize that the father’s love, forgiving, repaying evil with good (Rom 12:21), is an expression of strength, not weakness. That’ll only happen if both practice that love in forgiving, in repaying evil with good. Likewise the Father wants us at the banquet—us and our enemies. And that’ll only happen etc. That practice in this world means suffering (just ask Jesus how Holy Week went).

Pulling back the camera, while there are many moving parts in Jesus’ death, the combination of today’s Isaiah reading and the Prodigal Son parable encourage me to think that that death is less about paying some extrinsic penalty incurred by our guilt (a coal from the altar took care of Isaiah’s) and more about breaking the cycles of getting even that mar human beings and human history (see, conveniently, Gerhard Lohfink’s chapter 16 “Dying for Israel” in Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was).

Forgiving and repaying evil with good instead of seeking payback: signs of a strong or weak human being? (Signs of a strong or weak male?) The winds of that argument buffet us daily, and it’s worth noticing the answers we’re giving. And, since this is an election year, our presidential election is also about that.

La Santísima Trinidad–¿y qué? (La Trinidad, 26/5/2024)

Leave a reply

Lecturas

Hoy celebramos la fiesta de la Santísima Trinidad, una de las fiestas principales de la Iglesia. Un Dios; tres Personas. Pero—con toda la debida reverencia–¿y qué? Hay muchas maneras de responder a esta pregunta; voy a enfocar dos.

Confesando la Santísima Trinidad, confesamos que antes de la creación hay una comunidad de amor: Padre, Hijo, Espíritu Santo. “Dios es amor” decimos, y aquí tenemos el sentido más profundo de esta afirmación. Antes de nada, una comunidad de amor. “Comunidad”: quizá la palabra es demasiado débil. Mejor: una fiesta, un baile de amor. Y desde este amor Dios crea nuestro universo. Ni por carencia ni por necesidad, sino para compartir este amor primordial.

Compartir este amor primordial. Y aquí tenemos el destino humano: participar/vivir en esta comunidad de amor. Vislumbramos este destino en muchos textos de la Biblia. Por ejemplo, después del Éxodo y la entrega de la Ley:

Subieron Moisés, Aarón, Nadab, Abihú y los setenta dirigentes de Israel, y vieron al Dios de Israel: bajo los pies tenía una especie de pavimento de zafiro, límpido como el mismo cielo. Dios no extendió la mano contra los notables de Israel, que pudieron contemplar a Dios, y después comieron y bebieron. (Ex. 24:9-11 BNP)

O del profeta Isaías:

6 Y el SEÑOR de los ejércitos preparará en este monte para todos los pueblos un banquete de manjares suculentos, un banquete de vino añejo, pedazos escogidos con tuétano, y vino añejo refinado. 7 Y destruirá en este monte la cobertura que cubre todos los pueblos, el velo que está extendido sobre todas las naciones. 8 Él destruirá la muerte para siempre… (Is. 25:6-8 LBA)

O del fin de la Revelación de Juan:

El Espíritu y la esposa dicen: Ven. Y el que oye, diga: Ven. Y el que tiene sed, venga; y el que desea, que tome gratuitamente del agua de la vida. (Ap. 22:17 LBA)

Una fiesta de gozo desde antes de la creación—y nosotros, invitados a participar.

Ahora, un paréntesis, innecesario para algunos, necesario para otros—como su servidor. Un Dios; billones de personas: ¿no implica esto una burocracia sofocante? Bueno—necesito un poco más de imaginación. Y parece que Jesús mismo se dio cuenta del problema:

29 ¿No se venden dos gorriones por unas monedas? Sin embargo ni uno de ellos cae a tierra sin permiso del Padre de ustedes. 30 En cuanto a ustedes, hasta los pelos de su cabeza están contados. 31 Por tanto, no les tengan miedo, que ustedes valen más que muchos gorriones. (Mt. 10:29-31 BNP)

Hasta los pelos de mi cabeza. Y vemos esta dimensión personal de la invitación particularmente en los retratos de la Dama Sabiduría en el Antiguo Testamento:

Ella misma se da a conocer a los que la desean. Ella misma va de un lado a otro buscando a los que la merecen, los aborda benigna por los caminos, y les sale al paso en todo proyecto. (Sab. 6:13, 16 BNP)

En otras palabras, esta invitación de la Santísima Trinidad: no viene dirigida a ¨Ocupante¨ o ¨Residente¨.

Y esto nos lleva al segundo tema de esta plática. El primero: la asombrosa invitación de la Trinidad. El segundo: Dios no nos abandona a nuestros propios recursos para responder a esta invitación, como hemos escuchado en las lecturas de Romanos y Juan. En Romanos Pablo habla del Espíritu empoderando nuestras oraciones. Un poco después, de la intercesión del Espíritu cuando no tenemos la menor idea cómo orar:

26 De ese modo el Espíritu nos viene a socorrer en nuestra debilidad. Aunque no sabemos pedir como es debido, el Espíritu mismo intercede por nosotros con gemidos que no se pueden expresar. 27 Y el que sondea los corazones sabe lo que pretende el Espíritu cuando suplica por los consagrados de acuerdo con la voluntad de Dios. (Rom. 8:26-27 BNP)

En el Evangelio de Juan Jesús usa la imagen de nacimiento: ¨Te aseguro que, si uno no nace del agua y del Espíritu, no puede entrar en el reino de Dios.¨ (Jn. 3:5 BNP) Por eso bautizamos con agua en el Nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Nacimiento: la imagen sugiere un evento único. En la práctica, algo que recurre cuando—usando las palabras de Pablo—con la ayuda del Espíritu hacemos morir los hábitos destructivos que siguen siendo parte de nuestro carácter.

En otras palabras, ¿qué nos dice la doctrina de la Trinidad? Respondemos al Padre con el Hijo a nuestro lado y el Espíritu dentro y entre nosotros.

Bueno. La asombrosa invitación de la Trinidad, la asistencia diaria de la Trinidad a responder a esta invitación: basta para una plática. Pero, hay la última parte de la lectura de Romanos:

Y este mismo Espíritu se une a nuestro espíritu para dar testimonio de que ya somos hijos de Dios. Y puesto que somos sus hijos, también tendremos parte en la herencia que Dios nos ha prometido, la cual compartiremos con Cristo, puesto que sufrimos con él para estar también con él en su gloria. (Rom 8:16-17 DHH)

¿Sufrir con él? Después de tantas referencias a gozo, fiesta, banquete, ¿de dónde viene eso de sufrir? Una respuesta completa implicaría otra plática. Entonces, una respuesta mínima. En la parábola de Jesús que solemos llamar ¨El hijo pródigo¨ el padre quiere que tanto el hijo prodigo como el hijo creído estén en el banquete. Pero eso pasará solamente si los dos reconocen que el amor del padre, un amor que perdona y que vence al mal haciendo el bien (véase Rom 12:21) es una muestra de fortaleza, no de debilidad. Eso pasará solamente si los dos hijos practican este amor, perdonando, venciendo al mal haciendo el bien.

La Santísima Trinidad quiere que nosotros estemos en el banquete. Mejor: quiere que nosotros y nuestros enemigos estemos en el banquete. Pero eso pasará solamente si reconocemos que el amor del padre, un amor que perdona y que vence al mal haciendo el bien es una muestra de fortaleza, no de debilidad. Eso pasará solamente si hemos empezado a practicar este amor, perdonando, venciendo al mal haciendo el bien. Y esta práctica en este mundo trae sufrimiento—como nos recuerda cada Eucaristía (¨que por nosotros y por nuestra salvación bajó del cielo¨).

La Santísima Trinidad, una comunidad de amor desde antes de tiempo mismo, invitándonos a esta comunidad, empoderándonos por el Espíritu para responder a esta invitación, empoderándonos por el mismo Espíritu a caminar en el camino de perdón y de vencer al mal haciendo el bien: buenos motivos para celebrar esta fiesta, ¿no creen? Amén.

The Holy Trinity: And I should pay attention because? (Trinity Sunday, 5/26/2024)

Leave a reply

Readings

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, one of the principal feasts of the Church. One God; Three Persons. But—with all due reverence—so what? There are many ways we might answer that question; here are a couple.

Confessing the Holy Trinity we say that before creation there is a community of love: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That’s probably the most profound sense of the statement “God is love:” Father, Son, Holy Spirit in an eternal relationship of love. ‘Relationship’: that’s probably too weak a word. We might call it a banquet or a dance. And out of that love God creates our universe. Not out of lack or necessity (nothing is lacking) but out of desire to share that primordial love.

To share that primordial love: that’s the human destiny. It appears throughout Scripture; here are three examples. The first comes at the culmination of the Exodus at Sinai:

Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. God did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; also they beheld God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 24:9-11)

The second, from the prophet Isaiah:

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  (Isaiah 25:6-8a)

The third, from the end of the Revelation given to St John:

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. (Revelation 22:17)

The party’s been going on from all eternity; we’re invited to join in.

Now, a parenthesis which for some will be quite unnecessary, for others—like the preacher—quite necessary. One God; billions of people scattered over the centuries. How could that not end up being organized bureaucratically? Here’s where my imagination needs stretching. Jesus, it turns out, is aware of the problem:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:29-31)

Even the hairs of my head: counted. Perhaps not surprisingly this personal dimension to the divine invitation is captured most vividly in the Old Testament’s portraits of Lady Wisdom: “She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.… because she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought. (Wisdom 6:13, 16)

Which brings us to today’s second theme. The first: the Holy Trinity’s breath-taking invitation. The second: we’re not left to respond to that invitation on our own, as we’ve heard in the readings from Romans and John. In Romans Paul speaks of the Spirit empowering our prayers. A bit later he talks of those frequent situations in which we don’t have the slightest idea how to pray:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

In John’s Gospel Jesus uses the image of birth: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” And so we baptize (with water) in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Birth: that suggests a one-off event. In practice it tends to be a recurring event as we—picking up Paul’s language—repeatedly by the Spirit put to death those destructive habits that still form part of our character.

The Trinity’s breath-taking invitation, the Trinity’s daily assistance in responding to that invitation: that’s probably plenty for the sermon. But there’s that last bit in the Romans reading: “it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ– if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Suffer with him? After all the talk of feast and banquet in the sermon, how’d that get in? A long answer would require another sermon; here’s the short answer. In Jesus’ parable that we usually call “The Prodigal Son” the Father wants both the younger prodigal son and the older self-righteous son at the banquet. But that’ll only happen if both recognize that the father’s love, forgiving, repaying evil with good, is an expression of strength, not weakness. That’ll only happen if both practice love in forgiving, in repaying evil with good.

The Holy Trinity wants us at the banquet. More precisely, us and our enemies at the banquet. But that’ll only happen if we recognize that the Trinity’s love, forgiving, repaying evil with good, is an expression of strength, not weakness. That’ll only happen if we’ve at least begun to practice that love in forgiving, in repaying evil with good. And that practice in this world means suffering—as every Eucharist reminds us.

The Holy Trinity, a community of love since before time, inviting us into that same community, empowering us through the Spirit to accept that invitation, empowering us through that same Spirit to walk in the way of forgiveness and repaying evil with good. If that’s not a reason to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

The Spirit’s Many Roles (Pentecost, 5/19/2024)

Leave a reply

Readings (Acts, Psalms, Romans, John)

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Fiftieth (thank you, Altar Guild!). The Fiftieth? Well, ‘pentecost’ is simply the transliteration of the Greek word for ‘fiftieth.’ Fiftieth what? Well, that’s tied to the agricultural year, fiftieth day after the beginning of the harvests, so Fiftieth/Pentecost is a harvest festival, one of the three annual gatherings in Jerusalem. As Luke tells the story in Acts, this year the harvest being celebrated are the three thousand who are baptized in response to Peter’s sermon.

And that, in turn, provides one answer to the question of what the coming of the Spirit is for. At the end of Luke’s Gospel Jesus says to the disciples “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Lk. 24:49). The coming of the Spirit is the fulfillment of that promise, and throughout Acts we watch the Spirit empower mission. Better, the Spirit takes the lead, and the disciples—like Peter in today’s text—are called on to explain what’s going on. As we think and pray about St Peter’s mission in and around North Lake this might be a model to attend to: how might the Spirit take the lead here?

What’s the coming of the Spirit for? John’s Gospel gives a different answer, focused on the disciples’ common life. Jesus passes the baton to the Spirit, so that the Spirit continues doing what Jesus has been doing. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” That’s a promise we put our weight on, whether in our use of a canon of Holy Scripture (these books and not those books), the episcopate as it developed historically, down to the commissioning of our representatives for this year’s General Convention. We count on the Spirit to guide us into all the truth.

Guide us into all the truth. It turns out that there are a couple different dimensions to truth in John’s Gospel, and both are important here. The first, in line with what I’ve just said, is cognitive. “[Y]ou will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32). That’s important. At the same time, Paul’s words to the Romans provide a sort of counterweight. Jesus’ words in John are—in part—about  the Spirit increasing our understanding; Paul takes comfort in the Spirit stepping in when we don’t understand: “we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

One other thing about this understanding/not understanding tension. Recalling that passing of the baton in John, recall how seldom Jesus gave a direct answer to a question, or how often Jesus responded to a question with questions of his own. We shouldn’t be surprised if the Spirit follows that model, giving us—if we’re paying attention—more questions than we started out with. To sharpen the point: when looking for signs of the Spirit’s presence, some Christian traditions speak first about speaking in tongues. On the basis of this text in John, we might speak about having new questions.

The cognitive is one dimension of this guiding us into all the truth. The other equally important dimension is behavioral: doing the truth. “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (Jn. 3:21). Back in John’s Prologue we hear “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14). ‘Truth’ there is something like faithfulness. So “guide you into all the truth” is about guiding us into faithful living. So Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). If we’re looking for signs of the Spirit’s presence, not a bad place to start.

We’re hearing a rich combination of the Spirit’s roles: lead actor in the Church’s evangelism (Luke in Acts), Guide, both cognitive and behavioral (John), Intercessor when words/understanding fails (Paul). And Psalm 104 gives us one more: “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created; / and so you renew the face of the earth.” God’s creation is ongoing, and the Spirit that hovered over the primordial chaotic waters continues to work throughout God’s creation, chaotic or not. Wherever we go, whatever situation we’re facing, God’s Spirit is already at work. That doesn’t mean that everything is peachy; it does mean that there’s no place that’s godforsaken. So the first step in mission or evangelism is usually to attempt to discern what God’s Spirit is already doing.

In other words, this global work of the Spirit warns us against thinking “guide you into all the truth” means only the Christians have truth. We witness to our experience, confident that the Spirit’s guiding into all truth is also global.

Let’s close this off with the other Collect assigned to this day: “O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Jesus, making the Father’s Name known (7th Sunday of Easter, 5/12/2024)

Leave a reply

Readings

In eight days we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, and already today’s readings are setting us up for it. The reading from Acts picks up from Thursday’s Ascension Day reading, and brings us to the end of the 1st chapter; chapter 2 opens on the Day of Pentecost. The Gospel narrates the heart of Jesus’ prayer for the disciples: Protect them! Sanctify them (Make them holy)! And the Father’s response to that prayer is chiefly in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

To appreciate what’s going on in Jesus’ prayer, recall the scene toward the start of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers in which Gandalf the wizard and Pippin the hobbit are in conversation: “Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for, the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard’s face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth” (1965, 34).

“[A] great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.” Something like that same combination of care, sorrow, and joy is present, I suspect, in Jesus’ face and certainly in his words. Here he is, hours away from Judas’ betrayal and the tender mercies of the Roman garrison, talking about “my joy made complete in themselves.”

The joy is intimately connected to God’s Name: “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.” Now that’s odd: they didn’t know God’s name? What’s going on here? It turns out that Jesus making God’s name known is multi-dimensional, each dimension inviting us to joy.

The fundamental revelation of God’s Name up to this point occurred when God through Moses brought Israel out of slavery. In that first conversation at the burning bush, God has announced his intention to deliver Israel from Egypt, and we get this interchange:

—If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?
—I AM WHO I AM.… Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’

“I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” The most frequent form of the name was probably pronounced “Yahweh” (in some older translations, “Jehovah”). In its abbreviated form it’s the ‘Jah’ in ‘Hallelujah’. Whatever the form, the Israelites learn the meaning of this Name in God’s actions for their liberation. They start out slaves; they end up free; that’s what ‘I am’ means. And periodically in the Old Testament we encounter this I AM again, particularly in the Greek translation with which Jesus and the NT writers —specifically John— would have been familiar:

See now that I AM. There is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand. (Deuteronomy 32:39; my translation)

You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I AM. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. (Isaiah 43:10; my translation)

In the Gospel according to John, Jesus takes up this name “I AM” in a whole series of statements, including:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35)

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (8:12)

So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” (10:7)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (10:11)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…” (11:25)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (14:6)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” (15:1)

And in case we’re thinking “well, talk is cheap,” recall that Jesus says “I am the bread of life” after the feeding of the 5,000, “I am the light of the world” after giving sight to the blind, and “I am the resurrection and the life” just before calling Lazarus out of the tomb.

Nor did “I AM” always come with a predicate. Recall Jesus’ “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (John 8:58 NAB). Again, when the disciples in a small boat in the middle of a big storm cry out in fear as they see Jesus walking towards them over the sea, Jesus responds, “I AM; do not be afraid” (John 6:20 my translation).

Yes, Jesus has made the Name known to the disciples. Jesus’ actions, Jesus’ words, Jesus’ very being have taken that divine name revealed to Moses to a whole new level. The Israelites were filled with joy when finally out of the Egyptian army’s clutches; as we remember the liberation God has accomplished for us through Jesus, a greater joy can be ours.

There is a second dimension to this “I have made your name known.” The first is the presence and power of “I AM;” the second is Jesus’ distinctive use of “Abba,” the Aramaic word children typically used to address their fathers. We have no evidence of Jesus’ contemporaries using the word to address God; it probably would have seemed far too intimate. Most of the time the Gospels translate it into Greek. Its one appearance in the Gospels during Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane —“Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14.36)— is a window on Jesus’ customary usage. And the intimacy with God Jesus experienced —evident also through today’s Gospel text—is offered to the disciples. Here are the other two appearances in the New Testament:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15 NAB)

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6 NRSV)

So Jesus making God’s Name known to the disciples isn’t simply about giving them —us— information, but about inviting us to participate ever more deeply in God, God our Abba, God the “I AM” who can bring out of any situation life, freedom, and joy.

There is a third dimension to this “I have made your name known.” Jesus sends us out into the world to baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By the end of the New Testament, that is clearly the Name of God that Jesus has made known to the disciples. Our God, not a monolithic unity, but a community of love and joy into which we are invited to enter. Who is the God in whose presence we live? A loving Father, whose two arms, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, are constantly extended to strengthen, guide, embrace us. “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

You see, today’s Gospel text is pretty dense. I have tried to go for the core, the many ways Jesus has been revealing God’s Name —God’s reality, God’s character— to the disciples. Grasp this, and the rest falls into place: the deep gratitude in Jesus’ words, the awareness that all that he has is gift, Jesus’ trust in his Father’s continued care for the disciples, and the sense of passing the baton: You sent me into the world; I am sending them into the world. The world —the many ways we organize ourselves to shut out God— will do its worst, but will not succeed, any more than closing your eyes real tight, clenching your fists, and wishing real hard will keep the sun from coming up.

But all that falls into place only if we start with God. “I have made your name known…” Jesus said. Do not settle for anything less here. Do not get sidetracked. Life is too short to settle for anything less than “great joy, a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing.”

Humanity’s future: Human, not bestial (Ascension, 5/9/2024)

Leave a reply

Readings (with Daniel 7:1-14 read in place of Acts)

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

How’s that as an exercise in understatement? Not only risen, but, in Ephesians’ language “seated … at [God’s] right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”

Like last year, we heard Daniel’s vision in place of Acts’ account of the ascension. I make the change for two reasons. First, having only Acts and Luke is something like having our participation in a wedding confined to watching the couple leaving for the church. Daniel’s vision pictures the ceremony itself: “one like a son of man 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…”  

Daniel’s vision pulls the camera way back to encompass—representatively—human history, and to ask how it ends. It is a profoundly hopeful vision: history ends not with some version of “The one with the biggest teeth wins” but with authentically human life. And what today’s feast celebrates is that Daniel got it right. The Son of Man—Jesus’ preferred self-designation—has in fact been “given dominion and glory and kingship.” That’s good news that our neighbors—near and far—need to hear.

“Dominion and glory and kingship.” “Hey preacher, sure doesn’t look like it.” No it doesn’t, if dominion is measured by the compulsion of Daniel’s beasts. That’s one of the Church’s oldest temptations: let’s use the beasts’ tools, marry Church priorities with State power. No. Jesus’ dominion: creating space for free human choice, with the utterly reliable promise that even the smallest choice matters. “and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple– truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” (Matt. 10:42).

And then there’s our reading from Ephesians: “God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” If we’re paying attention, that text can be downright jarring. Imagine someone introducing a speaker like this: “She is the CEO of J P Morgan Chase—and the Manager of the McDonald’s at 5th Avenue & 42nd Street in Manhattan.” “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion…head for the church.”

If you want evidence that Paul’s certifiable, there it is. Or maybe Paul has seen what we have trouble seeing. Think about the sort of thing we’ve been hearing in our readings from Acts this Easter season.

“But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

Later, the high priest: “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” To which Peter and the apostles: “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:27-31).

Stephen, while being stoned, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

Daniel’s beasts, Paul’s “rule and authority and power and dominion:” these are not the agents for a human future. But Jesus’ Church: we’re the heralds, the witnesses, the evidence, of that human future, and who knows what we might contribute to it in the process.

This Feast of the Ascension. About Jesus, certainly. Being about Jesus, profoundly good news re human history’s goal. Being about Jesus, a reminder of the centrality of Jesus’ Church for that human history.

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